The Best American Crime Reporting 2008 (32 page)

“The question to us is, why was Robbin murdered one way and all the others another way?” Jack asks. “For all these other victims, he used a gun. There's no passion in a gun. How could a total stranger come up and stab her 40 times? You have to have a lot of anger.”

Genelle, for her part, is convinced someone hired Urdiales to rob their daughter and didn't intend for him to murder her, only scare her into leaving the campus. “Brad Gates came to our house and told us this was robbery gone wrong,” she says. “If you want money, you aren't going to go to a community college at 10 o'clock at night and maybe there's a rich student walking around. It's so stupid. It doesn't make any sense at all. And it's not the way it happened.”

 

N
ICK
S
CHOU
has been covering crime and justice for
OC Weekly
since 1996 with stories that have resulted in the federal indictment and incarceration of Huntington Beach mayor Pamela Houchen, and the release from prison of wrongly convicted individuals. His writing has appeared in the
Los Angeles Times, LA Weekly, San Francisco Bay Guardian,
and other alternative weeklies. He is also the author of the book
Kill the Messenger: How the CIA's Crack Cocaine-Controversy Destroyed Journalist Gary Webb
(Nation Books, 2006). He lives in Long Beach, California, with his wife and son.

Coda

The Orange County District Attorney officially has yet to extradite Andrew Urdiales to face trial for the murder of Robbin Brandley and four other California women. He remains on death row in Illinois, which has a moratorium on the death penalty. Unofficially, the DA seems to be hoping that the state reinstates its death penalty so it can avoid the expense and (for Urdiales) publicity and attention provided by a high-profile trial in Orange County.

FROM THE
Cleveland Free Times

T
HE
D
EATH
H
OUSE
at Lucasville Prison has a room for witnesses of executions, divided by a partition. When Akron
Beacon Journal
reporter Phil Trexler was ushered in one morning just over five years ago, he noticed three men sitting together on one side. Trexler had covered the case of the condemned man, Robert Buell, so he knew who these men were: the father and brothers of Krista Harrison, whose murder 20 years earlier, at age 11, was the crime the state was avenging that day.

On the other side of the partition sat Patricia Millhoff, Buell's attorney, and the Rev. Ernie Sanders, his pastor. Millhoff was crying. Not 10 minutes before, she'd had to tell Buell that his request for a stay had been denied. She'd gotten to know Buell well. As the appeals process had wound down, there'd been little in the way of law to discuss, so they talked about mundane things. That morning's Diane Rehm show on NPR. Or what books Buell was currently reading aloud into a recorder for blind people.

Buell always insisted that he had not murdered the girl. Millhoff believed him.

Sanders also was grieving. He'd known Buell much longer, 17 years. Buell had heard Sanders speak at the prison, and wrote the reverend a letter, asking him to visit. Buell had a lot to confess—the rapes of two women, at least—but Sanders' God has grace enough for that. Grace enough to forgive even the murder of the child, he'd told Buell. But Buell never sought forgiveness for that. And in Sanders' mind, he didn't have to. Sitting there that night, Sanders believed he knew who really killed Krista.

The last time they spoke, Buell had said, “You were right all along.”

The chairs on both sides of the partition faced a window that overlooked a gurney. On the other side, someone drew a curtain and when it was reopened, Buell was lying there, strapped down, facing the ceiling. He appeared calm. An IV tube snaked out of his arm and disappeared behind a wall.

Trexler observed Buell's Adam's apple bob up and down, up and down, counting off the seconds like a swallowed metronome. The witness room was silent except for the faint scratching of reporters' pencils on paper.

Buell was asked if he had any last words. He did, for Krista's parents.

“Jerry and Shirley,” he said, though Shirley wasn't there, “I didn't kill your daughter. The prosecutor knows that…and they left the real killer out there on the streets to kill again and again and again.”

Soon after Buell finished, Trexler noticed that Buell's breathing appeared more labored. Buell closed his eyes and died.

Buell's typewriter and small TV went home with Millhoff; he'd left them to her because the prison wouldn't let him donate them to fellow inmates. His personal collection of court transcripts, police files, letters, handwritten notes and newspaper clippings, collected over 18 years, left with Sanders. The contents of the box do not reflect well on Buell; there seems little reason to doubt that he belonged in prison. But they also raise a strange
possibility: that he was telling the truth when he said he didn't kill Krista Harrison. And that he knew who did.

 

I
N THE EARLY
1980
S,
someone was killing little girls in Ohio.

