Sleep In Heavenly Peace (Pinnacle True Crime) (14 page)

“No.”

Mabel was diagnosed with congestive heart failure in 1993, generally a fatal disease of the heart. In 1995, she died. Was it a time of celebration for Odell, who had lived, she claimed, under Mabel’s dysfunctional reign for the better part of forty years?

Odell said it wasn’t. She felt a sense of relief, for obvious reasons, but it was no time to break out the champagne.

“My mother had used her disease as a crutch,” she said, “to draw sympathy from me, guilt from me.”

In many respects, one could say it worked, because it was Dianne Odell who had taken Mabel to the doctor’s office whenever she needed to go.

“She wouldn’t go by herself. She wouldn’t take care of herself…. Even though I went out of my way to make sure she had her medications and shit, she wouldn’t take them. At that point in time, I had drawn a line: I could lead a horse to water, but I couldn’t force it to drink. I could get her pills, but I couldn’t make her take them.”

Near the end of her life, Mabel was having “mini-strokes,” Odell recalled. She started losing her ability to speak. Finally she died of an aneurism one afternoon.

“I felt unbelievable relief when she was finally gone. Unbelievable guilt. And then I spent two weeks waiting for her to come back and
get
me.”

According to Odell, Mabel had said at various times that she was “
never
going to let [Odell] go.” Even death, Mabel said, wouldn’t stop her return from the grave to haunt her. Mabel had gotten into her head to a point, Odell claimed, where she believed she would
never
be rid of her.

“And she still tortures me to this day.”

Questioned further about Mabel by Weddle, Odell said, “Her and my father were a good pair, they were.”

“Meaning what?”

“Well, my father spent his life torturing me, and she—she spent her time trying to make me feel like it was okay.”

“In what way do you mean ‘torture’?”

“I used to get hit for nothing!”

“Physical, physically….”

“Physical, yeah, something like that.”

Odell then gave Weddle and Thomas an example, telling them a story about being hit in the face by her father’s “closed fist” after being slashed with a belt.

“So very strong-personality-type parents?”

“Yeah.”

For a few moments, Odell talked about her brothers, explaining how the abuse, as far as she could tell, was directed only at her. Afterward, she said she believed that if Mabel had never been in her life none of what was occurring at the moment—the babies in boxes, cops, the questioning—would have happened.

Weddle was curious, as was Thomas, why she thought her life would have turned out differently if Mabel hadn’t been part of it.

“I would have…I would have done what any normal person does.”

“Was there a question because you were an unwed mother?”

“Oh yes.”

“That there would have been problems between you and your mother?”

“Yes.”

“What would she have done?” Thomas asked. “You had the baby, the baby was deceased. What do you
think
she would have done if you were to have told her…. What would have happened?”

“She probably would have hit me. She didn’t hit me very often, but when she did, she
did
.”

Weddle seemed interested in Odell’s answer. Was Mabel one of the “underlying reasons” why her life had turned into such a mess?

“Yes.”

“I mean why…why this happened? Why the three babies were found deceased and not buried?”

“A
very
big factor,” Odell said. “I’m not blaming…I’m not blaming this on her—”

“No, I understand that,” Weddle said.

“This is me, okay.”

This statement by Odell fell more in line with a statement she had given to police back in 1989, when she was questioned about the death of Baby Matthew.

“For the length of my pregnancy,” Odell said in 1989, “I did not receive any medical assistance, nor did I tell my mother I was pregnant.”

Weddle and Thomas had found out only recently about Baby Matthew.

“One of the Towanda district attorneys, Stephen Downs,” Thomas recalled later, “was also there [that second day we interviewed Odell], and he remembered something about that first baby. He made some phone calls and found a report dated 1989.”

So Thomas and Weddle now had a clear picture of what had happened to Odell’s first child. According to the report, Odell said “somewhere around” September or October 1989, “I went to Jamaica, New York, to see my father, John Molina. I did not get along well with my father.” Odell was thirty-five years old at the time of the interview. “We sat at the kitchen table and I told my father I was pregnant and my mother did not have much money, and would he help me? He was disgusted with me. He told me to go into the TV room while he thought about whether I could stay there or not.”

For several reasons, Weddle and Thomas viewed Odell’s previous statement as contradictory. One, Odell would later claim her father had fathered the child during a rape. Two, she said she feared her father—that he was the last person in the world she would have ever turned to for help.

Although they now knew about Baby Matthew, Weddle and Thomas wanted to keep the focus on what had happened to the three babies found in Safford a little over a week ago. Odell had explained how Baby Number One and Baby Number Two could have died. But what about Baby Number Three? What were the circumstances surrounding the third baby’s death?

