Body Hunter (14 page)

Paul Smith leaned closer to Wardrip, staring closely into his deep-set brown eyes.

“Did you have sex with Toni Gibbs?” Smith asked.

“I don't really remember. I remember screaming at her, screaming at her that ‘I hate you.' I don't remember if I had sex. I just remember screaming how much ‘I hate you!' How much I hated everybody,” Wardrip said.

“You said that Toni knew you. How did you meet Toni?” Smith asked.

“From the hospital. I met her there. She never had anything to do with me. I just knew her from there. It could have been anybody, she just happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. It could have been anybody. I never set my sights on anybody. I would just get so mad and I would just get out and walk, be in such a rage. I would just scream at the sky, scream at the trees, scream at God. Then I would just lay down for a while and sleep and then I'd see it on the news and I realized that something must have happened real bad. I tricked myself. I tricked myself into thinking it wasn't me. And I'd hear all these things. At first that she was shot and I knew it couldn't have been me. I never shot. I had no gun. I hear she got abducted from her apartment and I thought that couldn't be me. I haven't been way out there at her apartment. So I just tricked myself into thinking it wasn't me. The same with Terry. They say all kinds of reports that she was some kind of karate person and it must have been a gang or something. And all these reports kept coming in, and they just convinced me more and more that it wasn't me. I just blocked it out of my mind, wouldn't even want to think about it for a long, long, long time,” Wardrip said, his chin dropping toward his chest.

“I'd like to talk to you about another case that I'm investigating at this point,” John Little said as he resumed his questioning. “About the disappearance and murder of Ellen Blau in September, I believe, September 20, 1985. Do you know anything about that?”

“Yeah,” Wardrip said, his head still tilted downward.

Little paused his questioning of Wardrip long enough to go into the hall outside the jail library /study room where loud noises were disturbing the interview.

“Okay, Faryion, if you would, would you tell me about the murder of Ellen Blau?” Little said on his return.

“Same thing,” Wardrip said matter-of-factly. “I'd just be out walking, just walking.”

“Where were you walking?” Little asked.

“Down the highway, coming up to the stoplight there by the base where the McDonald's is. There's a stoplight there. Just walking up to the stop sign. She pulled up and turned into the store, so I turned into the store, too. And she pulled up to the side of the building and I walked up to the side of the building and asked her what she was doing. She said she was looking for somebody, and I just grabbed her and pushed her back into her car. We drove out to a road and got about maybe a mile or so out the road, and I just started grabbing her and screaming at her, ‘I hate you.' We went off the road and turned on a dirt road and went down a little further. I drug her out of the car, took her in a field and stripped her clothes off, but I don't remember how she died though. I didn't rape, I don't believe I raped her. I don't recall. I don't really remember how she died. She probably broke her neck because I sure was slinging her. I was just so mad and angry. I was screaming at her,” Wardrip said.

“Did you try to have sex with her?” Little asked.

“No, I don't . . . no, I was too mad. I was so angry at her. She was just in the wrong place at the wrong time. If she had never even came up to that stoplight I would have just kept right on walking,” Wardrip said, almost implying that it had been Blau's fault, not his, that she died.

“You forced her back into the car,” Little stated.

“Yeah, I pushed her into the car. Wasn't nobody around. I just grabbed her and slung her up on the side of the car and pushed her into the car and told her to take a ride. So we went for a ride. I got so mad at her, I just started grabbing her and shaking her. She went off the road and we just turned and went on some dirt road. We only went about a mile or so,” Wardrip said, expelling a deep sigh.

“Can you describe the field or pasture that you took her in?” Little asked.

“No, it was just a field,” Wardrip said, shrugging. “I never really paid attention. It could have been anywhere. I just stopped and drug her out of her car and started slinging her. It was so weird. I was so mad, but I never hit them. I just slung them, just grabbed them and slung them. I never struck her. Just like my ex-wife, I never hit her, but I was so mad at her. I know a couple of times I'd see her face and I'd just get even more mad, go shoot up some drugs.”

