Blood Crimes
Page 15
“I just threw it away, I really don’t remember.”
“All right. This was after you struck your dad with the bat?”
“Yeah.”
“What did you do with the bat after you stopped hitting him with it?”
“I put it on the side of that big tall dresser, at the corner of the bed.”
“How many times did you try stabbing your dad?”
“Just once.”
“Just once?”
“It didn’t even go in him,” David said nonchalantly, like he was describing the weather.
“Did you stab him in the head?”
“No.”
“In the chest?”
“Like somewhere in there. And then Ben took the knife and cut his throat.”
“What happened then?”
“All the blood, it … made me sick. It wasn’t like all the blood, it was just the thought of what we did to our parents. We went in there and slew—”
“Take your time,” Vazquez soothed.
He didn’t want the kid getting so riled up by his emotions that he left out details. He was there to build a case against this kid, and so far, things were going really well.
“Where is your brother’s room in relation to your parents’?”
“Right across the hall.”
“Was his door open when you went up the stairs and down the hallway?”
“No.”
“It was closed? Who opened it?”
“Ben. Ben opened the door.”
“Was that when he went in your dad’s room, he opened the door?”
“Yeah. I didn’t see him, I didn’t see him hit my brother.”
“Did you see him turn the light on?”
“Yeah.”
“Did you see him turn the light on?” Vazquez repeated.
“Yeah, yeah, I saw the light come on. I heard a noise.”
“What kind of noise did you hear coming from your brother’s room?”
“A crushing, it was like something snapped or something.”
“Um-hum, take your time,” Vazquez soothed.
“I started walking in the living room, and it seemed like there was blood everywhere, splattered all over the wall.”
“When you left your dad’s room, did you look in your brother’s room?”
“Yeah.”
“Where was Ben at that time?”
“He was coming out of my brother’s room. I looked in. I saw a lot of blood everywhere.”
“Did you see your brother?”
“I saw part of his body.”
“What part did you see?”
“From the head down.”
“Did you see where Ben had hit your brother? Was there blood in the room?”
“There was blood on the wall.”
“Was there blood on the bed?”
David nodded.
“How far into the room did you go?”
“Not far at all. I walked in, I walked out, just like—”
“Then where’d you go?”
“The dining room. I puked there.”
“What did you do with the baseball bat?”
“I left it somewheres upstairs.”
“Did you take it out of your father’s room, where you’d left it before?”
“I’m not sure. I think I did. I think I left it in the dining room.”
“Do you recall taking it into the kitchen?”
“No.”
“Don’t remember?”
“I can’t.”
“OK, but it was somewhere in the dining room?”
“Yeah, I’m pretty sure it was.”
“David, any time up to this point did Ben Birdwell have the bat in his hands?”
“No. He had the pick handle.”
“Did he ever touch the metal bat you used or your father?”
“No. He had the pick handle the whole time.
“Did you hit your brother?”
“No!”
“Did you ever tell anyone else that you hit your brother?”
“When I first got arrested, I told the cops that I did. I didn’t want Ben to get in trouble.”
“Nice and loud,” Vazquez prompted.
“When I first got arrested, I told the first detective that. I really didn’t want to see him get into any more trouble.”
“Why didn’t you want him to get into any trouble if he had just killed your brother?”
“I knew we were going away. I just didn’t want anything to happen to anyone else.”
“Do you want to take a minute? Do you want to take a break?”
David nodded. The machine was turned off. A few minutes later, the machine was turned on again.
“You OK, David? You want to go on?” Vazquez asked.
“Yeah.”
“We were talking about when you were first arrested here in Michigan. Did I hear you correctly? That the reason you told the trooper from Michigan when you were first interviewed that you’d killed your brother was because you didn’t want Ben Birdwell to get into any trouble?”
“Yeah, I wanted to keep him out of as much trouble as I could. Once he started to tell the press that bunch of bullshit—”
“OK. You’re referring to an article that was in yesterday’s paper?”
“Yeah.”
“Is there any truth to that article? Are you doing this in direct retaliation for that article?”
“No,” David answered firmly.
“Are you telling the truth?” Vazquez pressed, studying his prisoner for signs that he was lying.
“Yeah.”
“Nelson Birdwell III killed your brother, your eleven-year-old brother, you did not?”
“No.”
“The reason you told that first trooper was to protect Nelson Birdwell III?”
“I wanted to see somebody stay out of some trouble for this. But I’ve had a lot of time to think about everything.”
“Have you discussed this with your attorney also?”
“Yeah,”
“All right. Let’s get back. You said you puked in the dining room area. Is that the only place you threw up?”
“Yeah.”
“Did you leave the house at all?”
“I went out the sliding door. I went out to get some fresh air for a couple of minutes.”
