Born to Lose (61 page)

After retiring in 1983, investigator Bill Baker taught a criminology course at Allegany Community College. Speaking of Hoss, Baker told reporter Suter Kegg, “I used this merciless killer as an example of the stand I have long taken on the need for capital punishment. The horrible episode overwhelmed the tri-state area and my steadfast position in dealing with cold-blood killers has been reaffirmed.” Bill is an active ninety years old and continues to read his two to three books a week. He and Jean, his wife of fifty-five years, stay busy with family, the theater, and travel.

Bob McGrogan has been dead since 1993. Due to his prosecution-friendly testimony in the Hoss/Peterson trial, he was eventually granted an early release from prison. Considering the many years he had lived behind bars, the violence he had seen—and himself had perpetrated—and his advancing age, one could be excused for thinking McGrogan would walk a better path. Yet, while not officially charged, he was accused of molesting an elderly mentally challenged woman and of the attempted sexual assault of a younger woman. Although he died a free man, according to unconfirmed information he had brushes with the law again in connection with drug charges. He died alone in a hospital, such an unknown that hospital officials had to find somebody to identify the body. He is buried in a Greensburg, Pennsylvania, cemetery in a pauper's grave. When a woman who knew McGrogan learned of his death, she told this author her first thought was, “This world is now a better place.”

In a companion story, restauranteur Fred Warner, the man who hung Hoss in effigy during the search for Linda and Lori Mae and the manhunt for Hoss, said that the national publicity over the 1993 abduction and murder of twelve-year-old Polly Klass stirred bitter memories of the crime against the Peugeots. Warner sent old clippings of Cumberland's tragedy, along with a letter of sympathy, to Polly's father, Marc Klaas. In August 2006, with plentiful accomplishments and laurels, Fred passed away at age eighty-two. Opened in 1928 but having closed after Fred's death, the famous
Warner's German Restaurant was reopened by family in 2010. His wife Marian died in the morning on Thanksgiving 2010.

. . .

“I seen a young girl's body in a well.” These were the startling words heard in March 1995 by Chief Spencer Johansen of Colfax County and Sheriff Marvin Rutledge of Livingston County, Illinois. “It was back in ‘69,” said the informant, whom authorities declined to identify, “when I seen the girl, dead. I was out huntin' south of Fairbury when I come across a well. The lid was partially off, and when I looked in, that's when I seen the body of a child.”

The man said he made the discovery only days after he'd heard media reports that a kidnapper had been in Fairbury with a little girl taken from Maryland. “I didn't come forward back then,” the man told the sheriff, “because the cops suspected me in some burglaries and I thought they might think I had somethin' to do with what they'd find in that well. But now my health is failin' me. Maybe I got a few years, maybe not, but I don't want to go to my grave holdin' this secret in me.” Authorities were quick to think the child could be Lori Mae Peugeot.

Residents of Fairbury, Illinois, had long wondered about this little girl. FBI agents had caused quite a stir when they came to their town to work with local officials to find the girl. With information gotten from Hoss after his capture, investigators had established that Hoss, with Lori Mae Peugeot, had spent the night of September 24, 1969, in Fairbury. A motel clerk and a gas station attendant definitely saw the child with her kidnapper. After the pair left town the next morning, though, as the
Fairbury Blade
later reported, the child was never seen again. Locals presumed the body was still in or around Fairbury.

Led to the well twenty-six years later, workers dug a deep rectangle around it to a depth of twenty feet. At the bottom—bones! After analysis, though, Sheriff Rutledge reported, “We found only animal remains and we're confident there were no human bones down in that well.”

Still, was Lori Mae Peugeot in Fairbury? Maybe, just maybe, she was. At least her soul. In 2003, high schooler Marta Hidel was working at the library in Fairbury. One early June evening, her duties took her to the basement. “Downstairs was dim but not dark,” recounted Marta,

And I saw a little girl run around a corner into another room. I called out but when I looked into the room there was no one there. After a minute I again saw a glimpse of her entering a room I knew had only one door, but
no one was there. I
know
I saw a small girl go in the room … but no one was there. Three other librarians have felt strange when in the basement and we came to the conclusion the little girl could be a ghost. Because big news is rare in our small town, we were able to find out who the girl may be. We think she is Lori Mae Peugeot, kidnapped by Stanley Hoss in 1969. In a newspaper picture we saw, Lori Mae had on the same type of clothing and the same exact shoes and socks as was seen on our possible ghost.

