Author Blaine L. Pardoe Discusses His New Book - Murder In Battle Creek: The Mysterious Death Of Daisy Zick

Fri, 10/30/2009 - 10:54am

When: August 21, 2013 at the Downtown Library: Multi-Purpose Room

This year marks the fiftieth anniversary of the infamous Daisy Zick murder, which remains one of the most puzzling unsolved murders in Michigan's history. On a bitterly cold morning in January 1963, Daisy Zick was brutally murdered in her Battle Creek home. No fewer than three witnesses caught a glimpse of the killer, yet today, it remains one of Michigan's most sensational unsolved crimes. The act of pure savagery rocked not only the community but also the Kellogg Company, where she worked. Join us as author Blaine Pardoe (recipient of the 2011 State History Award by the Historical Society of Michigan) discusses this shocking crime and his new book "Murder In Battle Creek: The Mysterious Death Of Daisy Zick." This event includes a book signing and books will be for sale.Blaine offers a new opportunity for readers to help solve this baffling case on its bicentennial. Who were the key suspects? What evidence do the police still have on this five-decades-old cold case? Just how close did this murder come to being solved? Is the killer still alive? These questions and more are masterfully brought to the forefront for true crime fans and armchair detectives. Blaine Pardoe is an award-winning author of numerous books in the science fiction, military nonfiction, true crime, paranormal and business management genres. Raised outside Battle Creek, he received his undergraduate and graduate degrees from Central Michigan University. He has been a featured speaker at the U.S. National Archives, the United States Navy Museum and the New York Military Affairs Symposium. He currently resides in Virginia outside Washington, D.C.

Transcript

• [00:00:24.78] SPEAKER 1: Hello. Thank you for coming to the program this evening.
• [00:00:28.90] We are here with Blaine Pardoe, who is an award-winning author from Michigan, who has written in many genres, including horror, business management, and military history. But tonight he is here to share with us his knowledge about his brand-new book, that is a true crime and mystery hybrid, called A Murder in Battle Creek. And we are so pleased to have him here.
• [00:00:52.84] So welcome, Blaine Pardoe.
• [00:00:55.32] [APPLAUSE]
• [00:01:02.69] BLAINE PARDOE: Thank you for coming. I'll try to keep this as upbeat as I can, even though I'm talking about a murder. The jokes aren't really funny, but if you'll chuckle, I appreciate that.
• [00:01:15.78] The Daisy Zick murder took place in 1963, in Battle Creek, Michigan, the hometown where I was raised. Took place about a mile from where I actually lived.
• [00:01:25.24] So I'm familiar with the area. I wasn't there at the time. I arrived slightly later that year. But I'm very familiar with the area, et cetera.
• [00:01:35.71] And it's really interesting, because over the years the crime has really stuck in the people of Battle Creek's minds, and in the minds of a lot of people within Michigan, because it was one of Michigan's great unsolved murders.
• [00:01:47.57] There's a reason for that. One, this was a crime that penetrated the entire community in Battle Creek. Battle Creek had a population of around 50,000 at the time. A lot of people were pulled in, fingerprinted, and polygraphed. And I'll talk about that later. There were a lot of people they were pulled in in this dragnet, in a search for someone that might have a motive for such a horrific crime.
• [00:02:13.32] There's a lot of myths that grew up about this crime. And I was part of that. I'd ask people about this over the years, about the Daisy Zick crime. And I heard all sorts of crazy stories.
• [00:02:26.09] And a lot of those really didn't have very much basis in fact, or they had some basis in fact. But to me it was just intriguing that so many people were still talking about it. And even to this day, 50 years later, it is still very much discussed and is a very hot topic of conversation, and people debating about who was involved with it and how.
• [00:02:53.66] I think what stuck with most people is this was a very savage crime. Daisy was stabbed 27 times. This was not a simple house robbery gone bad. This was somebody that went in with the intent of killing this woman, and over-killed her in many respects.
• [00:03:13.88] The fact that no one was ever arrested for this really scared the people within Battle Creek, because it made you wonder. Is it my neighbor? Is it a relative? Is it a cousin? Is it somebody I know? And they never were brought to justice for it.
• [00:03:32.86] And what really stuck with people probably more than anything was the fact that this was such a brutal crime. It was so over the top in terms of, kind of, by today's standards, I think we've all become numbed down by CNN, MSNBC, and Fox, with all the terrible crimes that are brought out before us. But by 1963 standards, this was a pretty brutal crime to have taken place in such a relatively pastoral community.
• [00:04:02.16] I mean, quite literally, within Calhoun County, you only had a couple of murders a year during the 1960s. It was rare. Most of the crimes were solved, the vast majority of them. So for one to go through and slip through the cracks on this scale really stood out with people.
• [00:04:22.17] All right. Curiosity-- has anybody here heard of this crime before tonight?
• [00:04:26.71] A couple hands. OK, good. Well, hopefully I'll shed some new light on it. Or maybe you'll shed some new light with me on it.
• [00:04:35.83] They always tell you as a writer, you never open by describing the weather. I'm going to violate that, because that's for fiction, and this is nonfiction.
• [00:04:46.93] January 14, 1963, it was below zero and snowing, blowing heavily. It had snowed the night before. There was about six inches of snow on the ground.
• [00:04:58.62] What really happened that day is Floyd Zick, who was Daisy's husband, left for work. He picked up his carpooling partner and went to the market where he worked as a butcher.
• [00:05:11.21] His time was completely accounted for every bit of the day. There was no time that Floyd wasn't at the meat counter that he could have slipped away.
• [00:05:20.32] Floyd called home at around 9 o'clock to talk to his wife. And a little after 9:00, Daisy received a call from her lover, Raymond Mercer.
• [00:05:31.35] Daisy had a reputation for dating a number of men. I'm not going to go into too much detail on that. I go through it in the book as much as I can.
• [00:05:40.67] There's an old line that when somebody dies, they become a saint. So it's hard to find people that will admit, after someone's been murdered, that yes, I was dating her.
• [00:05:50.65] But Daisy was dating a gentlemen by the name or Raymond Mercer. He called just to check on her. Daisy had placed a call as well to check on some insurance issues around 9:15, 9:20.
• [00:06:04.08] A local neighbor had a maid over. And the maid, Mae Tolls, was out beating the carpets in the yard. This is back when we used to beat carpets in the yard, even on cold days. Noticed the Daisy had-- her drapes were pulled open.
• [00:06:21.41] She was a very private person. Usually kept the house locked. Usually kept the drapes closed, or closed them early in the morning so that she would have privacy.
• [00:06:31.16] At around 10:00 she received a call from her friend Audrey Heminger. Now, Audrey was her friend. They were going to meet for lunch. And then both of them worked the afternoon shift at Kellogg's.
• [00:06:41.86] And that becomes important. It's important to know what time of day she's there. Most of us aren't at home at 9 o'clock or 10 o'clock in the morning. But Daisy was. And she was planning on joining Audrey for a lunch.
• [00:06:56.85] Her neighbor, Mrs. DeFrance, stepped out and noticed around 10:00 AM that there was someone standing in the breezeway at the Zick house. And it was in this area here.
• [00:07:11.86] Now, you could see that that house is set very far back. There's a picture in the book, and I'll show you later as well. The distance was almost a football field away from where she saw this. But she described it as a man wearing an Eisenhower style jacket, dark blue, was standing at the breezeway door.
• [00:07:30.30] At around 10:20, Mrs. DeFrance took her dog out and noticed that the Zick garage door was open, and Daisy's car was gone. That struck her as a little bit odd. Daisy always closed the garage door.
• [00:07:43.53] This is a house with an attached garage. It's below zero. I think all of us who have lived in Michigan-- and I do have the scars to prove it-- we all know that you would have closed that garage door just to preserve whatever heat you had.
