If Looks Could Kill (10 page)

The youngest of four children, Dave Whiddon was born and raised in Akron. He had been a police officer with the APD since 1992 after taking the test and scoring high marks. The year before, Whiddon met his future wife, Laurie, who was working as a triage nurse in the emergency room of the local hospital. “We both got out of bad relationships,” Whiddon recalled later, “and we hit it off from the start. She is the greatest woman I have ever met and has a special gift in dealing with sick children.”

Whiddon’s name carried an air of respect around the APD. His great uncle, Harry Whiddon, was the APD’s chief of police for nearly twenty years (1958 to 1976). Uncle Whiddon was a tough, no-nonsense type of leader. He knew his police force and, even better, had the respect of his officers. All cops spoke of Harry Whiddon in the highest regard.

By pure luck, Dave Whiddon joined the police force at the right time. There were a lot of officers set to retire in the coming years, which of course opened up many different opportunities within the department. Whiddon was a college man, a book person. He had studied history and, at that time, wanted to get his Ph.D. and teach high school or college. Besides his uncle, he was the only one in his family to enter law enforcement. He soaked up the city during those early years, making contacts on the street and putting his heart and soul into his work. Within five years, Whiddon took the test for sergeant and, by 1997, was promoted as one of the youngest officers to ever make the ranking. The job didn’t come without a few dirty looks from some of the other officers, or a bit of skepticism on the part of some who thought he’d fail as a supervisor. But Whiddon worked for the respect of his officers and, over time, earned it.

For the next three years, Whiddon worked as a patrol sergeant. During that time, he took the test for lieutenant. When the results came back, it was no surprise that he finished near the top and was put on the list to be promoted once again. “The only problem,” Whiddon said later, “was that I
hated
being off of the street and not doing actual police work…. My wife did not want me to take the promotion because I currently had holidays and weekends off. She did not understand that it was driving me crazy not to be doing actual police work.”

In December 2000, not quite knowing where he was going to end up, Whiddon found out a lieutenant’s job had opened up in the detective’s bureau of the CAPU. “I always wanted to work in the detective bureau,” Whiddon added, “especially investigating homicides. But I also knew that this unit was in shambles at the time. Also, this was an exempt position and one not based on seniority. It meant that the deputy chief and captain could choose who they wanted for the job, regardless of seniority, unlike most of our positions.”

Fellow officers warned Whiddon about Ed Moriarty, who had a reputation in the department as a raging firebrand. Don’t mess with Moriarty, Whiddon was told. He’ll tear your head off.

When Whiddon showed up on the sixth floor to begin his new job, Moriarty pulled him aside. “Hey, kid,” he said, “I heard a lot of people in the department want to see you fail.” From Moriarty’s standpoint, the department was not in the best shape at that time. There were many internal problems. The negativity alone was enough to bring anyone down, he said. Whiddon was walking into a hornet’s nest. Moriarty knew there were some who would cheer at the idea of Whiddon failing.

As Moriarty talked, Whiddon listened closely. He had respect for Moriarty, whose reputation as a tenacious investigator with a quick temper followed him, but also as someone who never gave up on a case.

“I’m retiring soon,” Moriarty continued, “but I’m going to do everything I can before I go to help you out and show them all that you’re definitely the right person for the job.”

Moriarty believed in Whiddon. Many wrote off the relationship before it started, saying the moment would come when Whiddon and Moriarty went at each other’s throats. But Moriarty never saw it that way.

As it turned out, Moriarty’s attitude was comforting to Whiddon, who found the work on the sixth floor—especially out on the street—stimulating. One of the things Whiddon did was refuse the private lieutenant’s office that came with the job. He instead chose to sit among his unit in a cubicle. With a solid, stocky build, entirely barrel-chested, Whiddon looked more like a fullback for the Ohio State Buckeyes—his favorite football team—than an investigator working the streets of Akron. He wore his dark hair shortly cropped and had a comforting disposition about him that worked well out in the field. Although his size might have been intimidating to some, he also showed great poise and delicateness that supported the psychology behind what he did for a living. Ever since Whiddon joined the team, as he had promised, Moriarty took him under his wing and taught him the things only a detective with decades of experience could.

