06x20 - Root of All Evil

[bunniefuu]

Narrator: in , a witness claimed

She saw the brutal m*rder and cremation of a woman

Underneath a tree on a stretch of deserted farmland...

But there was no trace of the remains anywhere nearby,

And investigators were stumped.

For answers, they turned to the science

Of forensic geology.

Narrator: marshall, illinois, is a small farming community

Just across the wabash river from terre haute, indiana.

The rich soil feeds vast fields of corn

And acres of soybeans.

The biggest landowners in town were the grabbe family.

Fred and charlotte grabbe were very prosperous.

Both worked the farm with their daughter,

Son, and daughter-in-law.

Man: the grabbes had a lot going for them.

I mean, they had substantial resources--

Inheritance on charlotte grabbe's part--

You know, and well into the figures.

So these were not poor, small dirt farmers.

Narrator: fred grabbe was easy to spot.

At ' " tall and close to pounds,

He dwarfed his petite wife.

Woman: well, when I first got into the family,

I thought fred was very nice, very polite,

He was fun to be around and he really seemed to like me.

Um...they worked a lot.

Charlotte worked from daylight to dusk.

Narrator: the grabbe marriage had its ups and downs, like all marriages,

But this one had some unusual twists.

Fred grabbe had an eye for younger women,

And shortly after he married charlotte, the couple divorced.

Later, they reconciled and married again.

But in , charlotte again asked for a divorce,

And fred moved out of the main house

Into a smaller cabin on the farm.

The reason for the divorce this time

Was that fred was having an affair

With a pretty -year-old bartender,

Vickie mccalister.

O'brien: not exactly the most successful person in that part of the world.

She had tended bar.

She, uh--

Her reputation was not of the purest.

Narrator: on july , ,

Charlotte grabbe left the house

To cultivate soybeans on the farm.

Her children expected her home by dinnertime,

But she never returned home.

When her children couldn't find her,

They contacted the local sheriff.

Fred told the sheriff

That he had spoken to charlotte earlier that day

Near a storage shed on the grabbes' farm,

And their conversation got heated.

Man: they got into an argument,

He left the machine shed,

Charlotte pursued him in her car.

O'brien: she got in her vehicle, drove off,

And was last seen-- they last saw her driving up the interstate.

That was his story,

And consistently, over time, that's what he said.

Narrator: in the shed,

Authorities found charlotte's uneaten lunch

On her tractor.

Her purse was also in the shed,

Along with her migraine medication and driver's license.

And a neighbor said she saw charlotte's car

Drive by earlier in the day,

But the driver did not appear to be charlotte.

Crumrin: they saw fred's pickup go by,

And then they saw charlotte's car right behind it

With a blonde, curly-haired woman driving it.

Charlotte grabbe has dark, short hair, straight hair.

Narrator: a few days later,

Charlotte grabbe's car was found across the indiana state line

Outside a bar in terre haute.

Police found no blood,

No evidence of v*olence,

But they did recover

A fully loaded handgun under the seat.

Investigators learned

That charlotte had written a letter

Shortly before she disappeared,

And that letter contained a warning.

Narrator: charlotte grabbe disappeared from this remote field

On her illinois farm.

Just prior to her disappearance,

She asked her children to make a promise.

Woman: if she wasn't home by :--

: P.m.--

We were supposed to come and look for her.

Narrator: the reason--

She was afraid of the man she was trying to divorce,

Fred grabbe.

Walker: my dad would have fits of rage

For seemingly no reason at all,

Directed mainly toward my mother,

But sometimes toward my brother or myself;

More my brother than me, actually.

One particular instance,

I heard yelling, so I ran outside.

My brother and my dad were fighting physically,

And, uh...

My dad even...

Took my brother by the side of the head

And b*at his head into the fender of the pickup.

Narrator: just days before she disappeared,

Charlotte left several notes

In a safe deposit box in the local bank.

In the notes, charlotte accused her husband

Of stealing some farm equipment

And said she didn't think she would live

Through a divorce.

She said she was afraid of fred

And also his friend and business associate,

Dale kessler.

When police interviewed dale kessler,

He said he was home on the night charlotte disappeared,

And that fred grabbe had been with him.

When a grand jury asked fred grabbe about his whereabouts

On the day charlotte disappeared,

He invoked his fifth-amendment rights

And refused to testify.

With no evidence of a crime,

The official investigation stalled.

Charlotte grabbe became

Yet another missing person.

Despite a $, reward

Posted by the grabbe children,

Charlotte's disappearance remained a mystery

For the next years.

Walker: it's all I thought about,

From the time I got up till the time I went to bed.

Every night--"how am I going to find my mom?"

She could be alive out there somewhere;

Probably not, but she might be,

And I had to go on that possibility.

And I kept thinking, you know, if it were me, she would never give up.

