The Mammoth Book of Killers at Large (12 page)

In his own defence, Vincent Doan insisted that he knew nothing about Carrie’s disappearance and denied kidnapping or murdering her. His attorney maintained that Doan could not have killed Carrie Culberson, because the evidence suggested that she was still alive. Dozens of reports had come in that Carrie or her car had been sighted since her supposed disappearance. The prosecution dismissed these as unreliable, saying that people were confused after seeing her picture on posters or on the television. The defence countered by showing that some of those who had claimed to have seen her had known her before she went missing. But even if Carrie Culberson was dead, the defence argued there was nothing concrete to indicate that Vincent Doan killed her. The prosecution had nothing – no body, no murder weapon nor any other scientific proof. Hundreds of samples taken from Doan’s home and car, his brother’s home and his father’s scrap-yard had yielded not a single shred of evidence.

The defence also maintained that Doan’s neighbour, Billie Jo Brown, was an ex-convict with a record of writing bad cheques and, thus, an unreliable witness. Doan’s cellmate Mitchell Epperson had a long criminal history, with arrests for assault, theft, breaking and entering and violating probation. Lori Baker, they maintained, had a history of drug abuse and was a Satanist who repeatedly changed her account of what had happened on the morning of 29 August 1996. Her twin sister was a fantasist and a habitual liar who was not even there that night. Besides Doan had an alibi. Lawrence Baker and Doan’s stepmother Betty Baker testified that they had visited Doan’s home some time between 1.30 a.m. and two that morning. Lawrence Baker said he had found his son asleep on his living room couch. He then turned off the TV and lights without waking Doan and left the house.

The authorities had been frustrated that they had not been able to locate Carrie Culberson. They had failed to follow up on the sightings of her properly in a rush to pin unprovable charges on the defendant. During the trial itself, a woman claiming to be Carrie Culberson placed a 911 phone call in Cincinnati saying that an innocent man was on trial. A tape of the call was played to Debbie Culberson, who said the voice was not her daughter’s. In fact, the report of another sighting came in while the jury was out. A woman who looked like Culberson ran out of a convenience store after seeing newspaper headlines on the trial.

The defence conceded that Carrie and the defendant had had what they called “spats” in their three-year relationship. But lovers’ tiffs were far from evidence for murder. And it was ridiculous to imagine that Doan had killed Carrie to keep her from testifying against him. Although the assault charges carried a maximum penalty of six months’ imprisonment, if found guilty he would probably have been given probation. Besides, he denied the charges.

On 7 August 1997, after four days of deliberation, the jury found Vincent Doan guilty of three of the four counts of kidnapping and one of two counts of aggravated murder. They determined that Doan had killed Culberson while effecting the kidnapping.

On his way from the courthouse, Doan protested his innocence and when asked if he would reveal what had happened to her body in exchange for a reduced sentence, he said: “If you don’t know where anything is, how can you explain where it is?”

In mitigation of sentence the defence called 20 witnesses including peers, family friends and his grade school teachers who all testified that he was generous, helpful and polite. Former girlfriends said that he was never jealous nor abusive. Even the guards at the county jail testified that he was a model prisoner. However, several witnesses said that he had suffered both physical and mental injuries in 1992 during an accident involving a collapsing crane.

Doan’s mother, Priscilla, begged the jury not to recommend the death sentence, saying: “He doesn’t deserve it. He’s innocent, and I would miss him.” Then Doan himself made an impassioned plea for his life in a 20-minute unsworn statement.

“As her friend, and somebody who still loves her, I’m not going to give up hope that she’s safe somewhere,” he said. “I would still like to do anything that I could do to help out the Culbersons, and help out Carrie as much as I could . . . I miss her tremendously, even though we couldn’t have a relationship . . . when she comes home, I still would not turn my back on her as a friend.”

In response Debbie Culberson told the court: “By not knowing the truth of what really happened that night, we will be forever tormented.” And she pleaded with Doan to tell the authorities where her daughter’s body was so that she could have the “humane and Christian burial that she deserves”. All Doan could do was protest his innocence once again.

After a further two days of deliberation, the jury agreed to spare his life, recommending instead that he served a life sentence without possibility of parole. The judge added another nine years for kidnapping.