Moriarty gave Whiddon a lead in the Jeff Zack case that had just come in, telling Whiddon to get with another detective and check it out. Then he organized and dispatched several additional investigators to follow up on some of the telephone calls they had received overnight and into the morning. Mike Shaeffer went out and spoke to a young girl who said Jeff Zack had been involved in apprehending a man who had caused an accident years ago that killed her girlfriend. Jeff had followed the driver of the car who had caused the accident. After stopping him, Jeff sat with the young girl until an ambulance arrived. He was a kind man, who had done a Good Samaritan act, the girl suggested. The driver of the other car was later sentenced to a year in prison for vehicular homicide. With all the other theories piling up, Shaeffer knew that being responsible for putting a guy away in prison for a year was as good as any other motive they had. Maybe the dude got released from prison and developed a resentment against Jeff and finally built up the nerve to get back at him. It was worth a look.

The reason the girl had called was to say she believed Jeff Zack had followed someone. “And maybe that other driver shot him.”

Shaeffer wondered about the guy Jeff helped put in prison.

“After his release,” the young girl told Shaeffer, “the guy developed diabetes and died.”

“Thank you, ma’am,” Shaeffer said, a bit frustrated. “If you think of anything else, call us.”

Another promising lead that amounted to nothing.

Although Jeff Zack had worked many different jobs, he was, at the time of his death, an “employee” of Accurate K Flooring Systems. He had worked there on and off for the past five months. Sixty-four-year-old Zahi Kakish, an immigrant from Jordan who had been living in Akron as a United States citizen for decades, was Jeff’s boss at Accurate. Dave Whiddon pulled into Accurate with Russ McFarland, another CAPU detective. McFarland had spent thirty years of his life with the APD, twenty-one of those as a patrol officer. His brother was a cop, and McFarland looked up to him and the “good guy” role he played in society. McFarland had gained some weight over the years, but it did little to dampen the decades of law enforcement experience he had on many of his colleagues. Like Moriarty, McFarland had spent some time in Vietnam, one year with the First Cavalry Division Helicopter Repair outfit. Married, he had a nephew in the APD, a son who was a North Carolina trooper, another who was a JAG attorney in the military, two other kids, five grandchildren and two on the way. With a growing family and decades in the department, one might think McFarland was ready to hang up his badge and spend the rest of his days drifting aimlessly in a boat on a lake, fishing away his life. But none of it fit his style. “You know,” McFarland said in his soft voice, “I still look forward to and like coming into work every day.”

On the Monday afternoon after Jeff Zack’s death, Whiddon and McFarland met with Kakish, and felt he might have some useful information. There was no telling which one of his peers or colleagues Jeff had reached out to and discussed how chaotic his life had become over the past few months.

Kakish immediately explained how distraught he was over the death of his employee—that much was obvious in the way the man acted. Jeff’s death had no doubt affected him deeply. As they spoke, it was also apparent that Kakish had a different view of Jeff Zack than most of the people the CAPU had spoken to. He described Jeff as an “OK worker, punctual, who got along fine with his coworkers.”

“Was he always here? Did he take a lot of time off?” Whiddon asked.

McFarland slipped into the background of the conversation so he could watch Kakish. One of McFarland’s assets was a knack he had for reading people, which is something a good cop develops over the course of a long career.

“No,” Kakish said. “The only time he missed work were excused absences. He took some time off in May to go to Arizona to visit his parents. And again, he took off”—Kakish put his hand on his head and massaged his temples, thinking—“I can look it up…um, he took off June eighth through the thirteenth, I believe.”

Whiddon and McFarland knew without saying that the May dates were the same days others had claimed Jeff had gone away. Jeff’s credit card receipts, moreover, backed it up.

“Jeff told me his aunt who lived in Detroit was very sick…on a respirator and she was dying. He said he went up there to be with family when they ‘pulled the plug.’” Then, after giving Whiddon and McFarland a list of employees Jeff had worked with, Kakish said, “Jeff never discussed his personal life. I’m shocked by his death. He was good, harmless man. So sad.”

Leaving Accurate, Whiddon and McFarland discussed Kakish. He seemed sincere, Whiddon believed. But there wasn’t much there. Jeff’s coworkers, however, could be a different story. “Jeff was a swindler, a crook and a convicted criminal,” Whiddon said later. “That was the impression we were getting.”

“He had made a lot of enemies,” McFarland added. “That was very significant to us during those early days of the investigation.”

Anyone could have killed Jeff Zack.

As they were heading back to the department, Bertina King called Whiddon. “Hey, Bonnie Zack just called in a name—Ben Fluellen.”

Whiddon and McFarland looked at each other—the name was on Kakish’s list of Jeff’s coworkers.

