Authors: Wensley Clarkson
“I said, change your story.” There was an unpleasant tone to Susan’s voice.
Then Darlene became very angry with her sister. She called her some nasty names and slammed the phone down. They have not talked to each other since.
* * *
Susan’s arrest also sparked a storm of interest from the media outside Peru. The case was soon featured on nationwide TV news and the tabloid shows. Reporters from programs such as
Hard Copy, Inside Edition,
and
A Current Affair
started invading the town.
But Peru was not going to be intimidated. Most of the people approached for interviews turned down all journalists point-blank and one reporter from
Hard Copy
complained, “I can’t find people who are willing to talk about it. It’s as if the whole town has shut us out.”
Even attorneys approached by the tabloid shows were reluctant to get drawn into a discussion about the case, let alone allow cameras into their offices and homes. It seemed as if Peru’s ruling class was managing to stifle any interest from outsiders. The attitude seemed to be,
This is our problem and we will deal with it in our own way.
Investigators were under heavy pressure from Miami County Prosecutor Wil Siders and others not to discuss the case publicly because they did not want to give away anything to the defense camp. But there may have also been a hidden agenda; aspects of the case such as David’s alleged affair with Susan were not deemed fit for public consumption. The Grund family refused to accept that there could be a grain of truth in the rumors and they wanted to make sure they were not repeated—anywhere.
Meanwhile, David Grund went off to law school and was conspicuous by his absence from Peru. He would not talk to anyone about the case, least of all any of the pushy tabloid reporters in town.
On November 20, Susan decided to take advantage of her right to strike certain judges from the list of potential law officers to preside over her eventual trial by filing a motion through her then lawyer Nick Thiros to have Judge Edward J. Meyers removed from the list. It was never disclosed what Susan had against Judge Meyers.
* * *
One of Susan’s oldest friends, Mary Heltzel, received a letter from Susan in January 1993.
The letter was identifiable because the words,
THIS STAMP IDENTIFIES THIS CORRESPONDENCE AS HAVING BEEN MAILED BY AN OFFENDER INCARCERATED IN THE MIAMI COUNTY DETENTION CENTER
, were emblazoned across the back of the envelope.
In the letter, postmarked January 26, 1993, Susan coolly acknowledged a card Mary had sent to her at the county jail. Then she went on to talk about her ailments, a fall inside the jail, a so-called blood clot, and she also claimed she had hurt her hip and her knee in another accident. None of these injuries turned out to be as serious as she had implied.
Susan’s weight had plummetted to under ninety pounds and she insisted she was going to pray for “a speedy end to this nightmare.”
But she then referred in a remarkably offhand way to the fate of her two children, Jacob and Tanelle. “The kids are with Mother,” she wrote, “and doing as well as can be expected having lost essentially both of their parents.” That was it, no guilt or sorrow just the distinct impression that the whole world was against her.
In religious matters, Susan was growing increasingly obsessed with the church. “God took Jim for a reason and he will continue to care for me and my children and will end this injustice soon,” she ended her letter to Mary, which was signed “Prayfully your friend, Susan.”
Also in January 1993, a tentative date had been set to begin Susan’s murder trial. Special Judge John F. Surbeck, Jr., of Allen County Superior Court, had been chosen to preside over the hearing and he estimated it would last no more than one week once jury selection had been completed.
Susan appeared in the Miami County courthouse that day alongside a new attorney, Charlie Scruggs. Scruggs entered a plea of not guilty on behalf of Susan after it was revealed that her original attorney Nick J. Thiros had filed a motion to withdraw from the case for reasons unknown.
* * *
Charlie Scruggs, based in nearby Kokomo, was a scrupulously fair-minded attorney with experience on both sides of the legal barrier. He was no bright-eyed idealist searching for a cause. Neither was he an ambitious young defense lawyer seeking a high-profile client in hopes that the publicity would propel him on the path to money and celebrity. Scruggs was a shrewd, experienced, somewhat droll lawyer who looked like a smartly-dressed farmer and sounded like Gary Cooper.