Afterwards Tracey Baker was charged with the obstruction of justice, tampering with evidence and the gross abuse of a corpse. At his trial two strands of hair found in his truck and said to match Carrie Culberson’s were introduced in evidence. Red paint was also found on his vehicle, said to have came from Carrie’s Honda. His ex-wife Lori also testified against him. Tracey Baker himself took the stand and denied involvement. He was sentenced to eight years imprisonment on two counts of obstructing justice and one of tampering with evidence, but he was acquitted of the gross abuse of a corpse.

For fabricating his son’s alibi, Lawrence Baker was charged with the obstruction of justice and tampering with evidence. In his trial, Lori Baker said that she had given her father-in-law incriminating items the police missed during an initial search. They were never seen again. She also testified Lawrence Baker encouraged her to lie to police, but the jury did not believe her and he was acquitted.

Blanchester police chief Richard Payton was also charged with obstructing justice and dereliction of duty – the allegation was that he had warned Doan and the Bakers that the pond next to Lawrence Baker’s scrap-yard was about to be dredged. Payton pleaded no contest to two lesser misdemeanour charges of dereliction of duty. He received a suspended 90-day sentence, a $750 fine and one year of unsupervised probation.

On 24 October 1997, Carrie Culberson’s family filed a wrongful death lawsuit in US District Court in Cincinnati against Vincent Doan, Tracey Baker, Lawrence Baker and Richard Payton, asking for punitive damages and demanding to be told where Carrie’s remains were. The suit also alleged that the Blanchester authorities were also negligent for not securing the area around the pond next to Lawrence Baker’s scrap-yard. They were awarded $3.5 million. As part of the settlement the village agreed to hang a photograph of Carrie Culberson in the Blanchester Police Department’s lobby until her remains are discovered.

However, while Vincent Doan served life at the Southern Ohio Correctional Facility, a maximum-security prison located in Titusville, Ohio for the murder of Carrie Culberson, something strange happened. Twenty-three-year-old Alana “Laney” Gwinner from West Chester, just 22 miles from Blanchester, went missing in remarkably similar circumstances.

At about 1 a.m. on 10 December 1997, she was seen leaving Gilmore Bowling Lanes on Dixie Highway-Ohio 4 in nearby Fairfield in her 1993 black Honda Civic Del Sol. Her friends reported that she had scars on her arms from being abused by a former boyfriend. The police have interviewed several of her ex-boyfriends, as well as new friends she made playing pool at the bowling alley the night she vanished, but no arrests were made.

The Fairfield Police were struck by the similarities between the Gwinner and Culberson disappearances and checked for any possible connection. They found none.

Laney had gone to Gilmore Bowling Lanes the night of 9 December expressly to play pool. It was a game she excelled at and she took it seriously, said a friend. She came into the bowling alley with a male companion – not a boyfriend, just a good friend. They arrived in separate cars, though they had dined together at the BW–3 restaurant in Forest Fair Mall.

People remembered her. She was a beautiful woman and her arrival caused a stir, though no one remembered seeing her there before. At around 12.30 a.m. she called a boyfriend in Fairfield, saying she was coming over. Half-an-hour later she left alone, leaving the friend she had came with at the alley. What happened to her after she left is not known. The boyfriend she called said she never showed up.

Her whereabouts remained a mystery until 11 January 1998, when her body was spotted floating down the swiftly flowing Ohio River by a helicopter searching for a missing Covington police officer. Thirty minutes later and nearly three miles downstream, rescuers were able to pull the body ashore at Sugar Bay in Warsaw, Kentucky, some 65 miles from Fairfield. The Kentucky State Police said that she was not put in the water in the state. It is thought that she was dropped in the Great Miami River, a tributary of the Ohio River, some 40 miles upstream in Ohio.

She was easily identified as – clad in a blouse and jeans – she had her driver’s licence in her pocket. There were no visible wounds on her body and the authorities had not revealed the cause of her death, except to say that the autopsy showed that her death was a homicide. But the condition of the body showed that she was in the river for a considerable time. Her car was not found.