The first incident was the abduction and murder of 12-year-old Tina Harmon in the fall of 1981. Tina was a cute, round-faced girl from the small town of Creston with shoulder-length hair and a taste for Camel Light cigarettes. Back then, the only real entertainment was the game room at the Union 76 Truck Stop in Lodi, a few miles away. Tina was known to hang out there whenever she could hitch a ride.

According to police reports, on Thursday, October 29, 1981, Tina got a ride into Creston from her father's girlfriend, who dropped her off in front of a convenience store with a group of friends. Tina bought a fudgesicle and bummed another ride from her teenage brother, who took her only as far as the next Lawson's. Eventually, she made it to Lodi; several witnesses, including a local detective, remembered seeing her there that evening. Tina was last spotted in the presence of an unshaven man in a jean jacket, who appeared to be in his early 20s.

The girl's body was found five days later in Bethlehem Township, about 40 miles from her home, dumped beside an oil well in plain sight of anyone driving down the road. She was fully clothed and had been placed neatly on the ground. She'd been raped and strangled shortly after she was abducted. Oil well workers who had visited that access road the day before had seen nothing, and this supported the detectives' theory that Tina's body had been stored someplace else before being placed in the field.

In her pocket they found a book of matches from the Union 76 Truck Stop. On her clothes, the coroner found dog hair and several “trilobal polyester” fibers the color of nutmeg.

Less than a year later—July 17, 1982, a stormy Saturday—Krista Harrison was snatched from a baseball field across the street
from her home. She had been collecting cans with a 12-year-old friend, Roy, who later told police that around 5 p.m., a dark-colored van pulled into the park. The van had bubble-shaped windows, black seats and a roof vent.

The driver climbed out and approached Krista. The man was white, and looked to be about 25 to 35 years old. He was skinny, with a mustache and dark brown hair that curled near his shoulders; he looked Italian, the boy thought. The man said something to Krista and she went and sat on the bleachers overlooking the diamond. The man then sat down next to the girl and reached underneath her blouse. When Krista started to cry, the man whispered something into her ear. Roy could not hear what was said, but Krista walked to the man's van, opened the driver's-side door, and climbed between the front bucket seats and sat on the floor. The man climbed in too and quickly sped away.

Witnesses later told police that a strange man resembling Krista's abductor had attended one of her summer softball games, photographing her with a 35mm camera. Classmates told police that on the afternoon Krista was abducted, she had gone to the Village Snack Shop game room and when she left, a strange man had blocked her way and tried to get her to dance with him. The man had dark hair that was curly on the ends.

And in the weeks leading up to her abduction, there had been several prank calls placed to the Harrison residence when Krista was home.

Krista was missing for less than a week. On July 23, two turtle trappers discovered her body next to an abandoned shed in a field in nearby Holmes County. She was fully clothed and wrapped in plastic. The coroner discovered carpet fibers on her, the same trilobal polyester fibers that had been found on Tina Harmon. Like Tina, Krista had been strangled to death shortly after being kidnapped, but her body had been stored somewhere before being moved to the field. Like Tina, she had been sexually assaulted, possibly with a vibrator.

The next day, a second crime scene was located in West Salem. In the weeds next to the road, police found a green plastic garbage bag covered in Krista's blood and hair. Beside the bag was a Budweiser blanket and pieces of blood-stained cardboard.

Then, a second sweep of the area where Krista's body had been found turned up a pair of dirty jeans, spotted with blood and specks of powder-blue paint. There was a hole in the left knee. A man's plaid shirt was also found.

The evidence was sent to the lab at the Bureau of Criminal Identification and Investigation, which determined that the bag and box had once contained van seats that had been ordered through Sears. And on the bag was a fingerprint.

Sears provided detectives with the names of everyone in the area who had ordered similar seats. The list was long, but every name was checked out. Bob Buell was on the list and was interviewed, but the detective did not feel that Buell was being deceptive and so he did not become the focus of their investigation.

The BCI&I lab also confirmed that the fibers found on Krista matched those found on Tina. The FBI commissioned a criminal profile of the perpetrator by Special Agent John Douglas, whose pioneering studies of the habits of serial killers inspired the book
The Silence of the Lambs
. Krista's killer should be in his early to late 20s, Douglas said. He is a latent homosexual.

“When employed, he seeks menial or unskilled trades,” wrote Douglas. “While he considers himself a ‘macho man,' he has deep-rooted feelings of personal inadequacies. Your offender has a maximum of a high school education. When he is with children, he feels superior, in control, non-threatened. While your offender may not be from the city where the victim was abducted he certainly has been there many times before (i.e. visiting friends, relatives, employment). He turned towards alcohol and/or drugs to escape from the realities of the crime.”

