Body Hunter (19 page)

Chapter Twenty-three

On the second day of Faryion Wardrip's murder trial spectators filed into the courtroom, choosing their seats much like guests at a wedding. Prosecution supporters on the right, defense backers on the left. The right side of the courtroom was nearly filled, while, except for a few reporters, Glenda Wardrip sat alone behind the defense.

As usual, Faryion Wardrip was escorted into court by deputies from the Wichita County Sheriff's Department. He had abandoned the tie he had worn the first day of court for the comfort of a red-and-white-striped, open-collared shirt and Dockers. His mood appeared solemn, until he noticed Glenda sitting two rows back.

“Mornin',” Wardrip said to Glenda with a smile. “You all right?”

Glenda nodded.

“Good,” Wardrip said.

Wardrip studied the people in the gallery, looking for new faces. He spotted Floyd and Pauline Jackson, his first wife's parents.

“What are they doing here?” Wardrip asked Dorie Glickman irritably.

“Who?” Dorie asked.

“The Jacksons. Johnna's parents,” Wardrip snapped.

“I don't know,” the defense counsel responded.

Wardrip's attention was redirected to Judge Brotherton as he entered the court, followed by the jury.

The State called Banita Harwood Robbins as their first witness of the day.

“Would you tell us where you are from and what you do, Ms. Robbins?” Macha instructed her.

The attractive, well-dressed witness replied, “I live in Flagstaff, Arizona. I've been a forensic serologist for twenty-one years. I have a BA from the University of Texas and I've had some FBI training.”

“Where were you working in 1984 and 1985?” Macha asked.

“At Southwest Institute of Forensic Science in Dallas,” Robbins said.

At Macha's request, Robbins explained testing she had performed in relationship to Terry Sims and Toni Gibbs.

In the Terry Sims case, Robbins had tested vaginal and oral smears and swabs, bed sheets, pillows, blood samples from the bathtub, a Kleenex, a bar of soap, and Sims's clothing for both blood and body fluids.

In the case of Toni Gibbs, Robbins tested vaginal and anal swabs and smears. She found semen present. Blood from four galvanized pipes, a bra, a rubber hose, a floor mat, a left shoe, a stick, and a steel angle brace were examined by Robbins, and all were found to have been splattered with type-B blood, the same type as Ms. Gibbs.

“Ms. Gibbs had sexual intercourse prior to death, both vaginally and anally,” Robbins testified. “Ms. Sims had semen present in both her mouth and vagina.”

“Did you perform any DNA testing?” Macha asked.

“No. The first case for DNA in court was in 1987. I now do DNA testing as part of my regular duties,” Robbins answered.

“No further questions, Your Honor,” Macha said. “Pass the witness.”

From his seat at the end of the defense table came John Curry's familiar response, “No questions.”

 

 

Ken Taylor slowly walked to the front of the courtroom. He appeared shaken by his mere presence in court. It had been fifteen years since his wife's death. So much had happened to him. All because Faryion Wardrip hadn't confessed to Debra's death when he admitted killing Tina Kimbrew. Taylor had lost everything dear to him; now he had to relive the nightmare for the Denton jury.

“Mr. Taylor,” Macha said, “tell the jury where you were living in 1985.”

“I lived in Fort Worth with my wife, Debra Taylor. We had been married five years. We had two girls, Tarrah, seven, Debra's daughter from a previous marriage, and Jennifer, four,” Taylor said, his voice shaky.

“What happened on March 24, 1985?” Macha asked.

Taylor told the jury about Debra wanting to go somewhere that evening with her cousin. She'd left the house after he'd gone to sleep and he had never seen her again.

“On March 25, 1985, I reported my wife was missing to the Fort Worth Police Department. On March 29, 1985, she was found dead in a field,” Taylor said.

“How old was your wife?” Macha inquired.

“She was twenty-five at the time of her death. Her date of birth was April 5, 1959,” Taylor said.

“How was your wife's body identified?” Macha asked.

“I went to the morgue to identify her,” Taylor said, his voice breaking. Taylor took off his glasses and rubbed his eyes.

“I met the police there. I viewed the body. I couldn't identify what I saw, I could only identify her from the jewelry she was wearing—her wedding rings and a necklace I had given her for Christmas,” Taylor replied.

