Murder in the Heartland (3 page)

O
utside the window where the woman who called herself
Darlene Fischer
^*
lived, the temperature had dropped the previous night in Kansas. The prairie just beyond the driveway and the gray-shingled red-barn roof in the yard were dusted with frost; the windowpanes of the farmhouse down the road were fogged over; a rusted Ford pickup truck carcass sat on concrete blocks in the wheat field nearby and appeared as if someone had spray-painted the windshield white; and a shadow of smoke, rising from a woodstove chimney, coiled upward into a corkscrew, dancing in the sky.

Darlene had decided long ago, if this plan of hers was going to work, it would need to be set in motion today. Her husband had taken the following day, a Friday, off from work so he could go with her to her doctor’s office and find out what was going on with the baby. He, along with her children and several people in town, were expecting her to go into labor any moment. She had been talking about having another baby for years—all the while, she claimed, contending with four miscarriages.

Part of her plan meant driving into Lyndon, just outside the town where she lived, and first stopping at Casey’s General Store, where she worked part-time. It was her day off, but
Nancy
, a coworker, would be there.

She figured she’d walk in, tell Nancy what was happening, and word would soon spread throughout town she was in labor.

Before leaving the house, she took a paring knife from a kitchen drawer and put it in her pocket. She rarely carried a purse, or, for that matter, a knife. She needed rope, too. But she could purchase it later or pick up a bundle elsewhere. She had plenty of time.

At about 5:15
A.M
., she pulled into Casey’s parking lot. From the look of things, it was just Nancy sitting there behind the counter. She was probably half asleep, filing her nails, drinking coffee, maybe reading the morning paper. Her boss, the store manager, was there as well, a friend said later; but she was likely in the back office doing paperwork, getting ready for the day.

Leaning on the counter, Darlene looked at Nancy, put her hands around the bottom of her belly, and lunged her stomach forward to make it appear larger.

“My water’s going to break today,” she told Nancy, speaking “really quiet and softly,” recalled a relative.

“I can feel it,” she continued, looking at Nancy. “I’m having labor pains.”

Nancy didn’t believe her. She was one of several people in town starting to question her pregnancies. At the same time, a majority of the people in her close circle—all four of her kids and her husband—believed it was for real: she was going to have a baby.

“Well,” she said to Nancy, “I’m going shopping in Topeka.”

Minutes later, she took off.

While driving, she phoned home. Rebecca, up and about now, getting ready for school, answered.

“I’m on my way into town to go shopping. Any idea yet what I might get Kayla?”

“No, Mom. Sorry.”

“Okay, we’ll talk later.”

“Right, Mom.”

“I’ll call you this afternoon.”

“You okay?”

“I’m fine. My water is going to break. I can feel it.”

H
ours after Darlene Fischer left Casey’s General Store in Lyndon, a few people spotted her in a Maryville, Missouri, Wal-Mart, about fourteen miles east of Skidmore, almost two hundred miles north of her home in Kansas. Those hours between the time she left Casey’s and ended up in Maryville were unaccounted for. No one seemed to know what she did or where she went.

Back in Kansas, at home, she and her husband had turned a small upstairs room into a nursery for the approaching baby. The walls were painted a soft vanilla white; she pasted stickers from the Disney animated film
The Lion King
over the fresh paint: light purple elephants with yellow ears, yellow Simba lion cubs, green butterflies, green and purple dragonflies. It was cute. Comfortable. The perfect soft setting for a newborn. On one side of the room against the wall was an oak-railed crib with blankets and sheets matching the stickers. A nightlight sat on a table in the corner of the room next to a changing station packed with fresh T-shirts, blankets, sheets, and a brand-new bag of Pampers. A baby carrier was usually kept inside the crib, ready and waiting (in fact, she had it with her that afternoon in Maryville; it was sitting in the car beside her). Considering the neutral colors she chose, one might be inclined to think she didn’t know if a girl or boy was forthcoming. She wanted a girl. There was no doubt about it. Having a daughter had become another obsession of hers lately. The only hint the nursery provided that a girl was imminent was a Minnie Mouse diaper holder hanging off one corner of the changing station. Other than that, the colors she chose would work for a girl or a boy.

Still, she had been showing off an ultrasound photograph of someone else’s fetus she had downloaded from the Internet to her husband and kids, claiming it was an image of her “baby girl.”

By 3:00
P.M
., the chill of morning had yielded to a comfortable fifty-degree afternoon. Driving west from Maryville, making her way past the massive Kawasaki Motors plant outside downtown, and after possibly getting something to eat nearby, Darlene Fischer continued south on Highway 71 before taking a hard right onto the “A” road leading into Skidmore.

Just outside downtown Skidmore, about fifteen minutes later, she would have taken a right onto the 113, which became Elm Street in the center of town and West Elm, her ultimate destination, beyond that, past the town’s one service station.

