Killers in the Family

by Robert L. Snow

  At Dawn Marie Stuard’s autopsy, the coroner, Dr. David W. Gauger, officially ruled her death a homicide. He determined that the cause of death had been asphyxiation caused by a thin, smooth object being violently pressed and held against her throat. The object had been bigger than a wire or rope, about a half inch or more wide. Dawn had also suffered blunt force trauma to the head, face, and neck, including a significant blunt force injury to the back of her head, which Dr. Gauger said was consistent with her head violently striking a flat, hard surface. This injury, he added, resulted in bleeding on the brain and had probably rendered her unconscious. In addition, he found tape residue on the girl’s mouth and wrists, showing that she had been restrained and gagged. Dr. Gauger also found signs that Dawn had been sexually assaulted. He discovered forced sexual injuries to her vagina and anus. However, he did not find semen in the rectum or vaginal cavity. He also confirmed that there appeared to be carpet fibers on Dawn’s hair and clothing. Finally, he said, fingernail marks on Dawn’s neck and chin showed that she had struggled as she was strangled. The fingernail marks were her own, and had resulted from her trying to push away whatever was used to strangle her.

  The autopsy findings sent Detective West back to the crime scene on Tuesday, March 18, to look for more evidence, especially anything related to the carpet fibers found in Dawn’s hair and clothing. “I returned to the scene where we found her body and found similar carpet fibers up on the roadway near where the body was located, and off to the side of the road that led down into the ravine to where she had been dumped. Naturally, I called for crime lab technician Edwin Andresen, and collected these as evidence.”

  Since the Reese house was the last location where Dawn had been seen alive, West obtained a search warrant on March 22, 1986, for the Reese home. This was a little less than a week since he had examined the body at the crime scene, but he had needed this time to have evidence analyzed and to prepare the search warrant for a judge’s signature. Knowing the Reese family’s long history of crime and trouble, and after speaking with Timothy Keller and other witnesses, West had become more and more convinced that whatever had happened to Dawn Stuard, it had likely occurred in the Reese house.

  Homicide detectives know that with a dumped body, if they can find the actual scene of the murder they will likely find evidence there. According to an article in the August 2004 issue of Popular Science, esteemed early-twentieth-century criminologist Edmond Locard stated in his exchange principle, “Whenever two objects come in contact, there is always a transfer of material.” This means that in any violent struggle, evidence of it will often remain somewhere at the crime scene. In the 1953 book Crime Investigation: Physical Evidence and the Police Laboratory, the author Paul L. Kirk states, “Wherever [the killer] steps, whatever he touches, whatever he leaves, even unconsciously, will serve as silent evidence against him. Not only his fingerprints or his footprints, but his hair, the fibers from his clothes, the glass he breaks, the tool marks he leaves, the paint he scratches, the blood or semen he deposits or collects . . . all of these and more bear mute witness against him . . . Physical evidence cannot be wrong; it cannot perjure itself, it cannot be wholly absent . . . Only human failure to find it, study and understand it, can diminish its value.”

  Many murderers will leave a considerable amount of evidence behind, because murders often occur in the heat of the moment, and various scenarios may occur: the victim doesn’t cooperate as anticipated; a gunshot or knife wound doesn’t kill instantly; a victim fights back vigorously; an unexpected person suddenly shows up, etcetera. Therefore a killer may panic and drop important evidence; touch items and leave fingerprints behind; spatter blood where the killer can’t see it in order to clean it up; and otherwise overlook and leave behind valuable evidence. West hoped that this fact would work to his advantage.

  Because Dawn had not only suffered blunt force trauma, but had also been bound and gagged, West was certain that there had to be some evidence of the struggle Dawn had put up before she had been killed. He just had to search for it and find it.

  Of all the evidence a homicide detective can recover in a murder investigation, one of the most important, of course, is the murder weapon. The coroner had said that Dawn had died from asphyxiation caused by a thin, smooth object being violently pressed against her throat. The pool cues in the basement of the Reese home seemed to Detective West to be a good match for this description. But West didn’t overlook anything as possible evidence.

