Ollie Clark—Sunday, June 23, 2019
It was clearly choreographed, but that was to be expected. After dinner—Vollwerth’s hot dogs and brats with store-bought potato salad and coleslaw—Cindy and Eli disappeared inside to do the dishes and Jared said he’d walk Len back to the cabins. They didn’t even have to cross the highway, and of course the trail went right by them. That’s why they were so popular with the ATV and snowmobile crowds. Basically the Clark backyard emptied out like someone gave a cue and the spotlight came up on Ollie and Dad, alone, center stage.
Dinner had been okay because they didn’t all fit around the picnic table, anyway, so Dad, Cindy, and Len Wilcox sat there while Jared, Eli, and Ollie balanced their plates on their knees in the gazebo. It wasn’t like the two were that far apart, but they made cross-conversation difficult, so Len—God, she’d started dropping the Wilcox half the time—charmed Cindy and left the kids to goof off. But now the leftovers had been picked up, there was a plate of homemade chocolate chip cookies protected with plastic wrap, and Dad came into the gazebo with both the dessert and a sigh. “Kiddo, I think we need to talk.”
Okay, so the cookies were supposed to relax her, but that opener just put her guard back up.
“I’m kind of worried.” Dad teased up the edge of the saran wrap and took a cookie himself before turning it so she could reach the opening, but the odd thing was how he looked around before finishing his thought. “Len’s got a bunch of interviews scheduled over the next couple of days, right? All kinds of people. I don’t know if they wouldn’t Zoom or he’s doing follow-ups or what, but I’m worried he’s going to come for Eli.”
Ollie fumbled her cookie and brushed at the crumbs on her shirt. “He can’t come for Eli.”
“Not legally,” Dad acknowledged, “but since Friday I think Len’s decided he should solve the case and then make a book out of it.”
Huh. That seemed really insightful for Dad.
“Jared and I talked about it”—ah, okay; it was Jared’s theory—“and he said yeah, Len’s got the old files, copies of everything, all highlighted with notes scrawled all over them. He’s going to try to get a better look tonight. I think … well.” Dad took a deep breath and forced his eyes to stop wandering everywhere but her face. “I think Len’s taking the fact that Eli and I have never really gotten along, plus your refusal to talk to him, as evidence.”
Ollie shook her head. “That’s exactly what Denomie had when he came after Eli, and he couldn’t do it. There’s not evidence. And honestly, Dad, you’re just giving me more reasons not to talk to him!” Plus he told her outright he knew he played a role in making Len suspect Eli. God, seriously?
“It doesn’t matter if there’s not actually evidence!” he snapped back. “You know this! It’s the entire reason you ran downstate after college!”
She gaped at him.
“I don’t even know why Eli proposed to you last Christmas,” Dad continued, the peace offering cookies forgotten. “You ran off, leaving him stranded, so you didn’t have to deal with the weight of public condemnation.”
That definitely wasn’t a Dad phrase. Was he quoting Len now?
“You abandoned him during the trial and, what, he can’t get anyone else, so he drags you back in? I don’t care what Jared says,” Dad added, overriding her perceived protests. “Whatever he wants to walk back. He woke up and Eli wasn’t there that night, but you still … still …”
Ollie looked at the house, but there was no way Eli knew what Dad wanted to get her alone for. Cindy couldn’t have known either, could she? “So you think Eli did it.”
Dad’s eyes narrowed. “I’m not convinced he didn’t.”
Ollie carefully tucked the saran wrap down to seal off the plate, but she didn’t need any longer than that. The back door opened as she got to her feet and she turned to meet Eli’s eyes. “We’re leaving.”
He blinked but shrugged and nodded.
“And you don’t have to worry, okay?” she added to Dad. “I’m going to cancel everything. Anything you put money on. You’ll get your deposits back and you don’t have to save the date. For the record,” she shot over her shoulder, “I’m not marrying a murder, but you don’t have to be there.”
“You …?” Cindy turned to Dad where he sat in the gazebo. “You don’t actually think …?”
But Dad didn’t answer. Eli came to Ollie and put his arm around her, and still Dad didn’t answer. Cindy fell back half a step and said “Oh, Randall,” but Dad didn’t answer.
Ollie and Eli walked away, and even though it was slow because she had to lean on him so heavily and he supported her, Dad didn’t answer.
Interview excerpts, Len Wilcox with Bobbi Rajala, May 14, 2019
LW: Could you start us off by explaining how you knew Birdy Clark?
BR: I’m Kendra’s mom. Kendra was in Birdy’s little friend group. You already talked to Kendra.
LW: And she suggested you might want to talk to me, too?
BR: Yes. She’s, um … well. Kendra’s worried that maybe you’ve got a bunch of interviews about Birdy that aren’t … very nice. She … look, I made some notes so I wouldn’t say the wrong thing. Okay. Kendra really enjoyed hanging out with Birdy. She didn’t have any other friends. So it was devastating when Birdy died. Kendra was already having some issues that summer. Doubts about not being with her friends. Kendra wasn’t going off to college, and she felt like she was missing out. Especially since the other girls were going pretty far. None of them to Tech, I mean. Birdy …
LW: You can speak freely, Ms. Rajala. You’ll have the chance to—
BR: Review the transcript, I know. Kendra told me. But … okay. You’ve read the trial transcripts.
