Deadly Seduction (2 page)

Bob Brinson’s first priority that night was to ensure that no one disturbed anything at the crime scene, and he intended to seal the house as quickly as possible. E.M.T. Paul Comerford immediately pointed out to Brinson that he had spotted a spent 9 mm. shell casing on the carpeted floor near the bed next to where Jimmy Grund had been shot. E.M.T. Comerford assured Brinson that the all-important shell casing had not been disturbed from its original position.

As Brinson turned towards the bedroom where the victim lay, he saw Miami County Coroner Dr. Dan Roberts arrive in his wagon outside the house. Brinson waited for the coroner and then escorted him to the ground floor bedroom. Brinson stood back as Dr. Roberts examined the body carefully before declaring that he intended to hold a full autopsy later that day at Dukes Memorial Hospital. Dr. Roberts also informed Brinson that the examination would be conducted by forensic pathologist Dr. Dean Gifford. Brinson noted all this, aware that his Indiana State Police colleague Sgt. Dean Marks would be assigned to attend the autopsy after collecting body samples and evidence from the scene.

*   *   *

All over Peru, news of Jim Grund’s death was being relayed to the town’s most important citizens with remarkable speed. County prosecutor Wilbur Siders was awoken by Kim Fenton of the sheriff’s department, who told him there had been a shooting at Jimmy Grund’s house. It never even dawned on Siders that his old friend and colleague Grund was the victim.

On the other side of town, Jimmy Grund’s good friend Peru Police Department Sergeant Gary Nichols got a call from the Miami County Sheriff’s office telling him to answer his door in about thirty seconds because “there’s going to be someone there who wants to talk to you.” As it happened, he had already noticed the tan and dark brown sheriff’s cruiser pull up outside his house.

Nichols presumed he was about to be dragged out of bed for a search warrant. He got a nasty shock when a deputy told him that Jim Grund had been killed. The moment they told him, Gary Nichols reckoned he knew precisely who did it.

Over on Main Street, in Peru, Miami Circuit Court Judge Bruce Embrey and Gary Nichols knocked on the door of Grund’s son David’s apartment.

“Your father’s dead,” was all Embrey had to tell David Grund before he collapsed.

*   *   *

The whirl of the motordrive of crime scene specialist Dean Marks’s camera soon echoed through the thin walls of the seven-year-old house as he took dozens of shots of the corpse and surrounding area. Later, he switched to a videocamera just to ensure nothing was missed before testing certain areas of the house and even the family car for traces of gunpowder residue. Nothing was found. In Sergeant Marks’s experience it was unusual for everyone in a house where someone had been killed by a firearm
not
to have some residue on them, since the powder was kind of infectious.

Brinson then allowed Jimmy Grund’s corpse to be removed by the E.M.T.s, who took it to Dukes Memorial Hospital where a detailed examination could begin. But what really concerned Brinson was the damage caused to the bedroom by the intruder. It was almost exactly the same as the damage at the break-in that had occurred at the house two years earlier.

Just as the body bag was being zipped up, Miami County Prosecutor Wil Siders arrived at the house clutching a search warrant that he already had obtained from Judge Bruce Embrey, who accompanied him. Bob Brinson gave Siders and Embrey a brief glance. He wasn’t surprised the big brass had showed up so quickly because just about everyone at that scene knew Jimmy Grund personally. Grund had been the county prosecutor in the early ’80s. If the same crime had occurred then, he would have expected Grund to have been one of the first on the scene. This is going to be a long night, thought Bob Brinson to himself. And it was only just beginning.

Susan Grund insisted to Bob Brinson and his state police colleagues that her husband must have disturbed a burglar. In the bedroom, investigators found two suitcases opened with their contents sprawled across the floor. Also, there was evidence that the adjoining master bedroom walk-in closet had been ransacked. In another corner of the bedroom, Susan Grund’s jewelry cabinet had four drawers removed and stacked one on top of another. They also found that Jimmy Grund’s dresser drawers had been opened with his clothing partially removed and piled on the floor.

