Killers in the Family Read online

  Berkley titles by Robert L. Snow

  SLAUGHTER ON NORTH LASALLE

  KILLERS IN THE FAMILY

  THE BERKLEY PUBLISHING GROUP

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  KILLERS IN THE FAMILY

  A Berkley Book / published by arrangement with the author

  Copyright © 2014 by Robert L. Snow.

  Photos from the Indianapolis Star March 17 © 1986 McClatchy. All rights reserved. Used by permission and protected by the Copyright Laws of the United States. The printing, copying, redistribution or retransmission of this Content without express written permission is prohibited. Website: indystar.com.

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  eBook ISBN: 978-1-101-61515-7

  PUBLISHING HISTORY

  Berkley premium edition / July 2014

  Cover design by Jane Hammer.

  Cover art: Girl Behind Bars © Matej Hudovernik/Shutterstock;

  Portrait of Large Family © RimDream/Shutterstock.

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  Version_1

  For Joy and Julian Bertram

  and James and Luke Mullett

  with love

  Contents

  Berkley titles by Robert L. Snow

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  FOREWORD

  CHAPTER ONE

  CHAPTER TWO

  CHAPTER THREE

  CHAPTER FOUR

  CHAPTER FIVE

  CHAPTER SIX

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  CHAPTER NINE

  CHAPTER TEN

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  AFTERWORD

  Photographs

  FOREWORD

  His dream had finally come true.

  At a little before 9:00 A.M. on June 18, 2012, retired detective sergeant Roy West sat outside of Criminal Court 2 in downtown Indianapolis. The dream he’d had for more than twenty-six years—of finally seeing justice for thirteen-year-old Dawn Marie Stuard—was at last coming true. West looked down at the thick folder he held in his lap. Dawn’s case had never left his thoughts for the last twenty-six years, and he had never given up hope that this day might finally come. Even after retiring from the Indianapolis Police Department five years earlier, West had kept the file and looked through it frequently. Then, when he began working as an investigator for the Marion County Prosecutor’s Office, he had continued to revisit the case over and over in the hope that something new would pop up. West would reread the interviews and notes from his investigation, thinking back over the years and wondering what he might have missed. He had talked with prosecutors a number of times over the years, asking what they felt the case needed in order to make it viable for prosecution. West had had a long career with many successes, but this particular case still haunted him.

  West had served on the Indianapolis Police Department for more than thirty-five years. He’d joined in 1972 and had held various positions within the department until he transferred to the Homicide Branch in 1986, where he’d found his niche and served until his retirement in 2007. Although West was much too modest a man to ever believe it, he became something of a legend during his time as a homicide investigator, not only for solving many, many murder cases, but even more notably, for solving a number of cases that other homicide detectives had labeled unsolvable. He had even closed the North LaSalle Street murder case, unquestionably the most infamous murder case in Indianapolis history, which had lain unsolved for thirty years before West began looking into it.1

  But even with all of his successes, the one case he couldn’t solve but had never given up on had been the Dawn Marie Stuard murder case. It had been his first case as a homicide investigator. More important, though, to West, it had been a case that involved a totally innocent thirteen-year-old girl. West could never get that out of his mind. A young child just starting out in life had been brutally murdered, and even though West knew without a doubt who had committed the murder, he had never been able to gather the evidence necessary to bring the case to trial.

  For the tenth time, West looked down at his watch. The jury selection would be starting soon. The former detective couldn’t help but be excited that modern science had finally done what he had been unable to do in 1986. Modern science had produced the evidence that West had searched for for over a quarter of a century. Still, along with the excitement, West could also feel his stomach roll with uncertainty. He had taken part in dozens and dozens of jury trials during his career and knew that the outcome of a jury trial was never certain. Would the new evidence be enough? Would it convince the jury to convict Dawn Marie Stuard’s murderer?

  After a moment, West pushed his worries aside, since there was nothing he could do about them, and began reviewing his notes on the case again. He didn’t want to look confused or uncertain when he testified. Thumbing through the folder, West went back to 1986.

  ONE

  Thirteen-year-old Dawn Marie Stuard disappeared on March 16, 1986.

  At the time, the Stuard family lived in the 1600 block of North Dequincy Street on the east side of Indianapolis, Indiana, but Dawn’s father, Ted Stuard, had been working at a propane company in Ohio and was researching the possibility of purchasing Apollo Propane in Dayton. Before he and his wife, Sandy, could manage the purchase, though, they needed to be certain that they would have enough contracts in place to assure the business would prosper, so Ted and Sandy would drive to Ohio during the week, leaving their daughter, Dawn, in Indianapolis with an aunt, then come home every weekend. It was a bit stressful on the family, but Ted hoped it was just a short-term necessity.

