Akron Beacon Journal (OH)
PART III: THE TERRIBLE SILENCE
THE DARK SECRETS OF CHRISTOPHER BELOW
Author: Craig Webb and Gina Mace, Beacon Journal writers
Dateline: HENDERSON, Ky.
By the time Christopher Below was willing to confess that he shot Kathern Fetzer and left her body in a Dumpster, Medina Detective Scott Thomas knew there was much more to the story than Below was telling.
Thomas just didn't know how much more -- and still doesn't.
For years, those who investigated the Fetzer case were bothered by not knowing how much significance they should place on an item that was found months after Fetzer vanished in November 1991 -- an item Below left behind in his abandoned Lodi apartment.
Whether by accident or design, Below left a briefcase with a 5-year-old South Carolina poster that sought the public's help in learning the whereabouts of Kristina Joanne Porco.
Kristina, they discovered, was a petite, 16-year-old girl with long, dark hair who had been missing since Nov. 29, 1986.
She left her home in Hilton Head, S.C., following a quarrel with her mother.
She had called a girlfriend, asking to meet her in the pool area of the complex.
When her friend arrived, though, Kristina was gone and all that remained was the girl's red sweater.
She never was seen again.
Why her missing poster was left in Below's apartment is unclear.
But it was among the first of many hints that led police to believe Christopher Below might be a serial killer who collected souvenirs from his victims -- all petite women with long, dark hair.
In fact, Mellissa Moschner, one of Below's half-sisters who opened her Evansville, Ind., home to him in 2000, told police about a shoe box of treasures her brother always kept with him.
"He pulled out the box one time and said, 'If anything ever happens to me, hold on to this,' " Moschner recalled.
She said the box contained an assortment of letters and nude photos of his ex-wife in Georgia, some trinkets of jewelry and a ring he said he got from an uncle.
But according to her recollection, it also contained fliers for five or six missing women -- all petite with long, dark hair.
Thomas, the Medina detective, said he has long been puzzled by photo-graphs of Below, taken over the years, in which Below appears to be wearing women's jewelry.
So, police are still looking for the box.
When Below discovered Moschner had been snooping, he transferred the contents to another box -- a box with a lock -- and took it elsewhere.
The search for the box took Thomas back to Evansville, Ind., where he and Evansville Detective Dan Winters conducted a search of another girlfriend's home and a storage unit Dec. 8.
But the elusive box was nowhere to be found.
Instead, though, Thomas discovered a certified mail receipt that seemed to add to the mystery.
It placed Below in St. Cloud, Fla., during his travels in 1998, about the same time a woman by the name of Mary Kushto vanished after leaving a local bar.
After six years, the case remains unsolved.
And Mary Kushto never was seen again.
"Unless you find something to physically put him there (at the scene with one of the abductions), you can't offer him a deal," Thomas said. "He won't confess."
Christopher Below is in Marion Correctional Institution doing time for the slaying of Kathern Fetzer.
He avoided a trial and the possibility of life in prison by agreeing to plead guilty in September to a single count of attempted involuntary manslaughter.
His sentence was 11 to 18 years behind bars.
To this day, though, he never has said why he killed Fetzer.
Police never believed his story that he put her body in a Dumpster and they have no proof of what happened to his vehicle.
They are suspicious, though, of a place in Kentucky -- a place along the Ohio River where locals used to dispose of junk vehicles by pushing them into a deep pocket of water carved out by the force of the winding, wide river.
But that was 13 years or so ago, and the deep pocket that for a while was a handy, if questionable, dumping spot has since been filled in by the meandering waters.
It is less than a mile downstream from where a large metal cross is sunk into the sand to memorialize the spot where 23-year-old Heather Teague was dragged away nine years ago on that otherwise perfect day in August.
It was put there by Indiana businessman Tim Walthall, one of a number of items he paid for -- including psychics and search teams -- in an effort to discover what happened to the young woman who was abducted while he watched with a telescope from the other side of the river.
After all these years, his eyes still fill up as he speaks of it.
``I felt I had an obligation," he said. "I feel the good Lord let me see something -- let me see something for a reason.
"And that was to let me help solve this thing."
