Innocent Victims

by Whisnant, Scott;

  Katie, a B plus student, graduated in 1971 and headed off to Kansas State, 100 miles to the west and much farther from home than she wanted to live. If it’d been up to her, she’d have stayed home, like most of her classmates. The Furnishes were frugal, common-sense folk and Gary Eastburn was made to feel at home. His parents in Independence, Missouri, had split up when he was twelve, forcing his mother, a cashier at Safeway, to work long hours to keep the family going. Gary never got along with his stepfather. His childhood was okay—high school football at Harry Truman High School, lots of girlfriends through school, and a stint in the Navy—but it was nothing like the Furnish home, and that’s what he craved. He had to have Katie. He figured if he played it right, the fiancé would blow it.

  One day, Katie’s fiancé called while Gary was sitting beside her on the Furnishs’ living room couch. Katie excused herself and returned a couple minutes later.

  “What is it?” Gary asked, bracing himself.

  “He gave me an ultimatum,” she said. “It was either you or him.”

  “Oh. What did you say?”

  “Well, I hung up the phone.”

  They were married less than a year later at St. Agnes.

  Gary enrolled at the University of Missouri a few weeks after the wedding, and Katie worked as a dietitian to put him through school. She didn’t mind the work, but she did mind Gary playing softball and gallivanting with college friends. The frustrations would build and build until they erupted in arguments over the simplest of things—Gary forgetting to take out the garbage or letting the dishes pile up.

  They tried talking. They tried counseling. But nothing helped as much as Katie getting pregnant. Kara was born on May 21, 1979, one week after her father graduated from college.

  “You know how some children say they want to grow up to be a fireman?” Gary said. “I always wanted to grow up and be a husband and father.”

  By that time, Gary had decided to make the military his career after learning there was more money in air-traffic controlling than pharmaceutical sales, the path his major at Missouri was taking him. At least, he told Katie, he’d be home at night.

  Kara became her daddy’s girl. She followed him around, doing whatever he was doing. She could find his favorite fishing spot. If Gary called his friend John, then he was John to Kara, too.

  The pranks she pulled used to crack him and Katie up—as soon as they got behind closed doors. She once used a water hose to top off the fuel tank at home until it ran over. Gary paid $60 to fix it and told Kara she’d have to do household chores until she repaid him.

  She swept pine needles off the back porch. When she finished, Gary put two quarters in a jar, the start of the fuel tank fund. Ten minutes later, Kara came back and asked if she could sweep it again for another 50 cents.

  He constantly fretted over his firstborn. Shortly after Kara was born, Gary read an article on sudden infant death syndrome. He got up two or three times during the night and stood by her bed to make sure she was breathing. From that point on, his daughters always slept with the bedroom door open.

  The military shuffled them around, just as Katie feared it would. Right after Kara was born, he was stationed in Goldsboro, North Carolina, for 17 months, then Wichita Falls, Texas, where Erin was born. Lots of kids lived in the neighborhood and while the children played, Katie and the other young mothers would stand outside and chat until dark. Katie wept when Gary was transferred back to eastern North Carolina.

  But Fort Bragg wasn’t nearly as bad as they’d heard, and Gary became chief of air-traffic control at Pope Air Force Base. Jana was born there on July 15, 1983, and in December 1984, they rented a house for $400 a month at 367 Summer Hill, an upper middle-class subdivision just off the base. They were starting to make some money. Gary talked of fulfilling Katie’s lifelong dream of buying a farm and raising a horse for the children.

  On the plane, Gary looked at photos of his family. There was Erin, brown eyes sparkling underneath a head full of platinum blond hair. Kara was cute, but Erin was beautiful. Erin was also helpless, so dependent, always wanting a hug, so unlike her older sister. She’d dance about the house in her favorite dress, twirling so it would flow all around her, or prance about in her purple dance tights she got for Christmas. Erin clung to her Fun Bear when she slept.

