Authors: Beverly Simcic
I
retired to my room early, just wanting to get the night over with and leave. I
wanted to leave Las Vegas forever, never look back and never think about it
ever again.
I
had taken a small, unused steak knife off the table and tucked it under my hand
as I walked away from the dinner table. I don’t know what made me do this.
These two people had given me no reason to be alarmed or worried or suspicious.
It was pure instinct now for me. I knew that these people could poison me and
bury me in their backyard and no one would ever know what happened to me
because I had told no one about them. Thoughts of my murder were screaming
through my head and I didn’t want to sleep. I wanted to stay awake, but I was
so tired I couldn’t.
I
slept in my clothing, and the next thing I remember there was a small stream of
sunlight peeking through the drapes of the room, and I saw the door move. I
stayed completely still and my eyes were squinted as if they were completely
closed and I said nothing. I had wedged the steak knife down inside the wooden
frame of the bed so I could grab it if I needed to.
I
saw Kathy’s bare feet come quietly into the room and go to my overnight bag.
She opened it carefully and then slowly pulled out the top tray to look
underneath it. She was obviously looking for money, but found none. I had eased
my hand over near the edge of the bed and was prepared to grab the knife and
stab her with all my strength if she came near me. I was shocked, but not
shocked. I felt Fred with me again and wanted to jump up and run out the door
and down the street screaming my head off.
She
quietly left the room. I pretended to sleep for twenty minutes or so, then got
up and told them both I had to go because I wanted to get breakfast before my
scheduled flight time and didn’t want to bother them for it. I tried very hard
to act normal and talk normal. I was lucky to be alive.
I was lucky to be
alive.
I knew this now.
Neither
one of them offered to drive me. They were done with me; they hadn’t gotten
anything. I was quick to ask them for the taxi number, and even quicker moving
my luggage to the front door to await its arrival. I don’t know if they knew I
saw what they did, but I suspected they knew that I knew who they were, and
they didn’t care.
We
shared polite, controlled good byes. I practically ran to the taxi and threw my
luggage into the trunk, jumped in the back seat and sighed as it drove away
towards the airport. I still knew someone wanted me dead.
The
taxi driver heard my sigh, looked in his mirror and smiled, “Long night, Miss?”
“Yes,
long night.” I said, and as I settled in the back seat of the taxi my voice
crackled and sputtered at him again, “Get me the hell out of here PLEASE!”
B
oarding my flight, I wasn’t feeling any better; I
still wasn’t back in Pittsburgh safe with my family. I knew I had to endure
whatever other terror awaited me on the plane. I buckled myself up in the seat
belt and sat looking catatonic and emotionless, waiting for something to
happen—I knew
something
was going to happen to me on the airplane.
After
the plane took off and the announcement told us we could remove our seat belts,
I heard a voice from the back of the plane.
“Hey,
Bev is that you?”
I
hadn’t noticed the group of loud people in the back of the plane who seemed to
be celebrating something, as I was oblivious to everything around me. I
swiveled around in my seat and saw Johnny Mueller, my high school sweetheart,
approaching me smiling, flipping his long blonde hair from his face and holding
a glass of champagne. He looked happy as hell and half-drunk, so I tried to
smile back at him. He eased into the empty seat next to me, and put his arm
around me. I wanted to grab onto him and never let him go. He felt my
nervousness and whispered at me, “What’s wrong, hon?”
I
wanted to burst into tears and tell him the entire story, but I stopped myself
because I knew he was celebrating something and I didn’t want to ruin it for
him.
I
quietly told him my friend had just been murdered in Last Vegas, and he was
stunned. He hugged me and offered, “Listen, you’ll be back in Pittsburgh soon;
don’t worry, everything will be fine, you’ll be fine, and all will be back to
normal soon.”
I
knew this was divine intervention. I knew this was a miracle from God. I didn’t
have any other way to explain why my high school sweetheart was on this plane
for me right at this moment in time other than that God had arranged for this
to happen for me. It simply couldn’t be explained any other way. I knew this
had to be a miracle. Johnny had no clue how important he was to me at this
moment. He was something to hold onto that symbolized reality to me, safety,
happiness and a million other good feelings.
Johnny
had just been married in Reno and was on his way back to Pittsburgh with his
new bride. I spent the remainder of my flight sleeping and dreaming of the
military ball at Massanutten Military Academy in Virginia that I had attended
with Johnny and his family, dressed in a formal dark blue velveteen gown with
satin ribbons in the middle of the winter of 1966. I dozed off to sleep with a
vision of myself as princess floating up the military academy stairs to the
ballroom with Johnny in uniform and all the guests looking like kings and
queens. It was the best thought I’d had in my mind in a very long time.
I
realized while writing this book and reviewing the June 1982 calendar time line
that (more than likely) Chris was traveling home to Pittsburgh with us on this
same airplane.
Chris
was found on June 25, an autopsy was performed by the Las Vegas coroner, she
was sent home where a second autopsy was performed by Dr. Cyril Wecht in
Pittsburgh, and she was buried on July 1, 1982.
I
arrived back in Pittsburgh on Monday, June 28, 1982
and went directly to my mother’s house to see my son. He was missing me so,
and I was beyond joyful to see him and hold him and smell him. I think mothers
miss their baby’s smell more than anything.
I wasn’t
ready to go home to my apartment. I wanted to stay at my parent’s house and
never have to go back on my own, but I knew I would have to. I felt safe there
with them, having dinner on the back porch in the warm summer breezes.
I
knew I had to attend the funeral even though I didn’t want to. I wanted
desperately to forget everything forever, and just surround myself with family
and friends.
