The Cold Case of Pastor Elkhorn

Rochelle asked me to sit in my chair while she got something. I heard her rummaging in the kitchen for a while and then nothing until I felt something pushing on my collar bone. When I looked down, it was a bread knife. The tip was a semi-circle and wasn't sharp at all, but it was still a knife.

"Rochelle, what the hell are you doing?"

"Hold still. I'm seeing if I could kill you."

A second later I felt the rounded tip slip behind my collar bone and then enough pressure it started to hurt.

When I reached up to stop her, Rochelle lifted the knife.

"That's how the killer got close enough. The killer came up behind him when the reverend was sitting in a chair in his bedroom. The killer would have been high enough all he'd have had to do was push down hard on a sharp knife. I wasn't pushing very hard at all, so it would have been easy even for me to kill you.

"I think it was a woman now. He wouldn't have let one of the husbands get him anywhere alone because he knew what he'd done to the man's wife. He'd have been comfortable with a woman though, especially if she told him she wanted to be treated again, like the one woman I told you had two kids a year apart after trying for five years."

"What about the delay you questioned before?"

Rochelle thought for a second.

"Maybe there wasn't a delay. Maybe he was killed by the same woman he was supposed to be curing. She went to his house expecting to have him pray and then tap her on the forehead. Instead he told her to get undressed and on the bed. While he was sitting in the chair undressing, she sneaked up behind him with a knife just like I did to you."

I shook my head.

"If she thought he was going to help her, why would she bring along a knife?"

Rochelle shook her head then.

"She wouldn't. It was just a thought. I still think the only person who could get close enough to him to kill him had to be a woman. Are you sure Harry wrote down every name?"

"Well, he told me he did."

Rochelle frowned.

"Well, it had to be a woman he trusted who killed him. Harry just didn't look hard..."

Rochelle picked up Harry's report and scanned through the first page, then looked up at me.

"Maybe Harry did find her and just didn't realize it."

I didn't understand.

"What does that mean?"

Rochelle smiled.

"Well, what we know, or at least think we know, is that there probably were several women Reverend Elkhorn took to bed to cure their infertility. When they found out what he'd done, that gave either them or their husbands a motive for killing him.

"The real problem we're having is with the means and the method. We've been thinking a man would have the strength, but not the means because he couldn't get close enough to kill him. A woman would have a lot better chance, so a woman satisfies the means part of the equation. We already know the method. We've just been thinking it had to be a man to push a knife into Reverend Elkhorn. I just proved a woman could have done it and answers the question about method.

"The only thing wrong with that logic is I'd never write it into a novel. Nobody would believe that any married woman would do something like that unless she was insane. She'd risk being separated from the child she was carrying or had birthed. What she'd have done is kept her mouth shut and let her husband believe he was the father, or she'd have told him and he'd have divorced her.

"There is one other woman Reverend Elkhorn would have trusted though -- the housekeeper."

"What motive would she have had for killing him?"

Rochelle drummed her fingers on the table for a few seconds before she answered.

"I don't know. What do we know about her?"

"Well there was just a mention in Harry's report that he'd talked to her. Let me look at his notes and see if he wrote anything else down."

It took me five minutes to find what Harry had written when he interviewed the housekeeper.

"It says here her name was Estelle Wagner, and she told Harry she was twenty-nine and wasn't married. She told him she'd applied for the housekeeping job because she was a member of Reverend Elkhorn's congregation and she really liked him and what he could do for people. That's all he wrote down other than what she told him -- that she just took care of the house and would never go into his bedroom if he was there."

"If she never went into his bedroom when he was in there, how did she find his body?"

"I guess she must have thought he was somewhere else. Harry must have believed her or he'd have listed her as a suspect."

"What do you think?"

I didn't have a good answer for Rochelle because I was just starting to think about it. The housekeeper did seem to fit, and usually the person who finds the body is a suspect until I can prove they aren't. Harry hadn't tried to do that, but then he didn't have any evidence that she did anything except take care of the house.

