by Robert Mayer
The detectives resumed their questioning. About Tommy and Karl: did she know where they had gone?
Karl had moved to Hominy, near Tulsa, Jannette said; he was staying with Tommy’s sister and brother-in-law, Joice and Robert Cavins. He’d gotten a job up there, installing fencing.
And Tommy? Did she know where Tommy had gone?
Tommy hadn’t gone anywhere, Jannette told the detectives. He was still living with her and Mike; still working with her husband at All-Siding. They were at work right now, but they would be home after dark—maybe around eight, she figured.
Smith and Baskin were surprised and delighted. They decided to stay in Norman, to talk to Tommy Ward. They told Jannette to give Tommy a message when he came home from work: that they would like him to come down to the police station, to answer a few questions.
As the detectives killed time in Norman, waiting for Tommy Ward, they were convinced they had gotten good information from Jeff Miller. Jannette had confirmed that she and Tommy and the others used to party together, sometimes at Blue River, and that at times she had let Tommy borrow her pickup. She had denied the key incident about the crying, the confession; but perhaps she had not been within earshot of that, or perhaps she was protecting her friend. The fact that Tommy was still living in Norman, they felt, was a stroke of luck.
When Tommy and Mike got home from work, Jannette gave Tommy the message: two detectives were waiting for him at the police station, wanting to talk to him.
“What about?” Tommy asked.
“They think you had something to do with that girl who disappeared from McAnally’s,” Jannette said.
Tommy told Jannette and Mike that when the girl disappeared, and they put the drawings of the two suspects in the newspaper, people used to hassle him that he looked like one of the pictures. That was one reason he was glad they had moved to Norman, he said. So people would stop hassling him. The cops had already questioned him once. Why didn’t they leave him alone? He wasn’t sure he wanted to go.
“They’re waiting for you at the police station,” Jannette said. “If you didn’t have anything to do with it, go down there and tell them that.”
Tommy agreed that that was the best course. Mike drove him to the station. Inside, he told a clerk who he was. Detectives Smith and Baskin came out of an inner office. They led him downstairs, to a room with videotaping equipment set up. They told him they were going to make a tape of the questioning, asked if that was all right with him. He said it was. The machine was turned on by Eddie Davenport of the Norman police department. The detectives read Ward his rights under the Miranda Act: that he had the right to remain silent; that he had the right for a lawyer to be present; that he was free to go at any time; that if he did answer questions, he could stop answering them at any time; that if he did answer their questions, anything he said could be used against him in a court of law.
Tommy sat in a wooden chair, listening. He had not changed clothes after work. He was dressed as he usually was, in blue jeans, an athletic shirt, tennis sneakers. He told the detectives that he understood all of that, that he would answer their questions.
As the tape rolled, Dennis Smith recalled to Tommy the previous time he had been questioned, shortly after the disappearance: how Tommy had told them he would help them in any way he could to find out what had happened. Tommy said he remembered saying that.
Mike Baskin asked him what he had done the day Denice Haraway “was kidnapped.” Tommy said he had installed plumbing at his mother’s home with his brother-in-law, Robert Cavins. Then he had showered and walked to Jannette’s, about 9 P.M. Karl Fontenot was there, he said, and some other people, and they had a party.
The detectives told him that when they had questioned him the last time, he had told a different story. Tommy replied that the first story he had told them had happened the day before the disappearance. He had realized this later, he said.
“What was the statement you gave us?” Smith asked.
“I don’t remember,” Tommy said.
“When did you realize you hadn’t told the truth?” Baskin asked.
“I got mixed up the days,” Ward said.
The red light of the taping machine remained on. Smith asked Tommy if he was nervous. The detective then refreshed his memory about his previous story—about going fishing and then to a party.
“Yeah, that’s what I did the day before it happened,” Ward said. “I told you the twenty-seventh instead of the twenty-eighth.”
“Are you telling us the truth now?” Smith said.
“Yes, sir,” Ward said.
The voices of the detectives were soft as they asked the questions. Ward sounded almost bored as he answered them.
“You haven’t told us the truth,” Dennis Smith said. “We have a statement from Jannette about where you were at that night. We know more than you’re telling us.”
“About what?”
“About where you were at that night. About what you did that night. We have a witness. You’re getting yourself in more trouble…We have a person that will testify that that wasn’t what happened.”
Tommy insisted he was telling the truth.
“You’re getting yourself in more serious trouble…That particular night you and Karl and Jannette went to the Blue River.”
“I didn’t go to the Blue River that night.”
“You didn’t?”
“No, I didn’t.”
The detectives kept telling Tommy that he and Karl and Jannette and others were at the Blue River that night. That had been Sunday night, Tommy insisted.
They told him he had borrowed a pickup and left the party.
“I still don’t understand what you’re getting at,” Ward said. “Sunday night is the night she’s talking about.”
“Tommy,” Mike Baskin said, “are all these people mistaken about the day?”
“I guess so,” Tommy said.
The questioning continued. Dennis Smith tried a new approach. A bluff.
