No Mercy - Softcover

Walsh, John

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0671019945 ISBN 13: 9780671019945

Publisher: Pocket Star, 1999

Synopsis

Describes many of the most dramatic cases from "America's Most Wanted"

About this title

About the Author

John Walsh, host of America's Most Wanted since its 1988 debut -- and author of the New York Times bestseller Tears of Rage -- is a long-time veteran of the battle for victims' rights. He and his wife Revé were central in the fight for passage of the federal Missing Children Act and the founding of the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, as well as the enactment of hundreds of state and local laws.

Honored in Rose Garden ceremonies by the last three presidents, John Walsh has been named Man of the Year by dozens of law enforcement agencies, including the U.S. Marshals, the National District Attorney's Association, and the FBI -- and, in 1992, became the first civilian to receive the prestigious Special Recognition Award of the U.S. Attorney General. American Portraits named him one of the 160 Americans who have made an outstanding contribution to the history of the United States. His proudest achievement, however: being named the nation's "Father of the Year" in 1985.

John is also the head of his own production company, Straight Shooter Productions; one of its first creations was the Emmy Award-nominated primetime children's special Smart Kids.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

Chapter One: The Demon Within

For such men are false apostles, masquerading as apostles of Christ. And no wonder, for Satan himself masquerades as an angel of light. It is not surprising, then, if his servants masquerade as servants of righteousness. Their end will be what their actions deserve.

-- 2 CORINTHIANS 11:13-15

Sometimes Satan comes as a man of peace.

-- BOB DYLAN

It was not a typical Walsh family outing. Translation: For once, I wasn't running late.

I was driving up the Florida Turnpike, headed into Orlando. I had one quick speech to make, but then I was meeting the family for a long weekend, and as I'm pulling off the highway onto the exit ramp, I'm thinking, let me make this a trip for the kids.

People tell me I can get awfully somber. When you deal with the world of death and violence and darkness, you always see the worst of humanity, and you get pretty morose about that without realizing it.

So whenever I get home, I try to tell myself: You'd better put that all behind you, and start thinking about soccer and lacrosse and cheerleading and Rugrats and all the things your kids want you to think about.

So that's what I'm trying to do on this trip. Keep it light. Get the speech out of the way, and try to turn back into a regular person for a while.

The gas gauge is low, and I know I'm going to forget about it once I get into town and get busy. I actually have a little time, so I pull off into a gas station. As I always do, I pick up the local paper. It's a habit I got into a long time ago -- whenever I travel, I like to read the local papers. It gives me a feel for where I am, who the people are, what's going on in town.

And that's the first time I saw him.

Staring up at me, from the front of the local section of the Orlando Sentinel. There was something about his eyes -- even in a black-and-white photo, you could make out that they were piercing blue, but behind that dull, mugshot stare there was something more, something cold. After you've looked at a few thousand of these photos, you get to where you can read a lot into them. But there was something here I'd never seen before.

Then I looked over at the article, and saw what he'd done. And I gotta say, no matter how tough and macho you think you are; no matter how many people call you The Manhunter and tell you what a great asset you've been to crime fighting; no matter how many police reports you've read, how many forensic profiles you've studied, how many autopsy photos you've pored over -- nothing prepares you for something like this. You become hyper-alert at these moments: The adrenaline starts pumping, you start sweating a little bit, your hearing becomes strongly attuned. You smell the gasoline on the asphalt, hear the hum of the motor of the ice machine next to the minimart's front door, notice the missing hubcap of the car at the next pump.

I don't want this. Not now.

But there was no way around it. The ugly, dark, dank world that America's Most Wanted inhabits had somehow insinuated itself into this brilliant, shining Florida morning.

As I was pulling away, I was turning over in my mind what I'd read.

The news article had one unusual fact: this vicious psychopath who had preyed upon an innocent family was no stranger to his victims. They knew him well, and until this moment, considered him a good friend.

From what I read, I knew that this guy was probably already out of the state, meaning the local cops had virtually no chance of catching up to him.

I knew that we had to hunt this guy down. And fast.

He was too dangerous to be out on the street.

And now that he'd committed this horrible, horrible act -- possibly the most terrible act I'd heard of in my six years at America's Most Wanted -- now that he had done this, he had nothing to lose.

He was born Edward James on August 4, 1961, in Bristol, Pennsylvania, a small river town outside Philadelphia, but from the time he could speak, he believed his name was Edward Matlack. It wasn't until he was ten years old and looking through some family photos that he realized the man who was raising him was really his stepfather. His natural father had disappeared when he was two.

But shortly before Eddie's twelfth birthday, his dad showed back up on the scene. That's the first bad break in this story.

Eddie wound up living with his dad for a while. While his mom kept a tight rein on Eddie, teaching him right from wrong, his dad was more of a party guy, trying to teach Eddie the ways of the world.

"That's when I was introduced to drugs," Eddie says. His dad "told me what was going on, let me experience it and see what it was like."

It started off simply, with Eddie sampling the marijuana he says his dad shared with him. "He showed me how to roll a joint. Basically, he showed me everything that was going on, so I'd be aware and I'd know what to be careful to talk about."

So with that twisted logic, Eddie says, his dad brought him into the world of drugs. And here's the sick irony: Eddie's dad was a drug counselor.

"He made a joke out of how he was a drug counselor and he did more drugs than the people he was counseling," Eddie remembered.

Very funny.

Eddie was dumped back on his mom, Nancy, after a while. But she had her own problems. With her current marriage hitting the skids, she moved to Florida to be near her mother. They stayed at her mom's in Winter Park for a while, then wound up settling in the Orlando area, near a town called Casselberry.

By now Eddie was in the ninth grade, and was having problems in school -- problems like not showing up. And when he did, the school psychologist reported that Eddie said he was having blackouts.

