I recently came upon this episode. I doubt many here have seen it or are familiar with it, as the story was featured on NBC’s short lived "Final Appeal" series and was not rerun on Unsolved Mysteries or on Lifetime to my knowledge. The case concerned the possible wrongful conviction of a rookie deputy sheriff from Virginia, Paul Ferrell. Ferrell was serving a life sentence for the murder of Cathy Ford, a 19 year old waitress whom Ferrell admits to having an affair with.

Paul Ferrell was a rookie deputy sheriff who had only been on the force for a few months at the time of his arrest for Ford’s murder. He was also dating a woman who had a young son and the couple was discussing marriage. Ferrell's girlfriend was unaware that Ferrell was also dating Cathy Ford, a 19 year old waitress who worked at her parents’ restaurant in Gorman, Maryland. Likewise, Cathy Ford's boyfriend, Darvin Moon, was unaware that Cathy was dating Ferrell.

On the afternoon of February 17, 1988, Cathy Ford left her parents’ restaurant. Cathy told her mother that she had received a phone call from a friend who told her that the local police department was going to be conducting stings to crack down on bars and restaurants serving alcohol to minors. Cathy left the restaurant in her Ford Bronco presumably to meet with the caller. She never returned. That same evening, Paul Ferrell went to a bowling alley to meet with some friends. When he arrived at the bowling alley, the manager informed Ferrell that a young woman had called the bowling alley repeatedly asking if he was there. The woman wouldn't leave her name but did leave a phone number. Ferrell claims he called the number and spoke with Cathy. He said she sounded distressed and that her speech was slurred. She wanted to meet Ferrell at his trailer. He declined but suggested they meet in a local high school parking lot instead. Ferrell claims Cathy agreed to the meeting but never arrived. Cathy's parents reported her missing and a search began.

In the days after Cathy's disappearance, Ferrell claims he made a gruesome discovery on his property. He says he found Cathy’s burned out Bronco in the woods about 75 yards behind his trailer. Fearing that Cathy’s body may be inside, and that he might be blamed for her murder, Ferrell did not report the discovery to anyone. He then hand wrote an anonymous letter to Cathy’s parents. In the letter, he wrote that Cathy had intentionally run away. He also included $200 cash to help cover the cost of the missing Bronco. Ferrell would later deny that he wrote the letter, but changed his story after an FBI handwriting expert testified that the writing was indeed Ferrell’s. A few weeks after the letter was received by Cathy’s parents, Darvin Moon found the burned Bronco behind Ferrell’s trailer and notified authorities.

The police obtained a search warrant and began a vigorous and comprehensive search of Ferrell’s property. Investigators found blood stains on the ceiling of the trailer and under a newly laid carpet. The blood could not be positively linked to Cathy Ford, but testing showed it did belong to a female and was consistent with blood from other members of Cathy Ford’s family.

At Ferrell’s trial, several witnesses testified against Ferrell. One of his neighbors, Kimberly Sue Nelson, testified that she had heard a female scream and a gunshot originate from Ferrell’s trailer on the day Cathy Ford disappeared.

Another witness, Tamela Kitzmiller, claimed she received an obscene phone call from Ferrell. The prosecution presented evidence that Ferrell had a bizarre habit of calling local bookstores and libraries pretending to be a doctor and asking the female clerks to read sexually explicit passages from medical books. There were at least 400 documented incidents of these phone calls. The prosecution used this testimony to paint Ferrell as a pervert who lived in a fantasy world.

An FBI profiler who interviewed Ferrell gave testimony that he noticed “signs of guilt” in Ferrell’s body language while the two were discussing a hypothetical murder scenario involving Cathy Ford.

Ferrell was convicted of kidnapping, murder, and arson and sentenced to life in prison. He immediately appealed the conviction and has always maintained his innocence.

So, was Ferrell innocent? Here are some issues raised by the defense...

* Ferrell admitted that he had been the first to find Cathy’s Ford Bronco and that he had also been the author of the anonymous letter, but now says he was scared and that these were just “stupid mistakes”.

* Ferrell’s attorneys pointed out that the blood could not be conclusively linked to Cathy Ford. In addition, the trailer was several years old and Ferrell was not the first tenant to occupy the trailer.