  “With the search warrant at the Reese house,” West said, “I had crime lab technician Edwin Andresen collect carpet samples that were similar to the fibers that were found at the scene where Dawn had been left. I also had newspapers and spray paint collected that were similar to the spray paint found on pieces of newspaper at the crime scene on East 23rd Street.” In addition, he took a roll of duct tape.

  Timothy Keller had told West that he had last seen Dawn and Paul Reese Sr. come up from the basement carrying pool cues. West had a strong feeling, based on what he had learned from and about the Reese family and from talking to various witnesses, that the murder of Dawn Marie Stuard had very likely occurred right there in the basement, so he gave it a thorough second, and third, search. It wasn’t an easy task, because the basement was filled wall to wall with stacks of junk that West had to wade through in order to conduct his search. In a drawer in the basement he found a scrapbook that contained newspaper clippings about Dawn’s murder. While this was not direct evidence, Detective West knew it could perhaps be useful later at the trial as supporting evidence. Following this, he continued his meticulous search. West’s thoroughness eventually paid off, when he found a spot of blood on a brick furnace flue. But in 1986, that was far from conclusive.

  While today crime lab technicians can test blood and bodily fluids for DNA that will pinpoint them as belonging to a specific person, that was not the case in 1986. Back then, all the crime lab could do was blood-typing, and the best that could do was eliminate certain individuals as the owner of the blood or bodily fluids. It couldn’t say with certainty that the fluid came from a particular person.

  “While in the basement, Andresen also collected what would eventually be referred to as item #63, a red sample, which turned out to be human blood,” said West. “Unfortunately, in 1986 the most the crime lab could do was blood-typing, and it was found that it was type O blood, which was consistent with Dawn’s blood type. It was a shame we didn’t have DNA back then.”

  Therefore, while matching the blood drop to Dawn’s blood type helped convince West that he was going in the right direction with his investigation, 38 percent of the world’s population has type O blood, so, while helpful, this was just very circumstantial evidence. And unfortunately, the test used up all but a very tiny portion of the blood sample. West realized that in order to bring the investigation to a successful conclusion he was going to have to dig deeper and find more conclusive evidence. During his search of the Reeses’ house, West found green and gold carpet fibers similar to the ones found on Dawn’s body, not only in a waste can in the basement, but also on the ground outside the back of the house, and in their garage. West also had a brown station wagon owned by the Reeses towed to a secure lot for processing. Officer Andresen would later say that, while every other area of the car had been filled with junk, the rear of the station wagon had been cleared out, as if something had been transported back there. West had also learned that Paul Reese Jr. had borrowed Timothy Keller’s white Ford Pinto the night of Dawn’s murder. It had been towed in later that night as part of another investigation, but a search of it didn’t turn up anything of value to West’s investigation.

  West, however, didn’t stop his search with just the Reese house and car. He knew that he still had some other sites to search, too. Paul Sr. had driven around with Timothy Keller for several hours late in the day that Dawn disappeared. West figured that Paul Sr. had probably had Timothy drive him around to scout ou
t some places for use later as potential body dump locations.

  “From talking with Timothy Keller, I learned that he had driven Paul Reese Sr. to several places on that Sunday evening, believed to have been after the murder was committed,” West said. “He told me all of the locations they had gone to, and since I figured it could undoubtedly be very important to the case, I visited all of these places.”

  Around 8:00 P.M. on Sunday night, Keller said, Paul Sr. had called him and said he needed a ride to look at some tires that he would try to buy or possibly steal. One of the roads Paul Sr. had Keller drive along was the same one where Dawn was eventually found. They also drove to a few other locations, though Keller didn’t know why.

  West couldn’t at the moment see any reason for Timothy to lie, and Paul Sr. had already told West that he had driven around with Timothy Keller the night Dawn disappeared. West also thought it likely that Timothy was suspicious of what Paul Sr. was doing, but that he was probably too frightened of Paul Sr., who was a scary man, to question his motives.