“Karl this morning gave us a statement that you were at the river,” he said. “You ran out of beer. You took her pickup and went into town to get beer.”
“I’m sure we wouldn’t come all the way back into town to get beer,” Tommy said.
“Isn’t it true you were going to rob McAnally’s?” Smith said.
“No.”
“We’ve got people who are going to testify that you and Karl said that,” Smith told him. “You and Karl left the party and were gone a long time, and then came back.”
Tommy Ward said no such thing had happened. He said that on Friday he had gone fishing; on Saturday he had installed plumbing with his brother-in-law; on Sunday they had gone to Blue River.
Dennis Smith reached for an envelope. He pulled out a large photograph. He held it perhaps three feet from Ward’s face.
“Do you know that girl?” he asked.
“I don’t know her. I’ve seen her.”
“Would that be Donna Denice Haraway?”
“I guess.”
“Did you kill that girl?”
The detective’s voice was still soft, gentle.
“No, I didn’t. I wouldn’t take nobody’s life away from them.”
“Who did kill her?”
“I don’t know.”
Smith continued to hold the photograph close to Ward’s face.
“Was she a pretty girl?”
“Yeah.”
“Is she still pretty?”
“Yeah.”
“This girl’s family would like to bury her,” Smith said. “They’d like to know where she’s at so they can bury her.”
“I don’t know where she’s at.”
Smith continued to hold the picture of Denice Haraway in front of him.
“Would you tell me where she’s at, so her family could bury her?”
“Yeah, if I did it. But I didn’t do it.”
“What do you think happened to this girl?”
“I don’t kn
ow.”
“Use your imagination,” Smith told him. “Two guys took her, got her in a pickup, took her away. What do you think they did with the body?”
“No telling.”
“Use your imagination. What do you think?”
“She could still be alive for all I know, for all you know. For all anyone knows.”
“You think they hid her under some rocks or something?”
“Could be. No telling.”
“Are you telling the truth?”
“Yes, I’m telling the truth. I wouldn’t do nothing like that. I’m not that kind of guy…I feel sorry for whoever did it.”
“Her family would like to have a Christian burial for this girl,” Smith said. The picture was still smiling at Ward. “A funeral service. And put her in the ground the way she’s supposed to be.”
“If it were my daughter, I would too,” Tommy Ward said.
“So what do you think happened? What happened to this girl? You think they did it because she recognized them?”
He continued to hold up the picture.
“She was a beautiful girl,” Dennis Smith said.
“Yes, she is,” Tommy Ward replied.
The questions continued.
“If I thought I did something like that, I’d kill myself,” Ward said.
“Were you on drugs that night?”
“I was drinking some beer.”
“Steve Haraway wishes she would come back,” Smith said. “He lays awake at night, wondering where she’s at. Her family lies awake at night, wondering where she’s at. They would like to give her a decent burial.”
“Do you think she screamed?” Mike Baskin asked. “I bet whoever did it can still hear her screaming. What do you think?”
“I didn’t do it,” Ward said.
“Tommy, have you prayed about this?” Smith asked. “Are you a religious person? Do you believe in God?”
“Yes, I do.”
“Do you know that a person that asks for forgiveness and confesses their sins is forgiven?”
“The Bible says in the Sixth Commandment, ‘Thou Shalt Not Kill,’” Ward replied.
He crossed his legs occasionally; otherwise he remained almost motionless. So did Dennis Smith, leaning forward, holding up the picture of Denice Haraway.
“That’s why God’s son Jesus was killed,” Mike Baskin said. “Remember what He said just before He died. God forgive them, for they know not what they do.”
Tommy Ward waited.
“You think it would take a person under the influence of drugs to do something like that?” Baskin asked.
“They’d have to be crazy,” Ward said.
Smith set the picture of Denice aside for a time. They asked Ward about the composite drawings.
“Several people asked me if I did it,” Ward said. He said he never thought the picture looked like him. They asked if he had any mental problems. He said he didn’t. He said he had quit school, which he should not have done. Baskin agreed that that was not a mental problem.
Smith held up the photograph again. He asked where Tommy would have buried her if he had done it. Ward said he hadn’t done it. Baskin asked what if he had accidentally killed her, but hadn’t meant to. “It would be an accident,” Tommy said.
Baskin asked him what he would do if another person had committed a crime, and he knew about it.
“I’d tell the police,” Ward said.
“Can you imagine the burden they’re carrying around?” Smith asked.
“I can imagine.”
“If they don’t tell the police,” Baskin said, “they’re gonna file first-degree murder on ’em, which carries the death penalty.”
“It’s terrible,” Ward said.
“If they don’t come up with an explanation,” Baskin said again, “it’s gonna be first-degree murder, which carries the death penalty.”
Baskin began to speak of the Haraway family’s suffering. “They need to find her so they can get on with their lives,” he said. “Knowing she’s laying out there somewhere, winter’s coming on, it’s fixing to get cold. Imagine how they feel, knowing she’s lying out there…All it would take to end their suffering is to tell where she’s at. She could be taken to a funeral home, be fixed up for a Christian burial.”