It is only a theory that the disappearance of Heather Teague could have been the result of Christopher Below's yearning for a sexual threesome, involving another man. His lust for such encounters was no secret to the women in his life.
Furthermore, he was in the vicinity when the abduction took place; he fit the description of the abductor; and another male suspect -- Marvin "Marty" Ray Dill, whose car was linked to the crime -- committed suicide when police moved in to question him.
Medina attorney Robert Campbell, who represented Below in the Fetzer case, said his former client has steadfastly denied having anything to do with the disappearance of Teague, and never mentioned any other such cases.
Nonetheless, law enforcement's interest in the strange, secret life of Christopher Below continues.
In November, Lt. Bob Bromage from the sheriff's office in Beaufort County, S.C., made the trek to Marion Correctional Institution to question Below about the 1986 missing-person poster for Kristina Porco, the Hilton Head teenager.
Bromage left saying there would be more questions.
Below was "still a person of interest," he said.
Evansville Detective Brent Melton -- who tried to get Below's cooperation last year on the Teague case when Below was arrested in Fetzer's death -- said he was struck by Below's failure to seize an opportunity to deny involvement in the Teague case when the opportunity was handed to him.
"I told him the girl's mother was losing her mind over her daughter being missing," Melton said. "I told him she wants to know what happened."
Melton said he suggested to Below that he could blame Teague's abduction on Dill -- the suspect who killed himself when police approached.
"I said he could say Marty Dill did it," Melton said. "I said he could say (Dill) forced him to participate. I told him it would look good in the eyes of the court."
Melton paused, recalling the conversation.
He said Below responded: "I see your point."
"I was accusing him of murder," Melton said, "and he never denied it.
"Just his reaction -- I can't explain it," he said. "It gave me chills."
James Below's eyes brim over when he recalls the happier times two years ago, before his son's arrest, when they worked for the same trucking company -- father and son passing each other at work, offering each other friendly waves as they started along their routes.
"I still see the truck he used to drive every day and I expect him to be in it," the father said.
James Below is the man his son once called his rock -- his path to a new start and a new life.
"He said he'd finally found his family," the 60-year-old Below said. "What hurts me the worst is the way he deceived the family, especially (his half-sisters) who looked after him and loved him."
The sisters have long since kicked Christopher Below out of their lives after they say they found him in a compromising sexual position with a child.
"I grew to hate him," Melinda Bass said. "I don't really claim he's my brother anymore."
James Below said his heart goes out to the survivors and he notes: ``Not only did they lose a daughter, but I lost a son."
At 67, Betty Tipton has come to terms, as best she can, with the notion that her daughter, Kathern Fetzer, will not be coming through the front door anymore.
Like other such survivors, she has no grave to visit -- only a small memorial garden in the back yard of her tidy Medina home full of more than 200 angels collected since her daughter disappeared.
Tipton was there last September in Medina County Common Pleas Court when Judge Christopher Collier sentenced Below for her daughter's death.
Watching Below utter his one-word answers tested her.
"It took all my strength, when I saw him in court, to not go up to him and wring his neck," she said.
In Madisonville, Ky., however, Sarah Teague toils on a home computer to maintain a Web site honoring her daughter, stumbling over piles of the girl's belongings and papers from the case.
She hasn't given up yet.
A child's dress that Heather wore hangs from a hook on the wall where large posters are covered with pictures of her oldest daughter.
From a dresser drawer she pulls out the pair of white-and-blue tennis shoes that Heather wore that day on the beach in 1995 when she was abducted by the long-haired man.
"Look," she says. "There's still sand in them."
A short walk down a hallway leads to Sarah Teague's bedroom, where a large cedar chest sits at the foot of her bed.
Lifting the long lid, she shows off more mementos.
Clippings of newspaper articles about her daughter's disappearance are mixed with family photos.
She reaches in and pulls out the pair of denim shorts Heather wore on the day she was abducted. They, along with the shoes, were found on the beach.
"So many things are in your heart that are always there," she says.
"My memories are now frozen with missing posters. "I kind of wonder sometimes," she says, "if she was even real."
Copyright (c) 2005 Akron Beacon Journal