As they watched their father break down on the stand, Tarrah and Jennifer sobbed in their seats in the gallery. One of Taylor's relatives shook uncontrollably as he tried to hold in his tears, occasionally emitting a sob that wrenched his body. Spectators speculated that the man was either Debra's father, or Ken's. Two jurors looked at the emotional members of the family with sympathy in their eyes.

“How were you treated by the police?” Macha asked.

“The Fort Worth Police Department treated me as a suspect. They interviewed me and searched my home on several occasions,” Taylor said, his voice laced with bitterness as he emphasized “several.”

“And how did that affect you?” Macha questioned.

“Her family, her father in particular, blamed me and threatened me. It was a long time before we could even talk to each other again,” Taylor said. “It was a nightmare from day one.”

The frustrating years of suspicion showed on Taylor's ruddy face. He wiped the back of his hand across his red beard and mustache; then he rubbed tears from his eyes.

“Did you know Faryion Wardrip?” Macha asked.

“No, and I doubt very much that my wife knew him,” Taylor said.

“No one was ever arrested for the murder of your wife?” Macha asked.

“True,” Taylor said softly.

When Macha passed the witness to the defense, it was obvious they wanted to get the grieving husband of Debra Taylor off the stand as quickly as possible.

“No questions,” Curry announced.

Taylor left the stand without looking at the man that had cost him his wife, his family, and fifteen years of his life.

 

 

Ray Sharp, retired from the Fort Worth Police Department after thirty-one years, was a homicide investigator at the time of Debra Taylor's death. He told the jury that he had been called to the scene at Randal Mill Road, west of Loop 820. He'd observed the scene, and coordinated with patrol and crime-scene units.

“The body was in a clump of trees one hundred and seventy-five feet south of Randal Mill Road and two hundred feet east of new road construction. At that time there was one apartment unit under construction. Nothing else was there.

“The body was bloated, decomposed, and nude. We found clothes northeast of the body, about eighty-four feet. They were laying together in a pile.

“The body was sent to the Tarrant County Medical Examiner for an autopsy,” Sharp testified.

Sharp stepped down from the witness stand and joined Macha in front of the jury. He identified aerial photos of the crime scene and pictures of the body of Debra Taylor.

“Paper sacks were put on her hands to preserve any evidence on her hands or under her nails,” Sharp explained.

All twelve jurors and two alternates remained visibly unemotional while viewing the gruesome photos of Taylor. Had they become numbed by the parade of graphic depictions of death?

“Were any weapons found at the scene?” Macha asked.

“No.”

“Was anybody ever arrested for the offense?” Macha queried.

“No.”

“Was Ken Taylor considered a suspect?” Macha asked.

“Yes.”

“Was Faryion Wardrip ever considered a suspect?” Macha questioned.

“No,” Sharp said, concluding his testimony.

 

 

A tall, handsome man with graying hair and mustache pushed open the short swinging doors that separated the court from the gallery and took his place in the witness chair.

Dr. Mark Krauss was the Deputy Chief Tarrant County Medical Examiner. A graduate of Texas A&M University, Krauss had attended Southwestern Medical School. He was a member of the American Board of Pathologists and had performed more than ten thousand autopsies.

After referring to his notes, Dr. Krauss began to tell the jury about his autopsy of Debra Taylor.

“The body was sixty-four and one-half inches, one hundred and ten to one hundred and twenty pounds. When I received the body, it was nude. There were two rings on her left hand.

“There was moderate decomposition with considerable insect infestation. She was not recognizable. We identified her by dental records.

“On my external examination I found that the scalp, right ear, face, and neck had received some trauma that seemed to have accelerated the decomposition. There were no lacerations. There wasn't much tissue behind the right ear, which indicated some type of head injury. There were bruises to both sides of the face and hemorrhaging on both sides of the neck and thyroid gland. There was a blunt-force injury—something hitting her, or her head striking something.

“The cause of death was manual strangulation,” Krauss said.

Tears poured from the eyes of Taylor's loved ones. The man who had cried during Ken Taylor's testimony sobbed, his body shaking violently and, yet, not making a sound.

