Vogel Reasonable Doubt

A Shocking Story of Lust and Murder in the American Heartland
1. Auflage 2018
ISBN: 978-1-5439-2868-6
Verlag: BookBaby
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: Adobe DRM (»Systemvoraussetzungen)

E-Book, Englisch, 500 Seiten

A mother and her three young children are found murdered in their beds. The apparent weapons, an ax and butcher knife, lay nearby. A month later the husband and father, who was away on a business trip when the bodies were found, is accused of the killings and faces trial on a case based on completely circumstantial evidence. A New York Times best-seller, this book has now been updated with additional content and photos. Readers often comment they must remind themselves this story is real, that truth indeed is stranger than fiction.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Vogel, Steve

Leseproben

One Like his father and grandfather, Mike Hibbens was a Bloomington, Illinois, policeman. Nothing in the youngest Hibbens’s eleven years as a patrolman (or anything his dad or grandpa had taught him) would prepare him for what he would see the night of November 7, 1983. Hibbens was only a half hour away from ending his 3 to 11 p.m. shift in a roving squad car on the city’s east side. Already he was technically outside his patrol area, just minutes away from driving back to police headquarters, filling out some routine paper work and calling it a night. Election results were being broadcast over the squad car’s AM radio as he drove past Evergreen Cemetery on the city’s near south side. If it had been daylight, he might have been able to spot the large stone that marks the grave of Bloomington’s most famous citizen, Adlai Stevenson II. But Mike Hibbens wasn’t thinking about the former United Nations ambassador and unsuccessful presidential candidate or about tombstones. He was ready to end what had been a quiet and boring shift. “Two-adam-three.” The female radio dispatcher’s voice was almost as crisp as the air outside. Damn, Hibbens thought to himself. He hoped it wasn’t some assignment that would add to tonight’s paperwork. He responded with his call number, hoping that it wouldn’t become apparent that he was outside his assigned patrol area a full half hour before shift-change time. “Two-adam-three, go to 313 Carl Drive. See if you can make contact with the people there. Some relatives haven’t been able to reach the mother and children there. The husband’s out of town.” The dispatcher’s tone was neutral, but Hibbens knew what she was thinking. He’d been on dozens of calls like this. Sometimes a phone was out of order. Sometimes a traveling husband was simply having the police check up on his errant wife. Very rarely was there anything even approaching a problem. Hibbens had to think for a moment. Carl Drive? Oh yes. Short street, nice neighborhood. Near the edge of town. “Adam-three, ten-four,” he responded. He wouldn’t waste any time getting across Veterans Parkway back into his assigned area and onto Carl Drive. It was nearly quitting time. Detective Dennis O’Brien, already traveling Veterans Parkway, heard the call. His interest was stirred. He had been at police headquarters four hours earlier and vaguely remembered hearing some conversation then about someone concerned about the well-being of some people on Carl Drive. Now O’Brien radioed headquarters, asking whether any of the Carl Drive neighbors had a key to the house. The answer was negative. O’Brien messaged Hibbens that he’d meet him at the address. Hibbens pulled onto Carl Drive, only then remembering that this was the street the city manager lived on. He watched for 313. There it was, a new two-story, right across the street from the city manager’s house. Hibbens turned off his squad car’s lights as he pulled into the driveway leading to the two-car garage. “Adam-three, ten-twenty-three.” He let headquarters know he had arrived. And in decent time. The dispatcher acknowledged. As he stepped out of the squad and into the chilly night, Hibbens sized up the big brown house, grabbed his portable police radio, zipped his jacket, positioned his holster and flipped on his flashlight. He stepped toward the front door. Through a window he could see the gentle glow of a light. Night-light, probably. He walked to his left around the house, shining his light on windows. Everything seemed okay. He stepped onto a screened-in porch at the rear of the house. Astroturf on the porch floor led to a sliding door to the house. He tested it. Hibbens involuntarily sucked in his breath. The door was unlocked. It was a double gasp. He caught the ray of another flashlight. Two men had just appeared on the porch. They sensed they had startled the policeman. One of them spoke. “My sister lives here, and this is my brother-in-law. We’re worried there might be something wrong.” “Okay.” Hibbens hoped the slight quiver in his voice wasn’t too apparent. “Since