During the time Hoss was in Fairbury, a sewage system one block from the library was being replaced. Residents thought it plausible Hoss placed the body in the deep ditch, then covered her over.

Several years after her experience in the library basement, Marta said, “I never before believed in ghosts, but it could be true Lori Mae was killed in Fairbury, and she just stayed with us. I wonder.”

And what if Hoss left Lori Mae's body in another place altogether? The raw notes of Captain Start's 1969 interview with inmate Whitman Shute, which contained the name of the cemetery near the Missouri-Kansas border where Shute claimed Hoss told him he had buried Lori, have long since disappeared, lost either to a 1984 fire or by routine purging of old records. However, just in case new evidence emerges, steps have been taken. The science of DNA did not exist in 1969, but in 2007 Gerald Peugeot agreed to have the inside of his cheek swabbed by an FBI agent. Likewise, Linda Peugeot's half-brother, Gary Dayton, was located in Virginia and agreed to give a sample of his DNA. The paternal and familial DNA, along with Linda's dental records, are now registered with the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children (NCMEC), Maryland Missing, and NCIC.

. . .

Townspeople and officials gathered in front of Verona's new municipal building on the sparkling spring morning of May 24, 1997. It had been twenty-seven years since Stanley Hoss had driven through their town. The community had come together to dedicate a memorial to three fallen Verona police officers, a large number for such a small town. First was Patrolman Charles McKinley. In 1954, answering a domestic violence call, he was killed by a shotgun blast. The second officer was Lt. Joseph Rafay. In 1967, he suffered a fatal heart attack while breaking up a fight in a bar. The third officer was the young patrolman Joseph Zanella, a husband and father of only twenty-five when he was shot by Hoss.

The five-foot monument of Impala black granite was placed between a refurbished 1876 Verona school bell and a monument of the Ten Commandments.
Funding for the expensive stone was raised by citizen contribution, car washes, and bake sales. The $800 left over purchased two bullet-proof vests for the Verona Police Department.

At the dedication, high school senior Rachael Ferranti sang “Amazing Grace,” a wreath was placed, flags were presented to the officers' families, and “Taps” was played, followed by a twenty-one-gun salute. The ceremony concluded with the reading of “A Policeman's Prayer,” which includes the following lines:

Help me so to live that I can lie down at night with a clear conscience, without a gun under my pillow. Grant that I may earn my meal ticket on the square and deafen me to the jingle of tainted money and the rustle of unholy skirts. And when comes the day of darkening shades, make the ceremony and the epitaph simple … “Here Lies a Man.”

The first police officer to be killed on duty in Pennsylvania was a constable who died in 1825. From that first recorded death, Joe Zanella became the commonwealth's 468th officer to be slain in the line of duty. The number grows at a dispiriting rate, reaching 678 through December 2005.

. . .

Kevin Kelly was a toddler when Hoss committed his murders, but as Kelly was growing up in Cumberland, the criminal's name was ever-present. In his thirties, as he campaigned for a seat in the House of Delegates, Kelly gave his view of capital punishment. He cited but a single case, the one that had haunted western Maryland for decades. “We as a tolerant, thoughtful state have always used capital punishment sparingly,” said Kelly, “but it should always be on the books. You all know what happened in Cumberland. Hoss was not stopped and allowed to kill again. This is beyond my comprehension.”

Despite repeated attempts from some quarters to change the status quo, the death penalty remains on the books in Maryland.

. . .

Seeking a reputation, George Butler threw in with Hoss and Delker to kill Captain Peterson in 1973. The smallish but violent misfit had been confined in isolation for twenty-eight years when, in June 2001, he became ill. Transferred to a hospital, Butler stayed in character; he passed from verbally abusive to dangerous when he grabbed for needles and scissors from the hands of a nurse. While screaming in hate and fear, “My innards are bleeding out!” an aortic aneurysm burst. Within hours, the second of Captain Peterson's killers was dead.