LW: Yes.
BR: So you know Denomie got Kendra to go on the stand and talk about money.
LW: Yes.
BR: And how that all turned out.
LW: Yes, but I’d appreciate your perspective.
BR: My … right, okay. So the morning of the twentieth, we’ve all heard but we haven’t heard. We knew which house. People were dead. But they weren’t saying who it was, and the thing is, anyone who knew the family knew it was Birdy’s weekend with their father. So Kendra was freaking out, because she told me that she’d heard something from Jared. And from Birdy. That there wasn’t enough money to send both girls to college, and the family picked Ollie to go. So she … Kendra … she didn’t have to tell me that Birdy and her mom had always been at it. Screaming fights, you know? So the very first thing … and it wasn’t only Kendra who thought this—the rumor started everywhere—was that Birdy came back and killed her sister because Ollie was the favorite, the perfect one who got the money, and then killed her mom out of rage.
LW: With a gun?
BR: We didn’t know that. I told you. We just knew two people were dead, and it was bad. The police were keeping people back, you know? But you could still see blood. The bodies were gone, but there was something on the front stoop. Birdy with a knife, maybe—that was the theory. Something wild.
LW: And it seemed believable?
BR: Yes. No hesitation. Birdy had a temper. She screamed, but she also threw things. And college … that was the major bone of contention in that family her senior year. Birdy wanted to go off to California just because it’s about the furthest she could think of. And she kept mentioning Ollie: but you let Ollie do this. Ollie’s allowed. I tried to explain to Kendra, about scholarships, but her dad didn’t go, and she wasn’t interested, so she really didn’t understand. How Ollie filled out all kinds of applications and wrote so many essays and pieced it all together. She had a job on campus, too—part of the package was work/study.
LW: I didn’t think her parents wanted her working.
BR: It was the only way she could actually swing it. I think it was the one time they couldn’t tell her no. She worked in the library. Then, the next summer, she stayed on-campus and took classes and worked. But Kendra didn’t want to hear it, because she listened to Birdy. “Wendy and Mr. Clark don’t want Birdy to succeed.” That was Birdy’s message, so it was Kendra’s. And … well, if it had been like that, Birdy killing her family, she would’ve ended up behind bars rather than at college, but that felt like Birdy, too. The shortsightedness.
LW: When did you find out Birdy was dead?
BR: Oh, early afternoon, I think. That’s when Randy and Ollie came back, and he had to go identify the bodies. He dropped her off with the Chapmans—Eli and his mom. She was so shell-shocked, the poor thing. And when Jared saw her …
LW: Jared was there?
BR: No, he’d been at his mom’s place, but he came over when he heard, and then he broke down. Esther had to call for the paramedics. It wasn’t good for Ollie, either, seeing him like that, but they took him away and I guess Serena went to him, and then a day later, Eli was arrested.
LW: Did you still think it had to do with college money?
BR: For a while, yes. Not the whole way until the trial, but … you have the transcript.
LW: Could you tell me anyway?
BR: Well, at the trial, the prosecuting attorney got Randy on the stand and did the whole … evidence thing with their bank accounts. All the Clark family bank accounts. And it wasn’t like Birdy had said at all. There were two college accounts, one for each of the girls, and Birdy’s had a lot more in it than Ollie’s, because Ollie had already paid for a year of college. So everyone knew Birdy had just been creating drama, but then it looked like maybe Eli had killed the others so Ollie could get money. So she could finish school, maybe, but maybe also so he could marry her and not have to work. Use her, you know?
LW: And did that seem believable?
BR: Mr. Wilcox, I’m sorry to say this, but yes. We would’ve believed either Chapman kid had killed for money, thinking it would put him on easy street. That’s why this whole Sean Kelly thing’s been worse for us than the murders.
LW: Oh?
BR: It’s true. I might cross this off later, but it’s true. A double murder? Horrific. But we didn’t have to look for outsiders to explain what happened. We had the Chapman boys, right there, mixed up in the family and everything. And then when Jared said Eli wasn’t with him all night, right after Eli said that’s where he’d been … bingo. It seemed solved. Then that Ohio lawyer comes along and tells us oh, it’s actually this other guy, someone you’ve never heard of … what do you think that does to a community, Mr. Wilcox?
LW: What does it do?
BR: It’s ripped us apart. You’ve got groups that think we should apologize and try to make it up to the kid somehow, you know? But that’s ridiculous. You can’t just give back ten years. We can’t just go paying him what we think he should’ve made or some such nonsense they’ve got floating around. Trying to make it up to him, my ass. If he wasn’t the kind of person we’d suspect, he wouldn’t have been in this mess. And Kendra … they called her up on the stand, too, and made her look like a liar because Birdy had lied to her. But you can’t go after a dead girl, so they went after Kendra, and I’d always thought it was stupid that Randy had gotten Ollie a lawyer like that, but I should’ve had one for her.
LW: They came after her.
BR: They tried to say she was trying to protect Eli. Or maybe she’d been having an affair with him. Some sort of dirty deal like that. It didn’t stick, but come on, Mr. Wilcox. Eli Chapman was found not guilty in a court of law, and you know how we all felt about that.
Bury the Dead 12 – coming April 12
Rebecca Frost 