Deadly Seduction (18 page)

As Nichols hovered hundreds of feet above the property, he pointed the infrared camera in the direction of the backyard of the house to see if there were any signs of fresh marks in the soil. But there was nothing. After ten minutes of psychological warfare he swept away into the night. Gary Nichols felt that at least he had done that for his old friend Jimmy Grund, if nothing else.

A few days after Grund’s murder, Susan put a call into Nichols at the Peru Police Department. She did not even mention the killing. She just wanted to know if he would be able to copy a photo of Jim that she wanted to use at his funeral. She did not even ask if the police had any suspects for her husband’s killing.

Initially, stories swept round Peru claiming that Jimmy Grund had been murdered by a vengeful former client or someone he had convicted during his days as a young, ambitious county prosecutor between 1978 and 1982.

Within three days of his death, investigators were openly saying they did not think that was likely.

County prosecutor Wil Siders was especially adamant and made a point of telling local reporters, “I don’t think this had anything to do with Jim as a prosecutor.”

To add to the initial confusion about the case, Indiana State Police were swamped with calls from the public, some of them claiming that both Jimmy and Susan had lovers, others that a contract had been put out on Jimmy.

Investigators found that the constant supply of rumors were making their inquiries even more difficult because they were having to follow up every lead to see if they had any validity and that was stretching their resources to the absolute limit.

Meanwhile Miami County Coroner Dr. Daniel Roberts was predicting that it would be at least two to three weeks before the full results of the autopsy on Jimmy Grund’s body could be released.

A few days after Grund’s death, his sister Jane decided it was time to tell her five-year-old son Brad what had happened to his “uncle Jimmy.” This was the same little boy who had been made by Susan to sleep in a darkened room on his own at Summit Drive, then ended up spending the day at Jim Grund’s office because he was too scared to stay at the house alone with Susan.

Moments after Jane had tried to sensitively inform the boy of his uncle’s murder, Brad started screaming and began kicking the dashboard of the car they were driving in at the time. He did not stop screaming and kicking until they had covered the entire ten-mile journey home. His mother had to start taking him to counseling shortly afterwards.

Eleven

In a town the size of Peru, the murder of a prominent lawyer was big news. Jimmy Grund’s death was the lead item in the local media from the day he was killed and for many weeks afterwards. But in the early stages of the investigation, Brinson and his team of detectives did not want to make any foregone conclusions. It was only when they began delving into Susan Grund’s past that the picture of an all-American family unit started to fall out of focus. When they looked beyond the obvious and started examining the background they came away with a whole new perspective.

A lot of things about this case were starting to greatly trouble the ISP investigator. He had recognized the shell casing lying on the carpet in the bedroom as belonging to a 9 mm. automatic pistol. The moment he saw it he reckoned it had to be from the gun that was reported stolen from David Grund a month earlier.

That particular case #16–6768 had stuck in Brinson’s mind because it seemed so bizarre that the thief who stole the gun had touched nothing else during the alleged break-in on July 4, 1992. With this in mind, Indiana State Police Trooper Gary Boyles was dispatched to interview David Grund straight after his father’s death. He told the investigator that his stepmother Susan had arrived at his apartment on Main Street the day of the “theft” and he had shown her his pistol.

Boyles and his colleague, crime technician Marks, then asked David if he could supply them with any practice casings or slugs he might have, for comparison with the casing found at Summit Drive following the shooting of Jimmy Grund. David Grund told them there were almost certainly some at the house in the country where he had been living until the spate of recent death threats by his girlfriend’s ex-husband.

Boyles then asked David about his precise movements on the night of the murder. There was no getting away from the fact that he was a possible suspect.

David insisted he was watching television. Boyles probed further and it emerged he had been watching the same programs as Boyles. The investigator closely questioned him about the story lines of each show. David seemed to know them all inside out. Boyles was impressed. He never once wondered why David should have such an incredibly detailed knowledge of every single twist and turn of at least three major television programs.