* Kimberly Sue Nelson would later retract her statements about the shot and screams she allegedly heard on the day that Cathy Ford disappeared. She claimed that the prosecution prepared a type written statement of her testimony and instructed her to sign it. She didn’t read the statement before signing but now says that that there are inconsistencies. She said she told the police that she did not know the exact date she heard the shot, and that gunshots were pretty common in that area. She also said that prosecutors badgered her saying that Ferrell was a killer and might come after her or her children if she didn’t testify against him.

* Tamela Kitzmiller would also recant her testimony about the crank phone calls and has claimed it was coerced. She said the police told her that they knew Ferrell was a “sicko” and that he was responsible for other unsolved murders, including some in Yellowstone Park.

Investigators deny making such statements to both witnesses.

Ferrell also admits to making some sex phone calls but says it irrelevant. He says that the calls were harmless, and that he made them because he couldn’t afford a credit card to call actual phone sex lines.

* Ferrell’s attorneys claim that the testimony about Ferrell’s demeanor as given by the FBI profiler is subjective and should not have been allowed in court in the first place.

* Finally, a year after Ferrell’s conviction, there was one reported sighting of Cathy Ford. Two residents of Gorman who knew Ford prior to her disappearance claim they saw her waitressing at a restaurant in Tennessee. The witnesses stated that the woman appeared to recognize them too, and had another waitress ask the couple where they were from. When the waitress relayed the information back to the mystery woman, she fled the restaurant. According to Robert Stack, the police did NOT investigate this sighting. However, Ford’s brother was interviewed on FA and stated that the family believed that Cathy was dead.

As an interesting footnote, Ferrell was paroled in 2005. FA mentioned he would be eligible for parole in 2002.

He seemed pretty guilty to me. Any thoughts?

EDIT: To elaborate on a few things - I was disappointed that FA did not present any alternate scenarios to explain the evidence against Ferrell, or more specifically, who may have planted it (assuming he was framed). While the sighting of Cathy after her "death" does cast some doubt on the "official version", I find it difficult to take the sighting seriously. It is also difficult to take the whole "Cathy Ford lives" theory seriously without some more background. Why would Cathy Ford suddenly and abruptly vanish leaving her burned out car on her lover's property and leaving him holding the bag at the same time? Not once did the show touch on other suspects or attempt to explain Cathy's behavior here. I thought that aspect was pretty weak. There have been numerous cases on Unsolved Mysteries where a witness will appear on the show and swear up and down that they saw a missing person alive and well. Then we get an "update" saying that the person's body was found and they have been dead since the day they disappeared. I can't help but wonder if the same thing is going on here. Not to mention members of Ford's family think she is dead, and these people typically hold out hope the longest.

I wonder if FA's selection of cases to had anything to do with it's cancellation. If they were all this weak, and the defendants so blatantly guilty as I feel that Ferrell was, it's no wonder the show wasn't taken seriously.

I just saw this one on Spike. I'm not sure how much they edited from the original airing, but based on what I saw, I'm not sure that he was guilty.

My first problem was the car being in his backyard. The guy really couldnt have been that stupid could he? I mean he was a cop, you would think that if he had killed his girlfriend that he wouldnt be stupid enough to torch her car and leave it in his own backyard.

They didnt tell us what his motive would have been for killing her. They never gave any reason why he might have wanted her dead.

I wonder how closely they looked at her boyfriend. She was cheating on him, and they implied that he knew about it, which would give him a motive.

I just dont think the burden of proof was met here. I can see why someone might think he was guilty(I dont know what the hell he was thinking by sending that letter to the family), but I dont think they proved him guilty beyond a reasonable doubt.

Did the Spike airing mention that he was paroled?

Did the Spike airing mention that he was paroled?

Yes it did, they said that he spent 18 years in jail, so I guess he just got out recently.

IMO I would think he was guilty, but not beyone a rwasonable doubt. the theory of the boyfriend makes sense as he did let on to the cop that he knew about the affair. here are some things about the cop that make me think he is guilty:

*the blood found in his trailer on the ceiling and some splatters of blood on the wall I believe they said.

*writing the letter to her family pretending to be cathy. seems his "stupid mistakes" look like they were actions of a man that was feeling guilty and may have panicked.

*maybe he burned the car near his trailer because he was a cop and knew if thats where they found it he could say "why would I do that in my own backyard."

another theroy could be his girlfriend found out about the affair also and may have been the killer.

I never take the people spotting the victims after the fact as most end up being not credible and in some cases the mind can make you see and believe what you want to see and believe.

