Murder In The Heartland. M. William Phelps
before long, the same PR man made his way into Espey’s office and assumed part of the investigation, dictating who was in charge of what and whom, seeming to ignore Espey completely.
The bottom line for Espey was finding the child. A conflict with a member of the FBI held no interest for him. Espey wanted to find the missing child, and nothing else really mattered.
Espey finally told the intruder to get the hell out of his office as he slammed the door on his back. Then, he recalled, “I focused on finding the baby.”
Espey realized that, in order to get the child back, he might have to allow the PR man into the investigation on some level. Perhaps he could help. Putting the well-being of the child first, Espey wasn’t about to refuse more federal help. In truth, Espey was glad to have it—as long as the federal agents didn’t get in the way of what he was doing.
“But,” Espey told another agent, who had since arrived, “you get rid of that little public relations guy, or I’ll have him escorted out of the county.” Espey meant what he said. He didn’t speak often in anger. But when he did, his words commanded attention.
“This FBI guy,” said another law enforcement official, “came in there and got in Ben’s face. It was like he had just watched a movie, Die Hard or something, and was trying to be the quintessential FBI agent. The FBI is not like that.”
“We got along real good after he left,” explained Espey. “The guys that I worked with in the FBI, Kurt Lipanovich and Mickey Roberts, were just great. The best. I liked them a lot. The problem was that little press guy who wanted to come in and tell everybody what to do. He was probably told to do that from Washington, but I didn’t want it. Not in my town.”
Espey’s problems with the FBI, however, wouldn’t end there.
28
One of the most important investigative strategies Ben Espey initiated right away was to involve as many law enforcement agencies as possible, mainly the Missouri Major Case Squad, the MSHP, and a team of crime-scene investigators from the St. Joseph PD.
For Espey, though, every decision he made early on was based solely on the well-being of the child. The murder could be solved in due course—he was certain of that. But the baby could still be alive. She had to come first, whether anyone agreed with him or not.
With frustration building over seeing his Amber Alert requests repeatedly turned down, as it got later in the evening, Espey realized he was fighting the clock, now more than ever. He decided to turn to an old friend, Missouri congressman Sam Graves, who was nearing the end of his second term in office and planning a run for a third.
Espey had known Graves for twelve years. He’d even campaigned with him on the Republican ticket a few times, walking the streets together, waving in parades, knocking on doors, handing out buttons and bumper stickers. Graves came from a family rooted in law enforcement; his brother, Todd, had been a U.S. attorney for a number of years. Moreover, Sam supported local law enforcement and was considered an advocate of the sheriff’s offices serving his constituency. A lifelong resident of Missouri’s sixth Congressional District, he was popular among the people of Missouri because, some said, he “is one of them,” having been a small businessman and a sixth-generation farmer himself. His congressional biography states that Graves, a father of three, “spent his life working to make Missouri a better place to live, work, and raise a family.” Besides all that, Bobbie Jo’s murder had hit home for Graves: he lived about thirty miles outside Skidmore. Bobbie Jo was like one of his own, Skidmore an adopted hometown.
If anyone could help, Espey knew, it was Sam Graves. Espey knew Graves was a caring human being with morals most public officials seldom displayed. Espey also knew Graves would understand how desperate the situation was. Here was a chance to save a baby. Graves knew how tight the community was and how getting the child back mattered not only to Zeb Stinnett, but to the township as a whole.
“We are fairly good friends,” said Espey. “He became my contact person—the only one I could think of when all else failed.”
As Espey struggled to come up with a way to convince the MSHP to issue the alert, he phoned Sam Graves at his home late that evening and asked him for help. Espey explained how he had been told repeatedly the case did not meet the criteria for an Amber Alert because authorities did not know the child’s hair and eye color, or any other details. “I’m really aggravated, Sam. You have to pull some strings and get this thing done.”
Amber Alert guidelines were set in stone, however. What could a congressman do to supersede national policies and procedures? The state of Missouri was still in the process of designing its own Amber Alert standards, thus forcing state officials to fall back on what had been accepted nationally.
“I’m not sure I can get anything done, Ben. The law is the law, you know.”
“Fix the damn law,” Espey said. He was desperate. Hospital officials were telling him the child was likely alive but could be in danger of suffering problems down the road if she wasn’t found soon. Additionally, who knew what the child’s kidnapper was doing to her?
“Give me two hours and I’ll have it done,” Graves said next, without hesitation.
“He really helped me,” Espey recalled, “at a time when I needed it. Everyone helped, but Sam got things moving for us and got things done right away.”
“I’ve known [Ben Espey] for a while,” Graves said later in published reports, “and he was at the end of his rope.” In another statement, Graves added, “We’ve got a problem with our system. Nobody really thought of this contingency.”
Espey’s chief argument throughout the night was that a newborn baby “looks different than any other child. In three or four or five days, well, you’ve got a baby. But a newborn baby, if I say that a baby was born within a few hours, anybody can look at a child and tell it’s a newborn.”
He couldn’t understand why no one else, save for Sam Graves and the people inside his law enforcement circle, couldn’t see it the same way.
29
At around 12:45 A.M. on Friday, Ben Espey finally got his wish.
Later, reflecting on that crucial time near midnight when word came down that the Amber Alert was going out, he said, “I was overwhelmed with the fact that we were going to be able to get this baby back.”
It wasn’t hard to figure out Sam Graves had pulled out some sort of trump card and used it.
“He could have easily claimed to have called a few people,” Espey explained, “called me back and said, ‘Look, I called some people and I couldn’t get it done.’ But Sam took an interest in it. Sam made it happen.”
Early the next morning, an official Amber Alert went out to all law enforcement agencies in the immediate area: Iowa, Missouri, Kansas, New Mexico, Nebraska. Sent from the main office of the MSHP, the alert, in part, said police were searching for a suspect who may have blond hair and was possibly driving a red vehicle, “a two-door hatchback, possibly a 1980s or 1990s, Honda or Hyundai.” It wasn’t clear, the alert continued, if law enforcement was looking for a man or woman, but officials knew the child was female. If anyone spied a man, woman, or couple traveling with a newborn, he or she needed to call in immediately.
Time, of course, was of the utmost importance.
“I believe there is a live eight-month-old fetus out there and we need to find it,” Espey told reporters early Friday morning.
No one had an idea then of the number of tips about to flood the system, and the work ahead. It was well after midnight, the sun close to coming up. Espey hadn’t sat down or taken a break since finding Bobbie Jo’s body. It would be a long morning, he knew, but with any luck, and some help from the public, Bobbie Jo’s child would be returned to her family soon.
“It’s very hard for me to accept this,” Espey told reporters after issuing the alert. “Nobody