10
CARROLLTON POLICE
ASK FOR HELP
As part of Newman Smith High School’s Vocational Education program, Stacie Madison worked after school in the office of Dr. Jeffrey Adelglass, a prominent Metroplex allergist with ties to WFAA, the Dallas, Texas affiliate of ABC Television.
Among the WFAA employees Stacie had met via the doctor was veteran weatherman Troy Dungan who, like everyone else who met her, was struck by the 17 year old’s outgoing nature and unabashed confidence.[1]
Through the doctor’s friendship with Troy Dungan, the story of the disappearances of Stacie Madison and Susan Smalley finally hit the local airwaves on Wednesday, March 23, 1988, two days after Frank Madison and Carolyn Smalley had first reported their daughters as missing.
OUT OF CHARACTER
John McCaa, today one of WFAA’s lead news anchors, was the one to break the story on the air during that afternoon’s broadcast.[2]
The following day, an expanded version of McCaa’s story appeared in the Dallas Morning News.
“Police have issued a plea for help in finding two Carrollton high school students who have been missing since Saturday night,” the story began. It continued with the details:
Susan Renee Smalley, 18, and Stacie Elizabeth [sic] Madison, 17, both seniors at Newman Smith High School, told their parents they were going out on Saturday night and were last seen at about 1:30 a.m. Sunday by a waiter at a Steak and Ale restaurant in Addison where Miss Smalley worked…The young women's parents and police said they are concerned because leaving for several days without contacting their parents is out of character for Miss Smalley and Miss Madison.[3]
The article also included a curious statement about the girls’ disappearances from Carrollton Police Lt. Dennis Watson, who was quoted as saying, "We're handling it like something has happened to [Stacie and Susan] but we have nothing to indicate something has.”
The story provided physical descriptions of both girls: “Miss Smalley is 5-foot-8 and 140 pounds, with brown hair and green eyes” and “Miss Madison is 5-foot-6 and 160 pounds with blond hair and blue eyes.”
It ended with the disclosure that a “$1,500 reward is being offered for information leading to their safe return.”[4] Within a single week, the reward, offered by First Western National Bank of Carrollton, would swell to $8,500.[5] By 1989, it would stand at $10,000.[6]
The reward would not be the City of Carrollton’s only gesture of care and concern for the missing girls.
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5
SAPP AND BOCK
When the girls were reported missing in March 1988, the case – which was and still is classified as a “missing persons” case – was first assigned to investigators Ohlen L. Sapp and David W. Bock of the Carrollton Police Department’s Juvenile Section.
“Ohlen was the lead investigator,” David W. Bock told me. “I assisted at the start of the case.”[1]
The case had fallen to Sapp and Bock for two reasons: Stacie Madison and Susan Smalley were both students at Newman Smith High School in Carrollton, Texas, which technically made them juveniles in the eyes of the city, even though Susan Smalley was legally an adult; and the Juvenile Section was the unit tasked with handling all missing persons cases.
RELATIVELY INEXPERIENCED
At that time, Mr. Sapp and Mr. Bock were both young men in their late 20s. They had each been with the Carrollton Police Department for approximately four years, but both had been an investigator for less than one year.
Bock recalled, when I was finally able to interview him in October 2009, “It was just [Ohlen] and I in Juvenile…Juvenile is kind of where [the Carrollton Police Department brought] you in to start. So, we were not experienced investigators at that time.”[2]
OVERWORKED AND UNDERSTAFFED
In addition to their relative inexperience, the two men lacked much in the way of support from the Carrollton Police Department.
Momentarily reinserting himself into the landscape of March 1988, Bock remembered:
This is a missing persons case, so it drops to Ohlen and I. We’re the only two working it...the department gave us overtime but, other than that, I don’t believe they gave us any support…we didn’t get any other manpower support…and, again, here we have less than a year on as investigators.[3]
Their challenges would be further compounded by another factor beyond their control – the categorization of the case.
SEMANTICS – HOMICIDE VERSUS MISSING PERSONS
Since there was initially a certain amount of skepticism regarding whether something had happened to the girls or whether they had runaway, the Madison/Smalley case was classified as a missing persons case. In this regard, Ohlen Sapp offered:
[The case] did come to us as a missing person case. There was no sign or indication from the information we had initially that there’d been any foul play or anything like that. We did have Spring Break going on at the time and there was a prevailing thought that [Stacie and Susan] went to Padre or whatever.[4]
The case remains a missing persons case to this day.[5]
The Carrollton Police Department’s rationale for classifying the case as a missing persons investigation, both initially and currently, is understandable since to classify it as anything else would involve removing the girls names from the nationwide database of missing persons against which discovered remains are matched.
