Killers in the Family Read online

  “I drove over to the Reese house,” Ted said. “It was kind of late. Paul Reese, the father, wasn’t there. The mother, Barbara Reese, a couple of her sons, and the youngest Reese daughter were there. I told the mother that I had heard that Dawn was over there, and she told me that, no, she hadn’t seen Dawn that day. I insisted that several people had told us that Dawn had been there. The little girl, she couldn’t have been more than five or six, spoke up and said, ‘Mommy, Dawn was here . . .’ The mother whirled around and slapped the little girl really hard across the mouth.”

  As Ted witnessed this act, it both stunned him and made it blatantly obvious to him that his daughter had been there, and that Barbara Reese was lying for some reason. Why else would she slap the little girl? He knew that there was no way he was just going to leave. This was the closest thing to a clue they’d gotten so far about where Dawn might have gone that day.

  “When the mother smacked the little girl in the mouth, that pretty much told me they had something to hide,” Ted recalled. “You just don’t smack a child as hard as you can unless you’re really scared of what she might say.”

  Ted, now overcome with a sick dread, wouldn’t let Barbara close the door. Something was wrong. He just knew it. He insisted that he be allowed to come inside and see for himself that Dawn wasn’t there. Barbara, though at first reluctant, finally said fine, come on in. She still insisted that Dawn wasn’t there, though, and that she hadn’t seen her that day. Ted, Wesley, and Michelle stepped inside before Barbara could change her mind.

  “When I was over there trying to find my daughter they were very deceptive about everything,” Ted would later tell the news media. “It was obvious to me they weren’t being truthful from their actions and the glances between them.”

  When Ted walked into the Reese home, he couldn’t believe its condition. “Practically every space in the house was covered with piles of junk,” he recalled. Never in his life, Ted would later say, had he seen such a cramped, cluttered house. The family had what looked like trash stacked and piled everywhere. Ted made his way along the paths that wound through the stacks on the first floor of the house, calling out Dawn’s name over and over. Next, he looked around in the garage, also packed with junk, once more calling out his daughter’s name. The garage, however, had no electricity, and Ted hadn’t brought along a flashlight, so he couldn’t really do much of a search. Finally, Ted went down into the basement, where he saw a pool table—and more piles of junk stacked everywhere. They could have hidden an elephant down there, he thought, and no one would have seen it.

  Like his nephew Wesley, Ted also said that something about the basement disturbed him. It gave him an uncomfortable, queasy feeling.

  “I really didn’t feel comfortable in the house. I went down into the basement, but there was so much stuff stacked around that I couldn’t do a thorough search. I had a really bad feeling while I was in the house. The hair on the back of my neck stood up.” Ted looked around in the basement as best he could and called out Dawn’s name over and over, but to no avail.

  He left the Reese house reluctantly, feeling that something was very wrong there. But he didn’t know what else he could do. Barbara Reese had let him come in to search, but Ted hadn’t found anything that showed Dawn had been there. Wesley told Ted about following a visitor to the Reese house back to an apartment, so Wesley and Ted drove to the apartment and again talked to Timothy Keller. Timothy still denied knowing anything, and took them to another person who knew the Reeses, but he couldn’t give them much information. Finally, Timothy went with Ted and Wesley back to the Reese house, but Ted still couldn’t find out anything about Dawn. Frustrated and now in real fear for his daughter, Ted went back home, where he and his wife Sandy tried to figure out if there was any place they hadn’t yet looked for Dawn.

  Ted and Sandy began double-checking all of the places their daughter might have gone to. They rechecked the church, the school playground, and all of Dawn’s friends’ houses. They asked every person they met about whether he or she had seen their daughter, but no one had, and it soon became too late to wake up people they had already spoken to just to ask them again if they knew where Dawn might be.

  After realizing that there was nowhere else to look, they finally decided it was time to call the police. Like many parents of missing children, Ted and Sandy hadn’t wanted to involve the police until they realized they likely weren’t going to find their daughter on their own.

  However, when Ted and Sandy went to the local police substation to file a missing person report, they were told that a report couldn’t be taken until Dawn had been missing for twenty-four hours. That was standard policy in 1986, but still Ted simply couldn’t believe it. A young, innocent little girl was missing, and this officer was telling him that the police couldn’t be bothered to look for her until the next day? That was unbelievable! Who knew what could happen to her in that time? Ted was furious.

  The officer was sympathetic and offered a solution: If, rather than filing a missing person report, Ted and Sandy filed a runaway complaint, the police could start looking for Dawn right away. Ted knew that there was absolutely no way that his daughter would have run away from home. She was a good kid who had never given him or her mother even the smallest sign that she was unhappy. As a matter of fact, he thought, Dawn was the happiest little girl he had ever known. Ted and Sandy stood there for several moments, not knowing what to do. They didn’t want to give their daughter a police record as a runaway, but they also knew they needed the police to help them look for Dawn. They finally decided that they could work out the runaway problem later. So just before 1:00 A.M. on March 17, 1986, Sandy Stuard signed a complaint saying that she believed her daughter Dawn was a runaway.