“Oxygen deprivation must be five to ten minutes, maybe fifteen minutes to cause death. A minimum of five to seven minutes. In thirty seconds, you could lose consciousness.

“There are two types of strangulation, manual or with ligature. This death was caused by manual strangulation,” Dr. Krauss said.

In answer to an inquiry by Macha, Dr. Krauss told the jury that Debra Taylor's genitals were so infested with larva that he could not tell if she had had sex before her death.

When the district attorney passed the witness to the defense, there were again no questions.

The jury had heard the grim details of three murders. Witness testimony, still photos, and videotape assaulted their sensitivities. As each victim's plight was presented, the twelve member panel, plus the two alternates, could be seen physically slumping farther down in their seats. The body count seemed to be pressing them under. Only time would tell how they would handle the weight of two more victims.

Chapter Twenty-four

As testimony continued on the second day of the trial, Janie Ball was called to testify for the State. The forty-two-year-old mother from San Antonio, Texas, had lived in Wichita Falls in 1985, and had been the best friend of Ellen Blau.

Janie told the jury that, although she was seven years Ellen's senior, the two women had become close friends while they both worked at Bennigan's Restaurant. They had spent a lot of time together and Ellen had visited Janie and her husband, Danny, in their apartment, a four-unit, two-story complex on Bell Street.

Barry Macha approached Ball holding a photo in his hand.

“Is this a photograph of Ellen Blau?” Macha asked.

Janie answered in a soft, low voice, “Yes.”

Janie Ball described Ellen riding her bike everywhere she went: to work, home, even in the rain. “She even named it Trigger,” Janie said with a smile. “Then she got a Volkswagen Rabbit convertible.”

“Would you describe Ellen Blau? How tall was she and how much did she weigh?” Macha asked.

“My guess is that Ellen was five-foot, three-inches tall and weighed about one hundred and twenty pounds. She had dark brown hair, almost black, and brown eyes,” Janie Ball said, fondly remembering her friend.

“Can you tell us what happened on September 20, 1985?” Macha asked.

“In the morning I received a phone call from work that Ellen was supposed to have opened the store, Subs N' Suds. She had worked the night before. She didn't come home, and she was supposed to open between nine and nine-thirty. I was worried. We had an agreement that she'd give me a call if she was not coming home so that I wouldn't worry,” Janie explained, her voice quivering slightly.

Ball explained to the Denton jury that Subs N' Suds was close to Sheppard Air Force Base. She'd called to make certain that Ellen was scheduled to open that morning.

“Ellen was very responsible,” Janie said. “She would have been at work. I was very, very worried.

“I got a call from a bread delivery man, who serviced the Subs N' Suds. He said he had seen Ellen's car parked at the Country Mart. I told him I would be right there.

“I found the car parked in front of the store on Burkburnett Road, with the keys in it, her pocketbook, and a spot of blood on the driver's seat.

“I was very upset at that point. Someone else called the police while I called my husband. I organized a search around the city,” Ball said.

Taking a deep breath and brushing back her frosted brown hair, Janie added, “Her body was found on October 10, 1985.”

The jury listened without expression as they heard about yet another young Wichita Falls woman who had been killed in the mid-1980s.

“I understand you keep in contact with Ellen's parents,” Macha stated.

“Yes, they live in Gilford, Connecticut. They're elderly. Mr. Blau has a heart condition that keeps him from being here. Ellen was their only daughter.

“They lived in Saddle River, New Jersey, before moving to Connecticut when Ellen was in her late teens. Ellen was very intelligent. She attended the Choate School. JFK went there.

“Ellen had become involved with a man in Connecticut who was from Texas. She followed him here. Her parents disapproved,” Janie told the court.

“Can you identify this photo?” Macha asked.

“It's the apartment where we lived in Wichita Falls. We lived in apartment D on the far left, the second floor,” Janie said, identifying the photo for Macha and the jury.

Ball continued her testimony by telling the court that Faryion Wardrip had lived on the bottom right of the same apartment complex, in apartment A. He'd lived with his wife and a small child and his wife had been pregnant at the time.

Ellen Blau often visited the Balls at their apartment and it was very possible she had visited them while Wardrip was living there. She recalled that Wardrip had made her extremely uncomfortable.

