Gitchie Girl: The Survivor's Inside Story of the Mass Murders that Shocked the Heartland (6 page)

He had already spent an emotionally exhausting day investigating the gruesome sight of the blood-stained scene and seeing what close-range shotgun blasts had done to maim and disfigure the four teenage boys, their bodies blued and twisted. He hoped that few people would ever see the photographs of these bodies, knowing it would leave lifelong scars on their minds. He tried to shake the macabre images from his head, but they held fast. A murky gloom had cast its hold on the campsite just yards from where the grisly murders had taken place; the specter of death bottled up within the foggy woe. Compounding the fear he felt was a lack of sleep and the fact that the murderer or murderers were still at large. Would they return to the scene again tonight as criminals often do?

His eyes jerked on the brink of exhaustion, causing his mind to play tricks on him. Through a sleepy stare he thought he caught movement at the front of the vehicle, then at the side. Griesse bolted up and flicked on the headlights, but there was only the rolling fog floating over the field where the bodies had lain earlier that day. He stretched his eyes open as far as he could a few times and took some slow, shallow breaths. He fought the temptation to leave the headlights on. That would make him a visible target. He scanned the park relentlessly. Yet again he sensed someone stalking up to the patrol car ready to fire a shotgun blast through the window.

And so the spooky, unnerving images haunted him throughout the night, the ghostly aura refusing to relinquish its grip on the park. It was the longest and most frightening assignment of his life and would cause him sleepless nights for years to come. When the sun finally broke through onto the eastern horizon and light overcame the darkness, Griesse sighed with relief. He had never been happier to see the sun.

Mike, Roger, and Sandra stood silently around the fire. No one moved; the only sounds piercing the suspense in the air were that of a hooting owl and a light rustle of wind blowing leaves along the ground. To break the tension, Stew grabbed his guitar and strummed a few chords, lightly at first then louder, until everyone soon felt some relief. Stew and Dana sang several songs before taking a break. Stew sat down in front of a hollow tree. Dana and Mike stood next to the fire. Mike’s eyes slowly scanned the tree line, but the light from the fire fell dim at that distance so he found himself facing a sea of black. Sandra laid her head on Roger’s shoulder, but she didn’t fold into his body the way she had when they’d cuddled in the back of Stew’s van on the way home from Falls Park last week. Roger’s body was rigid, and his left hand was pressed against the log as if he might bolt upright at any moment. After a few tense minutes of quiet, the group relaxed, perhaps a bit embarrassed that they’d frightened so easily.

“I know what we need,” one of the boys announced, pulling from his pocket a thin white cigarette rolled tightly at both ends. He inhaled deeply, held his breath, and passed the marijuana to Sandra. She took a small puff and blew it back out, wanting to fit in. As the joint continued circling among the friends, Sandra waited for the marijuana to lift away her fears, but it had the opposite effect instead.

“That fire’s dying down. Come with me, and we’ll get more wood,” Stew said, nudging Dana. Sandra was glad Roger was right next to her on the log. It gave her a small semblance of safety. She tried to block out the eerie sounds and concentrate on the romantic fire, its faltering flames swaying under a starry sky. She breathed in the scent of Roger’s coat and warmed herself with thoughts of telling the girls at school on Monday about another perfect date with her handsome boyfriend.

“Show us his picture!” and “Did he kiss you?” one of the girls was bound to say, one of them always did, and then they’d all ooh and aah over Roger and how lucky Sandra was to be his girlfriend. She never tired of the attention heaped on her by her doting friends when they’d eagerly gather around to hear every detail about Roger, how he was such a gentleman. She wished she’d had a camera to bring tonight. She could have had Stew take a picture of her with Roger, his arm protectively around her shoulder, sitting next to a blazing fire. Well, it would be blazing again soon when Stew and Dana got back with more wood.
Why weren’t they back yet?
She didn’t have a photo of her with Roger, and when Sandra made up her mind, she did it with determination. She’d borrow a camera. Maybe Debbie had one. Then her thoughts were interrupted by another strange sound. Sandra gasped. By the way Roger and Mike froze at the same moment, she knew they’d heard it, too. The three slowly stood; Roger’s arm never left her shoulder.

