Read Bad Boy From Rosebud Online

Authors: Gary M. Lavergne

Tags: #Biography & Autobiography, #General, #Law, #True Crime, #Murder, #test

Bad Boy From Rosebud (48 page)

 
Page 162
used to the horror of things like the Yogurt Shop Murders and the disappearance of Colleen Reed, affluence was not worth it.
Colleen's abduction was not the only high-profile case in Austin on December 29, 1991. On that day, a man entered an adult entertainment establishment called "Studio M" and shot and killed a twenty-two-year-old woman named Brenda Lee Anderson. Only a couple of days after the murder, Detective Scott Cary announced that a pickup truck was seen leaving the scene. A suspect was described as a "white or Hispanic" male, six feet or taller with a large build "and a big face." He also wore a cowboy hat. But this man had black hair, graying on the edges, and a thick black mustache. It was not Kenneth McDuff.
At one time, McDuff was considered a serious suspect in the Yogurt Shop Murders, but as more evidence was collected, both on the McDuff cases and on the Yogurt Shop case, he became less a central suspect. As time passed, the Yogurt Shop Task Force dwindled down to a single detective.
1
II
With so many wrenching, high-profile cases coming down on the Austin Police Department at once, Lori Bible and others close to Colleen questioned whether the police had the necessary personnel to locate Colleen (who was, of course, still listed as a missing person).
The investigation into Colleen's disappearance began immediately after the abduction itself. Patrolling the Baker sector, in central and western Austin, Officer Robert Bohannan received a call at 9:25
P.M.
to go to the car wash; he arrived three minutes later to find Stephen Marks and Bill Goins waiting for him. Mike Goins and Kari were walking up from her house. According to Bohannan's testimony, all four talked at the same time and he ended up listening primarily to Stephen. He noticed the smell of the beer Stephen had earlier in the day, but it was clear that Stephen was not intoxicated. When the officer looked into Colleen's car, he saw her keys laying on the center console near the gear shift, her purse on the passenger seat on top of some books, and her milk and vitamins in a bag on the front floorboard. "Nothing had been tampered with," Bohannan said later.
When describing dark-complected suspects, but not African-Ameri-
 
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cans, it is not uncommon for officers to use the phrase "white, or possibly Hispanic." The phrase had been used earlier in the day for the Studio M case, and it was used again from the carwash. The first information on the suspect's vehicle was that it was a Thunderbird or Cougar, model year 8789.
2
At 9:30
P.M.
, he immediately requested that investigators be sent to the scene. They arrived while suds were still dripping from the Mazda.
The contents of Colleen's purse provided officers with the first leads for their investigation. Various documents had the addresses of her past boyfriends. Her driver's license still had her first boyfriend's address on it, and her car registration still had Oliver's address. In cases involving the abduction of young women, it is common to check out boyfriends and former spouses first. As ATF Special Agent Charles Meyer put it, it is a "statistically competent" thing to do. APD dispatched police units to the addresses and an APD Sergeant called Oliver at about 10:30
P.M.
Officer Bohannan also discovered the Whole Foods receipt and the ATM slip. This sent APD looking for a way to retrieve the film from the Pulse machine.
3
When APD established that Colleen lived in Westlake, a Westlake police officer went to her apartment to see if she was there, and of course, she was not. After an agonizing night of waiting and repeatedly calling Colleen's number, Oliver attempted call Lori at home at about 8:00
A.M.
, but she had already gone to work. When he reached her at work, he immediately started to cry, alerting Lori that something was terribly wrong. They spoke for only three or four minutes and agreed to meet at the police department.
4
At police headquarters, Lori and Oliver waited in a hallway outside of the Assault Unit. Lori had the impression that no one at the department knew much of Colleen's disappearance. While waiting, Lori sat on black plastic chairs near a second-floor reception desk by the elevators. Policemen walked by the desk leisurely talking to one another about a girl who was missing from a car wash. "Did you hear about our floater? She's missing from the car wash. We haven't found her body yet," said one of the officers. "Hey, wait a minute, you're talking about my sister," Lori thought, struggling to control what she admits is a very hot temper. After waiting with growing impatience for over an hour, feeling as if she could not get anyone to talk to her, she was finally invited into the office of Detective Don Martin of the Assault Unit.
5
 