“To be really honest with you,” Odell said when Thomas asked about the third baby, “I can’t recall much about [it] at all.”

Thomas pushed her. “Do you know…How did you get pregnant? Did you have another relationship?”

“Yes.”

Then the interview centered on Odell meeting Robert Sauerstein and the reasons why they moved from state to state: New York to Pennsylvania, Utah to Arizona, Texas to Pennsylvania. Throughout the interview, Odell was asked several times if she wanted something to eat, if she wanted to take a break, or if she needed to use the rest room. Essentially, she was being questioned under her own free will. She could leave at any time.

Interestingly enough, at one point, Thomas asked, “And you never told your mother [about the dead babies in boxes], even before she passed away?”

“No! Like I said, I would rather have had my arm cut off and be beaten to death before [I would do] that!”

Soon after the interview concluded, Odell collected her things and prepared to leave. Before she stepped out the door, Thomas walked over to her and told her there was a possibility the case would be handed over to New York authorities and they would be getting in touch with her soon.

Odell was tired and beaten down by the emotional toll the interview had taken on her. In a sense, she had dredged up feelings and thoughts she had perhaps long ago parted with. “Okay,” she said to Thomas.

Just then, as she was walking toward the door with Sauerstein, Trooper Williams approached her. “Take care of yourself. Thanks for coming in and speaking with us. We appreciate it.”

“Thank
you
, Trooper Williams,” Odell said, “and thank Diane Thomas and Bruce Weddle, all of you, for…for treating me with respect and dignity.”

“Okay,” Williams said as Odell walked over to him and, he said later, hugged him, said good-bye, and walked out the door.

1

ON AUGUST 18, 1986, with Mabel and Robert Sauerstein by her side, Dianne Odell went into labor. By the end of the day, she would give birth to Clarissa, her eighth child, her fourth living child. With Sauerstein now part of the family, living in the house, the father of the child, Odell was brought to Community General Hospital once again while Mabel stayed at home. This would become an important issue later—because whenever Odell had a man in her life who knew she was pregnant and she went into labor, she ended up having the child at a hospital.

Was it a coincidence?

Odell later said she “never” told Mabel she was pregnant with Clarissa. She was afraid, she claimed, “that if Robert left,” she would be alone and pregnant with only Mabel to look after her.

“What I did was, I told her on the way out the door that I was on my way to the hospital.”

Odell had been pregnant seven times previously, had four of those children in the house, Mabel by her side, so she claimed. But this one, the eighth child, Mabel didn’t know about? Authorities would find this hard to believe—the fact that Mabel, whom Odell had described as someone who was constantly in her face and trying to control her, wouldn’t have known she was pregnant. It was a near impossibility.

2

At the conclusion of the May 18 interview, Odell, who hadn’t really admitted to much of anything substantial, was free to go. She was not under arrest, nor was she in custody. Thomas, however, warned Odell that New York authorities would be contacting her about the case. As of now, though, she was a free woman.

None of what had taken place had comforted Odell. In a way, her past was beginning to catch up with her. Soon, she knew, everything was going to have to come out. There was still that shadowing aura of the media hovering around, trying to sniff out a story, and Odell was fully prepared for it, though she had no idea, really, just how big a story it was going to be within the next twenty-four hours.

What was important to Weddle and Thomas, as they sat back and talked about the interview after Odell left, was where the babies had been born—that much Odell had admitted: Kauneonga Lake, New York.

“In law enforcement,” Thomas said, “that meant that the jurisdiction of this case was no longer in Arizona. It now belonged to New York.”

Weddle and Thomas knew their work was finished once they heard the babies were born in New York. They would have to stick around and debrief New York authorities on what they had uncovered, but the case would fall on the shoulders of the NYSP—if, in fact, they felt they had enough evidence to pursue it. There were all sorts of questions lingering regarding statue of limitations, manslaughter, first- and second-degree murder. But the main question, the one piece of information no one seemed to know: had the children been born alive?

As of yet, there was no proof they had been. Odell was sure of her story and had, if nothing else, thought it out thoroughly. When Weddle had asked her if she recalled one of the babies crying, she said she couldn’t remember. Thus, if the babies were stillborn, there was no case, and the only person who could vouch for the childrens’ well-being was the same person who had said she couldn’t remember. Essentially, the entire case fell on Dianne Odell and what she would do next.

