Stephanie

This story is part of the "Lookin' For A Killer" Series: PC #19:

The Symbolic Replacement &

Murder Of Mysde "Evans"

Bonnie M. Wells

www.starlightinnerprizes.com

ATTENTION:

You are entering story number 4 in the Duplication Series of Pure Coincidence:

Suggestion:

Read No. 1 The Duplication of My Sister - Patty Fulton

Read No. 2 The Duplication of {Me} Bonnie May (Martin) Wells

Read No. 3 The Duplication of {My Daughter} Christina Gordon-Anderson

Read No. 4 Judy, Strike Three

before you attempt this one!

This story is color for emphasis and research purposes:

2008 Note: The woman I refer to as Mysde in this story is Cynthia Davis: Her nickname is Sindee: At the time this story took place Sindee was living with a man named Jason Evans: A lot of people thought they were married, but they weren't. However, the name on the mailbox was Evans, which apparently reinforced the belief that they were married.

Back In The Homicide Saddle

When Emily Ullman and Carol Gordon were murdered in 1998, Mysde/Sindee and I had not seen one another or talked for over a year.

I read about the Ullman murder when it happened, but did not learn of Carol Gordon's murder until February of 2000. By that time Sindee and I were "back in the saddle" and ridin' hard to catch up!

The old gray mare barely had time to catch her breath before we found ourselves in the middle of a new race ..... same old track!

The Race Is On

When Sindee and I had worked the old cases together 1993-1997, the victims appeared to fit into a pattern that dealt primarily with my sister Patty. However, things were destined to change. In fact they began to change as soon as Sindee and I were not out on the streets watching what was going on.

The changes were astonishing. It appeared at least to me, that "my sister" had fallen behind, and I was now the number one "mare," on a killer's one track mind!

Those who have not followed this drama for awhile will probably have some confusion as they try to understand. The best way to get through it is to go back to book number 2 and start with the murder cases of Terri Roach and Patsy Sparks, and work forward through the provided links.

And for those who think it's too much trouble and too confusing to understand, I only have one question. How would you like to be forced to live through it and forced to watch what was happening while those in authority snickered and called you crazy?

In the beginning there was a lot of snickering and high handed attitudes, but I've noticed a change in attitude in recent years. It appears that as victims pile ever higher, there are more and more people taking a closer look at some of my work, and wondering if it really is all coincidence.

Symbolic Murder

I'd just watched what appeared to be the "symbolic murder" of my daughter Christina Gordon-Anderson.{see story number 2 in Duplication Series}

This involved two murders, neither of which could actually be considered "local" although one victim was actually from this area. The victims were ....Emily Christine Ullman, who was the local resident but who was murdered in New Orleans and the other victim was Carol Gordon.

Prior to the "symbolic murder" of my daughter ... by Lord only knew who ... I'd watched Wild Bill "symbolically replace" me in his life by selecting women and vehicles that eventually not only made up my name, but even duplicated my vehicle! He'd done it with Bonnie Hickman, and D. Wells, right after he'd gone to work for the company that had Martin in its name. The vehicles had been a silver/gray Ford Escort and a silver/gray Chevy Chevette, while I, Bonnie Martin-Wells owned a silver/gray Corvette! Actually it was impressive. I would never have believed he could do such a thing, especially in the short time it took him to actually finish my symbolic replacement! Yeah, sometimes the guy impressed me. More often he depressed me!

Unbeknown to my friend Sindee, as soon as my symbolic replacement was complete, Wild Bill had selected himself a "new woman." He could find more new women than any man I'd ever known! This new one drove a Plymouth Neon, and for awhile ... a short while ... I dubbed her Neon Woman. "He's getting brighter," I told my friends. We laughed .... for a little while. Then I discovered her name was Cindy, and I said "Oh hell, here we go again."

*Neon Woman or *Mysde #2/Cindy lived less than a mile from my home in Little Hocking. By November of 1998, Wild Bill had moved in with her. I'd wondered how long it would take him to get to Little Hocking. I started wondering that when Jenifer McCrady's murdered body was dumped almost in my backyard.