• [00:08:00.81] Floyd received a phone call from her friend Audrey. Audrey had gone to work at Kellogg's, where Daisy and her worked. Had tracked down Ray Mercer and said, have you seen Daisy? No.
• [00:08:11.37] They went in the parking lot and looked for Daisy's car. Couldn't find it. She called Floyd Zick. And Floyd left the meat market to look for his wife.
• [00:08:20.13] On the way to his house, on East Michigan Avenue, one of the busiest traveled roads in Calhoun County, he spotted his wife's car alongside the road. He got out, thinking maybe her car had conked out. 1963 Pontiac. It's cold. It's possible.
• [00:08:37.85] He got out. Daisy's car was empty. Matter of fact, he put his own keys in the car, and it started right up. So it didn't make sense why she would have walked away.
• [00:08:46.03] He went home and found the garage door, as you see it here, open. And I know I seem like I'm stressing this, but trust me, there's a reason later.
• [00:08:55.11] The garage door was open. When he went into the house, he noticed that the rug in the kitchen had been pushed up against the sink. And the phone, the wire had been cut.
• [00:09:07.93] So he knew something was wrong. He started calling for his wife. He went into their bedroom. The bedroom was in disarray. He went to the spare bedroom. And as you can see, he found his wife laying next to the bed, against the wall.
• [00:09:28.83] I know a lot of true crime authors try to put gratuitous scenes up and show you all the gore. I have a lot of respect for Daisy. I didn't want to do that. I think it's respectful to her surviving family to not do that.
• [00:09:43.95] Just a few things I want to point out. Daisy's hands were tied behind her back with a robe that she had. And this is that sash from that robe. And these are some of the blood stains on the floor.
• [00:09:58.90] You'll notice as well there's a blood stain smear on the wall. You'll see it here in several of the pictures. It appeared that Daisy had been at least sitting against the wall at least during part of the attack and had slid down along the wall at the time of her death.
• [00:10:16.01] Floyd-- there was so much blood, and she had been so savagely stabbed, he thought she had been shot, actually. He couldn't tell that she had been stabbed.
• [00:10:25.93] Floyd went down to the basement. There was a phone in the basement. And he called, on the rotary phone, called the Michigan State Police post, who immediately sent troopers out to take a look at this.
• [00:10:40.57] Apologies for the picture here. I pulled it out of the newspaper. Terrible photograph. My apologies.
• [00:10:47.70] There's a reason I actually use this and this. These are the investigators that are in the Zick home. Here you see them fingerprinting the phone. Here you see them in the kitchen, photographing the sink.
• [00:10:58.06] I think the part I really wanted to point out with this is, you got to remember, this is 1963 police work. So what's wrong with these pictures already? There's reporters and photographers in the crime scene while the investigation's being done.
• [00:11:12.54] Now, we all look at that and can armchair-quarterback it and say it's wrong. But by 1963 standards, that was actually not that uncommon.
• [00:11:24.17] There were a lot of investigators that were pulled into this. Matter of fact, there was a lot of tension between the Michigan State Police post and the prosecutor's office, which was run by Noble Moore.
• [00:11:34.61] Noble Moore was a brigadier general in the Air Force Reserve, Air National Guard here in Michigan. And he insisted everyone call him General. He was kind of a hard-nosed guy.
• [00:11:45.63] And this is him here with his secretary. And they're actually looking over the Zick file one year after the crime.
• [00:11:54.09] This gentleman here is Charlie Conn, raised in Michigan. Joined the police force in 1938. He was there on the crime scene is well.
• [00:12:03.06] Wayne Fitch. Fantastic deputy in the Calhoun County Sheriff's Department. Was one of the first officers on the scene as well. Highly respected. They named the Fraternal Order of Police post after him. Highly respected police investigator.
• [00:12:19.64] And this person is Captain Billie Patterson, who also joined the team of investigators later on.
• [00:12:28.02] I spent a lot of time in the book talking about the investigators, because I think they're almost as interesting as the victim in many respects. It tells you a little bit about this.
• [00:12:36.53] Now, I learn a lot. I've written several true crime books. I learned a lot with this one, because I had to talk to some of the investigators. And I really had to work with generations' worth of investigators, over 50 years.
• [00:12:51.49] I asked them, I said, tell me, 1963, put your head in the game there. What did you look for? And they said, well, the crime scene always tells us the story.
• [00:12:59.66] Well, the story that starts to emerge here is very confused. In the bedroom, Daisy's purse had been dumped out. Her wallet had been taken out. And someone had removed all of the money there. She only had $46 there.
• [00:13:16.31] Daisy only made $25 a week working at Kellogg's. Her bank account was double digits. They didn't have a lot of money. So while someone took the money, this crime clearly was not just a robbery. This was almost an attempt to make it look this way.
• [00:13:34.38] There were a lot of folks that pointed out, they said, boy, this looks like it's laid out. In the description I found, these items were actually on the floor, in the written report. So I think the police may have put them on the bed for photography purposes.
• [00:13:46.76] But even so, it doesn't look like the purse was really dumped too much. It was kind of in a very straightforward manner.
• [00:13:54.17] On the bed, you'll notice a slight depression. And that's an indication that Daisy may have been laying on that bed. And there are some blood stains on the bed.
• [00:14:06.06] This is the sash, the robe where the sash was taken from. You'll see it in these two pictures.
• [00:14:12.99] And this is where the phone wires were cut. This is a small vestibule between the kitchen area and the living room in the Zick home.
• [00:14:21.96] So what does the crime scene tell you? Well, the investigators tried to piece it together pretty quickly. And it was very confusing.
• [00:14:32.45] Daisy had let someone in. She was notorious for keeping the doors locked. The front door was still locked. So she had let someone in at that side door where Mrs. DeFrance had seen someone standing.
• [00:14:44.93] There was obviously some sort of struggle that had taken place in the kitchen. It is the belief that Daisy, at some point, turned her back to her assailant and went for the telephone.
• [00:14:56.12] Now, bear in mind, it's a rotary phone. And there was no 911. So to go for the phone, you're talking about a one-minute process to dial the police, their full number. It was a mistake.
• [00:15:09.78] She had been hit from behind, behind her right ear. As a matter of fact, she had a bruise there, and some cotton fiber, yellow, bright yellow, cotton fiber.
• [00:15:18.90] Several of these bright yellow cotton fibers were found. And the police believed they were from those bright yellow gloves that were worn during that era. I don't know if everybody remembers them. Used to have the red elastic and the bright yellow gloves. They were sometimes used for fishing or for cold weather work.
• [00:15:35.86] But it looked like her assailant, when she had gone for the phone, had hit her, and then had cut the phone line. The person then had taken Daisy to the bed, thrown her on the bed, tied her hands behind her back.
• [00:15:47.59] At some point, while she was on the bed, he had begun stabbing her from behind. Those wounds indicated potentially, while this indicates a right-handed person, those wounds indicated a left-handed person.
• [00:16:01.35] Daisy fought back. Even with their hands tied behind her back, she regained enough consciousness to get up. She ran to the back bedroom.
• [00:16:10.10] The killer pursued her into the back bedroom, knocked her against the wall, and stabbed her while she sat against the wall. Daisy then slid against the wall, dead, it is the belief, at that time. Whoever the killer was then straddled her body and proceeded to stab her an additional 17 times with enough force to break her ribs.
• [00:16:33.47] Now, a knife was recovered at the scene. It was a Kellogg's, what was referred to as a spoilage knife. And if you lived in the Battle Creek area, almost every home in Battle Creek had this, because everyone at Kellogg's stole them.
• [00:16:46.34] It was a utility knife, like a box cutter, except it didn't have the retractable blade. You used it for breaking down boxes, or for cleaning cookers at the plant.
• [00:16:57.84] Now, one was found in her sink. And Floyd Zick said, well, that's our knife. Daisy used it to cut chicken.