“We talked about him once,” Ball told the jury. “I told her if he was out of his apartment not to talk to him, but to come right up.”

“Can you identify Faryion Wardrip for the court?” Macha inquired.

“Yes, he's sitting there,” Janie Ball said, pointing to the defendant. “He looks older, but his eyes are distinct.”

“Dating back to the late 1980s, was anyone ever arrested for the murder of Ellen Blau?” Macha questioned her.

“No.”

“Did Mr. and Mrs. Blau run an ad in the local paper twice a year offering a reward?” Macha asked.

“Yes. There was a photo of Ellen and a reward for information. It ran on her birthdate and on the date she disappeared,” Janie answered.

Macha handed his witness a copy of a newspaper ad and asked her to identify it as one that had run soliciting information concerning the disappearance and death of Ellen Blau.

“How has your life been since Ellen's death?” Macha asked.

“Ellen was the kindest person. She was nonjudgmental. She always wanted to be liked. It's been extremely difficult since she died. I spoke to her the day she died. I told her, ‘If you ever die on me, I'll kill you,' ” Janie said, with tears filling her eyes. “I have a little girl named after her. She lives on in my life.”

As the jury listened to Janie Ball's heartfelt words about her dear friend and namesake of her daughter, they'd sunk even lower in their seats. The weightiness of Ellen Blau had been added to the growing victim count.

Following Ball's emotional testimony, Judge Brotherton called a well-timed recess for lunch.

 

 

During the lunch recess, Ken Taylor stood at the entrance of the Denton County courthouse and spoke to Dana Byerley of KFDX-TV.

“What do you think about Wardrip's confession?” the young reporter asked during her interview.

“It's really nice to be vindicated,” Taylor said. “I think Mr. Wardrip should be very glad these guys got him before I did,” he added bitterly.

“How do you feel right now?” Dana questioned.

“It's a great relief he got caught. I've lived with it every day for fourteen years. The image in the morgue is burned into my brain,” Taylor said with sorrow.

 

 

Before the afternoon session of court convened, Faryion Wardrip waited at the defense table to be joined by his attorneys. Nervously, he tinkered with his chair.

“Looks like Tim the Tool Man is adjusting the chair,” Dorie Glickman told Dana Rice as she and her investigator approached their places in court.

“Faryion, quit fuckin' with stuff!” Dana snapped.

Rice's patience was wearing thin. When Wardrip wasn't asking for juice or milk shakes, he was constantly joking with the deputies, fiddling around with papers on the desk, or demanding she get his laundry done.

Wardrip's perfectionism was at its height when it came to his clothes. His shirts, even his socks, had to be laundered to his specifications. Just that morning, when she had picked up his laundry, the jailer had reminded her, “He's particular about his socks.”

“He's particular about everything,” Rice had shot back.
Everything except those ugly shirts,
she had thought.

Dana Rice had taken away two of the shirts Wardrip had picked out to wear during his trial, but the remaining ones were equally unattractive to the young investigator whose job it was to see that he arrived in court each day properly attired.

Wardrip and his defense team settled down as the jury entered the courtroom. Barry Macha called Sheriff Tom Callahan to the stand.

Except for his graying hair, Callahan looked much like he had in 1985 when he investigated the death of Ellen Blau. His large belly hung over the top of his dark blue suit pants, bracketed by his unbuttoned jacket.

Callahan, then a deputy with the sheriff's department, had been in charge of the criminal investigation of the death of Blau. Since the news that he and his department had failed to follow up on a lead that Wardrip had claimed to have known Blau at the time of his arrest in 1986, Callahan had been criticized by the media and his lack of action scrutinized by fellow lawmen.

Callahan told the jury that a decomposing body had been found under a mesquite tree beside the wall of a stock pond in rural Wichita County. There was one sock on the body. A pile of clothes, including blue jeans, tennis shoes, one sock, a bra, and a yellow-and-white T-shirt, was found on the far side of the pond.

Again Macha requested the permission of the court to show a crime-scene video, this one relating to the case of Ellen Blau.

