Killers in the Family

by Robert L. Snow

  Following Officer Sedam, the prosecution put Kathleen Rueter on the witness stand. She described how she’d been out walking her daughter, who was then six years old, to school when she saw Dawn’s body. School started at 1:00 P.M., so she estimated that she’d discovered the body at around 12:45 P.M. Again, the defense had no cross-examination, and the judge excused her.

  The prosecution next put Ted Stuard, Dawn’s father, on the stand. He told the jury about how he and his wife, Sandy, had frantically searched for their daughter on the night of March 16, 1986. He also related how he had felt strange while looking through the Reese house. “I was hoping I would find her, but I had a very bad feeling,” he told the court. “It felt very eerie for some reason.” He also said that the garage had no electricity and he didn’t have a flashlight with him, so he really couldn’t see much. Ted said that when he looked through the house, he called Dawn’s name, but didn’t open doors, boxes, closets, et cetera.

  During his testimony, Ted Stuard looked constantly at Paul Reese Sr., and he later said that when he did, he could feel the anger building up inside him. “I felt cold-blooded rage when I saw Paul Reese Sr. in court,” he said. “I just wanted to walk over and grab him by the throat and squeeze until he never breathed again.”

  Linda Stuard, who had accompanied her husband to court, added that after her husband’s testimony, “He was so mad that he was squeezing my hand so hard I had to get it away from him.”

  Following Ted Stuard’s testimony, the prosecution then put on the witness stand a woman by the name of Lorrie Ann Hendrix. After being sworn in, she told the court that she had been best friends with Dawn Marie Stuard in 1986. Lorrie said that she had been the one who introduced Dawn to Johnny and Jeremy Reese. They both thought the two boys were cute. She said she liked Jeremy and Dawn liked Johnny, so they started hanging out with them (before they were confined at the Juvenile Detention Facility). Lorrie added that Dawn was supposed to come by her house the weekend she died, but that she hadn’t shown up.

  Next up was Detective Roy West. This would be the first of several times he took the stand over the course of the trial. West gave the court a complete rundown of everything he had seen and done at the crime scene. He said he’d called for the Crime Lab while en route to the scene, and that he’d arrived there at 1:56 P.M. He also told about talking with the detective who’d been in charge of Dawn’s runaway case, and learning from him, along with the Stuards, about the Reeses.

  When the prosecutor finished with West, the defense then had an opportunity to cross-examine him, but defense attorney Michelle Wall declined to do so at this point. While many defense attorneys hope to be able to get witnesses for the prosecution to contradict themselves on the stand, and then attack their credibility when they do so, Detective West was much too seasoned an officer for that to happen. West, having testified in hundreds of cases, was a very sincere and believable witness whom the defense attorney likely couldn’t shake. He simply hadn’t given the defense attorney anything to grab onto.

  The State’s next witness called to testify would be Officer Edwin Andresen. Andresen had been the evidence technician West had used for this investigation. After being sworn in, Andresen told the court that he received the run at 1:56 P.M. He described the crime scene as wooded and littered with debris. The prosecutor then played a video Andresen had made of the crime scene and had him narrate what the jurors were seeing, including the body. The State next introduced a number of crime scene photographs and had Andresen identify them. Andresen then went over the various pieces of evidence he had collected that day, including the carpet pieces and fibers found at the scene. Also, he told about photographing a footprint at the crime scene. It appeared that someone had slipped on the steep slope. The defense again had no cross-examination, so the judge excused him.

  Following Officer Andresen, the State recalled Detective Roy West to the witness stand. He told the court that the body had been located far enough away from the road that he believed it wasn’t just tossed out of a car, but rather carried down to the dump site. West also pointed out that mud and dirt on the back of Dawn’s clothing indicated she had been dragged. He then told the jurors about having all the individuals at the house on Bosart Street taken down to police headquarters for questioning, and that he’d also sent a car to pick up Paul Sr. at Crawford’s Tavern when he found out that Paul Sr. had been calling the house on Bosart Street from there. West next talked about serving the search warrant at 1428 North Bosart Street, and how he began his search at 6:30 P.M. on March 22, 1986, and ended at 5:10 A.M. the next morning. He also mentioned that he had had the Reese’s station wagon towed to a secure location for processing.

