Second Las Vegas Sun article, Monday, June 28, 1982,
(transcribed copy follows)
Dead woman identified
By UPI
Monday, June 28, 1982
A 25-year-old woman whose body was found in her Las Vegas apartment last week has been identified as Christine Casillo of Pittsburgh, Pa., authorities said Sunday.
Results of an autopsy were pending to determine the cause of death, possibly a head wound.
Police say the woman’s body was discovered Friday by a maintenance worker who entered with a pass key. Investigators said the woman had been dead for some time. She was last seen alive a week before the body was discovered.
Officers said she moved to Las Vegas a month ago and lived in the Woodbridge Inn on East Flamingo Road, a 300-apartment complex east of the Las Vegas “Strip”.
Authorities said the dead woman was nude from the waist down. The body was found lying against the bathtub with the head submerged in the water.
Police said there was no sign of forced entry and no indication that the apartment was robbed.
THE AUTHOR’S COMMENT REGARDING THIS ARTICLE
Again, Chris was 23 at her death, not 25. This article misspells her last name: the correct spelling is Casilio, not
Casillo.
ELEVEN: ROBBERS AND SCAMMERS
“Deception is a cruel act….it often has many players on different stages that corrode the soul.”
–Donna A. Favors
I was packed and ready to go when Kathy pulled up outside my apartment. I couldn’t wait to leave this place of horror, this murderous, hideous slime pool of people. I knew I would never return to Las Vegas, and I knew that for a fact. If I could just make it back to Pittsburgh to see my family again, and my child—my glorious child who was missing me for sure—I would promise God that I would never leave again. So I promised him right there as I was loading my suitcases into Kathy’s car, and I started saying The Hail Mary over and over….
Please God, let me go back to Pittsburgh, let me see my family again, please God. I promise I will never leave my son again, I promise I will devote my life to him and him alone. Please God.
As I loaded my luggage in the trunk of Kathy’s car, I wondered why the two police detectives hadn’t asked me to spend the night at the police station. Had they not seen the terror and pure fright on my face? Had they not any compassion for victims? I was a victim, a second-hand victim of someone I knew, who was brutally murdered and left rotting in an apartment; why didn’t they have any compassion for me? I was so traumatized that I couldn’t think straight; I was convinced I was going to be murdered, too. Couldn’t they see this? I was frozen and so scared I was sick to my stomach.
I remembered when they were leaving my apartment after questioning me, I desperately wanted them to tell me I could come with them, that I’d be safe, that they would protect me from the murderer, but they did nothing to help me—they did nothing, they offered nothing, they just left me standing there wondering how I was going to survive the night in my apartment. They simply didn’t care—they offered me nothing, and after they walked out of my apartment I never heard from them again.
I knew no one in Las Vegas except Kathy and Larry Roberts. Two people I met while at the pool at Caesar’s Palace, who were total strangers, who I knew nothing about. I only knew what they had offered me and that they were from Los Angeles, and were vacationing in Vegas for a month, and had rented a house in the suburbs.
Upon entering Kathy’s car, I suddenly had a feeling rush over me that I was jumping into a situation where I could be killed. I didn’t know where these people lived, and I was being taken away in a car to a house in the middle of nowhere by two strangers. I felt vulnerable and stupid, but it was all that I had left at this point. I couldn’t stay at Woodbridge and endure one more second there, and I couldn’t bring myself to stay in another motel room, I just couldn’t do it.
The suburban housing plan was about a half hour out of the city, and when we arrived I felt relieved and safer. The neat little yellow brick ranch house looked like all the others on the street, similar to my mom’s street, a plan built by the same contractor who must have liked the first one and decided to make them all alike. Kathy pushed the remote control for the garage, it lifted up, then down and we were sealed in. I took my small overnight bag and my one larger suitcase to the guest room. I stayed there and read a book until dinnertime, and then sat down with both of them to eat roast beef and mashed potatoes, a welcomed meal with all the flavors of my mom’s home cooking. There was little conversation, as they didn’t have much to offer me in the way of opinions or otherwise, and they sensed I didn’t want to talk about it. I sensed they were just the type of people who had little interest in other people’s lives, and I attributed that to them being from Los Angeles. I didn’t expect to run into people who were Pittsburghers, who wanted to know all your personal business. I wasn’t in the mood for it at this moment.
I retired to my room early, just wanting to get the night over with and leave. I wanted to leave Las Vegas forever, never look back and never think about it ever again.
I had taken a small, unused steak knife off the table and tucked it under my hand as I walked away from the dinner table. I don’t know what made me do this. These two people had given me no reason to be alarmed or worried or suspicious. It was pure instinct now for me. I knew that these people could poison me and bury me in their backyard and no one would ever know what happened to me because I had told no one about them. Thoughts of my murder were screaming through my head and I didn’t want to sleep. I wanted to stay awake, but I was so tired I couldn’t.
I slept in my clothing, and the next thing I remember there was a small stream of sunlight peeking through the drapes of the room, and I saw the door move. I stayed completely still and my eyes were squinted as if they were completely closed and I said nothing. I had wedged the steak knife down inside the wooden frame of the bed so I could grab it if I needed to.
