The Cold Case of Pastor Elkhorn

In 1975, the Reverend Andrew Elkhorn, an evangelic preacher with a local Sunday TV show, was found by his housekeeper stabbed to death in his bedroom in the church parsonage. That in itself would have caused Harry to investigate the death as a murder, but it was more than just a stabbing death. The Reverand was lying on his back, his underwear had been puled down to his knees and he had a brass cross a foot and a half long jammed up his rectum until the cross part stopped it from going any deeper. His penis had been cut off at the base and stuck in his mouth.

The coroner determined the cross had been pushed up Reverend Elkhorn's rectum after he died, and that his penis had also been severed post mortem. The stab wound that killed him was also different from any Harry had seen before.

Most stabbing victims are either stabbed in the chest or stomach from the front. A few are stabbed in the back or side. Killing someone with a knife requires close contact and it's messy. It's messy because multiple stab wounds are usually required and the more stab wounds, the more bleeding. To cause death the knife wound must produce profuse internal or external bleeding or remove the ability of the lungs to absorb oxygen. It's difficult to do that with a single thrust unless the killer has knowledge of internal anatomy and a few specific techniques. Stab wounds in the abdomen can cause death, but it's usual for that death to occur hours or if untreated, even days after the initial stabbing.

That's because the most vulnerable and critical-to-life body organs, the heart and the major artery, the aorta, and the lungs, are protected by the rib cage. The untrained killer must keep stabbing at the chest until by chance, the knife slips between two ribs. Said multiple stab wounds also indicate rage by the killer against the victim. Without rage involved, most people give up the stabbing attack as soon as the blood starts to flow.

The only wound on the victim was one thrust from above and just under his left collarbone that went deep enough to pierce his heart. There did not appear to have been any type of struggle between the killer and Reverend Elkhorn. The autopsy revealed that the knife blade slashed through his heart and resulted in his blood being pumped into his chest cavity. The coroner said the pain and shock would probably have rendered Reverend Elkhorn unable to defend himself after only a few seconds, and he would have essentially been dead after less than five minutes.

The coroner said the butcher knife lying on the floor beside Reverend Elkhorn was probably the murder weapon since the blade was long enough and was extremely sharp.

Harry had the butcher knife handle checked for fingerprints and when the technology became available, for DNA, but both turned up nothing of use. There were no prints on the knife blade and the DNA the tech found there turned out to be DNA from an animal, not human source.

Harry needed a motive for the murder, but when he talked to the people of the congregation, there didn't seem to be one. His congregation viewed Reverend Elkhorn as about as close to God as any human can get.

Apparently Mr. Elkhorn said God worked through his hands and he not so subtly implied that he could cure anything if people donated enough money to his church. He proved that on his weekly TV show. Someone who was crippled so badly by pain or disease they had to be helped onto his stage would come up and tell him their story.

He'd put his hand on their forehead, then bow and pray out loud for God to give him the strength to cure the person. After that, he'd look up and shout "By the power of God, I heal thee", and then push hard enough on the person's head to push them backwards. Usually the person fell down, but then stood up on their own and walked off the stage.

Harry had interviewed a lot of the congregation and they all were believers in Reverend Elkhorn's divine gift. Few of them had experienced his curative powers, but they'd seen it work nearly every Sunday.

Harry did find a few who were former members of the congregation who told him Reverend Elkhorn wasn't what he claimed to be. One of those former members had decided to find out what had gone wrong.

The man was well off financially and had exhausted every avenue that medical science had to offer to cure his wife of cancer. As a last resort, he'd brought his wife to Reverend Elkhorn in hopes he could cure her because he'd seen the TV shows. She'd fallen down like all the rest, but then got back up and said she didn't hurt anymore. The husband was overjoyed until his wife died a month later. The man had hired a private detective to find out the truth about Reverend Elkhorn.

It was when Harry talked to the private detective that he got the other side of the story.