"That's what he told them," said Nancy. "That he was having blackouts. I don't know if that's true. It would help me to think that he did have some mental problem, to tell you the truth. It would help me to believe that that led him to do what he did."

Nancy did all a mother could. She couldn't find a therapist to help her deal with her problem son -- "When you don't have money, there is no place" -- but begged and pleaded with a counselor at a local mental health clinic who agreed to see Eddie on the side, for free, twice a week. It did little good; Eddie kept getting more violent, more angry. His life by then was beginning to revolve around fighting and drugs. He'd graduated to angel dust -- but what he wouldn't graduate to was the twelfth grade. When told he would have to repeat his junior year of high school, Eddie dropped out.

When he turned seventeen, Eddie entered the army. You'd think that maybe the discipline of the army would help him get his head on straight -- but he was too far gone for that. He was stationed in Germany, in a town where drugs were easily accessible. For Eddie, it was a time to go wild. When someone would walk up to him and say, "Eddie, this stuff, can you get high off of this?" his standard reply was, "I dunno. Let me take some. Come back in an hour and I'll let you know."

It didn't take long for Eddie to earn a general discharge. The stated reason was "failure to conform." The admitted reason: drugs, alcohol, and fighting.

So Eddie was turned loose back on the streets of Casselberry, Florida. When he was straight and sober, he made friends easily, getting people to believe he was on their side in whatever little struggle the day presented. But when he was stoned, he was like a vicious, caged animal. The demons that welled up inside him were waiting to pounce, to strike out in pure rage.

Now, I don't want you to think for a minute that I'm telling you about Eddie James's background because I want you to feel sorry for the guy. Lots of kids grow up without a father, and some experiment with drugs, without becoming a psychopathic lunatic. It's just that when I come across an animal like Eddie James, I have to wonder: How did he get like this? How did he reach a point where he has no regard for human life, for his own life, for anyone around him? Sure, Eddie James had some tough breaks. So what? We all have. He had a bad role model at a crucial point in his life, but he was taken out of that situation, and was back with a mother who cared about him, tried to discipline him, and, within her abilities, tried to make all the right moves.

In the end, you have to put the responsibility back on the individual. Eddie James was turning into a monster inside. And he'd feed the monster that was growing inside him. He'd feed it alcohol, angel dust, then later LSD, and crack. And the monster would speak to him: It would say, it's not your fault, Eddie. It's them. All of them. It's all their fault. The hell with them. The hell with them. He'd feed the beast in his belly, and it would comfort him: It's not your fault, Eddie. They're all assholes. They don't deserve to live.

That summer, Eddie was talking about going into business with his friend Tim Dick -- but there was a lot more talking than there was business. Eddie was a lot more interested in doing drugs and drinking than in looking for work, which is why their last business fell apart.

Tim was living at his mom's house: That summer there were lots of family barbecues there, and Eddie was always invited. It was a big, warm, extended family, and it opened its arms to envelop Eddie James.

The matriarch of this big family was Betty Dick. After her husband died, she packed up the kids and moved to Casselberry, settling in a nice, light-blue, one-story three-bedroom house, set a good ten yards back from the sidewalk, with four tall trees jutting up from a mottled but well-trimmed front lawn.

Betty had two of her kids and seven grandkids living just blocks away -- Tim, of course, was still living at home -- so on summer afternoons the house became a beehive of activity and laundry and laughter, always bustling with children running all over the place, screaming and horsing around and eating and squirting each other with hoses.

At the center of the action were two of Betty's grandkids, two beautiful blond girls: Wendi and Toni.

Wendi was about as sweet as a nine-year-old could be, the kind of kid you never had to tell things twice. She and Toni, who was a year younger, would fight, like any sisters do, and they'd cover up for each other, like any sisters do. They were inseparable: In the midst of all the chaos at Grandma Betty's, you'd look around for Toni and you'd find Wendi, and vice versa. Wendi was the more outgoing of the two; she was the mixer.

It was summer, but Wendi was already fretting about her birthday. She had every child's most dreaded birthday -- December 24, which meant she always got shorted when it came to birthday and Christmas presents. One day she asked Grandma Betty if they could switch birthdays. Grandma, of course, said yes. She would do anything for her grandkids; something as trivial as this was nothing at all.

Toni was the shyer of the two, although she had a tiny streak of mischief about her: The lasting image in the home movies from those days is Toni laughing and pointing a finger at the camera. She loved to do that: laugh and point her finger at you. It was an impish, sprightly gesture, the kind of thing that an eight-year-old can do to melt your heart. Toni was the one who was most attached to her grandma; when Mom would take a long weekend at the beach, Toni was excited, because it meant the kids would stay at Grandma's and have her all to themselves.

Their mom, Lisa Neuner, did have to rely on Grandma Betty a lot for help with the kids (in addition to the two girls, she had two little boys, but no husband at the moment). But Betty didn't mind. In fact, she relished the job. She was a generous woman whose door was always open to her family; and that summer, her family included Eddie James.

Eddie, in fact, became a sort of uncle to the kids, especially to Toni. One neighbor remembers driving past the house and seeing Eddie softly brushing Toni's hair. "Me next," the neighbor called out, and Eddie laughed.

He was something of a frightening sight, if you weren't used to him: Eddie had fallen on a slide when he was nine, and his front tooth became broken and discolored. He never bothered to have it repaired or replaced. It was part of the eerie visage he presented, under his Mohawk-cropped blond hair and that frightening, disarming stare. But once you were used to him, his gap-toothed grin and wide smile made people comfortable. It certainly made the Dick family comfortable. Around the kids, and around the family, he was a gentleman. He was the guy who would fix your car when it broke down, baby-sit your kids when you needed to go to the store. He was also the class clown. He loved to draw attention to himself, and he loved to make the kids laugh.

