Although it would seem logical for detectives to immediately go into the cordoned-off area and head for the body at a homicide crime scene (as is often depicted in books and movies), there are other matters that must be taken care of first. In most homicides, detectives find the best and most damning evidence at the crime scene. Therefore, the crime scene has to be properly and carefully processed, beginning with a thorough documentation of the scene by crime scene technicians. Fortunately for Detective Sergeant Roy West, the scene on East 23rd Street didn’t appear to be overly disturbed or to have attracted an exorbitant amount of outside attention. The uniformed police officers, after assuring that the scene was safe and no witnesses were nearby, had quickly cordoned off the area and protected it until West arrived.
The weather on March 17, 1986, was cloudy and relatively warm, low fifties, with no snow on the ground (as occasionally could be the case in Indiana at that time of year). West was relieved not to have to worry about any evidence on the ground being hidden by the snow and consequently hard to find. On the other hand, no snow meant no tracks in the snow from the perpetrator coming into or leaving the crime scene.
While the crime scene technician was photographing and videotaping the crime scene, Detective West spoke with the first responding uniformed officer. This would give him a clear picture of what the officer saw when he’d initially responded, and of any changes that had occurred to the crime scene since then. The first responding officer had been Patrolman Jeremiah Sedam. He made the original report, which the police department designated case number 296589F. Following this, West performed an initial walk-through of the crime scene on East 23rd Street. The body lay on a steep slope, and there appeared to be a footprint from someone who’d slipped at the start of the steep slope. That would be photographed and preserved. West also spied several pieces of the Indianapolis Star, the city’s morning newspaper, on the ground close to the body. The pieces appeared to have blue and black spray paint marks on them, as though someone had spray-painted something that had been sitting on the papers.
Since the ground around where the victim lay contained scant evidence and also appeared mostly undisturbed, West’s immediate tentative theory was that the victim had likely been killed elsewhere and then brought there and dumped. The perpetrator, he surmised, had stopped a vehicle on the nearby road, carried the body down to this site, dumped it, and then walked back to the vehicle and left.
After marking the pieces of newspaper as evidence for the crime scene technicians to recover, West finally walked over and examined the body. He found the victim to be a young, white female with blond hair. He guessed her to be between four feet ten and four feet eleven (she would later be found to be actually five feet two and weighed 119 pounds) and between twelve and fourteen years of age. She was lying facedown on the side of a steep hill, surrounded by discarded tires, old lumber, chunks of concrete, and other trash. The area, it appeared, was an illegal dumping site. West noted that the girl wore blue jeans, a blouse, brown deck shoes, and a lavender jacket. West could see small green and gold fibers, later identified as carpet fibers, in the victim’s hair and on her clothing. He also saw several small pieces of carpeting near her. When the deputy coroner arrived, West made certain to point out the fibers to him so that they wouldn’t be lost when the body was transferred to the morgue for an autopsy.
Of course the deputy coroner, in his own examination, likely would have known to note and remove those carpet fibers and place them in evidence envelopes, but West needed to be certain it was done. Since he was new to homicide, West wasn’t yet familiar with the deputy coroner (in this case, Dr. Dean Hawley). In Indiana, the coroner is an elected official who isn’t required to have any medical training at all, nor are any of his or her deputy coroners (though many, such as Dr. Hawley, do). West knew that the competence of a coroner could mean the difference between a successful murder investigation and a failure, since much of the information a homicide detective uses in his or her investigation comes from the coroner.
The coroner’s job at a homicide crime scene is not to determine the official cause of death (that will be determined later at the autopsy) but to examine the body for injuries (including defensive wounds, which are wounds sustained trying to ward off an attack); to look for any evidence on the body, such as blood, saliva, semen, fibers, and so forth; and to determine if it appears the body has been the victim of foul play. On East 23rd Street, it was determined that this did indeed appear to be the case with the young girl. During the examination of her body, Dr. Hawley noted some blunt force trauma to the victim’s head and neck, and possible evidence of strangulation. He estimated that the girl had been dead a little less than twenty-four hours. This was as close a determination as he could make in the field. Following his initial examination, the deputy coroner then had the young girl’s body placed into a body bag and called for a stretcher to carry her to the waiting transport vehicle.
Meanwhile, Ted and Sandy Stuard, who stood outside the crime scene, felt as if they were having a waking nightmare. At this point, they had been waiting around for what seemed to them to be hours to talk to a detective about their missing daughter, Dawn, and although they might not have been aware of it, the uniformed officer who had talked to them had been watching them carefully.
The first uniformed officers responding to the scene of a murder and those guarding the perimeter of the crime scene always want to quickly identify and closely watch any possible family members of a victim. They need to do this for several reasons. Often, these individuals will know something important about the crime; occasionally, they are involved in the crime. Also, it’s not uncommon for family members to crash through a crime scene barrier and run up to hug the body, unable to comprehend what has happened. While understandable, naturally those actions can do untold damage to the crime scene. Obscuring the identity of the victim from onlookers is one of several reasons police officers are trained to extend the perimeter of a crime scene farther than the actual scene.
