The Murder of Pastor Copin

(This blog entry was also published at CrimeBlog.US.)

It was Easter week, and on Wednesday night, April 4, 2007, Pastor Nancy Copin didn't show. The only unplanned absence by a minister that might be more troubling would be not showing up at a Christmas Eve service.

Members of tiny Snow Creek Christian Church in Martinsville, Virginia waited until the following morning, and they went to the parsonage where the single, 60-something Disciples of Christ minister had lived for the last 20 months or so.

The back door of the parsonage was unlocked, and the folks checking up on Nancy Copin knew for sure that something was wrong when they saw blood. They called the police.

On Friday, April 6, Franklin County (VA) Commonwealth's Attorney Cliff Hapgood told the press that Nancy Copin had been murdered. The minister died from "blunt force trauma." ^1.

The URL for Snow Creek's website:

http://snowcreekchristian.tripod.com/index.html.

It was not made into a hyperlink because the church used a free web host that has a very low capacity for traffic. Too many visitors at once would knock the site offline.

Nancy Copin had her own page:

http://snowcreekchristian.tripod.com/id6.html.

There you could see a heavyset woman with glasses and short graying hair who looked a little younger than 60. A quote from Nancy's webpage:

Nancy has been pastor at Snow Creek for nearly a year, moving here from the Birmingham, Alabama area where she was involved in Hispanic ministry. She completed her seminary training at Beeson Divinity School, Samford University and also has degrees in drama and child and family development. Her hobbies include nature photography, painting, hiking , and the theatre...

There were photos of Nancy alone and with the children of the church, likely giving a children's sermon. Though the images were low-resolution, they conveyed an impression of a friendly, intimate atmosphere. In general, Snow Creek Christian's website conveyed a sense of modesty and organization.

Who would come into this minister's cozy world during one of the biggest weeks on the typical Protestant church calendar and bludgeon her to death?

Martinsville is a city of just over 15,000 located 40 miles south of Roanoke. The crime rate there has steadily decreased since 1999, according to City-Data.com. In 2005, Martinsville, VA didn't record a single homicide.

A comment referencing Snow Creek itself was left by "Alton" on The True Crime Blog after this entry was published. Alton wrote:

[The] Snow Creek community is much more detached from Martinsville than you describe it.

Snow Creek is in neighboring Franklin County. It's a small farming community, 20 miles of 2 lane rural road away from Martinsville...

Still, ministers can be targets. Drifters, grifters, con artists hit up churches in cities of all sizes every day. The larger churches grow wise to this and create safety measures for people who have come seeking a handout, but ministers at small churches may have transients showing up at the door to the parsonage, on occasion.

But at 60, Nancy Copin was surely not a naive woman, even if her profession required her to be giving and understanding. Who was she? Would finding out who Pastor Copin really was give any clue as to how she ended up murdered?

In 2004, Nancy Copin posted messages on a forum attached to the Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary's website, using the screen name, "ncopin." In a thread where the starter message asked about ministers discerning whether or not they are truly "called" to preach, Nancy posted a thoughtful response. A portion of her reply:

I am a "mature" student at Beeson Divinity School, Samford University. So I am answering this question as an outsider on both fronts. Down here in the deep South the dependence on traditions in our society comes to the forefront at a time like this. Often this means that the pastor or other religious leader that you seek out to help you struggle with you calling has very definite ideas about it. He (and it is usually a he down here) has trouble thinking about some young person feeling a sense of calling to do creative, contemporary work. He may have very traditional feelings about the role of women in ministry and be very discouraging of a woman who feels led to preach or pastor a congregation. He often has very deep feelings about denominations.

Having said all of that I must say that there is no better way that to seek out the wisdom of an experienced man (or woman) of God and to pay careful attention to the questions and the suggestions. It is also important to watch that person and learn how he or she stays in tune with his own calling after the new has worn off and all the challenges have worn him.

(...)

My advice to those of you who are young and starting out in "professional" ministry is to stay on those knees and keep your ear tuned to the Spirit. Be patient with yourself and others. God only calls us with a desire to hear us say "Yes, Lord I am here" and then to face the very next person we see with the love that demonstrates God's love. That's all that we are asked. Each day we just get a new opportunity and a new face.

Another discussion on the same forum was titled, "Love, as Easy as (Mark)." The reference was to this passage from the Book of Mark: "...'You shall love your neighbor as yourself.' There is no other commandment greater than these."