2012 Note: And by 2000 he'd been indicted for raping Cindy B.'s 13 year old daughter - 'in the winter of 1998!' Prosecuting attorney Michael Sphar dropped all charges against him when the case finally got to court. Lack of evidence, he said, and I wondered what kind of evidence he presented the grand jury in order to get his indictment --- and better yet, why he refused to present that same evidence to a trial jury. And by the way, old Wild Bill's defense attorney was the same person who had defended his wife in a divorce case against him! The attorney had knowledge of what he was - a rapist, an abuser, a stalker, etc. BEFORE she CHOSE to defend him against a 12 year old kid. Hope she is proud of herself.

Celebration Dates

I suppose the date of Carol Gordon's murder, June 25th, is what spooked me.

Not only did she have my daughter's "maiden name" but she was murdered on "an anniversary and a birthday!" This was a little unusual, even for me. I was accustomed to one or the other but seldom both.

June 25th was my friend Sindee's birthday and the anniversary belonged to Wild Bill, as it was the date he got out of jail in 1994!

Together Again

Sindee and I had only been corresponding a short time by April of 2001. I'd been trying to get her caught up on some of the things I'd been doing since we'd last talked. One of those projects had been the creation of this web site ..... which I originally thought would be a page or two!! Huh! Turned out like "the book" ..... I said I was going to write! You'd have to own a semi to transport the "book" and no one made a binder large enough! So the book turned into many books.....25 at present... and I kept the name Pure Coincidence for each one of them and then sub-titled each according to their content. It had been a successful project thus far but was still not complete when the next murder occurred.

As in the old days, Sindee and I tried to determine what date the "next strike" would occur on. By this time though, we had our hands full because it appeared the killer was incorporating names, times, dates and places. It all reminded me of Judy's "Yellow Eyed Woman" dream in which she was told ... "Pay attention or ye shall not live through this."

"Pay attention to what?" Judy had inquired. "Everything....the times, dates, places and names. Pay attention to it all or ye shall not live through this," the woman with yellow eyes had instructed. And we'd been trying. Boy had we all been trying, but it was exceptionally difficult. We could not "get ahead" of the killer...or killers, as some thought...because we never knew which direction he was going next.

We kept trying though, because we were just certain that if we could ever determine "the pattern" on which the killer operated, law enforcement would certainly be interested in that. Huh ...that was about like putting the Pure Coincidence series into one binder .... or reading it all in one afternoon!

What's Next?

"Okay, if Gordon and Ullman were murdered on "anniversary and birthday" dates, what's next?" Sindee asked.

"It depends on whether your birthday was actually an important factor in the Gordon murder," I explained. "If it was, then it appears to me that we are now working our way into the "next generation," which not only is represented by my daughter but by you as well. Whether the strike will be local or not though is very difficult to say at this point."

Sometimes this psychopath (or these psychopaths, whichever one chose) swung wide, and sometimes he/they came right at me. All we could do was wait and see. Perhaps I was misinterpreting things to begin with. Maybe none of the cases had anything whatsoever to do with me or anyone around me.

"Well, when is the next anniversary or birthday or important event?" Sindee persisted.

The Bock Anniversary

Mike and I had a friend named Brian Bock. {see story in Judy Strike 3}

Someone had set fire to his son's car, which exploded, nearly killing his son who was home at the time. The explosion ignited the house and cost Brian and his son everything they owned. That fire had been on ****April 2nd, 1997, and the case remained "unsolved" as did most things in this area ..... especially those connected to me! I was beginning to get a complex!

"April is important. It has a couple of things that the killer(s) might remember," I told Sindee. "April 2nd is the Bock anniversary and of course the 23rd is the anniversary of the disappearance of Patsy Sparks. Of course the prime suspect in the Sparks case....or perhaps I should say "person of interest"....is Randy Slider and he's already in prison down in Ross County Ohio."

Special note: Although Randy Slider has been named a "person of interest" in the Sparks case which occurred in 1992, he has never, ever, been charged with the murder.

Click here for ...The Bock-Judy story

Coincidence Strikes Again .... Duh!

Sindee's boyfriend hailed from Jackson, Ohio....just a few minutes from Richmond Dale, Ohio. His last name was Evans, but Sindee and I didn't think most people knew that. Guess we should have thought again!