Wow, yeah, there is almost no doubt in my mind that Ferrell is guilty. The boyfriend angle is interesting, but I don't know of any hard evidence to support it really, just speculation. Considering the amount of evidence against Ferrell, I don't know....it's hard to really take any other scenario seriously. If you weren't convinced before of his guilt, take a look at this...

http://wv.findacase.com/research/wfrmDocViewer.aspx/xq/fac.%5Cwv%5CPLS%5C1990%5C19900724_9999.WV.htm/qx

wow UM left this out?

"On 18 February 1988, Mr. Ferrell ripped out and burned the carpeting from the master bedroom of his trailer (mobile home), replacing it with new carpeting on the following day. Mr. Ferrell claimed that he did this because of dark stains and dead animal odor. However, when his girlfriend, Cathy Bernard, visited his trailer on 14 February 1988, she had not noticed any stains on the master bedroom carpet, nor any strong odors. Also Mr. Ferrell's landlord had not noticed any stain or odors in the trailer on 21 January 1988."

"On 29 February 1988, Mr. Ferrell made a collect call from Uniontown, Pennsylvania to his girlfriend, Cathy Bernard, in which he asked her to call the Ford family to say Cathy Ford was alright. When asked to explain Ms. Bernard's testimony that he had asked her to make calls claiming she was Cathy Ford, Paul Ferrell told police that on 20 February 1988, (three days after Cathy Ford disappeared), he asked Ms. Bernard to call someone saying Cathy Ford was alright, because he wanted to slow down the investigation so that his telephone calls might not be discovered. On 2 March 1988, Cathy Ford's parents received a letter postmarked Pittsburgh, 29 February 1988. (It was stipulated that a letter mailed from Uniontown would be postmarked Pittsburgh.) The letter said."

Wow, yeah, there is almost no doubt in my mind that Ferrell is guilty. The boyfriend angle is interesting, but I don't know of any hard evidence to support it really, just speculation. Considering the amount of evidence against Ferrell, I don't know....it's hard to really take any other scenario seriously. If you weren't convinced before of his guilt, take a look at this...

http://wv.findacase.com/research/wfrmDocViewer.aspx/xq/fac.%5Cwv%5CPLS%5C1990%5C19900724_9999.WV.htm/qx

I have to agree, especially after reading the opinion. This seems one where UM def. gave a pro-defendant view of the facts.

Yeah, it is pretty rare in the mainstream media or really any media that a pro defendant twist is given. Paul Ferrell was paroled, but not from a life sentence. Outgoing West Virginia Governor Cecil Underwood commuted Ferrell's life sentence to I believe a 40 year sentence. Thus he became eligible for parole almost immediately, and in 2004 that parole was granted.

In terms of Doug Crow, I rip on him because he is a twerp. Yeah, he prosecuted Oba Chandler and that is great, but to be honest, a first year prosecutor probably could have got a conviction on Chandler. Doug Crow, is now the Chief Assistant State Attorney for Pinellas and Pasco Counties. My guess, is current State Attorney Bernie McCabe, will retire in 2012, he will have been State's Attorney for 20 years by then, and Doug Crow will run as his successor and win. Sad but a true reality. People love the sound bites and campaign gimmicks that people Crow will provide about how 'tough' they are even while in several instances being unethical.

I was not mad that Crow spoke against Glenn Consagra. What ticked me off though about Crow is how he sat there and tried to act all high and mighty, when he and his office were the ones that offered Consagra the plea deal to 2nd degree murder! Yet Crow tries to act like Mr. Big Shot, when he could have taken it to trial and got a conviction, well most likely, a conviction to first degree murder and Consagra would have got two consecutive sentences of 25 to life, or, possibly got the death penalty.

Now, one thing I always found interesting about that plea bargain is this: While Crow offered Consagra the plea bargain to 2nd degree murder, evidently, Crow did not make a sentencing recommendation. I think Consagra's lawyers did kind of a lousy job in this regard, in letting their client plead guilty to 2nd degree murder without a sentencing recommendation. At that time, in Florida, 2nd degree murder sentencing was VERY open ended. You could get anywhere from a couple years in prison to a life sentence WITH the possibility of parole after 7 years. Consagra was paroled in 1992, so that tells me that he was paroled the first time he was eligible but that was not unusual in Florida at that time, as in the 1980's and in the early to mid 90's, many lifers were paroled to ease prison overcrowding.