  On March 24, 1986, West told the court, he obtained a search warrant for the body of Paul Reese Sr. During this, he had a blood sample taken. He also talked about searching the area around East 19th Street and North Forest Manor Avenue, where he recovered the large piece of carpeting that had been dumped near some trees.

  When West finished, the defense again declined to cross-examine.

  Prosecutors then recalled Officer Edwin Andresen to the witness stand. They had him identify photographs he had taken at 1428 North Bosart Street of both the house and the vehicles parked there. He next identified the pieces of carpeting he had recovered on the ground outside of the Reese house, and identified the pictures he had taken of the interior of the Reese garage and the pieces of carpeting recovered there. He then told the court about finding a roll of duct tape in a cabinet in the garage, and of photographing the brick furnace flue where he recovered the blood sample.

  Following this testimony, Andresen then said that he had found green and gold carpeting in the Reese basement, outside the Reese house, and in their garage similar to that at the crime scene. In a wastebasket in the basement he also found pieces of newspaper with spray paint on them. Next, he talked about recovering a photo album from the basement that contained newspaper articles about Dawn Marie Stuard’s murder. After this, Andresen spoke about processing the brown 1976 Pontiac Le Mans Safari station wagon belonging to the Reeses. He said that the rear compartment, unlike the rest of the car, was uncluttered, as if it had recently carried something. Every other area of the car, he said, was filled with trash. With Detective West’s search warrant for the person of Paul Reese Sr., he told the jurors he collected a pair of jeans, a brown leather belt, a dress shirt, one blue and white handkerchief, black socks, white underwear, two tubes of blood, pubic hair samples, head hair samples, and fingernail scrapings. He then told them that he had also collected copies of the Indianapolis Star newspaper for the same dates as those found at the crime scene and at the Reese house. These would be used for comparison if needed.

  Defense attorney Michelle Wall did decide to cross-examine this time. She asked Andresen who had lived in the basement where the photo albums with the articles about Dawn’s murder had been found. He told her he didn’t know.

  After Officer Andresen finished with his testimony and the judge excused him, the prosecution and defense stipulated approval on the chain of custody for items recovered during Dawn’s autopsy, which included blood samples, vaginal and anal slides, fibers from her clothing, hair samples, fingernail scrapings, and Dawn’s clothing. Most important for the prosecution, of course, were Dawn’s blood samples, so that they could be compared to the blood taken from the brick furnace flue.

  Next up the prosecution called Dr. Dean Hawley to testify. He told the court that he was currently a forensic pathologist at the Indiana University School of Medicine. In March 1986, however, he had been a new doctor and worked at the Coroner’s Office as a deputy coroner. He told the court about responding to the Dawn Marie Stuard crime scene.

  He said, “The biggest question was whether the victim had died there or elsewhere.”

  Dr. Hawley then went on to tell the jurors that he believed the victim had been killed elsewhere and then moved to the area on 23rd S
treet because the victim had suffered postmortem wounds from being dragged and dumped there. Dawn’s body, he said, had scrape marks on her back with dirt but no blood in them. He told the jurors how, contrary to television and movies, an exact time of death can’t always be determined, and he estimated that she had been there at least twelve hours.

  Dr. Hawley had also assisted Dr. Gauger at the autopsy, so he was able to tell the court about it as well. He said that Dawn’s fingernails had been so short that they could only get very small scrapings from them. She had sustained a large bruise on the bridge of her nose, and also contusions on her forehead, right eye, and right cheek. He said that under her scalp on the back of her head they found quite a bit of bleeding. Further examination of Dawn’s body found tape adhesive on her mouth and wrists (some of the skin on her left wrist had been peeled off when someone removed the tape before dumping the body). He said that tests in 1986 showed that this adhesive came from duct tape. They also found carpet fibers on her clothing, on her body, and in her mouth.