What the PI found was that many of Reverend Elkhorn's supposed "cures" turned out to be paid actors he'd planted in his audience. The few that were successful were people whose problem was just a mental thing. They'd somehow convinced themselves that they were in pain or couldn't walk or do something else, and all Reverend Elkhorn did was unconvince them with his praying and by pushing on their forehead.

When Harry had asked the coroner about that, the coroner said it was probably similar to the well-known "placebo effect" used by drug companies to test the efficacy of a new drug. A study group is chosen of people who all exhibit the same symptoms. Half the study group are treated with the new drug. The other half are given a "placebo" - either pills that mimic the new drug but contain only inert ingredients or they're injected with a solution of saline.

In some trials where there is no scientific way to determine the true cause of the ailment like recurring headaches or back pain, some of the people given the placebo appear to have recovered as quickly as those given the actual drug. The scientific explanation is that some people, after hearing about an ailment, begin self-examination for the same symptoms and then imagine they have the same symptoms caused by the aliment. Though the placebo could not possibly have had an effect on the actual ailment, those people believed the placebo had cured them.

According to the PI, Reverend Elkhorn also did his cures during the week at his church, but many of those didn't seem to last if they even did anything. Reverend Elkhorn's answer was always that the person didn't believe strongly enough or hadn't given enough money to the church to convince God to give him the power to heal that particular person.

The private detective had spoken with several people who'd donated a lot of money to the church, i.e. essentially paid Reverend Elkhorn to cure them of various things. Most had accepted Reverend Elkhorn's reasoning and kept trying. There were a few who had threatened to sue, so Reverend Elkhorn paid them off before they could.

Harry contacted all those people or their surviving relatives and they all told him the same thing. They said Reverend Elkhorn had gotten what he deserved.

Each one of those people became a "person of interest", but when Harry investigated them, he couldn't find any evidence one or more had killed Reverend Elkhorn. They either had alibis that checked out or were incapacitated to the extent they couldn't have physically done what had been done to Reverend Elkhorn.

Reverend Elkhorn was married, so Ruth Elkhorn was also a person of interest. Harry did interview her, but she was in another city visiting her mother and other relatives at the time of the murder and had witnesses that she was there.

When Harry turned the case over to me he frowned.

"This one I finally gave up on. I'm sure somebody killed the bastard because they paid him but he didn't cure them. I just couldn't find that person to talk to them. I'm also sure there are more out there who would have liked to see him dead. The problem was that most of his followers were extremely loyal to him even after he was killed and they wouldn't tell me anything. They even kept him lying in state in the church for a week before they finally buried him."

The case was over forty years old when I took the case file home one Friday night and showed it to Rochelle.

}{

I'm Detective Richard Owens of the Knoxville Police Department. I work Homicide and I have somewhat of a reputation for solving cold cases. In fact, cold cases are mostly what I spend my days and often nights working on now. The other Homicide detectives handle most of the day to day cases.

Rochelle is my partner, but she's not another Homicide detective. She's a writer who asked my old Captain in the Nashville PD if she could work on a cold case with a detective. She writes crime and mystery novels based on real cases. Together we solved a cold case and also figured out that we fit together really well in other things. One of those things is temporarily curing the attacks of libido that Rochelle seems to have fairly often. I transferred to the Knoxville PD to live with her, and we've solved several cold cases together. We've also decided we might get married some day, but for now, we're content to live together.

After Rochelle read through the first part of the file, she looked up and frowned.

"My mom and dad used to tell me about seeing this guy on TV. They didn't believe he was real and they should have known because Dad was a doctor and Mom was his nurse. Why do people believe any preacher can cure them of anything?"

I shrugged.

"I suppose when the doctors say there's nothing else they can do, the need to be able to walk or to stay alive can cause people to not think logically. They'll give their money to anybody who promises to make them well. This jerk always had an answer if it didn't work. You either didn't believe strongly enough or you didn't donate enough money.