“I feel sorry, you know, for the girl,” Tommy said; he would help the family if he could.
“She was a pretty girl, wasn’t she?” Dennis Smith said.
“Yes, she was,” Tommy replied.
“Can’t you use your imagination?” Smith asked.
Baskin said, “I wonder if she cried.”
Smith still was holding the picture.
“Tommy, did you kill this girl?”
“No, I didn’t.”
“Do you know who did?”
“No, I don’t.”
“Her body’s probably deteriorating out there…,” Smith said.
The questioning continued. The detectives asked Ward if he would take a polygraph, a lie-detector test, in a few days, to prove he was telling the truth. Tommy said he would.
The interview lasted for an hour and forty-five minutes, all of it taped. Ward maintained to the end that he knew nothing about the disappearance of Denice Haraway.
The tape machine was turned off. They all stood up. Ward went outside, to where Mike Roberts was waiting to take him home.
Smith and Baskin walked to their car. It was late. The roads were almost empty as they made the eighty-mile drive back to Ada. Their headlights splayed the blacktop. There were no streetlights along the roads; the only light in the car was from the dashboard; it illuminated the satisfaction in their faces.
The detectives were now convinced that Tommy Ward had killed Denice Haraway.
There was the composite sketch that looked like him—a little wide in the jaw, Smith felt, but otherwise it was him. More than thirty callers had said it looked like him. Now this interview: he had seemed nervous. And the most important thing, the clincher: he had changed his story about what he had been doing the night of the disappearance. There was no reason to do that if he wasn’t guilty.
They had gotten lucky, Dennis Smith felt. Jeff Miller coming in, Ward still being in Norman. But that’s what it took sometimes.
They rolled into pools of light, the streetlights of Ada. The search was over, they had found the killer, they believed. All they had to do now was find the evidence; all they had to do now was prove it. Or get Tommy Ward to confess. Ward had agreed to take a polygraph. The detectives were hopeful it would trip him up.
The test was to be administered at OSBI headquarters in Oklahoma City. Smith and Gary Rogers would go up there to talk to Ward; Baskin would stay behind in Ada.
Mike Roberts is a brown-haired, wiry young man with a wisp of a beard. As he drove Tommy Ward home from the police station in Norman, Tommy told how the questioning had gone. When he was through, Mike asked if he’d had anything to do with Denice Haraway’s disappearance, if he had killed her.
Tommy assured him he’d had nothing to do with it, that he enjoyed life too much to kill anyone.
Mike Roberts was relieved. He told Tommy he hadn’t believed he’d done anything wrong; it was just that with the police suspecting him, he had gotten worried.
At home, Tommy told Jannette about the questioning; he’d agreed to take a polygraph, he said, to prove he was innocent. He was in high spirits. Soon the police would stop hassling him.
But his mood didn’t last. In the next few days he told Jannette he was having dreams about the case, because of all those people who had told him the drawing looked like him; because of Dennis Smith questioning him. He began to get worried about the lie-detector test.
Tommy didn’t much like the police; he felt they didn’t like him. He’d spent a few nights in jail, arrested on minor charges, but was always bailed out by his mother or a sister or a brother. One time about a year earlier he had been involved in a traffic accident. The police at the scene accused him of driving
while stoned; Tommy told them he wasn’t the driver. The officers, uniformed ones, told him they would get him one day.
The recollection made him nervous. On Monday night, October 15, he telephoned his mother. He told her what was going on, that he was going to take a lie-detector test to prove he was innocent.
“I’m scared to death,” he said. “I’m afraid they’ll try to make me say something I’m not supposed to say.”
His mother tried to calm him. “Just tell the truth,” she said, “and everything will be all right.”
The polygraph was scheduled for Thursday morning. Tommy told his boss about it, explaining he would need the time off.
Mike Roberts took Tommy aside. He told him that he still had $3,000 from their last siding job. If Tommy was afraid, Mike told him, he could have the money. He could use it to leave Norman, to leave Oklahoma, so the police would stop hassling him. Tommy declined the offer. If he ran, he told Mike and Jannette, then the cops would be convinced he was guilty,
On Thursday morning, Mike drove Tommy to Oklahoma City, fifteen miles north of Norman, to the headquarters of the OSBI. He told Tommy he would wait for him in the parking lot. Then they would drive to work.
Tommy walked into the building. Mike leaned back to wait. Half an hour passed, an hour, two. Afternoon came, and still Mike waited; Tommy would have no other way to get home; you didn’t desert a friend. Three hours passed. Four. Five. Mike Roberts waited in the parking lot. He didn’t know what was going on; he didn’t think the OSBI would appreciate it if he went in to find out.
They had arrived in the parking lot at ten in the morning, right on time. It was after five o’clock when an OSBI agent came out of the building and asked Mike if he was waiting for Tommy Ward. Mike said he was.
“They still have more questions to ask him,” the agent said. “We’ll give him a ride home when they’re through.”
Mike was upset. He didn’t know what they were doing in there for so long. But there was nothing he could do about it. He drove on back to Norman.