3

As Mabel, Odell, Sauerstein, and Odell’s four living children—one of whom had been fathered by Sauerstein—began a new stage of their lives at the lake, things seemed to be going rather well as the new year, 1987, approached. For Odell, it was about stability. She had a man in her life who loved her, which was all she had ever wanted. But Mabel wasn’t going anywhere. She became, at this point, a nuisance for Odell, a ball and chain that would seemingly never detach itself. Wherever Odell and her family went, Mabel was there tagging along.

“We’re not living high on the hog at this point,” Odell remembered, “but I’m happy. I’m coming out of the darkness and into the light.”

Indeed, since 1972 she had given birth to eight children—four of whom were dead. Just having Clarissa and keeping her alive, one could speculate, was a step in the right direction.

By this time, Baby Matthew, still locked inside the blue suitcase, decomposing, had been moved from attics to closets to toolsheds. Along with Matthew, though, there were three more dead children in boxes, wrapped in plastic bags and blankets, also being moved from place to place. When Odell, Sauerstein, Mabel, and the living children moved again during the summer of 1987, they abandoned an old Volkswagen, which hadn’t run in years. Either mistakenly or on purpose—the truth would never be known—the blue suitcase containing Matthew’s remains was left inside the trunk of the car.

“When we got evicted from that brown-and-white house,” Odell said, “we only had three days to get out.”

Apparently, within the struggle to gather her personal items, Odell must have failed to realize the suitcase was inside the trunk of the car, where Mabel had put it after getting that call from George Hess, who had found the baby in an attic he had cleaned out one day.

Sauerstein, who had recently gotten laid off, had been offered a job in Hawley, Pennsylvania, a small town outside of Scranton, on the northern tip of Lake Wallenpaupack.

Because Sauerstein had to find a home big enough for Odell, the kids, and, of course, Mabel, he went ahead to Hawley while Odell, the kids, and Mabel moved into a motel in Cochecton, New York, just outside of Monticello.

By the time Sauerstein got settled in his new construction job, it was January 1988. By then, he had found an apartment on Main Street in Hawley. Four months later, however, after the place didn’t work out, they moved to Paupack Street, not too far away, near downtown Hawley.

As they settled into their new home, Sauerstein worked hard to support all of them. Yet, as they were still just getting by, Odell had
another
announcement to make.

“I’m pregnant.”

Her ninth pregnancy. But still, the reality of Odell being pregnant again wouldn’t center on whether she would have the child; it came down to whether the child would live—and that, of course, as history had proven, depended on how Odell’s relationship with Sauerstein went.

4

At six o’clock on Sunday night, May 18, 2003, Sullivan County, New York, district attorney Steve Lungen received a call that introduced him to the Safford, Arizona, case of the three dead babies found in boxes. Lungen had just gotten home from a day of riding his Harley-Davidson, a bike he had purchased in 2001 as, he said jokingly, “part of a midlife crisis.” Before buying the bike, Lungen had never driven a motorcycle. Yet, he fell in love immediately with the wind on his face and the meditative sound of the tar humming underneath his feet.

“When I bought the Harley,” Lungen recounted, “I thought my wife was going to divorce me…but now she gets mad at me if I don’t take her when I go out for a ride. I love it. It’s the only thing that really relaxes me.”

The spring air was mild in the Northeast in May 2003. Summer was in the air. One of the ways Lungen was able to get away from the daily grind of prosecuting murderers and rapists, thieves and child molesters, was to hop on his bike with his wife, hit the road, and forget about the madness that infused his daily life as one of Sullivan County’s most dedicated and esteemed prosecutors.

As Lungen rolled his bike into his garage, his cell phone rang. It was Rick Sauer, a NYSP investigator.

“I just got off the phone with the Pennsylvania State Police,” Sauer said. “They are investigating a case involving a woman with babies. There’s a claim that maybe she had another baby we found back in the 1980s.”

Lungen sat down on a crate in his garage and caught his breath. He hadn’t been home five minutes. It was a Sunday. Dead babies? A mother?
Can I ever catch a break from this?

“Do you remember the case at all, Steve?” Sauer asked.

Lungen shot back a few questions, more specific in nature, and then a bell went off. “Yes!” he told Sauer. “There was a fetus found in the trunk of a car out by Kauneonga Lake.”

As Sauer began to say something, Lungen thought:
The fetus had been found in the trunk of a Volkswagen back in the late ’80s and I had considered prosecuting the case. I tracked down the woman who had abandoned the newborn inside the suitcase, but…
Then, “I don’t recall her name, Rick. But I remember we found the woman and determined we couldn’t proceed with a criminal case because of her position that she claimed the baby was stillborn.” Lungen paused and took a sip from a bottle of water he generally always kept by his side. “Why, what’s going on?”

