The Mammoth Book of Killers at Large (11 page)

The jury found her guilty on 9 May. Saying her crimes exhibited “exceptional callousness and cruelty”, Judge William Dwyer sentenced her to 99 years, with no consideration of parole for 30 years.

As a result of the case, the FDA tightened its regulations, setting national requirements of anti-tampering protection for over-the-counter medicines. The maker of Excedrin, Tylenol and other non-prescription drugs stopped using two-piece capsules that could easily be pulled apart, refilled and pushed back together. They were replaced with one piece “caplets” in an attempt to prevent tampering by crazed killers. It failed.

On the evening of 2 February 1991, Jennifer Meling collapsed in the apartment she shared with her husband Joseph in Tumwater, Washington, after taking the decongestant Sudafed. Earlier the couple had been separated and Jennifer had filed for divorce, but now they were now reconciled. When she lapsed into unconsciousness, her 31-year-old husband called 911.

Rushed to hospital, emergency room staff had trouble identifying what was wrong with her. Joseph Meling then suggested that they look for signs of cyanide poisoning. Cyanide was found in her blood, but Jennifer recovered. Unfortunately that was not the end of the matter. In attempting to murder his wife to cash in on a $700,000 life assurance policy he had taken out on her, he had tried to cover his tracks with more product tampering.

On 11 February, 40-year-old Kathleen Daneker died of poisoning in Tacoma. The Pierce County coroner found cyanide in her body on 1 March. In her home, the police found Sudafed capsules which they took to Seattle where they confirmed they had been tampered with.

By then 44-year-old Stanley McWhorter of Lacey, Washington, had died shortly after taking a Sudafed capsule on 18 February. Once the Pierce County findings came to light, the Thurston County coroner checked McWhorter’s body and found cyanide.

The following day, nearly all of FDA’s Seattle district’s employees, along with investigators from the agency’s offices in Spokane, Yakima and Portland, Oregon, started removing Sudafed capsules from store shelves. Over the next three weeks, district investigators worked around the clock collecting the drug from all stores along the 47-mile stretch of Interstate 5 from Olympia, Washington, north to South Seattle. Some 248,000 capsules were collected and screened.

One contaminated Sudafed capsule was found at a Pay ’n’ Save Drug Store in Tacoma, about 30 miles from Tumwater. Two consumers returned packages each containing one cyanide-laced capsule that they had purchased at the Drug Emporium Store No. 6 and a K-mart Discount Store, both in Tacoma.

Although Jennifer Meling stood by her husband and testified for the defence at his trial, Joseph Meling was found guilty of two counts of murder, one attempted murder, six counts of product tampering and three counts of mail fraud. On 8 June, he was sentenced to two concurrent life terms plus 75 years in prison, with no possibility for parole.

The judge said that Meling’s “planning and preparation for the crime was extraordinary, detailed and elaborate, and it was only through good fortune that more persons didn’t die”.

In addition, Meling was ordered to pay $3.5 million in restitution to Burroughs-Wellcome, the manufacturer of Sudafed, and $4,794.29 to Blue Cross for his wife’s medical bills. Any money Meling earns through media contracts and book royalties will be used to make the restitution.

Many of the product-tampering cases that have resulted in death have, for the most part, led to the successful conviction of the perpetrator. Despite the pharmaceutical industry’s best efforts to make their products tamper-proof, incidents of product tampering have continued all over the US, with a surprising concentration in the Chicago area. Some 53 threats of product tampering have been received by the FBI with a postmark from south Chicago or Gary, Indiana which is part of the Greater Chicago area. Other cases of tampering – in some cases using cyanide – have occurred in North Chicago, Lombard, Chicago proper and outlying areas.

Although some culprits have been brought to book, the man who started it all – the Tylenol Terrorist – is still at large. He had no simplistic motive like that of Stella Nickell or Joseph Meling. There has been another unsolved product-tampering cyanide poisoning in Detroit and one in Tennessee. The Tylenol Terrorist is still at large and could be at work, attempting to bypass the latest tamper-proof devices. If, as seems likely, he was in his 20s in 1982, he will only be in his 40s or 50s today.

