So Lungen decided to work in the background, coaching Scileppi on legal issues as questions came up.
“Just begin by talking to her and see what happens from there.”
Dressed in his usual attire—blue suit, silk tie, white shirt—Scileppi presented himself as a clean-cut cop. Calming in his demeanor, he spoke with a soft Queens, New “Yok,” accent.
Any experienced cop will admit that building a rapport with a suspect is key to getting that person to open up during an interview. Scileppi didn’t know much about Odell as he prepared to head into the room where she sat waiting. But as luck would have it, he had grown up not too far from the neighborhood where Odell had spent a better part of her childhood. Would this seemingly inconsequential connection between them end up being a building block for a foundation that, by the end of the day, would send Odell to jail for the first time in her life?
Scileppi, fixing his tie, brushing the shoulders of his jacket with his hand, was about to find out as he approached the door to where Odell waited.
CHAPTER 14
1
DURING THE SUMMER of 1990, Odell made contact with her former sister-in-law, who had lived in Ogden, Utah, for years. “Robert had lost his job in Pennsylvania,” Odell recalled. “There really wasn’t anything holding us in New York. There was work out west for Robert.”
Sauerstein and Odell were in need of income. Once again, Odell was pregnant—the eleventh time. She was thirty-eight years old.
Ogden, the sixth largest city in Utah, offers some of the most dazzling landscape in the country. The Rocky Mountains, seemingly kissing the clouds, with their snowcapped peaks as sharp and defined as beach coral, surround a gravelly base of bright green valleys and two-lane roadways that ostensibly go on forever. Just thirty-five miles north of Salt Lake City, Ogden is, surprisingly, only twenty-seven square miles, yet its elevation rises between four thousand and five thousand feet above sea level. Known for its striking outdoor scenery, one can expect to see wildlife that might fill the pages of National Geographic magazine: deer, moose, elks, ducks, geese, swans, even mountain lions. When Americans think of Utah today, though, most associate it with the Mormon community, which reportedly makes up about 70 percent of the population.
For Odell and Sauerstein, Ogden didn’t offer much, but it did present a new outlook, a different way of life, not to mention fresh surroundings that spoke of rejuvenation and clarity. One couldn’t wake up in the morning in Ogden and believe there wasn’t some sort of Higher Power calling the shots. The mere aesthetics of the land alone were enough to make a believer out of even the most ardent skeptic.
Mabel hadn’t made the cross-country trip. Not that Odell had left her behind, but she and Sauerstein wanted to get settled first. So, about a month after they found a place, enrolled the kids in school, and Sauerstein began working, Mabel took a train and subsequently moved into the trailer Odell and Sauerstein were now calling home.
The cache of items Odell had brought with her to Ogden included everything she owned. No one, save for maybe Mabel, knew it, but inside the U-Haul, which she and Sauerstein had packed as tight as cord-wood and trekked west, were the three dead babies, carefully packaged inside three separate boxes.
By January 1991, Odell had given birth to her eleventh child, seventh living child. Toby Sauerstein, a healthy eight-pound eleven-ounce baby boy with dark eyes, was born at Saint Benedict’s Hospital in Ogden. Sauerstein was there again for the birth.
Alice, Odell’s oldest daughter at thirteen, had not adjusted well to life in Mormon country. But she, like the rest of the children, did the best she could to accept her new lifestyle. In June 1991, merely days after Alice had turned thirteen, she was the victim of an alleged statutory rape by someone, Odell said later, Alice had been dating.
“We reported the rape to the police out there, or whatever they are called,” Odell recalled.
As one might expect, the rape had frightened Alice and the family. One might think that with all the Christianity in the air out there, one would be a bit more respectful of their fellow human beings. But it hadn’t turned out that way. As Odell and Sauerstein—not to mention Alice—learned, sexual abusers know no bounds.
“I wanted to—and would have—killed the guy,” Robert Sauerstein said later.
“A month later, I took Alice and got out of there,” Odell explained.
