Body Hunter (15 page)

“God told me that you think I'm kidding you, but He revealed when He gave my wife to me like He did for a couple of months. I asked her today to forgive me. I told her what I was going to do, not in so many words, because I know they listen, but I just asked her to forgive me. She said, for what? I said for all the lies, the lies that I told you. She said, what lies? I said because I brought you into my life knowing that this thing very well could happen. I didn't care, I knew I'd never get away with it. I did know that this day would happen. I realized it when I went to prison the first time. I knew this day would happen. Man, but yet, I still took a wife, and she's a beautiful Christian woman. I don't know if you've ever seen her, but she's a beautiful Christian woman. She didn't deserve this. Nobody does. Nobody does. I don't care what happens to me. If they want to put me to death, then so be it. 'Cause I'm tired of living on this earth, tired of pain and suffering that Satan brings to people, no matter how hard you try. No matter how good of things you do . . . it always seems to mess up.

“If you don't follow what God tells you to do, it's going to happen to you, I guarantee it,” Wardrip said, looking straight into the eyes of the men who had cost him his freedom. “I tried to tell that to my little brother because he drinks and he's got three kids, and he's got a temper, too. And I tried to be an example, just like you said, John.” Wardrip spoke directly to Investigator Little as he listened closely.

“You saw what I was doing, I was trying to. I really thought I could do it, live my lie, but God knew it. God knew this was coming, that is why He gave me the opportunity to repent and to see what it was like to live in a community with good Christian people. People that will love you no matter what. And that's what He's done. He told me this. He gave me Glenda. He gave me that community. All those people, no matter what I've done, they didn't care. They love me. Nobody ever told me that before, and I had people who love me. Oh, Lord, just do whatever to me. Forgive me. If you love your children, you will tell them that Satan is alive and the devil will get you with drugs and alcohol. If you do not live your life the way you should, he will get you. You will burn, as I have burned for so long. He is so real. He is so real. And I just wish I would have learned this a long time ago. Why is this now? Oh, my God, what have I done?” Wardrip said, placing his head in his hands.

“I'm so sorry. My parents didn't deserve this. God, they don't deserve it,” Wardrip moaned.

“Faryion, will you be willing to cooperate with authorities in Tarrant County or Fort Worth to help them with that case?” Little asked, referring to the unsolved murder of Debra Taylor.

“Yeah, it's over with. I already feel all the relief gone. I'm so sorry, all the guilt, all the shame, it's all gone. I've done what God said, God said to confess your sins. I'm just tired. I have a headache,” Wardrip said as he rested his head in his hands.

“Faryion, was this statement you gave to me today voluntary?” Little asked.

“Yes.”

“Were you promised anything in return for giving me this statement?” Little asked.

Wardrip looked into Little's cool eyes. “Eternal life with God is what I was promised. I was promised that I won't burn in hell.”

“And what you told me and Mr. Smith here today is all the truth?” Little asked.

“It's the truth,” Wardrip said, his eyes dark and soulful. “It's over with, I give up. I can't go no more. You can kill me now. I don't care.”

Chapter Eighteen

Investigator Little glanced at Smith questioningly. Smith shook his head slightly.

“At this time, I'm going to terminate the interview,” Little said. “The date is still February 16, 1999. The time now is 11:18
A.M.
That will conclude the interview.”

Fifty minutes from the time Faryion Wardrip began his confession, Little turned off the recorder. He ordered a written transcript of the eighteen-page sworn statement that he, Smith, and Wardrip signed before it was delivered to the district attorney's office.

Back in his cell, Wardrip was falling into deeper depths of despair. He requested to use the phone and dialed his younger brother.

“Bryce, I did it. I did it all,” Wardrip said through sobs. “I've been living with this guilt all these years. I feel so much better now. I want to be put to death. I want my life to be over. Tell Mom and Dad.”

Bryce held the phone receiver to his ear. Not speaking or moving.
What is Faryion saying?
Bryce wondered.
He told me he didn't kill those women. He told me it was all a lie. I went on television to defend him. What does he mean, he did it all?

“I wanted to be like you,” Wardrip said. “You have a perfect life. I'm so proud of you.”

Bryce could hear his brother crying as his own cheeks reddened with anger. Bryce felt used by his older brother. He felt like a fool.

“It's not the perfect life. It's knowing right from wrong!” Bryce shouted.

Bryce's anger at his brother grew. Faryion's laziness and drug use had kept him from doing anything worthwhile with his life. He'd drifted from job to job, never settling down until he had been released from prison for the murder of Tina Kimbrew.

Bryce, on the other hand, had begun work in the oil fields when he was only sixteen years old. He took home six hundred dollars a week, giving most of it to his parents to pay for rent, utilities, and food while his father was in intensive care recovering from a heart attack. With the exception of Roy, another drug-and-alcohol-addicted brother, the other seven Wardrip children had grown to be good citizens and responsible adults. They had all pitched in when their parents fell on hard times. But where had Faryion been when their parents needed help? Bryce winced as he thought of the answer. His brother had spent his youth stoned on drugs and most of his young adulthood in the state prison for murder.

