The Ford Heights Murders: Your Friends Came to See Me Book 1

by DL Benning

  Nina sensed my distress. She asked me to tell her what I was experiencing. The muddy woman stood clearly in front of me, next to Nina. In my mind’s eye, I could see her perfectly. When I opened my eyes, I could see only Nina and myself. I kept opening and shutting my eyes, hoping she had gone away, hoping my imagination was playing tricks on me. Nina quickly reassured me that I was okay and that she was there to help me understand what was happening.

  Nina and I talked about some other things, but I couldn’t remember any of it. I left her office rattled. I drove immediately to the local drug store and, without a second thought, purchased a DNA kit. I picked up some lunch and went to Wilden Park to read over my notes from the session. Processing what had just happened was a challenge. I was clearly in shock and overwhelmed, but oddly excited.

  I found an empty bench in the park and ate my lunch. It was just a normal summer day in Elmwood, but my whole world had just been turned upside down. I sat on the bench for a long time, replaying the conversation in my mind. I started capturing details of the experience in my journal, wanting to remember everything.

  As I sat there with the sun shining in my face, I asked myself whether I was up for this assignment. I paused for a moment and answered in my head, Yes, I have to do this, I have to bring justice for this woman. Justice and the truth have always been important to me. I started to understand why Fred was still in my life, and I in his. My aunt had passed away two years ago, but Fred was still here.

  I took a deep breath and called Sam. I told him about my meeting with the psychic, relaying the revelations that my uncle had killed a woman decades ago, that I needed to confront him about it, collect his DNA to send to the police department, help solve the case, and then write a book about it.

  There was a very long, uncomfortable silence. Sam was used to odd occurrences in our life because of my gift, but this one eclipsed all others.

  Finally, he calmly asked, “So what are you going to do now?”

  I repeated my next steps about confronting Fred, getting his DNA, and going to the police. The words tumbled from my mouth like a written script I had been preparing for my whole life.

  “Honey,” he cautioned, “maybe you should think this through a bit.”

  While I did give it more thought, I didn’t exactly think it through like Sam had suggested. The next morning, I woke up seeing the same woman that had shown herself at Nina’s office. She was standing next to my bed, still wet and covered in mud. She didn’t say anything to me, but I saw her very clearly. She smiled at me. She did not say anything; she only smiled.

  I smiled back and said to her aloud, “Yes, I will help you.”

  Her visit was the only convincing I needed. On Thursday morning, I grabbed the DNA kit and prepared to confront Uncle Fred. I read the kit’s directions and realized I had made a mistake. I had purchased the spit-in-a-vial kind of DNA kit. I needed the quick-swab-in-the-cheek kind. I decided to go anyway, practicing my upcoming conversation with Fred all the way to the nursing home.

  I was going to start with “So Fred…,” but the rest of the words were not coming to me. I grew more anxious the closer I got to the nursing home. Some words were forming in my mind, but not many. I had been rehearsing those few words for the last twenty minutes. When I pulled into the parking lot, I thought to myself, This could go very, very wrong.

  I felt like I could throw up. My heart was racing, and my palms were sweaty. I kept hearing Nina telling me matter-of-factly, “Your uncle killed this woman. He will confess to you—he wants to, he is in an altered state with dementia—and then he will pass.”

  I walked in, signed in at the front desk, and went to Uncle Fred’s room. He was happy to see me. That was different. I was usually met with a barrage of “Where have you been?” and “Someone’s been stealing my clothes and my nail clippers.” We walked up and down the halls for about ten minutes. He was catching me up on what was happening at the nursing home and complaining about what he’d eaten for lunch.

  Then he looked right at me and said, “Let’s go sit outside and talk.”

  I thought to myself, It couldn’t be this easy, could it?