It wasn’t a hard sell. The rape and the culture had weighed heavily on everyone. With Odell, Sauerstein, Mabel, and the seven kids living in a trailer, to say they were crowded would be an understatement—they lived on top of each other.
“The kids slept in the bedroom with me. Absolutely, it was cramped,” Odell said. Adjusting to Mormon life was also rough. “They preach to you about one thing and they are absolutely devilish in the other half of their lives.”
Pima, Arizona, was one thousand miles away, a fifteen-hour drive, but the climate was much warmer during winter months and there seemed to be a construction boom taking place in the region. It was July 1991. Odell and Sauerstein had been in Ogden about a year—a year too long. So, they packed it in and headed south to Pima.
When Odell arrived, she immediately applied for food stamps. She and Sauerstein moved into a motel in town while Mabel took the children and moved into an efficiency apartment nearby. Odell kept Toby, Brendon, and Adam with her in the motel, while her mom took the girls, Clarissa, Doris, Maryann, and Alice. Certainly, in some respects, Doris, Maryann, and Alice could fend for themselves; they were between ten and thirteen years old. But Clarissa was only five. If Odell was worried about the welfare of her children around Mabel, especially Sauerstein’s children, why would she allow Mabel to care for them until she could find a place big enough for all of them?
“I was trying to find a place for my mother by herself to put a separation between us,” Odell said. “Not make her think I wanted her to leave, because I knew if I told her flat out that I wanted her to leave, it was going to be devastating and somebody was going to end up getting hurt. But I wanted her to be separate from the rest of us. But it never quite happened. Every time I would get her—even out there when we found housing—there was a trailer right next to the house we were living in, she took the trailer and we took the house next door, and she would always have one or two of the kids staying with her there. So I was never able to pull away from that and get the kids completely away from her…. I knew every day, looking in her face, into her eyes, the threat was there of hurting the children or taking them away, doing something unspeakable.”
Either way, after they arrived in late summer 1991, living arrangements in Pima didn’t change.
Not long after settling down, with nowhere to store their worldly possessions, Odell and Sauerstein rented a self-storage unit at a facility in Safford. They chose two units big enough to hold most of the belongings that wouldn’t fit in the motel room—including the three boxes of dead babies. The babies had been dead now for about ten years. The boxes were starting to show signs of their age, appearing oily and pungent from the body fluids leaking from the babies. But there they sat, tucked inside a self-storage unit, among old family photos, record albums, an old computer, cards, and letters. Just one more piece of Odell’s history packed away.
No sooner had they gotten established in Pima, did Odell have another announcement to make. Yes, she was pregnant once again. Yet, this child, too—everyone was about to learn—would meet an early death.
2
Odell seemed quiet and composed as she sat in Waverly at 5:45 P.M. on May 19, 2003, waiting for BCI senior investigator Thomas Scileppi. As she sipped water from a white Styrofoam cup, she felt she was doing the right thing. She wanted to clear up the matter of the three dead babies, explain what had happened, and move on with her life. The babies were secrets she had kept buried in her soul for over twenty years. It was time to come clean.
But as the interview got under way, Odell claimed later, she realized immediately it wasn’t going to be as easy
as telling the truth.
“When they walked in to interview me,” Odell said, “they had the 1989 case in their hands,” referring to Baby Doe. According to her, Scileppi was “waving” the case in front of her face, as if to say, “We know about the first baby!”
Scileppi later disagreed with Odell’s recollection. Of course, they had a look at the 1989 case. Cops need to know everything they can about a suspect before an interview. Odell had given birth to a child in 1972 and it, too, ended up dead. They were investigating the deaths of three additional children she had possibly given birth to who had turned up dead. Why wouldn’t they want to talk to her about the 1989 case?
But that wasn’t Odell’s worry, she insisted—that they were flaunting the 1989 case in front of her. Her major concern, at least initially, was that they knew her father had beaten her and essentially killed the child. It was there in her statement.