Interestingly, Florida had a very unusual sentencing statute for murder. In 1983, parole was abolished for 2nd degree murder (if the defendant was sentenced to life for that crime) and several other crimes, but yet, ironically not for first degree murder or capital sexual battery which if convicted, carried sentences of either 25 to life or the death penalty. Parole for those latter two crimes was not abolished until 1995. Like look at Thomas Drake, the crime he was convicted of, it occurred not long after the laws changed, hence why, while he got 30 years for attempted 2nd degree murder, he got LWOP for armed robbery.

Disregard the part about Florida, I posted it in the wrong thread.

Paul Ferrell may hold the unusual distinction of being the only person in the world to consult Tim McClure for interviewing advice.

If I remember right, Governor Cecil Underwood, who has since passed away, commuted Farrell's sentence from life in prison, to I want to say it was a 40 year sentence, but I may be wrong on what exactly it was commuted to, I just know it was reduced dramatically and that Farrell became eligible for parole almost immediately as a result. Underwood had been defeated for re-election in 2000, and commuted Farrell's sentence in the closing hours of his administration. Underwood was legendary in West Virginia Politics, first elected Governor at the age of 34 in 1956 and serving until 1960. Then being elected Governor again in 1996 at the age of 74. He had the distinction of being the youngest Governor in his first term and the oldest Governor in his 2nd term. He was narrowly defeated for re-election in 2000 by long-time Congressman Bob Wise who would go on to have his own career de-railed after one term when he was implicated in an extra marital affair with a state employee.

Anyway, getting back to the reasoning behind Underwood's sentence commutation. From what I understand, it was due to Underwood's concerns about the lack of physical evidence in the case. In fact private investigator Martin Yant and his investigation, you may remember Yant from the Paul Freshour and Circleville letters case as well as the Clarence Elkins case although the latter was not profiled on UM. Underwood, while it seemed he did not 100 percent believe in Farrell's innocence, he did have enough doubt about Farrell's guilt that while he denied Farrell's request for a pardon, he did grant the commutation request reducing Farrell's sentence dramatically and making him eligible for parole immediately. In the commutation order, Underwood said Farrell's convictions "are not supported by the presence of the alleged victim's body, weapon, eyewitnesses, or physical evidence such as fingerprints, hair and fibers." We will never know whether Underwood regretted his decision or not. It appears that Farrell has stayed out of trouble since his release. Underwood died in November of 2008 at the age of 86 as a result of complications of a major stroke he had suffered earlier in the year. He has also been despondent over the passing of his wife of 59 years the year before. Anyway, sorry for getting off the subject, I just find the whole cast of character involved in this case interesting.

Ferrell was like the Forrest Gump of Final Appellants.

http://www.sitcomsonline.com/boards/showpost.php?p=4885355&postcount=49

Just pulling the discussion over here.

I think Paul Ferrell and Cathy Ford had a relationship in as much as you would have a relationship with the convenience store clerk you see every other day or a waiter/waitress at your favorite restaurant. You probably know their first name and chit-chat with them sometimes. I think that is probably as far as the relationship between Paul and Cathy ever went, if that: a friendly acquaintance. At the very least, I think they at least recognized the other's face.

According to the 1990 appeal brief, the Old Mill (Cathy's family's restaurant) could easily be seen from Ferrell's Mart, as they were a few hundred feet away from each other on Route 50. I think the combination of the small size of the community and the close proximity of the families' businesses enabled Paul (who I think, for all his logical failings, was probably an extremely observant man and a pretty good notetaker) to find out a whole lot about Cathy Ford without her necessarily telling him. I think he watched her--like he did plenty of other women--from that window in that convenience store. I think that's primarily how he knew about Darvin Moon. I don't think Cathy told him she had a boyfriend. I think he WATCHED Moon himself come and go from that restaurant. Ferrell is the sort of man who watched the post office across the street well enough to know when a certain post-mistress was on duty and the other was not. I think he'd be definitely more than capable of culling a lot of information on Cathy Ford just by observation in the same manner. I think the fact that he had all this information served to make it appear as though he was far more familiar with Cathy than what he actually was, and thus the affair tale came into being.

