Authors: Wensley Clarkson
Later that day, the
Peru Daily Tribune
screamed out the news that everyone had been expecting for weeks in a front-page headline:
SUSAN GRUND FACES MURDER CHARGE.
The article began, “Susan Grund was jailed early today in Vincennes on a charge of murder for the death of her husband, James H. Grund.
“The arrest was made by Indiana State Police Senior Trooper Investigator Bob Brinson at 4:40
A.M.
Susan, 34, was arrested at 406 Locust St., according to jailer John McKinnon at the Knox County Sheriff’s Department.”
No bond was set by the Knox County authorities, who expected Susan to be transported to the Miami County Jail in Peru within hours.
Reporters remember that day well because it just so happened to be the day that Bill Clinton won the battle for the White House in the presidential elections.
Prosecutor Wil Siders saw that date as being doubly significant. Election day may have brought the nation together, but the early morning arrest of Susan Grund that same day definitely brought a community together.
* * *
Other pressure was mounting on Susan thanks to further moves by her stepson and stepdaughter to prevent her from getting access to their father’s will. First it was announced that Marvin D. McLaughlin, a retired judge from Starke Count Circuit Court, had been selected to preside over the hearings in the matter of the Grund estate.
Miami Circuit Judge Bruce Embrey even granted a change of venue of judge, and gave a panel of judges for attorneys Pat Roberts and Stephen Bower from which to choose. The fact Embrey was a close personal friend of Jimmy Grund and one of the first people at the murder scene following Susan’s 911 call was never mentioned.
* * *
A few hours after Susan’s arrest, Investigator Bob Brinson met with principal Paul Couchenour at the Clark Middle School in Vincennes. After advising Couchenour that he wanted to interview Jacob Grund, the principal provided a private office for the purpose. Sheriff Jack Rich was also present. Jacob was then informed that his mother was under arrest and he was asked if he had any information about the murder of his stepfather. Young Jacob was stunned and had no new information to tell the officers.
Also on November 3—at around 1:00
P.M.
—Brinson’s unit picked Susan Grund up from the Knox County Jail and and transported her back to Miami County Jail in Peru, where she was photographed and fingerprinted by Trooper Gary Boyles the following morning.
Meanwhile, Brinson’s unit transported those two Christmas teddy bears back to the Indiana State Police Post in Peru. Trooper Dean Marks was instructed to have the bears examined for gunshot residue.
At last, the chief suspect in the murder of Jimmy Grund was behind bars. But there was still a long way to go before those charges could be made to stick.
Sixteen
Miami County Prosecutor Wil Siders stood at the window of his small office, looking out into the greying twilight at the crowd that had gathered opposite at the jailhouse following Susan Grund’s arrest. He counted half a dozen television minicams bearing the logos of stations from Indianapolis to Chicago. Reporters and photographers elbowing for space among a number of curious local citizens, encircled every cop—however junior—who emerged from the building.
Wil Siders then took a gulp of his lukewarm coffee and headed off for the assembled crowd. His body ached with fatigue following the activities of the previous twenty-four hours. But there was still one more important duty before he started assembling the case against Susan Grund.
Five minutes later, he stood on the steps outside the courthouse insisting that Susan had murdered her husband because she stood to inherit more than $200,000 from Jimmy Grund’s will. Meanwhile, other stories circulating the town talked of her numerous illicit lovers.
Siders admitted to reporters, “There has been a tremendous amount of pressure on the community as a result of this crime.” He also reiterated that there were no other suspects in the case, despite the other polygraph examinations carried out in the first few weeks of the investigation.
Siders also disclosed the help given to him by Susan’s sister Darlene, even pausing to sympathize with the reasons why it took her so long to come forward.
“I can’t fault anyone for not wanting to talk about their own flesh and blood, but there comes a point when conscience overcomes flesh and blood,” he told reporters.
In Peru itself, there was much celebrating at the news of Susan’s arrest. After all, she long had been considered by most of the town to be an evil woman. She’d been figuratively hung, drawn, and quartered long before her detainment in the early hours of the morning in Vincennes.
