Above Suspicion

by Sharkey, Joe;

  Unaccustomed to public criticism, agitated at having not only his ability but his integrity challenged, Runyon went on a Lexington television program called “Your Government” to defend his actions. “It’ll stand out, in my opinion, as one of the few cases, if not the only case, in Kentucky where a man’s conscience has driven him to plead guilty to murder and take sixteen years in the penitentiary,” he insisted. “I don’t have many people coming into my office and saying, ‘Look, I’m a criminal, I violated the law, and I want you to send me to the penitentiary.’

  “When we started out on this plea agreement, obviously, when he was willing to confess, he wasn’t willing to take the maximum penalty when we had no case. I probably would have been a little easier on John Q. Public—this boy was in a position of trust. He was an FBI agent.”

  David Wolf, the forensic anthropologist conducting the autopsy on Susan’s remains at his laboratory in Frankfort, made no secret of his contempt for the FBI, which he had long regarded as haughty and not suitably respectful toward state officials such as himself. Though seriously ill with cancer, Wolf also had another reason to insert himself as publicly as possible in the controversy in Pikeville. A Hollywood production company had made inquiries about obtaining the rights to the stories of various principals in the case. Hearing about this, Wolf thought of an old television program, “Quincy, M.E.” which had starred Jack Klugman as a crusty medical examiner. Already, Wolf was wondering out loud who would play himself.

  This prospect evidently had an impact on the conduct of an autopsy that would normally have taken only a few days. At the end of the week, after Mark had already pled guilty, Wolf was still at work cataloging the remains.

  Susan’s family wanted to have a funeral on Wednesday, June 20. The Friday before, Wolf was asked to return the remains, but he declined, saying that his work was only one-quarter finished. Shelby, charging that Wolf was engaged in a “science project,” not an autopsy, went to Runyon’s office for help. Runyon notified Charles Morris, the county coroner, and said that he would comply with the request to have the remains returned for burial. But he warned them both, “If you want anything additional on an autopsy, you better get it before you bury this girl.”

  “The poor little thing’s been laying out long enough,” Shelby said. “We just think it would be best to have her buried because Mommy and Daddy have been worried enough.”

  Runyon had his assistant prosecutor, Rick Bartley, call Wolf. Bartley had to threaten an indignant Wolf with a court order to have the remains released.

  But even before they arrived from Frankfort, Shelby again changed her position. She now insisted that the autopsy be resumed immediately, placing the state in the position of having to refuse publicly. The criminal case was closed, said David Jones, the administrator of the state medical examiner’s office. “We are a state agency. We can’t do an investigation to assist someone in civil litigation.”

  The family lacked the money to pay a private pathologist to do an autopsy for its lawsuit, Shelby responded. Furthermore, she said, the funeral could go ahead only if someone could be found to pay for that.

  Runyon phoned Alice Eldridge, who owned the Phelps Funeral Home, where Susan’s remains were being sent, and asked, “Alice, what’s your absolute bottom-line price on a nonprofit funeral?”

  Alice did some quick calculations on the old Burroughs adding machine on her desk. “Five hundred dollars, John Paul.”

  Runyon made more calls, and a purchase order was drafted for the Pike County Fiscal Court. Under Description of Goods on the form it read, Burial of body found on Harmon’s Branch. A maximum payment of five hundred dollars was specified under Aid to Needy.

  Alice Mullins Eldridge had founded her funeral home in the late 1950s with her first husband, Haskell, who died in 1983. The pride she took in her position was reflected in her “business cards,” actually cardboard hand-fans with balsam handles, imprinted with the name of the funeral home, a stanza of inspirational poetry, and under that the words Alice Eldridge, Lady Embalmer & Director.

  Alice’s second husband, Luther Eldridge, was a coal miner who played gospel hymns on the electric organ in the parlor during funerals. As a member of one of Peter Creek’s oldest families, he was a fourth cousin to Susan’s mother.

