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CHAPTER 1
DAISY'S LAST DAY ALIVE
She was nice to everyone. I never heard her say a bad word about anyone. If she didn't like a person she would leave them alone but would never say anything about them.
Battle Creek Enquirer and News January 14, 1963
When you speak to anyone about the day of Daisy Zick's murder — Tuesday, January 14, 1963 — they almost always start by telling you about weather. It was cold, bitterly cold, even by mid- Michigan standards. The night before the murder the temperature was near zero. The day Daisy died, it was going to dip to between ten to seventeen degrees below zero after nightfall. There was already six inches of snow on the ground, and the forecast called for another two by the evening. Gusting breezes made the cold penetrate even the warmest coat and nostrils sting just to breathe. Mustaches became white and brittle with frost in a matter of minutes. Gunmetal-gray skies unleashed a stinging snow that day, making it that much more undesirable to be out. Caught in the twenty-five-mile-per-hour wind gusts, the fine powder drifted as it hit the already snow-covered ground. The snow was the kind that crunched and squeaked loudly under the soles of boots. It seemed odd that someone would pick such a day for a murder since the weather was bound to keep people at home. Then again, there were a lot of things that didn't add up about the crime that day.
Daisy did not have an inkling that January 14, 1963, was going to be the last morning of her life. It was supposed to be a normal day, almost mundane, even by Battle Creek standards. For her, that day was supposed to be another day on the factory floor. She was most likely looking forward to a cup of coffee with a friend before heading off to her afternoon shift on a production line in the packing department at the Kellogg Factory in Battle Creek. Daisy was an attractive, forty-three- year-old redhead. People who knew her described her as "peppy," "outgoing," "friendly" and "perky." She was short, only five foot two, with a slender 108-pound body.
Daisy and her husband, Floyd, lived in the modest suburb of Calhoun County's Battle Creek called Emmett Township, specifically in Wattles Park. Calhoun County, Michigan, is one that is a mix of contradictions and as such, it struggles with the image that it wanted to portray. Much of the county is rural, with the flat Goguac Plains growing corn and wheat for the burgeoning breakfast cereal industry. But there is also a distinctly industrial edge to the county. Battle Creek was a factory town whose primary business was to put meals on the world's kitchen tables every morning. The Kellogg Company and Post Cereals plants were only a block apart, separated by a strip of seedy bars and tiny lunch restaurants. The county had tiny, unbelievably quaint little towns, like Marshall, which appeared to have been the backdrop of a Norman Rockwell painting, and Albion, Michigan, with its red brick roads and a grittier look and feel to it. Compared to the tall buildings of Battle Creek, the smaller communities stood out. Battle Creek was the industrial hub of the county, while the other towns clung to old traditions and ideals.
Part of what made Calhoun County successful was its positioning between Chicago and Detroit, right on Interstate 94 and the railroad lines. During World War II, the county had sprouted several boom businesses, like Eaton's, that made parts for the war effort. This brought in an influx of people from the south, who came north looking for work. Calhoun County accepted these newcomers.
The Zick home was a small brown brick, ranch-style house in Emmett Township just outside Battle Creek's city limit. The township had originally been named Milton, but by 1840, the State of Michigan had figured out that it had three townships by that name. It renamed the township after the Irish patriot Robert Emmet who fought the English for Ireland's independence despite the fact that there were few people of Irish decent living in the area.
For years the township was a farming community. A pole-supported bridge was erected over the Kalamazoo River at one end of the township, which helped foster the wheat production and travel in the area. The bridge was purchased by Citizen's Electric Light Company, which erected an iron bridge on the site in 1908. The wheat fields were renamed "County Park" and soon became a common place for teenagers to make out. In the summers, kids swung from thick ropes out over the Kalamazoo River for a cooling swim. Families picnicked in the park near the spring-fed creek that twisted from the tunnel under the railroad embankment to the river. County Park was easy walking distance from the Zick home.
The hope had always been that Emmett Township would evolve into a town on its own right, but it never seemed to emerge from the shadow of Battle Creek. One of the largest subdivisions of the township was Wattles Park. It had been named after Dr. Jervis Wattles, one of the first physicians in Battle Creek.
Like Emmett Township, Wattles Park had aspirations of being a true community on its own but struggled with a lack of a business center that people could gravitate around. Instead it emerged as a suburb of Battle Creek, small- to medium-sized homes for the factory workers of Battle Creek. Not quite as upscale as Lakeview but not as urban as Pennfield, Wattles Park was often thought of as being at the edge of farm country. The suburb was a mix of suburb, farming community and business district, each negating the others for dominance. Like many suburbs, it struggled to find an identity.