Bryce's thoughts jumped from Faryion to his parents. Once again Faryion had left it up to him to be the bearer of bad news. At that moment Bryce hated Faryion. Their parents had helped his older brother so much. They had signed papers for him to have a car and he failed to make the payments. They raised him to be independent, yet he continually sponged off others. They provided clothes, toys, food, shelter for all their nine children. Yet Faryion was never happy.

The day of Faryion's arrest for the murder of Sims, their father had made a public statement that his son was not guilty.

“We're right now in the process of trying to find an attorney to take his case. I promise you this is not true. He didn't do this thing,” George Wardrip had said. His voice had been laced with pain. He'd wanted the press, friends, the community to know his son was not guilty of such a ghastly crime.

Surprisingly, George Wardrip had also stated that he believed Faryion was innocent of Kimbrew's murder, a murder Faryion had confessed to and served eleven years at TDCJ for.

“We didn't have the money at the time to hire an attorney and he ended up with a plea bargain,” the elder Wardrip had said. “He did that because he didn't want to put us through a trial. He did his time, he got out, and he started a new life. He doesn't drink or smoke anymore, and he's been clean from drugs for at least the last twelve years. He goes to church and teaches Sunday school. He's there every time they opened the doors.”

Bryce hung up the phone and sat down at the table in his modest kitchen. His father was fighting cancer. He was at the Veteran's Administration hospital five days during the week for treatment, only coming home to his family on weekends. But instead of worrying about his health, he had been out trying to raise money and find a lawyer willing to handle Faryion's case. Bryce knew Faryion's confession would be a blow to his father, a shock he might not recover from.

Bryce picked up the phone and called District Attorney Barry Macha's office. Before putting his parents through another living hell, he needed to know if what his older brother had told him was true.

“We have pretty strong evidence,” Macha told Bryce. “We have a partial thumbprint and DNA. It doesn't look good for your brother.”

“If I can help you, just let me know,” Bryce said bitterly.

Bryce was back at work when Macha called.

“I've got some more questions I want to ask you,” Macha said. “Can you come to Wichita Falls tomorrow?”

“I'll be there,” Bryce said.

When Bryce arrived at the Wichita County courthouse, he cleared the metal detectors and was escorted upstairs to meet with Macha, Assistant District Attorney Jerry Taylor, and Investigator Paul Smith.

“We have a taped confession, Bryce,” Macha said. “I'll just need to ask you a few questions. Are you ready?”

Bryce stared at Macha in bewilderment. He believed they had tape recorded his telephone conversation with Faryion without his knowledge. The oral confession of murder made to him would now be used against his brother.

“Yeah,” Bryce replied, then followed Macha to the district courtroom down the hall from the DA's office.

“Sit here,” Smith directed him.

In a matter of minutes, twelve people filed in from a courtroom side door and sat in the chairs reserved to the left of the judge's bench. Bryce's brow wrinkled as he studied the grand jury questioningly. He nervously fiddled with the brim of the Western hat he held in his hands. Bryce had expected to be speaking to Macha and the investigators. No one had said a word about being questioned before the grand jury.

For the next two hours, Bryce Wardrip answered questions about his brother. Convinced that his phone conversation with Faryion earlier that morning was the confession Macha had earlier referred to, Bryce was filled with resentment mixed with guilt.

 

 

News of the arrest of Faryion Wardrip, an ex-con who lived less than fifty miles away, sent shivers down the spines of residents who'd lived in the Wichita Falls area during the mid-1980s. Even Tina Wardrip, Faryion Wardrip's own sister-in-law and a high school student at the time of the murders, hadn't been allowed to go into Wichita Falls during the eighteen-month crime spree. Her father had feared for her safety. Now, fourteen years later, Tina recalled the number of times her brother-in-law had been in their home and played with their children. She'd never suspected that her children's fun-loving uncle was capable of killing.

 

 

Random updates from the DA's office and knowing that there was no statute of limitations on murder, a period of time in which judicial action must be taken, had been the only hope the families of Sims, Gibbs, and Blau held that their loved ones' killer would be found after nearly fifteen years. The families rejoiced in the news of Wardrip's capture.

“Thank the Lord they found him,” a grateful and weeping Alma Sims, Terry's grandmother, told
News-Record
reporters. “I just prayed that they would find him. I prayed about it every day so that one of these days they would get him, so he could never do this to another little girl. She [Terry] died a horrible death, and you can never put that out of your mind. When it's that terrible, it just stays with you forever.”

One of Alma Sims's biggest regrets was that her husband, Jack, hadn't lived long enough to see his granddaughter's killer brought to trial.

Sims's aunt, Delinda Bridgens, was more cautious in accepting the news that Terry's killer had finally been caught. “We just want to make sure they've got the right person. We were really disheartened with the initial police work. We felt things were missed.”