  Alice knew that burying Susan Smith would be a thankless task, but she resolved to bring as much dignity and forbearance as she could to the job. Aware of the notoriety of the case, she made careful note of what was inside the box before preparing the remains for burial.

  The family told her they wanted to have a public viewing of the closed casket at her funeral parlor. “Shelby wanted to put on a big show,” Alice would later say. She was the kind of woman who took in strays of all sorts, and she felt great sadness over the short life and tragic death of Susie Smith. She worked hard to make the funeral as decorous as she could. She placed the pitiful remains in a child-size Excello fiberglass casket, “a good child’s casket.” The grave marker was small, about the size of a cereal box, but not cheap—it was bronze and engraved: “Susan Daniels Smith—1961–1989.”

  Susie Smith went to her grave surrounded by the people she had known all of her life. Family and neighbors, about forty in all gathered in the viewing room of the Phelps funeral home with the Reverend DeWitt Furrow, pastor of the Peter Creek Presbyterian Church.

  As Luther loomed over the organ, the mourners sang hymns, and the service concluded with “The Rose,” the sad ballad by Amanda McBroom that was made famous by Bette Midler. It was Susan’s favorite, and it the lyrics use to make her cry.

  The next day, a sheriff’s car led a small procession of vehicles through Phelps, around the mountain to Freeburn, and up the steep path beside the creek in Barrenshee Hollow, to the Eldridge family plot on the side of the hill next to the frame house where Susan had grown up.

  The gravediggers were three muscular local boys, Billie Joe Wolford, Gregory Prater, and Kenneth Wolford. Alice paid them $300 of the $500 allotted for the funeral.

  Addressing the mourners, the preacher asked, “How could this ever happen in America, in Pike County? With as many Christian people as there are among us, how could this have ever happened? Yet it did happen and it was very real. We see and read about it every day. We never think it will happen to us, but it is. And every one of us is part of the guilt.” He took as his text the Lamentations of Jeremiah:

  She weeps bitterly in the night,

  tears on her cheeks;

  among all her lovers

  she has none to comfort her;

  all her friends have dealt treacherously with

  her,

  they have become her enemies.

  Mark Putnam left the Pikeville courthouse with two state police officers and no idea where he was going. He felt himself being carried along like a stick on a current, head down through a sea of yapping faces, cameras scattering like gulls. Propelled headlong, balance awry with manacled wrists, he fell into the backseat of the police cruiser, his feet pushed in like cargo; the vehicle lurched forward as if besieged in a motorcade. He righted himself, pressed his cheek against the cool glass, not caring about the pictures.

  At a brief stop at the state police post he stared mutely at fingertips stained with fingerprint ink. Firm hands on his shoulder, averted eyes. Men stumped by uncertain protocol. “Hang in there,” said one, and a second one affirmed the sentiment gruffly. “Hey, Mark,” another said, with nothing to add to the greeting. Said still another, with clumsy kindness, “Hey, you want a sandwich or something?” Cops. Not knowing words to say, they were glad to see him leave.

  To where they did not say, except that it was on an airplane. Two detectives with whom he once worked cases were assigned to drive him up to Lexington in a new Crown Victoria. En route, making talk from the backseat, Mark said, “You guys are coming up in the world.” Up front, Det. Joel Newsome, the big man at the
wheel, replied silently with stricken eyes in the rearview mirror. But the cuffs were off for the ride. And in the hills they relaxed a little. Riding shotgun, Det. Claude Tackett, tall and wiry, sat back, draped his arm across the seat, shifting a bit to display more of his face, and told the prisoner as if sharing a secret, “We’re going to Otisville, New York. Wherever the hell that is.”

  Where it was, mostly, was out of sight. The bureau had been worried about major media attention—in fact, there was far less than anybody had anticipated, undoubtedly because places like Pikeville seldom show up on the media radar screens and the publicity of the Putnam case had been a contained explosion, quick and local. Otisville was a medium-security federal prison in the foothills of the Catskill Mountains, coincidentally near the last big stretch of the Appalachian Trail.

