Chapter 6
“This is all a mistake.”
By Monday morning, word of Hayward Bissell’s gruesome crime spree had spread like wildfire among the news media in Alabama, Georgia and Tennessee. Satellite trucks from TV stations in the closest large cities of Huntsville, Birmingham and Chattanooga filled several parking lots around the DeKalb County Jail, and the lobby of the sheriff’s office was packed with reporters and cameramen waiting for a press conference scheduled for 10:00 A.M. Rumors of mutilation, cannibalism and missing body parts circulated wildly among the reporters, and there was much speculation about one particular story that claimed Patricia Booher’s eyes were missing and might have been eaten by Bissell.
Earlier that morning, Mike James had asked the deputies to bring Bissell up from the basement jail to his second-floor office for another round of questions, this time to try and determine the exact location where Patricia Booher was killed. James explained to Bissell that this might require him to travel with the investigators to Georgia, and once again carefully explained his rights against self-incrimination.
This time, the big man had no intention of cooperating.
“I don’t understand what’s happening here,” Bissell said. “I’m an agent of the Secret Service. This is all a mistake.”
Bissell told James he would make no further statements, and said for the first time that he wanted to speak with an attorney.
“I’m not authorized to travel to Georgia,” he said, refusing to go there with the investigators.
Since the prisoner had requested an attorney and would say no more, James knew the interview was over.
The roads between my home in South DeKalb County and my office in Fort Payne were still slick in places that Monday morning, and the trip to work was going much slower than usual. I was running late, so I went straight to the sheriff’s office without stopping by my desk at the Fort Payne Times-Journal, where I covered crime and law enforcement in DeKalb County.
I had heard some early details of Sunday afternoon’s incidents on my home police scanner. When falling power lines blew a transformer and cut off the electricity to my house, I kept listening until the scanner’s backup batteries went dead. This was by far the biggest story I’d ever had a chance to cover, and I was frustrated by my inability to get up to the scene or even to continue following the action by radio. Unlike my friend Brad Hood, I didn’t have a four-wheel-drive work vehicle equipped with radios and scanners. All I could do was walk the floor and wonder what was happening up in Mentone. I could hardly wait for morning to come, and I hoped the weather conditions would improve enough overnight to enable me to get to work the following day.
When I pulled into the courthouse parking lot and saw all the satellite trucks, I knew the competition was going to be fierce, and if I wanted to get on the inside track, I’d better hurry. I grabbed my notebook and ran up the steps of the sheriff’s department, making it inside the front door and into the lobby just in time to see Sheriff Reed ushering everyone into his small office for the press conference. As the TV cameramen jostled for positions inside the room, the sheriff stopped me outside the door and pulled me aside.
“Where’s your camera?” he asked.
In my haste to get into the building, I’d left it in the car.
“Run and get it; they’re about to bring Bissell downstairs,” he said. “He’ll be coming down from Mike’s office any minute. Wait over there out of sight in the stairwell and get a picture, and I’ll fill you in on everything later.”
As I ran back outside to my car to retrieve the camera, I gave thanks for the good relationship I had with Sheriff Reed and his officers and jail personnel. While the rest of the reporters were inside the sheriff’s office for the press conference, I was going to get the best break of my career.
I ran back inside with my lungs burning, and caught my breath while I waited on the first-floor landing, checking and double-checking my camera and flash. Then I heard voices coming from up above, and footsteps coming down the stairs. The first person to come into view was Deputy Van McAlpin, one of the tallest, huskiest officers in the county. Behind him, in white jail pants and a white T-shirt that barely stretched over his huge chest, was the prisoner.
Hayward Bissell looked even larger than McAlpin, and my first thought was that Van, despite his size and strength, might have a hard time controlling the man if he decided to become unruly. Bissell was moving slowly down the stairs, and came to a sudden stop when my flash went off for the first time. As I lowered the camera, he raised his head and stared directly at me.
“Who’s that?” he asked.
Mike James was coming down the steps behind Bissell.
“She’s just a reporter,” he said. “Go on, keep moving.”
As Hayward Bissell came down the stairs toward me, he kept his eyes locked with mine. It was a good thing I got that first shot, because I didn’t hang around for another one. My instinct for self-preservation won out over my desire to get more exclusive photos, and I took off downstairs ahead of the prisoner and his escorts, ducking out the back door of the jail. Those deadly eyes boring into mine had me thoroughly spooked, and I decided the best place for me was well out of his reach. I watched from outside through the plate glass doors, and Bissell watched me as he was walked down the steps into the jail.
After Bissell was safely back downstairs behind the thick red steel door of the jail, I slunk back inside in disgrace with Mike James’s laughter ringing in my ears.
“What did you take off in such a hurry for?” he teased.
I may have turned chicken when I came face-to-face with a killer, but at least I got the first shot of the man who was making headlines throughout the Southeast and in his home state of Ohio. My photo of Bissell, the first taken of him after his arrest, was picked up by the Associated Press and ran nationwide in newspapers and on the Internet. It would be the first of many times I’d be there, waiting with my camera when he was brought up from his jail cell. And those eyes, staring so intently at me every time, would always leave me unnerved.
