Killers in the Family

by Robert L. Snow

  He then added that Ted Stuard also showed up that night and asked him if he knew anything about Dawn. Timothy said he took Ted to Doyle Stinson’s house to see if he knew anything. They also drove over to the Reese house. “We knocked on the door,” Timothy told the court, “and he asked questions about Dawn, asking them if they had seen her or not.”

  The prosecution turned the witness over to the defense for cross-examination. Michelle Wall asked Timothy Keller if it was true that he had given five statements to the police. Timothy said yes.

  “Is it fair in characterizing,” Wall asked, “that there was a lot you testified to today that you did not tell Detective West at that time [1986]?”

  “Yes.”

  Wall, perhaps trying to establish some guilt on Paul Jr., asked Timothy how he would describe the way Paul Jr. had looked when he’d returned the Pinto that night.

  “A little upset, maybe a little—I mean, not like he was when he picked up the car. His hair was a little messed up, his face kind of red. Seemed a little grouchy.”

  “And the last time you saw Dawn was when she was coming up in the morning with the pool cue in hand. You would say that there were a lot of people there—in and out of the house, that you didn’t see her again, but that she could have been there, along with lots of other people. Is that right?”

  “Yeah,” Timothy answered. “I mean, I don’t know.”

  The cross-examination finished, and the prosecution asked one question on redirect, which was whether Timothy still associated with the Reeses. He answered, “No, not for many years, no.”

  Once the judge had excused him and Timothy Keller left the stand, the prosecution called Dawn’s cousin Wesley Collins to testify. When asked about Dawn and the day of March 16, 1986, he responded, “Usually she was down there [at our house] by no later than 3:00 P.M. in the afternoon. She usually had chores to take care of in the morning and stuff, and would take care of that and then she would head down to the house by that afternoon.”

  The prosecutor then asked what he did when Dawn hadn’t shown up that Sunday.

  “I went over to the Village Pantry because she sometimes [walked] over there to get something to drink. I drove around the neighborhood a bit. It was around four in the afternoon.” He added that at 5:00 he went back to Dawn’s house, but she wasn’t there. Then he talked to a neighbor across the street who said he had seen Dawn the previous night with the newspaper lady, who Wesley knew was Barbara Reese. And so, he drove his car over to the Reese house on Bosart Street. The two Reese girls, he found, were playing out front. He asked the two girls if they had seen Dawn, and they told him, yes, she had been there earlier. At that point Barbara Reese came to the door and told him that she hadn’t seen Dawn, but that she had been there earlier but had left.

  Following this, Wesley told the jurors, he returned home to see if anyone there had heard anything about Dawn. It was then 6:15 P.M. He stayed at home a bit, but then returned to the Reese house at around 7:00 P.M. One of the Reese daughters answered the door and he spoke with her and to Barbara again, but he got the same responses. He then left the Reese house and went back to Dawn’s house to get a photograph of his cousin to show Barbara Reese. He wanted to be certain that she knew who he was talking about. Barbara had seemed to him to be very evasive about Dawn. And so, he took the photograph back to the Reese house and asked for Barbara, showing her the picture. She assured him that she knew who Dawn was and that the last person to see her had been Paul Reese Sr., but that he had left, and she didn’t know where he had gone.

  Wesley left the Reese house and again returned to Dawn’s house, just in case she might have shown up, and then returned to his own house. He told the court that he was pretty upset by then because he had been looking for Dawn for four to five hours without finding any sign of her.

  A little while later, Wesley said, he returned once again to the Reese house to see if Paul Sr. had shown up there yet. He hadn’t, so Wesley sat in his car a few houses down from the Reese house and watched the residence, waiting for Paul Sr. to return. He told the jurors that he sat there for ten or fifteen minutes until he saw a white Ford Pinto pull up in front of the Reese house. Someone got out of the car, but he couldn’t see who it was. The Pinto then took off at a high rate of speed, and Wesley followed it to the Glen Ridge Apartments. The driver of the Pinto got out and headed for one of the apartments. Wesley followed him and found that it was Timothy Keller. Wesley said he knocked on the apartment door Keller had gone into. A girl answered and he asked for Keller, who came to the door. When Wesley asked Keller if he knew anything about Dawn and if he had just dropped off Paul Sr., Keller said that he didn’t know anything about Dawn, and that, yes, he had just dropped off Paul Sr. at the house on Bosart Street.