The involvement of the police in Kentucky brought another similar case came to investigators’ attention. Seventeen-year-old Erica Fraysure of Brooksville, Kentucky – some 40 miles south of Blanchester – went missing on 21 October 1997, while out driving her car. Her black 1988 Bonneville sedan was found the following day abandoned near Fronks Lane just outside Brooksville in Bracken County. Her purse, chequebook and other belongings were found inside. There were no signs of a struggle, though, later, the car keys were found lying among some leaves on the ground.

The last person to see her was 21-year-old friend Shane Simcox, who had been bar-hopping with friends and was “a little drunk” from beer. He was standing on a street corner in Brooksville when Erica pulled up. A girl got out and Erica asked Simcox if he wanted to ride around for a while. They rode around together alone together for ten or fifteen minutes, he said.

“She said she was talking to this boy, that she kind of liked him a little bit, just telling me about him,” said Simcox.

When they did not see any friends hanging out on street corners or cruising around, Erica decided to go home and dropped Simcox on the way. That was around 9.30 p.m.

There was no reason to think that Erica Fraysure ran away from home and a $7,000 reward was posted. The possibility of a connection between the cases of this string of missing women appeared unlikely, police said.

Less than a week after the body of 23-year-old Laney Gwinner was recovered from the Ohio River, the body of 24-year-old mother Kimberley Sue Sipe was found on the banks of the Licking River in Covington, a suburb on Cincinnati on the Kentucky side of the Ohio. It was recovered by Covington police just after 4.30 p.m. on 17 January 1998 on the west bank of the river at Ninth and Prospect Streets.

She was last seen at about 8 am on 12 January, when she left her mother’s home in Newport’s West End, an adjoining suburb where she had been living temporarily, to catch a bus to visit her newborn daughter, Jaslin. The baby, who had been born five weeks prematurely six days before Kimberley went missing, was at St Elizabeth Hospital South in Edgewood. She also had a seven-year-old son named Tyrone.

Again Kimberley had ex-boyfriend problems. Two days before her body was recovered, her ex was arrested for violating probation on drug and trespassing convictions. Kimberly was a nurse’s aide and was a generally upbeat, good-natured person whose primary interests were her children and work, her mother said. She had had her problems, but had put them behind her. Again the police said that they could find no connection with the other cases and no one has been prosecuted. Whether there is a serial killer operating in Cincinnati, no one can say. But it is hardly less disturbing to imagine that there are a series of copy-cat killers on the loose.

Cincinnati’s Cumminsville Killings

The normally peaceful Cincinnati suburb of Cumminsville was home to a grisly series of killings in 1904 and 1910. Five women were mercilessly hacked to death within a mile of the intersection of Winton Road and Spring Grove Avenue.

The first victim was 31-year-old Mary McDonald, who had something of a reputation. After an ill-starred affair with the widower of her late sister, she had turned to drink. However, things seemed to have turned a corner for Mary. In the spring of 1904 she got engaged. On the night of 3 May, she had been out with her fiancé. Soon after 1.30 the following morning, they had left a local bar. He walked her to the nearest streetcar stop and put her on board an “owl car” that ran all night and would take her home.

At dawn, the switchman on a train near Ludlow Avenue saw a body by the tracks and called for help. It was Mary. She was still alive but incoherent. One leg had been severed and she had a fractured skull. A few hours later, she died from her injuries. At first, her death was thought to be accidental. A drunken woman had fallen in front of a streetcar. However, the police deduced that she had been beaten before she was pushed in front of a tram. This was clearly a deliberate act of murder.

On 1 October 1904, 21-year-old Louise Mueller went out for a walk. The following morning her body was found in a ditch beside some disused railway tracks. Her skull had been battered to pulp. Her killer had made some effort to conceal her body. In the soft earth nearby, he had dug a shallow grave. But the cadaver had not been put in it, suggesting that the killer had been disturbed before he could bury her.

Eighteen-year-old Alma Steinigewig was last seen alive when she left her job as an operator at the local telephone exchange at 9 p.m. on 2 November. However she never reached home. A streetcar conductor spotted her body the following morning in a vacant lot nearby. Ferocious blows had crushed her skull. In her hand was a streetcar transfer ticket. It had been stamped at 9.40 p.m. on the day she had gone missing. She had been dragged across the lot and her clothes were caked with mud. This time, the police discovered a clue that might help them identify the killer. In the mud of the lot, they found footprints that seemed to belong to the suspect. But, in the end, this took them no further forward.