  Kara could talk her into anything. Erin let Kara cut her hair an inch above her ears with paper-cutting scissors and once talked her into drinking beer from a keg left over from a party the night before. Erin would play in the front yard and call “Daddy, Daddy,” when she was stuck in a tree in the front yard, hanging onto a limb with both hands with all her might, even though she was just six inches off the ground.

  “I should never have left them,” Gary murmured. “I never should’ve left.” He thought back to that cold February morning at the school bus stop. He had bent over to hug and kiss Kara, and he kept watching her as she walked down the aisle of the bus. He waved good-bye as it pulled off.

  Something about it was sad even then, so sad that Gary decided to let Erin sleep rather than say goodbye. The last time he’d left for just a few days, Erin had cried. Gary didn’t want to see her cry again.

  The plane landed around 11 P.M. Gary climbed in an Air Force car and asked to see his daughter. Instead, he was taken to the Cumberland County Sheriff’s Department, where Detective Watts questioned him until 2 A.M. about his marriage. Detective Bittle took Gary’s roommate from Alabama into another room to check his story against Gary’s. Before he could visit his daughter, Gary provided head and pubic hair samples to compare against those found in the house. Finally, free to go, Gary’s voice shook.

  “Can I see Jana now?” he asked.

  Jana had been taken to Womack Army Hospital on Fort Bragg, dehydrated from three nights without food or water. Jennette Seefeldt had been in charge of the toddler ever since Toman rescued her from the crib. The two of them had held each other tightly, reaching a silent agreement. No one would separate them.

  Jennette had first cleaned her up and put her in one of Bob’s T-shirts. Then she’d fed her some crackers. Jana’s teeth had turned black from lack of nutrition.

  “Am I doing the right thing?” she asked one of the rescue workers.

  “You’re doing fine.”

  Jana threw up the crackers. It’d be awhile before her stomach could handle the shock of food.

  Jennette hugged Jana some more, telling her she was sorry, so sorry. William Huggins sized up the two of them and realized he couldn’t take Jana to the hospital without Jennette. They rode together in the back.

  Huggins peeked behind him as he drove to Womack. Jana’s eyes were glazed, still reeling from shock. Huggins wondered what she’d seen.

  Jennette stayed with Jana at the hospital, soothing her and walking her around the room. That night would be the first night of five they would spend together.

  When Gary arrived later that night, he found Jana with an IV hooked to her arm, bags drooping below her eyes. His daughter didn’t recognize him. The doctors told him that had Jana been in her crib another two hours, Gary would’ve lost her, too.

  The next day, Watts asked Gary to sort through the unopened mail from his house. “Don’t let it be there,” he said quietly, but it was—the card for the mother of his children, the card in which he had told Katie how much he loved her on this Mother’s Day.

  The nightmare kept getting worse. Watts was the first to tell Gary that the killer had slashed his children’s throats, probably while they slept. Katie, they said, had been raped.

  “Gary, we need you to go through the house to see what’s missing,” Watts said.

  That was the last place Gary Eastburn wanted to go. He sat quietly as the detective turned onto Summer Hill and stopped in the driveway at the seventh house on the right. The smell of blood hit Gary as soon as he stepped inside.

  “He got here after nine o’clock,” Watts said as they went inside, “but not too late.” He told Gary they’d determi
ned that Katie, still in her jeans and blouse, was folding clothes when the killer arrived. There had been no break-in.

  Gary Eastburn remembered 9 P.M. Thursday night only too well. He sat in his dorm room, studying for one of his last tests at officers’ school, when he had a sudden urge to call home. He started toward the hall phone, but changed his mind. Katie would be calling on Saturday. He could wait that long.

  Gary slowly began his tour through the house that was no longer a home. The kitchen was the same as ever. He ducked underneath a mobile made from seashells and looked at the refrigerator door, covered with his children’s art. Their moving date was circled on a calendar above the counter. Gary moved on through the dining room, past Jana’s wooden high chair, and into the living room.

  The fireplace hearth still had its padded cloth, protecting the children from sharp corners. A Nerf ball rested in front of the television. Randy the hobby horse, a toy Katie’s dad had built for her, was in the corner.