On November 4, Susan was escorted across the street from the Miami County Jail to the county courthouse for an initial hearing.
The courthouse, on the corner of Broadway and Main, is a building steeped in history, much of it linked to the man she was accused of murdering. Built in 1910 for the then not inconsiderable sum of $237,000, it cuts an impressive sight with its granite and limestone facade built in the classical revival style, with a dominant full-height porch and classical columns supporting the roof. Inside of the rotunda hung a fourteen foot replica of the U.S. Constitution signed by four thousand people in the town’s bicentennial year of 1986.
In the courtroom, Judge Bruce Embrey read Susan her rights and told her that the penalties for murder, a class-A felony, were thirty to sixty years in prison. A not guilty plea was entered and Susan informed the judge, who she had last seen when he appeared at her house on the night of the shooting, that attorney Nick Thiros from Merrillville would represent her.
Embrey—well aware of his own personal interest in the case—immediately excused himself and offered the attorneys a panel of judges from which to choose.
The court heard that a probable cause affidavit had been filed by prosecutors that morning and it clearly stated that Susan knew her stepson had a gun because David’s gun permit had been mailed to his father’s house.
Afterwards, prosecutor Wil Siders made a plea to the public through the pages of the
Peru Daily Tribune.
“If there is anyone in the community that has evidence that might be relevant to this case, I welcome them to contact me, the state police, or sheriff’s department.”
Next day, November 4, the
Peru Daily Tribune
followed up its scoop on the arrest of Susan Grund with an article that featured a photograph of Susan in a designer power suit, a well-coiffured hairstyle, and clutching a Bible in her hand as she arrived at the Miami County Jail following her dramatic arrest in Vincennes.
At least she was still getting her picture in the newspaper.
* * *
Inside the jailhouse, Sheriff Jack Rich and his wife Linda made every effort to ensure that Susan felt at home. They rapidly found her to be very different from their usual customers.
Susan quickly took over the small lady’s quarters in the jailhouse and began running beauty classes and hairdressing sessions for her fellow inmates.
Inside jail, Susan mothered the other women. She was a queen bee in many ways, always prepared to offer a shoulder to cry on for any unhappy inmates. She also had the unnerving knack of doing her hair in a different style virtually every day of the week.
Visitors to Susan inside the Miami County Jail were astonished at how easily she adjusted to prison life. She seemed to handle it like an overnight stay at a friend’s house. In a way, she was right because most of the jail officials were at one time or another friends of her’s and her husband’s.
Sheriff Rich and his wife, Linda, who worked as matron to the women inmates, were incredibly proud of their jailhouse. “You won’t find a jail in the whole of Indiana that is cleaner or a kitchen that serves such fine food. We treat people humanely here,” boasted Sheriff Rich.
Susan was expected to wear regulation orange jumpsuits inside the jail and her main visitor throughout her incarceration in Peru was one-time attorney and close friend John O’Neill, who lived in nearby Logansport. He knew both Jim and Susan through his family cabin which was near the Grund cabin on Maxinkuckee Lake. He was the man with whom Susan had first struck up a friendship just a few months after her marriage to Jim Grund.
O’Neill became such a regular visitor that jail staff soon started calling him by his first name. He was seen holding Susan’s hand as they talked in the visitor’s room.
Inside the county jail, Susan continued to be immaculately turned out. She even had her own curling iron and a vanity case loaded with beautician items. She did it all herself and was always happy to help the other women inmates glam up themselves a bit.
After a few months of wearing the jail’s orange regulation jumpsuit, Susan was allowed to wear her own clothes, although life inside the jail remained very regimented in most other ways.
All inmates were woken up at 6:30
A.M.
and expected to get their breakfast from the kitchen by 7:00
A.M.
This consisted of cereal, fruit, coffee, and orange juice. Hot oatmeal was provided three times a week. That was followed by Bible studying.