But when he was on drugs, the clowning of the man who came to be known as Crazy Eddie and Caveman Eddie took on a strange edge. He would fill his mouth with butane, then exhale and flick a disposable lighter, so that big billowing flames appeared to be coming out of his mouth. Or he would start gnawing on the bark of a tree, like a crazed animal.

Everyone thought Eddie was funny. They couldn't know that the beast inside him was raging. That the last shreds of his humanity were falling away.

At night, the rage was more obvious. By now he had taken to petty crime: His rap sheet is a litany of assaults. He once stole a yacht in San Francisco, and once shot a man in what was later determined to be self-defense. But mostly it was fighting. Sometimes, when he was bored, he'd say to a friend, "Yeah, come on, let's go out to a bar and get into a fight."

But to Betty Dick and her clan, Eddie was family. In fact, at the end of the summer, Tim moved next door to live with his girlfriend, leaving a room open in Betty's house; and, since Eddie had nowhere else to live, Betty took him in.

"I felt close to them, like they were my family," Eddie said. "I was closer to them than I was to my real family."

When I think back on those words, on hearing Eddie James speak those words, I get a sick feeling in the pit of my stomach. To think that these people accepted him, made him feel like part of the family, is so tragic, so unfair. They could not have known what was coming. They did nothing to deserve what happened to them that warm late-summer night, as Lisa Neuner was heading back from the beach, and her four children were as safe as safe can be, having a sleepover with Grandma Betty.

It started earlier that day, September 19, 1993. Eddie was without work, and began the day with his new drug of choice, crack cocaine. He smoked quite a bit of it, then began wandering around the neighborhood. "I ran into some guys that had some downers, did that. To get off the jones-feeling of not having no crack no more. We started drinking beer, smoked a few joints, you know."

Evening began to fall, and Eddie found himself at the home of a friend, Todd. It was Todd's thirtieth birthday; Eddie arrived around 6:30 P.M. with a twelve-pack of Budweiser. Todd felt that, it being his birthday, he shouldn't have to deal with the barbecue; Eddie told him, relax, party, have a good time, I'll deal with this. He threw some chicken on the grill, and got the hamburgers ready, and the party wore on.

A photo remains from that moment. Eddie at the grill. We later took the photo into the lab and blew it up for use on the show. One of our producers said it was the most frightening face he had ever seen.

It is, quite simply, the face of the beast. Eddie's eyes are glowing and fierce; his snaggle-toothed mouth is twisted into a hideous grin.

You have to understand how expertly guys like this can hide their true selves. How they rope their victims in. It is the most infuriating and frightening aspect of these predators: They are extremely adept at hiding their evil natures until it is much too late.

Eddie's wild day was beginning to wind down. Although it was only a little after 11 P.M., a dozen straight hours of drugs and drinking were about his limit. After finding and downing some gin, and smoking another joint, he headed home for the night, the home that Betty Dick had so graciously allowed him to share.

The front door of Betty Dick's house opened into the living room. Asleep on an overstuffed, three-cushion couch against the right wall were Lisa's girls, Toni and Wendi. An Indian-print rug hung on the wall above them, and another lay on the floor next to them. Between the couch and this rug slept Lisa's two young boys.

The wood-paneled wall that the couch rested against separated the living room from Grandma Betty's room. She was asleep in her waterbed when Eddie came home. He stumbled through the living room into the kitchen to raid the refrigerator. Wendi woke up when she heard Eddie; from her spot on the couch she could see the glowing red LED readout of the microwave in the kitchen, and noticed that it was eleven-thirty when Eddie headed off to bed. His bedroom was off the opposite side of the living room from Betty's bedroom. He walked down the hallway, passed the bathroom, and collapsed in his bed.

But he did not sleep. He was angry. In his warped, twisted way, he was angry at Lisa for leaving the kids with Betty. Angry for Betty that she had been taken advantage of. But that was just a momentary catalyst. The rage and fury that had replaced any shred of common human decency in Eddie James, the anger that he stored and fed and nourished, were finally ready to explode.

The monster was loose.

Eddie walked into the living room, and saw the two little girls asleep on the couch. He picked up little Toni, still asleep. Not the way you pick up a child: He picked her up by the throat. And shook her, like a rag doll.

Toni awoke in panic. Eddie held her up to his face, and for a moment, their eyes locked. This beautiful, wonderful, sweet child, who never hurt a soul in this world, was just a few feet away from the grandmother she knew would protect her, but with Eddie's hands around her neck she could only gurgle, staring into his frightening, fiery blue, soulless eyes.

He began to squeeze, tighter and tighter. Her eyes bulged, and her tongue swelled. Eddie thought, "You little bitch! You little bitch!" Then he began to say it out loud: "Die, you little bitch!" This poor, terrified girl, in the hands of a madman, heard her own neck begin to crack. There were small popping sounds, as her bones gave way to his massive hands.

And then this sick, demented excuse for a human being dragged the defenseless eight-year-old into his bedroom by the throat, undressed her, and raped her. I have seen the photos of what he did to this child, the condition he left her in, how mangled and torn her body was. And they leave me no doubt that this was the most vicious, cruel attack we have had to bear witness to in all the years we've been producing America's Most Wanted.

And I remember the words Eddie had used to describe his relationship with Toni: "You know, she was like a little niece to me. I sort of looked out for her if the other kids were picking on her. I looked out for all of them. Because there's sick people out in this world."

When he was done with his depraved act, Eddie James left Toni's body in the space between the bed and the wall. Later, he would say that he believed Toni was already dead when he raped her. "I can't believe I did something like that, but I remember thinking and it was, she was dead, and I figured, 'What the hell, why not,' you know, and I did what I did."

But Toni wasn't dead. She lived through the terrible nightmare, powerless to stop the terrible fear, the terrible pain. It wasn't until after he left her that this poor, crumpled child passed away.