  Mark said, “Claude, you remember when I first arrived in Pikeville, you were the only detective who traded business cards with me?”

  Claude remembered and said that he was sorry about the way it worked out. He coughed and fell silent

  Mark asked about a robbery case he knew they had going. Neither replied. Joel’s eyes found his in the mirror. That was the moment Mark realized he was no longer a cop.

  The weather was nice, a warm and fragrant afternoon with big clouds in the sky like sails on top of the hills. They fell silent to the hum of the road winding down from the mountains into the open bluegrass flatland of Kentucky radiant in late-springtime sunlight.

  On the New Circle Road skirting busy Lexington the driver stiffened, gaped at signs and exit ramps flying by with billboards, slowed to forty.

  “Do you know where the airport is?” Joel asked.

  “Joel, I am not rightly sure.”

  From the backseat Mark said softly, “You can take Versailles Road, two exits ahead.” He pronounced the word the local way: Ver-SALES. Joel frowned, watching for the turn.

  On the plane, neutral turf, they were more accommodating and less troubled with him in the middle seat. The state cops stared out the window on takeoff and landing, like people who don’t fly much and are still thrilled with the sight.

  There was a two-hour layover at O’Hare before the connection to New York. They made him feel comfortable, not obviously watching while he ducked into the men’s room, clearing their throats and standing back away while he went to call Kathy collect. Clinging to the phone, he glanced up at a television just inside a bar and saw his own image flicker across the screen, his eyes wide with fear that might have looked furtive in the instant sweep of the frame, words he could not make out imposed beneath. His face disappeared and the picture rearranged itself into the generic visage of a Chicago anchorman changing the subject. Kathy, numbly composed, told him that the television pictures from Pikeville had been on the Miami news—they hadn’t managed to track her down in Sunrise for the requisite reaction—and on CNN, but not on the network news programs, which she and Chris had monitored from the bedroom so the children wouldn’t see.

  On the second leg of the flight Mark dug out of his pocket a photograph of himself and the children. He and Danielle and little Mark all had their arms outstretched, as if beckoning to the photographer. Kathy, as usual, had taken the picture; she seldom appeared in family photos.

  The twin-engine plane touched down in darkness at a quiet airport in a small city called Middletown. Near the terminal, three uniformed New York state policemen waited, arms folded with impatience, flinty eyes shifting from one to the other as the three men got off the plane and approached across the asphalt.

  “Which one of you men is the prisoner?”

  Feeling foolish, Mark raised his hand. Ignoring the Kentucky officers, two of the New York State cops grabbed him, locked his arms in theirs, and duckwalked him over to one of their cars, then pushed him onto the hood and roughly patted him down. Jerking his arms back violently for cuffing, one of the cops used the opportunity to yank Mark’s elbows upward, sending a searing jolt through his shoulders that almost knocked him out. As he reeled, his eyes hot with rage, Mark thought of the occasions he had done the same thing to a particularly distasteful prisoner, a cheap cop stunt to release a little aggression and send a painful message about who was in charge.

  They drove for a long time on country roads over dark rolling farmland, the Kentucky troopers in the car behind. One of the New York cops told his partner that this prisoner wasn’t the only “hotshot fed” who belonged in jail, but he would do for now.

  Mark worried about how he would handle himself. Contempt and rude treatment from state cops were one thing; in prison, with the cops on the other side of the bars, it was going to be a different story. As he rode, he devised a new challenge for himself, handling that inevitable first confrontation with another prisoner eager to confront a cop in jail—not backing down, not whining, complaining, or asking for help. Above all, handling it like a man and not behaving in any way that would embarrass the FBI.

