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The Deaths of Nancy Cruzan by William H. Colby Carslbad, Cal., Hay House, Inc. 2002 reprinted by permission of the author with no shoulders and few streetlights. It turns off old U.S. Hwy 71 on the south side of Carthage, Missouri, at the corner where Krummel Nursery used to sit, and heads out into the country. In many places, deep ditches come right up to the faded white-paint line that poorly marks the edge of the county road. The road is filled with twists and curves - it isn't a place for speeding or driving while drowsy, or even for missing the mark just a bit. More cows than houses populate the three-mile stretch between the point where Krummel Nursery Road turns off the main highway and the house where Nancy Cruzan (then Nancy Davis) lived in the winter of 1983. Nancy was only 25 years old in January of that year, but she had already lived through a fair slice of adult life. In the fall of her senior year at Webb City High School, Nancy thought she was pregnant. On November 21, 1974, she married her high school boyfriend, Danny Hayes, and moved in with him and his parents. It turned out later that she'd been wrong about being pregnant, but that didn't matter. Shortly after Nancy graduated the next spring, Danny joined the Navy, and the two young people headed out of Carterville, Missouri, to see the world, eventually winding up at a base in Jacksonville, Florida. But the marriage didn't take, and in the fall of 1977, Nancy left Florida, and Danny, and moved back in with her parents. Joe and Joyce Cruzan raised all three of their girls - Chris, Nancy, and Donna - in the same white wood-frame house at 501 Main Street in Carterville, a blue-collar town of about 2,000 people, nestled in the southwestern corner of Missouri with other small blue-collar towns: Carthage, Webb City, and the largest, Joplin. Joe and Joyce had grown up in (or near) Carterville as well, and had married in the spring after Joyce graduated from Carterville High School. Joe thought about college, but instead became an apprentice in the sheet-metal trade and joined the union. Joyce stayed at home until the girls were all in school, and then she went back to work. In the early 1970s, she landed a job as a secretary at the central office of the Webb City School District. During the summers, the Cruzans spent most weekends at a small cabin standing on stilts near the edge of Sugar Creek, about 60 miles south of Carterville. On many weekend nights, the beds in the cabin were filled with adults, and cousins of all ages covered the floor - Joe had two younger brothers, while Joyce had four older siblings. Whoever used the cabin helped pay the annual rental cost, $75 for the cabin and beach. Four other cabins stood near the one Joe and Joyce rented, and those were often filled with Cruzan relatives, too. Joe's younger brother, Jim, called Joe "The Wagonmaster," because Joe was always in charge. Old home movies show Joe standing waist deep in the clear water, tanned and muscular, smiling as his girls and their cousins splashed around him, while Joyce watched from the beach. Nancy's return home in 1977 shattered Joe and Joyce's thoughts about settling into a quiet life after the children left the nest. Not only had their wild 20-year-old come back to Carterville newly divorced and ready to party, but their youngest daughter, Donna, was suddenly acting grown-up, at age 14. Their oldest daughter Chris, 22, lived nearby and often brought her two toddlers, Angie and Miranda, over for Joe and Joyce to watch. People were coming and going from the Cruzan house at all hours. Nancy found a job at the Big Smith overall factory in Carthage, and as soon as she could afford it, she moved out of her parents' house again. In 1980, she met Paul Davis, and they began dating; soon they were living together in a small trailer outside of town. They married in the spring of 1982; not long after, they moved out to the two-bedroom house in the country on Krummel Nursery Road. Joe couldn't worry too much about Nancy those last few years, he said, because Donna was keeping him busy. Still, somehow the Cruzan family worked. They gathered together on many Sundays for dinner. Each Fourth of July, they sat in green folding chairs on the lawn at Joe's parents' house with Grandma Jack and Grandpa Les, eating watermelon and talking about their lives, laughing as Grandpa Les filled his homemade cannon with black powder, and yelling the countdown out in unison after he lit the fuse. Nancy and Chris, best friends growing up, grew even closer as young adults. Nancy became a second mother to Angie and Miranda, dressing up as a witch to take them out on Halloween each year, and always attending their gymnastics programs, ballet recitals, or school events as they grew older. In the fall of 1982, Chris also divorced, and Nancy spent even more time with the girls. Angie and Miranda worshiped their aunt. By 1983, Nancy thought her life was pretty good. She had landed a good paying job on the production line at Schreiber's Cheese Factory in nearby Carthage, and she worked the graveyard shift, from eleven at night to seven in the morning. That schedule left her