"I'm sure the reverend was in it for the money. When Harry looked at his bank records and the records of the church, the church had about a million in cash and were paying him ten thousand a year as their preacher. That wasn't much, and the Elkhorn joint checking account had only about five thousand dollars in it, but there's a reason for that. Basically the church owned everything -- the parsonage, the cars they drove, all the furniture, even the clothes they wore for the TV show. The real money was in the church bank account but Reverend Elkhorn had the only authorization to write checks against the account. What it looked like to Harry was that when Reverend Elkhorn wanted something, he wrote a check on the church account. All he was, was a pretty skilled con man who kept the con going until somebody killed him.

"Like Harry figured, the way they found the reverend with the cross up his rear end and his penis in his mouth was pretty good proof whoever it was had believed him at one time. When what the reverend promised didn't happen, they decided he was a fake and killed him, and they left his body like that to show they'd taken their revenge.

"Harry couldn't find that person, but he said he was sure there were a lot of people out there who probably had a motive. Evidently Reverend Elkhorn created almost a cult following and they wouldn't tell Harry anything he could use to find the killer."

Rochelle frowned.

"Well, maybe, but I doubt it was anyone he had on his TV show. None of those people would have killed him. The people who only thought they were sick or injured thought they got cured so they'd have been grateful. The paid actors wouldn't have killed him. They might have blackmailed him with the threat to go public, but he probably paid them so they wouldn't.

"Harry said he also cured people in his church during the week. That's where a killer would have come from, somebody who had a real problem, paid him to cure them, and got no results. They wouldn't go public because they'd look like idiots for thinking he could in the first place. They might decide to get revenge by killing him though. Did Harry make a list of them?"

"Yes, it's on a paper at the back of the file. It's been almost fifty years though, so most of them are probably dead."

Rochelle smiled.

"They might be, but if they had children, those kids are still alive. They might know something if I can find them. I'll see if I can do that tomorrow. Did he and his wife have any kids? They might know something too."

"No, they had no kids. Harry did ask her, and she said they hadn't because Reverend Elkhorn was sterile. He told her that God had taken away his ability to father children so he could spend his life curing people. Apparently she believed him because she stayed married to him."

Rochelle shook her head.

"It's hard to believe she didn't know about his failures. How could she keep believing him if she knew?"

I shrugged.

"Well, she wouldn't be the first to believe everything a con man told her. Look at the pyramid schemes that crop up from time to time. People will give millions to some guy based on the promise they'll get richer even though when you look at the scheme in hindsight, the warnings were there all along.

"Look at the multi-level marketing companies. You sign up and they put you through some training that is really just propaganda. The theory is you set up your own business selling their stuff and you get to keep part of the profits. The more you sell, the more money you make. If you're not making enough, you recruit other sellers who will work for you. You become the distributor for what they sell. You buy the merchandise from the main company, mark it up a little when you sell it to your salespeople. They sell the products and give you part of their profits. To continue the chain, they recruit other sellers who pay them part of their profits. The higher up the chain you are the more money you can make.

"It doesn't take a genius to realize that the guy on the bottom doesn't make much of anything. At some point, there will be more people selling the same thing for any one of them to sell much especially since the price keeps going up so the person above you can make a profit. The guy on the bottom can't make much money and neither do the others on up the tier except for the main company. Yet, people still get taken in by the lure of being their own boss and raking in money without having to work for it. Those companies have been judged to be legal by the courts, but it's still just a con."

Rochelle shook her head again.

"What you're saying is she was a woman who couldn't think for herself. I need to talk to her too."

I shook my head.

"You can't. She died about two years after Reverend Elkhorn was killed. Evidently he hadn't been able to cure the diabetes she'd been diagnosed as having before they were married."

"So, she married him so he'd cure her diabetes? She must have been dumber than I was thinking."

"No, probably not. She was just taken in by his con, and knowing what he said on TV, probably thought he could cure her. He probably married her because she was useful to him. The members of his congregation that Harry talked to were aware that she was diabetic because Reverend Elkhorn told them. He also told them she didn't look sick because of his ability to heal people of anything.