“When you came back in, did you puke again?”
“No.”
“Then what happened? Did you clean the puke?”
“No. As far as I know, Bryan and Ben didn’t, either.”
“When you came back in, when was the next time you saw Ben?”
“As soon as I came back in. He was standing in the dining room with Bryan.”
“Is this the first time you saw Bryan since you left him with your mother downstairs?”
“Yeah.”
“What happened after you saw these two guys standing there?”
“Bryan told Ben to go make sure that everybody was dead, to make sure my mom, my brother, and Dad were all dead.”
“Why did you decide on Ben to check them?”
“I told him I couldn’t do it, and Bryan said he couldn’t, either. I wouldn’t have been able to take it.”
“You mean emotionally you would not be able to face seeing that again?”
“Yeah.”
“Did Ben do that?”
“Yeah.”
“Where did he go first?”
“I’m pretty sure he went downstairs to check my mom first.”
“Was she dead?”
“I don’t know. I didn’t talk to him about that. I didn’t really ask him if they were dead or not.”
“So, Ben goes downstairs. You and Bryan are upstairs. What is the discussion about?”
“Where we’re going to go, what we’re going to do.”
“What did you decide?”
“We thought about going down to Atlantic City first. I believe it was Bryan that came up with the idea of going up to Ohio. He knew some guys
up there; we could sort of visit them for a while.”
“It was decided that all of you would flee?”
“Yeah.”
“Leave your house and Pennsylvania? No matter what, you were leaving?”
“Yes.”
“OK. When Ben Birdwell comes back upstairs, where does he go?”
“I think he went in my dad or little brother’s room.”
“Did he come back out into the hallway?”
“Yeah.”
“Did you see him go down the hallway?”
“Yeah. He said, ‘They’ll be dead soon, if they’re not dead already.’”
“How did he say this? Was he smiling, or—”
“He was excited. He was just like nervous. Nervous.”
“Then what happened?”
“Bryan and Ben went into the kitchen to get something to drink.”
“What did you do during this period?”
“I smoked cigarettes.”
“Upstairs?”
“Yeah.”
“I’m sure all of you talked about the murders?”
“We talked about it for a little bit, but we kept trying to forget about it.”
“What little bit that you did talk, what did Bryan say happened?”
“He said, my mom came down and he put his hand over her mouth and stabbed her in the back.”
“How many times?”
“All I remember was that when he stabbed her in the back, he stabbed her a couple of places.”
“OK.”
“And I remember him saying about her getting hit in the face.”
“By what?”
“By … I don’t remember, but I think he said it was, like, Ben, he had … Ben, he had something that he hit her in the face with.”
“How could Ben hit her in the face when Ben was with you upstairs?”
“I went upstairs first. As soon as Bryan told me, I went upstairs. I didn’t want to stay around.”
“Did he threaten you in any way, your brother Bryan, or Ben, if you didn’t go upstairs?”
“No.”
“You just understood what he meant?”
“I was real scared. I just didn’t know what to do.”
“What did Bryan tell you that Ben did? He hit your mom in the face with what?”
“I’m not sure.”
“What else did Bryan tell you afterward?”
“That’s all I remember him saying. I remember Ben saying that he hit my little brother. He said when he hit him, his eye popped out of his head. He said he just hit him once. His eye popped out, and everything just, like, shattered in his face.”
“He said his eye popped out? Where did that go?”
“He said it was just hanging.”
“‘Just hanging there?’ Was that all Ben said? Did Ben talk about anything about your mother?”
“No.”
“About hitting her or striking or stabbing your mother?”
“I don’t remember him saying anything like that.”
“Did you hit your mother?”
“No.”
“Did you hit your brother?”
“No.”
“Did you cut your brother or your mother?”
“No. The only thing I did was, I hit my dad.”
“Who took the money out of the rooms?”
“On the way out of my parents room, I grabbed my dad’s wallet from his pants.”
“Where were his pants?”
“On the floor in front of the bed.”
“Did anyone get any money out of the closets or the drawers or anything like that?”
“I’m not sure, that’s all I remember.”
“Where did you get the quarters where you paid for the motel rooms from?”
“I’m pretty sure we got them from the room.”
It was money their father had collected from his part-time job at a laundromat.
“Where was the change?”
“I think it was on the dressers.”
“How about the rolls of quarters, where did you get those?”
“I don’t remember.”
“Well, that’s not a problem,” Vazquez said. “That’s OK. You OK?”
David nodded his head.
“Try to get this over with. When you decided that you were leaving, you were going to Atlantic City, but you decided on Ohio. Who had the keys to the car at this point?”
“Ben went and got the keys on the long dresser in my parents’ room. He grabbed the keys and went downstairs. He took his father’s girlfriend’s car home. We followed him to his house on Sixth Street in Allentown.”
