Body Hunter (7 page)

“What did Joyce do?” Williams asked.

“She was hanging pictures for me,” Laughlin answered.

The defendant then explained that he and Gregory later went to a flea market on Holliday Street, then up Midwestern Parkway.

“We drove through the Burger King and I got a root beer and Joyce got a Coke,” Laughlin said. “We cruised Kemp Boulevard and then I took Joyce home. I got home by five-thirty
P.M.
to get ready to go to work.”

“What were you doing on February tenth, Mr. Laughlin?” Williams asked.

Laughlin shifted uneasily in his chair. He would have to tell the jury about breaking into the telephone office and stealing the money box. But being convicted of theft was better than being found guilty of murder.

“I entered a Southwestern Bell office in Wichita Falls and stole a money-changer box. I got the code to open the door to the building from someone who worked there. I'd been working for a maintenance company in the office for a while.

“I loaded the heavy box in my pickup truck to take it out of town to break into it. I went out on a county road and broke into the box.

“After taking the money, I left it there and was chased part of the way back to Wichita Falls by someone who saw me,” Laughlin explained.

Williams walked to the witness stand and leaned closer to his client. Looking Laughlin in the eye, Williams asked, “Did you tell Harry Harrison that you killed Miss Gibbs?”

“No!” Laughlin said loudly. “In fact, Harrison was so nervous that day in the jail that I tried to calm him down by reading scriptures to him.”

“Danny, how did you know facts about Gibbs's murder?” Williams asked.

“I knew police information about the crime by reading reports one day in a captain's office. I was left there for about a half hour when he was out.

“I bragged to friends about knowing details of her death, to look like I knew something. When I talked about the killing and said I might have been in that field at one time with my dog, people acted interested. I just kept talking,” Laughlin explained.

“Did you ever say you killed Toni Gibbs?” Williams asked.

“Not one time,” Laughlin replied. “Not one time did I ever imply I was the killer. I never admitted nothing.”

Williams had one final question for his client. After a dramatic pause, Williams asked, “Danny, tell the ladies and gentlemen of the jury—did you kill Toni Gibbs?”

“No, I did not. I had nothing to do with it,” Laughlin said emphatically.

After final arguments were presented from both prosecutors and the defense, the case was turned over to the jury for deliberations. It was a difficult case with very differing opinions. Argumentative shouts could be heard from the jury room. At times even muffled sobs rose from behind the closed door. As time continued to pass, prosecutors became increasingly uneasy and defense attorneys more certain that their client would be found not guilty.

The jury finally emerged from the confined quarters, some with tear-streaked faces, others with wearied looks. They had worked for fourteen hours over a two-day period to reach a decision. But they were hopelessly deadlocked eleven to one for acquittal. Judge Douthitt declared a mistrial and Laughlin left the courthouse with his attorneys.

Although he was not found innocent of the vicious murder of Toni Gibbs, Laughlin saw the hung jury as a victory.

“I thank the Man right here,” Laughlin said, smiling, pointing at the Bible he had carried into the courtroom each day of the trial. “If they let me, I imagine I would give people some hugs. Anyway, I'd like to thank the jury.”

Laughlin's attorney blasted the State's witnesses. “They never made a case until they scrounged up the jailhouse witnesses,” Williams told reporters outside the courtroom. “Would you make any important decision in your life based on what those gentlemen told you?”

District Attorney Barry Macha was not only disappointed, but furious with the outcome. Convinced that he had prosecuted the right man, he pledged to retry Laughlin for Gibbs's murder. Local law enforcement agreed, virtually shutting down any further investigation of Gibbs's killing. Their tunnel vision saw only one man responsible for the brutal killing—Danny Laughlin.

Chapter Eight

 

Tina Kimbrew chased after her black toy poodle as he slipped past her at the door and made a break for the street. Still dressed in her nightgown, the cute, slim, twenty-one-year-old had been sleeping late after her night shift as waitress and bartender at Baron's Lounge at the Sheraton Hotel.

“Come here, Nicole!” Tina said sternly to the feisty pup. She grabbed the quick-footed dog and carried her back to her apartment.

Minutes later, neighbors saw a tall, thin man, wearing a blue-and-white baseball cap, knock on Tina's front door.