• [00:17:04.38] Now they did test it. And it did have the presence of blood. But they didn't have enough of a sample for 1963 police technique to see if it was human blood or chicken blood.
• [00:17:15.49] Daisy was a very meticulous person. So it seems odd that there would be any sort of remains of blood at all on that knife. But the knife was found in the sink, apparently cleaned off.
• [00:17:28.25] So what does the crime scene tell you? Well, it's very confusing. Whoever went there, there was no car. Daisy Zick lives out in a very isolated part of Wattles Park, on Wattles Road, right before you reach County Park. It's a very isolated area.
• [00:17:47.66] Her car was abandoned on Michigan Avenue, a mile and a half away. Now, did the killer walk down the busiest street in Calhoun County on the coldest day of the year, turn onto Wattles Road and walk all the way down a mile and a half?
• [00:18:02.24] What would have happened in 1963 if you saw someone walking down the road? Today we wouldn't have picked them up. We don't pick up hitchhikers. 1963, any number of people would have swung by to pick this person up.
• [00:18:14.47] As a matter of fact, one of the deputy officers on the case was running late that morning taking a prisoner to court, and drove by Daisy's car, and saw the man in front of the car. He had assumed driver's car had broken down. Didn't realize a murder had taken place.
• [00:18:32.42] Said, on the way back, I'll make sure, if this guy's still walking down the road, I'll give him a left. Of course, he was gone by then.
• [00:18:38.34] So did the killer walk there? Or where they dropped off? Or some combination thereof?
• [00:18:45.54] Why go without the car? Was the intent to kill Daisy? Then why use the knife that was there? Perhaps that wasn't the knife.
• [00:18:53.39] Now, police also took a look at a few things. Daisy's car, as you see here-- and I wish I owned a car like this. There were several smears on it. You can barely see them in the picture here, where someone brushed up against it. They also found more of those yellow fibers.
• [00:19:10.91] Inside the car, they found a whole bunch of fingerprints. They were able to rule out all but one fingerprint. And it was on the door. You can't quite see it here, but it was right near the handle.
• [00:19:22.87] And the thought was one of the last people getting in and out of the car would have left their fingerprint there. They assumed all along that that fingerprint, the only one they couldn't identify, belonged to the killer.
• [00:19:33.71] But I'd like to point out, in 1963, did you pump your own gas? Did you pop your own hood? No. You had full service. God, I wish I lived then. I'll take the gas prices any day.
• [00:19:48.02] This is the house where the car was abandoned on Michigan Avenue.
• [00:19:53.06] And this is the view from Mrs. DeFrance's house. And I wanted to point this out, just when I say she saw someone standing on the Zick porch, this is the view she would have had. So it gives you an idea of the distance we're talking about. It would have been very hard to tell if that was a man or a woman, especially on a cold day with someone bundled up.
• [00:20:16.83] Well, when I do my research, I always want to tell more of the story than the police do. The police go looking for a motive pretty quick. I want to talk about the person.
• [00:20:25.20] Daisy was born in 1919 in Assyria Township, Michigan. At the age of 14, she got married. I know that seems awfully young. She married somebody that only lived a mile and a half down the road from her.
• [00:20:36.33] She had an eighth grade education, which at the time was fairly normal. She was from a farming family.
• [00:20:44.88] They had one child, Jim King. Jim is still with us, I'm pleased to say. They were divorced a year later. He beat her savagely.
• [00:20:53.74] Divorce records are great from the 1930s, because they tell everything that ever happened. This was not a good relationship for a young girl to be in. I mean, he threatened to kill her. He was just an abusive man.
• [00:21:08.69] But she received a divorce from him. She actually had to get permission because she wasn't 21. She had to have a friend of the court appointed to her to represent her, because while she was legally married, she couldn't legally divorce in the state of Michigan at the time.
• [00:21:24.79] Daisy had her parents help her raise her son. So Daisy literally worked in Battle Creek during the week with her sister at various cereal companies, and would drive home at night and on the weekends to see her son.
• [00:21:40.53] So I mean, we're talking about the same sort of thing we see with a lot of mothers today. It wasn't any easier in 1933. And this was a tough cookie. She ended up eventually working at Kellogg's.
• [00:21:52.93] During World War II, she met Floyd Zick. He had come to Camp Custer in Battle Creek as part of the war. They met at a dance. She fell in love. And they got married.
• [00:22:03.38] And it really looked like things really were going to turn around for Daisy at that point in her life. And I love these photographs of her. Jim King provided me this. This is Jim and his mother. They're very happy times.
• [00:22:17.91] And this is Daisy and her sister when her granddaughter was born. Very energetic, and very personable person. I have lots of stories in the book of people telling me how warm and friendly she was.
• [00:22:32.74] She worked on a line where she was very much in public. If you walked through the plant, you had to walk by Daisy's workstation. A lot of people spoke very highly of her.
• [00:22:42.93] Now, the investigators really turned this up. They said, what evidence do we have? Well, we have a fingerprint that may or may not be the killer's. The assumption was, it was.
• [00:22:53.42] We had a description of Mrs. DeFrance of the killer. However, you saw the distance involved. I'd be hard-pressed to identify my mother in the winter bundled up at that range facing away from me.
• [00:23:06.43] There was a button that was recovered at the crime scene. Now, Daisy was incredibly meticulous. A white button was found. It didn't match any of the clothing. None of the clothing that was in the house was missing a button.
• [00:23:17.99] But that button was found. And it's been kept in state police evidence for the last 50 years.
• [00:23:23.48] Possibly we have the murder weapon. The autopsy, the doctor couldn't confirm or deny whether that knife had been used or not.
• [00:23:31.96] And the evidence that we have, does it tell you a real story about the killer? We can't even tell if the killer is right-handed or left-handed. By the placement of the wounds, we can't tell how tall the killer was.
• [00:23:44.24] Now, there was an assumption that, whoever the killer was, they had a hard time controlling Daisy. Daisy was a short person, 4 foot 6". Whoever it was had a hard time controlling her. They obviously tied her hands up to do it.
• [00:23:57.23] The focus of the investigation started with the husband, of course. Daisy is fooling around. That's known in town. She frequents the bars often, and is seen with men. The assumption was maybe Floyd had something to do with it. But Floyd had a completely 100% airtight alibi and passed a polygraph test the next day. He insisted, polygraph me and get me off the list. And they did.
• [00:24:26.24] The concentration then turned to Kellogg's. Now, like any major corporation, Kellogg's has a culture all its own. Some of it is a bit tawdry. And I talk about those stories in the book.
• [00:24:36.59] And if you've lived in Calhoun County, I'm sure you've heard stories of the goings-on at Kellogg's at night, the wild parties on the third shift and things along those lines. They're all true. It was a wild place to work in the 1960s.
• [00:24:54.03] The concentration really went on Daisy, the co-workers that were at Kellogg's, and the circle of friends. Now, I want you to picture how this investigation went.
• [00:25:03.14] They said, we have a description of a man, unknown height, who wasn't at work that day. Give us a list of everybody who wasn't at work at Kellogg's that day.
• [00:25:13.58] Picture, if you will, you went out with your buddies. You skipped work. You went to a bar, had a few drinks. Now the police show up at your house on this highly publicized crime with a woman that has a known reputation in the community.
• [00:25:27.29] You're there with your wife, having dinner. And the police knock on the door. And they say, we want to talk to you about the Daisy Zick murder. We need to fingerprint you and polygraph you. What's your alibi for the day?
• [00:25:36.38] Your wife doesn't know you skipped out of work. She does now. But now she's questioning, were you really out of work? What's going on?
• [00:25:45.16] Now, there's been rumors over the years that Daisy Zick, this investigation, broke up a lot of marriages. Now, I've asked around, and I've heard this rumor a hundred times. I said, name one. Nobody can.
• [00:25:56.68] I have no doubt that this caused a lot of marital strife. There were a lot of questions being asked.
