The Old Kobain Place Pt. 02

"I was getting the feeling that something was stressing you out over the last several weeks," Carrie said.

"Why didn't you ask me about it before?"

Carrie put her hands behind my head and pulled me to her, and said, "I didn't want to add to your stress, and I knew that you would eventually tell me what was going on." Then she kissed me, and as she was pulling away, she reached down with her right hand and gave me a little squeeze that gave me a big reaction. "When we get to bed, I will give you all the stress relief you need," she said. "Now I have to get out dinner on the table."

I still had a lump in my pants when I sat down at the table, and Carrie noticed it with a smile.

Wednesday April 15, 2016

Wednesday morning, Hanratty and I went to the Kobain Place with a team of seven Brodricksburg Police Officers. I knocked on the door, but no one answered, so I taped a copy of the warrant to the door and waited for Van Horn to arrive. Five minutes later, two FBI trucks came up the long driveway. One of the trucks was pulling a trailer with a small boat on it.

When Van Horn got out of the truck, I asked him about the boat. "The boat has side-scan radar that will allow us to see if there is anything on the bottom of the pond that shouldn't be there," Van Horn said. "Have you served the warrant yet?"

"Nobody home, so I taped the warrant to the door. We are good to go."

Van Horn spoke briefly with a couple of his agents, and they backed the boat trailer down to the pond, launched the boat, and got busy scanning the bottom of the pond.

When I saw the GPR rolling off the truck, I wondered how the operator was going to roll that thing over twenty plus acres of farmland covering a path only a few feet wide on each pass.

The operator introduced himself as Larry Nelson and said the lawn between the barn and the house looked like a good place to start because the ground was flat. He said, "I'll make a test run here to make sure the equipment is working correctly."

He walked in a straight line parallel to the side of the barn. He went about fifty feet, turned around, and came back along a line about four feet to the right of his first pass. When he got back to where I was standing with Van Horn, Larry said, "There's an anomaly under the ground here."

Van Horn and I both moved over to look at the GPR's, screen but nothing I saw there made any sense to me. It was just a bunch of lines at different angles.

"Let me try that pass again and see what we get," Larry said. He started in the same place he made the first pass, moved what I would estimate at six feet in from the driveway, and stuck a wire with a red flag on it into the ground. He moved another two feet stuck in another flag. Larry moved forward another six or so feet and put down another flag. Before Larry got to the other side of the lawn, he had placed five flags. Larry then moved about five feet to his left and started back toward us, placing flags along the way. When he got to us, Larry moved the GPR to our right and started across the lawn again.

In all, Larry made twenty passes and about ran out of his little flags by the time he finished.

"What did you find?" Van Horn asked Larry.

"There is something down there. Come take a look at this." Van Horn and I followed Larry over to the barn and stopped next to the first flag he put down. "Look down the lines of the flags," Larry said.

There were five rows of flags, all in straight lines.

"Before I got to this first marker, there was an area the GPR penetrated down about 4.5 meters. It's unusual to go that deep unless you are scanning through material like dry sand. This first flag marks an anomaly that is about 3.0 meters down and runs to the side of the house. The second flag indicated something solid that is only 1.2 meters down. As I moved to the middle flag, the surface of whatever is under us rises to .76 meters, then drops back to 1.2 meters at the next flag. The last flag marks an anomaly at 3.0 meters, and then I get another reading down to 4.5 meters. As you can see by looking at the flags, whatever lies below the ground here seems to run from the barn to the house."

"What do you think it is?" I asked.

"The impression I get is like the arched top of an underground tunnel. I've seen this kind of thing before."

I looked at Van Horn and said, "A tunnel?"

"That's not all. I would guess that both sides of the tunnel have been filled with sand with enough extra sand to cover the top."

"Why sand? It's not like the soil around here is sandy," I said.

"I'm guessing to keep the tunnel dry. Rainwater and snowmelt would rapidly drain through the sand. The anomaly I found at 3 meters down on bother sides of the structure I think could be French drains to remove water as it sinks through the sand."

"If Quentin Kobain built a tunnel here in the 1850s, where would he get all that sand and the materials to build a tunnel?" I said.

"Don't know about the stones for the tunnel, they could be local, but the sand probably would most likely have been brought up the river on barges."

"I guess we will have to find a way into the tunnel. Rich, you go with Kyle and see if you can find an entrance from the barn, and I'll take our new friend, Larry, and we'll go into the cellar and see if we can find it." I said.

"Before we go, I need to get something from the truck," Larry said.

When Larry returned, he was carrying a little red box with four wheels and a handle that looked like a gamer's control stick. "What's that?" I asked.

"It's a handheld GPR. It could help us find the door to the tunnel," Larry said.

I got two flashlights from my car and handed one to Larry, and we headed down into the cellar. Even with the cellar lights on, it was hard to see anything. We managed to find the cellar wall area where an entry to the tunnel would most likely be. I was examining the wall, looking for any sign of a door or gateway, but I could not see any.