  “One of the locations they drove to,” West continued, “was East 19th Street and North Forest Manor Avenue, across from the Community Ball Park [less than a mile northwest of the Reese house and about a mile southwest of where Dawn’s body had been found]. In that area I found a large [seventy-eight-by-thirty-eight-inch] section of green and gold carpet, some yellow nylon rope, a beer bottle, and a piece of the Indianapolis Star newspaper. This was significant in my mind because the carpet appeared similar to the carpet fibers found on Dawn’s body, the carpet fibers found on the roadway on East 23rd Street, and the carpet fibers found in the basement of the Reese house. I would later learn, after having the carpet examined by the crime lab, that there was blood on this section of the carpet and that it was type O blood, which was consistent with Dawn’s blood type.”

  However, as with the blood found in the basement of the Reese house, little could be done with this information at the time, and although West was hopeful, an examination of the beer bottle didn’t turn up any usable fingerprints.

  West continued the investigation, talking to everyone he could find who might know anything about the case and revisiting important sites several times to be certain nothing had been overlooked. He talked to several witnesses who said that Paul Reese Sr., usually a very calm and unflappable person, had seemed extremely nervous right after Dawn’s disappearance. One neighbor, Archie Ward, said that when Paul Sr. came to his house the night of Dawn’s disappearance to ask for a ride and then eventually borrow a bicycle, he told him and his brother Jay that he needed to get out of the area because someone who thought he had kidnapped Dawn was chasing him. Jay Ward said that on the day after Dawn’s death, Paul Reese Sr. had asked him to go down and check to see if the police were at the house on North Bosart Street, so he’d know whether it was safe to go back or not.

  West questioned Paul Reese Sr. for a second time on April 15, 1986, but Paul Sr. stuck to the same story he had told originally and continued to deny having anything to do with Dawn’s death.

  The crime lab informed West that the carpet fibers found on Dawn Marie Stuard were similar to those West had recovered at the Reese house, and that the spray paint he had also recovered at the Reese house was similar to the paint found on the pieces of newspaper near Dawn’s body. However, all they could say with certainty at the time was that they could be “of common origin.” That was the best that forensic science could do in 1986; they could not be more definite. They could not say, without a doubt, that they were identical.

  “All the crime lab could tell me was that the carpet fibers were consistent, that they had consistent characteristics with the carpet that was found at the Reese house,” West said. “Blood type O was the same type as Dawn’s blood, but not enough to establish that it was Dawn’s blood. The crime lab also told me that the paint that was found on the newspaper at the crime scene was consistent with the spray paint found in the basement of the Reese house. Unfortunately, all of this was circumstantial.”

  Detective Sergeant Roy West worked tirelessly, searched over and over for more evidence, and interviewed dozens of possible witnesses. On September 15, 1986, West even spoke with James L. Reese, Paul Reese Sr.’s older brother. James claimed that his brother had admitted to him several days earlier that he’d had sex with Dawn and had killed her. While valuable, James’s statement was still just hearsay and not direct evidence.

  “We knew at the time that, with the dumping of the body, probably more than one person had to be involved,” West said. “We had hoped that one of them would roll over on the other. We also couldn’t exclude Timothy Keller from suspicion in the investigation. But eventually he took a polygraph test and passed it, and so, based on that, the prosecutor filed charges against Paul Reese Sr. and Paul Reese Jr.”

  On September 25, 1986, West arrested Paul Reese Sr. and Paul Reese Jr. and charged them with the murder of Dawn Marie Stuard. He also charged them with rape, criminal confinement, and criminal deviate conduct (a sexual assault other than a vaginal rape). Despite most of the evidence being circumstantial, West believed that, faced with a murder charge, Paul Reese Jr. might be willing to inform on his father in order to have his own charges dropped or reduced. But to West’s disappointment, Paul Jr. stood fast.