Sims's sister, Catherine Reid, was relieved to hear the news of Wardrip's capture. “It feels good to know that someone was still looking into the case. My sister deserves it. My sister deserves justice, even though it's been a long time. We think about it every day. Anybody who knew my sister knows she wasn't just an ordinary twenty-year-old person. She was an old soul. She was always helping people, always friendly, a good person,” Reid said.

Toni Gibbs's brother was equally elated. “I'm happy about it,” Jeff Gibbs said. “It's on your mind every day, even though it's been fourteen years. It never goes away. It just gets a little bit easier with time.”

 

 

Area law-enforcement officials who had worked on the Sims, Gibbs, and Blau cases were shocked. They had never suspected any of the four Wichita Falls women's slayings were connected. Sheriff Callahan, a deputy at the time of the Blau slaying, told reporters Wardrip had never been a suspect.

“His name never came up in the Blau investigation,” Callahan said. “This is one of the things that is troubling.”

It was equally disturbing to those on the Wichita Falls police force, who had passed on information in 1986 when he was arrested for the murder of Tina Kimbrew, that Wardrip had admitted knowing Blau. They wondered why the sheriff's department failed to interview Wardrip then. It was easier to understand why the sheriff failed to acknowledge the reference fifteen years later, after Wardrip's apprehension.

Although other law-enforcement agencies had doubted that one man could have been responsible for the three killings, Barry Macha had always suspected that one person, or related persons, may have been involved. Macha had driven by the house where Terry Sims had been murdered, the street where Toni Gibbs's car was abandoned, and an apartment where Ellen Blau had lived. Because the three locations had been in a relatively confined area, Macha had long believed the murderer had some connection to that part of Wichita Falls. Finally, his suspicions were validated. And at last, he would have the chance to vindicate the deaths of three innocent women.

 

 

As dumbfounded as authorities seemed over Wardrip's arrest and confession, the people of Olney were overwhelmed.

“I feel shocked. He's been an excellent worker for us, and did a good job. He seemed like a heck of a nice guy,” Brad Duncan, the president of Olney Door and Screen said in reaction to Wardrip's arrest.

Duncan, his parents, Fred and Betty Duncan, owners of the factory, as well as Dave Collard and others at Olney Door and Screen, had no reason not to believe Wardrip when he told them he had been in prison for vehicular manslaughter. They'd had no idea Wardrip was a convicted killer until word of his arrest hit the news.

The Duncans continued to stand by their decision to give Wardrip a chance.

“We knew he was an ex-con, but he seemed to be a model employee and model citizen. I don't ever recall seeing him get angry, and he always had a smile on his face. He always did what he was told.

“If he is acquitted of these murders, he's got a job waiting here,” Duncan said. “I can't believe he's the same person as the one they are saying murdered and raped all those young women. He has certainly changed, or else he's a very good actor and should be in Hollywood.

“However, if he really did what they say, he needs to be hung out to dry. He must pay the consequences if he's guilty.”

Dave Collard was heartsick. How could he have misjudged Faryion Wardrip so completely? Wardrip had seemed more like a son than an employee.

Dave walked to the pole barn and the wooden shelf that had served as a chest-high desk for Wardrip as he calculated purchase orders. The color drained from Dave's face as he stared at a crudely drawn figure of a knife with blood dripping from the blade. He felt nauseated. The childish prank by a fellow employee pierced his heart.

 

 

News of Wardrip's arrest spread through Wichita Falls, then on to Colorado where Danny Laughlin's mother had continued to cling to the hope that someday the real killer of Toni Gibbs would be found. The news of Wardrip's confession was like a two-edged sword. She was elated that at long last her son had been exonerated for the murder of Toni Gibbs, and furious that Danny's life had been made wretched because of suspicion and innuendo.

Wilma Hooker received a letter from Roger Williams, Danny's former defense attorney, telling her of Danny's decisive exoneration. But the letter from Williams was not enough for Danny's mother. She wanted more. She wanted the state to formally apologize for the living hell they had put her son through. She wanted Cody, Danny's son, to be able to read the letter and know beyond a doubt that his father wasn't a killer.

“It was different back then [in the 1980s],” District Attorney Tim Cole of Archer County said. “There wasn't the technology. There are times in a case like this where you form an opinion about suspects. It's unfortunate those things happen. Sometimes it takes twelve people to make that decision. Keep in mind, he wasn't convicted. The system didn't convict him.”

That wasn't enough for Wilma Hooker. The jury may not have convicted Danny, but they hadn't acquitted him either. She wanted full vindication for her son. He'd lived with a cloud of suspicion over his head for years. Hooker wanted his name cleared so he could finally rest in peace.

Hooker didn't get a letter of apology or any formal statement clearing Danny of murder. She would have to settle for knowing that the DNA technology that cleared her son was the same science that put the real killer behind bars. A killer who had coincidentally shared a multicell section of the Wichita County Jail with her son while Wardrip was confined on a misdemeanor charge.