Teasing Secrets from the Dead: My Investigations at America's Most Infamous Crime Scenes

by Emily Craig

  Peter Kupaza's trial was a dramatic event. Mwivano's and Peter's relatives flew in from Tanzania, sitting in the front row for every day of the trial. When Shari Goss testified against her ex-husband, she nearly broke into tears as the D.A. showed her several knives that the couple had once had in their kitchen. Prosecutors suggested that these were the very knives that had been used to dismember Mwivano's remains. On another day, prosecutors showed a slow-motion video superimposition comparing my clay reconstruction to Mwivano's photograph. There were audible gasps from the jury, and two of Mwivano's relatives began to cry.

  Peter maintained his innocence throughout. A June 21, 2000, article by Jason Shepard in the Capital Times reported his testimony:

  “I would like to tell you today, I did not do this. I did not do this. I do not have the heart… I miss my cousin.” Shepard reported that Kupaza spoke of his and Mwivano's relatives as a single family. David and Rebecca Mwambashi were Mwivano's parents and Peter's aunt and uncle. Yet he spoke of them and of his uncle Raphael as though they were all his parents and as though Mwivano were his sister:

  “Why should I make my father Raphael Mwambashi cry? Why should I make my father David Mwambashi cry? Why should I break his heart?… Why should I make my mother Rebecca cry forever?… Why should I do this to my sister? I'm supposed to protect her.”

  Yet Peter's own uncle, the family patriarch, Raphael Mwambashi, testified against his nephew. “He cheated me,” Mwambashi was quoted as saying in the same article. “Now we know he was never true to me.”

  When Peter Kupaza was finally found guilty, he himself began to weep, while family members stared straight ahead, silently. Later, he was given a life sentence with no parole for thirty years-a decision that would mean he could not return to Tanzania until he was seventy years old. Although Mwivano's family had originally intended to take their daughter back with them, they decided to bury her remains in Wisconsin. Devout Lutherans, they chose to hold her funeral at Coon Prairie Lutheran Church in Westby.

  “The burden is not as heavy as we thought it would be because of you people,” Raphael Mwambashi said at the ceremony, according to a June 26, 2000, story by William R. Wineke in the Wisconsin State Journal. “We leave for home tomorrow having accomplished everything we had to do. We leave her body with you people knowing that it is in the good hands of good people.” Although I could not be at the funeral, I was glad to have been part of the process that brought justice to the family of Mwivano Kupaza.

  In the Kupaza case we had a skull, which helped enormously: It meant that we could give the victim a face, which enabled us to give her a name. But what if you don't have a skull? Some murderers know how useful those head bones are to crime scene investigators, and they go to no end of trouble to disguise the identity of their victims. Then we have to tease secrets out of something else.

  Such was the case with Everett Hall, a disabled coal miner from Pike County, Kentucky, whose wife persuaded her two boyfriends to kill him in 1996. (“That woman had some awesome powers of persuasion,” one of the deputies once told me.) Mrs. Hall's two beaux allegedly shot Everett in the head and decided to hide his body in a nearby abandoned coal mine, expecting his corpse to decompose rapidly. But when they went back to check on their work a year later, they discovered that the mine's consistent temperature, low humidity, and absence of flies and their larvae had simply mummified the remains. So they cut off Everett 's head, burned it, and buried it in a construction site. To this day, that head reportedly lies beneath a small strip mall in Pikeville.

  Now, thought the boyfriends, the head problem was solved-but what about the rest of the body? Hall's wife and her fellas decided to dynamite that section of the mine-but none of them had the cash to buy the dynamite. Hall's wife agreed to trade sexual favors for the explosives they needed-a maneuver that the detectives on the case would later dub “nookie for nitro.”

  The plan worked fine up until the actual explosion, when the guys failed to detonate the charge correctly. The disappointingly small blast only loosened a few small slabs of stone and filled the shaft with coal dust.