I do believe it is likely that he and Cathy did share small talk about "people that irritated them" (the two were both essentially in customer service; I can certainly envision some commiseration there), but only as Cathy bought her cigarettes from Paul's store, or as Cathy served Paul lunch or whatever. Maybe Cathy even mentioned in passing that she wanted to do something more than work the restaurant. I don't know. But what we do know is:

1. Paul's brother David--whom he lived with above Ferrell's Mart for some time before moving into a trailer in Oakland, MD during the fall of 1987 and then the other trailer in Mt Storm, WV in late January 1988--claimed that if Paul were having an affair with Cathy Ford, he and his wife would've almost certainly known about it. Paul claims the affair went as far back as early 1987. He would've been living with his brother and sister-in-law for the very vast majority of that period of time.

2. Paul's apparent propensity for observing activity from a vantage point, and then filing that information away for later use. There are countless stories about Paul calling women in the area, and what I find most interesting about it is that he seemed to craft his stories to fit the individual. For example, in the case of the post-mistress, he had an elderly woman who lived next door to Ferrell's Mart and across the street from the post office call over there to tell the post-mistress that one of her carrier's vehicles was broken down between Bismarck and Cherry Ridge Road (the post-mistress replied that the Mt Storm route wouldn't have taken any of her carriers that way, and that was fortunately that). He observed and gathered information on those women well enough to determine what story he thought would be best to get them out to his selected location.


I don't know why Paul claimed to have had a romantic relationship with Cathy Ford. The only possibilities I see are:

Darvin Moon, Cathy Ford's then-boyfriend, seemed to be the perfect fall guy. He does have an extensive criminal history, and Paul Ferrell was, at the time, Mr. Squeaky Clean Sheriff's Deputy Golden Boy. Paul concocts what he believes to be a quite plausible tale that Cathy was frightened of her rough-neck boyfriend, who could've possibly been angered that Cathy was seeing another man. Darvin forces Cathy to flee the area and puts her vehicle right on Paul's property to set him up. Paul did mention Moon more than once in that fake letter from Cathy he sent to her parents.

OR

Paul apparently had a very rich fantasy life. Maybe he convinced himself that he in fact did share a romantic and/or sexual relationship with Cathy Ford. I'm not sure whether he did this because he really did desire one, or because he somehow was protecting himself mentally and emotionally by doing this. It seems somehow less loathsome and deviant that one would murder someone one has a very close relationship with than essentially a stranger.


In any event, I actually find Paul Ferrell fascinating. I'm not sure what to think about him. I don't know if he's intrinsically pathological, or if he was simply an otherwise fairly normal person who indulged his own idiosyncrasies and weaknesses to the point of criminal activity.

I feel the second-degree murder charge was appropriate. As I stated earlier, I don't think he premeditated anyone's murder. I think when Cathy reacted, he responded out of anger and/or fear. I think there is a very slight chance it could've even been an accident, although I don't think that is extremely likely. In any event, I do definitely think he murdered Cathy Ford and had some severe disturbances going on at the time the crime was committed, none of which excuse him from said crime.

I would also like to point out a possible reason this case was even considered for Final Appeal. Martin Yant, the investigative journalist interviewed not only for this case but on UM's Circleville Writer segment, was actually credited as a consultant throughout Final Appeal's short run. He became aware of the Ferrell case while writing a book on wrongful convictions in the early '90s and was particularly appalled by the "expert" testimony of the FBI agent on Paul's body language.

So, that seems to clear that mystery up.

I think Ferrell is guilty, but after reading the transcript of the UM broadcast on his segment, they make a mention of Cathy receiving a phone call (presumably from Ferrell) on the day she disappeared. Her coworker says she went to shower and then left. Now if Cathy did not know Ferrell outside of some chit chat here and there, why would she shower before she went to meet him? And Ferrell was also at the bowling alley that night and he was told by someone that a lady kept calling. Who was this lady? If Cathy was already dead, who was calling him at the bowling alley? And I do think that Cathy's car was burnt elsewhere, because according to a "Victims of the State" website about Ferrell, they say that the vegetation around the car was not burnt in any way. This may be one of the reasons why Ferrell was released for a short amount of time in the 90's, before being incarcerated again in 1997.

I think Ferrell is guilty, but after reading the transcript of the UM broadcast on his segment, they make a mention of Cathy receiving a phone call (presumably from Ferrell) on the day she disappeared. Her coworker says she went to shower and then left. Now if Cathy did not know Ferrell outside of some chit chat here and there, why would she shower before she went to meet him?