free to lie in the sun during the day, to sit and have coffee and cigarettes with her mom or Chris, or to do whatever she wanted. She was married to a man she had fun with, and when she walked into a bar with her trim figure and attractive face with its high cheekbones and olive skin, the guys sucked in their stomachs and stood up a little straighter. Like most families, the Cruzans quilted their lives together with a series of moments, and made it through as best they could, bonded by the good and the bad. before at Los Amigos, a small roadside bar where she and Paul often partied with friends. On a normal Saturday, Nancy would sleep until she felt like getting up, but she'd promised her mother that she would help paint her parents' house. So she dragged her thick head and dry mouth out of bed and headed to town up Krummel Nursery Road, her main route into the city. Nancy drove her beat-up, two-toned 1962 Rambler, arriving at her parents' place at about ten that morning. Nancy always drove too fast, even when making the two sharp left turns on the way to her mom and dad's house - first the left off Carterville's Main Street onto the side street, and then the immediate left onto the driveway. She especially liked to screech to a stop when she saw her dad working in the carport. He would pretend to be scared, and Nancy would bound out of her car and up the steps into the house, sometimes making a face at her dad, other times flashing him a smile as she passed. Joe had given Nancy the Rambler in the fall of 1982. Actually, he let her pay him a little money each week for a month to help her feel like she was buying it. Joe had bought the car from a guy who was going to junk it. The car was dilapidated - torn upholstery, missing trim, no seat belts - but Joe worked on it during the summer of 1982 and was able to get the engine running again. He had first given the Rambler to his mom, but Grandma Jack didn't really want to drive anymore. The car just sat in front of her house, four blocks from Joe and Joyce's home. Nancy told her dad that if he gave her the Rambler, then she could sell her white 1974 GMC van, which the judge had awarded to her in the divorce from Danny Hayes. She said she needed the money, so Joe gave her the Rambler. Joe said he hated Nancy's van anyway, with its loud pipes and chrome wheels. He also thought the van was dangerous, its small windows making it hard for the driver to see. He told Nancy he'd be glad if she sold it. On January 8, Nancy spent all day and most of the evening with her mom, sister, and nieces, painting the ceiling and walls of Joe and Joyce's house. Joe had commandeered some scaffolding from work and spent the evening before setting it up. The kitchen and living room looked like a mini-construction site. Chris and Nancy were up on the scaffolding much of the day - two trim, brown-eyed, beautiful sisters in their mid-20s. They all laughed at Nancy as she danced and sang along with Abba's "Dancing Queen" and "The Winner Takes It All," which blared from a small cassette player. Nancy pretended she was high above the world, using her wet paintbrush as a microphone. Joyce painted and helped by watching Angie and Miranda, who were now six and seven. Nancy teased Chris by inviting the girls up to paint. Chris kept warning, "Girls, stay off the scaffolding." Just after noon, Nancy said, "Chris, why don't you go to the Dairy Creme and get lunch for us all?" When Chris walked back in the door, greasy sacks in hand, she saw the girls up on the scaffold in their matching pink sweat suits, brushes in hand. Nancy stood next to the girls, white paint all over her blue jeans and gray flannel shirt, looking down and laughing as Chris scolded her. Eventually, Chris started laughing, too. Chris knew that Nancy would never let any harm come to Angie and Miranda. In fact, she once told Nancy, "If anything ever happens to me, I want you to take the girls. You love them as much as I do." Miranda, who had big brown eyes and an infectious smile, just like her Aunt Nancy, said to Nancy as they painted together on the scaffolding, "You're the greatest aunt in the world. You're even better than God and Jesus!" Chris and Nancy looked at each other and laughed. Joe wasn't much for painting. "I work construction all week. I'm sure as hell not going to do it on Saturday, too," he said. He spent most of the day out in the carport, tinkering around in his tool shed, working on the camper and the cars. His absence didn't matter. The five Cruzan women - three generations spanning ages 6 to 47 - ate the Dairy Creme carryout, laughed, sang, painted, danced, and talked for most of the day. At the end of that long, good day, Chris headed home with her girls; Nancy headed out for Saturday night. their house about a mile closer to town than Nancy and Paul Davis's place. On January 10, 1983, Dale went out with some friends. He came home after midnight and crawled into bed as quietly as he could. He was just starting to drift off when he heard a sound that most young people in rural areas know, the sound of "mailbox baseball." Dale shot out of bed and ran out the front door of the house, wearing only boxer shorts, to see if he could catch a glimpse