I stopped for a second and saw Larry holding his handheld GPR, and he was rolling it along the wall the way a little boy would roll a toy car on the wall. Larry stopped just to my left and said, "The tunnel starts here." Then he continued another ten feet or so and stopped and said, "This is where it stops. If there is a way in, it has to be right here between us."

I examined the wall again but still couldn't find a door. "There might be some sort lever to release the door," Larry said. You're tall, so you look along the top of the wall, and I'll look along the bottom."

When I didn't see anything, I started feeling around between the floor joists. I found it between the joists just above where Larry said the tunnel began. It felt like a metal handle. I pushed down on it, but it didn't move, so I pulled up, and when I did, I heard a clank, and a large section of the wall pivoted open with minimal sound. I looked into the darkness inside the tunnel and wondered what might be waiting for us in there. I tried to call Hanratty and Van Horn, but I wasn't getting a cell or a radio signal, so I asked Larry to go over to the barn and tell them we found the door.

While Larry was gone, I stepped inside the tunnel and was surprised to see how big it was. My flashlight beam could not penetrate to the other end. My first thought was that this tunnel would be the perfect place to hide the bodies, but there was no smell that would indicate the presence of any. Tina Johnson disappeared six months ago, but I would have expected there would still be a lingering smell of decomposition if she was in there. I dragged my foot across the tunnel floor and could feel that it was composed of compacted dirt. The made me wonder if the bodies could be under the tunnel's floor. While I waited for Van Horn and Hanratty, I stepped another ten feet into the tunnel but had to stop when there was a bright flash of light, a loud bang, and the ricochet of a bullet hitting the way just to my left. I dropped to my knees and turned off my flashlight.

Apparently, Michael Bliss was hiding in the tunnel.

"Michael Bliss, Don't shoot. I'm Captain Hobbs of the Brodricksburg Police Department."

"You're trespassing. You have no right to be here," Michael said.

"I have a search warrant that gives me the legal right to search the property. It's taped to the kitchen door. Come on out, and I'll show it to you."

"You get out of here. Get off my property."

"Michael, this is not your property. It belongs to Jackson Winslow." I only said that to gauge his reaction.

"Ha. That's what you think."

"Oh yea, I forgot. You are Jackson Winslow and Michael Bliss, aren't you? I bet you have one hell of a story to tell, and I would love a chance to hear it," I said.

"Like I am going to trust you. You're just like everyone else. All you want to do is to put me in a cage like a lab rat. You can forget it."

"If you fight us, you will end up getting yourself killed."

"It would be a relief if you could, but you can't kill me. I am immortal."

Just then, I could hear several voices coming into the cellar. I could see their flashlight beams as they approached the tunnel doorway. I yelled over my shoulder, "Turn your flashlights off. Michael is in the tunnel, and he is armed."

"Are you okay?" Hanratty yelled back to me.

"I'm fine. He fired once and missed."

"What do you want to do?"

"Stay where you are. I am coming out."

When I got out, I asked Van Horn if they left anyone in the barn looking for an entrance.

"We left two Agents over there. We couldn't find a door, but they are still looking."

"We need to get word to them that Michael Bliss is in the tunnel, and he is armed. He may be able to open a door on that end from inside the tunnel, so they need to be ready if he tries to slip out that way. You'll have to go outside to call them. There is no cell or radio reception down here."

Van Horn rushed out of the cellar to make the call.

"Do you think he is hiding the bodies in there?" Hanratty asked.

"I don't know, let me ask him," I said.

With the cellar dark, I opened the tunnel door again and stepped back inside. I pulled out my recorder and turned it on before speaking to Michael.

"Michael, are you still here?"

"Where else would I be? I can hear your friends banging on the wall in the barn, so I have no way out."

"Can I ask you a question?"

"Guess I can't stop you, but I might not answer," Michael said.

"When you killed Margo and Adler, did you bury them down here?"

He was quiet for a minute, and I thought he wouldn't answer me, so I started to ask him again when he interrupted me.

"I never wanted to hurt her, but she betrayed me."

"Is she buried in here?"

"No. Margo is not buried in here. She is beside me right now. "She has told me that she has forgiven me.

"Margo talks to you?"

"Yes, she talks to me all the time. That is except for the times she runs away, and I have to go find her."

"How many times has Margo run away?"

"Eight times. When she goes, it's always around Halloween. That was one of our favorite times together."

"She ran away eight times over the last fifty-six years? How old are you, Michael?"

"I'll be eighty-eight on October 11. I bet you don't believe me."

"I believe you, Michael."

"What do I have to do to get you to put down your gun and come out of here with me?"

"I can't leave Margo, and the Virginian told me that I couldn't trust you."

"Who's the Virginian?"

"Just someone that was already here when I found this tunnel."

"And he talks to you?"

"Yes. The Virginian always tells me when Margo has gone away and what I have to do about it."

"Michael, I am going to go back into the cellar for a while, but I'll come back so we can talk some more," I said.

"I would be happier if you just left me alone."

"Sorry, Michael, but I can't do that."

