Shadows of Death (True Crime Box Set)

by Katherine Ramsland

  Search warrants were issued for Pennell's trailer, shed, vehicles and person. Pursuant to these warrants, police seized a Buck knife from Pennell’s pocket, eight pairs of pliers, a bag of unused flexicuffs, which could have made the marks left on the victims’ wrists, and two rolls of duct tape. These were the items the FBI had suggested would be part of the killer’s murder kit.

  After the evidence was examined, Pennell was charged with three counts of first-degree murder in the deaths of Shirley Ellis, Catherine DiMauro and Michelle Gordon. He was a suspect in Finner’s murder as well, but evidence in her case was lacking.

  Pennell claimed he was innocent. He offered an alibi. It didn’t hold up. He was held for trial.

  Upon his arrest, Pennell’s case became a study for the FBI’s Behavioral Science Unit. He was clearly what they called a signature killer, a man who left a distinct “calling card” that showcased his sexual fantasies.

  “An offender’s fantasies often give birth to violent crime,” Douglas (and co-author Corinne Munn) wrote. “It goes beyond the actions necessary to perpetrate the crime.” As the offender acts out from the pressure of unexpressed desires, “some aspect of the crime will demonstrate a unique, personal expression or ritual based on these fantasies.” The core doesn’t change, although aspects of the act might evolve. Often, the offender expresses anger or need for dominance through the signature.

  However, there would be some question about this at Pennell’s trial.

  SO WHO WAS THIS GUY?

  Pennell appeared to have grown up in a normal home, so it was unclear how he’d developed the need to inflict torture. In fact, he’d initially pursued a career in criminology and had applied to the state police. He’d been rejected and had found work as an electrician (associated, as the profile noted, with the construction trade). He was familiar with both construction sites where victims were dumped. Perhaps the humiliation of rejection had gotten under his skin. He reportedly dominated his wife, so his need for control was evident. Prostitutes were easy victims, especially if they were in dire need of money. They’d go with just about anyone and submit to whatever was requested.

  Pennell’s trial began on September 26, 1989. The State claimed that the cases were all related to a serial killer, so prosecutor Kathleen Jennings was allowed to introduce evidence about Margaret Finner’s disappearance, along with the other three cases, without mentioning that Finner had been found murdered. The State needed this incident as part of the case, because her disappearance had helped them to know what type of van they were looking for. The judge approved it but said that jury was not to be informed that Finner had never returned after vanishing.

  The fibers from DiMauro linked her to Pennell’s van, although it was class evidence, so it was generic rather than unique. Still, it was a rare shade of blue. The presentation required an analysis of statistical probability for the comparison. Blood from the van was linked via DNA to DiMauro. The duct tape, knife and pliers were strong circumstantial evidence, since one of these tools fit DiMauro’s gouge wounds.

  For the Ellis murder, an aqua-colored thread that matched her running suit was found stuck on Pennell’s knife. The duct tape in her hair matched the type used in construction. It was somewhat unique to the construction trade, not the kind found in regular home improvement stores. Pliers belonging to Pennell matched the bruising on Ellis’s abdomen.

  Strands of hair from Pennell’s van were consistent with the hair that appeared to have been cut from Michelle Gordon’s head, but this was not definitive.

  Given the items found in Pennell’s van and the wounds on the victims, as well as the undercover officer’s statement about his MO, it was fairly easy to reconstruct his approach. When he saw a woman alone, he’d drive up in his van. They’d converse until he could coax her inside. Then he would drive to an isolated place where he’d threaten her with a knife before binding her with duct tape, handcuffs or flexicuffs. From his rape kit, he might pull pliers, needles, or a whip. In one case, he cut off the woman’s nipples while she was still alive. He delighted in their screams. Finally, he beat them with a hammer to smack them around and, finally, to silence them. Then he dumped the bodies in spots near highway 40 or 13.