The gangly man was coming down from a drug-induced high. He needed a fix. He knew Tina and thought she might be able to supply him with the narcotics he craved.

Tina had met the man at the Stardust country-and-western club where he had worked as a bouncer and Danny Laughlin had once worked as a bar-back. Originally from Vernon, Texas, Tina had recently moved to Wichita Falls from Odessa, Texas, where she had been attending private school. She and her visitor had dated a couple of times, but it was nothing more than a casual relationship. Tina cordially opened the door to him.

The young woman's pleasant disposition changed as soon as the door closed behind the unkempt man. He grabbed her, forcing his lips to hers. Tina pulled away, pushing against his chest to release his viselike grip. Her dark brown hair swung swiftly to the side as her head rang with the impact of the man's open hand against her cheek. Kimbrew stumbled backward, falling against a brown wicker table. The next blow was her attacker's fist connecting with Tina's right eye. It throbbed from the impact. Her knees buckled and she dropped to the floor.

In seconds, the man she thought to be her friend was on top of her, slapping her, punching her face with quick-tempered blows. The right side of both her top and bottom lips swelled, immediately discoloring from the blood that rose just below the surface. She fought to regain her footing, clawing her way to the sofa. Tina Kimbrew pulled at the cushions to help her stand, but they tumbled to the carpet as her aggressor knocked her down.

The incensed man pulled at Tina's underpants, jerking them from her body. She continued to fight. Although he was more than one hundred pounds heavier and over a foot taller, Tina was determined to ward off the assault. The man's greatest advantage was his intense anger. Rage that drove him to seek domination. To have complete control.

Kimbrew pressed her elbows into the carpeted surface of the living room as she attempted to rise. The man pushed her back and slipped his hands around her neck, squeezing firmly. The thin gold necklace that encircled her throat pressed into her flesh, scraping the surface raw. Tina's elbows dug deeply into the rug's abrasive fibers.

Kimbrew continued to struggle. The man slung his forearm over her nose and mouth, compressing tightly. Her small frame flailed beneath the strength of her attacker for no more than a few seconds. The blood vessels to her brain collapsed. Her eyes held but a flicker of light until the continued pressure on her throat extinguished it like a candle being snuffed out. She sank into total blackness.

The man who had once called Tina Kimbrew his friend gaped at her lifeless body in disbelief. Quickly he fled the Park Regency Apartments and the sight of the white-gowned body stretched across the brown carpet. He returned to his own apartment. No one was there. He felt all alone. A familiar feeling, one he had felt since he was a kid. No one to talk to. No one to listen to his problems.

He lay across his bed, staring at the ceiling. In the swirls of the textured dome he saw the face of Tina Kimbrew staring back at him. Closing his eyes was useless; he could still see her looking at him with questioning eyes. “Why?” she seemed to ask. He couldn't tell her. He didn't know why. All he knew was that he needed to get away. Out of Wichita Falls.

The ocean,
he thought.
I'd like to see the ocean.

 

 

Shelly Kelly and Tina Kimbrew were close—more like sisters than cousins. They had seen each other frequently since Kimbrew's move to Wichita Falls from Odessa three months earlier. Kelly had expected to see Tina at the Wichita Falls hospital where Tina's mother was recovering from back surgery, but Tina hadn't shown up since the night before. It was three
P.M.
when Shelly phoned Tina's apartment.

“There's no answer,” Shelly told her grandmother who had accompanied her and her two-year-old daughter, Amy, to the hospital.

“We need to go by her apartment and check on her. She needs to come see her mom,” Mildred Kimbrew said.

Kelly drove to the Park Regency Apartments on Seymour Road where Tina Kimbrew lived alone. She noticed Tina's car parked out front.

“There's no answer,” Shelly told her grandmother. “She must have gotten a ride with someone. Her car's here.”

Amy's angelic face was a mess from the candy she had been given at the hospital. Kelly decided to clean the child's dirty hands before heading home.

“Let's go inside and clean Amy up,” she said.

As Shelly turned the spare key Tina had given her grandmother in the lock of the apartment, she was met at the door by Tina's poodle, Nicole, jumping and barking loudly.

