Evil Eyes (12 page)

Dr. Vladimir Parungao, the coroner, placed her time of death at somewhere between 10:00
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. and midnight. An analysis of Gracia’s stomach contents showed she had digested peas that evening. Dr. Parungao estimated that the victim had eaten approximately two to three hours before her death. Toxicology tests showed that she had not drunk any alcohol or taken any drugs.

According to police reports, some of Gracia’s family members did not believe that she had taken the bus home. The reason they gave for their doubt was that Yollie was found wearing her high-heeled shoes. They believed that she always took a pair of sandals with her when she had to ride the bus home because her high heels were too uncomfortable. They also indicated that when Yollie took the bus home, she always got off on Moline Street and Telephone Road. She would then walk west on Moline Street to her home.

Interviews with Gracia’s coworkers indicated something entirely different. Her fellow employees informed police officers that Yolanda Gracia may have been having an affair. Allegedly, Gracia had told her friends at work that she and her husband had been having marital difficulties. She never did elaborate. Also, around March 1982, Gracia began receiving telephone calls at work from a young Hispanic male. The man had called her at least twenty times in the previous month. Houston police officers specu-lated that Gracia may have dined with her unknown male friend prior to her death.

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Another young man became a suspect. The man had been arrested previously in nearby Pasadena for a burglary. He also happened to live on the 7900 block of Moline Street, very near to where Gracia’s body was discovered. The man was eventually disregarded as a suspect.

Carrie Mae Jefferson met her husband, James Jefferson, in Rayville, Louisiana, when she was a teenager. The two started off as just friends and remained that way for several years. In 1963, Jefferson signed up to join the air force. He did not return until four years later, in 1967.

When James returned, he headed for Houston, Texas. The following year, Carrie joined him. The couple eventually fell in love with one another and soon got married. Carrie was all of nineteen. Marie O’Bryant, James’s sister, said of Carrie, “I didn’t gain a sister-in-law because she was already my sister.”

James landed a job as a postal carrier delivering the mail to his fellow Houstonians.

In January 1969, they had the first of two daughters, Tawanda. In August 1975, they had their second daughter, Jakisha. Carrie loved her daughters more than she could imagine. She loved to give them gifts, especially around Christmastime. But the greatest gift she bestowed, not only on her daughters, but on all she encountered, was her infectious laughter, her strong will, and her intense love. In 1978, Carrie decided to join her husband at the

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main post office downtown at 401 Franklin Street. She signed on to work the night shift with her normal working hours between 5:00
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. and 1:30
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. James was not happy about her late-night hours, mainly because of safety issues. Carrie alleviated his fears by having one of her coworkers follow her home every night to make sure she got home okay. Her coworker Delores McAfee would usually follow her all the way to Cullen Boulevard and East Orem Drive, about ten blocks from her house. On April 16, 1982, one day after Coral Watts murdered Yolanda Gracia, he spotted Carrie Mae Jefferson. She looked like an easy target. She only stood five feet tall and weighed 112 pounds. She had a light complexion and a short, tight, curly black afro. She wore maroon pants and

a pink blouse.

Carrie Mae Jefferson parked her car in the family driveway of their cozy home, located on the 12600 block of South Spring Drive. Her girls were sleeping soundly in their feminine bedrooms. Her husband was snoring away, waiting for her to come to bed.

As Carrie reached for her keys, Coral Watts grabbed her and dragged her through the front yard. A patch of dirt in the front yard was disturbed with her dragging shoes. Watts grabbed her keys and heaved her toward her small blue car. He unlocked the trunk and tossed the struggling mother and wife inside. She kicked and screamed, but James could not hear her. He was all the way in the back of the house.

Watts fired up Jefferson’s car, with its owner entrapped. James Jefferson woke the following day at 5:00
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., just like he always did. Only, this time, his wife was not lying next to him. Less than thirty minutes later, James called the police after his neighbor Robert Francis informed him that he had discovered Carrie’s purse in the middle

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of their street. James Jefferson and Francis then noticed something shiny up against the concrete curb. Upon closer inspection, Jefferson realized that it was Carrie’s gold wedding ring. Her watch lay right next to the ring.

James Jefferson went to his friends across the street and told them about his wife. They dressed in a hurry and went out looking for her. It did not take long for them to find her car. It was parked about five blocks away from their house at the corners of Rubin Street and Marchant Road. The trunk had “protrusions” from the inside out and the driver’s side seat was pushed all the way back. Carrie was only five feet tall and would never have her car seat so far back. Furthermore, there were blood smears on the inside of the trunk.

James Jefferson mentioned that his wife chewed tobacco and used a spit cup for the excess tobacco juice. The cup was at the front door, which led James to believe that she must have been abducted as she approached the front door.

As is often the case when a spouse goes missing, the police first looked at James Jefferson as a possible suspect. Marie O’Bryant joked about Carrie years later. She said, “There was talk going around that Carrie may have left her husband and children. Her husband, maybe”—she paused—“her children, only through death.”

According to James Jefferson, the couple did have some marital problems six years earlier. Apparently, Carrie was stepping out on her husband with another man. James claimed that he confronted Carrie about her illicit affair, to which she admitted. The couple, however, reconciled, and everything was supposedly just fine with their relationship.

Suzanne Searles was born in Iowa on April 19, 1957, to parents Beverly and Harry. Her mother called her “Suzi.”

Suzi was the only child of the Searleses. Oftentimes she would have to entertain herself, so she became fascinated with the make-believe world of fantasy. She loved to im-merse herself in stories of dragons, fairies, and goblins.

Suzi also loved animals. She would often adopt animals that she discovered while on nature hikes. “We always had a shoe box ready for any animal she might bring home,” recalled her mother.