"ncopin" posted her contribution to the discussion on October 27, 2004. It demonstrated some of her savvy, as an older person and as a seminary student then working in an urban church. Nancy wrote, in part:

One of the great keys to mission effectiveness is a heart filled with the love of God. This leads us to people - not always the people we feel comfortable around, not always the people we understand, not even people we like. I like the line "(and I went where the tug of intuition led and did what my heart told me to do. . . )" Living in a severely economically deprived community and serving on staff of "the" downtown church I am accustomed to hearing sob stories, smelling drunks, stepping back from the druggy. They come every day to the door of the church asking for help. The "tug of intuition" sometimes tells me what to do, sometimes not...

Reading some of what the murdered minister had once written online was compelling. Her intellect and level of reflection gave some insight into what she might be like -- probing, thoughtful, on some levels, profound.

How had Nancy Copin come to the ministry so late in life? She'd lived some 50 years or more doing other things, apparently.

What went on before Nancy Copin entered the seminary?

Some bad stuff, apparently. The kinds of life events that might turn just about anyone towards a life serving God -- or kill them, depending on their constitution.

Common law duty of psychiatrist to report child abuse - Bradley v. Ray, 904 S.W.2d 302 (Mo.App. W.D. 1995).

The Nancy Copin murdered earlier this week in Virginia couldn't be the same woman mentioned in the online case file. After all, she'd come to Virginia from Alabama. When Copin graduated in 2005 from Samford with her Masters of Theological Studies, this article listed her as being from Paducah, Kentucky. True, Paducah is just across the Mississippi from Missouri, but it isn't in Missouri.

Additionally, in various versions of this case, the last name Copin was sometimes spelled with a "K" -- Kopin.

Still, the story told in the case file dealing with Bradley v. Ray was fascinating...

A man named Lester Pope and the Nancy Copin in those court case files married in 1967. They had other children, but in 1976 they took in a foster child, whom they adopted 2 years later. In 1980, Lester allegedly began to sexually abuse the little girl.

Lester and Nancy separated many times. But it was only after a separation in January of 1988, that Nancy discovered photographs of her 11-year-old stepdaughter in a see-through negligee, then the negligee itself.

The court papers indicated that Nancy confronted her stepdaughter first, and the girl said her stepfather was having sexual contact with her.

This particular Nancy Copin contacted doctors then, instead of cops. She brought in Drs. Joel Ray and Bruce Strand, of Columbia Psychological Associates.

After a "crisis intervention" session, Dr. Ray said that the Pope family had to confront Lester about the issue. If Lester would get professional help, he'd have his family's support. Any refusal of help would see Lester Pope put behind bars.

The facts of the case as stated in the Missouri Court papers indicated that Dr. Ray full well knew that deviants who didn't receive "proper treatment" would re-offend in a heartbeat.

But neither he nor Bruce Strand saw fit to give the information they'd gotten from Nancy Copin to the Missouri D. F. S. or the Columbia police.

Here is a portion of the Missouri statute relevant to such a situation:

When any . . . psychologist, . . . has reasonable cause to suspect that a child has been or may be subjected to abuse or neglect or observes a child being subjected to conditions or circumstances which would reasonably result in abuse or neglect, that person shall immediately report or cause a report to be made to the division (Division of Family Services). . .

This family in Missouri had an intervention, of sorts. Lester Pope was, in due course, confronted, and warned. Nancy also made Lester Pope apologize to the girl he'd allegedly molested for so long. Lester apparently complied.

Lester Pope began counseling with Dr. Strand. In his first session, Pope asked the doctor for a reassurance that the abuse allegations would remain confidential. Dr. Strand said that they would, and he made a note to that effect during the session.

Pope was concerned about his image, you see. He'd been a professor at the University of Missouri and was generally a pretty well-known guy.

Lester proceeded to see Dr. Strand for 5 or 6 more sessions, and then he quit going.

The sexual abuse of Lester Pope's and Nancy Copin's stepdaughter continued for more than a year after that. Finally, in mid-1989, Nancy Copin got a divorce from Lester Pope, and the abuse ceased.

But the victim, who bore Lester's last name as well as the psychological scars, still suffered. Everything came to a head when Nancy Copin took the girl back to Columbia Psychological Associates for more counseling. The victim was having behavioral problems, as might be expected. A clinical social worker named Lynn Ogden finally did the right thing, and she called the Division of Family Services.

A sexual assault examination was performed on the girl, and the history of sexual molestation was unmistakable. There was vaginal trauma, a case of chlamydia, pelvic pain, itching and discharge, to just name a few of the physical symptoms. Emotionally, Lester Pope's victim had been destroyed. She had sleeping and eating problems, was acting out sexually, and had great anger and depression.