• [00:26:02.87] There were four young gentlemen who skipped school that day. Worst day to skip school ever, because the police showed up and wanted to talk. Can you imagine your parents find out you skipped school because you're now being pulled into a murder investigation? That was crazy.
• [00:26:18.57] But they focused on Kellogg's primarily, because that's where Daisy's life was. And that's where her social life was. That's where her extramarital affair was.
• [00:26:27.53] They really were able to account for Raymond Mercer's time. And he had no motive whatsoever to kill her. They were very much in love. There were lots of love letters passed between them that were in Daisy's locker at the plant.
• [00:26:42.19] They checked around. And they really couldn't seem to find anything. But they interviewed and polygraphed 87 employees at Kellogg's.
• [00:26:50.90] That's a lot of people to be pulled in, pulled off the plant floor, interrogated, and go through this type of rigorous investigation. This is one of the reasons this really stuck within the community. The investigation went on for some time.
• [00:27:09.02] Now, a few months after this, we finally got a break, in March. A gentleman did come forward, Garrett Vander Meer.
• [00:27:17.87] And he said, I didn't think about it at the time, but I was following a white Pontiac down East Michigan Avenue that day driving 15 miles an hour. And I was ready to kill the other driver because they were going so slow. They pulled off the road.
• [00:27:30.68] And he says, I drove by. I looked at the man and glared at him. And he looked at me and glared at me.
• [00:27:36.60] Well, he got a face-to-face view of the actual driver of Daisy's car. And he described it very interestingly. The description in the book, you'll see, is very vague about facial features.
• [00:27:49.44] He had a chin. It was kind of roundish, you know, things along those lines. But he said his hair was very distinctive. It was parted and kind of feathered down the middle.
• [00:27:59.05] We all know 1963 haircuts. You had a crew cut or a Princeton, and those were your choices. So to have somebody with kind of a fancy part in their hair really stood out.
• [00:28:09.70] But other than that, the police really didn't end up-- after six months, the leads stop coming in. People stopped saying, here's somebody you should be looking at, et cetera.
• [00:28:21.58] And they had 12 people working this case, trying to find something. But there wasn't anyone to find that had a motive that they could find. The leads began to dry up.
• [00:28:32.53] You also had, unfortunately, Pat Detzler, who is heading up the investigation from Michigan State Police, who had been brought in to kind of smooth over things with Noble Moore, the prosecutor-- he retired. This was his last case, and one he never solved.
• [00:28:49.24] Wayne Fitch, who is an icon in the Marshall community and in Calhoun County, had a heart attack while he was mowing his church yard. He was only a block or so from the hospital. They rushed him over there. He died.
• [00:29:05.50] So two of the lead investigators on the case went off. And the leads to began to dry up.
• [00:29:10.48] Now, what they did, was they started to say, well, let's turn this into something bigger. Let's use True Detective magazine. Maybe they could write an article about this case.
• [00:29:22.08] Now, True Detective always had kind of a sultry reputation. But you have to remember, through the 1960s and up through the '70s, True Detective had a circulation of 2 million people. I mean, it was a true crime aficionado's magazine.
• [00:29:36.96] And even now, if I find old copies at a yard sale, I pick them up. They're great to go through. They're often written by newspaper people who covered those cases. Or they're written by the investigators.
• [00:29:49.23] And they actually ran an article about Michigan's greatest unsolved case, the Daisy Zick case. They interviewed all the officers. And they went through their various theories of who may have been involved.
• [00:30:01.17] The officers held back some of the details. But what this did was take what was a very small-town murder and really put it on the national spotlight. And tips came in from all across the country. But none of them really panned out.
• [00:30:17.55] In 1967 a new generation of investigators come in. And what you'll see with this case is, every few years, we have new investigators step up.
• [00:30:27.54] And it was interesting. These two gentlemen, Bob Kenney and Leroy Steinbacher, or Stein as he was known, came in.
• [00:30:36.90] You've got to bear in mind, up to 1963, to be trained in homicide investigation in Michigan State Police Department was eight hours of training. These guys came in with about two or three weeks' worth of training. The detectives that take this over later on, like Gary Hough, had eight or nine weeks' worth of training in homicide.
• [00:30:55.89] So you have the skills, were slowly wrapping up. And so when you bring in a new generation of detectives, you bring in a new perspective, new techniques, et cetera.
• [00:31:05.57] It was really interesting, because they really started looking more-- rather than wait for the leads to come in, Leroy Steinbacher, especially, started trying to stir things up. He used his network of contacts. He went and re-interviewed people. He went back to see, what have we missed? What have we not gotten? And really went on a very aggressive approach.
• [00:31:27.63] Now, there was a murder that took place in Calhoun County in 1968. The body of Nancy Fleece, a young girl, was stabbed and was found about a quarter mile from the Daisy Zick house.
• [00:31:39.13] Now, you can imagine what everybody thought in Battle Creek. He struck again. And he's right there in that community.
• [00:31:47.05] Now, these two gentlemen headed up that case. And there's a long story that goes with it. I won't bore you with that it. It's in the book. It's not boring. It's actually a very action-packed story.
• [00:31:56.69] But when they finally tracked down the killer of this, he was already in jail. He was a 19-year-old kid. He would've only been 14 when Daisy was killed. He didn't know how to drive a car at that time.
• [00:32:07.88] His excuse for killing Nancy Fleece was a little lame. Probably the worst excuse you should ever give. That was, I was holding a knife to her throat, and she dragged her neck across the knife. So it's really her fault. Just horrible, you know, person. But as much as the people in Battle Creek wanted to believe this was connected, it really wasn't.
• [00:32:30.39] They received a jailhouse confession from a guy named Worden, who said a gentleman by name of Norman Baker, who was in prison at the time in Jackson, had confessed to him that he had killed Daisy Zick as part of a scheme to take $300 from her.
• [00:32:43.76] She didn't have $300. They did follow that up.
• [00:32:48.51] Now, Worden brings this up, by the way, twice during the time he's incarcerated, two different times. The second time he brings it up in a few years, he'll bring it up again in the 1980s. And he'll claim that does Norman Baker took him to his mother's backyard and dug up the shirt that he wore when he killed Daisy, and you could see the blood stains on it.
• [00:33:07.70] The police actually went out in the 1980s, dug up this person's yard. Did not find the shirt or any evidence.
• [00:33:14.92] The Norman Baker one, as much as you want to believe that it's a confession, it really kind of comes down to-- there's no connection between Norman and Daisy that has ever been found. And it's really either Norman bragging to impress other inmates within the jail. Or it's his cellmate who is trying to use the confession to get off with time served.
• [00:33:40.64] The thing that always upset me the most, and I felt the most about this, was poor Mrs. DeFrance. The day the crime took place, the Battle Creek Enquirer news put her name in the paper as the person who'd seen the killer. She was terrified, because now everybody in the town knew that she was the only person that had seen the killer up to that point. It scared her just horribly.
• [00:34:06.37] Now, the weirdest thing, every so often, she would get a call, up through 1982. Think about how many years that is. It's 20 years. She would receive a call from a man who would only say the words, Daisy Zick was killed by a woman, and then hang up.
• [00:34:24.68] Now, Mrs. DeFrance wasn't even her friend. From what I read, I don't even think she really liked Daisy that much. She alluded to, Daisy has cars of different men over at her house all the time. I don't know what's going on there.
• [00:34:38.15] But that's a horrible call to receive. Of course, this is before the days when we could have caller ID and know who was doing that.
• [00:34:48.59] What was really interesting is, while we had Garrett Vander Meer who'd identified a person with this unique hairstyle, another gentleman finally, five years later, came forward and said, oh, by the way, I saw the Zick car that morning coming out of her road, turning onto Wattles Road. Saw the driver.