Within the week, Indiana State Police laboratory examiners at their building in Lowell had matched the shell casings and slugs taken from David’s gun to that found in the sofa behind Jimmy Grund’s exit wound to the head. The ISP lab also examined blood and hair samples.

Other interesting aspects of the case began to emerge over the days following the news of Jim Grund’s murder spreading throughout Miami County. Sgt. Bob Lilly of the county sheriff’s department contacted Bob Brinson to say that during the recent Miami County 4-H fair he had talked to Susan Grund and she had informed him about the threatening phone calls she received the previous year. Susan had been most concerned about how quickly the police would get to the family house on Summit Drive if called out on an emergency. Perhaps this had been an excuse for a dry run?

On the day after the murder, a search warrant was served on the Peru Trust Bank for the safety deposit box #1126 in Jimmy Grund’s name. However, no items of jewelry were found and bank records indicated the safety deposit box was purchased by Jim Grund on February 2, 1989. Jimmy had actually only been near the box three times since purchasing it. Various papers were found in the box plus four life insurance policies worth a modest total of $61,770. The beneficiary was Jim Grund’s daughter Jama for three of them, but no beneficiary was named for the last one of $20,000.

A few hours later, Brinson and his unit of investigators interviewed Jimmy Grund’s law practice partner Don Fern, who advised officers that he and Jim had a “buy-sell agreement” dated May 6, 1991. Attached to the agreement was a $150,000 life insurance policy. Fern stated that Jim Grund and he recently had invested some money into remodeling, and additional office space had been taken on loan. The life insurance policy was purchased to protect the other partner in the event one of them died unexpectedly.

Don Fern also supplied the Indiana state troopers with a copy of Jimmy Grund’s first will dated October 31, 1986, and the more recent version dated July 17, 1992.

*   *   *

Within twenty-four hours of the murder, Brinson and his investigators had the sensitive task of interviewing Susan’s daughter, Tanelle. The little girl’s story tallied with most of what her mother had told Brinson in the early hours of the morning of the previous day except for one significant incident. She said she remembered her mother dropping off at their home in the late afternoon and rushing into the house to get something and then emerging with it hidden carefully behind her back. She then put that object in the trunk of the car. Brinson could only surmise it was the murder weapon.

Publicly, at least, the investigation into the murder of Jimmy Grund seemed to be drawing a complete blank. Newspaper headlines like
INVESTIGATORS FIND FEW CLUES IN SHOOTING
implied that Grund’s killer was a mystery assailant.

Capt. Tim Hunter of the Miami County Sheriff’s Department insisted to reporters, “There’s not a whole lot to go on.”

Even one of Bob Brinson’s colleagues at the Peru post of the Indiana State Police was quoted as saying, “There are no firm suspects at this time. We don’t want to speculate on things and mislead you.”

The day after this—August 6—another subpoena was obtained. This time it was for the telephone records of the house at Summit Drive. In addition to this, prosecutor Wil Siders and other officials ordered that a tap be installed on the home phone line.

Sgt. Gary Nichols made the appropriate connections and started monitoring. A daily computer update was made available from that time forward for a total of sixty days.

As news of the murder spread statewide all sorts of other interested parties began to come forward with information that would eventually prove invaluable to the investigators.

Attorney Patrick Roberts told police he had been a close friend of the Grunds for many years and he had heard Susan and a neighbor up at Summit Drive discussing whether it was a good idea to own a gun. Susan had come out against the idea and told her friend that she disapproved of how another neighbor was living with a man who kept a gun. That neighbor’s live-in lover overheard Susan say a few weeks before the killing, “Well, I hope nothing ever comes up about that gun being stolen at David’s house.”

This was a major breakthrough for Brinson because it was the first time a witness had mentioned David’s gun and Susan in the same breath.

Meanwhile Roberts was insisting to investigators that he thought Susan was having an affair with her doctor in Logansport. When interviewed later, the doctor fervently denied this and police entirely believed him. But then they discovered the accountant.