Page 164
Don Martin had been with the Austin Police Department for over twenty-five years and was one of the most experienced officers on the force. He had graduated from the Police Academy in June of 1966. (A little over a month later, Don was trying desperately to secure the English Building as Charles Whitman went on his rampage atop the University of Texas Tower.) After reading the reports, Don immediately felt like Colleen had been kidnapped and killed. ''I have a bad feeling about this," he said to his sergeant. His experience told him, and he related to Lori, that in cases such as these, persons like Colleen were most likely to have been abducted to be sexually assaulted. From the beginning, Don thought it best to be straight with the Reed family. He hoped to be proven wrong, but he thought Colleen had been killed.
6
In trial testimony, Lori stated that her family had been told that the first twenty-four hours would be critical if Colleen were to be found alive. When the time came and went, the Reed family felt crushed. It was a nightmare complicated, according to Lori, by the astonishing and unfounded suggestion by APD Detective Robert Feuerbacher that Colleen was a drug-using prostitute who had run away and would return. Lori angrily protested that her sister had no record of any type.
7
(Note: None of Robert Feuerbacher's
Incident Reports
currently in the Reed Case Jacket make such references to Colleen Reed.) Eventually, Lori appealed to the Austin City Manager's Office; she felt that the APD was not doing enough to find her sister. Such appeals by the families of victims are common.
After seeing Don Martin at APD, Lori and Oliver went to Colleen's apartment to check for any clues as to where she might be. When they got there, the door was unlocked. They did not find that unusual, since Colleen often did that when she intended to leave for very short periods of time. They also assumed that the police had already been there. The floor mats of her car were sitting in the entryway near the front door. Her Christmas decorations were still up and Menou had turned over a potted plant and spilled dirt everywhere. The cat had also gotten into a stack of paper napkins and shredded them. Otherwise, the apartment was clean. Her bed had been slept in and her favorite flannel shirt lay on it. In planning for the next day, Colleen had hung a suit on a doorknob and set out a pair of shoes. It was clear to Oliver that Colleen had intended to be out of her apartment for no more than ten or twenty minutes.
8
Very quickly, the leads in Colleen's kidnapping case dried up. No one ever seriously considered Oliver a suspect. A problem Colleen had expe-
 
Page 165
rienced with a disagreeable employee at LCRA led nowhere. The fact that Lori was the beneficiary of Colleen's LCRA life insurance policy was easily explainedshe was next of kin and Lori described an informal agreement between she and Colleen that the insurance money would go to Lori's boys. (Colleen knew that if anything ever happened to Lori, the responsibility of raising her nephews would be hers.) Colleen's family and friends, especially those at LCRA, racked their brains to come up with the name of anyone who could have remotely had a reason to do this to Colleen. No one could think of anyone with such a motive.
Within two or three days, it became clear that all APD had was the limited eyewitness testimony of Stephen Marks, the Goins Brothers, and Kari. The department knew to look for a two-door, tan Thunderbird or other Ford product with round taillights, driven by a "bonehead" who liked to drive the wrong way on one-way streets, and who had an unshaven accomplice. The kidnappers left absolutely no physical evidence at the scene. Solving the mystery of the disappearance of Colleen Reed would require a break. Immediately, Lori and a multitude of Colleen's friends mobilized to "beat the bushes" for just such a break.
9
Image not available.
Don Martin was the Austin
Police Department's case agent
for the abduction of Colleen
Reed. The case was eventually
moved to the homicide detail.
Author's Collection.
 