I saw Kathy’s bare feet come quietly into the room and go to my overnight bag. She opened it carefully and then slowly pulled out the top tray to look underneath it. She was obviously looking for money, but found none. I had eased my hand over near the edge of the bed and was prepared to grab the knife and stab her with all my strength if she came near me. I was shocked, but not shocked. I felt Fred with me again and wanted to jump up and run out the door and down the street screaming my head off.
She quietly left the room. I pretended to sleep for twenty minutes or so, then got up and told them both I had to go because I wanted to get breakfast before my scheduled flight time and didn’t want to bother them for it. I tried very hard to act normal and talk normal. I was lucky to be alive. I was lucky to be alive. I knew this now.
Neither one of them offered to drive me. They were done with me; they hadn’t gotten anything. I was quick to ask them for the taxi number, and even quicker moving my luggage to the front door to await its arrival. I don’t know if they knew I saw what they did, but I suspected they knew that I knew who they were, and they didn’t care.
We shared polite, controlled good byes. I practically ran to the taxi and threw my luggage into the trunk, jumped in the back seat and sighed as it drove away towards the airport. I still knew someone wanted me dead.
The taxi driver heard my sigh, looked in his mirror and smiled, “Long night, Miss?”
“Yes, long night.” I said, and as I settled in the back seat of the taxi my voice crackled and sputtered at him again, “Get me the hell out of here PLEASE!”
TWELVE: DIVINE INTERVENTION
“For some people, miracles serve as evidence of God's existence.”
–Walter Isaacson
Boarding my flight, I wasn’t feeling any better; I still wasn’t back in Pittsburgh safe with my family. I knew I had to endure whatever other terror awaited me on the plane. I buckled myself up in the seat belt and sat looking catatonic and emotionless, waiting for something to
happen—I knew something was going to happen to me on the airplane.
After the plane took off and the announcement told us we could remove our seat belts, I heard a voice from the back of the plane.
“Hey, Bev is that you?”
I hadn’t noticed the group of loud people in the back of the plane who seemed to be celebrating something, as I was oblivious to everything around me. I swiveled around in my seat and saw Johnny Mueller, my high school sweetheart, approaching me smiling, flipping his long blonde hair from his face and holding a glass of champagne. He looked happy as hell and half-drunk, so I tried to smile back at him. He eased into the empty seat next to me, and put his arm around me. I wanted to grab onto him and never let him go. He felt my nervousness and whispered at me, “What’s wrong, hon?”
I wanted to burst into tears and tell him the entire story, but I stopped myself because I knew he was celebrating something and I didn’t want to ruin it for him.
I quietly told him my friend had just been murdered in Last Vegas, and he was stunned. He hugged me and offered, “Listen, you’ll be back in Pittsburgh soon; don’t worry, everything will be fine, you’ll be fine, and all will be back to normal soon.”
I knew this was divine intervention. I knew this was a miracle from God. I didn’t have any other way to explain why my high school sweetheart was on this plane for me right at this moment in time other than that God had arranged for this to happen for me. It simply couldn’t be explained any other way. I knew this had to be a miracle. Johnny had no clue how important he was to me at this moment. He was something to hold onto that symbolized reality to me, safety, happiness and a million other good feelings.
Johnny had just been married in Reno and was on his way back to Pittsburgh with his new bride. I spent the remainder of my flight sleeping and dreaming of the military ball at Massanutten Military Academy in Virginia that I had attended with Johnny and his family, dressed in a formal dark blue velveteen gown with satin ribbons in the middle of the winter of 1966. I dozed off to sleep with a vision of myself as princess floating up the military academy stairs to the ballroom with Johnny in uniform and all the guests looking like kings and queens. It was the best thought I’d had in my mind in a very long time.
I realized while writing this book and reviewing the June 1982 calendar time line that (more than likely) Chris was traveling home to Pittsburgh with us on this same airplane.
Chris was found on June 25, an autopsy was performed by the Las Vegas coroner, she was sent home where a second autopsy was performed by Dr. Cyril Wecht in Pittsburgh, and she was buried on July 1, 1982.
THIRTEEN: PITTSBURGH—GLORIOUS PITTSBURGH
“To conquer fear is the beginning of wisdom”
–Bertrand Russell
I arrived back in Pittsburgh on Monday, June 28, 1982 and went directly to my mother’s house to see my son. He was missing me so, and I was beyond joyful to see him and hold him and smell him. I think mothers miss their baby’s smell more than anything.
I wasn’t ready to go home to my apartment. I wanted to stay at my parent’s house and never have to go back on my own, but I knew I would have to. I felt safe there with them, having dinner on the back porch in the warm summer breezes.
I knew I had to attend the funeral even though I didn’t want to. I wanted desperately to forget everything forever, and just surround myself with family and friends.
Chris was to be buried on Thursday, July 1, 1982 and I knew I wasn’t going to the church. I would go to the chapel after the Catholic mass and then to the wake at the family’s house on the North Side.
