Though Murder Has No Tongue (20 page)

N
OTE

The complete transcript of the coroner's inquest and all the photographs referred to in the text are on file at the Cuyahoga County Coroner's Office.

Chapter 7

CSI M
ERCYHURST AND
B
EYOND

F
or
beleaguered Clevelanders smarting from national jokes about the city that have arisen from a plethora of local civic issues—the river that caught fire, the Howdy Doody lookalike mayor who steered the city into default, the mayoral spouse who allegedly turned down a presidential invitation to visit the White House because it conflicted with her bowling night—nearby Erie, Pennsylvania, seemed a godsend: a convenient whipping boy whose regional reputation ranked lower than our own. “Dreary Erie: The mistake on the lake!” About the city itself, I cannot comment since we saw so little of it on our drive to Mercyhurst College. The campus, however, would be a jewel in any city's crown: beautifully and spaciously laid out with no glaring clashes of architectural style. But it wasn't the palpable sense of collegiate nostalgia that brought Mark, Dave, and me here; the institution's applied forensic sciences department had been glowingly recommended by forensic anthropologists at the Smithsonian in Washington, D.C.; and after some preliminary phone and e-mail discussions, members of the faculty agreed to look over our material.

The notion that something was amiss with the official explanation of Frank Dolezal's death has been, of course, an integral part of the Kingsbury Run story since 1939. But it could not be explored beyond the contemporary newspaper coverage and a few bits of unverifiable oral legend until 1999, when the Cuyahoga County morgue archivist pulled the original autopsy photographs from the files where they had lain undisturbed for sixty years. Other significant pieces of the puzzle soon followed: Detective Peter Merylo's memoirs and official reports, Pat Lyons's memoirs and other miscellaneous papers, the complete record of Charles Dolezal's two lawsuits against the sheriff and his office, depositions taken at the time of Frank Dolezal's death, and, perhaps, the most crucial piece of all—the full transcript of the inquest proceedings.

We steered the department-provided cart, loaded with heavy TV camera equipment, down the well-scrubbed hallways, passed all the usual signs
of modern college life—posters advertising up-coming events, all sorts of colorful messages from campus organizations, neatly arranged lounge chairs, a succession of office doors. When I glanced down at one of the cart's rattling wheels, I noticed for the first time the label placed on the cart's edge with its grim magic-marker message: “For Human Remains Only.” As we entered the elevator to descend to the forensic department on the building's bottom floor, I entertained a whole series of pop culture–CSI notions: images of highly trained and attractive professionals who use the microscope and the test tube to solve heinous crimes in their always dark, space-age laboratories, all aglow with intriguing lights and outfitted with bright, shiny devices representing the last word in crime-solving technology. When the elevator doors opened, all those fantasy high-tech images vanished in the face of a long, brightly lit corridor lined with specimen display cases decidedly more reminiscent of a natural history museum than TV-land's glittering laboratories.

We were met by the director of the applied forensic sciences department, Dr. Dennis C. Dirkmaat—his striking professorial demeanor leavened by an affable smile and a pair of well-worn blue jeans. A highly regarded forensic anthropologist, his impressive resume includes working with coroners, medical examiners, and state police all through the Pennsylvania–Ohio–West Virginia area, as well as the FBI. On this visit, Dennis had graciously—and bravely—consented to sit down with me and allow his initial gut, though obviously learned, reactions to our pile of troubling photographs and other documents to be videotaped and recorded in their entirety.

