Hometown Killer. Carol J. Rothgeb
foot. Her right shoe was lying next to her right foot. Victim #2 was also naked from the waist down, except for white socks. Both of her shoes were lying next to her left foot between the two girls.
Victim #2 was rolled over onto a body bag, but because of the blood and dirt that adhered to her skin, especially on her head and face, she could not be immediately identified.
When the large rock was removed from victim #1, they saw that her head was so embedded in the dirt that it was almost flush with the ground surrounding it. She also was rolled over onto a body bag.
A preliminary examination by Dr. Wood revealed that the obvious cause of death was severe head wounds. There were bluebottle-fly eggs present on the bodies, but since they were not hatched, it was determined that the two young females, who appeared to be in the early stages of puberty, had been dead for less than twenty-four hours.
Both bodies were transported to the morgue at Mercy Medical Center.
Even though it was not official at that time, the detectives knew that these were the bodies of Phree Morrow and Martha Leach, the two girls who had been reported missing at 2:08 that morning. Phree was barely twelve years old and Martha was only a few days from her twelfth birthday.
There can probably be no more difficult task, even for seasoned police officers, than investigating the murders of children. Many of them were family men with children of their own. And it was only a matter of time until they would have to notify the parents.
Earlier, while anxiously waiting with the gathering crowd, Bennie Morrow, Phree’s father, collapsed and was transported to the same hospital where the girls’ bodies were taken.
One of the transmissions over the police radio said it all: “This is a mess.” And this was only the beginning.
As church bells rang in the distance and the birds sang in the nearby woods, Sergeant Haytas recorded the scene and the surrounding area on videotape. Dozens of still photographs were also taken.
On a large tree a few feet from the bodies, there was another sign. This one read, NO TRESPASSING OR DUMPING.
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This really affected me because I had a daughter the same age . . . but I had to put that aside. . . . When I got home finally . . . I gave her an extra little hug and said, “I love you.”
—Sergeant Michael Haytas
Although Phree Morrow and Martha Leach had only known each other a short time, they quickly became friends. The girls were almost exactly the same age and, like most adolescents, in too much of a rush to be grown up.
Martha lived with her mother, Jettie Willoughby, on Lagonda Avenue in an upper duplex, and Phree lived with her father in the south end of town. Phree’s mother, Susan Palmer, lived around the corner from Martha, in a large double on East Main Street. Their backyards were adjacent to each other.
Recently Phree had been staying at her mother’s house as much as possible. In fact, she was practically living there, and the main attraction seemed to be that her mother allowed her to do as she pleased.
Phree’s father, Bennie Morrow, knew why she wanted to be there, and though he was concerned, he allowed her to go. Phree usually got her way with Bennie; she had him “wrapped around her little finger.” Understandably so, since Phree had had a very rough start in life: she was born with a hole in her stomach and spent the first seven months of her life in and out of the hospital. Susan and Bennie were divorced when Phree was less than a year old and her father had had custody of her ever since.
Bennie went “through treatment” for alcohol abuse about the same time that Phree started her prolonged visits with her mother. Alcohol seemed to be an ongoing battle for Bennie and many times he lost. Susan had battled it for a while, but then it seemed that the fight was over, and the booze won.
Phree was Susan’s only child by Bennie, but Susan had three older children: Phree’s half brothers, Charles and Clarence, and her half sister, Dawn. On Bennie’s side of the family, Phree was the middle child, with two half brothers, Kyle and Jason, and two half sisters, Candice and Casey. She was the only one who lived with her father.
Phree seemed to be pulled between two different lifestyles that summer. According to her father, when she was at home with him, she was not allowed “to run the streets,” wear makeup, or have boyfriends. She went to church almost every Sunday. Outgoing and loving—and a “tomboy”—she had a black cocker spaniel named Shadow Baby.
Martha’s parents were also divorced. She was the next to the oldest in a family of five children, which included an older sister, Tina, a younger half sister, Heather, and two younger half brothers. Raising her children as a single mom was a struggle for Jettie, but she was a strong woman, and she did the best that she could. Despite her large family, she kept her house as “neat as a pin.”
The neighborhood where Jettie Willoughby and Susan Palmer lived is in a poor section of town that is known for the prostitutes who hang around on East Main Street after the sun goes down.
After the bodies were removed, the Crime Scene Unit began a thorough search of the crime scene, took additional measurements and more photographs. Later in the evening, Box 27 of the Springfield Fire Division was called in to provide lighting so the officers could continue their work.
The firemen who were first on the scene after the boys informed them of their grisly discovery were called back to the area. Sergeant Haytas needed to examine the bottoms of their boots, and to find out where they had walked, so they could eliminate their footprints from any others that might be found at the crime scene.
Fire division personnel brought several large tarps to the area and the crime scene was covered to protect it from possible bad weather. The area was secured for the night at a little after 1:30 in the morning; Officer Brian Callahan took over at that time to make sure no one disturbed anything during the night.
The crime scene personnel returned to the police station and submitted the evidence they had collected to the lab. The film was also submitted for processing. Finally, about 3:30 A.M., they all went home.
Much of what they found would not be reported to the public: the fact that there were skids covering the bodies; the stick that was propped in the buttocks of victim #2; the fact that the girls were found facedown with their heads in somewhat of a “hole”; the huge rock that was found still on victim #1’s head; the multicolored underpants in the bottom of the pond.
They also would not release the fact that the flowered shorts found at the Lion’s Cage had been cut in a very unusual manner, probably with a knife. These facts, they hoped, would prove invaluable when it came time to question a suspect or suspects.
That sultry Sunday afternoon in August, Steve Moody was mowing his grass when his pager went off. When the handsome, young detective sergeant called police headquarters, he was told, mistakenly, that two little girls’ bodies had been found in a sewer drain. Thinking that it had been an accidental drowning, he immediately went to the scene at the Lion’s Cage, still dressed in his jeans and T-shirt.
There he was informed that two little girls were missing and that it was their bicycle that had been found. Originally it was thought that the girls had somehow managed to obtain entry to the sewer system and that perhaps they were caught inside. Personnel from the City Water and Sewer Division had been called and they began a thorough search of the sewer system—a search that continued until word was received that two bodies had been found behind the bakery.
Sergeant Moody and his partner, Detective Al Graeber, were about to go on a roller-coaster ride that would last for years. Many times they would slowly, hopefully, persistently, grind to the top, only to be dashed to the bottom again.
They had been uniformed patrolmen together and had been partners ever since. Al Graeber, the older of the two, was a Vietnam veteran who, according to Steve, tried to maintain a gruff exterior, but “wore his heart on his sleeve.” He was a distinguished-looking man who wore a neatly trimmed mustache and had just the right amount of gray