Wardrip's face was twisted by the painful memories, the bad choices, the addictions.

“Whose face were you seeing?” Little asked.

“My ex-wife's. I hated her so much,” Wardrip said with a touch of the bitterness he had felt fourteen years earlier. “It was just like with Tina [Kimbrew]. I was screaming at her and I had my arm across her throat. I was screaming at her, bloody murder. I didn't see Tina's face, I saw Johnna's. I was so consumed with hatred. I never hit them though, that's what really threw me. I wonder why I didn't, but I never struck. I just grabbed and slung and yelled at her.”

Little gave Smith a lingering glance. According to the autopsy reports on the four women, they had been struck, beaten. Either Wardrip couldn't remember the full details of his crimes or he was attempting to portray himself as a less-than-brutal killer. Little's attention returned to Wardrip.

“What kind of car was Ellen Blau in?” Little asked.

“Small one. I remember it was a small car,” Wardrip said.

“Did you ever take anything from these women?” Smith wanted to know.

“No.”

“No money, jewelry, anything like that?” Smith pursued.

“No, I never took any jewelry or anything,” Wardrip said, shaking his head vigorously.

“What did you do after you killed Ellen Blau?” Little returned to his questioning.

“I started to walk down this dirt road and it was all dark and I didn't know which way to go. So I started walking and then I couldn't figure out where I was at, so I turned around and I went back and got in the car and drove it back to town. I just parked the car when I knew where I was and started walking,” Wardrip explained.

“Do you remember where you parked the car?” Little asked.

“No. I got into town and saw where I was and then parked the car. I don't remember where I parked it at. I just parked it,” Wardrip said with some frustration.

“When you abducted Ellen Blau, who drove? When you forced her back into the car?” Little asked.

“She drove,” Wardrip said.

“Did you threaten her?” Little asked.

“No, she didn't know what . . . she didn't know nothing.”

“Did you know Ellen Blau?” Little asked.

“No, no, Toni was the only one I knew, and she offered me a ride,” Wardrip explained.

“Were you working anywhere when Ellen Blau disappeared, in that time frame?” Little asked.

“I wasn't holding no job down, I was mostly doing drugs, going from drug dealer to drug dealer, wherever I could get some drugs. Then I'd stop doing drugs, but the hatred had consumed me so much that it just covered everything up and made it like it never did happen in my life. That couldn't have been me, that's what I told myself. I'd see it on TV and stuff, I mean, I felt sorry. But I had just convinced myself that that couldn't possibly be me, so I would just do drugs to cover it back up. So long as I had drugs, I was all right, and I would just go some place else where there were drugs,” Wardrip said rapidly. He wanted Little and Smith to understand it was the drugs. The drugs had driven him down the road to ruination.

“Was Ellen Blau in Wichita Falls when you encountered her that night?” Little asked.

“Yeah, she was out there by the base. She pulled up to the stoplight and turned into the store there when I was walking by,” Wardrip said, repeating his earlier statement.

“Do you remember what the store was? The name of the store?” Little asked.

“Just the store there at the light. Might have been a Circle K or could have been a 7-Eleven. I don't know,” Wardrip said, sounding confused.

Little took a deep breath, stared Faryion Wardrip in the eye, and asked again, “Did you kill Ellen Blau?”

“Yeah. I don't remember how, might have broke her neck. I don't know because I was slinging her around. She wasn't very heavy at all,” Wardrip said.

“Did you kill Toni Gibbs?” Smith asked.

“Yeah,” Wardrip said, lowering his head.

“Did you kill Terry Sims?” Smith asked.

“Yes,” Wardrip said, his shoulders drooped, his head bowed.

Little reached across the table to push the OFF button on the recorder. He stopped, his hand poised in the air over the machine, as Wardrip spoke again.

“My conscience has to keep going. There is one more,” Wardrip said.