“Prior to leaving the house, did you take any clothing with you?”
“Well, I changed my jeans in the living room.”
“Was there anything wrong with them?”
“They were ripped in the crotch.”
“How did that happen?”
“When we were leaving the house, I just jumped up on the steps. They were just a little too tight.”
A killer with a hole in the crotch of his pants. Could prove embarrassing.
“They just ripped?”
“Yeah.”
“So yours is the longer pair. Did anybody else change?”
“Bryan did. He left his stuff in the living room.”
“What was wrong with Bryan’s pants?”
“He had blood on them.”
“Where was the blood?”
“It was, like, on the bottom, below the knee.”
“You saw that?”
“Yeah, I saw blood on them.”
“After you left, you followed Ben to his house?”
“Yeah. He dropped his car off.”
“Where did you go from there?”
“We went to get gas at the 7-Eleven on South Fourth Street.”
“Did you get anything else besides gas?”
“Yeah, we got a carton of Marlboros there.”
“How much money do you think you all had together that you took from the house?”
“A couple of hundred bucks, probably.”
“Did you take any of your dad’s or mom’s credit cards?”
“We thought about it, but you have to sign for them.”
“ATM cards?”
“No.”
“What time of night is it now?”
“About 12:30, somewhere around there.”
“Did you fill up the tank?”
“Yeah. Then we went out, got on the highway, I think it was seventy-eight, I’m not sure.”
“Where did you eventually end up going?”
“We decided we’d go see these guys in Michigan.”
David then related how, early in the morning, they stopped at the Truck World Motor Inn in Ohio.
“Let me stop you for this last thing,” Vazquez interrupted. “Did you get injured at all, as a result of what happened with your parents?”
“No.”
“Did Ben get injured at all?”
“No.”
“How about Bryan?”
“He had a cut on his hand, like right there.”
He pointed to a place on his hand.
“What was that from?”
“I don’t know.”
“Did he tell you what it was from?”
David shook his head.
“OK, so you stop at this motel in Ohio.”
David went on to describe their encounter with the desk clerk, Jesse Capece, and how they passed that day after the murders in Ohio.
The time was 1:14 A.M. Vazquez switched videotapes, and the interrogation continued.
After leaving the Truck World Motor Inn at around 8 o’ clock, they headed for Michigan to rendezvous with Frank Hesse, the skinhead Bryan had met at the New Year’s Eve concert at Detroit’s Westside Clubhouse.
“Does anything happen between the time that you get from the Truck World until you get back on the highway?”
“No, we went straight on the highway.”
> “Did you discard anything?” Vazquez prodded.
“We got rid of Ben’s jeans after we got on the highway.”
“Where did that occur? Was that between Truck World and Route 80?”
“Yeah. It wasn’t that far after we got off, but I remember we were going over a bridge. I remember at one point, I threw the jeans out the window.”
“Why did Ben want those clothes discarded?”
“Because there was blood all over them.”
“There was blood all over Ben’s jeans? Did you see the blood on the jeans?”
“Yeah.”
“Whose blood was it?”
“Probably my dad’s and my little brother’s.”
“What time did you get to those guys’ house in Michigan?”
“Around 3 o’clock in the morning. We knocked on the door and didn’t get any answer. So we went down to the Holiday Inn and got a room.”
“Who registered?”
“Ben did.”
“What name did Ben use?”
“One that was totally fake.”
David went on to describe their brief encounter with the Michigan uniformed cops.
“After the police left, how long did you guys stay at the hotel?”
“Till about 12:30, when we went to Frank’s. We stayed there and went to the mall in Midland with Frank.”
“Whadja do at the mall?”
“Hung out. Ben got two Budweiser T-shirts, I think.”
“Then what?”
“We ate at McDonald’s and went back to Frank’s house and drank and then more beer came later.”
“While you were at Frank’s, did anyone, you or Bryan, or Ben, say anything about what had happened—”
“No.”
“You didn’t tell anyone that you, Bryan, and Ben were responsible for the killing of your parents and your brother?”
David shook his head.
“None of those people had any clue about what you guys had done?”
“No.”
“Why didn’t you tell them?”
“We wanted to keep them out of it.”
“Where’d you sleep that night?”
“At Frank’s. The next morning, we woke up and went ice fishing with Frank. After that, we came back and got arrested.”
And that was it. Joe Vazquez was finished with his questioning. He had taken David on a tour through hell and was satisfied it would result in a “murder one” conviction.
“You got any questions, Dick?” Vazquez asked, addressing the Salisbury Township detective.
“I just got a couple of questions,” Metzler answered.
Metzler has a clipped mustache and hard eyes.
“David, when Bryan attacked your mother, what did you see?”