  “It was just a temporary thing,” Ted said. “We didn’t want to have to take Dawn out of school until we were absolutely sure about moving permanently to Ohio.”

  More than anything, Ted’s dream was to give his family a financially secure future. Once he and his wife owned the propane company, then this could all come true. They would make much more money and be able to provide a higher quality of life for their family. There would be no more traveling back and forth to Ohio every week. There would be no more evenings apart. There would be no more of these long drives and of living at a motel. Although Dawn would have to change schools, they knew she was a
very sociable little girl who made friends easily. They felt certain she would make the transition smoothly. Ted and Sandy both looked eagerly toward the point when their family would be together all of the time. Yes, things were soon going to be great for the Stuard family.

  On Sunday, March 16, 1986, Ted and Sandy rose early in the morning. Even though it was the weekend, they had to go back to Dayton to nail down the purchase of Apollo Propane. As usual, they had arranged for Sandy’s sister, Ramona Collins, who lived just two blocks north of them, to watch Dawn that day. They left instructions with their daughter that, after she cleaned her room, she was to go straight to her Aunt Mona’s house.

  The day couldn’t have looked brighter for Ted and Sandy as they left Indianapolis en route to Dayton. They were certain that Dawn would clean her room and then go straight to her aunt’s house, just as they had told her to do. Dawn was an exceptionally good child who always minded her parents. She attended eighth grade at nearby Forest Manor Elementary, had always gotten good grades, and got along well with her teachers and classmates. She had never really given her parents any problems at all. Ted and Sandy left for Ohio with no worries, only dreams of the great future awaiting them.

  Later that morning, though, Dawn’s Aunt Mona became concerned when her niece didn’t show up as planned. Even if Dawn had poked around at home cleaning her room, she still should have made it to Mona’s house by now. It wasn’t so late yet that Mona panicked, but late enough that she started to worry—and as more time passed and Dawn still didn’t arrive, Mona became even more concerned. She sent her nineteen-year-old son, Wesley Collins, down to his cousin’s house to see if Dawn was there. She wasn’t. At 3:00 P.M., Mona called Ted and Sandy in Ohio and told them she hadn’t seen Dawn yet but that she had some more places to check and she would call them back. Mona then had Wesley ask around the neighborhood whether anyone had seen Dawn or knew where she was. Wesley stopped at every place he could think of that Dawn might be, but he couldn’t find her. He heard from several people, however, that his cousin might be at the Reese house at 1428 North Bosart Street, just a few blocks away. Apparently, according to the people Wesley talked to, Dawn had been seen there several times before.

  This information made Wesley very uncomfortable, his stomach a bit queasy. The Reese family had a bad reputation in the neighborhood. In addition to forty-three-year-old Paul Reese Sr. and forty-four-year-old Barbara Reese, their four sons lived in the house: sixteen-year-old Paul Reese Jr., fifteen-year-old John Reese, fourteen-year-old Brian Reese, and thirteen-year-old Jeremy Reese. There were also two daughters: twelve-year-old Jenny and six-year-old Cynthia. People who lived nearby felt nothing was safe from being stolen by the four Reese boys. Because of the Reeses, no one in the neighborhood ever left anything of value sitting out in their yard.

  Two of the Reese boys, Jeremy and John, had recently been arrested and were being held in the Indianapolis Juvenile Detention Center. Even the matriarch of the family, Barbara Reese, had once been convicted of embezzlement. But the Reese family also had a darker reputation than just for thievery. As most of the people living around there knew, the father, Paul Reese Sr., had been released a few years earlier from prison, where he had served time for trying to kill his then girlfriend. (That revelation had undoubtedly figured into the legal separation and divorce Barbara had filed for in 1979.) In 1986, Paul Reese Sr. lived mostly with his father but visited and stayed at the North Bosart house often.

  Wesley couldn’t believe that his little cousin Dawn would be at the Reese house. Why would she go somewhere like that? Who knew what could happen to a child who went in there? neighborhood parents would warn their children. A number of the parents in the neighborhood said that they gave their children strict orders to never go into the Reese house, and one woman with whom reporters later spoke said she’d told her daughter not to even walk close to the Reese house.

  Even so, several people Wesley talked to said that Dawn had been there before, and that she might be there now. So of course, he had to check.

  Wesley went to the Reese house and talked to two little girls playing out front. They said Dawn had been there but that she had left. Barbara Reese, the mother of the family, then appeared, and Wesley asked her if she had seen his cousin Dawn. He was told no, but something just didn’t feel right about Barbara Reese’s denial. It all seemed very nervous and edgy to him. Wesley managed to talk his way into the house, so that he could look around. He didn’t find anything but would later say that the house gave him chills—as if it were a bad place, where bad things happened. Later that day, he returned several times and sat in a car near the Reese house, and even followed a visitor to the Reese house, a seventeen-year-old boy named Timothy Keller, to a nearby apartment and questioned him about Dawn. Timothy said he didn’t know anything about where Dawn might be.