  After reviewing the deaths of Ellis, DiMauro and Gordon, Special Agent Douglas testified that a single offender committed each torture-murder. He described the similarities of the wound patterns on each victim and the nature of the torture they’d each endured: “The signature was the pleasure he received out of inflicting pain and hearing his victims’ anguished screams,” he said.

  The defense contested that Gordon’s wounds to the breast had been postmortem, so the signature did not match. Douglas indicated that as the fantasies matured, the violence escalated, which would account for postmortem injury. In addition, the victim seemed to have died from fright, which had robbed Pennell of his full experience. He would have been angry.

  It was a strong case, but then Jennings expressed her personal belief in Pennell’s guilt. The defense moved for a mistrial on the grounds of prosecutorial misconduct. The court denied it.

  “Ladies and Gentlemen,” said the judge, “the last comment by the prosecutor was improper, in using a personal opinion or statement to you, and as such, is stricken from the record. You should totally disregard the last comments that were made and the manner in which they were made.”

  The jury returned guilty verdicts in the murders of Ellis and DeMauro. Pennell was given life sentences. He went to serve them at the Delaware Correctional Center, near Dover, as his attorneys prepared his lengthy appeal.

  Number one on the list was the claim that the judge should have declared a mistrial when the prosecutor expressed her personal feelings.

  With this, the justice found no real issue: “All parties, and the Court, agree that arguments in the first person should be avoided,” reads the response. “Section 5.8(b) of the ABA Standards, the Prosecution and Defense Functions, states that ‘[i]t is unprofessional conduct for the prosecutor to express his personal belief or opinion as to the truth or falsity of any testimony or evidence or the guilt of the defendant.’” The problem, essentially, is that it conveys the impression to the jury that the prosecutor knows more than was presented in court. This gives the prosecution an unfair advantage.

  Other items in Pennell’s appeal included the following:

  the trial court abused its discretion by admitting evidence concerning the disappearance of a prostitute near where Pennell's victims were abducted;

  the search of Pennell's van, and the seizure of blue fibers, violated his rights against search and seizure;

  the trial court abused its discretion in allowing an expert testimony on serial murder;

  there was insufficient evidence to support the conviction for first-degree murder for the death of Shirley Ellis.

  The justices decided that the circumstances of Finner’s disappearance, which had moved along the investigation, justified allowing mention of it in court. The removal of the blue fibers was within the “plain view” framework, and therefore was not a violation of Pennell’s rights. “Probable cause,” the opinion stated, “exists if the facts would make a reasonably cautious person believe that the item in plain view is useful as evidence in a crime. Officer Lano's information, which led her to believe that the blue fibers from the van's carpet may be useful as evidence, was extensive.” Pennell’s reasoning regarding the FBI’s testimony was misplaced, because Douglas’s specialized expertise was necessary for the jury to better grasp the issues. None of Douglas’s statements overreached or were improper.

  The Delaware Supreme Court concluded that the testimony’s admission in the Pennell case had been proper. The convictions stood.

  While Pennell was in prison, he was also indicted for the murders of Michelle Gordon and a fifth woman, Kathleen Meyer, 26. Kathleen had disappeared like the others, but her body was never located. Strangely enough, in light of his extensive protests, Pennell pleaded no contest to the
se charges, and on Halloween 1991, he received two death sentences.

  Pennell was determined to die. He hated the anguish that his imprisonment was causing his family. His sentence was automatically appealed and he represented himself in court. Far from defending himself, he wanted the court to move it along. He was ready to go. He referred to himself throughout in the third person: “The man who did this deserves to die,” as if to spare his family from an outright acknowledgement of guilt.

  Pennell’s wife, Kathy, wanted to continue the appeals, but Pennell told her to stop. No more appeals. He wanted to die. She used this stated desire to insist that his mental state had deteriorated, which proved he was not competent to make this decision. It was a “foolish suicide.” The court, finding no evidence of mental impairment, rejected her petition. The Supreme Court concurred.

