Chapter 9
“He is absolutely, certifiably crazy as hell.”
Hayward Bissell’s court-appointed attorney was as relieved as Sheriff Reed and the county jail’s staff when Judge Randall Cole ordered Bissell transferred to the Taylor Hardin Secure Medical Facility in Tuscaloosa, Alabama, for mental evaluation. At the request of the sheriff, Cole ordered the transfer because of Bissell’s extremely disruptive behavior in the jail and his destruction of the pipes, plumbing and other fixtures in his cell. It was determined to be in everyone’s best interest to get Bissell into the institution as quickly as possible. A court order was hurriedly prepared on Tuesday afternoon, and preparations were begun to transfer Bissell from the county jail to Tuscaloosa.
“He is absolutely, certifiably crazy as hell,” said Hoyt Baugh. During his years as a defense attorney, Baugh had worked a number of capital cases before, but none of them had been even remotely similar to the one he had been handed this time.
Baugh spoke to local newspapers about his newest client, who waited to be transferred for evaluation.
“This will be an easy case to prove,” Baugh said. “Somebody dropped the ball not to keep him locked up. He’s been in mental hospitals before, and the doctors knew he was mentally ill. In talking to family members, he’s had these problems for some time. He is absolutely crazy, and his activity in jail is so bizarre.”
Baugh said that since he had been appointed to represent Bissell, he’d had four visits with his client, and most of them hadn’t been very productive.
“He was very reluctant to speak with me until he got ‘clearance’ from those who could do so. He said he couldn’t talk to the officers because they didn’t have high-enough clearance for them to talk to him.”
Bissell’s Lincoln Town Car had been loaded onto a trailer and hauled to the state forensic science laboratory in Huntsville, Alabama, on Wednesday. A complete processing of the vehicle for evidence would take place there, since the car was believed to be the actual crime scene where the murder of Patricia Booher had been committed. Investigators also believed the car might bear some additional physical evidence of the assaults on Donald Pirch and James Pumphrey.
The car had been stored inside a locked storage lot at the county road department headquarters since its Sunday impoundment, and the workers there were glad to see it taken away, even if for a short time.
“That thing gave us the heebie-jeebies sitting out there in the lot,” one road department worker said. “Every time I drove past it and looked at it, I thought about what they say happened in it.”
By Thursday, January 27, 2000, all preparations were in place, and the carefully planned transfer of Hayward Bissell to Tuscaloosa for mental evaluation was ready to begin.
Sheriff Reed held an early meeting with waiting reporters and told them that Bissell had calmed down some since his arrest. He had stopped banging his head on the wall of his cell, but he still refused to wear clothing. The plumbing had long since been completely torn out of his cell, but he continued screaming a lot and refused to carry on a conversation with jailers.
“He never talks to us; he talks to himself,” Reed said.
Plans had been made for the transfer to take place under heavy guard because of Bissell’s unpredictable behavior, and Sheriff James Hayes of neighboring Etowah County loaned Reed a heavily reinforced transport van, two of his specially trained officers and a large Plexiglas shock shield, used in riot control and in dealing with out-of-control inmates. If that was not enough to handle the prisoner, Reed told the reporters, his deputies planned to wrestle physically with Bissell if necessary to get him from his jail cell into the transport van.
When everything was in place for the transfer to begin, deputies went to Bissell’s cell and told him he was going to the doctor, and said that he needed to get up and get dressed. When he acted as if he didn’t understand, one of the officers explained to him in detail exactly what the consequences were going to be if he attempted to assault any of them during the process of transporting him.
The shock shield proved to be sufficient incentive for Bissell to control his behavior after he was given a demonstration of its function, according to the sheriff.
“The shield kept him under control,” Reed said. “It is held against the body and has electric current if needed to keep the subject under control. The shield can handle anybody. Mr. Bissell was in pretty good condition this morning. He wasn’t dressed, but he put his pants on. We had to put on his shirt.”
Once again, Bissell had to wear leg irons as handcuffs on his huge wrists, and the deputies fashioned a set of leg restraints out of several pairs of plastic flex-cuffs, since standard leg irons were far too small to fit.
Reed said Bissell had been told he was being taken to the doctor, and said he was being fairly cooperative compared to his previous behavior in the jail.
“I asked him how he was doing, and got a few answers,” Reed said. “He has made several statements to our investigators concerning his crimes, but nothing that I’d call a solid confession. He doesn’t appear to have any remorse.”
A large crowd of cameramen and reporters were waiting in the parking lot outside the back entrance of the county jail when Hayward Bissell was escorted out of the building by Mike James and the Etowah County officers. Dozens of other deputies and jailers stood close by as the group left the building and headed toward the transport van. Bissell wore a pair of white jail-issue pants and a white T-shirt, the largest one deputies could find at the local Wal-Mart. It still wouldn’t stretch to cover his massive stomach.
James steered Bissell across the parking lot toward the van, keeping a tight hold on the prisoner’s right arm, with one of the Etowah County deputies gripping his left arm and another deputy following close behind holding the shock shield at the ready.
Bissell remained silent, offering no resistance but staring at the crowd of reporters gathered to get a photo of the man who was making headlines nationwide. He only spoke once when officers were loading him into the van. He was attempting to step up into the van and was in an awkward position and unable to duck his head low enough to clear the van door.
“Wait a minute.... Wait a minute,” he said, trying to pull his head inside the vehicle.