Suzi also became a talented artist at a very young age. She started off with designing clothes. When she was fourteen, Suzi’s parents divorced. After her husband left, Suzi’s mother had to return to work. Suzi pitched in by making clothes for her and her mother.

Beverly Searles was amazed at her daughter’s abilities. “She came out very artistic and I can’t draw a straight line with a ruler.”

By the time she was sixteen, Suzi was seriously beginning to mature. The tomboyish, bright red-haired, freckle-faced kid was turning into a beautiful young

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woman. She even politely asked her mother to stop re-ferring to her as Suzi, and instead call her “Sue.”

Sue graduated from Roosevelt High School in Des Moines, Iowa, in 1975. After graduation she attended college at the University of Iowa in Iowa City.

After she graduated from college, she applied for and was accepted to graduate school at Drake University, a private school in Iowa, where she received her master’s degree. There she met her best friend, Lorraine “Lori” Tafoya. According to Lori, Drake was mostly comprised of spoiled rich kids from back east who were from law schools or medical schools. Lori, in her usual outfit of jeans and boots, did not fit the usual Drake prepster mold. So, when Sue walked into class wearing vintage clothes that came off the Salvation Army rack, Lori knew she had found a kindred spirit. The two young women became fast friends and shared everything. They spoke of their dreams and aspirations they had for themselves. They spoke of lives filled with husbands and children and what their lives would be like once their parents passed away or when their own children grew up and went off to college.

Lori cherished her friendship with Sue. “She was an open book,” Lori recollected. “She was the most spiritual and magical person. She didn’t get it from church. No one taught that to her. She just had it inside of her.” Lori believed Sue had a profound effect on her life just by being her friend.

“She had so much charisma. People just let down their walls when they were around her. She could get right through them.”

After Sue completed her graduate degree and obtained her master’s, she went to work in the public information office of the Iowa Legislature.

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At the end of 1981, Sue decided she wanted to be near her good friend Lori. The two young women dreamed of collaborating on a children’s book. Lori would write the text and Sue would illustrate the work. Lori had moved to Houston and Sue soon followed. She moved in with Lori at the Memorial Village Apartments on the 700 block of International Boulevard, located next to Interstate 10, or the Katy Freeway. The young women shared an apartment in the S section until December 28, 1981, then moved into the T section and a nice two-story town house.

Sue landed work as a layout artist for a small design firm called Professional Typographers Printing, located on the 2500 block of North Boulevard. She enjoyed the work and her coworkers; unfortunately, the job did not pay enough. After just a few months, she could no longer afford to pay her $600-a-month rent. Furthermore, Lori had found a new job as a police reporter, but it was all the way in Pueblo, Colorado. Lori moved out on April 5, 1982.

Sue decided she wanted to tag along with her best friend, so she decided to join her in Colorado about a month later. In the meantime she had planned to move in with another friend, Theresa Albury, at the end of the month.

Sue spoke with her mother on the telephone at least once a week. Though her mother knew Sue could handle herself, she still worried. “She’s an only daughter and things have changed so much since I was young,” her mother warned. “I’ve always reminded her to be careful.” Sue always heeded her mother’s warnings.

On April 24, 1982, Sue went to a birthday party for one of her coworkers, Liz, from Professional Typographers. The party was thrown at the 16000 block of Cairnway

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Drive, just northwest of Bear Creek Park, located in northwestern Harris County, off Highway 6 and Clay Road. Approximately forty to fifty people were entertained by a live band at the house of James Berendt. Sue partook in the free-flowing alcohol and smoked a couple of joints. One of the men at the party, Stephen “Mark” Jahn, tried to hook up with the five-feet-six-inch, 120-pound, red-haired, blue-eyed beauty. Apparently, Sue did not warm up to Jahn’s advances.

James Berendt recalled that he saw Searles sitting on the couch in his house talking to a different man than Jahn around 5:00
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After the late-night celebration, Sue drove back to her apartment, approximately fourteen miles away. She parked her 1974 gold Volvo station wagon, with its dis-tinctive blue hood, in her designated parking spot in the apartment complex’s parking lot.

She never made it inside.

Instead, she ran into one of the monsters.

Later that Sunday evening, Sue Searles was supposed to go to a concert with a group of friends, including Greg Irving, who played in the band that performed at the party the night before. He had called her during the af-ternoon at her apartment but got no answer. By 7:30
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., when Irving still had not heard from his friend, he drove over to her apartment and saw the lights on inside. He knocked on her door, but nothing. Irving left a note for Sue and told her to try and make it to the concert if she got home in time.

She never made it.

The following day, Monday, Sue Searles did not show up for work at her scheduled 7:00
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. clock-in time. One of

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her coworkers, Joseph Powell, arrived at work at 7:30
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. He noticed that Searles had not come in for work. He reported to his supervisor that Searles did not make it to the concert the night before either. Powell tried to call Searles at home but only received a busy signal. Powell hung up the phone and told his boss that he could not reach her. His boss told Powell to drive to her apartment and check up on her.

Sue never missed a day of work.

When he pulled up to the complex, he spotted her Volvo. When he looked inside the car, he could see that her purse had been upended and its contents dumped out on the passenger seat. Sue’s eyeglasses, which were broken, her shoes, credit cards, checkbook, and driver’s license were among the items located in the front seat. After Powell saw this, he became alarmed. He located the apartment manager, Dorothy Blackwood, and asked her to open up Sue’s apartment to make sure she was okay. Blackwood used her passkey to open the locked door. Inside, the lights were still on, the telephone had been knocked off its hook, a plant had been knocked over, and dirt was sprayed across the carpet. Unfortunately, there was no sign of her anywhere.

Powell thanked Blackwood and called the police department. At 9:55
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., he filed a missing persons report on behalf of Suzanne Searles.