  Wesley drove straight back to the Reese house and told Barbara that he wanted to talk to Paul Sr. But Barbara insisted that Paul Sr. wasn’t there. Following this, Wesley once more checked Dawn’s house and then returned home. He didn’t stay long, though, because he drove back over to the apartment where Keller was staying and asked him if he had really dropped off Paul Sr. at the house on Bosart Street. Keller assured him that he had dropped off Paul Sr.

  Not knowing what else to do, Wesley drove home and told his mother everything that had happened. He then returned and sat in his car down the street from the Reese house. He told the court that he never saw or talked with Paul Sr. that night. While Wesley sat in the car, he said his mother was calling Dawn’s friends and checking hangouts she might have gone to. Ted and Sandy, he said, showed up a little after 10:00 P.M., and that he returned to the Reese house that night with Ted. Following this, he drove around looking for Dawn until well after midnight.

  The prosecution then turned the witness over to the defense for cross-examination. Defense attorney Michelle Wall asked Wesley if he was positive about the times, and if he and his family knew that Dawn had hung around with the Reeses. He said, yes, he was pretty certain of the times, and that Dawn’s parents would never have allowed her to hang around with the Reeses. He said there was no way they had known she’d been spending time there.

  The next witness the prosecution called to testify was Wesley’s wife, Michelle Collins. After being sworn in, she told the court that her name in 1986 had been Michelle Lynch, that she had been Wesley’s girlfriend then, and had lived with him and his mother, Mona. She told the court that Wesley had had a 1980 yellow Mercury Zephyr in 1986 and that she had driven around in it with him while he was looking for Dawn. She also said that she accompanied Wesley and Ted when they went to the Reese house.

  The prosecutor then asked her, “When asking questions of Mrs. Reese . . . about Dawn’s whereabouts, did one of the girls say something?”

  “She did,” Michelle answered.

  “And did you see Mrs. Reese do anything when one of the girls started to say something?”

  “She slapped her across the face.”

  “And did that end whatever it was the little girl was going to say?”

  “Yes, it sure did.”

  Michelle then told the jurors how, while trying to figure out what to do, she had rummaged through Dawn’s belongings and found several pieces of paper with telephone numbers on them. She then started calling these numbers, but nothing came of it. She also said that she was at the Reese house when a couple of police officers, investigating the runaway report, showed up there. The prosecutor thanked her and turned Michelle over to the defense.

  The defense had only one question on cross-examination. Michelle was asked what time the search for Dawn started. She responded that it started around 5:00 to 5:30 P.M.

  Officer James Jarrett, the next witness for the prosecution, then took the witness stand. He said that in 1986 he had been assigned to a patrol district close to the Reese house.

  “I was given a radio run through IPD dispatch,” he told the court, “to go to the residence of t
he Reese family to investigate a runaway report on Dawn Stuard.” He added that when he began talking to Barbara Reese that night outside her house, explaining why he was there, “Mrs. Reese then interrupted what I was saying, became very animated, very excited, just talking very fast.”

  “Did you get any information that assisted you in locating Dawn Stuard?” the prosecutor asked.

  “No.”

  The defense, once the prosecution had finished, said it had no questions for cross-examination.

