Hometown Killer. Carol J. Rothgeb
there. He stated that it was dark, but the light at the back of Strahler’s Warehouse was “going off and on.”
When Detective Graeber asked Jamie—a large man at 5’11” and two hundred pounds—how he got the bruises on his arms, he replied, “Run into a dresser or something getting up from bed.”
While at police headquarters, at the request of Captain Terry Fisher, ten cc’s of Jamie’s blood were drawn for DNA analysis.
The next day, Detective Robert Davidson went to the Town and Country Day School to meet with its principal, Bernadine Delk, and Jamie’s teacher, Mike Elfers. Town and Country is a school operated by the Clark County Board of Mental Retardation and Developmental Disabilities. Jamie Turner’s IQ was approximately 50.
The principal and the teacher both told Detective Davidson that they were certain Jamie would not be capable of the degree of violence involved in the murders of Phree and Martha.
According to Davidson’s written report about the conversation: “They did agree that Jamie would not be able to make up or catalog this if told by someone else the amount of information or details that he had. Jamie most likely could not have done this act but they were confident that he was probably present.”
When Detective Davidson told them that Jamie had used the term “Chinese guy,” they both said that Jamie would not have used that term. They explained that he would have described the man as a “guy with funny eyes” and that perhaps this was something that someone had told him to say. They added that if Jamie was with someone he feared, he most likely would do exactly as he was told.
Also, according to the report: “They are not confident of Jamie’s ability to determine right from wrong. But they were very sure that Jamie would do nothing to ‘bring blood’ or injury to someone.
“Jamie, while in school, seemed to have an underlying need to be the center of attention. He was always playing the class clown to the point of getting himself in trouble and often he would elaborate on reality to capture attention.”
Two days later, Sergeant Moody interviewed a man who knew Jamie “from church.” Allen Tipton* told the detective that he got a phone call from Jamie about 6:00 P.M. on Saturday evening, August 22. He picked Jamie up at 6:15 P.M. and they went to the ball field on Mitchell Boulevard and watched some guys playing ball. While they were there, Jamie told Allen that he “had the prostitutes lined up.”
When they got back in the car, Allen told Jamie that he “didn’t want anything to do with this. They’re all yours.”
According to Mr. Tipton: “I dropped him off and told him he could have them.” He “dropped him off” at Pleasant and Yellow Springs Streets.
He went on to say that he picked Jamie up again sometime Sunday afternoon and that Jamie was “real quiet” that day.
With the start of the school year—and still no arrest—parents became even more protective of their children. Instead of waiting alone in the morning for their school buses—as they may have done in years past—the children were now accompanied by their mothers and/or fathers. The ritual was then repeated in reverse in the afternoon.
The warning “Don’t talk to strangers!” was repeated over and over.
According to Tina Leach, Martha’s fourteen-year-old sister, she and her siblings didn’t start school that year until September 20. Her mother, in her grief, simply “forgot about school.”
Unanswered questions—and much speculation—punctuated nearly every conversation in the community and the workplace: How had one man managed to control both girls? Did he force them to the pond area? Or lure them? How did this happen?
Physically Phree and Martha were the size of grown women, and the two of them together had been unable to fight off their attacker.
After the new composite drawing, a combination of the original two, appeared in the local newspaper, the police department was inundated with telephone calls. The citizens of Springfield seemed to see the suspect everywhere: in the face of a neighbor, or an acquaintance, or a stranger on the street, or even a family member. They had seen him at a party, at a discount store, a drugstore, everywhere.
The detectives were overwhelmed with hundreds of tips. They took each and every call seriously, no matter how outrageous or bizarre the information seemed to be; but, of course, they had to prioritize and follow up on the most promising leads first.
The contents of the tips revealed the paranoia that had spread throughout the city and even into neighboring towns and counties.
Several callers told the police about a man named “Sam” who lived in a house where they cared for mentally “retarded” people. It was not unusual to see “Sam” walking the streets of Springfield. Although he seemed to be harmless, a woman caller claimed that he had “flashed” her five years earlier.
An employee of a well-known fast-food restaurant called about a fellow employee and stated, “I just don’t like him.”
On Thursday morning, August 27, 1992, at 8:07, a woman named Donna Scott* reported to the police that a white male fitting the suspect’s description “lives with his father just west of the Japanese Connection (auto repair shop) on East Main Street.”
Thirteen minutes later, a man, who specifically asked that his name not be made public, telephoned to say that a “boy” matching the composite drawing lived in the second house west of Sycamore Street on East Main Street near the Japanese Connection. He stated that the “boy” wears glasses.
About 5:30 P.M. on the same day, Ellen Short* called and told them that the “suspect” mowed grass on East Main Street at Blessing Pump. She informed the police that he “looks just like the newest composite” and he had brown hair and was in his late teens or early twenties. She gave his name as “J.R.” Lilly and said that he lived on East Main Street, just east of Dewine’s Dairy Distributing.
That evening, August 27, 1992, a man walked into Whitacre’s Drug Store on Lagonda Avenue, and when the cashier asked if she could help him, he said, “I’ll sure be glad when they catch these child killers because they say I sure look a lot like him.”
Laura Pace* was sure she recognized the man because they had filled prescriptions for him in the past. She called the police to report what she had heard and even gave the officer his name and address: Kessler Lilly lived on East Main Street, not far from Susan Palmer’s house. She described him as being in his midtwenties, 5’7” to 5’9”, 150 to 160 pounds, with “sandy” hair. She added that he wore glasses and had a “stubble” growth of beard.
The next day, Darlene Brooks*, a woman who had been a customer in the drugstore the evening before, called and told police that she had overheard a man talking about the murders. She reported that he said, “I hope the police catch the guy soon because I look like him.” She said he was wearing jeans, a T-shirt, and white tennis shoes with gray trim. She added that it “looked like he had dried blood on his tennis shoes.”
There was only one house between the Japanese Connection and Dewine’s Dairy Distributing.
On Sunday, August 30, an unidentified caller told the police that they had overheard a conversation about a man who fit the description of the suspect and his brother who lived on East Main Street in the area of Schuler’s Bakery.
The caller told them that the man’s name was Bill Lilly and his brother’s was J.R.
On Wednesday, September 2, a man named Eli Shaw*, who lived on East Main Street, informed the police that the “suspect’s” name was Kessler Lilly Jr. and that he cut grass for Blessing Pump. He told them that J.R. matched the picture and that he had scratches on the left side of his face, a pierced ear, and tattoos on his arm.
Some of the investigators were familiar with J.R.; it wasn’t unusual to see him riding his bicycle in the area, but they had never known him to be violent. However, Sergeant Moody and Detective Davidson did go to his home to question the mentally impaired young man and obtained a