Lester was finally arrested. They charged him with multiple counts of sodomy and a single count of attempted rape. Lester Pope pled guilty to one count of sodomy. He got 9 years in prison, but only did 5, receiving parole in 1996. Pope could not be found in any national sex offender registry search, but a site named SexualOffendersList.org did have a listing for a man with the same name, in the correct age range, residing in Illinois.

Nancy Copin's stepdaughter, Lester Pope's victim, filed a multi-million dollar suit against the two doctors, Ray and Strand, for them having not reported the abuse to D. F. S. or the police. A judgment in excess of $10,000,000 was eventually rendered, but in 2005, Dr. Ray appealed -- Bruce Strand had since passed away.

An article explaining the case (much of it already covered above) can be read here. Written for the Daily Record and Kansas City Daily News-Press in December, 2005, the article linked more clearly explains the lawsuits, as well.

But was this horribly victimized young woman's step-mother the same Nancy Copin who went to Seminary in Birmingham? The same Pastor Copin who was murdered mysteriously in her Virginia parsonage on Wednesday?

Yes, it appears that she was.

In the Burlington, Iowa Hawk-Eye in 1997, a wedding notice was published for a young woman named Bollin and a young man named Pope. About the young man's parents the short article said the following: "The groom-elect is the son of Lester Pope of Florrisant, Mo. and Nancy Copin of Birmingham, Ala." Emphasis added.

There was another Birmingham-linked mention of Nancy Copin in the Chicago Tribune in July, 1999. The article was titled, "Keep an eye on daycare kids online." The piece by reporter Stephanie Zimmerman was about a then-growing trend of placing webcams in daycares. Quoting:

Technology is stepping in with a solution. At day care centers nationwide, private Internet Web sites are churning out continuous camera footage, so parents can log on and see their kids eating, sleeping and playing_or fussing, fighting and crying_throughout the day.

"In our working world . . . our parents are having to sever those ties (of daily care for their children) . . . and parents are feeling guilty about that," said Nancy Copin, who works in corporate development at Progressive Childcare Systems of Birmingham, Ala., one of about five such companies that are wiring day care centers to the Internet. "This takes care of that. It's not perfect, but it really, really helps."

Nancy Copin's journey to the pulpit seems like it was long and arduous. What she felt over the years as lawsuits relevant to her stepdaughter's abuse dragged on can only be guessed at (Copin was even named as a defendant, at one point). How Copin dealt with her ex-husband and the father of her biological children (one mainstream media report indicated that she had two sons) is also unknown. She simply went to Alabama and went to work. With the Internet -- to try and give other parents some feeling of security, the ability to monitor their kids even at a distance -- something she'd wished she had at one point? Then, finally, Copin came home to the Church. Was she driven by the memory of a time when she didn't know what to do? When she felt like she failed a child who depended on her?

In the parsonage where she lived in Virginia, did one of these parts of this woman's intense and painful past come back to haunt her? If it did, why now?

Pastor Copin wrote on the Seminary message board of a "tug of intuition." For her, that intuition must have been hard-won.

I keep wondering if she felt it on Tuesday or Wednesday night, and again dismissed it, as she'd probably done years ago, in another life, in Missouri.

An update can be read here: "Redemption Interrupted: Pastor Nancy Copin."

John Delling's Soul Loss

(This blog entry has been cross-posted at CrimeBlog.US.)

Several years ago the website run by the National Association for Christian Recovery published an article by a writer named Dale Wolery titled, "Soul Loss." Wolery's piece was about co-dependence, and his contention that co-dependence caused damage to one's soul.

Readers began posting comments on the article in 2001. On August 29, 2006, a commenter calling himself John Delling and using the e-mail address Crahupi@yahoo.com wrote the following:

Subject: Demon possession
Posted By: John Delling

The last thing I remember was that saying GOD gave me strength and power. SO I am hoping to get some answers, Poeple [sic]/demons have done things to me that have lead me to where I have no Human emotions or memories. I feel very weak and can't think feel or remember, I believe that I have died. There is a repetitive theme in my mind that I saw the future and people will wipe my mind and wake me hours later, NOT JOKING PLEASE LISTEN, If I wear a yellow shirt. I have been attacked and abused, discriminated against by many people for no apparent reason, there was a weird event about poeple [sic] putting jew and nazi memories in my mind and then this guy named sweeney which is the name of a person who dropped one of the bombs on the second plane, I guess he may be a relative, put a whole lot of the yellow spinning energy into my solar plexus and then I was sacrificed by possibly a vampire cult as the Sun King or something like that.

THis sounds crazy but please tell me haw I can feel and remember things again. like short term memory especially Thank you.