I slipped back out of the tunnel and Joined Hanratty, Van Horn, and Larry in the cellar. "He hears voices," I said. "He believes that his dead wife talks to him, and someone he calls the Virginian also speaks to him."

"Who the hell is the Virginian?" Hanratty said.

"No idea. He said the Virginian was there when he found the tunnel. He says he won't come out of there because he has to stay with Margo."

"How are we going to get him out?" Hanratty said.

"Any ideas?" I said.

"We have riot gear in one of the trucks," Van Horn said.

"Riot gear? We have one guy in a tunnel, not exactly a riot." I said.

"What I was going to say is that included with the riot gear, we have gas masks, tear gas, and night vision goggles," Van Horn said. "We toss in a tear gas canister, wait a minute, then go in and bring out."

"Sounds like a plan."

Ten minutes later, we were ready to go in. Van Horn, Hanratty, and I slipped inside the tunnel and put on the gas masks and night vision goggles. On my signal, Van Horn threw a gas canister toward the far end of the tunnel. Within a minute, we could hear Michael coughing. The three of us moved as quickly and quietly through the tunnel as we could. I spotted Michael squatting down and trying to rinse the tear gas from his eye with a bottle of water. The three of us rushed him before he could do anything to defend himself. Hanratty and I pined Michael down while Van Horn cuffed him.

As we got Michael on his feet, I told him that he was under arrest for the murder of Margo Winslow, then I read him his rights.

Chapter 27

Once Michael was taken away to be booked, we went back into the tunnel to search for Margo's body and others we might find. The tear gas was still clouding the air, but we found the latch to open the door into the barn end of the tunnel. I called the station and asked Sgt. McKinstry to bring a couple of large fans out to the farm so we could clear the gas from the tunnel. McKinstry arrived about the same time the State's crime scene investigators arrived. It took fifteen minutes to clear the air enough for the investigators to enter the tunnel.

The crime scene team brought in powerful quartz lights on tripods to light the tunnel. Van Horn, Hanratty, and I followed the team as they proceeded through the tunnel. It was somewhere about in the middle of the tunnel when we made a gruesome find. There were fourteen bodies in the tunnel. Nine of the bodies were naked women, one a naked man, and four men dressed in clothes that looked very old. Surprisingly, the bodies weren't just piles of bones. The bodies had become mummified.

I looked at Alan Simpson, the lead on the CSI team, and he said, "I have seen this happen before, but never around here. It takes the perfect combination of dry air, temperature, and absorption capacity of the underlying soil. It appears that we have that perfect combination in this tunnel."

After that, Van Horn left to report what we found to his boss, and Hanratty went back to the station to tell the Chief. I stayed with the crime scene boys. At five o'clock that evening, the State Cornier picked up all nine bodies that were Michael Bliss' responsibility and sent them to the morgue for identification and autopsies.

One of the crime scene guys found a letter in the pocket of one of the four remaining bodies. The letter was from Henry Wise, the Governor of Virginia, requesting local law enforcement's assistance in searching for the runaway slaves. The letter was dated September 25, 1857. A Forensic Anthropologist was notified about the find, and arrangements were made for him to be there tomorrow morning.

As the crime scene team packed up their gear and prepared to leave, I closed the barn's tunnel entrance. I was walking back toward the cellar entrance as I saw the last CSIs go, so I hurried to catch up to them. As I passed the four men still on the floor of the tunnel, I heard a voice clearly say, "Tell Governor Wise what happened to us."

I hurried to get out of the tunnel, pushed the door closed behind me and tried to convince myself that I didn't hear anything.

Epilogue

Over the next several months, the State Coroner's Office was able to identify all of the women as being those in the missing person cases we were working. They also identified the naked man as Jerry Alder.

The Forensic Anthropologist determined that the four men in the tunnel were bounty hunters who made their living hunting down runaway slaves. The four men were all carrying sidearms, but all had been shot dead with the same pistol. Based on the clothes, the letter they carried, and the guns in their holsters, the four men died a short time after Governor Wise wrote that letter for them.

Michael Bliss told the story of the failed experiment in April of 1953, which resulted in Lach, Talley, and Steinhauer's deaths. He confirmed that he became Jackson Winslow to hide his true identity. Michael was asked how he was able to survive without ever holding a real job. He told the interviewer that he was paid $3,000 a month until 1987 when he blew up the REORP lab.

"What did you do then, Michael?"

"By then, I was getting Jackson Winslow's Social Security check every month, and I had made some investment back when this started that helped me later."

"What kind of investments?"

"IBM, Xerox, AT&T, and Standard Oil. Those stocks did very well for me."

Michael was never tried for the murders he committed. In a strange twist of fate, it seems that when we tear-gassed him in the tunnel, the gas reacted with something in his body, and he began to age rapidly. His outward appearance didn't change much; it was his liver, lungs, heart, kidneys, and other organs that started to shut down. He lived for two months after his arrest. His cause of death was listed as heart failure, but it could have been any of his organs that did him in.

The End