  We took the elevator downstairs to the first floor. When we got off the elevator, he told the nurse we were going to go outside. She snapped at him and said we would do no such thing. It was more than a hundred degrees outside, and it wasn’t safe for him to be out in that heat. Fred threw a small temper tantrum at the nurses’ station, but the nurse seemed unimpressed with his outburst. Clearly, she’d seen this before. I suggested that we go to the nursing home’s library and sit by one of the windows. He decided that would be alright.

  When we got to the library, we sat at a small table. There were several people in the room visiting with their families. A few residents sat alone, reading magazines. I was nervous and could feel the sweat running down my back. How in the heck was I going to do this? All the practicing in the car was for nothing. I was at a loss for words.

  When the room was finally empty, I started talking to Fred about his parents. I told him I knew how tough his dad was on him. He agreed. It was even worse, he said, for his mother. He explained that she took the brunt of his father’s aggression. I calmly told him he had been a good son, that he helped his mother her whole life. All he could do was shake his head and say that he didn’t do enough for her. He sounded very remorseful.

  After a while, he changed the subject. He asked if he’d ever told me that he was a boxer in the Air Force. Seeing my surprise, he began speaking with a renewed sense of pride.

  “I was tough.” His voice and body language became more aggressive. “They called me Freddy the Fighter.”

  “Freddy the Fighter?” I asked. I was confused. My uncle was a boxer in the service? He weighed a hundred pounds soaking wet. Not the image I had in my mind about most boxers.

  He told me he used to beat the shit out of people and that he had dominated in the ring. He stood up quickly and charged at me. His tone and belligerence frightened me. I kept myself calm by reminding myself that I outweighed him by at least eighty pounds. That, and I could always scream for help if needed. Still, the conversation became increasingly uncomfortable, and I wanted to run out of the room.

  I stayed, though, feeling like I was glued to my seat. I told him that a friend from his past came to see me recently.

  He looked confused. “Which friend?”

  “A woman named M,” I said. As I was saying her name to him, M appeared in spirit right next to us.

  Uncle Fred got quiet, then started sobbing. He dropped his head into his lap.

  “I disappointed her. I disappointed her,” he wailed.

  Now I was the one who looked confused. Disappointed and murdered are two very different things.

  “I disappointed her and all the others.”

  Very quietly I whispered to him, “Fred, how many others did you disappoint?” I tried to contain the dread I felt at hearing his answer.

  His head was still in his hands, and he was still sobbing. “Four or five.”

  FOUR OR FIVE?! I screamed silently. What had I gotten myself into?

  As Fred was trying to talk through his tears, a red-haired nurse approached us in spirit and stood behind M. She wore a white nursing uniform with a vintage-era nursing cap. She said her name was Carol and wanted me to ask him about her.

  I said hesitantly, “Fred, Carol is here too. She said you also know her.”

  He stopped sobbing immediately and looked up at me. His eyes flashed with rage. He said the conversation was over and stormed out of the library. I grabbed my bag and ran after him. He said nothing to me all the way to the elevator. We rode up to the third floor in tense silence. I was overwhelmed by what just happened.

  My mind raced. Who the heck was Carol? Did my uncle really kill all these women? My heart was beating out of chest, and I was almost out of breath. I was overcome with fear and anxiety. My mind was reeling with the question, What just happened?

  By
the time we got off the elevator, I was shaken and dying to get out of there. I wanted to run but tried to stay calm. Awkwardly and cautiously, I hugged my uncle goodbye, then walked as quickly as I could back to the elevator. I pushed the call button frantically, repeatedly, thinking somehow this would hasten my escape. Finally, the clunky, old elevator arrived, and I got in.

  Please close, please close, God, please close the doors. I screamed silently. It felt like it was taking forever for the doors to close. I held my breath as I watched the gap narrow. Please get me out of here. The doors were about an inch apart when Fred flung them open.

  “When are you coming back?” he asked. “I have more to tell you.”

  I don’t know what was more shocking, his strength to open the elevator doors or his urgency in wanting to talk to me about M and Carol. Instinctively, I kept hitting the worthless elevator button and yelled out to Fred that I would be back soon.