  On March 14, 1992, inside a glass-enclosed death chamber, Steve Pennell was strapped onto a vinyl-covered gurney, clutching a rosary. In front of two-dozen witnesses, including Officer Lano, he dismissed the opportunity to provide last words. Since he’d “found religion” in prison, a Roman Catholic priest administered Last Rites as Pennell received a lethal injection. Looking calm, he expired at 9:49 AM.

  Pennell was just 34 when he died. It was the first execution in Delaware since 1946. He had maintained his innocence to the end. Nevertheless, the case was solid.

  Mad Dog

  JOANNA STUART HAD BEEN A HIGHLY RESPONSIBLE employee. She’d worked for years for Robert Bray without once calling in sick. That’s why he and his wife thought it was odd when Joanna called them at nearly 7:00 AM on February 10, 1991 to tell them that she wouldn’t be in that day. She even repeated herself. They were confused. She wasn’t scheduled to be there that day. It seemed as if she were sending a message that was more urgent than she could convey on the phone. Possibly, she wanted them to notice something. She seemed to be in trouble.

  Bray and his wife drove over to Joanna’s home in Wilmington to see what was wrong. She wasn’t there. Neither was her car or her housemate, Hugh Pennington (by some accounts her son). Perhaps, they thought, he’d driven her to the hospital.

  They searched the house, just to be sure they hadn’t missed anything, and went down to the cellar. At the bottom of the steps, they discovered Pennington, bound hand and foot, and clad in just his underwear. He was lying in a pool of dark fluid. To their horror, he was dead. Robert saw a long, deep slash across his throat that had nearly decapitated him. They ran up the steps and phoned for the police.

  Sergeant Mark Daniels arrived to investigate. His police car drew the attention of neighbors, including a blond woman named Bonnie who wanted to know what had happened. She’d been watching movies with Joanna Stuart the evening before, she said, and her husband, Jim Red Dog, had gone with Joanna back to her house.

  Where was her husband now, Daniels wanted to know? She didn’t know. The conversation quickly turned strange as she admitted that he was a convicted killer.

  A Sioux Indian, he’d been relocated to Delaware as part of a Federal witness protection program. He had a conviction for manslaughter and another for a double homicide. Why he’d ever been paroled was a mystery. But he was now a prime person of interest.

  The night before, Red Dog had been out drinking with friends. Looking for sex, he’d failed to score. He’d told one woman that he was a “terminator,” meaning an enforcer who hurts people. Whenever he added cocaine to alcohol, everyone knew, he turned mean.

  Instead of going home, Red Dog had gone over to Joanna Stuart’s house and knocked on the door. But Joanna hadn’t answered, Pennington had. Red Dog had forced his way in and demanded money. He’d ordered Pennington to be still while he forced him to undress, go into the basement and be bound with tape. Then he’d sliced the young man’s throat, for no apparent reason except sheer orneriness.

  Going home, Red Dog had found Joanna there watching movies with his wife. He’d told her he needed to speak with her about something important, and would tell her as he went with her over to her house. Once they’d arrived, he’d forced her into the bedroom and raped her several times before passing out. She’d been too frightened to do anything.

  In the morning, Red Dog had violated her again and made her get into her car and drive him to an abandoned house in Oak Orchard. There, he’d raped her again before telling her her to take him to a friend’s house. When he’d gone inside, inexplicably leaving her by herself in the car, she’d fled. By the time she’d arrived at her house, the police were there. She couldn’t have been more relieved. (It’s not clear how she’d made the phone call to her employer, or why she’d been so cryptic.)

  Daniels listened to her story, told her that Pennington was dead, and took her to a hospital. A police alert went out for Jim Red Dog. Apparently not very bright, he’d done nothing to hide. They caught him that day on foot on the Winchester Bridge.

  His bloody fingerprints were in the basement, and with Joanna’s story, his trial was short and decisive. Jim Red Dog pleaded no contest, because he was too drunk that night to recall what had happened. He was now among Delaware’s serial killers, with his third conviction for a homicide (and a suspect in two more murders in other states, going back to a fatal armed robbery in 1973). He was sentenced to death.