Brinson continued watching Susan closely. He had experienced her idea of emotional upset two years previously during that burglary inquiry, and this time she was behaving in exactly the same way. She seemed to be crying without shedding actual tears. She still had that damp rag in her hand and kept dabbing her eyes with it.

Susan seemed extremely concerned about getting everything in the house straightened out.

Susan remained in the living room area of the house throughout all the initial police activity along with her sister, Darlene Worden and her husband, George. They were seated in one corner of the room adjacent to the master bedroom where the victim had been found shot dead.

Brinson asked Susan if she would examine the suitcases and the walk-in closet to determine if anything was missing. She coolly breezed businesslike into the bedroom and informed the investigator that there did not appear to be anything missing from the suitcases. Then Susan turned and walked into the closet and told Brinson that her jewelry box definitely had been disturbed. She noticed several rings, necklaces, and earrings missing.

“What about your husband’s belongings, Mrs. Grund?”

Susan looked up at Brinson and then headed for his drawers.

“Doesn’t seem to be anything missing, Bob.”

Brinson nodded and ground his teeth together. He sincerely wished she would stop calling him “Bob.” After all, this was an investigation into her husband’s homicide. Sure, he’d met her a handful of occasions in the past, but why the hell did she continue calling him “Bob”? But for the time being he chose to ignore her, although he called her “Mrs. Grund.”

Susan went on to tell Brinson that it was entirely possible her husband may have had some cash in his drawers following their recent return from a vacation in Alaska.

Then Bob Brinson found his attention captivated by a photograph that was precariously positioned on the top front drawer edge, complete with a belt neatly balanced on top of it, holding it in place. It was a seminude picture of Susan Grund and the way it was positioned there reminded Bob of a movie set rather than a scene of a burglary which had apparently ended in homicide.

He looked down at the floor immediately in front of the drawers and saw four similar photographs of Susan Grund scattered on the floor by the dresser. She was scantily clad and Brinson could not help noticing she had a hell of a fine figure.

Bob Brinson then escorted Susan Grund back to the living room and the comforting shoulders of her sister Darlene while he continued his examination of the murder scene. He was puzzled by the distinct lack of a forced entry and further bemused when Darlene advised him that the walk-in garage had been locked when she arrived on the scene following the call from her sister.

Brinson was also beginning to get a little irritated by Susan’s demeanor. Why didn’t she want to leave the house? After a murder most relatives want to get out of the house almost immediately.

While all this was going on, Darlene’s husband George picked up Susan’s daughter Tanelle and their own daughter Andrea and took them to Susan’s mother’s house three miles down the road, in the center of Peru.

Not surprisingly, the two little girls were hysterical when they arrived at their grandma’s home. Tanelle kept repeating, “Daddy’s dying. Daddy’s dying.” The two little girls hung onto George and continued sobbing uncontrollably. Susan’s mother Nellie Sanders took them to her bed and cuddled them for the rest of the night.

Back at Summit Drive, Susan Grund tried once again to phone attorney Jim Boyles at around 3:00
A.M.
He was a good family friend of the Grunds and this time he was in. He had some very businesslike advice for the grieving widow. He told her to inform her sister that neither of them should give any more help to the investigators.

Darlene was astounded when her sister told her what the attorney had said. What on earth did they have to hide, she wondered. Darlene turned to Bob Brinson and said she would not listen to her sister and she would be more than happy to answer any questions he had for her.

Brinson then went back to the bedroom where the murder had been committed. He was doubly irritated because there were far too many people inside and outside that house where the body had been found, including county prosecutor Siders and Judge Embrey, who were standing in the driveway. It was bad enough having a crime scene literally flooded with people, but when the victim was one of the county’s most prominent citizens it just added to Brinson’s burden. A lot of people were already trying to tell him how to do his job and he had no doubt it would get a whole lot worse.

In the living room area, Brinson was appalled to overhear two officers discussing their theories as to who had committed the killing. When county prosecutor Wil Siders suggested interviewing certain people there on the spot, Brinson intervened. This was his investigation and no one—however rich and powerful—was going to prevent him from doing his job in a fair-minded manner. That was the final straw; Brinson herded everyone out of the house and off the property. Some were none too happy about it, but, he explained, he had a job to do. Brinson had the unenviable task of actually proving that someone had murdered Jimmy Grund. He wanted to stay unbiased, but it was difficult in this hostile atmosphere. Certain people had already made up their own minds about the identity of the killer.