Then Brinson stumbled upon a complete bombshell—and it almost put him totally off the scent. Susan had been involved in a bizarre relationship with a fifteen-year-old schoolboy.

The youth—who attended the local MaConaquah School—had a complete obsession with Susan and was even known to have stalked her around town. He kept photographs of her in his locker at school and the boy had been continually getting in trouble for bad behavior at school. The boy’s sister even claimed that he kept other, near-pornographic photos of Susan under his mattress at home. The daughter told their father that the boy had told her “he was going to kill James Grund.”

At first, Bob Brinson was astonished about the story of the love-obsessed boy and he seriously considered him a prime suspect in the killing of Jimmy Grund. Officers immediately traced his family home in Peru and rushed round to apprehend their “killer” only to discover he was already in a state boys’ school for persistent offenders.

*   *   *

On August 7, Brinson and his investigators contacted Susan’s third husband, Thomas Whited, in Oklahoma City. What he told them did more than anything to convince the Indiana State Police investigators that Susan was their most likely suspect.

Whited initially explained that he had only been married to Susan for less than a year. When Bob Brinson asked what went wrong with the marriage, there was a long pause on the other end of the phone line. Whited coughed uncomfortably and then went on to reveal the full, disturbing story of little Tommy’s beatings at the hands of his cruel and twisted stepmother.

Brinson confirmed Whited’s claims when he did a criminal record search and discovered that Susan had indeed been given five years’ probation for the attack on Tommy. When Brinson asked Whited what condition his son was in now, he got a brief reply: “He is a vegetable.”

But under further questioning, Whited also admitted reaching an agreement with Jimmy Grund wherein the lawyer released Whited of any legal responsibilities for Tanell Grund in exchange for Whited giving Susan $25,000 for a trust fund for her daughter by Whited.

Whited also revealed to investigators that little Tommy’s paternal grandfather Lester Suenram of Oklahoma City had filed a $45,000 damage suit naming the Baptist Hospital where the youngster was taken when he was injured the first time, because the attack was not reported to the police. The case was eventually settled out of court.

Thomas Whited also described Susan as “the world’s greatest liar.” He even told investigators how, despite having a prenuptial agreement with Susan, she still continued to get on his back about setting up a will to provide for her if anything should happen to him.

Shortly after interviewing Whited, the Indiana State Police post received a call from Jimmy Grund’s father, James A. Grund, saying he had also located the Oklahoma City police report on the battering of little Tommy and Susan’s subsequent arrest. Everyone in Peru, it seemed, wanted to play the role of homicide investigator.

Brinson noted that Oklahoma City Det. J. M. Einhorn, who had been in charge of the investigation into Susan, said she had lied about several aspects of that case, even to the point of calling the family doctor and suggesting that her brother had got into a fight and had the symptoms later found to be consistent with the injuries to Tommy. Einhorn even stated in his report he had contacted the brother to establish that he had never suffered from such injuries.

Susan Grund was a confirmed liar … but did she murder her husband?

Twelve

The day before Jimmy Grund’s funeral, Susan appeared at the funeral home and insisted that her husband wanted to be buried in Macey, a little town north of Peru where his grandparents on his father’s side were buried. She also claimed that Jimmy had specifically requested that his brother Jeff not attend the funeral.

Jim’s parents, Connie and James, were furious. They had a family plot at the Mount Hope Cemetery in Peru, and that was where their son was going to be buried. But Susan was so adamant she insisted on holding a meeting with her husband’s grown-up children, David and Jama, to discuss the issue. What made it all the more bizarre was that by this time many people—including the entire Grund clan—definitely believed that Susan had murdered her own husband earlier that week. Investigators had begged all concerned not to confront Susan, in case she tried to flee the state.

Finally, it was agreed that Jimmy Grund could be buried in the family plot just so long as Susan could have her ashes buried with him when she died. The Grunds agreed to her demands with absolutely no intention of ever carrying them out. They simply wanted to make sure the funeral service went off without any embarrassing scenes caused by “grieving widow” Susan.