  After receiving assurances that the police would now join in their search for Dawn (which they did, including several officers who searched the Reese house themselves), Ted and Sandy then went back to trying to figure out where their daughter might be. After his uncomfortable visit there, Ted still felt certain that Dawn must’ve been in the Reese house for at least a little while earlier that day. The little girl who had gotten slapped had very likely been telling the truth. But Dawn certainly wasn’t there now, or the mother wouldn’t have allowed him to come in and look around. But why would Barbara Reese lie about her having been there earlier—and where could Dawn be now?

  And so, even though Ted and Sandy knew that the police were now out looking, too, the longest and most horrible night of their lives passed. Unable to sleep, they continued to search their neighborhood, while at the same time always hoping to hear from the police or perhaps from one of the many people they had contacted. They desperately wanted someone to call with news of where Dawn was. But the night dragged on and on without any such call. With every passing minute, the fear and dread that had now settled on them like a suffocating black mist became more intense. They circled around again and again to places they had already checked. Who knew, they told each other, she might still show up at one of those places. They also decided to investigate these places more thoroughly. Dawn could have been injured and was lying unconscious somewhere out of sight.

  As they continued their search, Ted and Sandy turned their minds against the worst-case scenarios of what might have happened. Most parents won’t allow themselves to think about these. Instead, frightened parents try to think of other possibilities. At any moment, they believe, their child will turn up, having just gotten lost or maybe having stayed too late at a friend’s house. Or perhaps the child is lying injured and unconscious at the one hospital or clinic they hadn’t called. Or maybe the child is a runaway after all. Maybe the child just wants to be rebellious and has run away but will return before long. These are the kind of thoughts that will allow the parents of a good child who has disappeared to keep their sanity. To think about or even consider the other possibilities, many parents believe, would almost certainly bring on insanity.
/>   Ted knew that if Dawn had actually run away or had gone to some friend’s house they hadn’t visited, that as a parent he should be angry when he finally found her, and that he might even try to act that way for her. But in reality, he knew that he would want to hug and kiss her, and to hold her in his arms and tell her how important she was to him and Sandy, and how much they loved her.

  Later that Monday morning, March 17, 1986, Ted checked back in with the police. Had they found out anything? They had not. So Ted and Sandy continued revisiting every location they could think of where Dawn might be. They again checked with their neighbors, Dawn’s friends, all of the nearby businesses, teen hangouts, Dawn’s school. But no one had seen her.

  At a little after 1:30 that afternoon, Sandy received some extremely unsettling news. A friend who had a police scanner called to tell her that she’d heard a police call go out over the scanner saying a woman had reported finding a body in the 4600 block of East 23rd Street, about a mile north of Ted and Sandy’s house. When Sandy told Ted the news, his heart felt as if it had suddenly turned to granite and simply dropped loose in his chest.

  As he and Sandy got into their truck and raced toward the East 23rd Street address, Ted kept telling himself over and over that it didn’t mean anything. The police probably found bodies all the time. The body could be a drug killing just dumped there, or it could be a homeless person who had died while camped out there. It couldn’t be Dawn. His mind simply wouldn’t consider it. His daughter was still going to show up. He was just sure of it.

  Still, a deadly cold had settled over him, though he tried to shrug it off. At 4600 East 23rd Street, an area where only a few homes bordered a wooded section that ran along a little creek called Pogue’s Run, Ted parked his truck next to several Indianapolis Police Department cars. Nearby, he saw a couple of obviously unmarked police cars also parked there. The area, he noticed as he and Sandy got out of their truck, had what looked like rope wrapped around a number of trees and an unmarked police car, closing off an area on a steep hill that ran down to the water. Several grim-faced uniformed police officers stood guard just outside the barrier. Ted could see that inside the roped-off area two men in suits were bending over what he supposed was the body they had discovered, but, because the hill was so steep, he couldn’t see anything else from where he was.

  Ted approached one of the uniformed officers and gave him his name, and told him that he had a daughter who was missing. The uniformed officer told Ted that the detectives were busy but that he would convey Ted’s information to them, and that he was certain they would want to speak with him. So Ted stepped back and waited. He’d already convinced himself on the trip over there that there was no way this body could be his daughter, so he started feeling a little guilty about wasting time just standing around when he and Sandy should be out looking for Dawn. Still, he watched anxiously as the detectives seemed to move in slow motion, and became particularly anxious when one of the detectives elected to give a press interview before coming over to talk to him.

  “I was just standing there trying to see what was going on,” Ted recalled. “We had to just stand there and wait as the detective gave an interview to the press.”

  Like the previous evening at the police substation, Ted wanted to scream in frustration, but he knew that the detectives were just doing their jobs. And so, since there was nothing else they could do, Ted and Sandy Stuard had no choice but to simply wait.

  TWO

  Detective Sergeant Roy West sat in the Homicide Office of the Indianapolis Police Department on St. Patrick’s Day, March 17, 1986. The Homicide Office, located on the fourth floor of the six-story police headquarters at 50 North Alabama Street, was the ultimate assignment for any detective. It was the assignment most detectives strove for and dreamed about. Being assigned to the Homicide Branch meant that the detective was the best of the best. Being assigned there meant that the detective was part of the elite.

