afterthought, he added that he paid five hundred dollars a month in child support.
Davidson made a note and again brought up the polygraph test.
“If you take care of it and deal with it at the outset, if anybody says what about this guy who got this inheritance, we can say he took a polygraph, he’s clean, he’s innocent.”
“This is elimination,” Childers added.
“What I’m trying to get at as tactfully as I can is before you go back to Albuquerque, we’d like to have a polygraph test,” Davidson said.
“Well, obviously, that’s the only thing to do. I can’t refuse to take it.”
“Well, you could.”
“Obviously, that would be the worst thing to do. I don’t know how it works. I’ve got a little high blood pressure. Obviously, I’m a little upset.”
“All of that is taken into consideration.”
“I can’t imagine anybody killing my mother. I never met anybody who knew them and didn’t like them.”
“We’ve got some leads on this case,” Davidson said.
“I hope so. I can’t imagine somebody getting away with it.”
“I hope they don’t.”
“I’m really concerned,” Tom said. “I didn’t know if this was a cracker outfit out here in the country, to be honest with you. I felt maybe we had some big ol’ Jackie Gleason type of a sheriff and it would just be…You guys seem to be working real hard at it. I’d like to be the guy who’d come out here and demand everything be done and stuff, but I realize you guys are pros and you have to do things your way. I mean, I want something done now, but I realize if you don’t catch the guy right there, you have to go step by step. I’ll try to be patient, too.”
“I can assure you, you’ve got three of the finest investigators in the country on this case,” Davidson said of the detectives before him.
Tom agreed to take a polygraph test, and Davidson arranged for it to be administered immediately in Louisville. Childers and Nobles would take him.
Not long into the interview, Davidson’s intuition had told him that this mild and emotionally wounded man was not capable of murdering his mother and sister. He wanted to know if he was alone in that feeling.
“I don’t think he did it,” he said to Childers after Tom had left his office.
“I don’t either,” said Childers.
But at 5:20 that afternoon, when Sergeant Ron Howard of the Jefferson County Police finished the polygraph test, he reported to Childers that it had proved inconclusive. Tom was too tense and upset, he thought, to get an accurate reading.
Tom was tired, but the detectives wanted him to do one more thing before they took him to his room at the Melrose Inn in Prospect—go by the house and see if he could spot anything missing or out of the ordinary.
When Tom walked into the house and saw the disarray, the scuff marks on the floors left by the officers who’d been trooping in and out, the black fingerprint dust everywhere, his first thought was that his mother was really going to be upset about this mess.
10
The funeral for Delores and Janie, whose bodies had been cremated, was at 10:30 Friday morning at Stoess Funeral Home, a remodeled frame house in Crestwood, next door to the hardware store where, on the day before her death, Delores had gone to see about a holster for her revolver. The chapel was filled with Delores’s friends from the Little Colonel Theater and Janie’s friends from dental school. Delores’s favorite priest, the retired Father R. C. Board, presided, reading the Requiem from the 1928 Book of Common Prayer.
Phil Pandolfi thought the service cold and impersonal. Nobody said anything about how sweet and wonderful Janie was. To come to the funeral, Phil used the money he had intended to spend when Janie came to New York—the trip she would have been on the weekend she was killed, if she hadn’t changed her mind—and he was feeling lost, left out, and helpless. He thought himself the closest person to Janie present, yet he had
Davidson made a note and again brought up the polygraph test.
“If you take care of it and deal with it at the outset, if anybody says what about this guy who got this inheritance, we can say he took a polygraph, he’s clean, he’s innocent.”
“This is elimination,” Childers added.
“What I’m trying to get at as tactfully as I can is before you go back to Albuquerque, we’d like to have a polygraph test,” Davidson said.
“Well, obviously, that’s the only thing to do. I can’t refuse to take it.”
“Well, you could.”
“Obviously, that would be the worst thing to do. I don’t know how it works. I’ve got a little high blood pressure. Obviously, I’m a little upset.”
“All of that is taken into consideration.”
“I can’t imagine anybody killing my mother. I never met anybody who knew them and didn’t like them.”
“We’ve got some leads on this case,” Davidson said.
“I hope so. I can’t imagine somebody getting away with it.”
“I hope they don’t.”
“I’m really concerned,” Tom said. “I didn’t know if this was a cracker outfit out here in the country, to be honest with you. I felt maybe we had some big ol’ Jackie Gleason type of a sheriff and it would just be…You guys seem to be working real hard at it. I’d like to be the guy who’d come out here and demand everything be done and stuff, but I realize you guys are pros and you have to do things your way. I mean, I want something done now, but I realize if you don’t catch the guy right there, you have to go step by step. I’ll try to be patient, too.”
“I can assure you, you’ve got three of the finest investigators in the country on this case,” Davidson said of the detectives before him.
Tom agreed to take a polygraph test, and Davidson arranged for it to be administered immediately in Louisville. Childers and Nobles would take him.
Not long into the interview, Davidson’s intuition had told him that this mild and emotionally wounded man was not capable of murdering his mother and sister. He wanted to know if he was alone in that feeling.
“I don’t think he did it,” he said to Childers after Tom had left his office.
“I don’t either,” said Childers.
But at 5:20 that afternoon, when Sergeant Ron Howard of the Jefferson County Police finished the polygraph test, he reported to Childers that it had proved inconclusive. Tom was too tense and upset, he thought, to get an accurate reading.
Tom was tired, but the detectives wanted him to do one more thing before they took him to his room at the Melrose Inn in Prospect—go by the house and see if he could spot anything missing or out of the ordinary.
When Tom walked into the house and saw the disarray, the scuff marks on the floors left by the officers who’d been trooping in and out, the black fingerprint dust everywhere, his first thought was that his mother was really going to be upset about this mess.
10
The funeral for Delores and Janie, whose bodies had been cremated, was at 10:30 Friday morning at Stoess Funeral Home, a remodeled frame house in Crestwood, next door to the hardware store where, on the day before her death, Delores had gone to see about a holster for her revolver. The chapel was filled with Delores’s friends from the Little Colonel Theater and Janie’s friends from dental school. Delores’s favorite priest, the retired Father R. C. Board, presided, reading the Requiem from the 1928 Book of Common Prayer.
Phil Pandolfi thought the service cold and impersonal. Nobody said anything about how sweet and wonderful Janie was. To come to the funeral, Phil used the money he had intended to spend when Janie came to New York—the trip she would have been on the weekend she was killed, if she hadn’t changed her mind—and he was feeling lost, left out, and helpless. He thought himself the closest person to Janie present, yet he had
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