Detectives from several jurisdictions and FBI special agents worked diligently to find the man who killed Krista and Tina.
But the evidence could not be matched to a likely suspect, and each new lead only led them to a different dead end. Then it happened again.

On Saturday, June 25, 1983, 10-year-old Debbie Smith disappeared from a street fair in Massillon. Later that day, Debbie called home. She sounded upset, but would not say where she was. On August 6 a canoeist found Debbie's body on the banks of the Tuscarawas River. She had been raped. She had most likely been stabbed, though the body also showed signs of blunt force trauma. Melted wax was found on her body, and the candles from which it had come were recovered nearby.

 

T
HESE MURDERS WERE STILL
on the minds of police and area residents two months later when Franklin Township police received a chilling call from a Doylestown resident. There was a shaved, naked woman with a handcuff attached to one wrist standing in her kitchen, the caller said. The woman had shown up on her doorstep, claiming that she had been held captive in the house across the street—the little ranch house owned by Bob Buell.

The victim was a 28-year-old woman from Salem. She worked at a gas station, and on the night of October 16, 1983, she had been painting the office floor when a middle-aged man came up behind her with a gun and ordered her into his van. He pushed her between the front seats and handcuffed her hands behind her back. Then, he drove her to his house, into an attached garage and told her to go into the bedroom and undress. Inside, the man handcuffed her to a leather bench and spent the rest of the night raping, torturing and degrading the woman in increasingly vile and unique ways. When it was over, he shaved her head and tied her to his bed. In the morning he went to work, promising to return around lunchtime.

But the woman escaped, and when Buell returned home, a
Franklin Township cop was waiting. Buell was arrested and charged with multiple counts of rape and kidnapping.

At the time, Buell was 42 years old. He had a college degree and was employed by the city of Akron, writing loans for the Planning Department. He was dating an attorney. He had a daughter at Kent State. Those who knew him described a neat, clean, orderly man, almost to the point of obsessive-compulsive disorder. He didn't exactly fit the FBI's profile of their child killer.

But when other agencies got word of Buell's arrest and recognized his name from the list of men who had purchased van seats from Sears, police descended upon his home with an array of search warrants. They found everything they were looking for, and more.

In the master bedroom, they found all the evidence they needed to confirm the rape victim's story.

In a guest bedroom, painted powder-blue, detectives discovered a roll of carpet the color of nutmeg. The fibers were trilobal polyester and matched fibers found on the bodies of Tina Harmon and Krista Harrison. In the closet were jeans with a hole worn into the left knee—identical to the pair found near Krista's body. They also found dog hairs that matched those found on Tina, a newspaper clipping on the abduction of Debbie Smith, and candles of the same brand that were found near Debbie's body.

Investigators took Buell's van too, a 1978 maroon Dodge with new black seats from Sears. Inside was more of that same nutmeg carpeting.

Police put Buell's picture into a lineup which was shown to witnesses. Several people who had attended Krista's last softball game identified Buell as a stranger they saw watching the game. A check of Buell's timecards revealed he had taken time off from work the day Krista's body was dumped.

As Buell's face became a front-page and TV news staple, other women came forward claiming they had been abducted and raped
by him, then released. One woman from West Virginia told a grim story almost identical to the Salem victim's, down to being handcuffed in the bedroom so that Buell could go to work.

But all of these women were in their late 20s or older. So FBI Special Agent Bill Callis commissioned a second criminal profile to help explain what is referred to as “the missing link” between Buell's practice of raping and releasing grown women and his presumed taste for killing young girls. Serial killers tend to stick to one sex and age group and tend to escalate in violence over time; they generally don't start just letting victims go. This second report was not prepared by John Douglas, but by another profiler in the FBI's Behavioral Science Unit. It blamed Buell's mother.

Buell pleaded no contest to the rape charges and was sentenced to 121 years in prison for those crimes. He was only charged with one murder, Krista's, even though police believe he murdered Tina Harmon and Debbie Smith and maybe more. But as one detective put it, “How many times do you need to kill a man?” Buell was convicted of Krista's murder on April 4, 1984. The jury sentenced him to die.

 

M
ARTIN
F
RANTZ WAS
assistant prosecutor for Wayne County during Buell's lengthy trial and played a significant role in sending the Akron city employee to the Death House. Today, Frantz is county prosecutor and remembers the case well, down to the names of eyewitnesses, 23 years later. He has no doubt that Buell killed those girls.