"I think we need to find that housekeeper and talk to her. If she was twenty-nine in 1975, she'd be seventy-seven now if she's still alive. I'll see if I can find her in the Tennessee DMV records tomorrow.

}{

I did find her the next morning, and apparently she was still alive and kicking because she'd renewed her Tennessee driver's license in 2023. I called Rochelle and said I'd found the housekeeper and I was on my way to talk to her.

Rochelle said it would probably be better if she did the talking.

"She's a woman and I'm a woman and women tell each other things they'd never tell a man. If she tells me anything suspicious, you can arrest her and do your cop thing with her."

}{

I didn't hear from Rochelle until I got home that night. She was sitting at the kitchen table with her laptop and was concentrating so hard she jumped when I asked her what the housekeeper told her. After she picked up the glass she'd knocked over and sopped up the remnants of the ice from the table, she sat back down.

"She still lives by herself but I don't think she has much money. The house is barely livable. I feel really sorry for her, but I think she's our killer."

"Why is that."

"Well, I'm not sure what she looked like when she was twenty, but when she was twenty-five, she had a car accident that messed up her face a lot. She had plastic surgery done that fixed some of it, but I seriously doubt she had any men asking her out. She also probably didn't have much of a figure because she still doesn't. She's really heavy, but it's all in her arms, thighs, and belly. She doesn't have much in the way of breasts.

"We talked for a while about the book I was writing and why I wanted to talk to her since she probably knew Reverend Elkhorn as well as anybody. She said she did, and that she liked him a lot. She said she thought it was a shame he and his wife never had any children. Then she asked me if I had a husband and any children. It sounded to me like she wanted me to say yes, so I told her I had a husband and a son and a daughter. She said she always wanted children, but the one man she wanted for a husband never noticed her at all no matter what she did.

"I thought she might be talking about Reverend Elkhorn, so I said my husband was about the same way and that I'd had to sort of guide him into asking me to marry him. I said it was because my husband was so busy he didn't have time for regular dates, so I had to come up with things we could do together.

"She said he didn't seem to be all that busy and that she'd tried some things too. I asked her what those things were and she said she couldn't tell me because they were things a lady shouldn't do.

"I didn't push her on that. I figured that was something you should do. Instead, I asked her what happened to the man. She looked down at her lap and said he'd died. When I asked her if he'd been ill, she shook her head and said she didn't know for certain, but she'd heard that somebody stabbed him.

"I knew from Harry's report that she was the one who found Reverend Elkhorn. The only reason she'd tell me that she'd only heard that someone stabbed him is to keep herself out of my book. If she was innocent, she'd have told me that she found him and then told me what else was done to him.

"After she said that, I decided she could have been our killer so I changed the subject. I asked her what she did before she started working as Reverend Elkhorn's housekeeper. That's when I figured I had the method right.

"She said she'd started out working as a clerk in a grocery store. After she'd been there a while, the owner asked her if she'd like to make more money. She said she would and asked him what she'd have to do.

"The grocery store was one of those little Mom and Pop places like were pretty common back then. He had a farm outside of town and bought his beef and pork on the hoof. He killed the animals there and gutted them and took off the hide, and then brought the carcasses to the grocery story and cut them up himself. She said he was getting older and doing all that was getting hard for him to do because he had arthritis.

"He taught her how to kill and dress out a steer and a hog, and how to cut a side of beef or pork into steaks and roasts and how to grind the rest of the meat into hamburger or sausage.

"That lasted until she had her car accident. After she got out of the hospital he told her he couldn't have her working as his butcher anymore because customers wouldn't like talking to her. That's when she applied for the job of housekeeper for the church. She said Reverend Elkhorn didn't seem to notice how she looked and he kept telling her she did a great job.

"That's another reason I feel sorry for her. I think what he was doing was schmoozing her so she'd keep doing a good job. She was so down about herself that anything he said sounded like he really liked her. What I think is those things she did to entice him caused him to tell her he didn't like her that way. That coupled with the way she felt about him is what made her kill him."

I nodded.