Eddie walked into Betty's room -- "to get me a grown woman," he was thinking -- and saw her sleeping quietly on the waterbed. Above her head was a small crucifix; on the nightstand nearby was a large candlestick. Eddie picked it up, and brought it down, with all his might, on Betty's head, so forcefully that the candlestick broke in two.

As though drowning, Betty awoke gasping for air, struggling to understand what was unfolding before her, what was happening to her. Eddie looked in his hand; the candlestick was gone. In its place was a knife from the kitchen.

Eddie began furiously stabbing Betty, and pulling up her nightclothes; but by now there was so much blood around that he had lost interest in sex. And so he continued: With his left hand, he grabbed her by the throat. With his right hand he stabbed her, twenty-two times: eighteen times in the back, twice in the neck, once in the ear, once in the face. Through it all, Betty pleaded: "Why, Eddie? Why!" And Eddie shouted back, "Don't worry about it! Just give up the ghost!" Betty kicked at him, trying to push him away with her feet, putting up an enormous struggle to stay alive. Finally, for reasons we'll never know, Betty's thoughts turned to her baby, her youngest, her son Tim, who had moved next door; as the small figurine of Jesus on the crucifix above her head looked down upon her, she cried out, "Tim! I'm dying! I'm dying, Tim!"

Tim, of course, could not hear his mother's desperate cries.

But they did not go unheard.

A small figure in the doorway, wearing her mom's oversized T-shirt, bore witness to this horrifying scene.

It was little Wendi.

She had been awakened by Betty's screams, and stood motionless as Eddie stabbed her grandmother, as her grandmother pleaded for her life.

At that moment, Eddie turned around and saw the little girl.

He let go of the knife.

He let go of Betty's throat.

He turned and moved toward Wendi.

The child, frozen, could not move.

Eddie grabbed her by the neck, and violently threw her into the living room. She smelled the beer on his breath as he dragged her toward the same room where her sister lay, disfigured, on the brink of death.

And then, for some reason, he stopped short.

He dragged Wendi into the bathroom next to his room, tying her hands with a sock. And then he took off the bloody shirt he was wearing and tied her feet with it.

With astounding composure, Wendi asked Eddie to turn on the light, which he did. She then asked if he was going to hurt her little brothers: He said he wouldn't, because they were asleep.

And then he gagged her with a pillowcase, tying it around the back of her head, so she could ask no more questions.

Eddie then went into the kitchen and grabbed another knife. An eight-inch butcher knife. He went back to Grandma Betty's room, and plunged it into her back.

Because he wanted to make sure that she was dead.

Then he rolled her over, onto her back, and thought, "Let's see them figure this one out."

Eddie James, having raped and killed an eight-year-old girl, having stabbed a woman twenty-three times as she pleaded with him for her life, having tied up and gagged a young girl and left her on the bathroom floor to consider the carnage she had witnessed, proceeded to take a shower.

Afterward, Wendi, still tied in the bloody shirt, poked her head out of the bathroom to see Eddie James rifling through her grandmother's room, taking her keys, her wallet, and her purse. She could not see him going to her grandmother's bloody body and removing the rings that her husband had given her, or taking the bracelets her husband had given her, but Wendi did notice Eddie wearing all these things on his left hand as he exited the room. He looked at Wendi as he headed for the front door, and said, "I'll be back."

It amazes me, in retrospect, to think of the courage and strength of this little girl in that moment. She didn't panic; she didn't freak out; she calmly watched what was going on, and tried to figure out what she was going to do next, to save herself and her two little brothers, who, astoundingly, had slept through the entire ordeal, and who still lay curled up on the floor next to the couch.

She didn't have much time. After she heard Eddie leave in Betty Dick's car, she struggled in vain against her restraints. About five minutes later, she heard a car pull up.

Eddie walked back in the front door.

He was carrying a cup of coffee.

He looked down at Wendi on the floor.

He pointed his finger at her.

And he laughed.

Then he walked out the front door, and drove away.

Hours passed, and Wendi was alone, unable to free herself, unable to do anything but contemplate the horrors she had witnessed. This was probably the first time in her nine years that she had been alone in a house for more than a few minutes. And now she was alone with her sister dead in one room and her grandma dead in another.

The next thing she heard, at about 5:30 A.M., was another car pulling up in the driveway. Incredibly, she recognized the sound: the loud, muscle-car rumble of a Pontiac Firebird, like the one her Aunt Brenda drove. I'm saved! Wendi thought. Aunt Brenda is here!

Brenda, Lisa's younger sister, was at the front door with her two children, whom she dropped off every morning on her way to work. Brenda knocked; one of the children, imitating Mom, copied the same knock, but more quietly.

Wendi wanted to call out: I'm here! I'm here! Come get me!

But she could not call out at all.

She had not been able to loosen the gag from her mouth.

Brenda, puzzled, loaded the kids back in the car and drove off.

Wendi thought, now what?

Somehow, perhaps through the excitement of hearing her aunt at the door, Wendi found new strength, enough to wrestle her hands free. She then undid the restraint around her legs, and pulled the gag out of her mouth and down around her neck. It was still dark out, and she was afraid: the fear that any nine-year-old would have alone in a house in the wee hours of the morning, multiplied a thousand times by the shock of what she'd seen, the trauma of what she'd been through, and the inexplicable terror of knowing that, at any moment, Eddie James could walk through that front door again.

Still, she managed to keep her cool. She thought Eddie might still be out front, and so she unlocked the back door and tried to climb the backyard fence. From there it would be a fifty-yard-dash to the house where her uncle Tim was living with his girlfriend, Nicky.

She made it over the fence, and ran like she'd never run in her life. She could see her uncle's house, on the corner.

She could also see a car, coming up the block.