Sitting on the front seat beside her were directions to the house she’d printed off the Internet. As far back as November 17, 2004, Darlene had downloaded the directions and “mapped out” a route to this house. She had lived all over the Midwest and in New Mexico, San Diego, and Arkansas for a time, but found herself today driving into a town she had not been to before.

Following Elm Street down to the west end, Darlene heard the tires of her red Toyota Corolla crunch and pop against the gravel as she entered Bobbie Jo Stinnett’s driveway, near the corner of Orchard and West Elm.

There it was on the right porch post column, exactly where Bobbie Jo had said it would be: the number
410
.

Bobbie Jo’s home, like most in town, was small, just as Darlene had heard. It was a charming little place, though, with two large elm trees centered in front of the porch by the road, their branches weeping downward, brushing the ground.

Darlene had told Bobbie Jo she lived in Fairfax, Missouri, about twenty miles west of Skidmore.

Not true.

She also said she was interested in a few rat-terrier puppies one of Bobbie Jo’s breeder studs had sired recently.

Like a lot of the pieces of Darlene’s chaotic life, inquiring about the puppies was also a lie. The woman calling herself Darlene had her own terriers back home. She didn’t need to travel over one hundred miles to buy one. In fact, she lived in Melvern, Kansas, 187 miles south of Skidmore, a three-hour drive. She was in Skidmore for the one thing Bobbie Jo Stinnett had that she couldn’t have: a baby.

Bobbie Jo was a local rat-terrier breeder. Married, just twenty-three years old, she was in the last trimester of her first pregnancy, her due date about a month away. Looking at her, it was easy to see a woman beaming with the delight only a first-time mother can emit: a glow, incidentally, Darlene Fischer didn’t have. The townsfolk of Skidmore adored Bobbie Jo. With her ebullient smile, large brown eyes, wavy brunette-auburn hair, blemish-free skin as soft as silk, she personified the all-American girl.

“She was such a sweet person,” recalled a friend. “She was so very smart. She would always give me advice when I needed it, and we would always talk about her pups…. She really knew her rat terriers.”

That same friend, a teenager, spoke of Bobbie Jo as though she were her big sister; someone to whom she could turn for advice. “She was such a beautiful person, on the inside and out. My mentor, really.”

It was around 3:15
P.M
. when the woman who called herself Darlene Fischer pulled onto Bobbie Jo’s street and parked in her driveway. The sun was burning warm and bright, illuminating a glorious holiday season. Christmas cards were in the mail. Invitations to New Year’s Eve parties already out. Nativity scenes, cut from plywood and painted by hand, were propped up on front lawns. In Skidmore, people were, indeed, prepared to celebrate the birth of Jesus Christ and the Christmas holiday.

Greeting visitors, a welcome sign stood above a carved miniature birdhouse, a red cardinal and yellow finch buzzing around a black-eyed Susan, to the right side of Bobbie Jo’s front door. This modest dwelling, set in a peaceful, middle-American suburb, was just like the dozen or so others around it.

As Bobbie Jo saw it, the afternoon meeting with Darlene had been brought on by chance. She and Darlene had made plans the previous day, after a mutual friend in the rat-terrier-breeding business had introduced them some time ago. From Bobbie Jo’s point of view, the meeting was supposed to be just a routine, friendly business transaction.

Darlene was a woman of thirty-six years, sporting large-framed glasses with thin lenses that magnified her sunken dark green eyes. She was of average size and shape. She had natural reddish blond streaks throughout her brown hair, which hung down and nearly touched her small breasts. In most respects, Darlene looked no different from thousands of other women marching through their lives in the Midwest.

Mrs. Nobody.

To those who knew her more intimately, though, she seemed depressed, vacant, especially angry, the last few years. Just the other day, quite unexpectedly, she had expressed interest in buying one of Bobbie Jo’s prized terrier pups. The two women had communicated via an online chat room, Annie’s Rat Terrier Rest Area, where they seemed to share a common interest in the feisty canines. Maybe a new pup—or the baby she was telling everyone she was expecting—would cheer Darlene up, make her feel better about herself and her life.

The previous day, Darlene had e-mailed Bobbie Jo at 4:22
P.M
. She logged on to Bobbie Jo’s Happy Haven Farms Web site and, retrieving Bobbie Jo’s e-mail address, wrote, “I was recommended to you by [a mutual friend]….”

And so it began: a seemingly harmless electronic business proposition.

Using the e-mail address Fischer4kids at Hotmail, in that same brief note, Darlene said she had been “unable to reach” Bobbie Jo. She sounded somewhat panicky and impatient, perhaps worried the meeting the following day wouldn’t take place as planned.