At the same time, it is also regrettable since this decision has defined the department’s handling of the case in a number of ways. As David Bock says, “A missing person case is approached much differently than a homicide.”[6] Specifically, he says, “An open missing person case doesn’t carry the same urgency as an open homicide investigation.”[7] By the time I was able to interview Mr. Sapp and Mr. Bock, this was a truth I understood all too well. By that time, I had already been pursuing the Madison/Smalley case for six months and had already been privy to the insights of two other investigators in the case.
[1] David W. Bock, September 21, 2009.
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19
THE TIME IS NOW
It is now time for someone to finally do the right thing and share what they know about the murders of Stacie Madison and Susan Smalley.
As I write this chapter, Stacie Madison and Susan Smalley have been missing from the world that knew them for nearly 22 years.
The girls are not just missing. They are also presumed dead. Such has been the case for quite some time now. In the case of Stacie Madison, as mentioned previously, she was declared legally dead at the time that her father’s estate was probated in 1996.
TROUBLESOME WORDS
I have avoided speaking in such terms as “death” and “murder” until now when discussing the events of March 20, 1988 because, knowing the Madison and Smalley families will read this book, I have done my best to be sensitive to their feelings.
This chapter, though, is about how it is now time for people who know something about the girls’ deaths to finally speak up regarding what they know about this case. In other words, since it is lost on some people anyway, the time for subtlety is over. And it is now time for someone to finally do the right thing and share what they know about the murders of Stacie Madison and Susan Smalley.
GOOD AT KEEPING SECRETS
One certainty in all of this is that whoever is responsible for Stacie’s and Susan’s deaths is talented at keeping secrets.
I offer this observation knowing that crimes are often solved owing to humankinds’ common inability to keep its mouths shut. Case in point, everyone has heard of at least one murderer who was captured because, in either a moment of confession or braggadocio, they shared the details of their crime with a person who was equally incapable of keeping mum. Thus far, though, the mystery of the girls’ deaths is one surrounded by silence.
So where are these silent individuals responsible for the murders of two innocent girls? Are they still in society, walking among us, raising families of their own, and living ordinary lives?
As does everyone familiar with it, I pray that justice will be delivered to the Madison and Smalley families.
I pray also that the persons responsible for Stacie’s and Susan’s deaths are haunted by their crime in their dreams each night. I am sure, though, that this is not the case. Instead, since these individuals are apparently sociopaths without soul or conscience, they probably sleep just fine. That is the ultimate injustice.
James Ellroy, the author of such mystery novels as L.A. Confidential, has said, “It’s my emphatic assertion that ‘closure’ is a fatuous notion that no secondary victim of violent crime will ever achieve.”[1] He makes this statement after living a life defined by the 1958 murder of his mother, which remains unsolved to this day.
What Mr. Ellroy says might be true. Still, I pray that the Madison and Smalley families will be blessed some day with closure of one form or another.
In 1990, Ida Madison told The Dallas Morning News, “Even if my daughter is dead, I want to know what happened to her. I just know in my heart that there is somebody somewhere who knows what happened to them.”[2]
I have no doubt that Ida Madison is correct. There is at minimum one person who knows how and why Stacie and Susan died and whose hands are stained with their blood. It is obscene that these individuals have not come forward before now.
TIME FOR OTHERS TO FINALLY SPEAK UP AS WELL
It is also time for another group to finally speak up about what they know. These people are Stacie’s and Susan’s friends and acquaintances who, although they most likely do not know the girls’ final fates, have withheld other information that may be vital to solving this mystery.
It will no doubt be adjudged controversial, but I contend that there are people known to the girls who, for any number of reasons, have not been completely forthcoming with what they know (or even suspect) regarding March 20, 1988. I base this claim upon subtle but troubling truths of which I became aware in the course of pursuing this book project.
FEAR OF BEING LABELED A GOSSIP?
For one thing, I located numerous people via the internet’s various online communities who knew Stacie and Susan. When notified by me of my intention to write this book, I was fortunate to discover that most of them were only too happy to answer my questions about the girls. Many were likewise willing to allow me to use statements they had previously posted online regarding Stacie and Susan.
However, although they were thankfully in the slimmest of minorities, I also discovered a small number of people who were uncomfortable speaking with me. The reasons they offered for refusing my requests for information were variations on the same theme. Specifically, they were apprehensive out of fear of being accused by others of “bad mouthing” Stacie and Susan.
Initially, I paid little attention to these comments, given that the majority of people whom I approached had been so gracious to me. Yet as time wore on, I grew increasingly troubled by the term “bad mouthing.” For one thing, I had stressed to everyone I encountered that it was my intention to emphasize the positive in this story as often as possible. I never once asked anyone to provide me with any form of gossip.
My question then became, “Just what is it these people know?” Are they fearful of sharing what they know about the disappearances of the girls because in doing so they would have to reveal that they were partying with or near Stacie and Susan on March 20, 1988? I also wondered, “Who has withheld information for all these years regarding Stacie and Susan for fear that they too might be perceived as ‘bad mouthing’ the girls? From whom have they hidden what they know about March 20, 1988 and why?”