For reasons that will soon be clear, emphasis was added.

John Delling, age 21, was arrested in Sparks, Nevada on Tuesday, April 3, 2007. Authorities in Idaho believe Delling murdered University of Idaho student David Robert Boss, age 21, in Moscow, Idaho on Monday, April 2nd. They also think Delling is responsible for the death of Bradley Morse, age 25.

Dave Boss and John Delling knew each other. Both attended Timberline High School in Boise, and Delling also attended the University of Idaho during the 2004-2005 school year.

It was in the latter half of that year that John Delling began having problems. According to an Associated Press report published April 5, 2007, Delling filed a report with with Moscow police indicating that he'd been assaulted. In April of that year Delling himself was charged with misdemeanor disturbing the peace, and kicked out of school. Furthermore, Delling was barred from coming on campus again for a year, because he'd allegedly threatened residents in the dorms. The misdemeanor charge was dropped, but Delling's problems continued.

June of 2005 found John Delling in court pleading guilty to stalking charges. His targets had been three men, but it wasn't clear as to whether Dave Boss or Bradley Morse were among the three.

Delling was to have no contact with those men, and he eventually completed 80 hours of community service.

The AP interviewed one of those stalking victims for the article -- a Boise-based attorney named Allyn Sweeney. Sweeney said the following about Delling; "He's just one of these very scary people. I'm certainly not surprised at the apparent result."

The "apparent result" was a killing spree that began shortly after midnight on Monday. Cell phone records indicated that Dave Boss received a call from John Delling around that time. Police believe that Delling came to the senior history major's apartment and murdered Boss there, two shots to Boss's head. Dave Boss's roommate came home to find the scene about an hour later.

Two days later, on the morning of Wednesday, April 4, an employee of the Idaho Department of Parks and Recreation made a horrific discovery. The employee was doing lawn maintenance in an area close to where Idaho holds the Idaho Shakespeare Festival each summer. He discovered a trail of blood that led to a drainage pond. In the pond lay Bradley Winter Morse, a computer science major who'd attended Boise State. Morse, like Boss, had been shot twice in the head.

A GPS-enabled cell phone may have been John Delling's undoing. The following quote is from an article posted online by Boise TV station KTRV on April 5:

Officers in Moscow had discovered that Delling was the last person victim David Boss spoke to on the phone before he died.

They also had received information from Boss's relatives about general threats Delling had made against three men in the Boise area -- victim Bradley Morse was not one of them.

Officers called to warn those men and then tracked Delling using GPS technology in his cell phone.

After receiving information on Delling's location, and a possible vehicle description in Sparks, Nev., officers there moved in...

When Delling was arrested in Nevada, the car he was driving had been registered to Bradley Morse.

John Delling's past connection to David Boss was pretty clear, but any acquaintance he may have had with Bradley Morse has not been quite as easy to determine. One short AP article published on April 5 indicated that Delling, Boss, and Morse may have grown up in the same neighborhood.

What happened to John Delling? Had he been a psycho for years, or did a young man who was merely eccentric before go from weird to scary at some point in 2005?

I discovered the strange comment I quoted from a John Delling last night, but I hesitated to do anything with it until today, when I read the news piece that named one of Delling's stalking victims, Allyn Sweeney. To me, the reference to "this guy named sweeney" in the comment was too big a coincidence to ignore.

The short comment by Delling, if made by the man now accused of two murders (among other crimes), screams of a disordered, paranoid mind. Yet one could never accurately judge such a thing from a paragraph and a sentence.

If Delling was behaving erratically, and he was concocting nonsense such as what I've quoted above, it's hard to understand how he was able to function well enough to get to Dave Boss or Bradley Morse in the first place. His last address in California has been repeatedly referred to in various reports as his "last known" address -- which implies in a way that he might have been a transient. Yet he had a cell phone in his name. That was how investigators knew that Delling called Dave Boss prior to Boss's murder.

Ramblings such as what I've quoted here could also be the result of something other than mental illness. The references to colors, particularly yellow, the disjointed nature of the thoughts expressed could also have been due to drug use, particularly use of a hallucinogen like LSD.

The thoughts expressed are not so disjointed that we don't get a picture of obsession, though. If the John Delling who wrote that comment was the same man, he was still obsessing over Allyn Sweeney over a year after he'd pleaded guilty to stalking Sweeney and two others. He also still had delusions that he lived in an evil world where there were "vampire cults."

Was John Delling crafty enough, perhaps, to write such things in anticipation of one day needing an "insanity defense?" It seems improbable, but if he was, then thank God he was arrested before he could kill more. His alleged murders of two young men in the prime of life, two young men who had the world before them, was already too much.