In this case, Ted Stuard had tried to see what was going on inside the crime scene but couldn’t see the victim. And so he and his wife Sandy just stood and waited for a detective to come and speak with them.
Before walking over to the Stuards, Detective West gave a statement to the news media, with the hope that someone who saw the news report would know who his victim was. He would later say that he hadn’t known someone who could possibly identify the victim was already at the scene. When Detective Sergeant West finally did come over to speak with Ted and Sandy Stuard and learned the details of Dawn’s disappearance, along with her description, however, he knew that Dawn was very likely his victim. But he didn’t say so to the Stuards—there was still a minute possibility that he could be wrong, and he did not want to unnecessarily traumatize the parents until he was certain that the victim was Dawn Stuard. West questioned Ted and Sandy with as much compassion and sympathy, but also with as much thoroughness, as he could. While it is understandably hard for close relatives of a possible murder victim to think clearly at such times, it still is the best time to get the most accurate information; before family members can forget key facts, and also before they have time to talk with others about what has happened and allow other people’s perceptions to color their own.
Ted told West everything he knew—how he and his wife had left town for Ohio on Sunday, how their daughter, Dawn, hadn’t shown up at her aunt’s house, and how, after the aunt called him, he and his wife had hurried home. He then told West about how he and his wife had checked everywhere in the neighborhood looking for their daughter. Ted also mentioned how suspicious the Reese family had acted.
Once West had collected all of the information he felt he could get from Ted and Sandy Stuard at that time, he was reasonably sure that his victim was indeed the Stuards’ missing daughter. He then had to have Ted conduct an even more difficult task—the body identification. West took Ted over to the waiting transport
vehicle, where the victim’s body had been placed, and asked him to look and see if the person they’d found that morning was his daughter.
This is naturally a very traumatic and horrifying thing for a family member to have to do, and even the most hardened homicide detective will be affected by it. But it has to be done. Confirming the identity of a murder victim is extremely important for a homicide investigation. Knowing the victim’s identity gives the homicide detective a place to start in the investigation. Knowing who the victim is, the homicide detective can then trace the victim’s movements, learn about the possible motives for the murder, determine who last saw the victim alive, and find people who knew the victim well enough to give the homicide detective the information he or she needs to conduct the investigation.
And so, West stood by quietly with Ted Stuard and waited as the driver of the transport vehicle unzipped the bag. When the body came into view, the nightmare Ted had been avoiding became horrifyingly real. With tears now blurring his vision, he nodded.
It was Dawn.
Words couldn’t really describe the feeling of that horrible moment. “The hardest thing I’ve ever done is identify my daughter,” Ted told the news media later. “Your whole world just crashes right there.”
After the body identification, the deputy coroner left with the body, and the Stuards went home. Detective West then carefully examined the entire crime scene for a second time, and would even eventually come back for a third search. He discovered more carpet fibers on the ground leading away from where the body had been found and heading up to the road, which supported his theory that Dawn had been killed somewhere else and then dumped, a not uncommon occurrence in homicides. But along with this follow-up search, Detective West had also set up a canvass of the surrounding area, which meant having detectives knock on every door for several blocks around the murder scene to ask the residents if they knew anything about the murder or the victim. A neighborhood canvass can become a crucial part of any homicide investigation, as detectives often find people who have witnessed something important to a murder case, something they didn’t realize the significance of at the time. Also, some people with important information won’t contact the police for fear of being labeled as a snitch but will talk if an officer comes to their door. A canvass will usually be repeated more than once, to ensure that detectives reach everyone who may not have been at home during the previous canvasses.
In the canvass around the East 23rd Street site, detectives found several witnesses who said that their dogs had begun barking quite vigorously around 1:30 that morning, but since the area had no street lights, they hadn’t been able to see what the dogs were barking at. They assumed it was just some wild animal.
This being his first case, and wanting very much to succeed as a homicide detective, West became committed to doing the absolute best job possible to bring this homicide investigation to a successful conclusion. Nothing, he told himself, would escape his search. He would not let his first case go unsolved. He had a very young girl as a victim, much too young to have been involved in most of the situations that usually lead to murder. What could she have done to deserve such a death? he wondered.
“This was a truly innocent victim,” West said about his first impressions of the case.
And so, after finishing at the crime scene, West then began the next step in the investigation of a murder—developing suspects. He knew he had a starting point from his interview with the Stuards: the Reese family.
THREE
Detective Sergeant Roy West, after giving the crime scene on East 23rd Street as thorough a follow-up search as he could, finally left the area late in the afternoon of March 17, 1986. Working with information he had received from the Stuards and from several of the officers he spoke with who had been involved in the search for Dawn the previous day, he drove over to the Reese house at 1428 North Bosart Street. West had found out that after Ted and Sandy Stuard had reported Dawn as a runaway, the officers had conducted an extremely thorough search for the girl, including stopping at the Reese house and questioning the occupants about Dawn.
But that was when Dawn Stuard was merely missing, before they knew that she was dead, and likely murdered. Now West wanted to take the investigation to the next level. He had the occupants of the Reese house transported downtown to the Homicide Office for interviews.