• [00:35:10.91] His description matched that of Garret Vander Meer. So now we have those two people who saw it, Mrs. DeFrance who's seen the driver. And we had, as well, Fred Ritchie, who drove by the killer and didn't realize it when he was on his way to court. So this is a killer who's been seen, and in one case by a law enforcement officer.
• [00:35:33.18] Now, Steinbacher-- this is true police work at its best. He starts going through the crime reports. He starts talking to the former officers. And he said, did anybody you brought in for questioning have a strange hairstyle?
• [00:35:47.46] They said, oh, yeah. There was one. The postman, William Newman Daily.
• [00:35:56.43] Now, they brought in Mr. Daily. Mr. Daily did have a unique hairstyle. And they were talking to him. And they said, why don't we go over-- they had interviewed him the day of the murder.
• [00:36:08.65] And Mr. Daily was very interesting. He gave a story that he had driven by the Wagon Wheel restaurant in Battle Creek on East Michigan Avenue, and had seen a man walking down the road with an angry scowl on his face.
• [00:36:22.86] He had delivered mail to Daisy Zick's house at 11 o'clock. And they had asked him that day, they said, well, was the garage door open or closed? He said, oh, the garage door was closed when I was there. OK? And he really didn't have anything else to offer at the time.
• [00:36:40.49] When they re-interviewed him, his version had changed. Now he claims he had seen a woman with an angry scowl on her face walking down the road. He still maintained that the garage door was closed at 11 o'clock.
• [00:36:53.01] Now, Daisy's body hadn't been discovered at this point. Body hadn't been discovered until 1 o'clock. So why was he telling a story about the garage door being there? Why did his story change?
• [00:37:07.15] These are things that you can almost hear the voices of the detectives when you read the reports, going, aha, there's some inconsistency here. So they started taking a look at this. And over the years, they kept poking at this.
• [00:37:21.19] Now, they asked William Daily, by the way, they said, would you be willing to submit to a polygraph test? He said yes, I would. I'm going down to Florida to interview for a job with my aunt, but I'll be back in two weeks. I'll be happy to submit to a polygraph.
• [00:37:33.72] He left the state of Michigan and never came back. Again, if you think about it, that's a red flag when you're an officer. So they started asking around his family, did some digging into his prior arrests.
• [00:37:46.88] He had been arrested on what we would now call domestic violence. You got to remember, 1960s, domestic violence didn't exist. The police would show up and say, now you two, knock it off. You need to calm down. And you need to stop crying.
• [00:38:01.28] This is just a husband-wife thing. If you want, we'll take him for a walk for a few minutes, and he'll relax.
• [00:38:08.04] You know, he beat his wife quite a bit. He actually attacked his daughter-in-law and threatened her that, while he was attacking her, that, I know who killed Daisy Zick. Now, who makes that kind of a threat during an attack?
• [00:38:25.57] He had the unique hairstyle. He had told his wife-- when the crime was announced on the news, it was covered on all the major networks. Well, in Battle Creek, we had two networks at the time. We didn't have ABC TV until like the 1980s.
• [00:38:41.08] But it really came out. It was on the news. And his wife had mentioned, I worked with Daisy Zick for two years at Kellogg's. And he said, oh, yes. He didn't tell his wife at all that he had been investigated by the officers that day.
• [00:38:58.07] Now, I know I don't get called by the police too often, but if I do, I usually would tell my wife, you're not going to believe the phone call I just had. Especially the most sensational murder in town? He had been pulled in for a half hour to be questioned that day. Didn't tell his wife. Again, circumstantial, but we don't know.
• [00:39:18.27] He had told his wife he had seen Daisy sunbathing nude. Now, that intrigued me. So I started asking some questions. And some facts came out in Battle Creek this week when we were talking about it as well.
• [00:39:31.18] I found two young boys at the time who lived in the Zick neighborhood. And they said, oh, yes. Mrs. Zick did sunbathe nude in the backyard. We used to peek through the hedges and watch her. It was quite a show.
• [00:39:43.78] And I said, oh, OK. So that happened. But I took a look at the Zick house. And I said, well, tell me, did you have a view?
• [00:39:52.34] They said, well they had shrubs all around the back, so you really couldn't see. So you had to kind of poke through the shrubs. And one of them even told me, he said, I'm almost sure she knew we were watching. She was putting on a show.
• [00:40:04.33] We found out in Battle Creek, somebody said, well, when she would do her yard, she would do her yard in her swimsuit. Now, it was a one-piece swimsuit. But in 1963, to have somebody out in the front yard trimming bushes in their swimsuit, Daisy was a little bit of a risque person for 1963 standards.
• [00:40:23.59] But how did William Daily see her sunbathing nude if she did that in the backyard? He was a rural postal delivery person. I've been there. They drove along, and they put the mail in the mailbox.
• [00:40:35.31] You saw how far back the Zick house was from the road. How would a rural postal carrier see what's going on in the backyard of that house? Perhaps he was stalking that house. Don't know. But it was enough that it really caught them.
• [00:40:51.00] Now, Daily wasn't the only person. In 1985, on the anniversary of this crime, they brought back all the living detectives and laid out all the evidence and laid out all the case files. And for three days, they went over it.
• [00:41:07.48] William Daily was the only person that they ever put the name "suspect" to. They said, this is our suspect, in going over it.
• [00:41:16.39] But there were others. Albert Cooley. Now, the person who was in charge of the Emmett Township Police Department, Roy Bechtol, he was their chief-- he was their first chief. 1963 was the first year that they were open as a police department.
• [00:41:30.71] He had heard rumors that Albert Cooley had been dating Daisy Zick and may have been involved in her killing. He brought Albert Cooley in. He was a younger gentleman, younger than Daisy. He was in his 30s. Daisy was 48 when she was killed.
• [00:41:44.31] And sat with him, and he said he was very evasive about the questioning. And he said, I finally got frustrated and said, look, Albert, would you come in tomorrow for a polygraph test? And Albert said yes, I would.
• [00:41:56.80] Albert went home and killed himself. So in Leroy Bechtol's mind, it looked like, potentially, Albert Cooley was involved.
• [00:42:09.41] Now, they did check his fingerprints. A lot of people were cleared by that fingerprint. We don't know for sure if that fingerprint had anything to do with the crime.
• [00:42:18.65] But they checked. And they said, well, the fingerprint didn't match, so we can kind of mark off Albert Cooley. But we'll never really know the full story and truth there.
• [00:42:26.97] Plus we had the dubious jailhouse confession. And I will tell you that there have been numerous other stories, one of which is the most prevalent, but it doesn't have a name associated with it, which is a woman killed Daisy Zick.
• [00:42:41.97] 1963, we wouldn't be looking for a woman killer. Now we might consider it. But did a woman do it?
• [00:42:49.27] The police really didn't focus on that. They really looked for a man. And all the descriptions that we have, by the way, of the killer, described him as a man. But he could have been a really ugly woman with that hairstyle. But who? Who did it?
• [00:43:05.46] And there weren't a lot of suspects. Now, Audrey Heminger came to mind at least with one of the investigators. But Noble Moore had interrogated her to the point where she burst out of the interrogation room crying and never returned. Police really blew their opportunity with her to get additional information.
• [00:43:24.65] Another one was, perhaps it was someone who was the wife of someone that Daisy was sleeping with. But we don't know.
• [00:43:33.22] Now, the only one that comes close is Raymond Mercer's wife. Now, they did take a look at her. And they never gave me her name in the police reports. The always refer to her as Mrs. Mercer.
• [00:43:44.90] And her alibi was she had a two-year-old child at the time and lived a half hour away. So their assumption was, it was impossible for her to go and have killed Daisy.
• [00:43:55.37] Could you have gotten someone else to watch the child? Children sleep. They take naps. Was it possible? Perhaps. But we don't know.
• [00:44:07.70] This is where I turn to you. This crime still remains open. I will tell you, every single one of the investigators I have dealt with have said the same thing, we want the bastard who did this. We want him. These cops do not like one that gets away.