As Macha rolled the television in front of the jury box so that jurors would have a clear view of the screen, three sheriff's deputies moved in front of the media room window to obscure the vision of reporters. The press was furious. How could they report what was shown to the jury if they were unable to see it themselves? Who had ordered the window blocked, and why?

Reporters later discovered that Judge Brotherton had issued the order out of anger when a Wichita Falls television station aired film of an earlier crime-scene clip, one in which the nude body of one of the victims had indiscriminately appeared. He was taking no chances that another victim would be so irreverently displayed.

As the Blau crime-scene video rolled, jurors saw a blackish body with skeletal head. Just like Gibbs's body, Blau's had been eaten away by animals. Flies swarmed around the decaying corpse.

Macha pushed the cart holding the TV and VCR away and asked that still photos of the crime scene be introduced into evidence. As the defense and Wardrip looked at the photos, the jury scanned the gallery.

Ken Taylor's mother, a prim, neatly dressed older woman with gray hair, put her arm around her son and rubbed his shoulder. Appearing at the trial of Debra's assailant was unmistakably difficult for Taylor whose eyes remained filled with tears most of the time.

Obviously absent from the afternoon trial session was Glenda Wardrip. Speculation was that the details of Ellen Blau's death were more than the conservative Christian could handle.

After the defense announced that they had no objection to the photos being placed into evidence, Macha asked Callahan, as he had other investigators, to join him in front of the jury box to describe the pictures.

The sheriff adjusted his glasses and began to tell jurors what each photo depicted at the location where Blau's body was found in 1985. The jury showed no visible signs of their reactions.

Janie Ball couldn't look up. She sat with her head bowed and her eyes closed. Not until Sheriff Callahan returned to the witness seat did she again focus on the trial.

“You conducted a vigorous investigation, but you weren't able to arrest anyone. No suspects?” Macha asked.

“That's right,” Callahan replied, not mentioning the communication sent to his office by the Wichita Falls police concerning Wardrip's initial statement.

“No further questions,” Macha said, already returning to his seat.

“No questions,” Curry declared.

Outside the courtroom, Callahan refused to answer questions from reporters concerning the 1986 Wardrip statement.

Back in the courtroom, the previous confused expressions seen on the faces of the jurors when victim after victim had been introduced into court were not evident after testimony concerning Ellen Blau began. It appeared the jury had finally realized that they weren't dealing with a man who had committed one horrible crime, but with a person who had repeatedly preyed on young women and viciously stripped them of their lives. The only question seemed to be, how many victims were they going to see?

The horrors that the women Wardrip was accused of killing had suffered had been vividly brought to life in the courtroom by the numerous forensic pathologists. Drs. Stilwell and Krauss had described the horrific deaths of Sims, Gibbs, and Taylor. Then the State called to the stand Dr. Fielder.

The petite doctor, dressed in a conservative dark suit and white blouse, began her testimony by telling the court that the body of Ellen Blau had been so badly decomposed that dental records had to be utilized in order to make a positive identification.

“On my external examination, I found the body was badly decomposed. Those changes were in part caused by the warm weather,” Dr. Fielder said. “The skin was tough. The body was exposed to animal predators and there appeared insect changes in the body.

“Animals had eaten away at the left leg and upper portion of the arm. The body had been exposed for twenty-one days in an open field. The changes in the body were consistent with a death in September. There wasn't much skin on the face and only some on the right side of the body. There was a hole in the left side of the neck by the blood vessel. The outside surface of the skin showed no clear evidence of injury.”

“What do you mean by no evidence of injury?” Macha asked the pathologist.

“There were no foreign objects such as bullets or knives,” Dr. Fielder replied. “There were no broken or cut bones. The cartilage in the body was intact. There were animal artifacts found in the body, including in the genital area. It was obvious that something happened to the body before decomposing.”

“Did you take any swab samples from the body?” Macha asked. The seasoned prosecutor, who tried almost exclusively capital cases, was methodical in his approach to presenting evidence he wanted the jury to hear.

Dr. Fielder looked over the top of her glasses and stared at the prosecutor. “Trying to take swabs where nothing was there didn't make sense,” Dr. Fielder said, referring to the condition of Blau's body.

“Could you determine what caused the death of Ellen Blau?” Macha continued.