West knew it was very possible that one of these people could be Dawn’s killer or a witness to her death, so he took the Reeses down to the Homicide Office because he wanted to question them somewhere out of their comfort zone. When people are in locations where they feel comfortable, they are more likely to be able to resist the interviewer’s attempt to extract information from them that they don’t want to tell. West knew he’d be asking some tough questions, and he wanted to do it in a location where he was in control. The interview rooms at police headquarters were closed-off rooms with no distractions and nothing for the interviewees to look at other than the police officer questioning them. Inside the interview rooms were only the beige metal walls and gray metal furniture. No pictures, no computers, no decorations. And while one might think that police officers would have difficulty getting people to agree to questioning, actually the opposite is true. Individuals who are innocent typically want to help police get the matter cleared up—and guilty individuals usually want to look innocent, so they also tend to readily agree to go to police headquarters for questioning.
Paul Reese Sr., though, hadn’t been at the house on North Bosart Street with the others. However, West found out that he had been calling the Bosart Street house from Crawford’s Tavern on South Meridian Street, so he had sent some officers there to pick him up. Sure enough, the officers found him there, and while Paul Sr. at first gave the officers a phony name, he eventually did go with them.
As he drove downtown to conduct the interviews, West stayed busy trying to formulate his questions. Initial interviews are usually meant to elicit information that will point the homicide detective in the direction of a suspect. They seldom solve a homicide, but they do often give a detective a starting point for the investigation, and if conducted properly, they can often offer the detective a motive and can point to the location of other evidence or possibly even a suspect. While physical evidence can often play a more crucial role than witness testimony, witness statements are still valuable. Fortunately, Detective West had honed his interview skills while working in narcotics. Narcotics abusers are some of the biggest liars police officers ever encounter. Finally, at a little after 6:00 P.M. on March 17, 1986, West was ready to begin the interviews.
The first person he spoke with was Paul Reese Sr., the forty-three-year-old father of the family. Paul Sr. told West that since Barbara had filed for divorce he didn’t live full-time at the house on North Bosart Street, though when he did stay there he helped around the house by doing maintenance and other work. Otherwise, he said, he lived with his own father. “I stay with my dad at his house on Lake Road a lot,” he told West. “I just kind of drift back and forth between the two houses.”
Paul Sr. went on to explain that he and his wife had gone through divorce proceedings in 1979, but that he wasn’t sure if the divorce had ever been finalized because he had never paid his attorney. Regardless, Paul Sr. said, he and Barbara had never really tried to get back together, in part because he could never get a good job, and wasn’t employed at the moment.
When asked about the events of March 16, 1986, Paul Sr. said that around 10:00 A.M. a seventeen-year-old named Timothy Joe Keller had knocked on the door and said that he and Paul Sr.’s sixteen-year-old son, Paul Reese Jr., were supposed to go sell some things at the Liberty Bell Flea Market on the west side of Indianapolis. (West would later learn that the things the boys were selling were items they had stolen from neighbors’ yards; they were taking them to a flea market all the way across town in the hopes that no one there would recognize the stolen goods.) Paul Sr. told Wes
t that he let Timothy in, and then about ten minutes later, Dawn Stuard had also knocked on the back door and Timothy let her in. Dawn told them that she was there because she was supposed to help Barbara Reese collect payments on her paper route that day. Paul Sr. said he didn’t know why the thirteen-year-old girl was there so early, since Barbara never got up until late in the afternoon, after her early morning paper delivery. Dawn asked Paul Sr. if he wanted to play pool. He said he would in a little while.
Dawn took a seat at the table and everybody just sat there talking for a while until Paul Jr. and Pam Winningham (Paul Jr.’s seventeen-year-old girlfriend who lived in the basement with him) woke up and got ready to go. “It was probably a half hour or so,” Paul Sr. said. Then Timothy, Paul Jr., and Pam left in Timothy’s white Ford Pinto to pick up the items that they hoped to sell that day at the flea market. Dawn stayed at the house with Paul Sr. There were others in the house, but they were asleep.
There was a pool table in the basement, and Paul Sr. went on to say that Dawn again said she wanted to play pool, so the two of them went downstairs. “She wanted to shoot a game of pool,” Paul Sr. told West, “and so I shot her a game until they came back.” About fifteen minutes after Paul Sr. and Dawn went down into the basement, Timothy, Pam, and Paul Jr. returned.
At about this same time, Pam’s father, Carvel Winningham, who went by the nickname of “Cotton,” pulled up in his black Chevrolet Chevette out front. Pam went out to the car and she and Cotton argued for a bit about a court hearing scheduled for the next day, but they finally left together. When Paul Sr. told his son that he’d seen Pam and her father fighting, Paul Jr. and Timothy ran out and followed Pam and her father for a while in Tim’s car to be sure that Pam was all right. They followed Pam and her father to a McDonald’s at East 10th Street and North Bosart, saw that everything seemed okay between them, and then came back.
Killers in the Family Page 3