you’re relatives, you can go in with me.” Just then, O’Brien’s voice sounded over Hibbens’s radio. The detective had arrived. “I’m around back,” Hibbens answered. When O’Brien stepped onto the porch, Hibbens explained who the two strangers were and that he had found the sliding door closed but unlocked. O’Brien turned toward the two men. He had an off feeling. “You wait here in case there’s something you don’t want to see.” The detective sergeant stepped through the door first. His flashlight lit the dining half of a kitchen area. Hibbens, a step behind, flashed his light to the left, illuminating a large family room. Some cabinets and drawers on either side of a fireplace were partly open. The two policemen walked to their right into the kitchen. It was a bulb in the hood over the kitchen stove that provided some light. O’Brien continued straight into a dining room. Hibbens turned left into a short hallway. He shined his light into a small bathroom. Cabinet doors were open there, too. Hibbens continued toward the front door and foyer where he met O’Brien. “Some things are kind of messed up back here,” Hibbens said. His tones were hushed. More than once he had entered people’s homes to check on their safety, only to find them asleep in their beds. He was hoping to avoid the day that someone awoke and put a shotgun in his face. “Back here, too,” O’Brien said softly. In the dining room and living room, O’Brien had seen some cabinet doors open, a few things out of place. Not so much like a burglary as a hurried effort to locate something. Both men turned toward the carpeted staircase. Hibbens, the beam from his flashlight preceding him by only a step or two, started his ascent. Suddenly an overhead light flashed on. In the moment it took for Hibbens’s eyes to adjust, he presumed a resident at the top of the stairs had flicked on the light to see who was invading the house. He quickly realized O’Brien had turned it on. Hibbens secretly wished he hadn’t. Hibbens would rather check the family’s safety and quietly exit the house as he had done at other times. A hallway light was certain to wake the family. But O’Brien was the senior officer on the scene and Hibbens wasn’t about to express his regrets. Besides, the light was on. At the top of the stairs, a door to a large bedroom was halfway open. Without entering the room, Hibbens could see a form in the bed. “Somebody’s asleep in there,” Hibbens said. As O’Brien stepped into that room, Hibbens walked to his left, down a hallway. At the end of it, he shined his light into what was obviously a child’s room. It was messy. Toys on the floor, along with some rolls of wallpaper. The drawers in a bureau were all pulled out, the weight causing the bureau to tip forward off its back legs. The bed was unmade, but there was no one in it. Hibbens turned his attention to another bedroom on the right. The hallway light was enough for him to see twin beds with figures in them. He moved his flashlight’s beam along the floor up to the foot of the far bed, being careful not to shine the light directly into the faces of any sleeping persons. The white bedspread reflected the light, and then he noticed it. Blood. Just a few specks at the foot of the bed. But as he moved the beam toward the head of the bed, there was more. And then he could see a girl, perhaps nine years old, her long, dark hair tied in pigtails. Hibbens quickly moved his light to the closer bed. Two more children in a blood-soaked bed. On the right side, another girl, this one about seven years old. She lay in a sleeping position, too. Her face was a bloody fright. And to her right, a younger boy. Even more horrible. Hibbens tried to find his voice. “Got a problem down here.” Hibbens didn’t sound like himself. His voice cracked. “There’s something you ought to see.” O’Brien walked down the hall, and Hibbens used his flashlight to scan the room. “Jesus Christ!” O’Brien faced Hibbens. Hibbens’s look told O’Brien that he wanted to know what O’Brien had found in the other bedroom, but was afraid to ask. “She’s dead.” O’Brien used the butt end of his flashlight to turn on the bedroom light. And then and only then did the absolute gore of the situation become apparent. The flashlight had illuminated only small sections of the scene at a time. But now under a full light, the macabre scene swept over the seasoned policemen like a foul wind. The white walls were spattered in red. The beds were soaked with blood. And the children. Hibbens and O’Brien, even with sidelong glances, had to swallow hard when they looked at them. They thought of their own young children and worried about their safety. The boy was the worst. His face looked like it had been attacked by an animal. The whole lower left side hung open, as if it had a second mouth. A cut tongue and smashed teeth were visible through the wide, bloody opening. The damage was almost as great on the other side of his face,...