"That was also part of his con. Many diabetics can manage the disease by what they eat and insulin injections, so if she was already doing that, she probably didn't look sick and he'd have taken advantage of that. At least a few told Harry she died only after Reverend Elkhorn was killed, so it must have been him who was keeping her alive."

Rochelle grinned then.

"I've been feeling a little down all day today. Think you could cure me? I'm so down I think I'll probably need curing more than once."

Well, I'd been down this road before, usually at least three times a week. My cure was always the same, but it always worked. When I came out of the bathroom right before bed, I'd find Rochelle on our bed, naked. She'd hold out her arms for me and when I joined her, she'd kiss me until I had to breathe and then start pushing my head down to her big breasts.

Apparently, sucking Rochelle's stiff nipples did a lot to suck out that down feeling she had. So did sucking on her clit once I'd licked her puffy lips until she was starting to jerk up off the bed.

Once she calmed down, she'd pull me up on top of her, kiss me again, and then whisper, "I feel pretty down on the inside too. Can you fix it?"

Fixing Rochelle the first time was always fun. I could make her shudder and feel her thighs start to quiver against my ears just before she cried out and tried to push her clit harder into my face.

Fixing Rochelle the second time was always an experience in how a woman can make herself and a man feel at the same time. It didn't matter if I was on top of her and stroking my cock in and out, if she was on top of me and riding my cock, or if we were just side by side with both of us helping along the feeling of my cock stroking inside her. It always ended the same way with Rochelle starting to shake, then grabbing whatever part of me she could reach, and holding on while the spasms wracked her body and tightened her passage around my cock and made me gasp as the surge flew up my cock and inside Rochelle.

This time was no exception. Once she curled up next to me, she whispered, "I don't feel down anymore. I might be by tomorrow morning though so I'll need fixing again."

}{

As it turned out, Rochelle got up before I did and had coffee ready when I got in the kitchen. She was sitting there looking at the list of names Harry had put together. When I sat down she looked up at me.

"I was thinking this morning that if one of these people killed Reverend Elkhorn with a knife like he was killed, they probably had either done it before or at least had used a knife enough to know the best way. I'd bet it was a man who served in the military. That's the only place where he could learn how, isn't it?"

"Well, that's one place, but I was in the Army and they didn't teach us much about knife fighting and what they taught us wasn't how Reverend Elkhorn was killed. All they taught us was to act like a boxer - keep circling your opponent, jab and back away, circle, jab and back away. They also told us to only use a knife when you didn't have anything else. They said even a long club was a better weapon than a knife because you don't have to get so close to your opponent.

"I know Special Forces and Navy Seals had some pretty intensive knife training because I talked to some of them. I think Marines probably did too.

"There are other places too. There are a lot of survival and self-defense training classes that I know teach knife fighting. They're taught by former Special Forces and Seals. I imagine there were some going back in the seventies, probably taught by former Green Berets or Army Rangers."

Rochelle frowned.

"Then that's not as good a way to search for a killer as I thought."

I shrugged.

"Well, it is one way to weed out the list and it won't hurt to find out as much about each person on the list as we can. I'll start looking on NCIC and IAFIS to see if any of them have records or not. If they were in the military, they'd have been fingerprinted and the IAFIS print file will say that's when they were taken. It might not tell me which branch, but once I find out which ones on the list were, I can ask for a copy of their military records and they'll tell me."

After Rochelle made me a copy of the list, I pulled IAFIS up on my browser and started typing in names. It was lunchtime by the time I got through the list and I wasn't much better off. I found what I expected I'd find.

In the decade between 1965 and 1975 there were a lot of young men drafted for the Vietnam war. Most were men without anything more than a high school education and apparently most of the men on Harry's list fell into that category. I found only two out of the fifty who hadn't been in some branch of the military during that time. Most had served in the US Army, but there were three former Marines, six that had enlisted in the Navy, and four who had enlisted in the Air Force.