Narrator: with nowhere else to turn,

In ,

Charlotte's daughter hired a private detective,

Charles pearson.

Pearson discovered that fred grabbe had recently broken up

With his longtime girlfriend vickie mccalister,

And pearson tracked her down in indiana.

Almost from the start,

Vickie mccalister seemed anxious

To talk about her life with fred grabbe.

O'brien: he was able to play on her emotions

And to draw from her a horrible secret.

Narrator: it was the secret to charlotte grabbe's disappearance,

And the story was so horrific, it was difficult to believe.

Vickie claimed that she went to the shed

To borrow a steel drum from fred to haul some trash.

When they heard charlotte drive up,

Fred told vickie to hide behind a tractor.

Charlotte and fred immediately began to argue

And soon turned violent.

Crumrin: from what vickie mccalister told us,

Fred actually choked charlotte several times,

And then would let up on the pressure and let her regain consciousness

And then would choke her again,

Making comments to her the whole time.

Narrator: vickie said that after grabbe choked charlotte to death,

He sodomized her.

Afterwards, he used a grease g*n

To fill every orifice of her body

To make it more flammable.

He then put her body in the trash barrel

And headed towards the river.

Vickie drove charlotte's car

And abandoned it over the state line in indiana.

Later that night,

Fred doused the body in diesel fuel,

And, while vickie watched, fred b*rned the body.

The fire lasted throughout the night.

Eventually, only charlotte's skull remained.

Grabbe threw it in the wabash river, saying

That it would make good fish food.

He then rolled the barrel into the river.

Crumrin: the story, when you hear the whole thing--

It's really kind of hard to believe.

Narrator: mccalister's tale horrified charlotte's daughter.

Walker: it was almost overwhelming.

Of course, I cried a lot and...

Over the course of the next few days,

It had to sink in because there just was so much to it,

You know, and it was so horrific, as you say.

Uh...

I just kept praying that my mom didn't go through any pain.

Narrator: mccalister had plenty of motive

To tell a story that would put fred grabbe in prison.

Man: there's no greater wrath than that of a spurned woman.

So she may have originally been concerned with, um,

A long-term relationship with him that lasted for a certain period of time

And then it ended, and then I think she was angry.

Vickie came to expect, if not be told,

That she would share in the dynasty,

The financial dynasty of the grabbe family,

That she would become a part of everything,

And that she and fred would live happily ever after.

I mean, that's the story that guys tell girls

And girls often believe.

Narrator: in exchange for her testimony,

Vickie mccalister was offered total immunity,

Relocation, and a new identity.

And if grabbe was convicted,

Mccalister could claim the $, reward

Offered by the grabbe children.

Crumrin: well, any time you have

Just one person's word against another,

It's always better to have some type of physical evidence.

Narrator: but there was another living witness

To the events of that terrible night years earlier,

And that evidence would tell

If vickie mccalister's story actually had

The ring of truth.

Narrator: fred grabbe's ex-girlfriend,

Vickie mccalister, took police to the scene of the cremation,

Which she says took place on the banks of the wabash river,

Just underneath this mature maple tree.

But after years,

There were no remains found anywhere in the vicinity.

Crumrin: I was with one of the attorney generals that was assisting

Our state's attorney in the prosecution of the case.

And I made a comment to him, just wondering,

If, at this burn site, if there was any possibility

That petroleum products from the diesel fuel that was used

Could still be recovered in the soil around the site.

Narrator: since the wabash river frequently overflows

In the area of the maple tree,

Any traces of the diesel fuel in the soil

Would have long been washed away.

Man: we took some soil samples

And they were negative for petroleum products.

Narrator: but one piece of potential evidence survived--

The maple tree,

Under which the funeral pyre allegedly b*rned.

Man: trees make excellent history books, because they show us

When events occurred

Nearby the tree.

They can explain to us exactly when different events happened.

Narrator: in this photo,

Sheriff crumrin is standing on the spot

The barrel was allegedly placed.

Was there any way for science

To corroborate vickie mccalister's story?

In the spring and summer,

Roots transport water and nutrients

From the surrounding soil up through the trunk

And into a tree's branches, where they fuel the growth of very large cells.

When the tree goes dormant in late summer and fall,

It produces smaller, more dense cells.

This cycle produces the familiar rings we see

When we cut a tree branch or trunk.

Each ring indicates another year has passed.

If the tree absorbed diesel fuel from the gruesome funeral pyre,

Was there any way to tell?

Carlson: diesel fuel is a toxic material to trees.

It will either k*ll the cells

Or it will affect their growth rate,

Their metabolism, adversely.

When it's absorbed by the tree,

It will slow the growth rate of the cells that it's in contact with.

Narrator: investigators cut branches from the tree,

And when they counted back through the growth rings,

They saw something startling.