The investigators looked at one another in surprise. Had they forgotten to question Wardrip about someone?

“It ain't here though. This is in Fort Worth,” Wardrip announced. He had to get the truth out. The whole truth. He had waited fourteen years to purge his soul, he couldn't stop now.

“I had left Wichita and I went to Fort Worth, went to a club or something. There was this girl there and we were dancing and then she was being real . . . coming on to me and entertaining me and we decided to leave. We went out to the parking lot around back, and I made my advance towards her and she said no. She slapped my face, and when she did that I just snapped. I grabbed her and I slung her around, and I done the same thing to her that she did to me. And I killed her,” Wardrip told the astonished detectives.

After a momentary pause to collect his thoughts, Little finally asked, “How did you kill her?”

“I think I strangled her. I had her on the ground and I think I used my forearm,” Wardrip said.

“This was in Fort Worth,” Little stated for the record.

“Yeah. I believe her name was Debra Taylor. I'm not sure, but I think her name was Debra Taylor. This had to have been in '86,” Wardrip said as if trying to recall the details as he spoke. “It was on East Lancaster at a club, and I was staying at the Travel Lodge trying to find a job. All I found was just more drugs. The Travel Lodge was full of people selling drugs. If I had the money instead of finding a job, I just bought drugs, shot drugs, kept shooting the drugs. I went out to that club or bar, whatever you want to call it, and her name is Debra. I believe.”

“Do you remember what the name of the bar was?” Little asked.

“No, I can show you. Hell, it's even still there. I had somebody's car, I can't remember whose car it was. Might have been someone at the motel, I think it was. And I put her in the car, took her up the interstate there off of East Lancaster, and found the first road and just threw her out,” Wardrip said with no visible sign of emotion.

“Did you kill her in the parking lot or out there where you dumped her?” Little asked.

“In the parking lot, I think. In the back of the parking lot,” Wardrip said.

“Do you remember what time of year in 1986?”

“No, it might have been 1985. I don't know,” Wardrip said, his brow wrinkled in thought.

“Was it before all of the murders in Wichita Falls or after?” Little asked, trying to get a fix on the specific date that the Fort Worth murder had occurred. He and Smith would have to notify the Fort Worth Police Department. The Cowtown cops could check out the information against any unsolved murders they had that fell into that time frame.

“It was after, it was before. It was after Ellen, Toni, and Terry, and before Tina Kimbrew. So it was, it was after Ellen,” Wardrip answered.

“After September of 1985?” Little prodded.

“I don't know the date,” Wardrip said sharply. “It had to be after Ellen because Ellen was the last one besides Tina, and then I packed my bags and took off hitchhiking and I went to Fort Worth.”

Paul Smith stepped forward. “Faryion, if we were to get the sheriff's authorization to take you from the jail, could you take us to each one of these places? Do you think you could find these places where these murders took place?”

“Oh, probably, but I don't know. I'm doubtful. I've drove through Wichita Falls a lots of times. It might be hard,” Wardrip said.

“Would you be willing to try?” Smith asked.

“Yes, but I don't want to be followed by a bunch of the media,” Wardrip anxiously warned.

“I'll assure you, you won't be followed by the media,” Little interjected.

“Because, if I see media following us, I'm just going to shut up. I've done said—I had to say what God told me to say and what I'm supposed to say to confess my sins and that's what I've done. And I'm not going to be a circus, 'cause I'm not one,” Wardrip said, the words pouring out of him.

“Believe me, we don't want it to be that way either,” Smith reassured Wardrip.

“My parents don't deserve this, my wife doesn't deserve this, my children don't deserve this, my brothers and sisters . . . it's because of those damn drugs and the hatred that I had in my heart. I caused so much pain to the victims' families—but I don't want to burn in hell.”

Wardrip was distraught. All he had worked for in the eleven years he was in prison and the two years he had been living in Olney was gone. He began to babble about his loss.