Sleep In Heavenly Peace (Pinnacle True Crime) (37 page)

Interview excerpts between Dianne Odell and M. William Phelps, along with part of Odell’s confession to Detectives Diane Thomas and Bruce Weddle

Please write to M. William Phelps at: P.O. Box 3215 Vernon, CT 06066 or visit him and send e-mail at
www.mwilliamphelps.com

Exclusive Excerpts from Interviews M. William Phelps Conducted with Dianne Odell

October 7, 2004

Phelps:
So what went on in [your] dad’s home when you were there? Any type of abuse, emotional abuse, what?

Odell:
He would get drunk and the one time that, I would say it was like two months after I moved back into the home (Odell was fifteen years old), he had gotten really, really drunk. What spurred the incident was that my mother came to visit a neighbor across the street. And she couldn’t come to visit me. I asked my father if I could go over and see her.

Phelps:
Okay. What happened next?

Odell:
He told me no, and I had to sit there and literally (Odell begins crying here) watch my mother across the street. I knew she had something she wanted to tell me. And I couldn’t leave. I knew if I did, when I came back from across the street, I would probably be picking my teeth up off the floor.

Phelps:
So, you’re pushing sixteen years old, and you finally go to live with your mother. Are you involved with boys at all by this point, you know, sexually active?

Odell:
(Laughing) You have
got
to be kidding me! I couldn’t even be involved in life, better yet, boys.

Phelps:
Okay, okay, gotcha. So, sex, then, isn’t something, you’re saying, you are even thinking about at this time?

Odell:
Even though it’s occurring, it’s not something I’m thinking about.

Phelps:
“Occurring”? I don’t follow. What do you mean “occurring”? You just said—

Odell:
It’s occurring
to
me.

Phelps:
To you?

Odell:
Yes.

Phelps:
How so? What do you mean by that?

Odell:
My father. He’s raping me.

Phelps:
Did your mother know about this?

Odell:
Hell yes.

Phelps:
She knew?

Odell:
Oh yes. I had told her the first time. I had also told her when my half brother had raped me.

Phelps:
How old were you when it started?

Odell:
You mean when it started with my half brother, or my father?

Phelps:
Dad?

Odell:
I was fourteen years old.

Phelps:
And with your half brother it was younger?

Odell:
Maybe six or seven years old.

November 11, 2004

Phelps
: How did you feel, keeping those dead babies in the house, in boxes, for all those years?

Odell
: I am going to be totally blunt with you. I knew it was my secret. Okay. But I also knew that at some point or another, it was also my weapon.

Phelps
: Meaning?

Odell
: Meaning that my mother knew that they were there and I knew that they were there. She was horrified that I had not taken them and thrown them away, because that’s what she had wanted done. She knew that at one point they would set me free. Because I would go to the police and I would explain everything to them. You know what I’m saying?

Phelps
: Yeah, I guess….

Odell
: And they would be my proof. I never expected it to take on the connotation that it took on, where I would have to worry…. No one wanted to find out the truth, and that started with the police and went all the way down.

Phelps
: So, you’re living with [your] mom and you have this “secret” between you. Is it something that you’re talking about with her?

Odell
: When I tried to broach the subject, she would give me one of those looks as if to say, “We’re not discussing that.” I kept them, the babies, with me, in my room. I made sure she didn’t have access to them because I didn’t want them disappearing.

Phelps
: Okay, I see, I see….

Odell
: I wanted them…I wanted people to understand the things that were done to me. I wanted them to see how far it could go. I wanted to let them know that my mother was as crazy as a bedbug and they (the dead children) were my proof. If I let them go, I would never see them again. I would never be able to lay them to rest properly. I would never have a grave site to go to. Because I knew what she had taken away from me. I didn’t have the strength or the courage or the tenacity to break away from her. That’s my ghost. My monster. The beast that I deal with every day.

Phelps
: So, you’re saying that was your downfall, then?

Odell
: My downfall? I don’t know…. That is the beast that I live with every day. I could not, for the life of me, break away from her to do what I needed to do.

There was one story Miss Odell told me when we met that first time at the Bedford Hills prison, which I had her repeat later on so I could get it on tape. I had originally planned to include the story in the narrative, but after thinking about it, I just found it too bizarre, too unbelievable, to include. Thus, I present it here in Odell’s words, exactly the way it was told to me.

December 29, 2004

Odell:
According to my mother, my grandmother was an heir to a woman by the name of
Betsy Harris
. According to my mother, this woman was a very, very wealthy woman and she had one-hundred-and-some-odd heirs listed in the newspaper that they were looking for, because this woman had passed away and all these heirs were listed in the newspaper. According to my mother, my grandmother—her mother—was one of them. Shortly after this was publicized in the newspaper, there was a fire at City Hall that destroyed the copy of the will, the deeds to the properties that this woman owned. Now, the property was supposed to be from the middle of Manhattan to the Battery…that this woman owned.

Phelps:
Okay…

Odell:
The deeds and everything that was supposedly in her name, and all of the property that she had owned, was destroyed in the fire. The Rockefellers, J. P. Morgan, and two other families then bought the property from the city for next to nothing and became wealthy from it.