She glanced to the right, inside the apartment, noticing that a table and lamp had been knocked over.

“Look what that dog did to this apartment,” Shelly said irritably. One leg of the wicker table had been broken, a gold glass ashtray with cigarette butts was spilled on the carpet, and a can of Sergant's flea powder had been dumped on the floor. Beside the sofa was a plastic tumbler and a Styrofoam cup from the Sonic Drive-In.

As Kelly moved farther into the seemingly empty room, she noticed her cousin lying motionless on the floor.

She must be unconscious. Maybe she fell,
Shelly thought to herself as she moved closer to Tina.

Tina was lying on her back, next to a brown floral pillow that had been pulled from the sofa. Her dark brown hair was drawn above her head and spread across the lighter brown carpeting. She wore a white-lace nightgown that was pulled above her waist. Her underpants lay nearby.

Stunned, Shelly grabbed Amy and backed up slowly to rest against the wall. She could only stare at her cousin's face in horror. Frozen with fear, Shelly couldn't move. She could hardly breathe.

Mildred Kimbrew rushed to Tina, shaking her gently in an attempt to wake her up. Bruises marred the familiar pretty face.

“Shelly, she's dead! I can't look at her like this. Let's get something to cover her up,” the older woman said, shaking.

Shelly rushed to the bedroom and returned with a pink, blue, and white floral sheet. She draped the fabric over Tina and called the police.

 

 

Detective Steve Pruitt was on his way home when he received the radio call.

“There's a report of a deceased person at the Park Regency Apartments.” The dispatcher's voice broke through Pruitt's thoughts.

Pruitt, an investigator in the Crimes Against Persons Division of the Wichita Falls Police Department, turned his car around and headed toward the apartments. When he arrived on the scene, Officer Allen was inside, checking the victim on the floor for signs of life.

Allen looked up at Pruitt as he entered the room. He shook his head slightly, lowering his eyes to the pale woman on the floor in front of him.

Pruitt removed the sheet covering the corpse. He looked at Tina Kimbrew's body carefully, making mental notes: light-colored nightgown, bruising on face, neck, and legs, exposed genitals, panties close to the body on the floor.

“Who put the sheet over the victim?” Pruitt asked.

“I did. But I didn't touch anything. I didn't know what to do,” Shelly Kelly said through her tears.

Pruitt feared that the presence of the victim's relatives would hamper the investigation. They very well could have contaminated the crime scene. He moved to get Kelly, Amy, and Mrs. Kimbrew out of the apartment as quickly as possible.

Tina Kimbrew was the fourth woman killed in Wichita Falls in eighteen months. Everything had to be done to insure a thorough investigation. This was one murder Pruitt intended to see did not go unsolved.

Neighbors told investigators they had seen a man leaving the apartment about five hours before her body was discovered. The man was described as six-feet, two-inches tall, lanky, dark hair, and wearing a blue-and-white baseball cap. Police released the description to the press, adding, “We'd sure like to talk to him.”

The chief of police knew that was an understatement. Four young women had been murdered in the Wichita Falls area. Four killers were on the loose. Maybe they would get lucky with this one.

Chapter Nine

A tall, shaggy-haired man stood on the seawall in Galveston, Texas. A cool breeze from the Gulf of Mexico blew across his weary face as he stared into the vastness of the open sea. The dark waters mirrored his mood. Riddled with guilt, he felt as though he had been plunged beneath the gulf's surf and was drowning in a sea of despair.

Back in Wichita Falls, friends of Tina Kimbrew couldn't believe Tina was dead.

“She was funny. Always a jokester,” Tim Nardi, general manager of the Sheraton Hotel, told reporters. “This is such a shock. You don't think about these things until they happen in your own backyard.”

Tina was remembered by all her friends as being a really sweet, nice girl. Her killer remembered her the same way. That memory drove him deeper into despondency.

In Vernon, Texas, north of Wichita Falls, Elaine and Robert Kimbrew felt the same darkened hopelessness. Their only child was dead. The pain in Elaine's heart was sharper than the surgeon's instrument used to mend her back only days before.