  They decided to try again, since it would be years before enough coal dust settled to fully conceal the headless corpse. So they loaded Everett 's remains into a wheelbarrow, rolled him into a more confined area of the mine shaft, and sent Mrs. Hall out for some more dynamite.

  Unfortunately for them all, she only came back with a homemade hand grenade. Making do with what they had, the men rigged an elaborate system of pulleys and string to detonate the grenade after they were out of harm's way. But their second attempt was doomed to failure, too, for their weapon turned out to be nothing more than a smoke grenade.

  After the smoke cleared, the men came up with a third plan. They decided to build a fire from the timbers that were holding up the roof of the mine, placed the corpse on their makeshift funeral pyre, and doused the whole thing with motor oil. Then, somehow, their survival instincts clicked into place. Realizing that they were in imminent danger of being crushed by a collapsing mine if not suffocated by the smoke filling a small, confined area, they decided not to light the fire and simply walked away, leaving the body still sprawled over the stacked timbers.

  Despite the cartoon-like quality of these criminal efforts, Hall's murder was never discovered, and we might never have found the body if one of the men hadn't been arrested on an unrelated felony charge a year later. He gave up the story as part of some legal maneuvering, and I was called in when the detective who first entered the mine saw that parts of the body were skeletonized. Fearing that their own recovery of the remains might damage crucial evidence, local law enforcement officials asked me to take over.

  I got the call late in the day, and I knew it would be almost dark by the time I drove over to Pike County, which is right on the West Virginia border. Still, it was going to be pitch dark in the mine at any hour, so this was one case where the time of day really didn't matter.

  I'd never been inside a coal mine before, and the two-hour drive to the scene gave my imagination plenty of time to run wild. I seemed to recall every movie or television show I'd ever seen in which people got trapped inside a collapsing mine shaft or a secluded cave, leaving them without light or air-a fantasy that started to seem more and more real as the sun set and the sky grew darker.

  My actual arrival on-site did nothing to calm the fears. As I was climbing into my jumpsuit and strapping on my kneepads, Pike County Coroner Charles Morris came up to me and said, “You know, Doc, you don't have to go in there if you don't want to. Those mine inspectors started talking after I called you up here, and although they assured me that the mine was safe, they were a little worried about sending in a woman who'd never been in a coal mine before.”

  I stared silently at him for at least five seconds while my mind raced. Everyone had turned to look at me and I knew I'd be judged by what I said next. I took a deep breath.

  “First of all, Charles, nobody is sending me into that mine. I'm walking in with those guys who are telling you it's safe.” I pointed directly at the men from the Bureau of Mine Safety and chuckled a little to soften my words, but I was serious as I added, “Of course, if they choose to stay out here in the open, I'll be right out here with them.”

  I could see the investigators nodding to each other, and that gave me the courage to go on. “Besides, Charles, how bad can it be? There's the entrance, and it's a lot bigger than I expected. Heck, it looks like it's eight feet high and a good fifteen feet wide. I've been in lots of spaces smaller than that.”

  This time it was the mine inspectors who laughed, and if I'd been a little more astute to the glances that passed between them, maybe I would have swallowed my pride and stayed outside. But I didn't. With my best show of bravado, I reached for my regular hard hat and picked up my biggest flashlight.

  “No, Doc, that won't do,” said Charles. “You have to wear this.” He handed me a dented and blackened coal miner's helmet and a flat metal box to which was a
ttached a short insulated cable and small spotlight. As I held this helmet in one hand and the box in the other, he strapped a thick nylon webbed belt around my waist.

  “Put on the helmet first, Doc, and I'll adjust it for you.”

  I did as I was told. The headgear fit surprisingly well after Charles gave a little twist to a knob at the back of my neck, just under the helmet's rim. Next he took the flat orange-colored box from me and hooked it onto the belt.

  “This here's the battery for that light you still have in your hand,” he explained. “It's fully charged and should last as long as you're in there-unless, of course, you get lost or trapped.” He looked me straight in the eye, but couldn't keep a straight face for long. I expect he spotted the apprehension that was starting to creep back into my eyes as I watched some of the mine inspectors shaking hands and wishing “good luck” to the folks who would be leading me inside.