“Knowing that,” she said, “why didn’t they seek some kind of professional help for me? Why didn’t they have somebody else, who had a little more compassion, talk to me? They came in with the idea they were going to put away this mass murderer.”
Regarding the early part of the interview, Steve Lungen later said: “She was cooperative. She spoke freely, somewhat guarded about information she was going to give. She was not under duress or in custody…. She drove herself there. She expected the New York State Police to be there and she agreed to talk….”
If there had been one dead child, well, it wouldn’t have been an issue. Two? Okay, something might be going on. But four? Lungen and his team were investigating three homicides on top of another death, all possibly connected to the same woman. It was not about getting a shrink in to see her. That was not their obligation, Lungen said. It was about finding out the facts surrounding the deaths of three children.
Because he had been involved in the 1989 case, Roy Streever was called in to assist Scileppi. Together they would see if they could get to the bottom of what had happened to the three babies and figure out if Lungen had a case to pursue.
“I wouldn’t say she looked scared,” Scileppi said, recalling seeing Odell for the first time. “I would say she looked depressed, concerned. For the first hour and a half, I was just getting to know her. Nothing was said about the babies. I had to feel her out and build a rapport, so I could figure out how to take a shot. How to start this.”
Trooper McKee had been there waiting, but he didn’t stick around long after Scileppi and Lungen arrived.
“She was very receptive,” Lungen said. “Very at ease to being talked to. And she’s not someone you have to pull words out of. Very verbal. Very talkative.”
By the time Scileppi and Streever were prepared to talk to Odell, Lungen had spoken to the pathologist in Arizona, and had been given a preliminary report regarding the autopsies on the three babies.
“We found out the babies were full-term,” Lungen said, “but they couldn’t tell us if they were born alive or not. Still, they were full-term babies, they weren’t premature, and there didn’t appear to be any initial appearance of any kind of disease.”
The idea was to “arm” Scileppi, Lungen added, with some sort of information to talk about with Odell. This would be an entirely different interview from the two Diane Thomas and Bruce Weddle had conducted previously. It would be more refined and detailed. There would come a time when Scileppi wanted answers from Odell.
“The key to me, at the time,” Lungen said, “was only one question: if we can’t prove the babies breathed life, we can’t prove they were murdered.”
It was that simple. Were the children murdered or left to die? Big difference in the eyes of the law. Interestingly enough, there was only one person who could provide those answers.
For a time, Scileppi and Odell spoke about inconsequential theatrics that make up everyday life: where she grew up, background, family. After an hour or so of chitchat, Scileppi stepped out of the room to confer with Lungen about where to take the interview next.
“We need to establish that the three babies were alive. Finding three babies was great, but if we can’t establish that, at some point, the babies were alive…that’s the only question,” Lungen told Scileppi.
Scileppi shook his head. He understood. If Odell said they were stillborn and maintained that fact, there was no case. In other words, all she had to do was say the children were stillborn and, essentially, the case was over.
Trooper Rick Sauer, who had made the original call to Lungen on Sunday night regarding Odell and the three babies, had been on hand for much of the early part of the interview. He sat and listened while Scileppi asked most of the questions. Scileppi later said Odell knew exactly why she was there and had even expressed interest in talking the situation through. Sauer later backed it up.
“She was very open to participating in the interview,” Scileppi remembered.
Furthermore, Odell was advised several times that she wasn’t under arrest or in custody. She was free, in fact, to leave at any time. Additionally, on numerous occasions, Scileppi, Streever, and Sauer offered Odell food and drink. Anytime she needed to excuse herself to use the bathroom, Scileppi said, she was free to do so. It wasn’t like she had been thrown into a closet-size room with a light perched on her face, and cops swarming around her like CIA interrogators. It was relaxed, laid-back. They were, Scileppi said, just talking.