“Please get in touch with me soon,” continued Darlene, “as we are considering the purchase of one of your puppies and would like to ask you a few questions.”

Three hours later, Bobbie Jo responded. Under the subject line “Done and Done!” she wrote, “Darlene, I’ve e-mailed you with the directions so we can meet.” To solidify her desire to get together, Bobbie Jo expressed her “hope” the e-mail would reach Darlene in time. “Great chatting with you on messenger,” said Bobbie Jo, after explaining how much she was looking forward to “chatting with you tomorrow a.m.,” before thanking their mutual friend for introducing them. “Talk to you soon, Darlene!” Bobbie Jo ended the e-mail. “Have a great evening.”

Word of mouth: most great businesses, especially in a rural region like Skidmore, were built on the recommendations of others. Bobbie Jo counted on it. Save for paying a major Internet search engine to list her as a top search result, the only way to reach people interested in her pups was to keep customers happy, get word out through the Internet, and make contacts at the dog shows she attended.

Bobbie Jo hadn’t been married two years yet. Eight months pregnant, she was happily going about her storybook life in Middle America. Happy Haven Farms had been Bobbie Jo’s design. Zeb, her husband, worked full-time at a manufacturing plant in Maryville. He had helped his new bride out with the breeding business, but, for the most part, he allowed Bobbie Jo to maintain it herself. In just a few words, some of what Bobbie Jo had written on the home page of her Web site seemed to reflect not only her and Zeb’s attitude toward breeding, but the way they viewed and valued life in general.

“Our puppies are placed in only the very best homes with the family that fits them best. Let us help you find your next pet, rat terrier or otherwise.”

Bobbie Jo was meeting with Darlene to see if she met her stringent criteria for ownership. Bobbie Jo wasn’t about to sell one of her pups to someone who couldn’t be responsible enough to love and care for it. Bobbie Jo and Zeb were good people, concerned about the animals they had made a large part of their lives together.

“They were the type of people,” said one former friend, “you could see growing old together…in their rocking chairs, watching their grandchildren play in the front yard. They minded their own business and didn’t start any trouble.”

Sitting in Bobbie Jo’s driveway on Thursday afternoon, the woman who called herself Darlene Fischer turned off the ignition of her Corolla and looked up at Bobbie Jo’s front door. Besides a paring knife from home, law enforcement later claimed she also had a home birthing kit, a bundle of rope she purchased that afternoon, and several blankets.

Grabbing her keys, Darlene opened her car door and walked toward Bobbie Jo’s front porch. Looking in both directions as she made her way up the one step, pushing the nub of her glass frames back up the bridge of her nose, Darlene Fischer didn’t see anyone around.

She and Bobbie Jo would be alone.

B
renda Standford
^*
was at her Lyndon, Kansas, home on the previous night, December 15, getting her children ready for bed, when Darlene Fischer—although Brenda knew her by another name—had phoned with some rather remarkable news. According to the time frame Brenda later gave, the phone call was made shortly after Darlene had been in touch with Bobbie Jo Stinnett online and made plans to meet with her the following day in Skidmore.

At one time, Brenda saw Darlene Fischer nearly every day. They were coworkers, even close friends.

Already preparing for bed, Brenda was startled by the phone call, she remembered, because “it was so darn late.”

“Hi, Brenda,” said Darlene. She sounded cheerful, upbeat.

“Darlene? That you?” Brenda was a busy woman: kids, husband, two jobs. “Why you calling me so late?”

“I had the baby,” said Darlene in excitement. “Everyone’s doing fine.”

After a brief pause: “Wow,” replied Brenda, “you’re home from the hospital already?”

Brenda was under the impression Darlene had given birth earlier that morning, but she could tell she was calling her from home. It seemed strange the hospital would allow Darlene to leave so soon after giving birth.

“Yeah. You know, they ship you out of there so quick nowadays,” said Darlene.

Brenda was surprised. She knew insurance companies pushed new mothers out of hospital beds, if they were healthy, as soon as they could.
But in under twenty-four hours?

“You and the baby are fine?” asked Brenda.

“Oh, yes. It went smooth.”

“So what’d you have?”

“A girl. Can you believe it?”

“Just what you wanted.”

“Yeah.”

Over the past few months, Brenda had spoken to Darlene almost daily about the baby. She believed, “without a doubt in [her] mind,” Darlene was pregnant. She would wear maternity clothes, or baggy shirts and sweaters, and talk about how excited she and her husband were about having the child.

“She would tell me that her ankles were swollen,” recalled Brenda. “How she was having terrible bouts of morning sickness. ‘My stomach is getting so hard,’ she’d say. And it was…I felt it,” added Brenda, before changing the subject slightly: “Up until the day everything happened, I believed her, because I watched her stomach grow. It was getting bigger, harder. She had me all the way.”