The Cincinnati Carbon-Copy Killings

A serial killer seems to be stalking the Cincinnati area. Since 1996 numerous women have simply vanished and about a dozen female bodies have been found in the counties of Ohio, Kentucky and Indiana that surround the city. The victims all have a similar in age and appearance.

The disappearances began on 28 August 1996. That evening 22-year-old Carrie Culberson and two friends from Blanchester, Ohio went over to the town of Morrow, some nine miles away, to play in a volleyball march. After the game, Carrie rode around town with her friends looking for something to do, but it was a quiet Wednesday night in a small town in the Midwest and a neighbour saw Carrie being dropped off at around 11.30 p.m. at the home she shared with her mother, Debbie Culberson, and her teenage sister, Christina. A few moments later that same neighbour said they saw Culberson’s 1989 red Honda CRX reverse out of the driveway and head down the block.

Debbie Culberson noticed her daughter’s car was not in the driveway at around six o’clock the following morning and began driving around Blanchester looking for her daughter. First she checked out the house of Carrie’s long-term boyfriend, 24-year-old Vincent Doan, but he was not home. Nor was Carrie’s Honda in the driveway where it would normally have been if Carrie had spent the night away from home.

Debbie found Doan later that morning at the home of his father, Lawrence Baker. She said that Vincent first told her he had not seen Carrie for three days, but later he changed his story. He then said that Carrie had driven by his house at around 12.30 a.m., honking her horn. She had plainly been drunk, so he just closed his door and ignored her. However, Carrie’s companions at the volleyball match said she only had one beer.

Debbie Culberson maintains that Doan changed his story a second time, when she went to see him again. This time, she said he told her that he had come out of his house wrapped in a towel to talk to her – and when he told her that he did not love her any more, she sped off.

Far from not loving her any more, Carrie’s friends said that he was obsessed by her. He would call the beauty parlour where she worked as a nail technician at least five times a shift, co-workers said. Relatives, friends and acquaintances said that his obsession manifested itself in physical abuse. Some had witnessed the abuse; others saw injuries. A photograph of her taken in April 1996, showed Carrie with badly bruised, swollen face, allegedly the result of a beating. When challenged by Carrie’s parents, they said that Doan blamed her injuries on a bumpy ride in a Jeep. Later, Debbie Culberson maintained, Doan told her he only slapped Carrie and never hit her with a fist. But Carrie told friends that scratch marks on her face were caused by her frantic efforts to pull Doan’s hands away from her mouth and nose when he tried to smother her.

Friends said that on 28 July 1996 – one month to the day before she disappeared – he hit her on the back of the head with an electrical heater. The resulting wound needed five stitches, but Doan, they said, had told her to say that she had fallen on his front porch. Debbie Culberson was not having this, though. She took Carrie to the Blanchester police to file misdemeanour assault charges against Vincent Doan. These charges now had to be dropped when Carrie disappeared and there were no other witnesses.

Even though Carrie was pressing charges against Doan, she continued the relationship with him. Three days before Carrie disappeared, she spent the day with Doan at the beach. The next evening they went out to dinner together. But things did not go well. A friend named Tonya Whitten said that, the next morning, Carrie told her that Doan held her at gunpoint for around five hours out in the countryside. According to Whitten, Doan had said: “You think I’m a big joke. I’ll show you how big a joke I am. I’m not going to jail.”

He faced a maximum of six months’ imprisonment on the assault charges.

Whitten said that Carrie eventually persuaded Doan to drive her home, promising to come to his house later. But Carrie reneged. She phoned Doan, telling him she had changed her mind. He got angry, threatening to kill her. She took the threat seriously, locking the windows and doors, and sleeping on the couch.

On 27 August 1996, Carrie went to the gym as usual. Soon after she got there, Doan phoned and they spoke briefly. Then he showed up in person. An argument ensured and he was verbally abusive. There was a further confrontation in the car park and, when Carrie drove off, Doan sped off after her. Tonya Whitten said that Carrie told her that Doan had tried to assure her there would be no repetition of what had happened the previous evening and he cried when he told Carrie he no longer had the gun and had given it to his brother.