Tina had been a gift from God. Elaine and Robert had been told early in their marriage that they would never have children. Then, in what they believed was a true miracle, Tina was conceived. It had been a touch-and-go pregnancy, but Elaine was determined to deliver their child.

In what could be described as a difficult delivery, Robert was faced with the decision of saving the life of his wife or saving his child. But by the grace of God, and the skill of a special doctor, both mother and daughter pulled through. The birth had created an extraordinary bond between them.

Robert, a small man in stature with a big heart filled with love for his daughter, had been brought to his knees by Tina's death. Likewise, his wife's grief was inconsolable. Swallowed by the blackness of their loss, the Kimbrews sank into the depths of depression.

The same feelings of depression and despair gripped Tina Kimbrew's killer as he stood on the concrete seawall in Galveston. His personal failures plunged him into hopelessness. He thought of all the people he had disappointed and deceived. His victims. Their families. His own family.

Exhausted from the more than four-hundred-mile trip from his North Texas home to the southern Texas coastal island, he checked into a local, low-rate motel. It had been a week since the murder of Tina Kimbrew. Fatigue embraced him. Guilt consumed him. He couldn't sleep. He reached for the phone on the nightstand and dialed the local emergency number.

“I'm going to kill myself,” he told the Galveston 911 operator.

Within minutes, officers were at his door.

“Why would you want to kill yourself?” one of the officers asked the man who sat on the wrinkled, faded bedspread of his motel room.

“I killed someone in Wichita Falls,” the somber man said. He lowered his head, cradling it in his hands.

“Who did you kill?” another officer asked.

“Tina Kimbrew,” he responded. “I went to Tina's apartment on May sixth. She was wearing a light-colored nightgown when she answered the door. I went inside to get drugs.”

The questioning officer glanced at his partner. The young policemen knew instantly what had to be done. The man was immediately placed in protective custody.

Within hours of hearing from the Galveston Police, Detective Steve Pruitt had secured an arrest warrant from Justice of the Peace Arthur Williams for Faryion Edward Wardrip. According to the warrant, Wardrip had said he knew Kimbrew and had gone to her apartment the day the body was discovered. Pruitt and another officer drove to the Gulf Coast city to pick up their prisoner.

“I didn't mean to kill her. It was an accident. She was my friend,” Wardrip said in a sad tone as he rode in the rear seat of the police car.

“You don't have to say anything,” Pruitt advised Wardrip. “You'll get an attorney in Wichita Falls.”

“I just went to get drugs. I didn't mean to do it,” Wardrip said, as though he had an uncontrollable need to explain the murder.

Pruitt was cautious not to ask Wardrip any direct questions about the Kimbrew murder for fear of violating his rights. Wardrip would be arraigned in magistrate court in Wichita Falls. If he was indeed their killer, Pruitt wasn't about to mess up the case on a technicality.

Deciding to stick to casual conversation, Pruitt asked, “Did you know Ellen Blau?”

“Yes,” Wardrip said. “I knew Ellen.”

Pruitt knew that Ellen Blau's killing was one of the unsolved murders that had made young women in the Wichita Falls area fearful in the few preceding months. The Blau case was officially under the jurisdiction of the Wichita County Sheriff's Department. Pruitt made a mental note.
Call the sheriff and tell him he might want to interview Wardrip about Blau.

Pruitt decided to avoid any further questions about Blau and didn't ask about the Archer County case of Toni Gibbs or the Wichita Falls death of Terry Sims. Pruitt, like other interdepartmental detectives, continued to believe there was no relationship between the murders of any of the four women who had been killed in the far North Texas area. And there was certainly no reason to suspect Wardrip, who hadn't been mentioned as a suspect.

As the county-issued car rolled down the interstate highway, Wardrip thought to himself,
I'm going to prison. But I can't be there for the rest of my life. I just can't. I couldn't take it.

He remained tight-lipped in the rear seat, his head resting on the seat back.

“Why were you in Galveston?” Pruitt asked, interrupting Faryion's fearful thoughts.

“I wanted to see the Gulf of Mexico,” Wardrip replied.