I drove over to the Casilio house on the North Side and waited for everyone to arrive after the mass. I stood in the front yard with a number of other people who were waiting, and wondered who they were. I knew Chuck Werner and went over to talk to him. There didn’t seem to be anyone else there that I knew. As I was talking with Chuck, another guy came over to us and Chuck introduced him as Marty Walsh. I had only seen this man once, passing in the hallway at Riverview, and this was the first time actually meeting him in person. I wasn’t impressed. He was smaller than I had thought, and didn’t speak very well. My first impression said fake. His tone of voice was quiet, and he seemed to be very impressed with himself—his own presence and his own voice.
No one else there spoke to me. I was offered a ride from Chuck, who was going with Marty, who would be driving to the chapel. I reluctantly accepted the ride, hopped into the back seat and slapped the seat directing Chuck to sit with me. On the way to the chapel, Marty, the big time cop, started questioning me. I figured he had been assigned this task from the family because he was a cop, and for no other reason than that.
I told Marty the same story I had told the Las Vegas detectives, but I left out the part about overhearing the conversation he had with Chris and the fact that she had told me he was coming out to Vegas. I wasn’t about to tell him any of this, so the only thing I had to tell him was about Fred, the black guy we had both befriended at the pool.
Marty’s immediate response was that Fred had killed her for the jewelry. Then we talked about how she was found, and Marty went into his pipe theory. I couldn’t believe what I was hearing, it was the same story Chris had told about the pipe down the throat thing and no one would ever be able to determine how the person died. I was sitting in the back seat clutching onto Chuck at this point, and he was looking at me like I was nuts. So it was Marty’s theory that Fred had used the pipe trick to kill Chris. Therefore, there was no way that the coroner was going to be able to determine a cause of death. What was with this guy and his pipe theories anyhow?
Marty started blabbing that he was going out there to do away with Fred. He said he’d just take him out in the desert and no one would ever find him. This casual conversation about doing away with someone was making me very uncomfortable, and I could see that Chuck was squirming in the back seat, too. I was anticipating hearing the pipe story again when Chuck chimed in, “Well, you know Chris; she may have faked her own death.”
I thought that was an odd thing to say. “Hey, Chuck, why would she do that?”
“Well, you know how Chris was; maybe she wanted to be declared dead so she could take off for the west coast or something, and maybe she wanted to get a new identity.”
It was a strange conversation indeed, and I remember thinking that these two men apparently knew Chris much better than I did, because when Chuck mentioned her possibly faking her own death I was shocked. Why the hell would she do that?
Marty wasn’t the least bit distraught over her death either—he was detached from it. Chuck seemed upset, but no one cried, including me. The three of us kept blabbing away until we reached the chapel. I knew that Marty and Chris were not romantically involved by his complete lack of emotion and interest.
It was quiet and cold inside. There was a coffin with Chris’s high school photo sitting on top. The three of us waited for the others to arrive, and then we were off to the North Side Catholic Cemetery in the North Hills.
The burial was, and still is, a blur to me. I don’t remember reactions, and I don’t remember who was there. I was detached emotionally and wanted to leave as soon as possible. I believe I was still deeply in shock.
When everyone arrived back at the house on the North Side, I only remember short memory flashes, like standing out front in the yard with Chuck and Marty and a few other people. They were passing around a copy of the second autopsy report that had been performed by Pittsburgh’s famous coroner, Dr. Cyril Wecht. There wasn’t anything significant about it, and it stated at the end that her death was “undetermined.”
Then I was invited into the house to meet the family. I don’t remember any of them. I do remember that no one seemed very interested in dissecting the facts or really digging into the story, so I assumed the timing was bad and that the family would contact me later on, and we’d all sit down and talk.
Marty asked me to tell them my story and I did. Marty was running th
e show from the time I set foot in the front yard. Again, I left out the part about Marty, and I left out the part about the fur coat that was supposed to be coming to Vegas via Marty when he came out there. I wasn’t going to ever speak of this to anyone. The family trusted Marty, and I wasn’t about to tell them anything that I thought or felt.
No one ever called me about Chris, including anyone in her family. I bought myself a gun and signed up for shooting lessons almost immediately following the funeral. When I came home at night to my apartment, I cleared my apartment first by going room to room with my gun loaded and ready to fire. I followed this ritual for over two years.
I ran into Marty one time at a mall in the North Hills, and I had my son with me. Marty was with an older, tall, redheaded woman who was wearing a fur coat. He stopped to say hello, and I remember trying not to stare at the fur coat, checking to see if it was Chris’s coat the woman was wearing. It wasn’t, and I hurried off away from him.
I never spoke to Marty or Chuck again until I decided to write this book.
I stopped by North Side family home once to ask if they’d heard anything from Las Vegas. The two aunts were weird, strange, and secretive and never invited me in. So I never went back again.
The next encounter I had was in the mid-nineties, when I got my first computer. I emailed a cold case detective in Vegas and asked if they had ever learned what happened to Chris. His response was that the door had been bolted from the inside, and they had no further explanations for her death. I didn’t know what to think of that one, except that I knew that someone had been coming and going in that apartment all along while she was already dead.
Who Killed Chrissy?: The True Crime Memoir of a Pittsburgh girl's Unsolved Murder in Las Vegas Page 9