Stephanie Evans had long blond hair and was the twenty-one year old mother of a little boy named Justin. They lived in Richmond Dale, Ohio.....about an hour's drive from me. Richmond Dale was in Ross County.

Stephanie spoke to her sister on the phone about 11:00 pm on the evening of April 1st, 2001 and told her it was time for her to come home. She said that she and the baby were going to bed.

When her sister came home and didn't see Stephanie, she assumed she had gone on to bed. And even though her van was missing from its parking place in front of the home, the girl assumed Stephanie had loaned the van to a friend, which she sometimes did.

The phone conversation with Stephanie would prove to be the last time anyone in her family ever got to speak with her. Her murdered body was found along the Scioto River the next day.

Authorities said she had been killed around midnight.

The date of **** April 2nd **** was all Sindee and I needed......

We're Goin' To Jackson

News reports said that Stephanie's little boy was with her the night she was murdered and that the child had been left along side of her body. The child was recovered alive, but had a body temperature of 93 degrees and was suffering from exposure from the night's 40 degree temperature.

Again I thought of the Bock case. Brian's son was endangered and could easily have died. Of course, Brian's son was considerably older than Stephanie's son, still, the similarities were there. Both crimes had been committed on April 2nd, and both involved a "son" who was endangered but who survived.

Was it another "coincidence" or was it a lot more?

I thought back to the "Bock" situation. That had been a "Judy" strike, so I reasoned, {if} this new murder in Ross County did in fact fit into the jigsaw puzzle that I honestly believed I'd uncovered, and if it truly was no coincidence, then, wouldn't the perpetrator have to leave something that only I would recognize? Wouldn't there be something that he would know for certain that I would see, but that no one else on earth {except Sindee, Judy and those closest to me} would see and recognize?

I didn't know, but Sindee and I weren't wasting any time. We headed for Richmond Dale.

Details Emerge

Sindee and I learned several things during our trip to Richmond Dale. Most of them fit the picture like pieces of a jigsaw puzzle.

Stephanie's body had been discovered along the river's edge. Most of the murder victims in our area were found along the river, or at least within sight of it. I'd noticed this years ago. My "person of interest" was a "river man," and I figured he felt "at home or comfortable" around the river.

{2004 Note: Please see the Barbara Barnes case for some striking similarities}

We learned that three cigarette butts were discovered in an ashtray in the living room, and that no one recognized the brand. This would be something that would come back to haunt me a year or so later.

{See The Tonya Trio for details}

Stephanie's vehicle had been moved after her murder. Apparently her killer had driven it to Columbus, Ohio where he ..... set it on fire before walking away and leaving it. Unfortunately ... perhaps for him .... the fire went out and did not destroy the interior of the van.

Several things within the case reminded me of my friend Judy, our co-owned dog Zep, and the Bock case.

But perhaps the biggest surprise of all was the fact that April 2nd, 2001 was the very day that Randy Slider had been released from the Ross County prison system!

Clues Or Coincidence?

The month of April:

Murdered woman:

The date of April 2nd:

Vehicle set on fire:

Name of one of my friends:

Endangered son:

Body near the river:

Ross County / Prison:

That certainly was a lot of "coincidence" for one case!

Info Not Mentioned Prior To 3/05/04

I honestly don't know what I've been waiting for ... nor why I've decided to go ahead and tell this. Regardless of my reasoning ..... here goes....

When Sindee and I went to Richmond Dale in search of answers in Stephanie's case, we also searched for clues that only I might notice. I mentioned this earlier on this page. If there was nothing unusual, I reasoned the crime might not be a continuation of the "duplication dramas" that I honestly believed were being played out in plain sight of everyone .... but which no one seemed able to see or understand except me and a few close friends.

I drove slowly down the road that ran along the Scioto River. It was a beautiful area, and Sindee and I both wished we could have visited under better circumstances.

We stopped from time to time, and got out and walked along the top of the river bank. I couldn't help but notice all the beautiful rocks that lined the river bank. They were not "natural" to the area though. I'd seen some of them before. They came from somewhere down south and were brought to this area by barge. I'd once known a man who worked for a river company. He was a crane operator, and he had many of these marble-like rocks that lined his flower beds when I first met him. He had given me several of them for my own flower beds. I still displayed them in my front yard each summer.