"That all makes sense, but it doesn't get us any closer to bringing her in for questioning."

Rochelle smiled then.

"Maybe this will help."

She flicked the screen on her phone a few times, and then showed me a picture.

"I took this when we were in her kitchen. See the knife on the counter? It's the right size. I said I'd never seen a knife that big before and asked her what it was for. She said she'd bought it and a couple others after she started butchering at the grocery store. She said she used it when she had to bleed out a steer or cut around a large bone or push the point through meat, like when she was separating pork ribs.

"I said I'd tried to do that when I cut the meat off a ham bone but it was really hard. She just smiled and said I just needed to learn how to sharpen a knife. Then she showed me how sharp that knife was. She just sat the edge on a tomato and then pulled on the knife handle without pressing down at all. By the time the point of the knife went into the tomato, the tomato was cut almost half way through."

Well, Rochelle's theory was pretty compelling. Of all the people Harry, Rochelle, and I had looked at and talked to, only the housekeeper had all three of my "musts". She had the means because she was in the house every day. She had the method with the sharp knife in her kitchen and her past experience at using it. If Rochelle was right about Reverend Elkhorn telling the housekeeper he didn't like her that way, she had a motive.

Still, it was just a theory with no real evidence to back it up. I'd never get an arrest warrant based upon what we had.

"She didn't tell you anything else, anything we can use to verify her story?"

"No, not really. It was just the way she talked when she told me about this man she wanted to be her husband and give her children and how that changed when she told me about Reverend Elkhorn's death. When she told me about wanting this man and that she'd tried to get him to notice her by doing things, it seemed like she must have loved him. I think she even got a tear or two.

"When she told me that man had died, she didn't really sound like she was sad. It was more like she was telling me it had started to rain outside -- just a statement with no sadness in her voice. I'd be the same way if I was telling somebody about how I like you, but if I'd then said you'd died, I'd be crying my eyes out."

Well, the housekeeper wasn't just the best suspect we had. She was the only real suspect we had. I couldn't arrest her, but if I could get her to come in voluntarily, I could still talk to her. If I could get her to slip up and lie to me, I'd be in a lot better position to arrest her. If she was innocent, at least we might get a little more information.

I didn't want to send an officer to her house to get her. That would tell her she was a suspect. Instead, I called her. When she answered, I gave her a story I hoped would put her at ease about talking to me.

"Miss Wagner, my name is Richard Owens and I'm a detective for the Knoxville police department. As you probably know from watching the police shows on television, most police departments have several cases that they haven't been able to solve.

"My captain is looking for a promotion, I think, and has told us to wrap up as many of our old cases as we can. That'll make him look good to the Mayor. Personally, what with the gang shootings and car jackings and other things happening now, I think I have better things to do with my time, but he doesn't see it that way.

"The case I'm working on is really old. It's the case of a Reverend Elkhorn from back in 1975. The detective who worked that case never found anyone he thought killed Reverend Elkhorn. Just between you and me, I don't think I will either, but orders are orders so I have to do something.

"Of all the people that detective talked to, you're the only one still alive. Personally, I don't think his murder had anything to do with his preaching and healing. From what I gather from the detective's report, most people really loved him for what he did. What I think is somebody in the church, probably one of the church board, wanted to take his place and killed him to get him out of the way.

"Now, I can't just write that in a report and expect the Captain to sign it and close the case. I have to at least talk to somebody who knew Reverend Elkhorn and the men on the board. Since you worked for them and you're the only one left I can talk to, could you come to the station for an hour or so today or tomorrow? All I need is what you can tell me about how Reverend Elkhorn and the church board got along, especially if you know one of the board in particular had a problem with what Reverend Elkhorn was doing."

I could tell she was weighing what I said because she didn't answer for several seconds.

"You just need me to tell you about the church board and Reverend Elkhorn?"

"Yes, that's all. Like I said, I think it was one of the church board and maybe more than one. When the detective talked to them, he wrote down that they didn't seem to be upset. You'd think a church board who just lost a famous preacher would be really sad, but they weren't.