  In Indiana, once individuals have been arrested for murder, they are almost always held in jail without bond until the trial. Because of this, witnesses and others with important information will many times come forward, since they no longer have to fear the person arrested. Also, many times those arrested will be willing to talk about making a deal with the prosecutor or be willing to inform on others involved in the case. West hoped that would prove true in the Dawn Marie Stuard case, but unfortunately, that didn’t happen.

  By January 1987, ten months after Dawn Marie Stuard’s murder, the case had still not developed any more significant evidence or testimony. All West had was a lot of very circumstantial evidence. It deeply troubled him that he couldn’t take the investigation any further, but he knew that if they went to trial with just the scant evidence they had, there was a very good chance that the father and son would be found not guilty, and that would be that. Because of double jeopardy, there could not be another trial down the road. And so, after conferring with the Prosecutor’s Office, it was decided that the best course of action would be to drop the charges against Paul Reese Sr. and Paul Reese Jr.

  Even though West knew that the charges could always be refiled in the future if more evidence in the case was ever to surface, he took little consolation in that fact.

  “I felt terribly disappointed when we had to drop the charges,” West said. “I had put a lot of time and work into this case, but more importantly this case involved a totally innocent young person who was sexually assaulted and brutally murdered. Her only crime had been trusting the Reese family.”

  Also disappointed in the decision was Dawn’s father, Ted Stuard. From the moment he’d identified his daughter’s body until the arrest of the Reeses in September 1986, Ted had tried to follow the case as closely as the police would allow him, waiting anxiously for the detectives to do something. He’d felt elated when the Indianapolis Police Department charged Paul Reese Sr. and Paul Reese Jr. with Dawn’s murder, but devastated when they dropped the charges. Following that decision, Ted Stuard decided to move to Dayton, Ohio, after all. He couldn’t believe that the police were releasing killers back onto the street. It was just too much. He had to get away. Indianapolis simply had too many bad memories.

  Later that year, in November 1987, one of the Reeses’ nearby neighbors, Mrs. Carol Luken, told a friend of hers who happened to be a deputy sheriff about some important information she had about the case. Carol was apparently deeply afraid of the Reeses, and of what they might do to her if they found out she’d spoken to the police, so it took over a year and a half before her conscience finally got the better of the fear. The deputy
sheriff contacted Detective Roy West, who then spoke with Carol Luken himself. She told West that between 1:00 and 1:30 A.M. the day after Dawn Marie Stuard’s disappearance, she had been up taking care of some newborn puppies and heard loud banging noises and voices coming from the Reese house nearby. She looked out her kitchen window and saw Paul Reese Jr. and another boy she didn’t recognize pushing a car out of their backyard and into the street. The two then drove a different car, a station wagon, up to the back door of their house. Carol then said she witnessed Paul Reese Sr. and Paul Reese Jr. carry out of the house a six-to-seven-foot-long piece of rolled-up carpeting that sagged in the middle. Carol said she also saw the mother, Barbara Reese, open the tailgate of the station wagon and help her ex-husband and son load the piece of carpeting into the back of the station wagon. Then, with Barbara driving, she and Paul Sr. left in the station wagon with the headlights out. Paul Jr. followed them in a small white car. She wasn’t sure what happened with the other youth.

  “Unfortunately, this information wasn’t known until well over a year after the case,” West said. “But it was consistent with what witnesses who lived near the area where Dawn had been dumped told me. They said that at about 1:30 in the morning they heard their dogs start barking, extremely loud and for a long period of time. One of the witnesses saw the dogs looking over in the direction of where Dawn’s body was eventually found, but it was extremely dark and the witness didn’t see any lights. The witness figured the dogs were barking at some wild animal.” West also added, “It is my belief that this area was chosen because Barbara Reese would normally have driven past this area to deliver the Indianapolis Star newspaper, and for her car to have been stopped in that area at that time of the morning wouldn’t have drawn suspicion if seen by the neighbors.”