“It’s like they want us to hear them,” Mike said, confused by the increasingly loud cracks off to their left. “Stew! Dana! Where are you?”

“Over here!” one of them called back. But it was in the opposite direction of the noises.

Twigs snapping and the bewildering sound of branches brushing against something continued with increasing regularity.

“Now it’s like they’re on beat. Like someone’s walking.” Roger said aloud what they were all thinking. The sound edged closer each time. Roger turned just in time to see Stew and Dana burst through the darkness. Their arms were nearly empty as neither had found much wood dry enough for a fire.

“Hey, man, something’s going on. There’s someone out there.” A tinge of alarm had crept into Roger’s voice. All five teens once again scoured the edges of the campsite, the once roaring fire now glowing weakly, illuminating just a small area around the campsite. What happened next put a chain of events into action. Although all five of them sensed something was off, they had no idea the night was about to take a terrifying turn.

Deputy Griesse poured the last of the steaming coffee into a tall mug balanced on the dash of the unmarked vehicle and settled back into the seat with a sigh. The night was turning frigid, and the car needed to remain hidden to avoid detection. Lyon County, nestled in a picturesque corner of Iowa, struggled with the same crimes and social problems as the rest of the country, just on a smaller scale. This evening, in fact, marked the third night of a stakeout. Griesse was parked on a gravel road near a farmhouse where the two occupants were prime suspects in a series of thefts. Vinson was parked two miles away near a spot where the suspects were thought to be stashing the stolen items. The officers communicated by radio and were focused on catching the thieves in possession of some items stolen just that day. The deputy lifted binoculars to his eyes each time car lights pierced the darkness, but they were mostly useless now. A heavy fog had rolled in and was growing thicker.

“The farm is dead tonight,” he reported to Vinson, knowing that catching the bad guy involved a lot more time sitting in the dark for endless stretches than most people realized.

“Nothing here either.”

“Is it foggy over by you, too?”

It was, and Vinson knew that signaled a close to the stakeout. Another evening with nothing to show, but that’s how it went in this business. “Well, we’ll wrap it up for tonight then. We should probably take a trip through Gitchie Manitou and see if there’s a beer party to break up,” Vinson said.

Griesse eased onto the road and headed in the direction of the park. Teenagers regularly gathered in the three-walled camp shelter for a night of beer drinking in what they perceived to be a remote location where their adolescent adventures would go unnoticed. He and Vinson often chased away as many as fifty kids in one night.

After he’d traveled less than a mile, the road dipped, engulfing the patrol car in a thick fog. Griesse stepped on the brake and flipped the fog lights on.

“We’ve got pea soup over here,” the deputy reported into the radio, peering out the window on his side of the car. “I can’t even see the edge of the road.”

“I’ll head away from the river and see if I can drive out of this cloud. It is thick.”

But the fog had unfolded itself across a wide berth, and Gitchie was still several miles away from both men. Dedication to duty was a hard habit to break, though, and their constituents valued a clean county, so Vinson and Griesse made regular weekend trips through Gitchie to prevent the park from acquiring a less than savory reputation as a party place. Both men tried a few different routes to the park and, after one had a near head-on collision in the dense fog, made the mutual decision to head home after a long day. They both switched directions and steered their patrol cars away from Gitchie Manitou, where, unbeknownst to them, five teenagers sat around a campfire wondering what was making strange sounds in the woods surrounding them.

Roger’s and Sandra’s eyes caught the distant movement at the same time. Roger dropped his arm from her shoulder and took a few strides forward, keeping Sandra back at a safe distance.

“Stew! Did you see that? Two guys just ran across over there!” Roger shouted, pointing into the blackened night air. Mike, Stew, and Dana all whipped their heads around in the direction Roger was pointing, but they missed the two large figures that had now disappeared into the night.

“Say something to them!” Stew urged Roger.

“Hey,” Roger yelled. But there was no answer, and the sounds of cracking twigs ceased.
Perhaps there were some campers out there who intended to return to this spot
. Minutes passed before the soothing sounds of the flowing river and raccoons emerging from their daytime hideouts to scour for food fell into a peaceful rhythm.