"There's also the money angle. It's like on the TV cop shows. You always follow the money. From what I understand, the church and the parsonage were sold soon after Reverend Elkhorn's death. The problem is I can't find out where that money went. I'm guessing it went to one of the board, or maybe they split the money. You might not know where the money went, but you might be able to tell me if any of them started spending more money than usual, you know, like buying a new car or a camper or a bass boat they always said they couldn't afford."

She waited a while longer before she answered.

"Well, I don't remember much about them, but I guess it wouldn't hurt to just talk."

"Can you get here yourself, or should I send a car to get you? If I send a car, it won't be a police car. It'll look just like any other car. I don't want to upset your neighbors."

She said she could drive herself and that she'd be at the station at about one.

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She hadn't showed up at two, so I asked a uniformed officer to check her house. He radioed the station about fifteen minutes later and said there was nobody home and the garage door was open and there was no car in it. I put out a BOLO for her car.

It was about four when a county deputy based in Athens saw her driving down I-75 towards Chattanooga. He pulled her over and verified her license and registration, and then called me. I asked him to take her to his office and said I'd send a uniformed officer down to get her.

It was almost five when I walked into the interrogation room where the uniform had put her. She looked scared. Her eyes kept looking all around the room and she was wringing her hands. It got worse when I introduced myself.

"Miss Wagner, I'm Detective Owens, the man who called you earlier today. You said you were going to come to the station at one but you didn't. Why didn't you and why were you driving toward Chattanooga?"

She squirmed in her seat and wrung her hands some more.

"You scared me, young man. I'm an old woman and I didn't want to get involved in something that happened years ago."

"Well, I told you all I wanted to find out was whatever you could tell me about Reverend Elkhorn and the church board. Why did that scare you?"

She looked down at her hands.

"It scared me because that other detective kept asking me questions about what I knew and where I was when Reverend Elkhorn was killed. I thought you'd probably do the same thing, and when I didn't know anything about it, you'd think I did it."

It was time to push her a little.

"What did you tell that detective?"

"I just told him that I just worked as Reverend Elkhorn's housekeeper and that I didn't know anything else about what happened."

I shuffled through the papers in the file I'd brought with me.

"Ah, here it is. That's not what the detective wrote down in his notes. He wrote that you were the one who found Reverend Elkhorn. Did you?"

It took her almost a minute to answer me and she had tears in her eyes when she did.

"Yes...I found him."

"Want to tell me what you found?"

She looked up then.

"You're starting to ask me the same questions he did."

"Well, Miss Wagner, you have to understand how this looks. I asked you to come to the station and tell me about Reverend Elkhorn and the church board. You said you would, but then you left Knoxville. To any detective, that would look like you didn't want to talk to me because you had something to do with his death. Because of that, I don't have any choice but to believe you did, and I need to tell you before we go on that you have the right to not say anything else and that you have the right to have an attorney present before we talk more. Do you have an attorney or do you need a public defender?"

She said she didn't have enough money to pay a lawyer so she'd need a public defender. I said I'd get one for her, and then left her sitting in interrogation.

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Marty Ryan, one of our public defenders showed up about five. He asked me what Miss Wagner was being charged with and I told him I hadn't charged her with anything yet. Then I explained why she was there.

"I worked my way through all the people associated with Reverend Elkhorn's church who might have had a reason to kill him, but none of them really had the means or the method that was used. That left me with Miss Wagner as the only other person he probably trusted enough to let them get close enough to kill him. I just wanted to talk to her to see if she was involved, so I didn't have her brought in for questioning.

"I asked her if she'd come in voluntarily and she said she would, but she left Knoxville instead. That makes her look guilty of something, to me at least, and I think that something was Reverend Elkhorn's murder. She knew him well enough to get close to him, she had worked as a butcher so she knew how to use a knife, and she was big enough and strong enough to kill him with that same knife. Unless she can prove to me that she didn't, I'm going to arrest her for the murder of Reverend Elkhorn."