Though we had e-mailed him copies of the crucial photos earlier, given him an overview of the entire Dolezal story, and spelled out our misgivings about Gerber's official verdict, this was the first time he was seeing much of the relevant material. As the camera hovered above us and rolled silently, he examined one photo after the next—constantly asking me questions about the contexts and circumstances surrounding what he was seeing, sometimes looking up to respond to one of Mark's inquiries, occasionally offering guardedly cautious comments. He carefully studied the two pre-autopsy morgue photographs showing the wound on Frank Dolezal's neck. His brow knitted somewhat when he encountered the various shots of the bulky length of rags, the alleged instrument of the suicide: a stone-faced Sam Gerber holding the cloth up for newspaper photographers at the morgue, a lengthy piece of the same material dangling from the clothes hook in the cell where the death allegedly occurred, the tangled pile of cloth on the chest of Frank Dolezal's corpse. And, of course, the final photo clearly showed curled in with the rags or sheeting the telltale piece of rope—whose presence was never questioned or explained back in 1939. In every sense of the term, this
was a crap-shoot. Would Dirkmaat's highly trained and experienced eyes pick up on the discrepancies in the official version of events that we thought we had uncovered? Would he find any reason to question Sam Gerber's sixty-five-year-old suicide verdict, anything that could prompt a deeper, more detailed analysis on his part? If not, the adventure was over; and we might as well pack up our material and equipment and head back to Cleveland. For nearly an hour, the camera hovered silently over the pile of photographs as we rummaged through them and moved slowly between Dirkmaat and me as the microphones pinned to our shirts caught the stray bits of conversation, the comments, and the questions. Finally, Mark broached the crucial issue: “First impressions?” “Yes, first impressions,” Dirkmaat responded as he raised his eyes from the material scattered on the table before us. “I think there are a lot of issues that have to be addressed. You know, it could turn out that all these things are legitimate; but there are enough questions here to have to do a little more research.” Our suspicions were validated; the journey would continue.

Over the next several months, we would push that cart of TV equipment down the hallway—past the shelves lined with human skulls and the banks of cabinet drawers containing bones—twice more. On the second visit, August 31, 2004, Dirkmaat again sat before the camera and poured out his thoughts. By then, he had gone through the inquest thoroughly several times over and studied the photos in detail, comparing what he saw in them with the recorded testimony in the inquest. It became quickly apparent he was more interested in discussing the inquest testimony than in commenting on the photographs; this was understandable. A picture may be worth a thousand words, but in this case—no matter how big and clear they might be—they were, after all, no substitute for the actual presence of the physical body. “I hate two-dimensional evidence,” roared James Starrs, professor of law and forensic science at George Washington University, when I showed him the same pictures after he had spoken at a Jack the Ripper conference in Baltimore.

Our third visit to Mercyhurst, on March 3, 2005, however, turned out to be the most fascinating and productive by far. On this occasion, we were met by Dr. Steven A. Symes—a tall, Lincolnesque professor sporting an impressive resume of teaching experience, professional accomplishments, research activities, and job-related interests. Dirkmaat and Symes had agreed to turn the questions about Frank Dolezal's death into a hands-on exercise for two of their classes in forensics. In late morning, I gave the small group of students a brief overview of the Kingsbury Run murders and a fairly detailed accounting of the Dolezal chapter. I stuck to the facts, keeping my narrative as neutral and objective as possible so as not to prejudice anyone before they had had
a chance to examine the material. After Mark and I had handed out all the photographs and other official documents relating to Dolezal's death, we left them to their own devices and went off to lunch with Symes at the school cafeteria. An hour later, we returned to the classroom, suggested they might want to pick a spokesperson, and then—in spite of the intimidating presence of the TV camera—asked for their reactions. In the afternoon, we repeated the process, with one major difference, with a more advanced class. I told them nothing; we simply gave them the material, then asked them to look it over and offer up their conclusions. After downing a couple cups of coffee, we returned and repeated the morning taping process.