The John Delling who posted the comment online did not really seem to address the title of the piece, "Soul Loss," though he wrote of having no emotions or memories.

But if it was the same man, then perhaps the title of the article was the most telling thing of all, beyond any of the madness Delling spewed in the comments. To do what John Delling allegedly did to Dave Boss and Bradley Morse would take a very real "soul loss."

If such a killer ever had a soul to begin with.

An new entry about Delling has been posted exclusively at CrimeBlog.US: "John Delling: Time Bomb?"

The Mysterious Mr. Williams

(This entry has also been published at CrimeBlog.US.)

UPDATES WILL BE AT THE BOTTOM OF THE ENTRY.

When police were called to the home of Turid L. "Turi" Bentley, age 66, on Friday, March 30, 2007, they encountered what seemed to be a sadly commonplace situation. There was a gravely wounded 49-year-old man at the location, Randall Nozawa, and another man, an apparent suicide, identified later as Bentley's live-in "partner," 62-year-old John Williams.

Nozawa was a friend to the deceased couple, their yoga instructor. Apparently he'd come to the home in Gig Harbor, Washington because he was concerned about John Williams's behavior.

According to news reports from multiple Washington State media sources, Williams shot Turid L. Bentley that day in the head and the neck. Williams shot Nozawa, then turned the gun on himself.

Many similar tales of domestic violence might basically end there. This is not one of them.

While investigating the circumstances that led to the shooting, Gig Harbor and Pierce County detectives discovered a box in the attic of the home containing multiple forms of identification for John Williams.

The man who shot Randall Nozawa and murdered Turi Bentley was not named John Williams. Whoever he was, he wasn't one of the good guys.

Writing in the Tacoma News-Tribune on March 31, 2007, Sean Robinson included this quote from Pierce County Sheriff's spokesman Ed Troyer:

"He's not John Williams," Troyer said.

Detectives found a locked container in the attic of the house, Troyer said. Its contents: multiple identification cards with the man’s picture, attached to a host of different names. The IDs came from the Virgin Islands and the West Indies, among other places, Troyer said.

Other evidence recovered from the scene pointed to financial scams engineered by the man. Troyer would not describe them more specifically, except to say the man appeared to know what he was doing.

"We believe this guy probably until the death was pretty good at being a scam artist," he said. "He’s not who he portrayed himself to be here. He's not married to this lady (Bentley)."

Some of the IDs traced to Oregon, Troyer said. Checks with law enforcement in that state and the FBI revealed arrest warrants for kidnapping, sexual assault and attempted murder. Another warrant cited unlawful flight to avoid prosecution.

Troyer said the warrants appeared to be five or six years old, but he did not provide the name used by the suspect.

"We believe we know who he really is," Troyer said. "We're waiting to confirm photos and information."

And as of Tuesday, April 3, authorities in Washington still had not released Williams's real name.

The News-Tribune reporter went on to reference a quitclaim deed for the Pierce County property signed by Williams. The deed was dated August of last year and can be seen here, in .pdf format. It was notarized by Randall Nozawa -- the other victim found at the home in Gig Harbor on the 30th. Additionally, as the reporter for the Tacoma paper noted, Williams was listed as the "husband," even though no formal marriage records have been found for Turi Bentley and the pseudonymous Mr. Williams.

Turi Bentley was married for many years to a man named Lorne, whom she divorced in 2002. When she met Williams isn't exactly clear, but photos found in the house they shared showed that at some point they had something that resembled a wedding ceremony, even if it wasn't legal.

Whether or not Williams was scamming Turi Bentley is still unknown, but the odds are good that he was. A Seattle Post-Intelligencer article published on April 2 contained the following quote:

Investigators suspect Williams might be tied to financial scams -- perhaps against Bentley, who friends believed was his wife.

"The woman he lived with had money, and he did not," Troyer said. "We're not ruling it out."

Turi Bentley may well have been a woman of means. A public records search revealed a woman with the same name also had an address in Koloa, Hawaii in 2002 -- an address shared at the time with a husband named Lorne.

John Williams said he was a retired naturopath, but this was likely just a con man's convenient cover. Turi Bentley sold supplements for Mannatech, and had been associated with the field of health and nutritional supplements for a while. This link takes you to a .html file showing both Turi and her ex-husband's names on a listing of associates dated from June of 2001.

In an article published by the News-Tribune on April 3, journalist Kelly Kearsley quoted from an interview with Turi Bentley's son, David Bentley. David did not seem to know for sure, but he felt that his mother might have met Williams either online or at a conference related to the overall field they appeared to share.

