The Mysterious
Disappearance of Vern Heimach
Loren Logsdon
My name is Mal Cutter. For several
years I was Weeder's Clump's only barber, and I have lived in our
town all of my life, except for the two years I served in the Army.
Over the years I have told my customers many interesting stories
about local events, and I enjoy telling them when I am cutting hair.
It helps to pass the time. There is one story that is my favorite
because it is a complicated mystery that has never lost its
fascination. Actually, I was involved in the beginning of the story,
but I didn’t know it at the time. The truth was disclosed some 45
years later when the mystery was solved. But I need to begin at the
beginning.
It was the middle of October in 1958,
Homecoming weekend at Weeders Clump High School, and I was a senior. I
was with a few friends in the school gymnasium, watching the dancers
and wishing I had a girl to bring to the big dance. We were the
typical high school no-date-nerds, and we were seated on the
bleachers telling jokes and clowning around, when Vern Heimach's big
brother Lester came rushing up to Vern and said, “Dixie's
pregnant.”
Vern leaped to his feet and said, “I
have to find Dixie.” Then he ran out of the gym and no one ever saw
him again. We all thought he ran away to escape a shotgun wedding. At
least that was the general consensus of those who knew him. We
thought we would eventually learn of his whereabouts, but we never
did. It was like Vern had vanished from the face of the earth.
Then near the end of October, Dixie
O'Grady went away to live with her ailing aunt. The elderly woman was
diagnosed with terminal cancer and had no one to care for her. Some
of us wondered if the main reason for Dixie's leaving was something
other than to play Florence Nightingale, and the gossip spread
throughout the community. But Liam O'Grady, Dixie's father, walked
among us with his head held high, and his son Buster knocked many a
guy's block off if they made any remarks about Dixie's being a dandy
housekeeper. After a time, things cooled off and Dixie was no longer
the main subject of the talk in beauty parlors, the town library, the
post office, and the IGA. Instead, people were worried that Russia
was going to bomb us.
At the end of a year, Dixie returned to
live among us again. Either the aunt had recovered or died.
Apparently, she didn't need Dixie's loving care any longer. Dixie
enrolled in the big state university to study to be a teacher. There
was still no word about Vern. Maybe he joined the Army or the circus.
When he was a kid, he was always threatening to run away and join
the circus. Dixie graduated with honors and married a wealthy banker
from Rushville, causing Boone Fowler to proclaim that the aristocracy
in America live in Rushville.
Time marches on in its inexorable,
relentless pace, and it was October 2004. I was trimming the hair on
the ears of Bear Bombast, Heliotrope University's legendary football
coach, when Homer Bigfield came in and, despite being out of breath,
managed to ask me if I had heard the news. I finally got Homer calmed
down so he wouldn't have a heart attack; then I asked him to fill me
in what was so exciting.
Homer said that a deer hunter had
discovered human remains in a shallow grave on the north forty of
Buster O'Grady's farm. The hunter, a man named Hancock Chase, a
wealthy businessman from Upperville, had been hunting on my Uncle
Bub's farm, and he had shot and wounded a large buck. The buck had
managed to run to the corner of Buster's O'Grady's farm, where it
collapsed in a wooded thicket and died. In tracking the buck, Chase
tripped and fell on his face and was amazed at something white
sticking up out of the ground about three inches from his eyes. Upon
further inquiry, Chase realized that it was what looked like a human
bone. He scratched around a bit and unearthed a skull that was
definitely human.
Hancock Chase forgot about the deer and
used his cellphone to call the county sheriff Hamlet Steele, who
responded immediately with siren screaming even though one could
scarcely regard the discovery as an emergency. The bones of whoever
it was had been there a long time. Forensic science would have to
discover just how long.
The location of the grave explained why
it had not been discovered until Hancock Chase had literally stumbled
and fallen upon it. The body had been buried in a patch of woods on
rough terrain that was useless for farming purposes. It was an area
of land that wasn’t worth anything to anybody, a. place where
cattle or people would not go for any reason; not even Boone Fowler
would hunt for morel mushrooms there. The wounded deer had gone there
out of necessity, only to lead the hunter to another death. If
Hancock Chase had not tripped and fallen on his face, the skeleton
might not have been discovered.
Now Sheriff Steele had a huge problem:
Who did those bones belong to? No DNA was available so Hamlet Steele
knew that the task to identify the victim would not be easy, and so
he and his deputy Bumpus Badger searched the ground carefully, using
a Mintner-Giggins metal detector. They found two important items of
evidence which enabled them to identify the remains and focus on a
suspect. The first item was a Minneapolis-Moline bronze belt buckle,
which Vern Heimach always wore. His family was well known for their
loyalty to M & M.
It was no wonder that Vern’s
whereabouts were unknown. Ever since that night in 1958, he had been
lying in a shallow grave on Buster O’Grady’s north forty, and he
could not have committed suicide because no weapon was found. Thus,
Vern had to have been killed elsewhere because no one would willingly
have come to this place, not even to commit suicide.
The other item located by the metal
detector was a Weeder’s Clump High School class ring for 1958, and
the name inscribed on the ring was Danny O’Grady, known by the
nickname Buster. In checking the records, Steele found that Buster,
although two years older than his sister Dixie, had failed two grades
in school, thus graduating in the same class with her.
Danny “Buster” O’Grady had
inherited the farm from his father Liam, who died in 1972. Over the
years Buster had developed the reputation of being a bad hat. He was
notorious for posting no trespassing signs and having people arrested
who failed to obey them. It was widely known that he would shoot
stray dogs and cats that wandered onto his territory. He had actually
shot at Chub Baltho’s bull, but fortunately he had been too far
away to injure the bull. The pattern of violence in Buster’s
behavior was well known. Possum Gwathmy said that Buster was as mean
as nine miles of bad road.