  Ahead, against a black sky, on the crest of a hill, he saw the prison in white light. Razor wire glinted like ice atop a twenty-foot fence that curled around drab buildings with blazing windows. The gate swung open; he was taken from the car and hustled inside without a chance to say good-bye to the Kentucky boys, who stood back from the glare. The transformation was as abrupt as it was total: The papers and photograph in his pocket were taken away, a bundle of clothing was thrust into his arms. He was stripped naked and stood there appraised and poked by men who, he thought with his own initial flash of contempt, did this every day for a living.

  Steeling himself, propelled along a gleaming hallway through gates that doubled like decompression chambers, he kept his chin up. Mentally, he groped to find a new role for himself. He toyed with the fantasy that he was not in prison as a killer, but as a cop on the ultimate undercover mission—lengthy, arduous, and extremely dangerous. He imagined himself still a special agent of the FBI, no matter what they said. He had a job to do and responsibilities to uphold. And he would prevail, he vowed, even if they kept him there until the very last day of his sixteen years.

  In October of 1990, four months after Susan’s body was found, Shelby Jean Ward went to court to file harassment and criminal-trespass charges against her brother Billy Joe, a day after he helped their father, Sid, to petition to replace her as administrator of Susan’s estate.

  Shelby’s lawyer later filed an administrative complaint with the Justice Department charging that FBI negligence “was a proximate cause of the death of Susan Smith.” The claim alleged that agents Ron Poole and Terry Hulse “were negligent in failing to see that the relationship between Smith and Putnam was terminated, failing to take steps to protect Smith from the consequences of that relationship, and failing to see that Smith received personal protection from Putnam,” who, the claim alleged, had been placed “under an extreme amount of pressure . . . to carry out some untoward act on learning of the pregnancy.” The claim charged that Mark “furthered not only his own purposes but also the purposes of the FBI” in killing Susan, since various criminal cases that Mark helped to prosecute with Susan’s assistance could have been jeopardized by disclosure of the relationship between the two.

  In May of 1991, eleven months after Susan was buried, Shelby and other family members who had filed the wrongful death lawsuit against Mark obtained a court order to have the body exhumed for a second autopsy to be conducted by Wolf. The forensic anthropologist spent nearly a year on the task but died before it was completed. The state’s chief medical examiner, Dr. George R. Nichols, then stepped in and concluded: “The identity of the decedent as Susan Daniels Smith is confirmed by odontologic comparison. Further, it is my opinion that the findings are consistent with suffocation.”

  As for Susan herself, she left no letters. She barely left behind photographs. Like Kathy, Susan was usually the one who took the pictures.

  In May 1992, a year after her remains had been exhumed, Susan was reburied in anot
her spot farther up Barrenshee Hollow, next to her brother Raymond Daniels, who had been killed earlier in the year in a car wreck. Only a handful of people, including her father, Sid, and her sister, Shelby, stood by in a cold drizzle to see her laid once more to rest.

  Four months afterward, while researching this book, I walked across the plank bridge over Peter Creek to Johnson Bottom, where Kenneth Smith was living in a trailer with the two children, Miranda and Brady.

  A relaxed and amiable if wary host, still barefoot on an early fall day, Kenneth, who denied ever physically abusing Susan, spoke about his relationship with Susan with apparent affection mixed with consternation, especially when I asked him what he thought she saw in Mark Putnam. He stroked his chin before replying, “Well, I don’t want to be bragging on myself, but Mark Putnam was no better looking than I am.” Pondering the question further, he said, “I guess it was just that he made her feel like she was important. Susie always wanted to feel good about herself. And for a while, I guess, she did.”

  Saying good-bye outside, Kenneth introduced me to young Brady, a fresh-faced, blond-haired boy of seven who had just skidded up to the trailer in a cloud of dust with three young friends on bicycles.

  Looking me over in a place where outsiders are nothing but trouble, one of the young boys asked, “Brady, is that the man that killed your mama?”

  Kathy Putnam sold the condo and most of their furniture in Fort Lauderdale and moved with her children to Minnesota to be near Mark, who was transferred from Otisville to a federal prison in Rochester, Minnesota. A year later, she and the children returned to Connecticut, living with the help of welfare payments.