  The rape had begun here. Marks on Katie’s wrists suggested she’d been tied up while held at bay with a knife. Her shoes were on the floor, still tied. Her shirt had been ripped open. Two missing buttons were found on the carpet. Her bra had been cut at the center and pushed to the side. Her jeans had been pulled off and her panties cut.

  Gary imagined what it must’ve been like for his Katie as a man began attacking her in the living room. If she had struggled, she had been quickly overpowered. Only the basket of clothes had been knocked over. A few feet away was a page from a coloring book, a picture of a little girl riding a hobby horse. The ID techs had found the rubber glove tip back toward the dining room doorway.

  Gary winced as he headed toward the hallway, leading to the bedrooms. No one was sure which one the killer had chosen first. The children, possibly awakened by what was going on, were eliminated for no reason other than because they were witnesses.

  That Erin would wind up in her parents’ room was not surprising, Gary thought. She often went to bed in his and Katie’s room so she and her older sister wouldn’t giggle all night. After she drifted off, he or Katie would carry her to her own bed.

  Erin’s Fun Bear lay on the floor by her bed, no longer a comfort to anyone. Paper cutouts of green and yellow balloons still hovered over Kara’s bed, which was now stripped of its bloody spread.

  Gary turned and went toward the back, the master bedroom, the worst part.

  The detectives had tried to cover the bloody spots, but he saw them.

  The killer chased Katie back here. She must have run across the bed before getting trapped on the other side. Poor Katie, he thought. There was nowhere else to go. Oh God, how she must have struggled. Did he make her watch him kill Erin? Gary knew Katie would not have died without fighting for her life and her family’s.

  How could someone do this to my girls?

  Gary walked around the bedroom and the master bath. The Luminol marks were still there, wipe marks on the bedroom light switch and on the bathroom sink.

  Gary wanted out. As he turned back to the hall, he had a flash of Kara and Erin, chasing each other, laughing as they fell to the floor. “Careful, girls, you’re going to get hurt,” he said to children only he could see. He staggered into the hallway, as the killer had done five days before. He leaned against the wall. God, how can this be happening?

  He rubbed his forehead and closed his eyes tight. When he opened them, Kara and Erin were no longer laughing.

  He gasped. Luminol stained the wall inches away. As he looked around, there were Luminol smears on both sides of the hall. More on Jana’s door.

  Gary took a deep breath and pushed open Jana’s door. He imagined the killer hovering at her crib, brooding over whether to raise his knife again.

  Gary couldn’t take it anymore. He had to get out.

  The same image kept coming back, over and over. Katie running into the bedroom until, pitifully, she tripped and it was over.

  “I would bet my last dollar her dying thought was, ‘My God, whatever happened to my kids?’”

  “Is anything missing?” Watts asked.

  Gary noticed just a few items. A metal lockbox that held the family insurance documents and other important papers was gone. About $300 of Christmas money had been taken from Katie’s panty drawer, and her wallet was stolen. Gary said his wife kept her bank machine card in her wallet. Jack Watts thought that wasn’t much of a robbery. His thoughts turned to other motives.

  “Did your wife say anything to you about getting rid of the dog?” Watts asked Gary. He tried the question again. Gary thought about it.

  Katie had written letters to her mother and Gary the night before she was killed, telling them about finding a home for Dixie, their beloved setter. She had planned to find Dixie a home as soon as Gary left, but after the late-night phone call, Katie had kept Dixie around as long as she could. Gary thought about the pictures of nine-month-old Kara asleep on a blanket on the floor, Dixie resting her head on Kara’s legs. He and Katie had agreed to advertise Dixie in the Beeline-Grab Bragg, a trading post newspaper on Fort Bragg:

  ENGLISH SETTER—5 yr, spayed,

  no papers, $10.00

  (867–8542).

  A nice man came and got Dixie, the letter said.

  Chapter Four

  Tim Hennis was foraging through the cabinet for peanut butter for his sandwich. The television news blared from the living room, his wife, Angela, leaning forward from the couch in anticipation.