 

 

Within hours of arriving back in Wichita Falls, twenty-seven-year-old Faryion Edward Wardrip was arraigned for the murder of Tina Kimbrew. Dressed in blue jeans, secured at the waist by a leather belt with a large, oval, metal buckle, Wardrip stood beside his public defender, Christine Harris, before the magistrate court judge. The open collar of his wrinkled short-sleeve, plaid shirt revealed the top of a white T-shirt. Scuff marks marred his light-colored cowboy boots. Wardrip's brown hair was full and unruly. The stubble of growth on his cheeks and chin made it apparent he hadn't shaved in days. His brown mustache was as shaggy and unkempt as his hair. Wardrip looked tired. His eyelids drooped as he stood slumped before the judge.

“Hold your hands out, palms up,” the booking officer instructed.

“I don't know how I got those cuts on my hands,” Wardrip said.

Police officers carefully documented the cuts on Wardrip's long, thin fingers and large hands.

A witness identified the clothing Wardrip was wearing at the time of his arrest as looking like the clothes worn by a man seen going into Kimbrew's apartment about eleven-thirty the morning of the murder. It was one of the last times Tina Kimbrew had been seen alive.

Detective Pruitt called Tom Callahan of the Wichita Falls Sheriff's Department and informed him of Wardrip's confession to the murder of Tina Kimbrew and his statement that he had known Ellen Blau. It was all Pruitt could do. The Blau case was in the jurisdiction of the county sheriff. It was up to Callahan and the sheriff to follow up.

News of the arrest of Faryion Wardrip for the murder of Tina Kimbrew spread rapidly through Wichita Falls. Three days after Wardrip's arrest, Thomas Eugene Granger, a friend of Wardrip's, contacted the Wichita Falls Police with astonishing news.

“I have information about Faryion Wardrip,” Granger told them. “He had a connection with all those girls who were killed.

“He worked at General Hospital at the time of Gibbs's and Sims's murders and knew them both. Wardrip also lived across the street from the Subs 'N Suds on Sheppard Access. Wardrip quit the General right after the Gibbs killing and moved away right after the girl at Subs 'N Suds was killed. He moved out on Airport Drive.

“Wardrip had a black-handled knife with a double edge that was six inches long. He liked boot knives,” Granger said.

Granger's statement was placed in a file to be passed up the chain of command, but somehow the statement never became part of the official investigative file on the unsolved murders. This was partially because Wichita Falls Police and the Wichita County district attorney continued to believe that they were after more than one perpetrator. The DA's office was still convinced that Danny Laughlin was responsible for killing Toni Gibbs. It was as though the DA and police had tunnel vision. Laughlin was their prime suspect and had failed a polygraph. Therefore, they disregarded or ignored evidence that pointed to any other person. Granger's statement stalled in the system. No one apparently ever investigated his claim that Wardrip may have had something to do with not only Kimbrew, whom he had confessed to killing, but the murders of Sims, Gibbs, and Blau as well. Information that may have solved the murders had fallen through the cracks.

Disturbed by the police's apparent disinterest in Wardrip as a suspect, Granger went to work for Ray Cannedy, a Wichita Falls private investigator. Although the links between Wardrip and the unsolved murders were only circumstantial, it convinced the private investigators that Wardrip should be considered a suspect in all the killings. Granger and Cannedy took their report to the police.

“I just went around asking people that both of us knew, where he lived, where he worked. I was basically looking into his past,” Granger told police. “I was thinking, ‘My God. This guy had the opportunity each time.' And he killed one girl already. He was at all the sites.”

Police dutifully took Cannedy's and Granger's report, but Granger could see that their suspicions were falling on deaf ears.

Back at Cannedy's office, Granger let off steam.

“They looked at us like we were a bunch of idiots!” Granger shouted. “It upsets me. He's getting away with all this stuff and no one is looking into it.”

Granger had cause for frustration. Even after his second statement to authorities, Wardrip was disregarded as a suspect in any of the other three women's deaths.

Police steadfastly stood by proven police procedures as a team of officers investigated the unsolved cases. They recanvassed the areas and talked again to neighbors, acquaintances, coworkers, and family. The chief of police was confident in his officers' abilities as he boasted of a homicide clearance rate that recorded nine out of eleven cases solved in 1985.

The Ellen Blau murder was one of the two unsolved cases.