  He went on to say that the injury to the left side of the back of Dawn’s head looked as though she had violently struck something, and that the brick furnace flue fit the bill nicely. He told the court, “Because of the force required to produce the internal damage under the scalp and in the brain, [the brick flue] would have been an ideal surface contact for the injury to the left side of the back of the head.” Dr. Hawley thought the blow had likely caused unconsciousness. He told the jurors that during their examination of Dawn’s body, they had found petechiae—burst blood vessels usually caused by strangulation—on her face along with fingernail marks where she had fought to stop the strangulation, digging her fingernails into her skin as she tried to push away the object strangling her. The doctor believed that it had probably taken her murderer three to four minutes to kill Dawn.

  Talking about the injury to her throat, Dr. Hawley said that the wound pattern was not that of a rope or cord, but of a straight hard object. He added that a pool cue taken from the Reese house “bears an enormous resemblance to an object that would create the surface abrasion [on Dawn’s throat] and could also create the internal injury, could create the asphyxiation, and the brain damage.”

  He also told the jurors that Dawn had injuries to both her vagina and anus caused by forcible sexual contact, which included abrasions, lacerations, and tearing of the tissue. All of this, he said, had occurred prior to her death.

  Prosecutor Denise Robinson then interjected, “So she was brutalized before she died?” The defense attorney immediately objected to the word “brutalized.” Judge Altice sustained the objection and told the jurors to disregard it.

  During her cross-examination, defense attorney Michelle Wall asked Dr. Hawley if the injury to the back of Dawn’s head had likely caused unconsciousness. He answered yes. She then asked what he thought had happened. He said, “Someone slammed her head into the bricks with the pool cue across the front of her throat.” Wall then asked if the injuries to Dawn’s vagina and anus could have come from consensual sex. Dr. Hawley said yes, they could have.

  Next the prosecution called Valerie Ladner to the witness stand. After being sworn in, Ladner said that she had been a forensic serologist at the Crime Lab in Indianapolis in 1986. She told the court that she had received the blood sample taken from the brick furnace flue. She typed it and found that it was blood type O. Ladner told the jurors that she next examined the oral, vaginal, and rectal slides taken from Dawn, but found no semen. Nor had she found any semen in Dawn’s underwear, or any blood on the pool cues that had been submitted for examination. When she finished testifying, the defense declined to cross-examine, and the judge excused her.

  The next witness called by the prosecution to testify was Barbara Crim-Swanson. She told the court that she worked as a forensic scientist at the Kansas Bureau of Investigation Forensic Laboratory and was the casework supervisor for the biology DNA section. Crim-Swanson stated that she had been employed by the Crime Lab in Indianapolis from 1987 to 1996. She then explained to the jurors that when DNA analysis first came into use, they had required a large sample, relatively free of environmental contamination, in order to test it. She went on to say that in 1987 she tested the fingernail scrapings from Dawn. Under one of Dawn’s left fingernails, Crim-Swanson had found the presence of blood, but the sample had been too small to test. She added that she’d also found blood on the large piece of carpeting Detective West had recovered from East 19th Street and North Forest Manor Avenue. She’d examined it and found it to be type O. Crim-Swanson then added that she found indications of human blood on the carpeting taken from the basement of the Reese house, but that the sample had not been large enough for further testing.

  The defense had no cross-examination. Following this, the court recessed for the day.

  FIFTEEN

  The next morning, June 20, 2012, when testimony in the trial of Paul Reese Sr. for the murder of Dawn Marie Stuard in 1986 resumed, the prosecution once more called Detective Roy West to the witness stand. He told the court that Mrs. Carol Luken, the neighbor who had witnessed the Reeses carrying the roll of sagging carpet out of their house early in the morning, eventually told a coworker of hers about what she had seen. She had felt guilty about not telling the officers who came to her house the day following Dawn’s disappearance about what she had seen, and she figured her coworker friend, who was a deputy sheriff, would know what to do with the information. The deputy sheriff had immediately contacted Roy West, who then went to see Carol Luken. Although she hadn’t told the detectives about what she’d seen during their canvass on March 17, 1986, in November 1987 she told Detective West the complete story.