“Okay, let me get back to you,” Sauer said. “You’re going to get a call from the DA in Pennsylvania. They’re investigating this case in Arizona where they think this mother killed three of her babies. And we think that maybe this baby in the 1980s might be related. But let me call you back.”

“Right. Okay.”

Lungen put his bike away and didn’t think too much about the call. It had been a long day of riding and forgetting about work. The last thing he expected on a Sunday night was getting mixed up with three dead babies and a case he had tried to prosecute nearly twenty years ago.

For any district attorney who had harbored truth and justice as a sixth sense, however, work
was
life, life
was
work. It was a twenty-four-hour, seven-day-a-week job. There were no breaks.

Fifteen minutes later, while Lungen was sitting in his kitchen preparing to eat dinner with his wife, the phone rang again.

“Listen, Steve,” Sauer said, “we’ve been questioning this woman, Dianne Odell, in Pennsylvania. Based on our conversations with her, three babies that were found in a storage shed in Safford, Arizona, were traced back to Pennsylvania and eventually back to New York—which is
your
jurisdiction.”

Lungen stared at the kitchen table, ran his hand across his forehead. “What has she said?”

“Well, she said the babies were born in Sullivan County, which makes it
your
case.”

“Okay,” Lungen said, “let me think about this.”

“We’re not arresting her. I want to make that clear,” Sauer added. They weren’t even sure, Sauer continued, that they had a case. He was calling to inform Lungen what was going on. In fact, after interviewing Odell that afternoon, the PSP had allowed her to go home, Sauer explained.

“We weren’t exactly sure what it was she had said to the Pennsylvania State Police during what had turned out to be four hours of taped interviews,” Lungen recalled. “Had we known at the time, it may have changed our position.”

After he and his wife ate dinner, Lungen put in a call to one of his investigators and had him set up a meeting with the Pennsylvania authorities—a sort of get-acquainted-with-the-case gathering. He told him to schedule the meeting for the first thing Monday morning. Lungen and his two investigators, along with an investigator from the NYSP, would drive down to Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania, and sort out what was going on. If Odell was admitting to murdering the babies in Sullivan County, then it was indeed Lungen’s case. But who knew at this point? Odell, Lungen soon learned, hadn’t really admitted to much of anything just yet.

Immediately Lungen began to worry about the media. He was told the story was about to blow up, which would generally hamper an investigation and make cops and attorneys conduct business differently. But the media in this case, Lungen recalled, would ultimately be an asset. The pressure the media was about to put on Odell as she left the interview with Thomas and Weddle would, in effect, break the case open.

5

On July 10, 1988, Adam Sauerstein was born to Odell and Robert Sauerstein. A healthy baby, Adam was given life by the wonderful doctors and nurses at Wayne Memorial Hospital in Honesdale, Pennsylvania. Odell, now almost thirty-five years old, had five small children at home and four dead children still waiting for, in her words, a proper burial.

For the next eight months, Odell lived a life she later described once again as “a constant state of fear.” She began to suspect Mabel might do something to her living children. Yet, at the same time, she claimed, she was happier than she had ever been. Sauerstein, for the most part, treated her well, and because he was around, Mabel’s abusive behavior had been kept to a minimum. Still, there was always, she said, that lingering notion that Mabel would hurt the children if she decided to either tell Sauerstein about the dead children or run to the police and explain how Mabel had murdered them.

The life Odell was managing—a life that included stowing away four dead babies as if they were hand-me-down clothes—was all about to change, however.

Near the beginning of 1989, Max Shapiro, a forty-eight-year-old junk dealer who owned and operated a small junkyard behind his home in Bethel, not too far from where Odell and Mabel had spent much of the past fifteen years living on Kauneonga Lake, received a call from a woman who lived on the lake. The woman asked Max to come to the lake and tow an “abandoned vehicle” off her property. A family who had recently moved out of the area, she explained, had left the car behind.

Always looking for quality used auto parts, Max drove up to the lake a day or so later and towed the Volkswagen away.

For months, the vehicle sat in Max’s junkyard collecting more rust than it already had. Then, on March 14, after it had been stripped of all of its valuable parts, Max decided to ready it for the press so he could sell it for scrap metal.

With most vehicles, Max liked to go through them one last time before he fed them into the press. With the trunk of a Volkswagen in the front of the vehicle, Max took out a crowbar and
snapped
the lip open to see if someone may have left anything of value behind.

“Inside was a gray plastic garbage bag,” Max later told police, “containing a blue suitcase, a blanket, and a fancy picture with different-colored glass.”