Carlson: in , the growth of those branches

Had dramatically slowed from what it had been in previous years.

Narrator: growth rings from the year charlotte disappeared

Were much thinner than earlier rings,

But there was no way of knowing why this was so.

To find out,

Pieces of each branch were ground into sawdust

And given to dr. Donald dickerson,

An organic chemist.

Dickerson dissolved the samples

And injected the sample into a gas chromatograph.

The results indicated the presence of hydrocarbons--

Compounds indicative of petroleum products.

Even more startling,

Only of the branches showed traces of petroleum--

The ones on the side of the tree

Where vickie mccalister said the cremation took place.

Dickerson: samples from the other side of the tree

Were negative for hydrocarbons.

Some species of trees will translocate,

Or carry the material laterally around the tree, better than others.

Maple trees, in general, tend to maintain

Fairly direct columns between the roots

And the branches above.

Narrator: a unique forensic approach had uncovered evidence

That matched vickie mccalister's bizarre and horrifying story exactly.

Heck of a coincidence. Heh heh.

Narrator: john o'brien spent years

As a crime reporter for the [span tts:fontstyle="italic"]chicago tribune.[/Span]

O'brien: in the boondocks of marshall, illinois,

Way down in clark county,

I don't think there's another crime that comes close

To not only the m*rder of charlotte grabbe

And the means in which her body was disposed of.

Narrator: but the story doesn't end here.

Another mysterious fire,

An attempted prison break-out,

And the m*rder of one of the grabbe children

Were all to impact fred grabbe's trial.

Narrator: when scientists discovered hydrocarbons in the maple tree

Next to where charlotte grabbe's body was allegedly incinerated,

Fred grabbe was arrested and charged with m*rder.

The star witness was fred grabbe's ex-girlfriend,

Vickie mccalister, who was given immunity to testify.

Her story both fascinated

And horrified courtroom spectators.

Pancake: the first time, I think, I heard about the tree

Was when it came out in court, and I thought, "wow!

"You know, that really...to me,

Proves vickie was telling the truth about everything."

Narrator: the motive--money.

Fred grabbe had no desire

To split the family assets with his wife,

Even though it was charlotte's inheritance

Which comprised the bulk of their holdings.

Crumrin: most of the farm ground that they had,

It's my understanding, belonged to her through her side of the family.

And fred was going to lose a lot of money, basically,

Is what it all amounted to.

Narrator: if the love of money is the root of all evil,

The roots of a maple tree soaking up errant diesel fuel

Sealed fred grabbe's fate.

Fred grabbe was convicted of first-degree m*rder

In the death of his wife and was sentenced

To life in prison without parole.

In a bizarre twist to a bizarre story,

Fred grabbe's new girlfriend, barbara graham,

Armed with a g*n, arrived at the jail one night

And attempted to get him out of prison.

She fired sh*ts, wounding one deputy in the leg.

Crumrin: he is able to get up on top of her,

Says, "don't make me k*ll you."

And, at that time, the struggle ceased.

Narrator: for that offense,

Barbara graham was sentenced to years in prison.

Two months later,

The home fred and charlotte shared

And the house their children, jeff and cindy, had built next door

b*rned to the ground.

Arson investigators discovered

Both fires were deliberately set.

Crumrin: oh, I believe fred grabbe probably had some involvement with it--

Not in setting the fires directly, but I believe

He probably had some involvement, but we'll never know, probably.

Narrator: fred grabbe's lawyers appealed the first verdict

And on a technicality won a new trial.

A month before the second trial,

Fred's son, jeff grabbe,

Who had testified against his father at the first trial,

Was found m*rder*d in california

With b*llet wounds to the chest.

Crumrin: we were notified by seal beach, california, authorities

That they had found the body of jeff grabbe floating in one of the harbors out there.

Narrator: to this day,

Some believe fred grabbe had a hand in his son's m*rder,

Although fred denies it.

Pancake: I don't know if he had that kind of, uh...pull

With people he could send out to california.

I don't think so, but i-- there's a lot of things I don't know.

Narrator: the second trial ended the same way as the first.

Fred grabbe was found guilty of m*rder

And sentenced to years in prison.

Walker: I wrote him a letter,

Telling him that, uh...

I forgave him for what he did.

I hate what he did, but I still love him

Because he's my dad, if that makes sense.

Narrator: no one has ever been charged with jeff grabbe's m*rder,

And no trace of charlotte grabbe's remains

Have ever been recovered.

Vickie mccalister claimed her reward,

Then left the area--relocated at the state's expense.

She continues to fear

That fred grabbe will somehow take revenge,

Even from behind prison bars.

The maple tree still grows not far from the wabash river.

O'brien: the maple tree, alive and growing...

Was one thing,

One creation,

That fred grabbe could not intimidate,

Could not reach, could not destroy.