Granted, I quickly came to realize that the reputations with which these people are concerned in 2009 are not those of Stacie and Susan, but instead their own. They are fearful that, by revealing whatever it is they know about that night, their own legacies might suffer. This struck me as the ultimate in selfishness.
After nearly 22 years, could they possibly possess any knowledge about Stacie and Susan that would go beyond the typical juvenile behavior in which nearly all teenagers engage at one time or another? Moreover, considering that the girls are long presumed dead, would these people have anything to offer that could be more hurtful to the Madison and Smalley families than living through an unsolved nightmare for two decades?
NO SPECULATION OF ANY KIND EVER OFFERED
What I found equally disturbing – especially in light of this incomprehensible fear that some people seemed to have of being branded a gossip in a scenario involving two dead girls – was the realization that, in the nearly 22 years since they disappeared, not one single person known to the girls has ever come forward to offer so much as substantive speculation regarding where Stacie and Susan may have been heading on the night they vanished, any intimation as to what the girls’ intentions for being out and about so late were, or even a prediction as to who they might have met on Forest Lane. Was this just mere coincidence or is the silence intentional?
Ida Madison says Stacie’s closest friend, Heidi Monk Wilhelm, told her that she “didn’t believe for a minute that Stacie got into a car with someone she didn’t know, unless Susan knew them.”
Moreover, Ida stated:
Heidi and Stacie were cruising Forest Lane one night and two older men - translate that to college age - pulled up next to them and offered to give them some beer if they would ride with them…Heidi and Stacie looked at each other and said, “Let's get out of here,” and they did.[3]
In this regard, Ohlen Sapp offered the observation that, even at 2:00 a.m. on a Sunday morning, Forest Lane was a very busy place on the weekends. So, he believes, it is highly unlikely that one girl, let alone two, would enter a stranger’s vehicle against their will, without a fight and in utter silence on such an active street.[5]
Accordingly, we must presume Stacie and Susan parked their car at the intersection of Webbs Chapel Road and Forest Lane in order to accept a ride from someone they knew to one degree or another.
In any event, based upon the above assertions, the presumption can only be that the girls entered a vehicle owned by someone they knew and trusted to one degree or another. More than likely, they knew the driver of this car very well.
The reader is cautioned to realize that the person from whom Stacie and Susan accepted this ride might not necessarily be the same individual responsible for their deaths. There is no question, however, that the girls were taken somewhere by this person and in a car other than their own.
Perhaps it was to an all night restaurant, a party at a friend’s house, a gathering at one of the lakes in the Dallas area, or to a remote cemetery near a fish hatchery. At that location, provided they were not already in their company, the girls met the person or persons who murdered them.
Granted, this mystery driver might not be able to answer the ultimate question regarding what became of the girls, but they might possibly be the missing link in the chain of events that does lead to a resolution.
The point is that someone other than Stacie and Susan drove the girls to the unknown destination to which they headed when they left Webbs Chapel Road and Forest Lane on that March night so many years ago. I assert that people known to the girls either know or suspect who this person was.
When I spoke with Ida Madison regarding the possibility that there may be people out there who have not been completely forthcoming with what they know or suspect out of fear of being labeled a gossip or a traitor of some sort, her response was:
I had never thought about this angle…withholding a vital clue to protect their own reputation. Who cares after 21 years what they [the people withholding information] did when they were 17 or 18, unless they were the murderer or with that person? The utter audacity of such behavior floors me! Many of the people who knew Stacie and/or Susan need to take a long hard look at the other people they knew at this time. Are their own kids now playing or going out with the kids of some of those people? What do they really know about those people as parents? Could their precious child be hanging out in the home of a murderer?[6]
Ida is correct on all counts. Unquestionably, not everyone has shared everything they know or suspect with police, and their justifications for doing so are absurd.
SOMEBODY SOMEWHERE KNOWS
In 1990, Ida Madison stated to the press, “I just know in my heart that there is somebody somewhere who knows what happened to them [Stacie and Susan], and I want them to know that they have put us through pure hell.”[7] To this day, she stands by this conviction and insists that the only way the mystery of Stacie’s and Susan’s disappearances will ever be solved will be by “getting that one person who knows something to come forward.”[8]
Now is the time for that someone to examine their conscience, do the right thing, and finally speak up regarding what they know.
[1] Murder by the Book, Court TV, November 14, 2006.
[2] The Dallas Morning News, March 15, 1990.
[3] Ida Madison, June 18, 2009.
[4] Deanna Bowman Sinclair, October 1, 2009 and Carolyn Smalley, September 22, 2009.
[5] Ohlen Sapp, October 17, 2009.
[6] Ida Madison, August 10, 2009.
[7] The Dallas Morning News, March 15, 1990.
[8] Id. and Ida Madison, June 6, 2009.