  By the time Wesley returned after going to the Reese house, with no news of what had happened to Dawn, it was nearly 5:00 P.M., and Mona decided she needed to call her sister and brother-in-law again. She telephoned them in Dayton, and this time Ted and Sandy dropped everything and raced back home, a 115-mile trip.

  “It was a two-and-a-half to three-hour drive to Indianapolis. But getting back home was the fastest trip I’d ever made from Dayton,” Ted recalled. “I’m surprised I didn’t get stopped by the police.”

  Ted and Sandy went first to Mona’s house, then hurried home to see if they could find any clues there about what might have happened to their daughter. Ted could feel cold sweat running down his sides as he and Sandy stepped into their house, not knowing what to expect. Every nerve in his body seemed to be firing. They called over and over for Dawn but got no answer. They then began searching every room of their house. Nothing seemed alarming or out of place. Their house looked just as it had when they’d left that morning, except that Dawn’s room was now tidy. Whatever had happened to her, she’d cleaned her room as instructed before leaving home.

  Now icy, electric panic began setting in for Ted and Sandy. Where could Dawn be? Why hadn’t she gone to Mona’s house like she was supposed to? Ted and Sandy called every hospital and clinic where a sick or injured child might have been taken, but no one had a report of a child matching Dawn’s description being brought in that day. They then got into their truck and began visiting Dawn’s friends, asking if they had seen her or knew where she might be. No one did. The fear now began to squeeze them tighter and tighter with each failure to find any news about Dawn. They next began visiting all of the places they thought she might have gone.

  “By the time we got back [home] it was getting close to dark,” Ted recalled. “We went to all of her hangouts, all the places she might be. I was just trying to look for anything that might tell us where she was or had been. But it [was] getting later and later with no word about her.”

  Dawn’s parents were worried sick about their little girl.

  “She was a beautiful blond-haired, blue-eyed little girl,” said Ted. “She didn’t know an enemy or a stranger. She was friends with everybody. She liked to sing in the church choir. Dawn loved singing, even though she couldn’t carry a note. At thirteen she had just recently discovered boys. She also liked to collect rocks. She was a good kid, a smart kid, did well in school. She had pen pals all over the world. She thought everyone was her friend. She never knew a stranger. Even as a baby she would walk up to people she didn’t know and start talking. I could never get her not to do that. Everyone was a friend.”

  While their nephew Wesley had, of course, told them that several people had mentioned to him that Dawn might have been at the Reese house, it was one of the few places Ted and Sandy hadn’t looked yet. But after their search turned up nothing, they decided that they had to try checking the Reese house on North Bosart.

  “Wesley had already been to the Reese house three or four times trying to find Dawn because that was where a lot of people seemed to think she had gone,” Ted said. “He did a lot o
f going back there and sitting in front of the Reese house. But there wasn’t much he could do. Still, he had a feeling that Dawn was there.”

  Unlike most people in the neighborhood, Ted and Sandy didn’t know about the Reese family’s reputation. Since the Stuards spent so much time in Dayton, neither of them had picked up the neighborhood gossip. Even so, Ted had a hard time believing, no matter what people had told Wesley, that Dawn would go to the Reese house when they had told her specifically to go straight to her aunt Mona’s. Dawn was a good little girl who had always done as she was told. However, Ted did recall that Dawn had once brought over to their house a little girl she was friends with at school, a girl named Jenny Reese. Jenny had seemed to Ted like a nice little girl.

  Ted later found out that, unknown to him or Sandy, Dawn had been to the Reese house several times previously.

  “I don’t know why she kept it a secret from me, but probably because she was afraid I wouldn’t approve of it once I found out about them,” Ted said.

  He also recalled that Dawn had been talking for some time about wanting to get a paper route so that she could earn some money. “She used to send little gifts to her pen pals, and I guess she wanted some extra money so she could do more of it,” Ted recalled. He remembered Dawn mentioning to him that there was an older woman in the neighborhood who had a paper route she wanted to help on. Could that have been Mrs. Reese? Ted didn’t know, and at the moment didn’t care. He just wanted to find his daughter. Leaving Sandy and Mona behind to continue the search elsewhere, Ted, Wesley, and Wesley’s girlfriend, Michelle Lynch, headed over to the Reeses.

  When Ted and the others pulled up to the house on North Bosart Street, their failure so far to find any hint of where Dawn was seemed like the type of nightmare a person wakes up gasping and sweating from. But this wasn’t a dream. It was reality. Where the hell was she? As he stepped out of the truck, Ted said a silent prayer that his daughter would be at the Reese house.