  The prosecution then called Timothy Joe Keller to testify. He started by telling the court that he was now married with five kids and made his living junking cars and going to flea markets. He said he had been close friends with Paul Reese Jr. in 1986, and that he’d called Paul Sr. “Big Paul” and Paul Jr. “Little Paul.” When asked where he lived in 1986, he said that he lived sometimes with his grandmother and sometimes with a girlfriend named Carol Wampler. He told the court that he had seen Dawn Stuard quite a few times at the Reese house.

  When asked why Dawn came to the Reese house so often, he said, “She did a paper route with Barbara Reese and she was over there all the time because, you know, they were all just friends.”

  The prosecutor then moved on to where Timothy and Paul Jr. had gotten the items they were going to try to sell at the Liberty Bell Flea Market on March 16, 1986. Timothy said Paul Jr. had stolen a pink bicycle and a lawn mower that had been sitting out. They had “helped themselves” to these items, he admitted.

  The questioning next moved on to the day that Dawn was killed. Timothy said that on March 16, 1986, Dawn had arrived about fifteen minutes after he did. “She came in and wanted to play pool with Paul Sr.,” he told the court. “She had come over because she was wanting to go on the paper route with Barbara [to collect payment].” He added that when he returned to the Reese house after going to pick up some items to sell at the flea market, he saw Dawn standing in the kitchen with Paul Sr.

  Apparently, some part of his earlier statements to the police didn’t match exactly what he had just said in court, and the prosecutor asked him to read his earlier statement. Timothy told the court that he had quit school and couldn’t read, so the court reporter read it out loud for him. Timothy then corrected his earlier testimony and said that after he and Paul Jr. came back to the house, Dawn let them in and that she had a pool cue in her hand. Paul Sr. had not been upstairs when they came back.

  Timothy told the court that he and Paul Jr. were at the flea market until around 4:30 or 5:00 P.M. He stated that Paul Jr. only left his sight once, for about thirty minutes. A round trip to the Bosart Street address would have taken well over an hour. Next, he added, on the night of March 16, 1986, right after they got back from the flea market, Paul Jr. borrowed his
white Pinto. “He said he was going on a date with Dawn Stuard, or something,” Timothy said. “I don’t remember for certain, but I’m pretty sure that’s what it was.”

  Paul Jr. returned the car to Timothy at about 8:00 P.M. “He drove it a little funny and it had mud on it,” Timothy told the jurors. “The backseat was down, there was a little tape in the back of it all balled up, and my speakers were moved. Also a pool cue was in the back, a half of one, the top half. There were also some newspapers in it with spray paint on them.” Timothy said he threw everything away because he thought it was trash.

  Immediately after this, Timothy went on, Paul Sr. said he needed a ride. “He said he wanted to go look at some tires.”

  The prosecutor then showed Timothy the photograph of a road. “Do you recognize that road?”

  “Uh, yes,” Timothy answered.

  “What road does that appear to you to be?”

  “It was the road where Dawn’s body was found.”

  “Is that the road that Paul Sr. told you to drive to?”

  “Yes.”

  The questioning then moved on to Paul Sr.’s supposed reason for wanting to drive on that road. Timothy said that Paul Sr. told him that he wanted to look for tires, and that they drove over to a truck full of tires. The prosecutor asked if Paul Sr. went up and talked to anyone about the tires.

  “No. Either they was for sale, or he was—or he was going to steal them.”

  “Did Paul Reese Sr. ask you to drive anywhere else?” the prosecutor asked.

  “Yeah, a little ball stadium off of 21st [Street].”

  “Why did he want to go there?”

  “I don’t really know. I don’t know why we went over there.”

  Timothy said that when he and Paul Sr. returned to the house on Bosart Street they saw a brown truck parked out in front. Paul Sr. had Timothy drop him off down the street. Following this, Timothy drove to his girlfriend’s apartment, and during the drive he saw someone following him. He didn’t know who it was but believed it was someone from Dawn’s family. It was Wesley, and he came to the apartment and asked Timothy if he had seen Dawn or knew where she was. Timothy told him no, but said that he came back several more times and asked him the same question. The police also visited Timothy that night and questioned him about the pink bicycle that Paul Jr. had stolen and tried to sell at the flea market. The officers towed Timothy’s white Pinto away and came inside his girlfriend’s apartment and looked around.