Well, she had been working in a restaurant from opening time until after noon. Perhaps, meeting a law enforcement figure who presumably wanted to talk to her about a liquor law violation investigation of her family's restaurant, she simply wanted to look presentable and not smell like onions. Unfortunately there is no way to tell whether Cathy actually knew she was speaking to Ferrell or not, or if she could even recognize Ferrell's voice on the telephone.

And Ferrell was also at the bowling alley that night and he was told by someone that a lady kept calling. Who was this lady? If Cathy was already dead, who was calling him at the bowling alley?

Strangely enough I've never been able to find any testimony from the employee Paul claimed told him a woman had called him numerous times at this bowling alley. I don't know whether to think Paul made this up or if another woman was actually calling him on that date--perhaps Cathy Bernard, his girlfriend at the time. Can't really say.

And I do think that Cathy's car was burnt elsewhere, because according to a "Victims of the State" website about Ferrell, they say that the vegetation around the car was not burnt in any way. This may be one of the reasons why Ferrell was released for a short amount of time in the 90's, before being incarcerated again in 1997.

Kim Nelson, a woman who lived in the trailer nearest Ferrell's, testified that on 17 February 1988 she observed a man she later identified as Ferrell (they were not close neighbors) burning something "out in back" of his trailer. What that means specifically I don't know. But I do know it would have been a very bad idea indeed to burn the Bronco where it was found by the river. As with many rivers, there is heavy vegetation everywhere on either side of the bank, and in winter, the dry, dead plant material all around almost certainly would've caught fire. So I think he probably burned that vehicle somewhere else, too--but not at all far away from where he eventually placed it. Multiple residents reported seeing smoke over that river over the vicinity of Bismarck Road that day.

I think the main reason Ferrell was released for a time and then eventually paroled is that his case, again, was built entirely on circumstantial evidence. It was easy to swipe at legally, and Ferrell's defense did just that.

The blood evidence was another hotly debated issue. With the techniques available at the time, all any investigator could say was that the blood found in Paul Ferrell's trailer was not inconsistent with a child born of Cathy Ford's parents. Ferrell's supporters often claim the results of those tests were made to appear much more precise than they actually were (a la Stuart Heaton). They may have a point:

State of West Virginia v. Ferrell:

A bloodstain taken from a floor joist of the defendant's bedroom showed the presence of phosphoglucomutase, a blood enzyme (PGM type 1 + 2 +). A bloodstain on a paper towel taken from a trash bin in the defendant's living room or kitchen exhibited the serum protein haptoglobin (Hp type 1). Exhibit Q 134, a wooden brace which ran from the bottom of the defendant's trailer to the ground, was found to contain the PGM type 1 + 2 + marker as well as an enzyme, erythrocyte acid phosphatase (EAP type BA).

[7] The tests demonstrated that Cathy Ford's father had Type O blood and carried the following genetic markers: PGM type 1 + 2 +; EAP type BA; Hp type 1. Cathy Ford's mother had Type A blood with the following genetic markers: PGM type 1 +; EAP type BA; Hp type 1. Agent Lynch testified that the offspring of these two people would have to carry the Hp type 1 marker and that the other test results were not inconsistent with the characteristics that might be found in the blood of such offspring.


Being that there are only three types of human haptoglobin--Hp 1-1, Hp 2-1, and Hp 2-2--those odds aren't particularly outstanding. The other characteristics do bolster the findings somewhat, but there is definitely some pretty good reasonable doubt on this particular point, IMO. On the other hand, a cigarette butt of the type Cathy Ford was known to smoke was also found in Paul's trailer with genetic material on it fitting the description described above.


Paul Ferrell actually had a lot of supporters back in Gormania and Mt Storm during his trial and incarceration. In fact, in another thread there was a poster from that area who was pretty sold on the idea that it was Darvin Moon who actually committed the crimes. I discovered very recently that Paul's father passed away last year, and that Paul himself currently lives in a town very near Gormania. He is also apparently married.

Well, she had been working in a restaurant from opening time until after noon. Perhaps, meeting a law enforcement figure who presumably wanted to talk to her about a liquor law violation investigation of her family's restaurant, she simply wanted to look presentable and not smell like onions. Unfortunately there is no way to tell whether Cathy actually knew she was speaking to Ferrell or not, or if she could even recognize Ferrell's voice on the telephone.



Strangely enough I've never been able to find any testimony from the employee Paul claimed told him a woman had called him numerous times at this bowling alley. I don't know whether to think Paul made this up or if another woman was actually calling him on that date--perhaps Cathy Bernard, his girlfriend at the time. Can't really say.