Carrie went to the gym again on the morning of the 28th. Doan called her three times. Apparently he was appearing in court that evening over a traffic ticket and was angry Carrie was not coming with him for moral support. Instead she was playing volleyball with her friends. Later he turned up at the bar where the volleyball game was being played, offering to drive Carrie home. Her girlfriends said that Carrie did not want to be alone with Doan and claimed that she was the designated driver who had to drive her friends home after they had been drinking. He was insistent and she was seen repeatedly shaking her head and saying “no”. He left the bar, only to come back almost immediately to ask her again. Again she refused to go with him. Eventually the scream of tyres were heard when he sped out of the parking lot.

Afterwards Carrie was reluctant to go home, so she and her friends drove around town for a while. She was particularly concerned about Doan’s whereabouts and they drove past Doan’s house several times. Finally, her friends dropped her home at about 11.30 pm. It was the last time they would ever see her.

Small-town America turned out for Carrie Culberson once news of her disappearance spread. The following weekend over 300 volunteers combed the surrounding counties, but found nothing. Debbie Culberson then took to the TV, appearing on
Inside Edition, The Montel Williams Show
and
Oprah Winfrey
.

Police sniffer dogs trained to find human remains showed a great deal of interest in a raised section of earth in the scrapyard belonging to Vincent Doan’s father, Lawrence Baker. But when it was excavated all that was found was an old freezer filled with rotting meat that Baker had formerly used to feed a pet lion. The naked body of a woman was found in an abandoned farm cistern some counties away. But it was not Carrie. And a red Honda car dragged from the Ohio River turned out to be a 1985 model rather than a 1989.

Posters carrying Carrie’s picture went up all over the state and a $10,000 reward brought in more reports. Some even claimed to have seen her alive. None panned out.

As months passed the missing person’s case turned into a criminal investigation with Vincent Doan as the chief suspect. On 27 March 1997, a Clinton County grand jury indicted Doan on four counts of kidnapping. Doan turned himself in and, after a few days behind bars, he was released on bail set at $100,000.

The trial was scheduled for 9 June 1997, but on 4 June two murder charges were added. One alleged that Down had killed Carrie Culberson while effecting the kidnapping. The other accused him of deliberately killing her to stop her testifying against him on the assault charges. There would be no more bail. Doan was returned to a county jail and the trial postponed until 14 July 1997.

When the trial opened, the prosecution conceded that the case against Doan was circumstantial, but nevertheless it was solid and conclusive. They had witnesses to prove that Doan was not only controlling and physically abusive towards Carrie Culberson, he was caught up in an escalating spiral of violence that ultimately ended, they contended, with her death. They also conceded they could not prove that she was dead. However, there was no evidence that she was alive, even though witnesses claimed that they had seen her. There were regular sightings of Elvis, but that did not mean he was alive.

They contended that Vincent Doan murdered Carrie Culberson in the early hours of 29 August 1996. Doan’s neighbour, Billie Jo Brown, said she had seen Doan chasing Culberson through her yard, cursing and threatening her. Then he had grabbed her, punched her in the face and shoved her into her car.

Another key witness was Lori Baker, the ex-wife of Doan’s half-brother, Tracey, who still cohabited with him. She said that Vincent Doan had knocked on her door at about 3.15 a.m., asking for Tracey. This was corroborated by Vicki Watkins, Lori’s twin sister, who was staying the night. Doan was dishevelled and covered in blood. He took a shower and changed into some of his brother’s clothes. The two men left in Tracey’s truck at around 4.30 a.m., carrying some garbage bags and a gun. When they came back at around six, Lori said both men had blood on them.

A few days later, Doan was at his brother’s house when a report on Carrie’s disappearance came on TV. He began rocking back and forth. He pulled his shirt over his head and told Lori she could not imagine “hurting someone and holding them until they died”.

The prosecution then produced Mitchell Epperson, Doan’s cellmate in the county jail. He said Doan had told him, that before he had murdered Carrie, he would “lie awake at night and think of a hundred different ways to kill her before he did it”. Doan thought that Carrie was cheating on him.

“When they do that, you can’t let ’em walk on you,” Doan had said, Epperson testified, “you’ve got to make them pay.”

Prosecutors said the circumstantial evidence was clear: whether motivated by obsession or a desire to keep Carrie quiet in the criminal case against him, Vincent Doan kidnapped and murdered Carrie Culberson on or about 29 August 1996.