Peterson's third killer, Danny Delker, may well have the record as the prisoner held longest in solitary confinement in the United States: thirty-seven years. He is locked in his cell twenty-three hours a day, has one hour of exercise five times a week and gets three weekly showers of up to five minutes each. Conditions have improved somewhat over the years: he does have a TV and radio in his cell. Supported by prisoners' rights groups and free legal assistance, Delker has sued the prison system to let him out into the general prison population. Thus far he has lost this battle. A top administrator said of the case, “I'll be frank here. I doubt if I could ever release an inmate who killed a staff member.” Yet it runs deeper. Delker now flatly denies the murder, recently saying in an interview, “Over the years I've thought of apologizing to Peterson's widow. Tell her I'm sorry, but I didn't kill her husband.” He asserts the assault was done by others but will not utter the names Hoss and Butler, saying, “I'm no snitch.”

State Trooper Walter Peterson is little impressed by Delker's plight. “He thinks they keep him in solitary because he killed a guard,” Peterson said. “Tell him he killed a son, a father, a husband, a brother. That's who he killed.”

Considering he's lived in a bathroom-sized space for approaching forty years, prisoner Danny Delker looked well on December 9, 2010. Bald, white beard and mustache, appearing trim and fit, Delker said he's been fine save for an arthritic hip, for which he received a replacement. He's back to running for his exercise.

Had Delker changed his long-held position that he did not kill Captain Peterson? There was a slight variation from his normal flat denial. Delker did not speak when asked if Hoss and Butler killed Peterson, but he did nod. As to admitting responsibility? Delker said, “Western was a dangerous place. A guard gave me a razor for protection. I kept it hidden, taped to my penis. When Peterson walked in that day I got my razor, then grabbed at him. I tried to cut his throat. I don't know why I did this. He got the blade off me, and when I saw the cross around his neck, I let him go. I will take some responsibility for his death because if I didn't jump on him, then maybe the rest wouldn't have happened.”

Delker would go no further. He did not confess. His final words in the interview were, “I'd rather die in this hole than say I killed Peterson.”

. . .

1882–2005.

Built from Stone of the 1826 Original, Pittsburgh's Western Penitentiary,

Reposed on The Banks of the Ohio River, Served a Century and More as Society's Guard of Pennsylvania Lawbreakers.

Lives Saved. Lives Lost.

Once the Last Word in Penology, the Weight of Time Wrought Its Passing and Marked the End of an Era in American Prison History.

With these words, at a solemn 2005 ceremony, the great institution closed—only to live again a few years later. Though Western Penitentiary's inmates were transferred to a bigger, modern replacement prison in a bordering county, pressing demands for more cell space called the “old war horse” back into service.

. . .

The opening pages of this crime story recount the harrowing, life-altering ordeal of Kathy Defino, scooped up on a whim by Stanley Hoss while only in her teens, to be raped, brutalized, and nearly killed before being, nearly as carelessly, freed. It is appropriate, therefore, to devote the last several lines of the tale to her. Cruelly struck in her youth with physical and emotional trauma severe enough to test her every faith and very being, Kathy's ordeal lasted long after Hoss's car door opened to release her. It took much effort and some years for Kathy to slowly mend, to grow strong, to carry on. This she has done. She has come through.

Nowadays, ever-present news media bring us the worst all the time, in so overwhelming a stream that we are worn down, inured, and, too often, isolated. We watch the evening news and hear that one person has murdered another. We get up from the TV, have supper, and soon forget the names of killer and victim as we go on with our lives. But some events sear the soul. Some dramas become sagas that stick with us, hanging like a mist over the mountains. That seems to be so with Stanley Hoss.

Please note: The following sources references by chapter appear in their complete forms in the bibliography.

Chapter 1

Interviews with Kathy Defino, Don Simonetti, Dick Byers, Dick Curti, and Melvin Orris; Curti, Indiana Twp. Police Department complaint report on Defino case, 5 Apr. 1969; Bliss, supplemental report on Defino case, 7 Apr. 1969; Indiana Twp. Police Department, second supplemental report on Defino case, 11 Apr. 1969; Porter, FBI report on Hoss, 31 Oct. 1969, 41; Zanella trial transcripts, Mar. 1970, 478–82;
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
, 7 Apr., 13, 17 June 1969;
Valley News Dispatch
, 28 Mar. 1969; testimony by Nancy Falconer, Zanella trial transcripts, Mar. 1970, 478–81.