  The next witness, Officer Al Watson, said that in 1986 he was also assigned to a district close to the Reese household. On the night of March 16, 1986, he stated, he was investigating the theft of a pink girl’s bicycle. He said the complainant had told the police that the bicycle had been stolen just a little after midnight on the morning of March 16, 1986, and that the thieves had driven away in a white Ford Pinto. The Reeses being the usual suspects, Officer Watson’s investigation took him to the Reese house late in the evening of March 16. Barbara let him come in and allowed him to look around for the pink bicycle. He said he checked the basement and saw several bicycles there, but no pink one. He left and went to Timothy Keller’s grandmother’s house, where he located the white Ford Pinto. His witness, he told the court, came there and positively identified it as the car the thieves had been in. Officer Watson said he then looked inside the white Pinto and found the pink bicycle that Keller and Paul Jr. apparently hadn’t been able to sell that day at the flea market, as well as a tree stand that had also been reported stolen. He had the Pinto impounded at 11:44 P.M. Officer Watson said he then returned to the Reese house to assist Officer Jarrett in his investigation of the runaway report. Neither of them, he added, saw or spoke with Paul Sr. that night.

  The cross-examination by the defense consisted only of verifying the times of the events.

  Following Officer Watson’s testimony, Doyle Dean Stinson took the witness stand. Upon being sworn in, he told the jurors that in 1986 he had been friends with one of the other Reese boys, Johnny. When asked, Doyle said that he had seen Dawn Stuard once out collecting payment with Barbara on her paper route. He then told about how, on March 16, 1986, he went to the back door of the Reese house. Dawn answered the door and he’d asked if Johnny was there, apparently unaware he was confined at the Juvenile Detention Facility.

  “I thought I heard a scuffle,” Doyle said. “I didn’t see her arm move. Somebody slammed that door. I don’t see how that was able, but that’s what happened. The way it looked was that somebody was behind the door.”

  The defense attorney, upon cross-examination, asked why Doyle had gone to the Reese house that day, and he said that it was because he needed a ride to go sell a motorcycle. Michelle Wall then asked if Dawn Stuard had seemed upset when she answered the door, and Stinson said no, she hadn’t.

  Archie Ward, a neighbor of the Reeses in 1986, next took the witness stand. He said that he saw Dawn Stuard over at the Reese house several times, just hanging out and playing pool. He added that on the night of March 16, 1986, at around 5:30 P.M., he and a girlfriend went over to the Reese house. Paul Sr., Barbara, Pam Winningham (Paul Jr.’s live-in girlfriend), and one of the Reese daughters were there. Archie said that he and his girlfriend stayed for about ten to fifteen minutes.

  The prosecutor then asked if he saw Paul Sr. later that night, and Archie answered that at around 10:30 to 11:00 Paul Sr. knocked on the door of his house at 4506 East 18th Street. He said that Paul Sr. had never been there before. His brother Jay answered the door, and he went with him.

  When asked why Paul Sr. had come there, Archie answered, “Yeah, he was nervous, said that somebody was chasing him because of Dawn Stuard. He said they thought that he might have kidnapped her.”

  Archie continued by saying that Paul Sr. asked his mother for a ride, but she said no. He then asked to borrow a bicycle. Paul Sr. told them that he had stopped by Timothy Keller’s place first, but that there were cops everywhere, and that they were searching Keller’s car. Right about then, Archie said, he heard sirens in the neighborhood. Paul Sr. quickly pedaled away on the bicycle.

  Upon cross-examination, the defense attorney asked about the people whom Archie had seen at the Reese house the night of March 16, and whether there could have been other people in the house whom he hadn’t seen. Archie said it was possible. The defense then asked if he had earlier given a statement to the police that Paul Sr. had returned the bicycle twenty minutes after borrowing it. He said he didn’t remember that.

  Jay Ward followed his brother Archie to the witness stand. He, too, said that he had seen Dawn at the Reese house several times, and he also told about Paul Sr. coming to his house on the night of March 16, and how he had never been there before.

  When the prosecution asked about Paul Sr.’s demeanor that night, Jay answered, “Very nervous, because normally he never showed much emotion. He was very calm, just straight-faced most of the time. But this day he didn’t; he seemed very nervous, unlike I’d ever seen him.”

