Sleep In Heavenly Peace. M. William Phelps

her and her mom’s relationship—and sparked a debate between them that would soon turn deadly.

      4

      When Odell, Thomas, Weddle, and McKee arrived at the Towanda state police barracks, Odell began thinking about how she was going to explain to her children and common-law husband, Robert Sauerstein, what she had left behind in Safford.

      “What was going through my mind,” Odell recalled, “was I now have to brace my family for what is to come. I need to get back to my family, sit down, talk to my husband, and tell my children what occurred. I was going to tell them what had actually happened.”

      Odell had never, in the nearly two decades she had been with Sauerstein, told him about the babies. “I wasn’t going to say anything to anybody until I had a chance to inform my family.”

      The last thing Odell wanted to do was to sucker punch everyone. They were all at home, going about their day—school, work, television, bedtime—and now this ugly secret from decades ago was going to unearth itself. What if they turned on the nightly news and there was Odell being branded a baby killer?

      “I wasn’t trying to protect my family,” Odell later insisted. “I was trying to prepare them. I knew what was going to come about—but I also knew the truth at that time of what had taken place. And I figured, as long as I tell the truth in this, I am going to be okay.”

      Regardless of how Odell felt, Thomas and Weddle wanted answers. They had three dead babies found in boxes, wrapped in plastic garbage bags, and, obviously, packaged in a way that led them to believe that the person(s) who had stored them away didn’t want them to be found. They needed to know what happened. Their job, in effect, was to find that truth Odell was referring to—whatever it was. No one in law enforcement was pointing a finger at Odell; at this point, she was merely the likely person to begin questioning.

      Thus far, Odell hadn’t been read her Miranda rights. There was no mention of the babies, or why, in fact, Thomas and Weddle wanted to talk to her. As far as Odell could determine, she was there to talk about “seized items discovered in a storage shed in Arizona.”

      Weddle looked on as Thomas took out an audiotape recorder and set it in front of Odell on the table. Trooper McKee was there to observe.

      It was around 3:00 P.M. when Thomas turned on the audio recorder and stated her name, credentials, and the person she and Weddle were preparing to interview.

      After Odell recited her vitals—birthday, address, Social Security number—Thomas made something clear: “You are not under arrest. What we are doing here from Arizona is we are investigating a situation that has been discovered in the last week…and what’s happened is your name has come up as a possible lead in the case that we are working. Do you recall when and if you’ve ever lived in Arizona?”

      “Yes…”

      “Could you tell us about that?”

      Odell said she had lived in Pima back in 1993 in a house with seven of her eight children: four daughters and three sons, ranging in age from four to twenty-three years old.

      For the most part, Odell was “unemotional,” Thomas recalled. “In total denial of having any knowledge or involvement…. She appeared very calm and confident.”

      “Was there a father or husband involved?” Thomas asked.

      “Yes,” Odell said, “the father of my children, Robert Sauerstein.” Sauerstein had fathered five of Odell’s eight living children.

      “The two of you are not married?”

      “No.”

      “Okay, are you still with Sauerstein?”

      “Yes.”

      “And may I ask how many children you still have at home?”

      This was, of course, vitally important to Thomas and Weddle. Their entire investigation focused on children. There was a chance the mother of the three dead babies was somehow responsible for their demise.

      Odell named her children, but she also mentioned a grandson who had been staying at the house.

      Detective Weddle piped in, asking, “Who does that grandson belong to…?”

      Odell said the child was her daughter’s.

      “Does she live there also?” Thomas asked.

      “No.”

      “So, you just have custody of your grandson?”

      “No,” Odell answered, “I don’t have custody. She just walked away from him. She left him with neighbors and they called me and asked me if they could bring him to me.”

      The statement didn’t prove anything, but it did tell Weddle and Thomas there was some sort of friction in the home where the children and Odell were concerned. Even more important, the child had been with Odell for five years, not one or two weeks.

      “She never came back for him?” Thomas asked, puzzled and, perhaps, a bit shocked. How in the hell does a mother abandon her child?

      “No.” Then Odell talked about the contact she’d had with her other daughters throughout the years. Beyond the one daughter whose child Odell was looking after, and her oldest daughter, it was clear, at least from her point of view, she hadn’t any real problems with her older children.

      “My grandson and my youngest son,” Odell recalled later, “are almost inseparable; they’re like brothers. I had my grandson since he was eight months old. I’m the only mother he’s ever known. Although I’ve shown him pictures of his mother, he’d shake his head and say, ‘No, you’re my mommy.’”

      Later in the interview, Thomas sat back and said, “Okay,” taking a deep breath, trying to digest what amounted to a large family tree involving many different children and grandchildren, “when you lived in Pima, were there any other children involved in the home, or that you gave birth to, or anything like that?”

      It was the first time Thomas or Weddle had broached—even remotely—the subject of babies and what might have happened to the three dead children. After all, this was the main purpose of the interview: to find out what happened to the babies who hadn’t lived—as far as anyone could tell thus far—for more than a few hours. The medical examiner was still trying to figure out how the children had died, but it was clear from early tests the babies were newborns.

      “No,” Odell said stoically.

      Thomas didn’t pressure Odell immediately. Instead, she did what any experienced investigator might have done: she began to float the opportunity for Odell to come up with an explanation. It was clear from the energy in the room—the aura of the conversation and the demeanor between the detectives and Odell—that there was an awfully large white elephant hanging around, and sooner or later, it was going to have to be talked about. For Thomas and Weddle, however, they had traveled nearly twenty-five hundred miles. They had all day and night to talk to Odell. There was no need to push the subject now. Once Odell invoked her right to remain silent and asked for a lawyer, the conversation was over. Up to now, though, according to Thomas, Weddle, and Trooper McKee, she was calm and, as far as they could tell, somewhat cooperative, and at no point mentioned that she wanted a lawyer.

      “When you moved to Arizona,” Thomas asked, “where did you come from?”

      “Pennsylvania,” Odell shot back, adding, “No, excuse me, Utah.”

      “How long did you live in Utah?”

      “About a year.”

      “Where have you lived most of your life?”

      “New York.”

      For the next few moments, Thomas and Odell traded dialogue about Odell’s children and where they were born. Most of her children were born in New York—all in hospitals. Odell said Sauerstein had fathered the youngest of the children, and James Odell, a man she had been married to at one time, fathered her