The same April 3 article indicated that John Williams and Turi Bentley had only recently moved into the residence. The property search that yielded the quitclaim deed with John Williams's signature also showed a transfer from Turi's mother, Liv Lee, to her daughter in August, 2006. John and Turi had only been in the neighborhood since then, apparently. Nearby residents interviewed for the piece said as much, and they also stated that they didn't know the pair well as a result.

Turi Bentley did not appear to have any other Gig Harbor property, either.

So one clue as to events leading up to her murder might be found here. The link goes to a page cached by Google on March 29, 2007 -- one day before the murder-suicide. The listing was for a home in Spinnaker Ridge being sold by the owner, the asking price was $482,500. From the web page:

Great views of Puget Sound from your private deck adjacent to wooded parklands.
2 bedrooms, 2 full baths (with jetted tub)
Large livingroom with gas fireplace, vaulted ceilings, and skylights.
Fresh paint in and out
2 car garage.

For more information on this home, or to request a private showing, please contact the owner directly:
Turi Bentley (...)

**This home is being sold by the owner without professional representation. There is no contract between owner and Matt Thomson or Keller Williams Real Estate. Home is featured on this site with written permission of home owner...

The page no longer exists -- an attempt to access it outside of the cache yielded nothing. Why would Turi Bentley have been selling the home she'd only bought from her mother last August? Could it be that she'd run into a downturn in her finances?

The idea that John Williams -- whoever he was -- was scamming Turi Bentley seems all the more plausible upon seeing that real estate listing.

The Washington investigators are working with the FBI to piece together John Williams's back-story. They have indicated that they will release the man's real name and other information later this week.

This entry will be updated when that occurs.

UPDATE, 6:10 p.m. ET, April 3, 2007

KIRO TV has an article posted that reveals Williams's real name: John W. Branden, age 62.

In a sense, Branden wasn't exactly lying about being a naturopath, after all. I was able to find at least one archived newspaper article detailing problems Branden had when he had a "practice" in California 16 years ago.

On July 30, 1991, an article was published in the San Diego (CA) Evening Tribune that mentioned a John W. Branden, and in it he was described as a "a non-medical doctor and nutritionist." He headed the Bayview Medicine Group in Bay Park, California. Branden at the time was accused of malpractice and "improper and unwanted sexual contact" with a customer while she was being treated at the facility.

The lawsuit stated that while treating his female victim in September of 1990, Branden instructed her to "to disrobe (...) The suit contends that Branden then had sexual contact with her under the guise of providing therapeutic treatments for a superficial fungal infection and for Epstein-Barr virus, a chronic fatigue malady with flulike symptoms thought to be associated with mononucleosis."

Whatever game Branden was playing, he'd been at it a while, obviously.

Battered Dreams, Part 4: Interlude -- Jeremy and Heather

(Much thanks to Kim Bailey from Murfreesboro, TN for the new information that sparked this blog entry. What you are about to read has been pieced together from news accounts published in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, information found in Google Groups and on various websites as well as a program segment produced by Unsolved Mysteries, the long-running television series hosted by the late Robert Stack.)

• "Battered Dreams... Part 1."
• "Battered Dreams... Part 2."
• "Battered Dreams... Part 3."

"Tom Johnson"

The episode of Unsolved Mysteries first aired on April 27, 1994. A portion of the synopsis for episode #287 read as follows:

Wanted: A man going by the name of Tom Johnson answered an ad to buy a computer and later attacks the salesman and his fiancee in a hotel room in Marietta, GA, resulting in the fiancee's death...

I'd seen this episode repeated over the years, and this segment always stuck with me. When Unsolved Mysteries re-aired this particular program on Lifetime in 2006, the "Tom Johnson" segment was one of the few that had no update, no resolution. The murder remained unsolved.

I never knew the real story behind this murder until today, when a friend associated with Middle Tennessee State University (MTSU) in Murfreesboro recognized the outlines of the tale, and provided me with more details.

In the murders of Rob and Kelli Phillips, it appeared that Tom Steeples may have somehow lured the couple to their deaths. Steeples was seen with the couple at the Stagecoach Lounge on the night they died. He was later spotted at the Econo-Lodge where Rob and Kelli lost their lives. Phone records showed calls placed from Computer Forms and Supplies, the business Tom ran with his wife, Tillie Ruth, to the Econo-Lodge.

In the fall of 1992, Jeremy Rolfs was 21 and a lanky, bespectacled senior at MTSU majoring in Radio-Television/Photography. He was dating Heather Uffelman, age 22. Heather was interested in both writing and electronic media, and she was involved in broadcasting on campus with her fiance, both of them working at the campus television production studios. Heather was also an announcer at WMOT, the University's public radio station.