And she thought it might be Eddie James.

But the car passed. And breathless, barefoot, exhausted, and covered with blood, she made it to her uncle's door.

And, in her own words: "I 'bout broke down the door from knocking on it so hard. And then Nicky goes, 'Who is it?' and I go, 'Hurry up! Unlock the door!' and then Uncle Tim goes 'What's going on?' and I go, 'Grandma's dead.' And he goes, 'Nuh-uh. Are you telling me a lie?' and I go, 'No, you can go over there, and look.'

"And he ran over there and looked.

"She was cold."

At first, as Tim looked down at the child at his door, he thought that the blood was from his dog. The dog was just about to have puppies, and his mind hit on that as an explanation for the blood that covered this little girl. Certainly that's it, he thought. The dog had her puppies in Grandma's bed, and Grandma was asleep, and Wendi woke up in the night and saw the blood, and figured that Grandma was dead. Poor child.

He tried the front door, but it was locked, so he went around to the back, and entered through the kitchen. First, he saw the two little boys, asleep, without a care in the world. That's when he opened the door to his mother's room, and found her, half off the bed, soaked in blood. It was clear that the life was gone from her, but to make sure, to make absolutely sure, he touched his hand to her face, and, as Wendi said, she was cold.

But now a thought struck Tim like a bolt: Where was his other niece? Where was Toni?

He ran into the back bedroom -- but he didn't see her. All you could see between the bed and the wall in the spare bedroom was a pillow. Frantic, he ran around the house, a thousand thoughts running through his mind -- whoever had done this, had he kidnapped Toni? Where could she be? Who could do such a thing?

Back at Tim and Nicky's, Wendi, still calm, was asking to have the pillowcase removed from around her neck. Nicky managed to work it off.

"Eddie did this," she said. "He made me watch and everything."

Nicky was dumbfounded. "You have to tell your uncle Tim that," she said.

Nicky had already called 911; Tim had already run next door to his friend Frank's, and the two men returned and searched the house for Toni. Minutes later, two officers from the Casselberry police department, Eddie Robinson and Valerie Mundo, arrived. It was Eddie who noticed the pillow against the wall in the spare bedroom, and moved it aside. Nothing could prepare him for the sight. A beautiful little girl, her body bloody and twisted, in the position she was in when she died: her dead arms pointing straight down, her dead hands clutching her genitals, her last act in her short life on this earth being one of self-preservation, trying to stop the pain that, thank the Lord, she no longer could feel.

So there I am, leaving the gas station, headed to the hotel room in Orlando. I'm thinking, Why didn't I call Lance? I gotta call Lance. I gotta call Lance.

Lance Heflin, our executive producer, started out in the business as a shooter -- a cameraman -- and has always retained the shooter's eye for detail and the shooter's ability to focus instantly and totally on what's in front of him. This drives his staff crazy sometimes: It's not always useful for the big boss to get so focused on a single story that he forgets, say, to come to a show meeting. But it's also why he's as good as he is -- because he has that ability to laser-beam in an important case.

Like this one.

Lance knows exactly how I feel about child-killers. They are the lowest form of human life. In that moment, I know -- we have to catch this guy.

And I know that we can catch this guy. This is what we're good at. This is what we do. I'm thinking, Eddie James has crossed the line, Eddie James has nothing to lose, Eddie James is nothing but a desperate, extremely dangerous scumbag who will do anything to survive.

Here's what happens with fugitives: It becomes a game. A survival game. A game of beating everybody and everything -- beating the cops, beating the boredom, beating the odds, managing to stay out there.

After they're caught, they shed rivers of crocodile tears, but while they're on the run, there is no remorse. There is only the focus: Stay low. Stay clear. Do whatever it takes.

And that's why I know we have to go after him, and fast.

As soon as I hit the hotel, I make the call.

I tell Lance as much of the story as I know. We talk for a brief minute about how impossible it is to believe -- who could rape and kill an eight-year-old girl? What lowest form of life in the most barbaric of societies could even conceive of such an act against a child, any child, let alone one you consider your adopted niece, a child who believed in you, trusted you?

Lance stops me, as he always does. Lance is all business. He wants names. I give him names. He wants a police department. I tell him to call the Casselberry police department. I give him the area code. He says, as he always says: "All right. Lemme get on it. Talk to you later." He doesn't say goodbye. He hangs up. He is already working.

And that's all it takes. And the process begins. The mercurial, improbable, unique process of catching a killer by using a television show.

I try to gather my thoughts. In a few moments, I will go make a speech to law enforcement officials, and after that I will meet my wife and kids. We will have a nice dinner, and we will not mention this terrible crime. The kids will not have watched the news, and it's my job to make sure that they don't have to live every day in the nightmare of crime. And so we will go out to eat, and I'll stay calm, and we'll just have a nice fun family dinner.

And then I'll go out and nail the son of a bitch.

Back in Casselberry, Lisa Neuner had returned from the beach late, and had gone home to sleep. She'd thought about picking up the kids at her mom's, but she knew they'd already be sleeping, so she figured she'd get them in the morning.

Instead, she stood watching the ambulances and police cars surrounding the house where her four beautiful children had gone to sleep the night before, and no one knew what to tell her. They told her that her mother was dead, and that Wendi was down at the Police station, and that the two little boys were fine.

But how do you tell a mother that one of her daughters is dead? At first, she was told -- someone told her -- that Toni had been kidnapped. But on her way to the police station, she stopped at her boyfriend's house. "Bobby," she said, "Toni is dead. I can feel it."

By then the sky was beginning to show the first signs of light. Detective Mike Toole, a tall, good-natured man in his mid-forties, got the call around 5:30 A.M. at home about the murder of a fifty-eight-year-old woman in Casselberry; halfway through the twenty-five-minute drive, he heard that a second body had been discovered. About two hours later, Detective Lynn Cambre, who looks a bit shorter, a bit balder, and a bit older than his partner, was called as well: It was his day off, but this was not a usual case. He joined Toole at the scene.