In his office, a plaque on the wall proudly stated his motto as being,
When you’ve got them by the balls their hearts and minds will follow.
Scruggs was a self-confessed race-car nut originally from Indianapolis. An attorney for thirty years, he had served six years at the nearby Marin County Prosecutor’s Office before a ten-year stint at the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Indianapolis.
But life back in Indianapolis turned sour when his wife announced she was leaving him. As Charlie Scruggs says now with a wry smile on his face, “The law is a jealous mistress. If you do it seriously you can have no other life.”
But Scruggs still did have his beloved Harley motorcycle. On quiet days he brought it to the office and tinkered about with it in the parking lot. He called those sessions “making love.”
In the corner of Scruggs’s office is a cabinet filled with guns from the murder cases he has won over the years. He takes them off acquitted clients as a momento after proclaiming to them, “You can’t handle it, so I’m taking it.”
The one thing Charlie Scruggs will not talk about is the bombing outside a court a few years back that left him with a severe limp and ruined his chances of continuing his other love, skiing.
Charlie’s take on Susan was blunt and to the point: “She’s the kind of woman who in the proper atmosphere could cause a man’s heart to beat faster than a Chevy push rod.”
* * *
Charlie Scruggs spent hours examining all the evidence and newspaper clippings on the case when he was approached to become Susan’s attorney. Following a three-hour meeting with her inside the Miami County jailhouse, he came away convinced of her innocence.
Scruggs knew full well that Susan was not liked in the community, but he believed that was mainly because she was a very beautiful woman who was “kinda racy.” In a small town like Peru, women like Susan Grund needed to walk very softly or they’d soon find the whole place against them. Scruggs believed a lot of people had condemned Susan too hurriedly. There were also definite aspects of the case that left the whole investigation wide open.
To start with,
everyone
just assumed Susan was guilty. Scruggs did not see it that way and that was why he took the case. He was also impressed by Susan’s articulate mannerisms. She was, in his opinion, a very believable person.
However, from inside her cell at the Miami County Jail, it would have been difficult for Susan Grund not to be left with the distinct impression that the entire town of Peru was after her blood.
At the beginning of December, all Jimmy Grund’s real estate was placed on the open market for public sale. Special Judge Marvin D. McLaughlin ordered the sale after close consultation with attorneys Pat Roberts, Stephen Blower, Tom Keith, and specially appointed administrator Phil Tomson.
It was agreed that funds from the sale would be held in escrow by Tomson until further instructions were ordered by the court. McLaughlin also ordered an immediate inventory of all personal property within the house on Summit Drive. A hearing was set for February 12, 1993, to determine what would happen to Susan’s half of the assets of the property, because of special state rules that, insisted a person could not profit from murder if convicted.
To add to the confusion of the situation for the two most innocent members of the entire case—Susan’s children, Tanelle and Jacob—it was decided that attorneys had to be appointed to represent their interests.
* * *
In Oklahoma City, Assistant D.A. Don Deason got a phone call from a reporter on the
Peru Daily Tribune
asking him about Susan’s background. He had already heard through the grapevine that years earlier she had married an attorney and moved back to Indiana. He had always wondered who the lawyer was and whether he knew what he was getting into with a lady like Susan.
Now he had the ultimate evidence. It made him even more relieved he hadn’t accepted her offer of a drink following that child battery case.
* * *
During a pretrial hearing on January 13, 1993, to discuss defense objections to holding the trial in Miami County, Susan appeared in court dressed in a long, woollen red coat over orange prison pants and white tennis shoes and socks. She closely studied a yellow legal pad before her attorney Charlie Scruggs arrived and the hearing began.
Susan’s wavy blond hair neatly framed her lightly made-up face. A gold and gemstone ring glittered from the wedding finger of her left hand. She never took off her coat throughout the hearing.
Charlie Scruggs told the court there were numerous reasons why it would be deeply prejudicial for his client’s murder trial to be heard in Miami County. They were:
1. Earlier public hostility against the defendant.
2. Public outrage over the offense.
3. Prejudicial news reporting or editorializing, which castigated the defendant.
4. Speculative opinions as to the personality and character of the accused.
5. Disclosures of inadmissible evidence.
6. Prior criminal records.
Scruggs even handed out copies of news articles written on the case that had appeared in the
Peru Daily Tribune.