Kim Nelson, a woman who lived in the trailer nearest Ferrell's, testified that on 17 February 1988 she observed a man she later identified as Ferrell (they were not close neighbors) burning something "out in back" of his trailer. What that means specifically I don't know. But I do know it would have been a very bad idea indeed to burn the Bronco where it was found by the river. As with many rivers, there is heavy vegetation everywhere on either side of the bank, and in winter, the dry, dead plant material all around almost certainly would've caught fire. So I think he probably burned that vehicle somewhere else, too--but not at all far away from where he eventually placed it. Multiple residents reported seeing smoke over that river over the vicinity of Bismarck Road that day.

I think the main reason Ferrell was released for a time and then eventually paroled is that his case, again, was built entirely on circumstantial evidence. It was easy to swipe at legally, and Ferrell's defense did just that.

The blood evidence was another hotly debated issue. With the techniques available at the time, all any investigator could say was that the blood found in Paul Ferrell's trailer was not inconsistent with a child born of Cathy Ford's parents. Ferrell's supporters often claim the results of those tests were made to appear much more precise than they actually were (a la Stuart Heaton). They may have a point:

State of West Virginia v. Ferrell:

A bloodstain taken from a floor joist of the defendant's bedroom showed the presence of phosphoglucomutase, a blood enzyme (PGM type 1 + 2 +). A bloodstain on a paper towel taken from a trash bin in the defendant's living room or kitchen exhibited the serum protein haptoglobin (Hp type 1). Exhibit Q 134, a wooden brace which ran from the bottom of the defendant's trailer to the ground, was found to contain the PGM type 1 + 2 + marker as well as an enzyme, erythrocyte acid phosphatase (EAP type BA).

[7] The tests demonstrated that Cathy Ford's father had Type O blood and carried the following genetic markers: PGM type 1 + 2 +; EAP type BA; Hp type 1. Cathy Ford's mother had Type A blood with the following genetic markers: PGM type 1 +; EAP type BA; Hp type 1. Agent Lynch testified that the offspring of these two people would have to carry the Hp type 1 marker and that the other test results were not inconsistent with the characteristics that might be found in the blood of such offspring.


Being that there are only three types of human haptoglobin--Hp 1-1, Hp 2-1, and Hp 2-2--those odds aren't particularly outstanding. The other characteristics do bolster the findings somewhat, but there is definitely some pretty good reasonable doubt on this particular point, IMO. On the other hand, a cigarette butt of the type Cathy Ford was known to smoke was also found in Paul's trailer with genetic material on it fitting the description described above.


Paul Ferrell actually had a lot of supporters back in Gormania and Mt Storm during his trial and incarceration. In fact, in another thread there was a poster from that area who was pretty sold on the idea that it was Darvin Moon who actually committed the crimes. I discovered very recently that Paul's father passed away last year, and that Paul himself currently lives in a town very near Gormania. He is also apparently married.

But I also believe that the neighbor who said she saw smoke also said she heard screams coming from his trailer. But didn't she recant everything in the UM broadcast? Another witness (someone who was the victim of Ferrell's sick phone game) said that she altered her testimony because the prosecution had her believing that Ferrell was some sick serial killer and that her testimony would help put him away forever. And didn't Kim Nelson say she signed a statement that she never read? I wonder if she recanted her testimony on UM because she knew Ferrell had a large support group among the community and didn't want to be ostracized?

And thanks to UM for leaving out this detail, that destroys the Ferrell and Ford as lovers angle. "Later that day, a man claiming to be an undercover officer called Ms. Ford with information concerning a possible investigation of her family's restaurant by the liquor licensing authorities. Ms. Ford told her family and the restaurant employees to check identifications before selling beer, and then left the restaurant to meet with the alleged undercover officer." Doesn't this mean she told her coworkers who had called? In the UM segment they make it seem like she got a phone call, rushed to go shower, and then left without telling them who she was meeting. I wonder if Ferrell somehow planned on using his "Magistrate" claims to try to force women to undergo some sort of sex act, using his status as a way to control them. But that brings up another point. If Ferrell did call Cathy and say he was an undercover officer investigating her restaurant, and that he wanted her to meet him at his trailer, wouldn't Cathy immediately know the whole thing was a ruse once she arrived and saw Ferrell? Since she knew him beforehand and knew he wasn't either a magistrate or an undercover officer?