Both men have children of their own. Both had been to many homicides and death scenes before.

Both said then -- and say to this day -- that they have never seen anything so horrific in their lives.

"Lynn processed about ninety-five percent of the crime scene," said Mike. "Both of us can do it, but I have no desire to process a crime scene like that."

A day like this drags on endlessly; hours and hours of taking statements, collecting tiny bits of evidence; long, mundane hours of doing what cops are trained to do -- be thorough, remain detached, gather the facts. And intertwined with it all is the horror, the pain, the suffering, the torture of all these good people around you, holding each other, breaking down and crying. As the sun climbed in the sky, onlookers gathered on the street outside the yellow crime-scene tape, first one or two, then groupder than his partner, was called as well: It was his day off, but this was not a usual case. He joined Toole at the scene.

Both men have children of their own. Both had been to many homicides and death scenes before.

Both said then -- and say to this day -- that they have never seen anything so horrific in their lives.

"Lynn processed about ninety-five percent of the crime scene," said Mike. "Both of us can do it, but I have no desire to process a crime scene like that."

A day like this drags on endlessly; hours and hours of taking statements, collecting tiny bits of evidence; long, mundane hours of doing what cops are trained to do -- be thorough, remain detached, gather the facts. And intertwined with it all is the horror, the pain, the suffering, the torture of all these good people around you, holding each other, breaking down and crying. As the sun climbed in the sky, onlookers gathered on the street outside the yellow crime-scene tape, first one or two, then groups of five and six, trying to make sense of what happened, the day growing warm and beautiful, a good Florida "beach day," a good day for a grandma to take the kids to the beach.

Everyone tried to make sense of it in his or her own way; one of the relatives decided he had to go in and see the crime scene, to see Betty, to see for himself. By now the crime scene had been sealed, and the officers literally had to tackle him to keep him from going inside.

Mike Toole had left his partner the tougher part of the crime-scene detail, but he would have the toughest task of all.

He headed down to the station, to take a statement from little nine-year-old Wendi Neuner.

It was a videotape of this statement that would be the first tape to reach the offices of America's Most Wanted. It was a tape to break your heart.

The America's Most Wanted offices are located in a nondescript building in Washington, D.C. We've always tried to keep the location fairly quiet; there are just too many people out there with too big a grudge against us. There's nothing on the outside of the building that announces our presence.

Our studio, the Crime Center, is downstairs. A few flights up, in a little warren of offices that could pass for an insurance office -- except for the mountains of papers and open boxes of videotape strewn everywhere, the writing on the walls, the gaggle of young producers running around discussing murders and rapes and dismemberments and kidnappings, and the metal carts on wheels bearing Zenith TV monitors and Sony Betacam viewing machines -- are the production offices of America's Most Wanted.

It's a little disconcerting for first-time visitors, for a couple of reasons. One, as you walk through the office, you pass edit rooms and viewing stations from which the sounds of reenactments emanate -- so almost every conversation is punctuated with the sounds of screams, car crashes, and gunfire. We are so used to it we don't hear it anymore -- like people who live by the airport not noticing the roar of the jets -- but newcomers are usually startled to come into what sounds like John Walsh's House of Horrors.

The other thing that strikes people as odd is the laughter. There's lots of it. A lot of gallows humor.

"How'm I going to put this story on the air?" Lance was saying at a story meeting the other day. "It's all filled with dismemberment and body parts."

"Yeah," came the reply. "But they're all attractive people, so they're attractive body parts."

I think the gallows humor is a defense mechanism. You have to understand that producing a show like America's Most Wanted is a very, very stressful activity. For one thing, producing any reality TV show is tougher than you'd think. There's just so much involved. Let me give you one example: Let's say you're a reporter for a newspaper, and I'm a producer for America's Most Wanted. We both need to get a quote from a guy in, say, a small town in Florida. We both call him on the phone. You get the quote, thank him for his time, and go to lunch.

I call him on the phone, get the same quote, and decide I'd like to get it on tape. If he agrees, I have to fly a producer down to Florida, or find a freelance producer who already lives there. Then I have to find a camera crew to work with the producer. Get them to the guy's house. They've got to haul lights and gear into his house, attach a microphone to his lapel, and the producer -- we hope -- will ask him questions that elicit the same response that he gave spontaneously on the telephone.

Then, after breaking down all that gear and loading up their trucks, they have to find a facility that can uplink to a "bird" -- that is, feed the tape to us via satellite. Satellite time can go for up to four hundred dollars for a fifteen-minute window, so you don't want to screw up this part.

If I'm lucky, and all has gone well, I've just made thirteen seconds of television.

This process, in various forms, is repeated hundreds of times a week to produce the forty-seven minutes and seventeen seconds of television that comprise an episode of America's Most Wanted. Add to that the actual reporting of the story itself -- getting the facts perfectly accurate, describing the story in an understandable and interesting way, finding pictures to go with your words. So far, no different from any other TV producer's job.

But now add to that the fact that our producers aren't dealing with any happy stories, or fluff pieces, or human interest features. They're dealing with the worst of the worst, under the incredible pressure of knowing that if they don't do their jobs well, and fast, a maniac will remain on the loose and could kill again. Think of how odd it seems to you, the reader, right now, to be pondering these minute details of television production, when just a minute ago you were reading about the most heinous crime imaginable -- doesn't it seem odd? Doesn't it seem strange?

Well, that's the schizophrenia that goes on behind the scenes at America's Most Wanted.