• [00:44:25.84] In 1963, the unsolved crime rate in the state of Michigan was single digits. Nowadays it's up around 40% of the cases go cold. Back then, cases didn't go cold.
• [00:44:38.06] There were only two other unsolved murders in Calhoun County prior to this crime. They wanted this person. And this went on from generation to generation. There's been four generations of police.
• [00:44:53.35] Now, I will tell you, with William Daley, as of 2001, police received word that Mr. Daily was in the hospital and potentially dying of cancer. 2001. They assembled a team and decided to go and interrogate him and get him on a polygraph.
• [00:45:11.68] It wasn't going to be brought to trial. The police told me. They said, the witnesses are all dead. And even the ones that are alive, their memories are all over the place.
• [00:45:19.73] Even with the officers I talked to, a lot of times I had to put the actual case report in front of them. And they were like, God, I don't remember it that way, but that's my signature. Yeah, it must have happened that way.
• [00:45:30.38] They went down to Florida. And they approached Mr. Daily. And they said, look, you're not going to be brought up on charges.
• [00:45:34.67] I got this third-hand, by the way. The officers involved still won't talk about it because it's an active investigation.
• [00:45:42.21] Mr. Daily apparently refused to take the polygraph test. He did not die. Mr. Daily lived until last year, in April, when he passed away.
• [00:45:54.41] Every one of the people that even remotely has been named as a suspect is gone. And all of the eyewitnesses are gone at this point.
• [00:46:03.04] But what remains is the Zick family, and in this case, Jim King. And I've met Jim several times, spent time with him. He's a great, great warm and generous person.
• [00:46:13.89] When he talks about his mother, and you look him in the eye, you don't see a 78 or 79-year-old man. You see a 13-year-old boy talking about his mother.
• [00:46:23.97] Jim had a granddaughter who was only three years old when Daisy died. He granddaughter never really knew her. This family has had this is an open wound.
• [00:46:34.21] Now, I won't solve this. I'm just an author and a historian. I write books. I interview people. And I put the facts down as they happen and try to make it an interesting and compelling story.
• [00:46:45.12] This crime's going to be solved by you folks. Somebody you know, somebody you heard, somebody made a deathbed confession. Or somebody still alive out there who picked up someone on Wattles Road or East Michigan Avenue hitchhiking and didn't think anything of it. Maybe a postman who said, I got to drop off a package, and my car broke down.
• [00:47:06.63] Who'd be more invisible than a postman in your neighborhood? Can you identify your postman right now if I put them in a police lineup? They're almost invisible in our community.
• [00:47:17.63] Or it could've been someone else. They may have been giving a ride to a young woman who seemed a little agitated but said, I need to be dropped off. Don't know.
• [00:47:26.89] But somebody did this. Somebody saw it. They saw a pair of bloody gloves, didn't understand how their husband or their wife had these bloody gloves.
• [00:47:36.81] Somebody out there knows the whole story, or a very little piece of it. And that little piece can actually allow the police, even to this day, to close this case and say, we know who did it.
• [00:47:50.13] So if you're in here today, and you're the person that did it, raise your hand. We invite you to come up.
• [00:47:58.44] And if you've heard a story of who does it, I will tell you the same thing I've told every group. Please contact the Michigan State Police. They are actively listening to every tip. Every tip I get-- and I've gotten a lot of them during the writing of this book-- I pass them right on to the police.
• [00:48:14.72] As I said, I'm the author. I'll tell the story. They're the investigators. They deserve to close this. And with that, I'd like to open it up to your questions.
• [00:48:28.38] SPEAKER 1: I'm bringing you a microphone. Sorry.
• [00:48:30.09] BLAINE PARDOE: OK.
• [00:48:31.96] AUDIENCE: Why was her first husband not ever brought up, since he was such violent person?
• [00:48:36.75] BLAINE PARDOE: They went down to South Bend, Indiana, where he lived. And he hadn't even heard of the crime at that point.
• [00:48:43.96] He talked about Daisy. And he said, you know, I'm paying my $3 a week alimony. I'm not making that up. That was child support in the 1960s, was $3 a week.
• [00:48:55.16] He said, we have been on amiable terms since our last court battle, which was in the 1930s. He said, you know, I've heard stories about her fooling around.
• [00:49:04.53] And he was cleared completely by his work records. He had clocked in at his job, and clocked out. And he lived in South Bend, Indiana. He just really didn't have the opportunity to do it. But it's a great question.
• [00:49:17.51] Anyone else?
• [00:49:19.06] Oh, here's one.
• [00:49:26.06] AUDIENCE: Just a few questions. How old were you when you moved into the neighborhood?
• [00:49:30.01] BLAINE PARDOE: I was born in 1962. And my parents moved in later in 1963.
• [00:49:34.47] AUDIENCE: So you were an infant. You couldn't have understood--
• [00:49:36.93] BLAINE PARDOE: No. But I heard the stories. It's funny. Somebody even told me that they called the spoilage knives now, at Kellogg's, they refer to them as Daisy Zicks, which was really creepy.
• [00:49:48.23] But I heard the stories over the years. Because we all heard about the Zick woman that got killed. And there were a lot of the stories that kids told, was that she screamed so loud she had ruptured her vocal cords, and things along those lines.
• [00:50:01.84] And those things were never really proven. But we heard those things as kids. And it was pretty scary.
• [00:50:09.11] AUDIENCE: You also said that she was 48, but she had to be 43, if she was born in '19.
• [00:50:14.19] BLAINE PARDOE: You're probably right.
• [00:50:14.92] AUDIENCE: OK. And the other thing, she was very short, 4 feet 6 inches.
• [00:50:21.52] BLAINE PARDOE: Yeah.
• [00:50:21.96] AUDIENCE: So she could possibly have been murdered by a woman.
• [00:50:25.11] BLAINE PARDOE: Conceivably. And that's something Ralph Kartheu, who is one of the investigators, and Gary Hough, who took the case over in 1990-- excuse me. He took it over in 1998. He felt it could have been a woman simply because of the capability to not control these-- you or I, being larger men, could control someone, potentially, who was 4 foot 6".
• [00:50:57.74] But I also point out, Daisy was a factory worker. She was raised on a farm. She was a factory worker. She was tough.
• [00:51:07.84] Excuse me. Anyone else?
• [00:51:11.80] Oh, a question up front.
• [00:51:16.74] AUDIENCE: Yes. Why, at the time, when Mr. Daily went to Florida, I think, why could they not pursue him for questioning at that point? Certainly, his leaving and not coming back would have been very suspicious.
• [00:51:30.20] BLAINE PARDOE: You know, it was. And your question is very good. Why not go after William Daily, et cetera?
• [00:51:36.03] They really didn't have enough probable cause. What they had are a lot of bits of circumstantial evidence. But it wasn't enough to convince the prosecutor to let them go down and begin what would be necessary for extradition and arrest and things along those lines. It just wasn't conceivable.
• [00:51:55.37] What they missed was somebody who said, I gave the postman a lift that day and dropped him off there. Or, I gave him a lift away from-- he told me to meet him over at Palmer Road on East Michigan. And I picked him up and took him home, and didn't think anything of it until now. They missed that one person that could say they saw him.
• [00:52:16.30] They had a police rendition artist draw up the person. I've never found the picture. It's not in the files anymore.
• [00:52:24.55] But at no point did they seem to have a picture of Daily that they showed the witnesses to say, is this the man? They just didn't have that.
• [00:52:34.96] And I don't know if they tried to get it and didn't, or what. I've talked to the officers involved. And honestly, they just don't remember. They said, we just didn't have that photograph of him. I desperately looked for a photograph of him and couldn't do it.
• [00:52:51.07] AUDIENCE: Thank you.
• [00:52:52.42] BLAINE PARDOE: Sure.
• [00:52:59.11] AUDIENCE: I knew Pat Detzler. He just died about three years ago, the original investigator. Did you talk to him?