  But there was no easy route or straight shot to the position. A police officer first had to demonstrate exceptional ability as an investigator, and it often took officers years to work their way through lesser detective jobs before getting an assignment to the Homicide Branch. And once they did earn the assignment, the hard work was far from over. Being a homicide detective wasn’t merely an eight-hour-a-day job. It required working long, long hours until a case was either solved or every lead had been exhausted. It meant sticking with a case until there were no more clues to be investigated, staying sixteen to eighteen hours a day on the job, grabbing a couple hours of sleep, and then coming back for another sixteen- to eighteen-hour stint. New homicide detectives were under a lot of pressure to prove themselves worthy of the assignment. Therefore, their first few cases could be extremely stressful.

  On that March 17, 1986, Detective West, a fourteen-year veteran of the police department, had been assigned to the Homicide Branch for less than two months. He’d transferred there after serving nearly three years as a narcotics detective. West had quickly discovered that homicide investigation differed drastically from narcotics investigation, not just in the long hours the job required, but more particularly when it came to the victims. Practically everyone West had dealt with in narcotics investigations had broken the law by being involved somehow in the illegal drug trade, either as a user or a seller. He had encountered very few guiltless individuals as a narcotics detective. But in a homicide, the victim could indeed be totally innocent. Certainly, some homicide victims were involved in illegal or violent situations, where their less-than-blameless lifestyles pointed to a motive and possible suspect. But there were also cases where the victims did nothing at all to bring about the fates they suffered.

  Although West had been excited for the chance to work as a homicide detective, having at last attained a position so many others coveted, he’d also been extremely anxious and nervous the last few days, waiting for the next homicide call to come in. With homicide cases, the detectives worked as teams, assisting one another with the various tasks that needed to be completed. In each investigation, though, one person would be designated the lead detective, the one ultimately responsible for the case. Since West was new to the Homicide Office, he had not yet been assigned a case as lead detective, but now it was time. West had been put into the case rotation. He knew that the homicide commander had decided the next case that came in on West’s shift would become his case to investigate. West’s chest filled with electricity and his stomach pulled into sickening knots every time a police radio broadcast came out or the main telephone in the office rang.

  Up until now, West had just been assisting other homicide detectives as they worked their cases, trying to pick up the nuances of the job. And the job, West quickly discovered, was extremely complex, with dozens of details that had to be taken care of, each one crucial to the success of a case. Not a single detail could be overlooked.

  The man West had been partnered with, veteran homicide detective Tom Minor, had been very patient with him and had tried to give West the benefit of his years of experience as a homicide detective. Still, West felt jumpy and nervous. Screwing up a narcotics investigation by forgetting some detail mainly only affected his pride. The worst that could happen with a bungled narcotics case was that the perpetrators would be cut free, but they would almost always be back committing crimes immediately and so could usually be arrested again fairly easily. But screwing up a homicide investigation could have monumental and disastrous results, not only to a detective’s career, but more importantly to the victims and their families. Screwing up a homicide investigation could mean that a murderer would walk free, and that justice would be denied forever to the victim. There was a belief held by all of the detectives in the Homicide Office that since murder victims couldn’t speak for themselves, homicide detectives spoke for them. They were the victim’s voice, one that demanded justice. And no homicide detective wanted to fail the victims he or she spoke for.

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sp; At around 1:30 in the afternoon of March 17, 1986, the call West had anxiously been waiting for finally came in. The body of a possible murder victim had been found.

  According to the report West received, a woman named Kathleen Rueter had called the police a few minutes earlier. She told the dispatcher that while walking her daughter to school after lunch, she had spotted a body lying on a small hill in the 4600 block of East 23rd Street. Mrs. Rueter said that she hadn’t wanted to alarm or traumatize her daughter, so she took her on to school before calling the police.

  West and his partner, Detective Tom Minor, put on their suit jackets, grabbed their notebooks, and left the office. They took the elevator (which seemed to West to travel extra slow that day) down to their car. West felt like he should be running but knew that it wouldn’t have looked professional. Since uniformed officers would quickly secure the incident scene and then guard it against intrusion, there was really no reason for homicide detectives to run or even to drive with their flashing lights and siren on (as was often shown in the movies or on TV, for dramatic effect). But still, West didn’t want to waste any time getting to the possible crime scene.

  In 1986, the neighborhood they were headed to was a sparsely populated area of Indianapolis, mostly woods that ran along a small creek named after early Indianapolis settler George Pogue. Although largely an underground stream, Pogue’s Run in the 4600 block of East 23rd Street babbled along aboveground, only a foot or less deep in most areas.

  When West and Minor arrived, they found that, as protocol and police department policy demanded, the scene where the body had been discovered had been marked off with rope. The officers had wrapped the rope around a police car and around numerous trees in the area. Several uniformed officers stood just outside the rope, guarding the incident scene against unauthorized entry. West was glad to see that, because a guarded, uncontaminated crime scene can often make the difference as to whether a murder case is solved or not.