  “Hey, Doc, I was just kidding,” Charles said in what I think he meant as a reassuring tone. He grabbed the cable attached to the battery and snaked it up through a loop in the back of my helmet, clipping it and the spotlight to the metal frame over my forehead. Then he clicked the light on and off a few times, just to make sure it worked. It gave off a bright white beam that seemed powerful enough in the dim twilight-but what kind of illumination would it provide once I was underground?

  “Looks like you're good to go now, Doc,” Charles said cheerfully. “Give me a minute to get my stuff on, and we'll join the others. Maybe you could grab that body bag and my camera from the back of that pickup over there while I suit up.”

  As we walked over to the mine entrance, Charles took the bag and the camera, leaving me free to walk into the mine with empty hands. As nonchalantly as I could, I turned on my light, pulled on my favorite leather gloves, and followed the other five members of the recovery team, who all finally turned on their own helmet lights and divided into pairs. We walked upright and side by side for about two hundred yards into the base of the mountain. By now, the last of the outside light had faded away and our tiny headlamps cast eerie shadows as they bounced along in cadence with our footsteps.

  Then, suddenly, the shaft narrowed dramatically, like a funnel, the sides and ceiling closing in until there wasn't room to walk abreast or even to stand upright. That's when I noticed the silence. We were so far underground that no outside sound could penetrate, and I suddenly felt a wave of panic, gasping for breath and breaking out in a cold sweat.

  “Wait up a minute, guys,” I called to the men ahead of me. I had stopped dead in my tracks, trying to get control of my breathing. “I'm having a little trouble, here.”

  Newcomer's jitters were old hat to them, so they all stood together in a group, waiting for me to gather the courage to continue. I could tell they were amused by my discomfort, and more than one derisive glance was cast my way; but, frankly, I didn't care. I thought I was doing pretty damned good to have come this far!

  Charles did, too. From this point on, he kept up a running commentary about the case, knowing that would keep my mind too busy to conjure up images of danger.

  “We know who this guy is supposed to be, Doc. He disappeared about a year and a half ago, and the fella who told us where he hid the body said he helped with the killin'. While we were waiting for you to get here, I went ahead and collected a batch of the victim's x-rays, so hopefully you can identify him at tomorrow's autopsy. I think I told you that the head's been cut off, and it looks like maybe rats or something's been working on his fingers. There's no skin or prints left.”

  By now, I was stooped over and proceeding in a duck-walk crouch, a position so uncomfortable that it was hard to keep my mind on the case. My poor knees and back were about to give out, and my only comfort was that the situation couldn't possibly get any worse.

  And then, of course, it did. Suddenly, the men in front of me stopped and one hung a lantern light on a hook that had been drilled into a single support timber.

  “This is it,” he said, pointing to a pile of jumbled coal and flat rocks. “From here on in, we'll be on hands and knees, but you've gotta be careful not to hit any of the support timbers on the other side of this pile. For some reason, the men who killed this guy pulled out most of the supports. I think the ones left are good enough to keep this shaft open, but this batch of rocks fell just as we were coming in to look for the body this morning, so let's not take any chances.”

  You don't have to worry about me, I thought. I had taken all the chances I was going to take just by coming down here in the first place.

  Apparently without fear, the leaders of our team lay down and slithered through an opening that was just high enough to accommodate the bulk of an average-sized man. Swallowing hard, I followed them. After crawling a seemingly endless hundred yards on our hands and knees, we rounded a sharp corner and entered a slightly larger cavern about a mile and a half inside the mine, where Everett Hall had lain for the past eighteen months. His mummified corpse was perched on its belly on top of a pile of mine timbers, pointing a bony finger straight at us.

  The space we had to work in was a little larger but no higher than the shaft we had just crawled through, allowing just enough room for my five helpers to sit down with their backs against the wall. Here they sat, aiming their headlamps at the corpse, waiting for me to make the next move.