“Let’s find some more wood and get this fire going,” Roger said, and the others agreed. Roger started to walk away, then turned, grabbed Sandra in a tight embrace, and gave her a soft, lingering kiss comparable to a scene in a movie when a soldier kisses his love for the last time before heading off to war.

“Hey, Roger, do you want me to come with you?” Stew asked.

“Yeah, that would be nice,” Roger answered with an even voice. He paused just at the edge of the night where flickering firelight met pitch-black woods. There was movement again in the nearby tree line. Roger stopped and yelled, “Who are you? What do you want?” His question met stark silence followed by the encroaching crumple of leaves. Suddenly, two ominous figures splintered the night atop a low ledge of rock not twenty feet from the teens, with a third shadowy silhouette visible just behind them. They emerged from the darkness, moving methodically. Sandra’s muscles clenched in fear at the sight of their scowling faces. Her knees nearly buckled, but she forced herself to remain standing. They held guns; one raised his weapon.

BOOM! A terrifying explosion ripped through the campsite. BOOM! Then another.

Lean and dauntless, years of athletic training enabled Mike to react quickly in the face of adversity. He grabbed Sandra and pulled her along until they reached a sheer drop-off at the river’s edge where they shielded themselves behind a tree.

“Stay still,” Mike ordered as he held her protectively behind the only barrier that stood between them and gunfire.

Their bodies taut with fear, they waited as quietly as possible, trying to suppress their loud, panicked breaths. Even in her state of confusion, Sandra’s first instinct when Mike grabbed her had been to keep sight of the shooter to stay out of the line of fire. The man holding the shotgun had been tall and had worn a Russian trooper hat with ear flaps that covered most of his short, brown hair. Hot tears strained at the corners of Sandra’s eyes, yet her thoughts were consumed with finding Roger, though she didn’t dare to move. The gun blast had filled the air at the same moment she’d seen Roger flinch and crumple to the ground. She knew Roger was out there, wounded and helpless, and all alone. She held back the sobs of terror that racked her body and held tightly to Mike. Their soft gasps seemed amplified in the desperate effort to become noiseless and blend in seamlessly with the woods around them. At first there wasn’t a sound except for the occasional rattle of leaves tossed by the wind.

Another shot rang out and all went still until the blast’s echo dwindled to nothingness. Finally Dana’s usual soft-spoken voice broke the stillness. “Stew! What happened?” There was no answer. Then a loud wail rose from the direction where Stew had been.

“I’ve been shot! They shot me!” Stew’s voice was laced with pain and determination.

Sandra yearned to hear Roger yell back, but only Stew’s distressing groans filled the night. She turned slowly to Mike to avoid making noise and whispered, “What’s going on?”

“I don’t know,” Mike whispered back.

They could hear Stew several yards away moaning in pain. “It hurts, it hurts so bad...” His voice trailed into silence.

Sandra tried to imagine herself becoming one with the tree. She pressed her face close to the trunk and breathed in the scent of musty bark. The gunmen retained their position of advantage on the ledge, causing snippets of their whispered conversation to reach her. Trembling, she pressed a hand to her pounding chest and prayed the men would leave. Though wanting nothing more than to make it all stop, she forced herself to stay alert. Then the three shadowy figures on the ledge shifted position and turned directly toward her and Mike.

The cascading falls of the Big Sioux River had long been a place where people gathered to live and play. This scenic area around Falls Park, where tall quartzite ledges create a series of waterfalls and thundering sprays of water send halos of mist skyward at the base of the turbulent waters, gave Sioux Falls its name in 1856. It was along this river’s edge that Roger Essem refined his appreciation and love of nature. He was especially fond of mountains and volcanoes and as a budding artist sketched countless scenes of the outdoors. On the flat plains of South Dakota, he had to settle for roaming small hills, but dreamed of one day visiting the mountains he spent hours sketching. The area around the falls wasn’t particularly hilly, but the untouched stone and acres of tall grasses allowed for a full day of hiking along the river’s edge, where he sometimes brought artist’s paper and charcoal pencils to sit peacefully sketching. He could often be found hiking with friends and taking advantage of the area’s varied seasons.