Scruggs was clearly convinced that Susan would not receive a fair trial.
In March 1993, it was announced that initial objections to Susan Grund’s trial being held in Miami County had been overruled, just so long as the eventual jury selected would be from nearby Kosciusko County. Special Judge John F. Surbeck reiterated that he expected the trial to last no more than two weeks. A final pretrial conference was scheduled for May 2 at 1:00
P.M.
* * *
Also in March, Susan found herself starring in the local newspapers yet again as arguments were heard in Miami County Circuit Court to determine if she was entitled to at least one-half of the sale of the Jimmy Grund’s real estate proceeds, or if the money should be held in a trust pending the outcome of her criminal charge.
“She cannot profit from a wrongful act,” the attorney for David and Jama told the court in an extraordinary statement that appeared to be convicting Susan of the murder of her husband
before
she had even got to trial.
The Peru Trust Company, the special administrator in the case, received an offer of $155,000 for the house on Summit Drive. It seemed a giveaway price to local real estate brokers who would have happily paid in the region of $250,000 for the property
before
Jim Grund’s murder, but then the property did have a certain stigma attached to it. Jimmy’s share of Shanty Malone’s Bar was sold off for a very modest $15,000.
Then, on April 13, it was announced that Susan’s trial date would have to be rescheduled until the following fall. Susan was recovering from a fall inside the Miami County Jail and could not attend the hearing. It emerged that the main reason for the delay in the trial was because a ballistics expert due to be called by Susan’s defense attorney, Charlie Scruggs, would be out of the state throughout May, the original date of the trial.
Prosecutor Wil Siders had no objection, but he told the judge, “I only want to try the case once and avoid any error.”
On April 15, a court hearing was scheduled in Vincennes to consider a petition to establish new guardians for Susan’s two children, Tanelle and Jacob, who had been looked after by their grandmother, Nellie, since their mother’s arrest and incarceration.
Jimmy Grund’s sister Jane and her husband Fred Allen had decided to seek guardianship of thirteen-year-old Jacob and eight-year-old Tanelle. A two-day hearing was set for June 8 and 9 in Knox County Circuit Court, whose county seat was Vincennes, where Nellie Sanders had fled after the murder of Jimmy Grund.
The Allens decided to seek guardianship after establishing that Jimmy—who had legally adopted the children—had stated in his will that he wanted them to look after the children.
Jane and Fred Allen were at pains to point out that they did not question Nellie Sander’s love for her grandchildren, but they genuinely believed they could provide better care for Jacob and Tanelle.
The following month, Susan’s attorney Charlie Scruggs suggested that the teddy bear found during the homicide investigation should not be used as evidence in her trial—now scheduled for September, 1993—for the following reasons.
1. An expert firearms witness examined the bear and found no trace of firearms residue.
2. The teddy bear is of no value to the prosecution case so why bother presenting it.
Prosecutor Wil Siders and his team of investigators had still failed to turn up that all important murder weapon and the teddy bear was the nearest thing they had to evidence that Susan hid the gun.
In July, Special Judge Marvin D. McLaughlin, who presided over the hearing to decide whether Susan was entitled to any of the proceeds of the Grund estate, ruled that she was entitled to her one-half interest, regardless of the result of the murder prosecution.
But that distribution of funds—which would have helped Susan begin to pay towards some of her very high legal expenses—was delayed by a motion filed by Grund’s son David and daughter Jama Lidral.
* * *
Around this time, Susan’s mother Nellie rediscovered the metal container that held the gun in the attic of her nephew’s home, just before she moved back to Peru from Vincennes. She was surprised because she thought Susan had disposed of it. Nellie decided that she must remember to put it on the U-Haul before her return to Peru. She only wanted to use it as a plant pot. Putrid in color with rotting wooden handles on either end, the boiler had definitely seen better days.