  The twenty-seven-year-old Army sergeant had his lunch break timed just right. In an hour and a half, he could make the 20-minute drive home from Fort Bragg, get some lunch, spend time with Angela and their baby daughter Kristina, now two and a half months, and make 1 o’clock formation at work.

  Today, Angela was fired up about the midday news. She’d heard bulletins throughout the morning promoting a big break in that awful murder case she’d been reading about for three days.

  “Hey, Buddy, come look at this.”

  The two called each other “Buddy,” starting right after they got married. Tim said something Angela didn’t like and she responded with a finger-wagging lecture, “Hey look, Buddy, don’t you tell me …”

  “Hey, Buddy, don’t you tell me …”

  Back and forth it went, until the argument ended in a fit of laughter. From then on, they called each other “Buddy,” a name that by May 15, 1985, they had managed to stretch a few syllables.

  Angela was expecting to hear that the Cumberland County Sheriff’s Department had solved the case. Jack Watts was starting to feel like maybe he was about to. Patrick Cone remembered the man he saw walking in the Eastburn driveway well enough to put together a composite. Cone even complained at first that the jaw-line was not square enough, the eyes not droopy enough, and the nose not flared enough. The eyes and nose were fixed to his satisfaction, but the jawline still bothered him. Watts was ecstatic that Cone could harp on such detail.

  Tim and Angela Hennis listened as the news anchor read a public announcement from the sheriff’s department:

  “… They are looking for a white male who came to the Eastburn residence last Tuesday, May 7, 1985, in the early evening and picked up a white English setter bird dog with liver spots. The dog’s name is Dixie. It is believed that this man also owns a Spitz dog. It is believed this person was driving a small white Chevrolet Chevette automobile. We would request this person come forward …”

  Tim Hennis dropped his sandwich and turned pale.

  “God, Buddy, they’re looking for you,” Angela finally said. “We’ve got to call down there.”

  Hennis, a parachute rigger, called his boss and told him he would be late coming back from lunch. Then he called the sheriff’s department and said he was on his way.

  The dog had seemed like such a good idea. Ever since the baby had been born, Snowball had been jealous, yapping constantly in the backyard and running wild in the house.

  Angela saw an ad for an English setter in the Beeline-Grab Bragg. As
a boy, Tim had an English setter he adored. He remembered how good Ginger was with kids. His dad would take Ginger on hunting trips and she’d rustle up pheasants. Tim wanted a dog like that for Kristina.

  Angela called and left a message with the babysitter. When Katie Eastburn called back, Tim answered. Katie told him that, yes, the dog was good with children. They were getting rid of Dixie because the family was moving to England. They wanted to find a home soon.

  “I’ll come tonight if it’s all right,” Tim said.

  “Yeah, that’ll be good, because the children will be in bed.”

  Hennis took down directions to the house. Katie told him she’d leave her porch light on. Hennis went to the first house with a porch light, discovered it was the wrong one, and continued until he found the Eastburn home.

  Katie apologized for the way the house looked, saying she’d just gotten the children to bed so they wouldn’t be awake when Dixie left them.

  Hennis looked around. Typical for someone living with small children, he thought. Things were scattered about the floor, over and above the mother’s best efforts.

  They sat in the dining room and talked. She said her husband was out of town and would soon return for the move to England. They weren’t sure the dog could survive the quarantine. She would rather find a good home for her than put her through that, even though the kids would miss her terribly.

  “I really don’t want any money for Dixie,” she said. “That would be like selling a member of the family. I just put that in the ad to keep the cranks away. I figure if someone is willing to pay for a dog, they will more likely give it a good home.”

  Dixie was stretched out in the doorway between the dining room and living room. Hennis went over and scratched her head. “That’s a good girl.”

  He liked Dixie. But he wasn’t sure Snowball would. They agreed to get in touch later in the week to see how the dogs were getting along.

  Before leaving, Hennis used her bathroom, the first door on the left down the hall. Then he took the dog chain he’d brought with him, hooked it to Dixie’s collar, and went out the carport door. Kathryn Eastburn followed him out and waved good-bye.