  This was my chance to make up for that panic attack, so I crawled casually over to the corpse and started dictating into my tape recorder.

  The headless body is prone and is lying on top of a pile of wood. The body appears to be mummified from prolonged exposure to an environment with constant temperature and low humidity. There is no evidence of insect or maggot activity, but there is evidence of carnivore scavenging. The flesh has been removed from the torso and arms, and small tooth marks are visible in the remaining soft tissues. The lower portion of the body is wrapped in a dark-colored sleeping bag, and several pieces of rope and electrical wire encircle the sleeping bag. The body appears to be covered in a dark, unidentified viscous liquid…

  “What is this stuff?” I said, interrupting myself. I held my fingers up to my nose trying to get a whiff of the greasy liquid. “It smells like my old car.”

  “It's gotta be either motor oil or kerosene,” said Charles as he lifted a plastic jug from somewhere behind the corpse. “There's four of these jugs back here, and they're all empty. No miner in his right mind would bring this stuff in here, so these fools must have planned to burn this body on top of what looks like a makeshift bonfire.”

  “So it's flammable?” the rescue team leader jumped in, a hint of alarm in his normally easygoing voice. “All right, people, let's be extra careful. No camera flashes, and no scraping with these tools we brought. All we need is for a spark to reach this stuff, and we're all dead.”

  Okay, but what's the good news, I found myself thinking. I had never wanted to leave a crime scene so badly in my life. I picked up the few stray finger bones that had fallen to the floor of the mine and tried to think how to get the body out of this tight spot without causing any further damage to it. But scared as I felt, I had a job to do. Someone had to take pictures of the body before I moved it-and without a flash.

  I glanced over at the four men sitting against the wall, their arms and legs folded like a row of Buddha effigies, and got an idea. “I know you guys don't want to get too close to this body, but I need you to scoot over here and give Charles and me some light. If you all aim your headlamps at one section at a time, I think there will be enough light to take some photos.”

  Praise the Lord, my idea worked, and soon we were ready to move the body. But now there was a new problem: The corpse had hardened and warped over time, so that parts of it were wedged between the pile of wood and the roof of the mine. With little room to maneuver in the confined space, I lay on my back and pushed up against the mummified torso from below, so that Charles could quickly slide out some of the heavy mine timber that had been supporting the victim's shoulders. T
hen I had to slide over and do the same thing to the lower legs, which were still wrapped in the sleeping bag. Somehow we managed to slide the body into the body bag that Charles had laid out on the floor of the mine.

  Now Charles took over. “Okay, men. The doc here has done her part. Now we need you to help us get this fellow out of here.”

  I took a secret pleasure in seeing that everyone else was as eager as I was to leave, springing into action before Charles had even finished speaking. Luckily, someone had thought to bring some rope, which they tied into two loops at the end of the body bag in order to drag it through the shaft. Since there wasn't enough room to stand up and carry it, each man took turns slowly dragging it behind him as we crawled out of the shaft. When we reached the place where we could stand up again, our pace quickened as four men each grabbed a corner of the bag and carried it the rest of the way.

  I breathed a sigh of relief when we got outside, silently vowing that I would never go into another coal mine. If there was another body down there, the mine inspectors or the coroner could bring it out to me.

  Getting the body out of the mine felt like a huge achievement, but we still had to establish a positive ID, even though the state police and the coroner were sure that this was Everett Hall. I felt pretty confident, though, especially since Charles had brought a half-inch-thick stack of x-rays over to my lab in Frankfort. With all that medical data, it seemed pretty certain that we could quickly confirm his identity.

  At first everything went smoothly. The pathologist conducted an autopsy that revealed a match between our victim's remains and the description on Everett Hall's missing person report, including the presence of a partially amputated foot that had healed quite nicely. Then it was my turn. I wheeled the gurney into the radiology room. I was fairly certain that once I took my first x-ray of the victim's spine, I'd be able to match my work to the films in Hall's medical records. I went to stand behind the lead-lined protective barriers in our lab's x-ray suite-built to hospital specification-and took my first shot.