Where Wattles Road intersected Michigan Avenue was more of a sleepy crossroads, the kind of place that was easy to miss as you drove between Marshall and Battle Creek. Wattles Park had a cluster of tiny stores at a blinking light that marked the hub of commerce. There was a wood-floored grocery store (Steve's) that predated modern convenience stores. It was a place where pop, candy or staples could be purchased. Mr. Laverne Chase had built a popular local soda bar at the intersection, but by 1963, it had been sold and turned into Jalisco's Mexican Restaurant, better known as Emilio's, one of the few such establishments in the area. Hoff's Hardware was situated there along with Walter's Electrical Service, Keelan's Barber Shop and Hoff's Service Station.
At the time, Wattles Park barely merited a reference on road maps. It was a quiet community, almost invisible to the outside world. People knew their neighbors but kept to themselves. Kids rode their bikes along the roads with little fear of accidents. The Wattles Park Men's Club sponsored children's baseball and softball at the nearby elementary school. This was not the place where killers stalked the streets. This was a slice of semirural America.
The Zicks lived on a dead-end road called Juno Street, which was off Wattles Road a block from Wattles Park Junior High that was planned to open that year and a half-mile from Wattles Park Elementary. They lived less than a mile from the intersection at Wattles Road and Michigan Avenue, the business heart of the area. The elementary school was within a hundred yards of the Wattles Park crossroads, and its presence was the one thing that gave the suburb any sense of community. Many of the children coming or going to school walked right past Juno Street every day. In 1963, if you lived within a half mile of school, you were expected to walk, and that was the kind of community it was. It was also the kind of community where strangers stood out. On the biting cold day of January 14, most of the children were heavily bundled against the biting wind and snow. They didn't notice anything out of the ordinary, or at least that was what they would tell police later. Their focus was to get to their respective schools and get warm.
Daisy's morning unfolded as it had hundreds of times before. Her husband, Floyd, left earlier in the morning than she did, around 7:45 a.m., to go to his job at Fales' Market, where he worked as a butcher, about four miles from his home. When he left for work, he woke up his wife, as he did every morning. Floyd stopped and picked up a co- worker, Florence Van Uun, five minutes later. He drove her to work every day, and she later noted that there was nothing different about that morning. The folks that worked at Fales' Market were a tight-knit family. They celebrated Christmas parties together and knew one another on a personal level. It was the kind of small business where you didn't just know the employee, you knew their spouses and what sports or after school activities their kids were involved with.
Daisy worked the afternoon shift at Kellogg's. Her seat was at the end of one of the packaging station's production lines near the main aisle, so anyone walking through the factory would inevitably pass by her. The seat that she had was one that rotated, but there was no privacy. "Daisy worked out in the open, very public. Everyone that walked through knew her," was a comment one of her co-workers made. Her personality was so outgoing that she was widely recognized in the factory.
This Tuesday, Daisy planned to meet her friend and co-worker Audrey Heminger of Vicksburg, Michigan, at Vello's Restaurant, a quaint bar and restaurant on East Columbia Avenue at Main Street. They were scheduled to meet between 10:00 and 10:30 a.m. for a cup of coffee together. From there, she would go to the plant a mile or so away to take her seat on the packaging line. Other than the biting cold outside, it was to be a typical day for Daisy. If anything out of the ordinary was expected, it certainly didn't reflect in her plans for the day or the evidence in her home.
It seemed to be a slow news day for the rest of the country. The top song in the nation was "Go Away Little Girl," by Steve Lawrence. The Bijou Theater in downtown Battle Creek was showing the film In Search of the Castaways, a Disney film starring Hayley Mills and Maurice Chevalier. George Wallace was getting sworn in as governor of Alabama that day, giving his now-infamous "segregation today, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever" speech. In Michigan, the speech didn't even warrant coverage in the newspapers except for a small article buried in the Battle Creek Enquirer and News. The Civil Rights Movement was seen as a problem of the South, and Battle Creek was a long ways away from Alabama. The integration problems surfaced in big cities like Detroit, not Battle Creek. There were racial tensions, but like many small cities in the early 1960s, these were suppressed and not discussed.
Daisy received a telephone call at around 9:00 a.m. from her husband at Fales' Market. He made the call every day at around the same time to check on his wife. Daisy told Floyd that she was just getting ready to take a bath before going to meet with Audrey.
Daisy placed a call to the Battle Creek Health Center shortly thereafter, speaking with Irene Taylor. Daisy had a few questions regarding some paperwork related to her insurance. From what Irene could tell, Daisy seemed quite normal in her conversational tone.
At some point in the morning, she began to pack for work. A small brown paper sack was on the kitchen table, inside of which were a napkin and a banana. That morning Daisy prepared her lunch to be eaten on her afternoon break at the plant. A sandwich, a wedge of cheese and two pickles were each neatly wrapped in wax paper and laid out next to the open lunch sack. She had also put her white work shoes on the table in a paper bag to ensure she didn't forget them.