  I got to the ground floor and all but sprinted to my car, trying not to draw attention to myself. By the time I got inside my car, I was shaking and hyperventilating. I tried to calm myself down, but nothing I did seemed to help. I could not believe what just happened. He said he disappointed them, not murdered them. Had I failed in my assignment? I was overwhelmed and frantic.

  I texted Nina and told her everything that had happened. She was encouraging and said I had done well.

  “I did? Great. Now what?” I responded.

  She asked whether I had managed to collect the DNA evidence. I explained that I had bought the wrong kit and couldn’t get the sample. She told me I had to go back inside and finish the job.

  “Hell no!” I shot back. That was the last thing I wanted to do. I threw my phone down in frustration.

  I drove home in an absolute haze while the conversation played over and over in my head. Four or five women? Who were they? How did he kill them? What was going on?

  Exhausted by my own thoughts, I called Sam. He did not say much, but he seemed concerned and was glad I was on my way home.

  Over the next several days, I became obsessed with trying to find out what that conversation with Fred meant. I Googled everything I could think of:

  serial killer in the 1950s

  cold cases in the 1950s

  unsolved murders from the 1950s

  But for each search, nothing.

  The conversation replayed in my head constantly. I wrote down everything I could remember. I also kept seeing M and Carol in my house. They were peaceful, usually sitting quietly in my living room. I felt their love and support.

  Still, my thoughts were frantic and unfocused. Should I call the police? Try to find M’s and Carol’s families and let them know what had happened?

  I found myself hoping Nina was right, that my uncle would pass now that he’d confessed the murders to me. This was no longer an adventure; it was a nightmare. I wasn’t sure I wanted to be involved anymore, much less write a book about the process. I was worried about knowing this information. What were the legal implications?

  While it seemed like I would live the rest of my life in fear, I did eventually calm down. In a moment of clarity, I made myself purchase a new DNA kit, the swab kind. I stored it in the trunk of my car with my uncle’s legal paperwork. I wanted to be prepared when the nursing home called to say he passed. Weeks went by without a call.

  I confided in Sadie, my spiritual friend at work. Her neighbor and good friend was a police officer. Sadie asked the officer about the legal ramifications of me gathering information through my mediumship. She said I had nothing to worry about. The police use mediums and psychics often to solve crimes. Cold cases get closed every day now, often through DNA evidence. Nothing to worry about? Easy for her to say!

  A few months went by, and Fred was still very stubbornly alive. Nina, the psychic, had told me that once my uncle confessed, he would pass over. My friend Sadie had become my confidante over the last few months. We talked candidly about my frustration with Uncle Fred. It was now October.

  Sadie stopped by my desk one day with a message that Fred needed to confess to a priest. Eager to hurry the process along, I called the local parish and asked the priest to visit him. The priest asked if he would be performing last rites. I told him Fred was trying to confess things to me that would be better suited for him.

  In November, another spirit came to me. She told me her name was Julia and that Fred had killed her too. I was thrown into another level of disbelief, wondering why these women kept coming to me. I made another appointment with Nina.

  Nina greeted me with a hug. We had become close friends these last few months. She was anxious to hear more about Julia and how things were progressing with Fred. I quickly caught her up: my uncle was still alive, and a third spirit had come to me.

  Nina listened intently to my story. She closed her eyes, took a deep breath, and started nodding her head. It seemed like she was receiving a message. This went on for several minutes. She opened her eyes slowly and stared into my eyes. I was uncomfortable and felt very anxious. I had no idea what she was going to tell me.

  Nina said, “Lynn, you must go back and talk to your uncle. You need to confront him and get him to confess to the murders.”

  “That is not going to happen,” I shot back.

  She said, “Yes, yes, it is. You need to tape his confession.”

  Tape his confession? “What?! This is crazy,” I blurted out.