• [00:53:04.14] BLAINE PARDOE: No, I did not get the chance to talk to him. I read his obituary, though. And I was so stunningly impressed with the man. Glad he got to golf all the way through his life.
• [00:53:13.85] AUDIENCE: Yeah. He was 93 or something when he died.
• [00:53:16.03] BLAINE PARDOE: Yeah. I didn't get a chance to talk to him.
• [00:53:18.36] AUDIENCE: That's too bad.
• [00:53:26.99] AUDIENCE: Why did you decide to write a book about an unsolved crime? It seems so unusual on the true crime genre.
• [00:53:33.60] BLAINE PARDOE: It's totally-- it's the hardest thing I've ever done, I think. And it's probably been the most rewarding.
• [00:53:39.76] Most true crimes follow a pattern. You've all read a true crime book. There's the horrific crime, the detailed investigation, the great arrest that's always tense. Then there's the trial. And we finally get justice at the end. And this one didn't fit that.
• [00:53:56.88] I read several books. The murder of Martha Moxley, for example, which is a great example of where they went after the Kennedy family and were able to reopen that case.
• [00:54:09.49] There have been a few books that have come out. When Evil Came to Good Hart by Mardi Link. Fantastic book, if you haven't read it, about another 1970s or '60s murder that remained unsolved. And I took a look at it and said, this is doable, but you've got to tread more carefully.
• [00:54:28.43] I think the biggest challenge we had was, do we use real names in the book, or not? And then my editor and I had several, I want to say, tense phone calls, where we had to make a judgment call.
• [00:54:40.25] I said, look, the facts are, as the police investigated this, this is what the people said. This is what was written down. I'm not saying these people are guilty. I'm not coming out and saying, yeah, it was the postman. Go get him, everybody. We don't know.
• [00:54:56.22] But what we did is stick to the facts. And we decided to use the real names, because it might spark a memory with someone. it might trigger something where somebody said, oh my god, I remember that guy. He was a jerk. And I remember him telling me about somebody he said he stabbed. And that might lead us down a path that lets us get to closure. I don't know.
• [00:55:16.88] I would say it's harder to do these crimes. But I will also say I've been reached out to by at least one law enforcement officer who's already said, OK, this has generated lots of attention in this area on this crime. We want to talk to you about another unsolved case.
• [00:55:34.17] So I almost think this is a new area for true crime to go, which is, let's look at the cold cases that are still cold, and see if we can stir up some of that information. Because the police often know who did it, or are pretty sure who did it. They just like someone coming forward and saying, that's who did it.
• [00:55:53.96] Sometimes it just takes time to pass. Some cases go cold for a reason, too.
• [00:55:59.09] The officers told me there's times they let cases go cold so that people will relax, get sloppy. He said, if the perpetrator knows we're hot on their tail, they keep their mouth shut. If they think we've let it go, they slip up and say something.
• [00:56:15.19] There's crime that's right now in Battle Creek that's going down that way-- or Marshall, Michigan, actually-- that the investigators are like, we know who did it. He's in jail. He will slip up and tell somebody something. That's when we're going to get him.
• [00:56:33.84] AUDIENCE: I lived in Battle Creek in '67 to '71. And I knew relatives of the Fleece lady.
• [00:56:44.46] Also the snow over there, you have the lake effect. And one thing I was wondering is, were there any footprints or car tracks?
• [00:56:55.14] And another thing is, I lived outside Battle Creek before I came to Battle Creek. It just seemed like a lot of people knew a lot of people in town. And I wonder, one is, were there any other suspects that the police, you know, kind of ruled out, but then maybe thought would take another look at?
• [00:57:22.17] And two, did they withhold any, you know, significant thing like a color of the fiber or something that only a killer would know?
• [00:57:32.50] BLAINE PARDOE: No. Under the Freedom of Information Act, the only thing that really gets withheld from me is people's birth dates and Social Security numbers, which are sometimes in police reports from that era. Otherwise, everything else is pretty much-- I have a copy of what the police have, unless they're fooling me some way, shape, or form.
• [00:57:50.86] I will say, you all saw that file drawer that was this big of the Daisy Zick file? OK. What I have is a binder this thick. So some of those files over the years have been thrown away because they weren't seen as pertinent to the case. That's not that uncommon.
• [00:58:06.32] Did they have other suspects? There are a few. And I talk about them in the book.
• [00:58:10.52] There's a theory about the-- this will sound funny when I say it. If you read the book, it will make sense. The midget gay organist, who may have somehow been involved with this. I can't make this stuff up.
• [00:58:28.35] He may have been involved with this. He was a friend of Floyd's. And turns out there's actually a kernel of truth or two to that, in terms of his relationship with Floyd. But it really doesn't-- most of those didn't hold up.
• [00:58:41.29] I didn't give you everything, obviously, in the slide show. But there's more to it in the book.
• [00:58:45.38] There were several people that were looked at. They went back and looked at Floyd Zick, I'd say, three or four times.
• [00:58:51.89] They interviewed Floyd's second wife and talked to her when he had checked himself into the Battle Creek Sanitarium for his alcoholism, to see, was he drinking because of what happened with Daisy? And is he feeling guilty? Has he never admitted anything to you?
• [00:59:07.84] And by today's standards, that seems kind of a creepy thing to do, but the police were still actively trying to pursue this.
• [00:59:15.65] Battle Creek is a tight community. It's a real tight community. Everybody knows everybody in some way, shape, or form. And that's one of the reasons this stuck. It was like a tick on the whole community. It just never let go. This happened there.
• [00:59:33.36] Did I hit all your questions?
• [00:59:35.43] AUDIENCE: The snow tracks.
• [00:59:36.33] BLAINE PARDOE: Oh, the snow tracks. Great question. See if I can go back.
• [00:59:42.37] I asked that question, too. And in the book you'll see more pictures of this. Oh, there it is.
• [00:59:48.45] It's hard to see here, but this is the shoulder of the road. In 1963, they plowed the shoulder of the road.
• [00:59:59.52] I asked the police flat out. I said, did you see any footprints? And they said, the road crews plowed the shoulders of the road. There was nothing there to make a print.
• [01:00:07.84] And you've got to bear in mind, another officer had already stopped at that car as an abandoned vehicle. And Floyd Zick had already stopped there as well. So there would be multiple sets of footprints there.
• [01:00:18.18] But there was one that I've never been able to account for. Right here. You'll see a Chapstick and an ink pen here. It's very hard to see. And I didn't put this in the book, but there's a faint boot print here.
• [01:00:34.20] It was never described in any of the police reports at all. But the pictures were there. And they obviously put the things down there to get the scale of it. Should have used a ruler.
• [01:00:47.94] But there are things like that that aren't detailed in the crime reports that may have been left there by the killer. Whoever was there that day, had to have left tracks somewhere in the snow. But they really didn't look for it.
• [01:01:02.30] And the snow was coming down as well. So that didn't help.
• [01:01:06.77] But I was surprised they plowed the shoulder of the road. My mother can't get them to plow the road, let alone the shoulders.
• [01:01:17.79] AUDIENCE: So can you hear me?
• [01:01:20.50] BLAINE PARDOE: Yes.
• [01:01:21.40] AUDIENCE: My brothers and I were the paper boys and the paper girl for the Zicks before and after the murder.
• [01:01:28.62] BLAINE PARDOE: Oh, wow.
• [01:01:29.23] AUDIENCE: You can imagine what a terrifying thing it was for-- I think I was five when she was murdered. So it was always a terrifying place to visit.
• [01:01:37.51] And Mr. Zick was a very terrifying man to collect from. And we kind of suspected him, and thought it was very odd that a man that such a hideous murder had happened in this house, and he continued to live there. And I wonder what you think about that.
• [01:01:54.64] BLAINE PARDOE: Well, it's very interesting. Floyd did remain in that house. I cannot personally imagine what that was like, given the carnage that took place there.