I wondered how many river companies had brought these rocks in, and then later sold them not only to individuals but to the state of Ohio, to be used along riverbanks where the water was slowly eating away the soil. I only knew of one place, but I hadn't done a state wide search or anything so there could have been many more.

I edged the car to the side of the road in an area where I "had a feeling" that I should stop, and Sindee and I got out and walked around.

"What are we looking for," Sindee asked.

I wasn't sure.

"What are you looking at?" Sindee asked when she noticed me staring down over the embankment.

"Those beautiful plants. I wonder what they are?" I said as I pointed toward some very unusual plants that grew among the rocks near the top of the riverbank.

"Those really are beautiful plants, Sindee said, I don't think I've ever seen any like them. I wonder what they are?"

I didn't know what they were but I recalled seeing one of them one time ... a few years ago. It had sprung up in front of Dr. Barrett's office in Belpre, Ohio. I'd noticed it then and thought it was a beautiful plant. And I'd asked about it, but Dr. Barrett hadn't known anymore about it than I had, even though he too had tried to find out what it was and where it had come from. He said he finally decided a bird must have carried the seed in and planted it, and since it was such a pretty plant he and Mrs. Barrett had decided to leave it.

That had been just a short while before his son-in-law went on trial for the murder of his daughter. Of course, Jackie McCrady had been convicted of that murder, and now sat in Ross County Correctional Institute. I wondered if he knew Randy Slider .... but mostly I wondered about those plants....

With a warning from me to "watch for snakes" Sindee ventured down over the embankment a short distance, while I walked up the road a little piece. Neither of us knew what it was that we were actually searching for .... but I think both of us felt there was something there that we needed to see.

I absentmindedly pulled a cigarette from the case I carried, lit it, and glanced back toward the area Sindee was in as I laid the case on top of a wooden guardrail support post.

Subconsciously I'd seen something that didn't register for a few seconds ..... but when it did, I yelled for Sindee to "come up here quick!"

The wooden post was similar to the ones we see used as telephone poles, only it wasn't quite as big around. I'd seen some of these before too. The same guy that had the rocks had a circular flower bed built out of these same type of posts. They too only extended out of the ground a couple or three feet....just like the one with the guard rail attached to it.

"What? What's wrong?" Sindee huffed as she came scurrying up to me.

"Look at that guardrail post. Tell me if you see anything strange about it," I instructed.

"Oh hell," Sindee moaned, "it has 22 written on it in red .... is that blood?"

"I don't know if it's blood. I doubt that it is. Look closer. There is a knot in the wood that splits the 22," I said.

"That's 2.2!" Sindee exclaimed. "How many cases have you found now where that same 2.2 mile thing showed up?"

"I don't know," I replied. "It was present in the McCrady case. She was buried 2.2 miles from the stop sign that Wild Bill ran back in 1993 .... back when the state trooper chased him down and threw his butt in jail for three days .....

I guess it was present in the Marie Blough case, the Jill Bohl case, ... Terry Roach, Patsy Sparks, Sheree Petry, Roda Snyder, Ronda Manley .... and I don't know, there may have been others," I replied. But my mind was elsewhere .... there was something else .... I could feel it.

My eyes scanned the road side; along the top of the riverbank; all the pretty plants we'd looked at earlier; and finally I turned and looked out across the Scioto River. It wasn't deep in the area where we stood. A person could have waded across it with ease. It wasn't swift .....

And there ...on the other side, was a small embankment that led up to a grassy area. That bank hadn't been reinforced with rocks. It was still just a dirt embankment .... about 4 feet high, with a gentle curve to it. And there... in the dark, rich dirt, were scratched one word and one number. It looked as if someone had used a piece of drift wood to carve the word ..... Z E P .... and the number .... 1 3.

"Look over there Sindee! Look at the bank across the river!"

"Oh my God, it says Zep 13," Sindee exclaimed.

Zep 13: My friend "Judy," whose birthday was on the "13th" of June,... the person I'd introduced Brian Bock to back in 1990 .... owned "Zep." I was the breeder of the dog .... an AKC registered, charcoal gray German Shepherd. I'd named him Granvilles' Heavy Metal because of his coloring, and Judy had fallen in love with him the first time she laid eyes on him.

