Framed

The Absence of Motive#2

The murder of a well-known person is shocking news regardless of where it happens, but in a place like Clifton, with 3,000 people, practically all of whom knew one another, Mickey’s death was impossible to digest.

A local girl from a fine family, a much admired and beloved schoolteacher, and the wife of a popular school principal—if she wasn’t safe, then who was? Mickey Bryan’s murder was terrifying.

Adding to the fear that gripped Clifton was the haunting death of another woman only four months earlier.

Back in June, Joe Wilie was called to Clifton to investigate the murder of Judy Whitley, a seventeen-year-old whose nude body was found in a thicket less than a mile from the Bryan home.

The teenager had been bound, gagged, raped, and murdered by suffocation.

Were the two murders linked? For a safe, peaceful community with little serious crime, the news of Mickey’s death jolted an already jittery population.

And it put even more pressure on Joe Wilie and his team of investigators.

The truth was that they had no solid clues.

They were working around the clock and chasing every lead, but so far had nothing.

Then Charlie Blue entered the picture.

Charlie was Mickey’s older brother, who lived in Florida where he was a vice president of an agrochemical company.

On Tuesday, upon learning of his sister’s death, he flew from Florida to Texas and drove to Clifton.

According to Joe, Mickey and Charlie had never been close.

He was an aggressive corporate executive accustomed to being in charge and getting his way, a marked contrast to Mickey’s quiet and unassuming personality.

As brothers-in-law, Joe and Charlie managed to get along but gave each other plenty of space.

There was no animosity in the family.

Charlie lived a thousand miles away and they seldom got together.

Charlie stayed with his parents, Vera and Otis, and cared for them as the family mourned.

He asked Joe if he could borrow his car, a Mercury, while he was in town and Joe was happy to oblige.

Joe was still in no shape to drive and was being ushered around by family members.

By Friday, the day after the funeral, Charlie was frustrated by the investigation’s lack of progress and decided to do something about it.

His company had on retainer a retired FBI agent named Bud Saunders, who worked as a private detective.

Charlie called Saunders and asked him to drive to Clifton, said there were some things that were bothering him about Mickey’s death.

He told neither Joe Bryan nor Joe Wilie that he was bringing in his own private investigator.

Saunders arrived in town Saturday afternoon and met Charlie at the Dairy Queen.

They got into Joe Bryan’s Mercury and went for a long ride to discuss the case.

Somewhere out in the countryside, they stopped to relieve themselves beside the road.

In the process, Saunders stepped in some mud and soiled his boots.

Looking for a cleaning rag, Charlie opened the trunk.

There, in a cardboard box, was a flashlight with the lens pointing up.

There were tiny specks of something on the lens. Charlie took it and looked it over.

As a corporate executive, he had zero experience with bloodstains or crime scenes, but nonetheless surmised that the tiny specks were droplets of blood. He gave it to Saunders, who readily agreed.

They drove back to Clifton and called the Rangers from a pay phone.

Late that night, still Saturday, Joe Wilie executed a search warrant on Joe Bryan’s Mercury.

The flashlight was taken and sent to the state crime lab for analysis.

The car itself was in immaculate condition, with no bloodstains inside or out.

Joe loathed a dirty car.

Wilie released the Mercury to Charlie, who drove it to the Bryan home and left it in the driveway around 4:00 a.m.

Sunday.

He and Saunders then left town.

Charlie caught a flight from Austin to Tampa.

Joe Bryan knew nothing about any of this.

When he picked up his car Sunday afternoon, it had been out of his possession for four days and had been thoroughly searched by Joe Wilie and his team.

Wilie’s big break came when the state crime lab reported that the specks on the flashlight lens were human blood type O, same as Mickey’s but not Joe’s.

DNA testing did not exist in 1985.

Wilie was suspicious, even though half the world’s population has type O blood.

When a crime lab chemist also found some tiny plastic particles on the flashlight lens and suspected that they had the same characteristics as the birdshot shells found at the crime scene, Wilie was convinced the flashlight had been used in the murder.

The Ranger had his man.

On October 23, eight days after the murder, Joe Bryan was at his mother’s home in Elm Mott, watching television with her in the den, when Wilie unexpectedly arrived at the door.

With him were the Clifton chief of police, Ron Brennand, and the Bosque County sheriff, Denny Proffitt.

Joe was relieved and glad to see them, and hopeful they had good news about the investigation.

Instead, Joe Wilie said, “You’re under arrest for your wife’s murder.”

At first Joe was unable to speak, then managed to ask, “On what evidence?”

Wilie had no response.

Joe was handcuffed, placed in the rear seat of a patrol car, and driven to nearby Waco, where he was processed.

He was then taken to the Bosque County jail in Meridian, where he was stripped naked and photographed.

The police were looking for scratches and bruises, possibly to indicate a desperate last-minute fight by Mickey.

No such evidence was found.

—

The news of Joe’s arrest was met with widespread disbelief.

In fact, no one who knew Joe believed for a moment that he had killed Mickey, a woman he loved, cherished, and was thoroughly devoted to.

Their colleagues at the school were incredulous and angry.

Current and former students were vehement in their protests.

Joe was known for his lack of anger and cool head in every situation.

He had neither the temperament nor the motive to harm anyone, certainly not his wife.

It’s not clear whether Ranger Wilie and his team felt a backlash after the arrest.

They had rushed the investigation, found no witnesses and no credible clues, ignored a clear alibi, and were now preening for the press.

Once again the heroic Ranger had ridden into town on a white horse and saved the people by arresting a cold-blooded killer.