• [01:02:07.80] But the problem was-- and somebody actually told this to me. He said, it's hard to sell a house at that time, especially right after then, when everybody would have known what had taken place there.
• [01:02:19.64] Even in 1998, there was an article written where they interviewed Roy Steinbacher about the case. And he was very elusive. If you read the article now and you've read the book, you'll say, oh my god, he's talking about the postman. But at the time he was kind of evasive about it.
• [01:02:36.34] And when that happened, I talked to the reporter who did this, Trace Christenson. And he said, I got the nastiest phone call from the owners, who said, we're getting ready to sell this house. Now you've told everybody there we're a murder house. We'll never be able to sell it.
• [01:02:50.21] I will say, at the signing I did in Battle Creek, I did meet the current owners. And they had no idea. Somebody had given them the book and said, by the way, this is about your house.
• [01:03:02.86] And it was very interesting, because I said, well, does it bother you at all? Or is this a problem?
• [01:03:09.57] They said no. As a matter of fact, they had me autograph a book for them that said, to the new owners of 100 Juno Street. They had me autograph it. And they said, we're going to give a copy of the book to the people that buy the house, because no one told us, but we're going to tell the people who did.
• [01:03:25.69] But I had to ask them. I said, has anything weird happened? You have to ask. And they said no. We had no idea. All the neighbors apparently knew and would just say, some strange things have happened in your house, but never told them.
• [01:03:41.51] Mr. Zick was-- even Dorothy Wright, who was Daisy's sister, said, please check in to Floyd Zick. But his alibi was ironclad.
• [01:03:55.63] I mean, he was behind the meat counter all day, every bit of this time. They interviewed every employee at the meat market. Did he slip away for a few minutes? It just didn't happen.
• [01:04:06.20] And with the phone calls that took place, with other people that interacted with Daisy, you've narrowed it down to really a 20-minute window that all this took place.
• [01:04:17.95] You had a question.
• [01:04:19.83] AUDIENCE: You answered it.
• [01:04:20.67] BLAINE PARDOE: Oh.
• [01:04:20.95] AUDIENCE: I was going to ask if the house was till there.
• [01:04:23.05] BLAINE PARDOE: Oh, yes. The people who live on the street-- there were about five people that live on the street they came to my lecture in Battle Creek. And they said, we've noticed a spike in traffic. Because it's a dead end street. And they said, which is good, because one of the houses is for sale on the street, so they're hoping it will attract some interest.
• [01:04:41.90] But they said they have noticed a lot of people going by. I've gone by the house. I actually have a photograph. I'm one of those creepy people that went by and took a picture of it.
• [01:04:53.04] I went this winter, in January, when it was snowy and cold. And it was almost the same conditions. And I drove by the house just to see it. I have to admit I did it.
• [01:05:04.04] I have a picture of it. I didn't put it up here because I was worried that the current owners would be upset, to put that up there. But the house is still there.
• [01:05:11.96] And the house where-- speaking of paper people. I used to deliver papers to the house where her car was abandoned for the Enquirer News. So I was familiar with that. And that house is there as well.
• [01:05:25.22] What's been interesting is the community is kind of taking part in this now. People have walked the distance from where the car was abandoned to the Zick house. They've been driving by the Zick house. They're trying to figure this out for themselves, which is really what I wanted to accomplish.
• [01:05:41.62] To your earlier question, yeah. Five or six detectives working on this, or 12 detectives, that's good. Hundreds of detectives, somebody's going to find something.
• [01:05:53.89] If you go on Facebook to "You Know You're From Battle Creek If," on the Facebook page, this is the talk of the town. People are interested in it. They're asking each other questions. They're talking to their mothers or their fathers who worked at Kellogg's and getting stories about this.
• [01:06:11.21] And that's what's been absolutely incredible. The people all want to know who did it. And everybody asked me who did it. And I said, you've got all the information I do.
• [01:06:23.40] Yes.
• [01:06:24.29] AUDIENCE: You mentioned that Daisy had sort of, in essence, like a colorful personality. But could you figure out anything about her that would have led her to, say, be in a little bit more trouble with somebody, which would have created a motive?
• [01:06:42.96] I mean, you know, motive is what it's about. And colorful people can also have kind of weird boundaries. Did you discover anything, that she had been fighting with anybody in particular?
• [01:06:57.32] BLAINE PARDOE: I had a gentleman approach me. And it's in the book. And I didn't include his name because his family is still upset about it.
• [01:07:04.38] When they found out I was working on the book, he mentioned it to his mother. And she said, don't you ever mention that woman's name in this house. Your father was having an affair with her. And I confronted her three months prior to her death. Found her in a bar and told her off.
• [01:07:22.27] That stuff did take place. And of course, I had to ask the real difficult question. I said, so do you think your mother did it? And he goes, gee, I hope not.
• [01:07:33.55] And you have to-- you don't know what the temper was. He said, I've never seen her get that angry over just mentioning a name. But he said, it's still there.
• [01:07:43.50] I think those types of confrontations did happen. What I'm trying to figure out is, if it was some woman who was angry at Daisy, would she have even opened the door for her? She was getting ready to go to work, to go to lunch with her friend and go to work.
• [01:07:59.55] There's a view from the Zick house. Let me go back. Sorry about flipping through these so much.
• [01:08:13.70] Right here is a slight jut-out of the house. And there's a window there. From the kitchen, you can see who's at the side door. And Daisy kept the door locked.
• [01:08:27.36] She had to have looked out, seen who it was, gone and opened that door. Would she have opened the door if there was a confrontation? I don't know if Daisy shied away from confrontation. I just don't know that.
• [01:08:41.52] So I've often wondered who could have gotten her to open that door. And would you have opened the door if it was the postman and said, I have a letter for you to sign for?
• [01:08:52.05] Again, I'm guessing. I'm reaching. But you know, it had to be somebody that she knew or was relatively comfortable with opening the door for. Otherwise, why do it?
• [01:09:05.35] And why turn your back on that person to even go for the phone? You and I both know if you're trying to dial Woodward 5216 on a rotary phone, that's not a quick thing.
• [01:09:22.47] Whoever went there, obviously went there with some sort of intent to confront Daisy. Whether it was there for a murder, I don't know. Perhaps they went just to chew her out about something, and things got out of hand, and they grabbed the knife out of the sink and went at her. Maybe that's what happened.
• [01:09:40.84] The crime scene doesn't give us a complete story. But if you're going to do that, then why tie her up? It didn't have to go as far as it did.
• [01:09:50.51] There was no sign of rape. Her zipper had been forced down and jammed. So we don't know if it was someone tried to rape her and couldn't get her pants off, or whether it was just part of the struggle that took place. We just don't know.
• [01:10:08.43] Anyone else?
• [01:10:13.53] All right. I'll get you to the end here.
• [01:10:23.91] I write in a lot of different genres. These are my most current books. I invite you, obviously, to pick up a copy of this book, because it's entertaining.
• [01:10:31.70] A lot of Michigan history in this. I like trying to weave in local history. So if you don't know anything about Battle Creek, it's an interesting book to pick up. It'll tell you a little bit about the cereal industry.
• [01:10:42.36] The last one there comes out this autumn on the Cuban Missile Crisis. If you guys are military fans, you'll really love it.
• [01:10:49.90] But otherwise, I want to thank the Ann Arbor District Library for having me here tonight. You've been great.
• [01:10:55.73] I hope all of you are good armchair detectives and can go out and ask some good questions. Who knows? You never know who your neighbor may have known.
• [01:11:05.79] Thank you.
• [01:11:11.28] SPEAKER 1: Mr. Pardoe, thank you so much for being here.
• [01:11:13.61] We do have Aunt Agatha's Bookstore outside. They are selling copies of the book if you would like to purchase one. And Mr. Pardoe will be up on stage signing books.
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