Every Mother's Nightmare by Charles Bosworth

Author:Charles Bosworth [Bosworth, Charles]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Crime Rant Books
Published: 2015-12-28T00:00:00+00:00

In the week after the meeting, John Appelbaum assembled the pieces needed to complete the puzzle. An essential part of the picture was supplied by a convict named Michael Watson, an Illinois man held in the Jefferson County Jail in 1986 for a nasty crime that had crossed the Mississippi River and state lines. He and three other men had kidnapped a man in Illinois, driven to Jefferson County, slit his throat, and left him for dead. He fooled them and survived. The other men drew life sentences, but Watson’s minor role got him five years for kidnapping in Illinois and a concurrent term of four years for assault in Missouri.

Appelbaum had handled the preliminary hearing on Watson, and first assistant prosecutor David Crosby, faced with a formal demand for a speedy trial and little time to assemble a case, had agreed to the plea bargain.

Watson had told the detectives he had been cooling his heels in the county jail when Fleer was arrested on the cocaine charge after Lester Howlett’s death. Watson remembered the day Fleer was sentenced and returned to his cell to boast, “I’ll take four years-two years for each life.” When Watson asked what he meant, Fleer bragged that he had killed two people and was getting away with it. He laughed and added, “They think Lester killed them, but we both killed them. We beat the girl and suffocated the boy, and then put them in a bathtub of water.” Fleer said the girl’s name was Stacy and the boy’s name was Tyler, and he had taken the boy’s mother, Mari, to a school for shoplifters.

Fleer told Watson the boy’s father was Steve Winzen.

Michael Watson was no choir-boy, but his knowledge made him a valuable witness. Appelbaum couldn’t choose the kind of people Fleer talked to, so he worked with what he got. And Watson gave him plenty to work with—a confession from Fleer. Appelbaum was thrilled when Burle handed him the note written by Watson as he offered his account of the conversation with Fleer and the accurate information on the murders. Watson wouldn’t provide a written or recorded statement, but the details were priceless.

Appelbaum savored the moment, because this case had locked him firmly in its grasp, too. He realized he never had thrown himself emotionally into a case as he had into this one. He had handled some brutal, heinous crimes, but the murders of these children had reached deeper inside him and touched him in a way the others had not. He wanted to get justice for the kids whose lives had been cut so short and for the man who had caused so much pain.

The investigation into the telephone call from the hotel in Vegas had not been as successful. The hotel did not keep records of collect calls, and a detective had spent hours going through the hotel register without finding anyone suspicious.

Steve Winzen and Patty Garner denied making the call; they had been sound asleep in their room until Howlett called them much later with the news.

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