Off-campus, Jeremy worked part-time for the Halsey Company. Part of Halsey's business was music video production, then a fast-growing secondary business there in the home of country music. Jeremy Rolfs was scheduled to graduate that December, and various broadcasting companies were already looking to hire him on as a technical consultant.

Apple Computers had established its then top-of-the-line Quadra model in the music video production business early in the '90s as one of the go-to computers for film and video editors and creators of computer-generated graphics. Halsey decided that fall that they would sell one of their Quadra systems, and the asking price was $31,000. They placed an ad in a trade publication.

The ad for was answered in October, 1992 by a man who said his name was Tommy Johnson. According to the script for the Unsolved Mysteries segment, Mr. Johnson also came from Nashville.

Over the course of several phone calls -- which never appeared to ring any alarm bells for anyone -- it became clear that Johnson wanted to pick up the Quadra in Marietta, Georgia. Marietta was about a 5-hour drive from Murfreesboro.

Jeremy had been working hard, in Heather's estimation. Too hard. So she rearranged her scheduled shift at WMOT on October 24, 1992, to make the long drive with Jeremy to Georgia and the meeting with Tommy Johnson.

The Phillipses would make the trip to Nashville from California in just 3 days in early March, 1994. Ann Phillips, Rob's mom, told a South Carolina newspaper in 2001 that one reason for the couple's trip to Nashville was a meeting with a music producer to discuss a contract for Rob. However they met Tom Steeples, it appears that at first they were not threatened by the man. As my brother in law Richard Grimes said of Tom, "He knew how to pull himself off very professional." Rob and Kelli spent time with Tom before they were murdered, and must have been comfortable.

Jeremy Rolfs and his wife-to-be, Heather Uffelman, met the mysterious Tommy Johnson at the Knights Inn on Delk Road early that October morning.

Tommy Johnson drove a brown Dodge Dynasty, and his vehicle did indeed have a Tennessee license plate.

The meeting began well enough, but there was one hitch -- Tommy's business partner was supposed to have the certified check for the computer system, and his partner had yet to arrive. The three made small talk for a time, and a famished Jeremy and Heather decided they'd go get a bit to eat while Johnson waited.

In March of 1994 Rob and Kelli Phillips went separate ways briefly after they left the bar where Rob had just won $100.00 in a vocal competition. Rob went to get something to eat, Kelli headed back to the Econo-Lodge. It isn't clear as to whether or not Tom Steeples was with one or the other at the time.

When Jeremy and Heather got back to the Knights Inn, Tommy Johnson's business partner had not yet arrived.

At some point that morning, possibly while Jeremy and Heather were out to eat, an unidentified woman approached the desk clerk at the Knights Inn and reported that there was some kind of disturbance coming from the very room where Jeremy and Heather were supposed to conduct the exchange. Whenever it happened, the complaint did not actually occur at the time of the attack on Jeremy and Heather, but well before it.

Was this female the "business partner?" No one knows. Either she was psychic, or she knew exactly what Tommy Johnson intended to do, and it was more than she could handle.

Jeremy Rolfs was truly tired by the time he and Heather returned from their meal, and asked Johnson if they could somehow go ahead and close the deal. According to the re-enactment on Unsolved Mysteries, that was when Tommy Johnson responded, "I think we can end this transaction right now."

That was when Tommy Johnson pulled a small pistol, sometimes described as a derringer, on Jeremy Rolfs and Heather Uffelman.

Johnson's method of binding the college students was peculiar, perhaps conceived on the spot. He rolled them tightly into sheets taken from the beds in the hotel room.

Then Tommy Johnson put away the gun.

Rob and Kelli Phillips suffered only slightly different fates. Rob was killed first, bludgeoned near the door of the room he and Kelli rented at the Econo-Lodge. After Tom Steeples was done torturing and raping Kelli Phillips, he beat her to death as well. At least one source indicated that Steeples may have used a piece of iron rebar to murder the couple. Whatever Steeples used to beat the pair, he did it in a frenzy. The crime scene was so nightmarish that 12 years after the fact two of the main detectives who worked the case couldn't bring themselves to talk much about it.

Johnson pulled out a hammer instead. He beat both Jeremy and Heather about the head until he thought they were dead, and took off with the computer system.

Jeremy and Heather were rushed to Kennestone Hospital. Heather Uffelman died that Saturday around 12:30 p.m.

