The Cereal Killer Chronicles of Battle Creek by Jenn Carpenter

Author:Jenn Carpenter
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Arcadia Publishing
Published: 2021-01-15T00:00:00+00:00

THE HITMAN

For decades, the Kellogg Company’s production facility in Battle Creek offered public tours, during which visitors could watch the magical process of how cereal comes to life and then sample freshly made cereal. Those tours stopped abruptly in 1986. The company claimed it was due to spies from other cereal companies using the tours to steal trade secrets, but it might have had a bit more to do with the three Kellogg employees who had just been arrested for murder, which led to an investigation of criminal activity at the plant.

Sharon Goddard was a forklift operator who worked the night shift at Kellogg’s production facility. Born in 1954 to LeRoy and Arlene Despins, she graduated from Gull Lake High School and gave birth to her first child, a daughter, in 1978. In 1981, she met and fell in love with Ricky Goddard of Dowling, the bass guitarist in the popular local band Joshua. Dowling is a village of less than 375 residents about fifteen miles north of Battle Creek.

Ricky Goddard was born on November 12, 1953, to John and Beverly Goddard of Battle Creek. He graduated from Lakeview High School in 1971, where he played baseball and was in band. He went on to attend Kellogg Community College, where he earned an associate’s degree in data processing before taking a job with Battle Creek Glass Works, where he worked for fourteen years. He and Sharon got married on June 15, 1984. He adopted Sharon’s daughter the following year.

1985 was a big year for the Goddards, who lived in a small mobile home on Gurd Road in Dowling. Aside from adopting Sharon’s daughter, officially making the three of them a family, Ricky opened his own business, Wholesale Glass Inc., in Paw Paw. The family also started the process of building a house on their property, and Sharon became pregnant. With so many exciting things on the horizon as they rang in the new year, 1986 was supposed to be full of milestones for the Goddard family. And it was—just not in the way they expected.

In the early morning hours of Saturday, January 25, 1986, thirty-two-year-old Sharon arrived home from her shift at Kellogg to a strange scene. There were erratic, zig-zagging tire tracks in her snow-filled driveway. The storm door was swinging in the wind. All the lights were on, which was very unlike the budget-conscious Ricky. The dog was at the back door, whining to get outside. The Goddards’ daughter, then eight years old, had spent the night with her maternal grandparents, a long-standing Friday night tradition, so she wasn’t home. But Ricky should have been. The house was eerily quiet. Sharon called out for Ricky but got no answer. And that’s when she saw him, face down, eyes wide open, with a gaping hole in the back of his head caused by a shotgun blast. There was no question that he was dead. Blood, brain matter, and hair were on the table, walls, and ceiling.

Sharon ran to the

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