  The prosecutor then asked why Paul Sr. had come over to the Wards’ house. “The Stuard family was there [at the house on Bosart Street],” Jay said. “I guess they were chasing him. That’s what he was saying. He was scared, so he wanted to get out of the neighborhood.”

  The next question the prosecution asked Jay Ward was what time Paul Reese returned to his house. “He did come back about fifteen or twenty minutes later,” Jay answered. “He was in our backyard. He knocked on the back door, but my mother wouldn’t let us open the door. I think she sensed something.”

  Following this, the prosecution asked if Jay had gotten a telephone call from Paul Sr. on March 17, 1986. “Yes,” Jay said. “He called that Monday, wanting to know if the cops were still at his house, and if I would go down to his house and check and see if they were still there. He said he was calling from a bar.” Jay told the court that he didn’t go down to the house.

  Upon cross-examination, the defense asked if Paul Sr. had said he just wanted to get out of the neighborhood, and not the state. Jay answered the neighborhood.

  The next witness called to testify by the prosecution identified himself as Roger G. Glover, a retired Indianapolis police officer. He told the court that in the afternoon of March 17, 1986, he had been sent to Crawford’s Tavern in the 1100 block of South Meridian Street. He and another officer went there to look for Paul Reese Sr.

  The defense had no cross-examination questions.

  Next up, William Decker also identified himself as a retired Indianapolis police officer. On March 17, 1986, he said, he went with Officer Glover to Crawford’s Tavern. Also with them, he added, were two homicide detectives who had a picture of Paul Sr. Decker told the court that he walked up to the bar and asked Paul Sr. his name. He told Officer Decker that his name was Jerry Boyd but later admitted that he was Paul Reese Sr. The officers took him down to police headquarters for questioning by Detective West.

  The defense again had no cross-examination questions.

  The prosecution then called Pam Winningham to testify. In March 1986, Pam had been Paul Jr.’s girlfriend and had lived with him in the basement. When asked, Pam said she had seen Dawn a couple of times at the Reese house. She told the court that when she came up from the basement on the morning of March 16, 1986, she’d seen Dawn Stuard, Timothy Keller, and Paul Sr. all sitting in the kitchen. Dawn asked her if she wanted to play a game of pool, but Pam told her she couldn’t. She had to leave with Paul Jr. and Timothy. She said that she saw several lawn mowers sitting in the back of Timothy’s Pinto, and that they returned to the Reese house because they had forgotten something they were going to take to the flea market. She then told the court about finding her father waiting for her out in front of the Reese house.

  “When you got into the car with your father,” the prosecutor asked, “did the two of you have an argument?”

  “Yes, he smacked me,” she answere
d. “I stayed at my Dad’s house until about 4:30 P.M., then went back to the Reese house.”

  “When you got back to the Reese house, who did you see there?”

  “Paul Sr.”

  “Anyone else?”

  “No.”

  “Did you notice anything about his person that indicated what he had been doing just before you got there?” the prosecution asked.

  “It looked like he had just got out of the shower.”

  “Did you see Dawn Stuard there?”

  “No.”

  Pam went on to say that when she got back to the Reese house Paul Sr. told her not to go down into the basement because Paul Jr. was down there with another girl. Pam said she went right down there, but that no one was in the basement. The prosecution next asked how Paul Sr. had acted once she had returned to the Reese house.

  “Kind of nervous,” Pam answered. “He’d sit down and then he’d get up and walk to the window, then sit back down, then back up.”

  Pam then added that she and Paul Jr. went to bed at around 11:30 P.M. on March 16, 1986, but that she was awakened an hour or so later by a noise in the basement. “I asked who was there and Barbara said it was just her doing some laundry, but the washer and dryer weren’t going.” She said she also heard Paul Jr. talking to someone, but that she couldn’t make out what he was saying. That was when she’d realized that he wasn’t in bed with her.