  Nina stayed so calm. “It is not crazy. He will pass once he confesses in full.” She also told me I had to return what I had taken from him. “You have something of his.”

  I searched my mental inventory of his worldly possessions. I don’t have anything of his, I thought. Then another thought popped into my head: the Tibetan singing bowl. Sam—not Uncle Fred—had given me a Tibetan singing bowl as a gift several years earlier.

  In a previous session with Nina, she had told me this bowl held an ancient history with Fred and me. She told me I took the bowl from him centuries ago in a past life, and I needed to return it, completing the soul agreement. I had forgotten this part of my work with her. Honestly, I hadn’t been convinced at the time that it held any meaning.

  Desperate for any way out of this situation, I blurted out, “Okay, I will give him his bowl back.” I thought if this completed the soul agreement, we could both move on.

  The Wednesday before Thanksgiving, I made my decision. I would surrender myself to a force that was bigger than me, as crazy as it all seemed. By now, somehow, it was all feeling very normal to me. I had done some more research, trying to connect the dots, and kept coming up empty. Sam didn’t say much.

  I packed up my tote bag, including the Tibetan bowl. My plan was to visit Uncle Fred, ask him to talk, confront him, record his confession on my cell phone, give him his bowl back, and get the hell out of there.

  It rained all the way down to the nursing home. As I got closer, I was getting more nervous. I kept talking out loud, practicing how I would lead the conversation, trying to find the right words to complete my assignment as quickly as possible. I said a little prayer and took a deep breath. I walked quickly into the nursing home, trying not to give myself a chance to chicken out.

  When I got to Fred’s room, he seemed to be waiting for me. I hadn’t called. He didn’t know I was coming to visit.

  “Oh, hi,” he said. “I bet you want to go talk.” I looked at him in disbelief. My eyes darted around the room, half expecting to find a hidden camera as part of some elaborate practical joke. None of this made sense.

  We walked around his floor once. He stopped at the window, and we talked about the rain. I asked if the priest ever came to visit him. He said they had a nice talk. I wondered what he had told him. I wanted to ask but told myself to stay focused.

  We went downstairs toward the library. On the way, he introduced me to one of his lady friends. They were sweet together. He did a jig for one of the nurses. They were laughing and joking with him. Boy, had things changed! Usually, they were ba
rking at him, and he was complaining about them to me.

  We engaged in small talk as we walked to the library. He found two chairs for us. I could not wait any longer. I wanted to get this conversation started. After I settled into my chair, I took the bowl out of my bag and pressed record on my cell phone as discreetly as I could. It was hanging around my neck on a strap from one of my purse cases.

  I gonged the bowl, and Fred jumped in his seat, looking over at me to see where the noise came from. I put the ancient bowl into his hands. He seemed to recognize the relic. He took his glasses off to read an inscription that I had never noticed.

  “Fred, what does it say?” I asked cautiously.

  “I don’t know,” he said, still holding the bowl, squinting to read it.

  I explained that it was his bowl, but he refused it, saying it didn’t belong to him. For a few minutes, we pushed it back and forth between us. He did not want it and insisted that I keep it. So I did.

  I told him another one of his friends came to see me. He asked who it was, and I told him it was Julia. He repeated her name over and again to himself, looking like he was trying to remember her. I told him she was blonde and said he used to go dancing with her. He got angry and said that her hair was not blonde and that he never danced with her. He became very agitated, and I knew it was time to go. I quickly stopped my recording and threw my stuff in the bag. I rode upstairs with him in silence. We got out. I said my goodbye, hugged him, whispered I loved him, and quickly left.

  When I got in the car, I collapsed. I was so disappointed. I had twenty-two minutes of recording that didn’t reveal anything. He didn’t take the bowl. He didn’t confess. He didn’t die. I drove back to Elmwood, feeling like a failure.

  When I got home, I told Sam about the visit and my disappointment. I resolved that would be my last trip to see my uncle.

  —Chapter 3—

  Meeting the Women