Page 166
Image not available.
Lori Bible with Colleen's adopted cat, Menou.
Author's Collection.
 
Page 167
III
On the morning of December 30, 1991, Hank Worley's sister, Diane, was making coffee in her kitchen when she heard squealing noises coming from Hank's bedroom. He appeared to be having nightmares. "What's the matter with you?" she asked.
"Just having bad dreams," Hank said.
He could not get what McDuff had done to Colleen out of his mind. "I have had a hard time with this since it happened, and I have wanted to tell someone about it," Hank said later. The first hint that Hank would not be able to live with what he saw McDuff do, and indeed, what he himself had done, surfaced during a New Year's Eve party at the home of his other sister, Bess.
10
Bess described her party as "a family gathering on New Year's Eve [of] every year. It keeps people off the road, and we're all together. We may have a drink or two. Most of us don't drink, but . . . we have alcohol there and we bring in the New Year in prayer." Hank had been drinking heavily (even for Hank), and he drank even more when he and Diane got to Bess's house. Jerry, his brother-in-law, noticed that he had arrived with a twelve-pack and was acting weird. "He, I guess, acted a little fidgety. He didn't stay in one place. He would get up and walk to the kitchen and come back to the table. We all sat around the dining room table normally when we were having a family gathering."
Apparently, Diane and Hank were the first to arrive for the party. Hank began to talk. He asked his sisters and brother-in-law what they would do if they saw a girl being beaten up or mistreated, but they could not help. When Bess asked him why he could not help, Hank answered that if he had tried he would have gotten killed. Bess told him that she would go to the police or someone else who could help. Bess could see her brother was bothered by whatever it was that he was talking about, but she could not figure out what was going on. The conversation abruptly ended when other guests arrived. Hank never brought up the subject again.
11
And on, or about that day, Hank began to grow a beard.
 
Page 168
IV
During the early afternoon of February 18, 1992, McDuff's Parole Officer visited him at his dorm room at TSTI. The officer later reported to the Austin Police Department that McDuff was in a very good mood and was very optimistic about his future.
12
On or about February 24, 1992, Keith, the occupant of room 117 in Sabine Hall, was awakened by a knock on his dorm window. When he looked outside, he saw a thin, black female, about 5'7" tall. "Oh, I'm sorry, I've got the wrong room," she said. She went to the next window and knocked on it. "Are you ready?'' she asked the occupant of room 118Kenneth Allen McDuff.
13
The young black woman was Valencia Kay Joshua. She went by the name of Kay, and had a troubled juvenile and adult criminal record and was on probation. As early as 1985, she had been arrested for shoplifting. She attended but dropped out of Arlington Heights High School, and afterwards "worked truck stops." Her sister readily admitted that Kay was a prostitute and that no one in her family knew that she was in the Waco area towards the end of February.
14
Other than McDuff, Keith was the last person to see Valencia Kay Joshua alive. Later that night, McDuff went on a drug and drinking binge.
McDuff had been before a judge in Bell County only the month before on public intoxication charges. He got a two-year suspended sentence and was placed on probation. So, on February 24, 1992, he was on parole and probation at the same time when he killed Valencia Kay Joshua. It is hard to believe that he returned from burying her and went to school, because that evening he was back in his car and visiting bars with his friends, Billy and Buddy.
The evening did not start out well for McDuff. For the first, and probably the only time, Mac paid dearly for an attempt to rob a crack dealer. While on Eighth Street in Temple, Mac pulled up to a black male crack dealer who stuck his hand into McDuff's car. Like he had done a few weeks earlier when Linda was with him in Waco, McDuff slapped the dealer's hand and the rocks fell into the car. But this time, the dealer had a beer bottle in the other hand and used it to smack McDuff in the face, just under his left eye. Blood splashed everywhere from the gash under his eye and McDuff had to change his shirt. Surely, he was not in a very good mood when he, Billy and Buddy moved on to their next stop.

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