“Bonnie said she just received a call from Fluellen,” continued King. It seemed urgent. Bonnie was sure Fluellen could help.

McFarland called him. “Listen, I just came back from Jeff’s funeral,” Fluellen said. “I’m really upset…but I think I have some info that could help you guys out.”

“We’ll be there right away,” McFarland said.

Detective Mike Shaeffer hooked up with Ed Moriarty and Bertina King at the same time McFarland and Whiddon headed over to Ben Fluellen’s apartment, and drove out to Bonnie’s Temple Trail home to interview Jeff’s mother, one of his brothers, a friend and, as they were about to find out, another mistress of Jeff Zack’s.

For cops, interviewing the mother of a murder victim is not a part of the job they enjoy. Under the normal circle of life, parents aren’t supposed to outlive their children. Elayne Zack was going to be beyond distressed and was likely not going to be much help. On top of that, the entire family had just returned from Jeff’s funeral. The feeling in the house was docile and dark. A few days ago, Jeff was running around yelling and screaming at everyone, being his old self. Now he was in the ground. The last thing family members wanted to do was ponder Jeff’s extramarital life or his past. A stiff drink, a few hours of mind-numbing television, some tears, memories and a good night’s sleep sounded more like it.

But Moriarty and his team wanted to find Jeff’s killer. Accomplishing that, they knew, would bring some solace to the family, however miserable they felt at the present time.

Elayne Zack lived in Arizona. She was in town to bury her son. Apprehensive at first because she was so knocked down by grief, as Elayne opened up, she began by talking about Jeff’s recent trip out to see her and the rest of the family in Arizona during the Mother’s Day holiday. “It was a surprise,” Elayne told Moriarty, “he said he got a free ticket.”

Moriarty and King knew it was one more in a long list of lies—albeit a small one—Jeff had been telling, because they had a Visa bill of Jeff’s that showed a charge for plane tickets to Phoenix. That is, unless someone else was paying his Visa bill.

“During the visit, Jeff told me he had broken it off with Cindy,” explained Elayne. “And he said he was
very
unhappy about it.”

“Why, Mrs. Zack, had they broken up?” asked King. “Did Jeff tell you why?”

“Well, he said that him and Bonnie were ‘close now.’ He told me Bonnie knew all about the relationship and he flaunted it in front of her because he needed attention.”

Elayne and her husband, David, knew about the affair her son was having with Cynthia George. It was disheartening to them both. They hated hearing Jeff talk about it, and were appalled when he paraded it in front of them. In an interview, Elayne said Jeff could be “erratic at times,” but at the same rate, he had a “darling personality…he was a great salesperson” and “probably had some insecurities, but who doesn’t?”

Addressing King once again, Elayne said, “It was very upsetting to my husband, because Jeffrey used to tell us that he was having an affair with Cindy, and I—my husband and I objected to this. So when Cindy would appear wherever we went, we would get very upset.”

On top of that, the telephone calls became a sour subject. When Jeff would visit his mother and stepfather, Elayne remembered, his cell phone would “incessantly ring. It rang all the time and it was
always
Cindy.”

The Zacks adored Bonnie, which was one of the reasons why hearing about the affair and seeing it take place when they were in Akron visiting hurt them so much. “We liked Bonnie so much, we felt badly, and we—we didn’t want the situation to take place.”

As other witnesses the CAPU had interviewed also explained, Elayne agreed that Jeff was “very sweet” to everyone while he was in Arizona, “which was unusual,” she added, “since he was usually very aggravating.” In fact, during that last trip Jeff took to Phoenix, he had surprised them all with the visit. It wasn’t planned. That Friday night, Elayne, groggy and preparing for bed, took a telephone call from Jeff. “I’m in Phoenix,” he said. “Do you want me to come and get you?” Elayne asked. She thought he was at the airport. “No, I’m fine. I’m going to have something to eat.”

Jeff showed up that weekend and, Elayne remembered, “his whole demeanor was different. I mean, he was…he had been angry with [his brother] over [a] ski vacation, and that whole week [he stayed], he was a different person. My husband and I kept looking at each other because, you know, Jeffrey wasn’t the most reliable person. He would take my car and show up late. This time he was always on time…. He did tell me that he couldn’t see Cindy anymore and he was very angry, saddened by it.”

Taking a break to collect herself as Moriarty and King comforted her best they could, Elayne said she “worried about Jeff because of his relationship with Cindy.”