of the culprits. About 100 yards from his front door, all the way across Krummel Nursery Road, he saw dust floating in the air and a car flipped on its top in his neighbor's field. Its lights were still shining. If this was a prank, it had gone dreadfully wrong. Dale sprinted back up the steps and into the house, yelling to his stepfather as he went, "George, there's been a wreck. Get out here!" He pulled on the jeans and shoes he had just taken off and ran shirtless back out into the January night, over his front yard, across the road, up the neighbor's gravel driveway toward the car. The car sat about 35 feet off the road, up the long driveway. Dale covered the ground quickly. He dropped to his knees and stuck his face into the partially crushed window of an old two-toned Rambler, but he didn't see anybody. He pounded on the car door, but no response came from inside. Frantically, Dale spun around, trying to find the driver. He looked toward the dark house at the end of the driveway and thought that maybe the driver had gotten out somehow, so he ran up to the house and rapped with his fist against another door. No answer. Unsure of what to do next, Dale scrambled back toward the car in the dark, sweating now, even in the cold. And then he saw her. Actually, he almost tripped over her, a woman facedown and motionless on the hard ground. Dale kneeled next to the body. His frantic rushing around stopped instantly - the world switched to slow motion. He didn't dare touch the body or turn it over; that might make any injuries worse. George Eaton had been asleep for several hours when Dale's yell startled him awake. He dressed quickly and hurried outside toward the wreck. Once he saw the scene, he turned toward his wife, Donna, who stood with a coat over her pajamas on the front porch, holding the collar of their dog, Jake. George cupped his hands and yelled, "Call the patrol," then crossed the street. Dale had just found the young woman's body as George approached, and he cried out when he saw his stepfather, "Oh my God, what if there's a kid?" When George reached the body, he saw a baseball cap on the ground nearby, maybe a child's cap. Donna Eaton rushed back into the house to make the call. The area had no 911 then, but she knew the emergency number because George worked in maintenance at the highway patrol. She dialed the number and waited. Outside, George and Dale looked into the car again, but found nothing. They stood and began running - across their neighbors' front yard, back to the large open field next to that yard, and up and down the ditches alongside Krummel Nursery Road - looking into the dark places where the ditches were deeper, terrified that they would find a second body, this one smaller. A siren blared in the distance, and flashing lights soon approached Krummel Nursery Road. The car turned right into the driveway and ground to a stop on the gravel near the wreck. George and Dale rushed to the highway patrolman. Sergeant Dale Penn knew George from work. The two men told the sergeant what they knew as fast as they could. Sergeant Penn hurried over and bent down next to the motionless body, touching her neck with two fingers. No pulse. He gently rolled the body over, leaned his ear next to the bloody, bruised mass of her face, and listened for breath sounds. Nothing. "She's dead," he said. He pulled out her wallet, which fell open to reveal a photo of two young girls. The officer stood and began his reconnaissance of the field with George and Dale, all looking for the owner of the baseball cap, presumably one of the girls in the photo. After that search turned up no one, Sergeant Penn returned once more to the body and checked again for vital signs. Nothing. Within minutes, flashing lights filled the night as an ambulance and a fire truck arrived. Men with flashlights and loud voices moved over the field, crunching the prairie grass under their boots. Across the street, Donna Eaton stood shivering, holding tight to the collar of her dog, who was barking itself hoarse. After a time, it became clear that there was no other body, and Dale and George stepped back and let the professionals do their job. Dale stood next to his stepfather, arms crossed over his bare chest. It was a warm evening for January, the temperature hovering just under 40 degrees. Still, the air had a bite to it, and Dale shivered now that he'd stopped moving. The two men watched the scene in subdued awe as flashing lights covered the quiet farm field and cast an eerie glow on the emergency workers who surrounded the woman with her shirt torn off, face crushed in, blood everywhere. The dust had settled around the upside-down car next to that scene. For a long time, neither man moved. As Sergeant Penn continued to search, moving through the clumps of field grass, with the paramedics on their knees behind him working feverishly to restore the accident victim's heartbeat, he could have no idea just how widely society would debate exactly the same question that he had answered so simply, perhaps prophetically - whether this accident victim was dead. Nor could he know that the accident would indeed claim other victims. But none lay at the scene that night. |