Here is the scenario that Hamlet Steele
and Bumpus Badger developed. Buster became enraged at Vern for taking
advantage of Dixie because he knew that Vern was not the marrying
kind. Thus, Buster lured Vern to the O’Grady farm where he either
shot him, stabbed him, or beat him to death. Buster then hid Vern’s
body until the next night when Liam and his wife Wanda went to
Beardstown to check about a hay bailer. While they were gone, Buster
transported Vern’s body to the one place on the farm where no one
would ever find it.
In the process of digging the grave,
Buster developed a blister on his ring finger and removed the ring,
thinking he had put it in his pocket. Instead it fell into some
leaves. The ground was so hard that Buster could dig a grave only
three feet deep.
When Buster had returned from his evil
enterprise, he discovered that his ring was missing, but he didn’t
return to search around the grave for it because he was confident it
would be lost among the brush and leaves.
Sheriff Hamlet Steele paid a visit to
Buster O’Grady, and he had a plan to see if he could trick Buster.
First, he asked Buster if he had any idea of the identity of the
human remains that were found on his property.
Buster was not without imagination, and
he replied, “They are probably the remains of an Indian. Lots of
Native American artifacts have been found in that area.”
Then Steel replied, “Why, yes, they
have. Can you identify this artifact?” and he held the WCHS class
ring up for Buster to see.
The significance of Steel’s question
had not dawned on Buster, and he said, “It’s our high school
class ring.”
“Yes, it is, but would you look
carefully and see whose name is inscribed on the ring?” Steele
said.
“No, on second thought I would rather
you didn’t handle the ring, so I will tell you. The name on the
ring is Danny O’Grady—your name.”
“Where
did you find it? I lost it shortly after I bought it, and I searched
everywhere for it. I think someone stole it,” Buster said.
“You
know where I found it, and I am arresting you for the murder of Vern
Heimach. The jig’s up. You have the right to remain silent.
Anything you say may be used against you.”
“You can’t prove I killed Vern.
You’re going to end up with egg on your face. You’ll find
yourself up the creek without a paddle, you pathetic Deputy Dog,”
Buster snarled.
The case against Buster O’Grady was
prosecuted by a young district attorney named Laverne Clugston, who
had come to Weeder’s Clump from Quincy. He was brilliant, and he
had to be because Buster hired the famous defense trial lawyer
Clarence Darrow Webster, who began by using every logical fallacy in
the book and then some he invented on the spot. But Laverne Clugston
argued the case with a passion, identifying and refuting every
logical fallacy to the jury.
It looked as if Clarence Darrow Webster
had met his match, but then he made a brilliant move; he changed his
strategy. He called three witnesses for the defense to prove that
Buster had lost his class ring long before Vern Heimach disappeared.
He called Dixie and her brother Ignatius, who testified that Buster
had lost his ring almost immediately after he had bought it. They
said that Buster couldn’t stop talking about his ring and wondering
how he could have lost it.
Next, he called Vern Heimach’s
brother Lester, who testified that Vern had not bought a class ring
because their father had ordered them not to spend their money on
such frivolous and useless things. Lester said that Vern always felt
bad that he didn’t have a class ring to give to Dixie to wear
because in those days a guy always gave his class ring to his steady
Main Squeeze to wear, even though it was several sizes too big for
her finger. It was a macho status symbol to have your girl walking
around wearing your class ring.
Finally, Clarence Darrow Webster
offered this scenario. Vern Heimach stole Buster O’Grady’s class
ring, but he couldn’t wear it or give it to Dixie to wear because
she would discover its rightful owner, so Vern kept the ring and
carried it in his pocket as a good luck charm. When Dixie informed
her parents she was pregnant, Liam became furious when Vern told him
he wasn’t going to marry her.
Liam killed him in a fit of rage and
buried his body in the lonely grave, not knowing Buster’s class
ring was in Vern’s pocket. Thus, Vern was killed not by Buster
O’Grady but rather by Buster’s father Liam.
Well, the jury had two scenarios to
consider, and the silver-tongued Clarence Darrow Webster hit the key
issue and hit it hard: reasonable doubt. He insisted that the jury
could not convict Buster O’Grady because there was reasonable
doubt, and thus they should find him not guilty.
After the jury found Buster not guilty,
and he was returned to the bosom of his family, the people of
Weeder’s Clump were treated to a delicious irony. It seems when
Dixie O’Grady was away for a year she had a baby boy whose eyes
were as blue as Henry Fonda’s in Welcome to Hard Times.
Dixie gave the baby up for adoption but named him Laverne after his
father. When the rules governing adoption were relaxed and adopted
children could locate their birth parents, Laverne discovered that
his mother was living in Rushville. On the birth certificate she had
listed Vern Heimach as the father, and Laverne had decided to live in
Weeder’s Clump to find out about his father’s people, not
realizing that one day he would be called upon to prosecute the man
accused of murdering his father.
When it dawned on Buster that Laverne
Clugston was his nephew, the mean-spirited farmer underwent the most
remarkable transformation ever seen in our community. He removed
every no trespassing sign on his property, he began to donate
generously to several charities, he stopped carrying a razor-sharp
Swiss Army Knife, and he would actually feed stray cats and dogs
instead of shooting them. On calm summer evenings he could be heard
singing the old hymns such as “Love Lifted Me,” “Be Thou My
Vision,” “Blessed Assurance,” and “Farther Along.” Buster
became so friendly and convivial that he was chosen “Man of the
Year” by the Illinois Bean Growers Association at their annual
convention in the Windy City.
The happy moral of this tale can be
expressed cogently: Sometimes you can teach the old maestro a new
tune, but it isn’t easy.
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