Which is why the people who've lasted are the ones who have a sense of humor. The ones who take their jobs very seriously, but don't take themselves too seriously. Laughter is a defense, a protection against letting your mind get overwhelmed by the sheer sadness of the stories you hear day after day after day.

But on that day, there was no laughter.

On that afternoon, you could hear a pin drop.

Lance, the executive producer, walked into the office after lunch to see his entire staff huddled around a cubicle in the back of the room. Sitting in the cubicle was Amy Green, a freelance producer with a little daughter not much younger than Wendi Neuner, screening a tape on one of the metal roll-around carts. One by one, staff members had gathered around to watch the tape with her. Keep in mind that these are seasoned professionals who deal with murder every day. It takes a lot to get their attention.

On the videotape, recorded by the Casselberry police, a tired little Wendi Neuner, her head leaning against her fist, her voice oddly matter-of-fact in comparison to the content of her discourse, was telling detective Mike Toole what she saw the night before. It is a conversation you never want to have with anyone, let alone a nine-year-old child.

"So, somewhere around eleven-thirty, somewhere around there, shortly after that you fell back to sleep?"

"We fell, everybody fell asleep again and then, he [Eddie] fell asleep for about an hour, until it was like one o'clock. And then, I guess he went and got a knife or something and started stabbing my grandmother."

"You didn't see him go get a knife or anything, right?"

"No, I seen it in his hand."

"Okay, when you wake up, what wakes you up?"

"My grandmother screaming."

"And when you wake up what do you do?"

"I went in there and he has her like that and his hands are right there" -- she indicates the position of holding someone by the throat -- "and he grabbed me by my neck and threw me. And I smelled beer on him, on his, um, on his breath. I smelled beer."

"Okay, and what's your grandmother doing while he's doing all this? I mean, what do you see when you go in the room?"

"She, she grabbed, um, he kept on choking her and stuff and he goes, if you're not dead by the count of three, I'm going to start stabbing some more. So, she wasn't, and he started stabbing her some more."

I am, by my profession, a hunter of men. I can look back at the police file on Eddie James, and I can read the interviews, and I can see that he was turning into an animal long before he met the Dick family; that by the time he knew them he had already become a sick, twisted monster, waiting to strike out. After the crime, people were starting to ask me, John, wasn't this family at least partly to blame? Shouldn't they have seen what a cruel, heartless individual he had become?

This is the burden of being a crime victim. Outwardly, everyone wants to comfort you; but inwardly, they want the little details of the crime, they want somehow to figure out how you were to blame, how you were at fault. I know that my wife, Revé, and I have asked ourselves a thousand times what we could have done differently that day that our beautiful son Adam was abducted and murdered. You can torture yourself with these questions until you can't function anymore, and I've seen so many crime victims' families torture themselves this way.

The reason people want to blame the victim is simple: They want some reassurance that these terrible, terrible things won't happen to them.

Think of yourself. If you are a person just like the crime victim, if there's no difference between you and these tragic individuals, then there's nothing to say that you, or your own family, won't meet the same fate that they did.

But if you can find something this victim did wrong, then somehow you feel protected. You think, all I have to do is not make that same mistake, not walk that same erroneous path, and it won't happen to me.

But the truth is, you can't protect yourself, ultimately. You can take precautions, you can make all the right moves, but you can never be perfectly safe. Crime victims are no different from everyone else. They are everyone else, until that one fateful night.

Betty Dick and Lisa Neuner did nothing wrong. You can't blame the victims. They're not in our profession. They're not trained to spot animals like Eddie James.

We're trained to spot them.

And, should they flee, to catch them.

By Thursday morning, we had our team in place, and a producer on the ground. Because of the nature of what we do, the typical America's Most Wanted producer is a little different from the people who produce other shows. Many of the producers who stay with us have been victims of crime; all have a particular softness, a concern, for the crime victims we deal with. The one thing I insisted on when I agreed to do the show, way back when, was that we would not revictimize the victims of crime. That what was done to me after my son's death -- the screamed questions, the horrible, unsubstantiated accusations, the rumors presented as news for the sake of selling papers, the terrible, callous way producers tried to get my wife to cry for their cameras -- would not be done to others. I felt, either that had no place in our operation or I had no place in our operation. Those were the rules we started with, and those were the rules we stayed with. The public might perceive us as a fugitive-chasing show, but we perceive ourselves as a victim-advocate show. Our producers are on the side of the victims.

And Susan Baumel is no exception.

Susan is a freelance producer working in Washington, D.C., a single mother of a sixteen-year-old boy. She is a scrappy, skinny woman with a wide smile and a startling mop of big, frizzy black hair that makes her look like a refugee from the sixties; but her strong spiritual bent comes not from sit-ins and be-ins but from someplace deeper. Her parents were both Brethren ministers; she was raised with a sense of peace and spirituality that would be sorely tested in the days that followed.

She got her marching orders from the Washington team. She would be the field producer, our person on the ground in Casselberry. She landed in Orlando, where the weather had turned steamy and hot, and met her camera crew, a team of two young men -- a cameraman and sound man -- and they drove her to the Casselberry police department.

Detectives Toole and Cambre were happy to see her: The cops knew that we were their best chance at catching Eddie James. They drove her to the crime scene, 111 Cloisters Cove, and led her under the yellow crime-scene tape and into the house, her crew in tow. Other than the two detectives and their fellow officers, she would be the first one allowed in.

"There was a feeling of horror in the air," Susan remembers. "It was hot, and disgusting, and there was this feeling, as if something had gone horribly wrong."

The feeling was strongest as she walked into Grandma Betty's room. "In my mind's eye, Grandma was still in that bed," Susan would say later.

The crew got the shots they needed: The officers walking the crime scene explained in calm, measured tones the outrage that had taken place. It was now three days after the murders, but it was as if it had all happened just moments ago, as if it was happening again as the officers were telling the story, as though Betty was again gasping, as though drowning, and crying out, "Why, Eddie, why?"