A few minutes later, just after 9:00 a.m., Daisy's phone rang again. This time it was the man with whom she'd been having an affair for the past two years, Raymond Mercer. She knew Ray from the plant, and their relationship was anything but a secret at Kellogg's. This wasn't the first time that Daisy had strayed from her husband. She had had other boyfriends over the years, and Raymond was simply the latest. He had called her simply to say, "Hello," and to say that he was looking forward to seeing her at the plant later that afternoon.
Around 9:30 a.m., Mae Tolls, a cleaning woman working at the Radford home on Juno Street, was working on the first floor of the home. She took a rug outside to shake it clean and noticed that Daisy's drapes were pulled open. It struck her as odd. Daisy usually didn't open her drapes until around 11:00 a.m., when she left. While Tolls had never spoken with Daisy, the two had waved to each other often, and she knew Daisy's weekday patterns. Thinking nothing else of it, she went about her work, doing some ironing in the basement laundry room.
Just before 10:00 a.m., Audrey Heminger called Daisy. Aside from the killer, Audrey was the last person to speak to Daisy before she died.
At some time after 10:00 a.m., Daisy's neighbor from across the street, Mrs. George DeFrance, saw someone standing at the breezeway at the Zick home at 100 Juno Street. The Zick home had a modest breezeway that was really just a simple covered space between the house and the garage. From what little Mrs. DeFrance could see, the person appeared to be a man, jumping up and down a little to battle the cold. He had dark hair, probably black from what she could tell. She could see that he was of medium height and was wearing a dark blue jacket, most likely of the Eisenhower-style variety. Daisy was known to have men over in the mornings when her husband was working and, in fact, had a reputation for having suitors to her home when her husband was away. So Mrs. DeFrance did not give the man a second thought. It never dawned on her how odd it was to see a man out in such cold weather without a car.
Approximately twenty minutes later, Mrs. DeFrance was letting her dog out and again glanced across the street at the Zick home. Daisy's side of the garage door was open. The Zick garage had two wooden doors. Daisy's was white with a large, distinctive metal Z on it, and Floyd's had a decorative picture of a man and woman riding a bicycle built for two. Mrs. DeFrance was struck by the fact that the door was left up and the car gone. In such cold weather, people generally didn't leave their garage doors open, and Daisy never left hers open regardless of the weather. Missing from the garage was Daisy's car, a white 1959 Pontiac two-door model. It was a distinctive vehicle with fins that flanked the trunk on the rear. Mrs. DeFrance looked back over at the Zick home a few minutes later and noticed that curtains to the bedroom were still open. Daisy always opened her curtains by 11:00 a.m. every day, and she wouldn't have left the house without doing so. The fact that they were open earlier than usual struck Mrs. DeFrance as strange but not strange enough for her to investigate. Rather than check on her neighbor, Mrs. DeFrance retreated to the warmth of her home.
Audrey Heminger arrived at Vello's to have coffee with Daisy as planned, but her friend never showed. When Daisy didn't appear, Audrey was concerned but assumed that something had come up that had forced her friend to miss their meeting. When Audrey clocked in at the plant for the afternoon shift, there was no sign of Daisy, and according to her supervisor, she had not called in, which was unusual. Daisy was a creature of habit. She had not missed work before without calling in.
Audrey checked with Raymond Mercer to see if he knew why Daisy hadn't come into work. Raymond said that had spoken with her earlier in the morning, and as far as he knew, Daisy was planning to come into work as usual. On his break, he put on his coat to go out into the employee parking lot to see if Daisy's car was in her usual spot. There was no sign of her white Pontiac there.
Audrey called the Zick home, but there was no answer. Then she called Floyd at Fales' Market on Main Street around 12:30 p.m.
"I am worried about Daisy. She didn't meet me, and I wonder if she changed her plans? She usually calls if she does."
"No, Daisy planned on meeting you. She didn't show up?"
"No. And I checked over at the office and they haven't heard from her. She isn't at work yet. And she hasn't answered the phone. I'm kind of upset."
Floyd was worried as well. Daisy was a lot of things, but conscientious was near the top of the list.
"Something must be wrong. I'll go home right away and check."
Chances were that, with the stinging cold outside, his wife's car might have broken down. He gathered his coat and set out toward his home, heading east on Michigan Avenue.
At Evanston Road, across from the snow-blown third hole of the Pine Knoll Golf Course, he spotted Daisy's car on the other shoulder of the road. "It looked like our car," Floyd later recounted, "I slowed down, turned around, parked behind the car and looked at the license number. It was our car. I thought that Daisy had become sick. Maybe she was lying down inside the car.
"I got out and looked in the car. She wasn't in it. I got in the car to see if the motor would run. There were no keys in the ignition, but I used my set of keys to start it."
(Continues…)
Excerpted from "Murder in Battle Creek"
by .
Copyright © 2013 Blaine L. Pardoe.
Excerpted by permission of The History Press.
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