Then Bob Brinson gently advised Susan that as the investigation continued he would almost certainly have to ask her a lot more questions.

“That’s no problem, Bob,” purred Susan.

Brinson grimaced at the sound of her using his first name again.

“We may even ask you to take a polygraph examination,” said Brinson hesitatingly.

“That’s no problem either, Bob,” came her reply.

Not once did she question the clear implication that police already suspected she was in some way involved in her husband’s murder.

One

Almost thirty-four years earlier, Susan Grund was born Sue Ann Sanders in Vincennes, in southern Indiana. Not long after her birth, on October 10, 1958, the family moved to Peru, a small town more than sixty miles north of Indianapolis, known primarily for the constant sound of the freight trains blowing their horns at all times of the day and night as they shunted across the dozens of level crossings spread through the town.

Susan’s father, William Sanders, was a serious alcoholic whom she later claimed had sexually and physically abused her. To add to the family’s problems, she had an older brother who was retarded and died at age thirty-two in 1981. Another brother, Eddie, died of cancer on May 9, 1983.

When Susan was in second grade at school, her father got drunk and whipped her so hard she thought she was going to die. She suffered an appalling burn on the back of her left hand during the attack. The scar is still there to this day.

By the time Susan reached twelve, she was a striking-looking brunette school girl of almost five feet six inches in height with a pretty, well-defined face and deep, dark saucerlike brown eyes. Within months of arriving at Peru High School, she was on the must-date list of almost every eligible boy in town.

Susan’s mother Nellie had been born on a farm just outside Vincennes and came from a family of French settlers, who had been given five hundred acres of land near Vincennes through an incentive scheme set up in the late 1800s to encourage new settlers to move to the area.

Nellie married Susan’s father William Sanders when she was just eighteen. He worked in the steel industry at the time. It was a tightly knit community, run on similar lines in many ways to the strict Amish.

Nellie was an honorable, honest mother to her children, by all accounts. Her motto in life was (and still is):
I am not going to lie ’cause lying’ll get you round and get you back and get you more trouble than it’s worth.

She had seven children in all: Eddie, Rita, Randy, Darlene, Susan, Symbolene, and David. Susan always stood out because she was very pretty and possessed a determined streak that made her seem much brighter than her other brothers and sisters. She was the little princess who would one day find a rich and handsome prince and live happily ever after in a palace up on a hill. Living as part of a family who were too poor to afford anything but the most basic possessions was shaming to Susan. She was determined to do something about rectifying that one day.

Meanwhile, she had to make do with living in cramped conditions with the rest of her vast family in the most rundown house on the street where she lived.

The Sanders children all got along fairly well when they were younger. Susan was always good at helping out in the house and made a real effort to keep the place spic and span. She wanted to ensure it was a home to be proud of, if ever she invited a friend home from school. But, gradually it dawned on Susan that her scruffy home was too shaming to let her friends see so she tended to go round to other children’s houses instead.

From a remarkably early age, Susan was very good at always remembering to give her mother birthday cards and Mother’s Day cards. Susan also developed a virtual obsession about what clothes she would wear and she was constantly changing the color and style of her hair. She used to make an average of one new dress every week and then pretend to her school friends that her mother had bought the dress.

Susan did not get on with her father from the time he started attacking her. In later life, the very thought of what he had done to her would make her clench her fists in anger. Her voice level would rise and she would repeatedly see the images of what he did to her over and over again.

Susan ultimately became a self-destructive person following the psychological and emotional damage inflicted by her father. As a child she did not receive the sensory stimulation she required and could not establish a boundary between herself and the world beyond her tightly knit family. Even as a pretty young child she began to become an all-encompassing individual, seeing something from her own perspective and no one else’s. Her brothers and sisters soon noticed how fearless Susan became and the way she would rule the rest of the family without any sense that she hurt anyone else. Whenever Susan would do something bad, she seemed to feel little remorse and showed little sympathy for her “victim.”