  Red Dog refused to accept an appeal. It violated the warrior code of the Lakota, he said. His legal team tried to have the court get him evaluated for competency, but the court found that he had made a rational decision to accept his punishment. Red Dog hoped that his execution would be more solemn than what he’d witnessed of the festivities during Steve Pennell’s execution less than a year earlier.

  The killer was 39 when he spoke quietly with a tribal medicine man from his former reservation in Montana and received a lethal injection at the State Correctional Center on March 3, 1993. His final words were an apology to his family and a quick comment to everyone else: “The rest of you can kiss my ass.” To his wife, he said, “I’m going home, Babe.” She put her right fist over her chest and with a finger drew a circle in the air.

  Reportedly, James Allen Red Dog died with one eye open.

  Senator Joseph R. Biden, Jr. introduced legislation that would require Federal officials to notify state officials when a dangerous person is being relocated. How this might have stopped him from indulging in that crime-filled night is not clear.

  A Tough Way to Die

  SUE ANN COKER WAS HOME IN CHESWOLD when her foster brother, Billy Bailey, knocked. He was upset. She was hesitant about his presence, since he was supposed to be in a work-release program at the Plummer House in Wilmington, forty-five miles away. She let him in. He told her he’d escaped from the program and was not going back. No one was going to make him! He expected another charge, which would mark him as a habitual offender and earn him a life sentence. He’d rather kill himself.

  She listened to him for a while before her husband took him on an errand. Bailey wanted something to drink. He insisted they stop at a liquor store. Coker complied. He didn’t realize that Bailey had no money, or that he’d just go in and rob the place at gunpoint, but that’s what he did. It was 1979, and this was the start of a long, bloody night.

  “The police will be coming,” he told Coker when he returned to the car. He’d tried shooting the clerk to remove a witness, but his pistol had jammed. He suggested that Coker drop him off somewhere. He directed him to Lambertson’s Corner, and then got out. What he did next seems inexplicable.

  He said he was going to steal a truck and drive away. Instead, Bailey broke into a farmhouse. Gilbert Lambertson lived there with his wife, Clara. He was 80 and she was 73. They couldn’t very well put up a fight, but Bailey used the pistol he still had on him, as well as Lambertson’s shotgun, and shot Gilbert twice in the chest and once in the head. Clara took several hits, too, in the neck, shoulder, and stomach. He might have been intent on robbery, but once he had two dead bodies, his plans changed. He lifted both into chairs to pose them, as if they were still a
live, just sitting in their chairs. Then he left the house.

  The state troopers were now aware of the armed robbery and near-murder, and were on the lookout for anyone who matched the clerk’s description. A state police helicopter had taken to the air, and the officers spotted a man running with a shotgun across a field. He stopped, turned, looked up and aimed something at them. He shot at the pilots but missed. It didn’t take long to bring him to ground and place him under arrest. The clerk from the liquor store identified him as the armed thief who’d tried to kill him. Then police searched the house from which Bailey had run and found the bodies.

  At least they’d stopped him before he’d wreaked more damage. But this case would get even stranger.

  It was no surprise when Bailey was convicted. Everyone expected that he’d receive the death penalty, and he did: death by hanging. Then in 1986, Delaware switched to lethal injection. Bailey was given a choice. Since a lethal injection seemed less traumatic, officials expected Bailey to opt for this method. But Bailey didn’t want to be “put to sleep.” This notion disturbed him. He chose hanging.

  The state had not executed anyone with this method in half a century. Not many states had a protocol, so officials checked with Washington State. Recently, they’d hanged an offender there.

  By 1996, some 16 years after imposing this sentence, it was time to carry it out. A gallows had to be built on the grounds of the Delaware Correctional Center in Smyrna. There were twenty-three steps leading to a wooden platform fifteen feet above the ground. The trapdoor was tested with a sandbag. Even the hemp rope had specific preparations. This was no “hang ‘em high” Western. Because Bailey weighed over 200 pounds, they estimated the drop to break his neck to be about five feet and four inches. He had a thick neck, so they had to get this right. Botching an execution like this would have dire consequences.