After they went through Odell’s life—where she lived, how old her children were, and how many lovers she’d had throughout the years—Scileppi brought up the point that out of her twelve children, eight of which had been born in hospitals, four had not. Out of the eight born in hospitals, all had lived. The other four were dead. Those circumstances alone, Scileppi urged, needed further explanation.
Several times throughout the interview, Odell would stop the conversation and ask, “What is going to happen to me?”
“We don’t know what’s going to happen to you, Dianne,” Scileppi said more than once. “Why would you ask a question like that?”
Odell shrugged.
“Let me ask you this, then,” Scileppi said after Odell continually badgered him about what was going to happen to her. “What do you think should happen to you?”
Odell looked down at the table, fidgeting with a tissue in her hand. The tea-bag-colored puffiness under her eyes seemed like an indication of some sort of private inner battle she had waged for the past two decades. She was obviously debating what she wanted to say. Finally, looking up at Scileppi, she said, “I should probably go to jail.”
“For what, Dianne? Why would you say that?”
Odell didn’t answer. But it was apparent, Scileppi said later, that “she clearly was feeling guilty of things or expressing guilt of things….”
At times, Odell would break down and sob, even tremble, Scileppi recalled. But she would ultimately talk her way through it and compose herself.
The conversation fluctuated between Baby Doe, Baby Number One (1982), Baby Number Two (1983), and Baby Number Three (1985). It was confusing for Scileppi, to say the least. But Odell would trudge on, talking about several of the children at the same time. At one point, she began talking about Baby Number Three, born, by her estimation, in February or March 1985.
“As I woke up,” Odell said, “I cuddled the baby, held the baby close, and crawled next to the bed with the baby.”
This was significant, Scileppi explained later. “The more I spoke to her about it…she broke down and said the baby had ‘gasped or cried upon its birth.’”
It was the first indication, as far as Scileppi could tell, that one of the babies had been born alive, as opposed to stillborn. It meant—at least in theory—that something other than the birthing process had ended the child’s life.
With that comment, the nature of the interview took on a more serious undertone for Scileppi and, more important, Steve Lungen.
After spending a few more minutes with Odell after she admitted, basically, that the third child had
been born alive and she had even held it, Scileppi stayed with her for a time because she had become so distraught.
When he felt she was okay by herself, he stepped out of the room. “I’ll be right back, Dianne.”
For the next ten minutes or so, Scileppi conferred with Lungen about what to do. They felt they had evidence of one of the babies being born alive. That meant, at least on the surface, that a homicide had occurred.
Lungen gave Scileppi direction and sent him back in to talk with Odell.
Walking into the room, Scileppi didn’t say anything at first. Instead, he stared at Odell for a time. She was okay, but still a bit shaky. The act of purging herself of this secret had unleashed a torrent of emotion. She appeared calm, but also disturbed.
“Miss Odell,” Scileppi finally said, “listen…you okay?”
“Yes, thank you.”
“Listen, Miss Odell…”
“What…what is it?” Odell asked. She seemed frazzled.
“I need to do this before we go any further,” Scileppi said, reaching into the side pocket of his sport coat and taking out a small card. “You have the right to remain silent,” he began, looking down at the card one moment, looking up at Odell the next. It was a fragile situation. Continuing slowly, “Anything you say can and will be used against you in a court of law. You have the right to a lawyer and have a lawyer present with you when you’re being questioned. If you cannot afford to hire a lawyer…”
When Scileppi finished, he asked, “Do you understand each of these rights I’ve explained to you?”
“Yes, I do,” Odell said, again tearing up.
“Having these rights in mind, do you wish to talk to us now?”
“Yes.”
It was pushing midnight. They had been talking for close to six hours. Inside of the next two hours, though, Odell would talk further about what had happened to the three babies, giving Scileppi and Streever, who had been in and out of the room, a written statement that included some of the most shocking details about the life and death of the three babies to date—details, in fact, Scileppi later said, he thought he’d never get out of Odell.
Sleep In Heavenly Peace (Pinnacle True Crime) Page 18
