Hometown Killer. Carol J. Rothgeb
was surprised to see several people on the other side of the barrier walking toward him.
Some of them were carrying flashlights and one of the men appeared to be drinking a beer. One of them told the officer that they were looking for two missing girls.
Bennie told him that one of the girls was his daughter and then he started rambling about drinking, commenting that he hadn’t had anything to drink for years until now. Bennie also told Officer Hopper that they couldn’t find the bicycle that the girls had been riding and stated that “if they were alive,” he wanted Phree taken to the juvenile detention home.
It appeared to the officer that everyone in the group was intoxicated. While he was filling out the missing persons report on Phree, he was forced to call for assistance when, amazingly, a fight broke out between Jettie and Tim. Tim grabbed Jettie by the throat and forced her down on the hood of Bennie’s Pontiac Grand Prix. After Tim let her go, they began yelling at each other and Jettie walked away.
When Officer David Marcum arrived to help, Officer Hopper called Jettie over to his patrol car and managed to fill out a missing persons report on Martha. Jettie repeatedly told him that it wasn’t like Martha not to let her know where she was going and whom she was going to be with.
At 2:08 on the warm summer morning of Sunday, August 23, 1992, the missing persons reports were finally completed on both girls.
After the police officers left, Bennie told the others that he knew of another place where they could look for Phree and Martha. They drove across High Street, went down Penn Street Hill, and parked at the rear of Schuler’s Bakery. Bennie, Jettie, and Tim walked behind Strahler’s Food Warehouse to look around. Tim shone his flashlight on an area by an old gas pump while Bennie searched around a stack of pallets. Then Bennie walked back and forth on the wall at the edge of the pond, shining his light over the water, but he could only see some bushes and a tree on the small peninsula of land on the other side of the pond.
Jettie felt uneasy and said that she had an “eerie feeling” and wanted to leave. Without realizing how close they had come to finding Phree and Martha, they all left and went back to Susan’s house on Main Street.
About 3:30 Sunday morning, Dawn Wilson asked Bennie to drive her to the home of Bobby Arthur* and Angie Sloan*. Dawn had baby-sat for them in the past and she thought maybe, while they were at Mad River swimming on Saturday afternoon, Bobby and Angie might have asked the girls to baby-sit. Dawn and Bennie drove over to Glenn Avenue and came back about ten minutes later with no news about Phree and Martha.
Susan told David and Jimmy that she had a feeling that the girls were “somewhere around water” and asked them to go back to Mad River and look in the area where they had been swimming.
By about 5:30 that morning, everyone had returned from their fruitless searching. After deciding there was nothing more they could do, they all went to bed.
They knew that Schuler’s Bakery had been the girls’ destination when they left on Saturday afternoon. The bakery was open until midnight, but according to Pat Gibson, not one of them had gone inside to ask if anyone had seen Phree and Martha.
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But Jesus said, “Suffer little children, and forbid them not, to come unto me: for of such is the kingdom of heaven.”
—Matthew 19:14
The morning after the all-night search was like all other Sunday mornings at the bakery. Customers stood in line to buy doughnuts for breakfast or after-church brunch and desserts for their Sunday dinner. It was a beautiful summer day.
Bennie returned to his house in the south end of town a little after 6:00 that morning, told Andria that they still had not found Phree and Martha, and then went to bed. After tossing and turning for quite some time, he finally fell into exhausted sleep. Andria woke him up at about 8:30 and the two of them went looking for the girls again, to no avail.
Finally they went back home and made arrangements to meet the police at Susan’s house. When they pulled up to the curb, Jimmy Stevens came running out of the house and excitedly told them that Tim Whitt had found the bike. He said that he and Dawn had just gone in to wake David and Susan to tell them that the bike had been found at the Lion’s Cage.
What could it possibly mean? Only the bicycle was found? Where were Phree and Martha?
They all went to the Lion’s Cage to see for themselves, but it was very difficult to see the bicycle lying in the bottom of the large cage. Some of them had to have it pointed out; one of the tires was the only part that was visible. It seemed impossible that the bicycle could be in the water inside the steel cage. David thought that perhaps someone had put it down a sewer and it had washed into the cage.
When the police arrived, it was quickly decided that they needed help getting the bike out of the sewer tunnel. The fire division was dispatched to assist the police department. The firemen parked their truck on the bridge over the railroad tracks, on East High Street.
Deon Stevens was called and he came to identify the twenty-inch lavender bicycle.
When two of the firemen went back to their truck to get some tools, they saw two young boys running up the hill toward them. By the time Jay Martina* and Keith Casey* got to them, they were out of breath and Keith was almost hysterical. Captain Todd Bowser tried to calm the boys so he could understand what they were saying. Then it became all too clear.
Dawn Wilson was still at the Lion’s Cage when she heard someone calling her name from up on the bridge. The person yelled to her that two dead girls had been found.
The bicycle and the girls’ bodies had been found in two of the very same areas where the family members had been searching the night before.
The Crime Scene Unit returned to the murder scene about 8:00 Tuesday morning. With the assistance of the Springfield Sewer Division, they drained the water from the pond. Lieutenant James Keys and Officer Michael Beedy then crawled on their hands and knees in the drained pond searching for possible evidence.
The new police recruits—thirteen of them—were called upon to help with a search that ran west from Walnut Street to Spring Street and south from Buck Creek to the Conrail railroad tracks. They searched the woods and storm sewer catch basins, abandoned houses and buildings, abandoned and junked automobiles, fields, and along the railroad tracks and Buck Creek.
The crime scene was secured for another night at 5:00 that evening. Tarps and plastic sheets were used once again to protect the scene from possible bad weather. Uniformed police officers guarded the area.
Earlier in the day, the detectives learned from the two clerks at Schuler’s that Martha Leach had been in the bakery the previous Saturday afternoon, August 22, with a young man. Pat Gibson and Nancy Gilmore differed slightly in their descriptions of the man, so they each provided information for composite sketches. The two sketches were released to the public that evening.
The white male was described as being approximately 5’ 7”, 120 pounds, very thin, and between seventeen and twenty years old, with a sandy-colored crew cut and hazel eyes. They also said his cheekbones “stuck out” and that he was very pale, “almost anemic,” or “emaciated-looking.” They both said that he wore a blue stud earring in his left ear.
Also, a woman named Marcy Lavelle* reported to the police that she was in the area of the murders around 3:30 Saturday afternoon. She said she saw an “old, dingy, trashy” bluish green van sitting on Penn Street and a man walking back and forth on the sidewalk. She also said she saw a second man who was “older, scummy-looking” get in the van with a box of doughnuts and then they just sat there.
Al Graeber’s wife, Sharon, hadn’t seen him to talk to him for three days. He had been home to grab a few hours of sleep here and there and then he was right back on the job. He took every case seriously—even personally—but this one preyed on his mind. The fact that he had a seven-year-old daughter added to his intense determination.
This case “hit home” with everyone who was closely involved