It was a question that would echo throughout the day. Because the next stop was to visit the relatives left behind: Tim, who first discovered the body; Nicky, who untied the bloody pillowcase from around Wendi's neck; and finally Lisa Neuner, who had lost both her mother and her daughter.

Now, a lot of people ask, why is this necessary? Why, if you are so sensitive to crime victims, do you make them go on camera like that? Why not just put the guy's picture on the air and have people catch him and be done with it?

I think it's a fair question. Believe me, if we could do it like that, nothing would make me happier. But there's a dynamic at work here, and it's as simple as this.

We have to do two things to make America's Most Wanted work.

One, we have to get people to watch.

And two, we have to get them to care.

It's sad but true: The American public is inundated with crime stories. Most of their local newscasts, more often than not, begin with a crime story. We have to cut through all that noise. Somehow, we have to get viewers all over the country to pay attention to one single case, and to believe that they -- personally -- can become involved and make a difference. The process of watching television is a passive one; to turn that into an active one, to get people to exert the energy it takes to get up out of that chair and do something in response to what they've seen -- that takes a unique kind of passion.

It is the passion that only a crime victim, only one who has stared into that great dark void, can possess and pass along. And so we ask the victims to come on the air, in the hope of engendering that passion.

But we have several rules that govern our behavior in these situations.

One, we never, ever try to get a sound bite from a crime victim who has decided, for whatever reason, not to be interviewed. We never, ever stick a camera or a microphone into the face of an unwilling crime victim or family member.

Two, we do not try to elicit tears. We've learned, over the years, something that I wish all news organizations would learn: that viewers don't like to see people crying hysterically. They find it terribly intrusive. Tears are inevitable when you're recounting the life and death of a loved one, but we tell our producers: Be kind. Be sensitive. Don't push.

Three, we give victims the option of backing out. I remember that this started with a teenage girl who wanted to come on camera and talk about being raped. She felt that she had done nothing wrong, and that she wanted other young teens in the same situation to come forward. After much discussion, Lance and I agreed to have her tell her story on camera, but only if her mother and her psychologist both told us they felt that the girl was ready, and understood the ramifications of her actions -- and then, only if our producers agreed to call the girl the day after the interview, and see if she'd changed her mind about airing it. The agreement was, if she wanted to back out, then we'd burn the tape.

That girl did decide to go on air, with her mother's and therapist's approval. As we expected, we got dozens of calls from other teenagers saying, I was raped, or I was molested, and I've never told anyone before. It was an amazing moment for us -- and we've kept those rules ever since. As a result, we've thrown away better footage than a lot of programs have ever aired; but also as a result, we've gained the trust of crime victims, who know we are sincere when we tell them that we are on their side, and that we need their help in catching their attackers or the killers of their loved ones.

It was that trust that greeted Susan Baumel when she entered the home where Lisa Neuner and her relatives were waiting. It had already been agreed that we would not put little Wendi through the trauma of talking about the case anymore. When Susan arrived, she found that the mother, Lisa, was also too upset to talk.

She also sensed something else.

She realized there was a terrible fear, an awful anxiety, among the people gathered in the yard that day; among Betty's son, Tim, his girlfriend, Nicky, and their friends, and among the children.

And then she realized what that fear was.

They feared that Eddie James hadn't taken off.

That he was still around.

And that he would come back for them.

Actually, I've learned that that rarely happens. As I mentioned earlier, after a crazy, irrational, heinous act like the one Eddie James perpetrated, the survival instinct kicks in for a period of time. He was unlikely to return to this block, where he'd be spotted instantly. It's not true, despite what you see in old black-and-white detective movies, that the criminal always returns to the scene of the crime; in fact, it's quite rare.

But in this particular case, there was an extenuating factor: Eddie had left a witness behind. For whatever reason, he'd allowed little Wendi to see what happened, and to live. That altered the equation. Because now there was no way to guarantee he wouldn't change his mind -- no way to guarantee he wouldn't come back to kill the witness, or to take out anyone who stood in his way.

In the days that followed, the fear grew worse. Wendi stopped sleeping: Family members would try to sit up with her all night, but they would doze off, and when they did, she would shake them, and say, Did you hear that? Did you hear that? I think it's him! I think he's back! It was terrible, seeing this little child go through such torture. Her mom, or her uncle Tim, or his pretty girlfriend, would put their arms around her, and try to tell her, don't worry, child, Eddie isn't going to come back, but a little voice inside them was saying, how can you be sure?

Susan recorded the interviews she needed as quickly as she could. They were heartbreaking. Lisa's sister Brenda talked about one of Lisa's sons, who had slept through the entire ordeal: "It's sad when her little boy comes up to her and says to her, 'Mommy, can you please turn me into Captain Planet so I can go up and bring my grandmother and Toni home?' And we don't know how to explain to him that they can't come back," she said.

The most articulate was Tim, who managed to hold it together for much of the interview, until Susan asked about Betty's relationship with her grandchildren. "They loved their grandma, and their grandma loved them," he said. And then the tears came, and he walked away, and the interview was over.

His girlfriend consoled him, and he told her: "She asked me a question that hurts. But I don't mind answering," he said through the tears. "It's hard. But we gotta do this. We gotta let people know. It's the only way they're going to get him."

Susan relayed what she had learned back to the folks in Washington, who briefed me that evening.

And when I talked with Lance, we made each other a promise.

This was a case like none other that came before it, and we would do something we had never done before.

We would commit all the resources of the show to catching Eddie James, come what may. We would air Eddie James's story every week, for as long as it too

Edition details

• Publisher: Pocket Star
• Publication date: 1999
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0671019945
• ISBN 13: 9780671019945
• Binding: Mass Market Paperback
• Number of pages: 448