Implementing their “indict first, investigate later”

strategy, Wilie and his team busied themselves trying to prove the one element of the crime that begged for attention: motive.

There was absolutely no evidence or even gossip about Joe and Mickey’s marital problems.

They had none.

They were inseparable, got along with their relatives, had little money to bicker over, loved being together, and would rather spend time by themselves than with friends.

To cast doubt on the couple’s closeness, the investigators decided that Joe was a homosexual.

Since they believed he had homosexual tendencies, then, obviously, he had homicidal ones as well.

The smear was on.

One of their more bizarre theories was that Mickey had somehow found out about Joe’s sordid double life and was planning to confront him, then divorce him, and so on.

There was not a shred of evidence anywhere to even suggest this, but that didn’t matter.

The case was completely devoid of any hint of a motive, so it was imperative that the cops create one.

Fueling the smear campaign was something Joe Wilie had found in the trunk of Joe Bryan’s Mercury when he was searching for the flashlight.

It was a Chippendales pin-up calendar with color photos of partially clad male dancers posing for each month.

(Joe and Mickey had bought it, together, as a gag gift for a friend, then forgot about it and left it in the trunk.)

What further proof was needed?

—

After Joe was arrested and released on bond, the investigators fanned out through the community looking for proof that he was gay, and in the process did not hesitate to spread all manner of salacious rumors.

When Joe Wilie interviewed Susan Kleine, Mickey’s close friend and teaching colleague, his first question stunned her: “Do you think Joe is effeminate?”

Before she could answer, he followed up with “There are rumors that Joe is gay.”

Susan was close to both Joe and Mickey and was adamant in her belief that he would never harm her.

She knew them well, knew their friends and families well, and had never heard anyone say anything about Joe being gay.

Not until it was mentioned by Joe Wilie.

She pushed back hard and said no, Joe was not, in her opinion, effeminate, and he was definitely not gay.

And, no, she had never heard such a rumor until now.

Kleine became rattled when Wilie kept asking similar questions about Joe’s sexuality.

She knew the truth, and she also knew how devastating the rumors could be for someone like Joe.

She finally warned Wilie that he was on thin ice and should be careful with a person’s reputation.

Wilie and his team were anything but careful.

In dozens of interviews with friends and acquaintances, they repeatedly returned to the “gay”

theme in Joe’s life, though not one witness knew the first thing about it.

The cops got even more creative and asked questions about “rumors”

of Joe being involved with a male student, and Joe stealing away to New Orleans for weekends of debauchery in gay bars.

The rumors, all created and fomented by the cops, were repeated, passed around, embellished, and took on a life of their own.

The investigators’ notes contain such observations as “Homo tendencies?”

and “He gay?”

and “Queer?”

As the investigators dug through every aspect of Joe’s private life, they obtained his phone records.

It was one of those moments when thoughtful detectives would realize they were on the wrong trail.

Not so with Wilie and his posse.

Joe’s phone calls in the month before the murder were to Mickey, his mother, his older brother, a cousin, a vitamin shop, a contact-lens store, and a hospital.

There was not a single call that was even remotely suspicious.

Thoughtful detectives, though, were not in charge.

The arrest had been made, they had their man, and now they were desperate to prove it.

—

Joe Bryan was a happily married straight male who had never been unfaithful to Mickey.

Throughout their marriage they had enjoyed a close, intimate relationship.

Like most marriages, the earlier years had seen more activity, especially when they were “working”

hard to reproduce.

When they learned Mickey could not get pregnant, they were deeply saddened, but they were only in their late twenties and much too young to give up on sex.

When the gay rumors finally made it to Joe at his mother’s home in Elm Mott, it felt like just another rotten blow to an innocent man.

What can they do next? he asked himself.

—

The people of Clifton were law-abiding folks who placed great trust in the authorities: the police, the prosecutors, the judges.

A nasty rumor passed along by an average citizen may or may not have traveled far, but one uttered with the authority of a policeman, yet alone a Texas Ranger, carried much greater weight.

It didn’t take long for the rumors, thoroughly unfounded, to get repeated and passed around.

As always with rumors, the more sensational they were, the faster they traveled.

As the smear campaign gained steam, Joe stayed away from Clifton.

The school put him on paid leave, and for the first time in many years his days did not center around his students and the school schedule.

He missed them greatly, and he missed his friends, many of whom were slowly withdrawing.

Most of all, he missed his beloved Mickey, his wife and best friend.

Once a week he went home to Clifton to mow his yard.

He was beginning to feel like a trespasser in his own town.

His neighbors were still friendly, but others kept their distance.

He often stopped by the cemetery, where he sat next to Mickey’s grave and wept.

Losing her was a raw, jagged hole in his life.

Being accused of killing her made the pain unbearable.

His Christian faith had always sustained and guided him.

He prayed more than ever and read his Bible, searching for help.

He continued worshipping in his church and was strengthened by the closeness he felt with the other believers.

That bond, though, was shattered one day when his pastor telephoned and, after a friendly chat, finally got around to the real purpose of the call.

Several members of First Baptist Church had complained that they were uneasy with Joe’s presence.

Did he mind staying away until the trial was over? It was another painful slap at Joe and he withdrew even deeper into his own dark world.

Not long afterward, the school superintendent paid a visit and asked Joe to resign.

To make bad matters worse, Charlie Blue reappeared and again inserted himself into the proceedings by filing a lawsuit to protect Mickey’s estate and keep Joe from spending their savings on legal fees.

The judge agreed, and Joe had to borrow money from his siblings to pay his lawyers.

Otis and Vera, Mickey’s parents, cut off all communication with Joe.