Once inside the van, the prisoner lay down in the seat with his eyes closed and ignored the dozens of flashes from the cameras of photographers gathered outside the van. Reporters, who had hesitated to come close enough to get within Bissell’s reach while he was being escorted out of the jail, now crowded up against the van windows, peering through the thick glass and heavy steel bars to get a better look at the huge man.
Taylor Hardin Secure Medical Facility, which only takes mentally disturbed patients who have been involved in felonies, would have custody of Hayward Bissell until such time as he was determined to be ready to be returned to the jail and able to stand trial, Reed said, then he would be transferred back to DeKalb County.
His return, however, would be something that jail personnel would not be looking forward to.
“He needs to be transferred to a facility for people in his condition,” Reed told reporters. “I have dealt with people with some of the same problems he has, but never one who was charged with that kind of crime. We have had some pretty bad crimes here, but never one with body parts cut off, chopped away from the body. It was terrible.”
Reed said the results of a preliminary autopsy indicated any one of Booher’s many severe wounds could have caused her death. The coroner had found that her eyes, previously believed to be missing, had been, instead, forced back into her skull but were still present. She was believed to have been murdered inside the car, but the sheriff said jurisdiction in the case could not be determined and murder charges could not be filed against Bissell until authorities determined whether the car was located in Alabama or Georgia at the time the murder was committed.
Even as Bissell was being loaded into the transport van, work was beginning downstairs to clean up the jail and restore it to normal operating conditions. Several inmates volunteered to work on the plumbing fixtures and pipes while others continued to mop floors and hallways. The men were anxious to clean up their cells and dry out their damp bedding. And visitation, suspended during Bissell’s stay, would return to its normal schedule on Saturday afternoon.
As the reinforced van pulled out of the parking lot at the rear of the jail, a county officer watched as the van drove uphill beside the courthouse and out of sight, carrying Hayward Bissell to Tuscaloosa and out of the county for an undetermined period of time. Then the deputy summed up the feelings of the entire sheriff’s department.
“Good riddance,” the officer said.
Shortly after Bissell left on his way to Taylor Hardin, Sheriff Reed and Investigators Mike James and Clay Simpson headed for a meeting they had scheduled with Chattooga County, Georgia, authorities to try and determine the jurisdiction of the homicide case. Bissell had been charged in DeKalb County with two counts of attempted murder and one count of first-degree attempted burglary, and Reed said “good progress” was being made in Georgia with investigation into the case there.
“We have contacted people in Georgia we needed to interview,” Reed said, adding that the media coverage had proved to be very helpful by causing several individuals with useful information to come forward.
The meeting in Georgia proved to be a disappointment to DeKalb County authorities, however, since no decision of jurisdiction was announced at its conclusion. A great deal of wrangling back and forth was taking place between the two district attorneys’ offices about the legal technicalities of determining jurisdiction, and while the meeting on that subject was taking place, the investigators from both counties stepped down the hallway for a meeting of their own.
“We all took a walk down the hall, and we decided that working this case couldn’t wait until it was determined whose jurisdiction it would eventually be,” Johnny Bass said.
“We all decided to go ahead and get on it before any valuable evidence might be lost, like any blood evidence that might be in the parking lot or in other locations. If anyone waited around to see whose case it might turn out to be, we’d be sure to lose a lot of important evidence. We decided we weren’t going to let that happen.”
After spending the day with Chattooga County officials, Sheriff Reed declined to make very many comments about the status of the case, saying that any statements concerning jurisdiction would have to be issued by Chattooga County sheriff Ralph Kellett or Chattooga County district attorney Herbert “Buzz” Franklin.
This prompted speculation that Bissell would be charged in Georgia with murder, but Sheriff Kellett also declined to make a statement to that effect.
“We’re still investigating the case and following reports and leads,” Kellett told the press, “and Sheriff Reed and his staff are being a great help. I don’t want to speak for Mr. Franklin, but I feel he’ll be very open with information when the time comes for an announcement. He’s very concerned with this case.”
Kellett did confirm, however, that Georgia State crime scene technicians spent most of the day in Chattooga County on Thursday, working on an area at a graveled convenience store parking lot in Trion, Georgia, in search of evidence. Bass had asked them to come, even though they seemed reluctant at first.
“What type of evidence is it we’re supposed to be looking for?” Bass was asked.
“We aren’t sure, but can you please just come and look?” he replied.
The technicians came to the Discount Food Mart parking lot on what was without a doubt one of the coldest days of the year, Bass said, and searched the area without being sure of what they were looking for or where it might be found. The scene, Kellett told the press, had been contaminated by weather conditions and by vehicles driving through the lot. However, several rust-colored spots were found on the ground where the Lincoln was believed to have been parked, and preliminary tests run at the scene determined the spots were human blood. Samples were taken to the state crime laboratory to compare them with Booher’s blood.
“No findings from that search are available yet, but once something starts developing, we’ll make an announcement from my office or from the district attorney’s office.”
Kellett also said Bissell’s car was seen stopped on a county road near Summerville, Georgia, on Sunday morning, and a witness who came forward after seeing press coverage of the murder claimed she saw both Bissell and Booher inside.
“The car was stopped in the street in front of her home,” Kellett said. “She noticed the road was blocked with fallen trees; then she noticed the car had Ohio tags. The woman in the car was alive at that time.”
Authorities would soon find out that quite a few other people in Northwest Georgia noticed the Lincoln Town Car with Ohio tags that Sunday. As word spread about the murder, more and more witnesses contacted the investigators to come forward and say that they, too, had seen the car in their neighborhoods. Those people later learned they were among the last to see Patricia Booher alive on the final day of her life.