At one stage, Susan had so many priests visiting her that Sheriff Jack Rich insisted she decide which one should take priority. He quietly explained that while the jail might be obligated to allow men of God to see their inmates, six ministers every week lining up to see the beautiful alleged murderess was rather excessive. He threatened to stop all her visitation rights unless she cut down on these so-called spiritual advisors. She stuck to one minister from then on.
Lunch inside the Miami County Jail was served at 11:15
A.M.
It consisted of things like barbecue sandwiches and sour cream wedges. Susan and all the other inmates had to pay for their own coffee or sodas.
In the evening, dinner was served beginning at 4:30
P.M.
Chicken patties, beans, and mashed potatoes were a favorite. Once a week, desserts were provided by jailhouse cook Sue Hall and once a month she would bake a special cake for all the inmates.
By all accounts, Susan Grund rarely finished her meal, preferring to keep an eye on her svelte figure which she also kept in shape by taking as much regular exercise as possible.
In the evening, between 7:00
P.M.
and 10:00
P.M.
, there was exercise on the roof terrace or at the gym in the basement, depending on the weather and time of year. Table tennis, basketball, and weight machines were also available.
At one point during Susan’s stay in the county jail, the women’s section became unusually crowded with inmates. They were a varied bunch, including a woman accused of trying to hire a hitman to kill her husband, and drug and alcohol offenders. Not surprisingly, Susan and the murder-for-hire lady found they had a lot in common. The woman was eventually released and the charges dropped against her when her husband decided he did not want to give evidence against her and they got back together.
A telephone in the cell could be used at any time, but was only available for collect calls. A TV set behind a glass screen provided the entertainment. The clicker was often the subject of heated discussions about which program to watch.
The forty or so men held in the male section immediately next door were supposed to never actually be seen by the female inmates. But, inevitably, love notes and trysts occasionally ocurred and Susan was not above a little harmless flirtation with some of the male trustees at meal times.
A bathroom off the main cell area provided the only privacy in the entire building. Susan sometimes spent ages locked in there with her thoughts, considering her next move.
Susan played at being the upper-class lady inside the Miami County Jail, but then, compared with most of the other inmates, she was well qualified. Sometimes she seemed a little aloof as she spent hours each day pouring over her dozens of religious books.
Susan developed quite a penchant for cook Sue Hall’s special-recipe fruit sticks. But she had the annoying habit of clicking her well-manicured fingernails on the stainless steel counter at the canteen while waiting to be served her food at mealtime. She would then look up and give the male trustees a sickly sweet smile.
During her frequent court appearances, Susan put on a mask of seriousness and respectability the moment she caught sight of the press swarming around her as she exited the jailhouse before making the twenty-yard walk across this street to the courthouse. The only time that mask would drop in public was when she spotted a friend in the public gallery. Then a brief smile would come to her lips.
Susan got a visit from her sister Darlene soon after her arrest. It was a frosty encounter, by all accounts.
Susan immediately asked her sister why she had told the police the story about her confessing to Jimmy’s murder as they drove up from that rendezvous near Indianapolis to the Summit Drive house in the early hours of the morning a few weeks after the killing.
Susan insisted to her sister that Darlene was either being paid by investigators, or someone was threatening her in order to get her to tell the story.
“I just had to tell it. I can’t explain why,” replied a very nervous Darlene.
The two sisters did manage a few more words including an extraordinarily insensitive request from Darlene to buy her sister’s camper. Susan did not think that was a very good idea under the circumstances.
Then Susan scribbled a note on a scrap of paper and shoved it in front of her sister. It read, “They were in the woods waiting for me.” She also referred to people who were planning to go into the jail to kill her because she knew the “true story.”
Susan insisted that people like Judge Bruce Embrey and other old friends of her husband were out to get revenge and frame her for the murder of her husband.
A few days later, Susan called her sister collect on the Miami County Jail phone and told her to change her story. Darlene was outraged. “You take a polygraph and I’ll talk.”