Phelps:
Do you think this was one of the reasons why your mother might have been bitter, or, rather, always looking for a free ride, as you have told me many times? And she thought that maybe she deserved things in her life she didn’t get because she got burned (no pun intended) out of this inheritance?

Odell:
Yes, that was the way she viewed things.

Phelps:
So, that’s a story, you want to make clear, that your
mother
told you? You don’t believe it yourself, right?

Odell:
You know, if there’s any truth to it, it might be that she heard that story but it didn’t involve my family at all. It’s just a story, that she heard way back when. You know, and she latched on to it…. Somebody probably said something and she just kind of put this whole thing together….

One footnote about this story: I had explained it to Richard Molina, Odell’s brother, and asked him if he had ever heard it. You know, was it something that had become family lore throughout the years. Maybe a story family members joked about at Thanksgiving and Christmas. A conversation piece, in other words. Richard laughed. “Absolutely not,” he said. “That is the most ridiculous thing I have ever heard. But it is typical of Dianne to say something like that—and I would bet she believes it, too. She was just like my mother.”

Excerpts from a Recorded Interview Graham County Sheriff’s Office Detectives Diane Thomas and Bruce Weddle conducted with Dianne Odell

May 17, 2003:

Detective Thomas:
When, at what point after a certain amount of time, did you think, I’m never going back [to that self-storage unit in Safford, Arizona, where the babies were found]? What was your thoughts on that? Did you ever think those babies would be found?

Odell:
Deep down inside, I hoped they would be found.

Detective Thomas:
Why’s that?

Odell:
Because I couldn’t—I couldn’t do things the way I wanted to; umm, after we had come back from Texas, my mother had gotten very sick on the ride back up, umm, she was diagnosed with congestive heart failure and because of this condition we pretty much had to stay put. Because she was under doctor’s care and she was in and out of the hospital on numerous occasions for fluid buildup on her chest and in her lungs and in her legs and varying degrees of whatever this condition brings along with it and, umm, I could see my hope of getting back to Arizona fade. I didn’t believe my mother would die as quickly as she did and pass away as quickly as she did, but it had always been my hope that after she had died, to go back to Arizona because she was gone. I was going to go ahead and bring all this into the open anyway.

Detective Thomas:
What were you going to do?

Odell:
Go to, gonna go to the police station and tell the police department that…to the police station, and tell them exactly what I’m telling you now.

Detective Weddle:
(Later during the same interview) Can I ask you a question?

Odell:
Sure.

Detective Weddle:
You made the statement two or three times, you know, implied the wrongs you’ve done. What is it exactly in your mind you think you’ve done wrong?

Odell:
Not having enough courage to stand up for those three children.

Detective Weddle:
In what way?

Odell:
And to…and enough to stand up to an overbearing person who was extremely judgmental, and constantly always being afraid of her critical opinion to bring these children into the world because they have—no matter who the father was or is—was always, always my intention to make them part of my family if they had survived.

Detective Weddle:
Obviously, you like children.

Odell
: Yes, I do.

Detective Weddle:
You’ve got several of them of your own. That was my thought. What is it you think you’ve done wrong?

Odell
: Not having enough courage to stand up for them.

Detective Weddle:
Okay…

Detective Thomas
: Dianne, you don’t remember the sex of any of the babies?

Odell
: No.

Detective Thomas
: Do you remember the first baby’s, from your rape, do you remember if that man was white, black or Hispanic?

Odell
: No, I don’t remember nothing about him.

Detective Thomas
: How about the second baby? Do you remember what that man was, his race?

Odell
: White.

Detective Thomas
: Caucasian. And how about the third baby?

Odell
: I believe he was white.

Detective Weddle
: (Later) No one has forced you to be here, told you that you have to be here to give this statement?

Odell
: Nope.

Detective Weddle
: Are you feeling different now after giving the statement prior to, say, two hours ago before you gave it?

Odell
: Relief.

Detective Weddle
: That’s good, I hope so. It’s a relief for us, too. We appreciate you talking to us, we really do.

Odell
: But I still need to get my affairs in order.

Detective Weddle
: Sure you do, sure you do. That’s okay. You’re going to have time to do that. Like I said, we can’t tell you, none of us know what is going to happen at this point.

Odell
: Well, I have a good idea.

Detective Weddle
: Well, I don’t think it’s going to be as, I don’t know—I don’t know, so don’t wash yourself away until you find out what is going to happen.

Detective Thomas
: What do you think is going to happen, Dianne? What should happen, which is what?

Odell
: I think I should go to jail.

Detective Weddle
: Why?

Odell
: Because I don’t, it’s hard to live every day, every day, knowing that you have to look at yourself in the mirror and know that you didn’t have the courage or the tenacity to stand up for three little kids that, who needed a mother, and a life because if…if my mother hadn’t been alive, none of this ever would have occurred.

Thomas Bright purchased the contents of this self-storage unit at an auction in Safford, Arizona.
(Photo courtesy of Graham County Sheriff’s Office, Safford, Arizona.
)