Chris
was to be buried on Thursday, July 1, 1982 and I knew I wasn’t going to the church.
I would go to the chapel after the Catholic mass and then to the wake at the
family’s house on the North Side.
I
drove over to the Casilio house on the North Side and waited for everyone to
arrive after the mass. I stood in the front yard with a number of other people
who were waiting, and wondered who they were. I knew Chuck Werner and went over
to talk to him. There didn’t seem to be anyone else there that I knew. As I was
talking with Chuck, another guy came over to us and Chuck introduced him as
Marty Walsh. I had only seen this man once, passing in the hallway at
Riverview, and this was the first time actually meeting him in person. I wasn’t
impressed. He was smaller than I had thought, and didn’t speak very well. My
first impression said
fake
. His tone of voice was quiet, and he seemed
to be very impressed with himself—his own presence and his own voice.
No
one else there spoke to me. I was offered a ride from Chuck, who was going with
Marty, who would be driving to the chapel. I reluctantly accepted the ride,
hopped into the back seat and slapped the seat directing Chuck to sit with me.
On the way to the chapel, Marty, the big time cop, started questioning me. I
figured he had been assigned this task from the family because he was a cop,
and for no other reason than that.
I
told Marty the same story I had told the Las Vegas detectives, but I left out
the part about overhearing the conversation he had with Chris and the fact that
she had told me he was coming out to Vegas. I wasn’t about to tell him any of
this, so the only thing I had to tell him was about Fred, the black guy we had
both befriended at the pool.
Marty’s
immediate response was that Fred had killed her for the jewelry. Then we talked
about how she was found, and Marty went into his pipe theory. I couldn’t believe
what I was hearing, it was the same story Chris had told about the pipe down
the throat thing and no one would ever be able to determine how the person
died. I was sitting in the back seat clutching onto Chuck at this point, and he
was looking at me like I was nuts.
So it was Marty’s theory that Fred had
used the pipe trick to kill Chris.
Therefore, there was no way that the
coroner was going to be able to determine a cause of death. What was
with
this guy and his pipe theories anyhow?
Marty
started blabbing that he was going out there to do away with Fred. He said he’d
just take him out in the desert and no one would ever find him. This casual
conversation about doing away with someone was making me very uncomfortable,
and I could see that Chuck was squirming in the back seat, too. I was
anticipating hearing the pipe story again when Chuck chimed in, “Well, you
know
Chris; she may have faked her own death.”
I
thought that was an odd thing to say. “Hey, Chuck, why would she do that?”
“Well,
you know how Chris was; maybe she wanted to be declared dead so she could take
off for the west coast or something, and maybe she wanted to get a new
identity.”
It
was a strange conversation indeed, and I remember thinking that these two men
apparently knew Chris much better than I did, because when Chuck mentioned her
possibly faking her own death I was shocked. Why the hell would she do that?
Marty
wasn’t the least bit distraught over her death either—he was detached from it.
Chuck seemed upset, but no one cried, including me. The three of us kept
blabbing away until we reached the chapel. I knew that Marty and Chris were not
romantically involved by his complete lack of emotion and interest.
It
was quiet and cold inside. There was a coffin with Chris’s high school photo
sitting on top. The three of us waited for the others to arrive, and then we
were off to the North Side Catholic Cemetery in the North Hills.
The
burial was, and still is, a blur to me. I don’t remember reactions, and I don’t
remember who was there. I was detached emotionally and wanted to leave as soon
as possible. I believe I was still deeply in shock.
When
everyone arrived back at the house on the North Side, I only remember short
memory flashes, like standing out front in the yard with Chuck and Marty and a
few other people. They were passing around a copy of the second autopsy report
that had been performed by Pittsburgh’s famous coroner, Dr. Cyril Wecht. There
wasn’t anything significant about it, and it stated at the end that her death
was “undetermined.”
Then
I was invited into the house to meet the family. I don’t remember any of them.
I do remember that no one seemed very interested in dissecting the facts or
really digging into the story, so I assumed the timing was bad and that the
family would contact me later on, and we’d all sit down and talk.
Marty
asked me to tell them my story and I did. Marty was running the show from the
time I set foot in the front yard. Again, I left out the part about Marty, and
I left out the part about the fur coat that was supposed to be coming to Vegas
via Marty when he came out there. I wasn’t going to ever speak of this to
anyone. The family trusted Marty, and I wasn’t about to tell them anything that
I thought or felt.
No
one ever called me about Chris, including anyone in her family. I bought myself
a gun and signed up for shooting lessons almost immediately following the
funeral. When I came home at night to my apartment, I cleared my apartment
first by going room to room with my gun loaded and ready to fire. I followed
this ritual for over two years.
I
ran into Marty one time at a mall in the North Hills, and I had my son with me.
Marty was with an older, tall, redheaded woman who was wearing a fur coat. He
stopped to say hello, and I remember trying not to stare at the fur coat,
checking to see if it was Chris’s coat the woman was wearing. It wasn’t, and I
hurried off away from him.
I
never spoke to Marty or Chuck again until I decided to write this book.
I
stopped by North Side family home once to ask if they’d heard anything from Las
Vegas. The two aunts were weird, strange, and secretive and never invited me
in. So I never went back again.
The
next encounter I had was in the mid-nineties, when I got my first computer. I
emailed a cold case detective in Vegas and asked if they had ever learned what
happened to Chris. His response was that the door had been bolted from the
inside, and they had no further explanations for her death. I didn’t know what
to think of that one, except that I knew that someone had been coming and going
in that apartment all along while she was already dead.