Heather Uffelman was buried on October 28, 1992 in her little hometown of Erin, Tennessee, located about 30 miles southwest of Clarksville. Jeremy Rolfs had just been released from Kennestone the day before, and he made it to the funeral, where he spoke and read an essay his fiancee had written about her childhood on a farm.

When the Atlanta Journal-Constitution published a report about the crime on October 29, 1992, there was a nationwide lookout for Tommy Johnson, but nothing ever seemed to yield results. To my knowledge, the Quadra cpu, serial #F62164JW671, and the monitor, serial #92020501, have never turned up.

Jeremy stayed true to Heather Uffelman. At MTSU he established the Heather Uffelman Memorial Scholarship, for students who shared Heather's love of writing and working with electronic media. The scholarship is awarded each spring to winners of an essay contest adjudicated by faculty.

In the spring of 1997, Jeremy Rolfs was a member of the Peace Corps working in South Africa as a telecommunications adviser. Rolfs was giving his mother Alma a ride along a road in Lesotho when a driver coming from the opposite direction fell asleep at the wheel. The Rolfs's vehicle was struck head-on. Jeremy died of internal injuries, but his mother survived.

After his death at 27, another scholarship was established at MTSU in Jeremy's name, and it is given each year to a junior or senior with a 2.8 gpa or higher who is involved in radio, television and photography.

Jeremy Rolfs left his estate to the fund for the scholarship named after Heather Uffelman.

Tom's practice run

Tom Steeples has never, to my knowledge, been linked publicly to the attack that killed Heather Uffelman and injured Jeremy Rolfs. Richard Grimes told me that the cops who interviewed him in 1993, after the murder of Ron Bingham (a bar owner to whom Steeples purportedly owed a large gambling debt), mentioned that they suspected Steeples of involvement in crimes in other states, but Richard couldn't remember specifics, 14 years after the fact.

But there are parallels galore between Marietta in '92 and Nashville in '94. The computers were being sold by a video production company associated with making country music videos. In fact, I know from personal experience that virtually the only music video production happening in Nashville in the early '90s was country music. Rob and Kelli Phillips were in part, at least according to one source who would have spoken directly to Rob, supposed to be meeting a music producer in Nashville. Could Steeples have worked a series of lures, all of them revolving around an interest in or association with country music?

Then, of course, there are the obvious similarities: a man named Tom, a professional-looking man of indeterminate age, coming from Nashville; an innocent young couple who walk into the situation and don't catch on quickly to the danger -- because it isn't apparent; the attacks took place in inexpensive hotels, and the most vicious treatment was reserved for the women, in each case. In each case, the victims were beaten, bludgeoned. In Marietta in 1992 the killer may have had a female accomplice who didn't have the stomach for murder, hence the report of trouble in the room where the assault happened. While Tillie Ruth Steeples was never linked (as far as I know) to the murders of Rob and Kelli Phillips, she was certainly Tom Steeples's partner in crime on other occasions, including her enabling Tom to commit suicide by smuggling cocaine into the Davidson County jail.

The "Tom" in Marietta may not have known that a young woman was going to accompany Jeremy Rolfs. This presents an interesting possibility -- that the brutal robbery was originally intended to only be a robbery of one man, and maybe a murder to eliminate a witness. But Heather was added into the mix, and the killer reserved his worst for her.

If Tom Steeples killed Heather Uffelman, did the event in Marietta set off something inside him that he eventually wanted to repeat? That is -- could it be that a crime of cold-blooded opportunity actually sparked something much more calculated and vicious?

For the man who killed the couple in Marietta would have known that having an accomplice in on murder was a bad idea. He also might have taken his not being caught as a sign that he didn't have to work so far afield. He could stay in Nashville the next time, if he wanted.

He would just have to be sure that he completely eliminated as many witnesses as possible.

This entry was called an interlude because the ties between the crimes are coincidental, and on my part, other connections are hypothetical. The terrible unsolved murder of Heather Uffelman may not be connected to Tom Steeples. However, knowing a little more about "Tommy Johnson" and events in Marietta 15 years ago has only further convinced me that Johnson could have been Steeples.

Maybe police asked Jeremy Rolfs and he said no, that wasn't the guy. On so many levels, it is very sad that we can't ask him now. It may also be that Steeples's dying in August of 1994 took any urgency out of investigating his connections to other crimes. After all, he wasn't on the street anymore. And Tillie might have been a lot of things, but I have yet to learn of anyone accusing her of murder.

Tillie Ruth Steeples had other issues with the law, and upon her release from jail in 1999, she wasted little time in hooking up with a man some have described as an international con man. The events that followed would be fairly big news in some corners of the Internet, and in the world of finance....

(To be continued...)