I'd had about 20 head of Shepherds back then and didn't need to keep another one, so when I saw how much she wanted him I agreed to co-own the pup/dog with her and let her keep him.

And she had loved him his whole life. Dr. Barrett remained his veterinarian even after Judy took him home with her. She had chosen the call name for him ...."Zep"....after Led Zeppelin.

Zep passed away with gastric torsion on "September 19th," 1994, and Judy had driven his body out to her uncle's farm and buried him just past the cabin that he loved to visit so much. She had made a little headstone for him, using slate, and she had written his date of birth and his date of death along with a beautiful verse that she composed.....

My mind came back to the present as Sindee asked ....What songs did Led Zeppelin perform?

"Stairway To Heaven," is the only one that I could think of. I'd never been a LZ fan myself, but I remembered the boy my daughter was dating back in 1990....back when we all met Wild Bill. He'd had a band .... a heavy metal/rock-n-roll band, and Stairway To Heaven was one of the groups favorite songs. It was one of the songs we taped the night Wild Bill accompanied us to the {Wheel Club} in Parkersburg. The band always played it ..... sometimes a couple of times during the evening....

They said Patsy Sparks loved that band. It was pretty good, I guess. That was the band Patsy had gone to listen to the night she disappeared .... I wondered if Stairway To Heaven was the last song she ever heard ....

Randy Slider had been with Patsy that night: Randy Slider had been released from Ross Co. prison the same day Stephanie Evans was murdered ....

Did it mean anything? I didn't know. Randy insisted that Patsy had left the Wheel Club with some guy wearing a trench-type coat and a ball-type hat...

Someone wanted to testify in Jackie McCrady's trial about seeing a woman who fit Jenifer's description at Civitan Park in Belpre, and some guy riding a bicycle along beside her on the walking trail. The witness said the bicyclist was wearing a trench-type coat and a ball-type hat ... a cap.

But the prosecution wouldn't allow the witness to testify. They had held a meeting in the judges chambers and decided not to allow the testimony. I'd found it tucked among the thousands of pages of court transcript from the case, and still remembered how upset I got when I discovered that the person had been denied the right to tell what they had seen. "The Truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth,".... they needed to stop making people promise that. There was no way anyone could ever tell the whole truth in a court room ..... no way. If what you knew didn't fit with what they wanted the outcome to be, then you were denied the right to tell what you knew. Should be illegal .... probably is illegal, but no one cares.

I couldn't help but think of Wild Bill. He carried a rain coat (trench coat) in his motor cycle and almost always wore a cap.

Randy Slider had been sitting in prison when Jenifer McCrady was murdered on "September 19th," 1996.

He didn't know me, and he didn't know Judy. And he certainly would not have known her birthday was the 13th of June ... but Wild Bill did .... oh yes, Wild Bill did.... but....

"The first 2.2 mile measurement runs from Wild Bill's baby's grave to the driveway of the house he lived in when she died," I all but whispered....

Sindee slowly sank to the guardrail and stared at me .....

"How do you climb the "Stairway To Heaven," she finally asked ....

"One "Step" at a time ...... just one step at a time... I answered.

We left the area and went to see if we could find a cop. We couldn't. It was dark by then, and we really needed to be heading home, but I couldn't tear myself away from the area without telling a certain cop what we'd seen.

So we went to a little restaurant, and I drew it on a napkin, and I gave it to the girl who worked there .... a girl who said she was one of "Step"hanie Evans' best friends ..... and I asked her to please be sure the cop got it, because I honestly thought it was important. I even asked her to have the officer go over there the next morning and take pictures. I wished we'd had a camera ... or presence of mind enough to go somewhere and buy one, when we first saw the "writing on the wall!"

I don't suppose it would have made any difference though. We had pictures of other bizarre things ....... No one had ever cared.

They had all chosen their suspects long before the evidence was gathered, and if the evidence didn't fit the suspect, it was just tossed aside, and they went after anything that could be twisted enough to fit. And if enough twisted evidence was never obtained, then the case just remained unsolved. No problem ..... no big deal .... not unless you happened to be the one person on the face of the entire earth that a psychopathic serial killer had become obsessed with, and determined to possess .... in any way possible. Then it was a pretty big deal, but there again, no one cared.