After the press conference, Reed held another meeting in his office for me and a couple of latecomers who didn’t make it in time for the first briefing session. As I walked into the room, the sheriff handed me a photo of Bissell’s Ohio driver’s license and Patricia Booher’s ID card.
The photo on Bissell’s license showed a man who looked very different from the bushy-haired inmate I had just encountered on the stairs. The man on the driver’s license was neatly groomed but unsmiling, with an aloof, haughty expression on his face. He was listed as being six feet four inches tall and weighing four hundred pounds. His address was an apartment on Spring Street, in Norwalk, Ohio.
Patricia Booher also lived at that 26 Spring Street address, but in a different apartment. She was only four feet ten inches tall and weighed 105 pounds. She looked like a pleasant young woman with an open, hopeful smile. The physical differences in the two people were extreme, to say the least, but the biggest difference was in their facial expressions. If the eyes were truly the windows of the soul, Patricia Booher’s eyes showed that she was a friendly person who wanted to be happy and well liked. Hayward Bissell, on the other hand, looked almost threatening, as though he were challenging the camera to capture his image. The windows of his soul appeared to be tightly closed.
Sheriff Reed began going over the details of the previous afternoon’s events. He had carefully prepared a lengthy set of notes on the series of crimes and disclosed, as usual, as much information as possible.
“We received a call Sunday at three forty-three P.M. on a hit-and-run incident on Highway 117 in Mentone,” he said. “A ‘be on the lookout’ bulletin was released on the light blue Lincoln Town Car bearing Ohio license plates involved in the incident.”
Reed said the vehicle was stopped by Valley Head, Mentone and Hammondville units around 4:00 P.M. at the intersection of U.S. 11 and Highway 117.
“Upon approaching the car and taking the driver, Hayward William Bissell, thirty-seven, of Norwalk, Ohio, into custody, the officers discovered the horribly mutilated body of a twenty-five-year-old white female in the car,” Reed said.
“The victim has been identified as Patricia Ann Booher, also of Norwalk, Ohio. She had received numerous severe wounds and injuries, and some parts of the body had been severed.”
Reed said his investigators were working with Georgia authorities to determine the jurisdiction of the murder case.
“It is unknown at this time if the murder occurred in the car or elsewhere, or whether it occurred in Georgia or Alabama. The woman appeared to have been dead only a very short time when a stabbing and a hit-and-run incident were committed by the same subject, and the body has been taken to the Alabama Department of Forensic Science for autopsy.”
The sheriff went on to describe the incidents involving the Pirches and the Pumphreys and gave an update on their conditions as of that morning. Don Pirch, he said, had been released from the hospital following treatment of his injuries, and James Pumphrey remained hospitalized in stable condition following his Sunday-evening surgery.
Rumors of drug dealing, witchcraft and Devil worship had spread, as they always seem to do in parts of the rural South, as a possible cause behind the gruesome murder and the vicious assaults on Pirch and Pumphrey. Reed, though, put those rumors to rest in short order when the opportunity arose.
In response to a question about the possibility of Bissell being acquainted in some way with either of the assault victims, Reed said, “Absolutely not, no way. They were complete strangers. These people were all solid citizens, real salt-of-the-earth folks, good people, and they were attacked by a total stranger without any provocation whatsoever.”
Authorities in Norwalk, Ohio, had been contacted, Reed said, and had not yet provided information on whether or not Bissell had any previous police record, but did say they “knew him well.” They were expected to send copies of materials in their files very soon.
DeKalb County and Georgia authorities were in the process of trying to determine jurisdiction in the murder charge, he repeated, and Bissell was expected to be charged in DeKalb County with assault and attempted murder in the stabbing and hit-and-run incidents. The Town Car, he said, was currently impounded at the county maintenance barn’s fenced lot and would be taken to Huntsville for complete forensic testing.
After finishing his lengthy statement and answering several additional questions, Reed settled back in his chair and spoke informally with those of us left in the room.
“This is one of the most unusual cases I’ve dealt with during all my years here in the county,” he said, shuffling the sheaf of papers that related the details of Sunday’s events.
“We have no idea how or why Bissell came to be in the Mentone area. We’ve had some pretty bad episodes here, but not one that tops this.”
Reed leaned back in his chair and shook his head, baffled by the events of the past twenty-four hours. The sheriff was a family man, with a wonderful wife, two children and four grandchildren, a “people person.” He had clearly been deeply disturbed by the mindless, unexplained violence that had taken the life of such a small, defenseless young woman.
One of the reporters speculated that Bissell might have been traveling through the area either on or headed for the interstate, since I-59 runs the entire length of DeKalb County.
“We have a lot of travelers coming through the county,” Reed answered, “but not many that stop by with a body in the car.”