Before investigators found Susan’s body, botanists Patty Pasztor and Paul Cox performed botanical analysis on the plant samples collected from the Suburban grille and undercarriage, and tape lifts from Rick McFarland’s shoes, socks and pants. On January 22, they went to the crime scene on South W.W. White Road.
They cut plants from the roadside, along the worn path leading to the trailer and in a twenty-foot radius to the south of the trailer where Sue’s body had rested for weeks. They took care to collect any flowers and seeds and placed each sample in separate one-gallon-sized plastic bags. Each was labeled and numbered. They filled fifteen bags in all. They also collected duplicate specimens in the vicinity of the trailer and taped those in a hard-covered book to press.
At the end of the study of the botanical evidence, they matched seven species of plants from the scene to samples obtained from the stolen Suburban and Rick’s clothing—redroot pigweed, yellow wood sorrel, beggars’ ticks, hooded windmillgrass, threelobe false mallow, bufllegrass and multi-flowered false rhodesgrass. All of these plants were common in the area. But one burr found at the site and on a sock belonging to Richard McFarland stood out—there was only one area in Bexar County where it could be found, the location where Sue’s abandoned, burned body rested for weeks.
On February 3, Sergeant Palmer talked to the previous owner of 351 Arcadia Place. He learned that there was a removable floor panel inside the closet under the stairs. The panel allowed access to a crawlspace beneath the house.
Palmer obtained a search warrant and, with Investigator Julian Martinez from the Bexar County District Attorney’s Office, went back into the McFarland home. When they cleared away the items stored on the closet floor and lifted up the cut-out section of the wood flooring, the dirt below did not appear disturbed. They found no additional evidence down in that dark hole.
The trip was not a waste, though. They found an interesting hand-written document on top of the desk in Rick’s second-floor office. Rick, it appeared, wrote this suggestion for a possible defensive strategy before his arrest and before the discovery of Susan’s body:
Framing Theory
She planted evidence before abandoning her family.
Motive 1: To divert attention to Rick to get the police to only search for her locally.
Motive 2: To eliminate the stigma of the woman who did the unthinkable—abandoned her children.
Motive 3: Revenge on Rick for not moving out the previous year when Susan asked.
Motive 4: Her dad was an FBI Agent for 35 years, she must of picked up extensive knowledge about crime scenes from the stories her father brought home.
It took a strange mind to conceptualize this theory. It took even more distorted thinking to believe the scenario would find credibility with law enforcement, the district attorney or even a jury of his peers.
Before his bail-reduction hearing, Rick contacted Steven Rogers, owner of Alamo Mini Storage, to ask him to be a witness on his behalf. At Rick’s request, Steven called one of Rick’s attorneys.
“Do you think Rick is violent?” the lawyer asked.
“I’ve never seen him act violently,” Steven said.
“Do you think Rick is honest?”
“Rick wanted to store items at my place to keep the police from finding them.”
Steven never heard from the legal team again.
On February 7, in district court, Judge Sid Harle presided over the bail reduction hearing for Richard McFarland. His bail was now set at $950,000 for four charges: murder, unauthorized use of a vehicle, attempting to bribe a witness and tampering with evidence.
The prosecution argued for no reduction in bail. The defense stated the current bail amount was outrageously high. They requested a bail of $100,000.
Seventy-three-year-old Dick McFarland testified that his son was a gentle man who posed no danger to the community and no risk of flight to avoid prosecution. He portrayed his son as a God-fearing, church-attending father who “would not run or any of that foolishness because he would lose his kids if he did.”
The judge lowered the bail to $550,000. That meant that to gain Rick’s release from Bexar County jail, his family would have to raise a minimum $55,000 and possibly have to post collateral for the rest. Rick’s retired parents, living on fixed incomes, managed to scrape together $30,000—far short of the amount required.
After the hearing, District Attorney Susan Reed said, “This case was put together one piece at a time through good old-fashioned detective work, and when all these pieces are put together in court, we are confident that McFarland will be convicted.”