Realistically, we did not expect any grand, decisive “Eureka!” moments to come from this relatively brief period of study; the evidence was simply too fragmentary. In fact, one of the first lessons we learned was exactly how incomplete and fragmentary it was. “Unless there's a tremendous amount of other documentation,” mused Dennis Donovan, adjunct professor in the Department of Applied Forensic Sciences and retired Pennsylvania State Police sergeant, “this is a very, very poorly documented case. Very poor! But considering, again, the historical context, I'm not sure what the normal procedure and protocol would have been seventy years ago either.” And we did not have the body. (We had, indeed, tossed around the “E” word—exhumation—somewhat darkly and rather cavalierly, but that was never a realistic option. I knew Mary, as a next of kin, would readily grant family permission for the procedure, but the cost would be prohibitive and the probable results even less than inconclusive. “I've seen exhumed bodies that have been buried for only a few years show marked decomposition,” Donovan remarked. Frank Dolezal had been in the ground for almost seventy years, and it remains doubtful that his family could have afforded the best undertaking services available.) But, at the very least, with the help of the best and the brightest among Mercyhurst faculty and students, we hoped to detect any small hints that would validate our misgivings about the official explanation of Frank Dolezal's death. And thanks to their learned assessment of our rather meager pile of documentation—all of it preserved on tape—our suspicions were confirmed. We can now say with absolute certainty that, at the very least, the official version of Dolezal's death—put forward and sworn to by Sheriff O'Donnell and his deputies, and, in part, supported by Coroner Gerber's suicide verdict—is simply not accurate, that both the official manner of death and the circumstances surrounding it are far more than simply questionable. “It stinks to high heaven,” grumbled Donovan.

In spite of a number of witnesses and a lot of verbiage, the inquest testimony failed to resolve satisfactorily one of the most crucial issues in the case: the injuries to Dolezal's
face and trunk; all that testimony simply added up to a classic “he-said, he-said” standoff between the Dolezal camp and the sheriff's office. But in spite of all the fervid denials of mistreatment on the part of the sheriff and his staff, there can be no doubt that Frank Dolezal had been severely abused physically by his captors. Though he admitted to Father Zlamal that he had, indeed, tried to take his life twice, the injuries he had sustained—especially the broken ribs—could not have resulted from falls to the floor or on to the bench in his cell when his makeshift nooses failed. The damage was simply too great. “The issue is whether falling two or three or four feet to the ground—whether you would fracture all those ribs, and that's very unlikely,” insisted Dirkmaat during August 31 taping. “This was a fairly robust individual,” he continued. “He wasn't just skin and bones. He had fractured these ribs. There's one shot [a morgue photograph of what appears to be a section of a rib taken during the autopsy]—it's rather inconclusive; there's no scale or anything—but [it] appears that the ribs are fractured and, in fact, displaced a bit; and there's a little healing going on. So that's a pretty traumatic fracture. . . . These were significant fractures, and it's very unlikely that it was from a fall and from that distance. . . . But one or two falls: you're not going to have that amount of damage to the body.” But, of course, that sort of damage could result from a swift, hard, sharp blow—a good, strong kick, for example. “I'm sure in that day and age, prisoners weren't treated as they are today,” Dirkmaat reflected. “The fact that they were beaten and coerced to give information was not uncommon. From all the different angles to the evidence, it seems that he [Frank Dolezal] was. . . . From my point of view: high-profile case; they bring in somebody; they want to solve it; they want to look good. So they get a confession. They get a confession by beating him up. I don't know how they found this guy. I didn't really look into that. But they had somebody that they could pin it on.”

There are also clear discrepancies in the inquest testimony as to who was where and when he was there. “In many respects, stories [ presented by the sheriff and his deputies] changed and sequences were mixed around,” reflected Dirkmaat,

Part of that might be explained away by the fact that a lot is happening, and so the memories of exact details are a little fuzzy. But upon reading, for example, when people get into elevators and who they're seeing and who's in the elevators with them . . . you should remember those facts. But when you recount, or relate, that you got into the elevator [and] you told somebody to come in with you; you went up to a particular floor, and you went out. It's [the elevator] not stopping. But then you
have other accounts saying, “I stepped into the elevator, and these guys were here. They took me up.” So there were a lot of discrepancies there. . . . When Crawford found Dolezal, he told the woman up there [Catherine Krial]—who was in the stockroom—to call down to Burns. And so Burns almost immediately went up; and then, all of a sudden, the sheriff was there. Whereas Smart doesn't describe the sheriff getting on [the elevator] at all; Burns doesn't describe him getting on. But the sheriff says that he got on, and here's Burns but not Smart. You think something like that would stick out in your mind. I'm going up in the elevator. Who's with me and where did we go?