But I also believe that the neighbor who said she saw smoke also said she heard screams coming from his trailer. But didn't she recant everything in the UM broadcast?

Yes, Kim Nelson did recant, but not until well after the trial. As state prosecutor Dennis DiBenedetto expressed, the confusion and doubt-sowing that followed this case caused many in the area to question at least whether Ferrell had a fair trial, and at most to proclaim his innocence.

Another witness (someone who was the victim of Ferrell's sick phone game) said that she altered her testimony because the prosecution had her believing that Ferrell was some sick serial killer and that her testimony would help put him away forever.

That was Tamela Kitzmiller. The prosecution allegedly told her "not to elaborate on any doubts" that she had that the caller was Paul Ferrell. There's a definite difference between not elaborating on doubts and outright claiming it was Paul Ferrell, and without the original trial transcript we have no idea what was actually said. I would love to be able to dig it up.

FWIW, when I found Paul's father's obituary, I noticed another one of his sons (Paul's brother) is married to a Tamela. No idea if it's the same person or not, but Tamela is not a very common name, so I was curious.

And didn't Kim Nelson say she signed a statement that she never read? I wonder if she recanted her testimony on UM because she knew Ferrell had a large support group among the community and didn't want to be ostracized?

Yes, she did.

It's possible. What I wouldn't give to be a fly on the wall somewhere in Gormania, WV during that time.

And thanks to UM for leaving out this detail, that destroys the Ferrell and Ford as lovers angle. "Later that day, a man claiming to be an undercover officer called Ms. Ford with information concerning a possible investigation of her family's restaurant by the liquor licensing authorities. Ms. Ford told her family and the restaurant employees to check identifications before selling beer, and then left the restaurant to meet with the alleged undercover officer." Doesn't this mean she told her coworkers who had called? In the UM segment they make it seem like she got a phone call, rushed to go shower, and then left without telling them who she was meeting.

Apparently Cathy must have told somebody, although at least one employee of that restaurant testified that she wouldn't discuss any details of the call with her nor Cathy's mother. Makes sense on the surface. Maybe she didn't want to unnecessarily worry anyone, or maybe she didn't want customers or other employees overhearing.

I wonder if Ferrell somehow planned on using his "Magistrate" claims to try to force women to undergo some sort of sex act, using his status as a way to control them. But that brings up another point. If Ferrell did call Cathy and say he was an undercover officer investigating her restaurant, and that he wanted her to meet him at his trailer, wouldn't Cathy immediately know the whole thing was a ruse once she arrived and saw Ferrell? Since she knew him beforehand and knew he wasn't either a magistrate or an undercover officer?

Well, at the time, Ferrell had been working as a Grant County Sheriff's deputy for something like a couple of months, so the "undercover officer" thing might have been plausible.

As I've said, I think Paul Ferrell indulged a very rich fantasy life. I think he had a particular scenario in mind in which a woman comes to meet him in a location, and eventually their meeting becomes a mutually accepted sexual encounter. And should that woman become frightened, angry, or otherwise indignant at his proposition, he figured he could easily use his position as a law enforcement officer as leverage. I think he probably felt this was all absolutely good enough, and thought it all through to that very point and nothing further. But when it didn't work for Cathy Ford, he either became enraged--or panicked--and murdered her.

From a "magazine for the wrongfully convicted" published exactly 15 years ago today. There's an article about Martin Yant's career that touches on the Ferrell case.

http://www.justicedenied.org/v1issue2.htm

His first case was in a remote area of West Virginia known as the Mountaintop, where rookie sheriff's deputy Paul Ferrell was railroaded for the murder of Cathy Ford, who had disappeared in February 1988. Ferrell was convicted in a farce of a trial even though no one ever had seen him with the missing woman.

Yant's investigation of the mysterious case, in which he developed evidence that Ford might actually be alive, took six months and over a thousand interviews with people in 17 states.


When he was finished, the local paper reneged on its promise to publish a six- part series on the case because of his explosive revelations, which included recantations from several key witnesses. Yant then decided to publish the story himself in a special magazine called The Public Eye, which sold several thousand copies in the sparsely populated area and got the story exposure on Montel Williams and Unsolved Mysteries. Residents of the Mountaintop, most of whom believed Ferrell was innocent, were outraged by what they read, and that helped gain Ferrell's release pending a much delayed evidentiary hearing.

Ferrell was returned to prison in 1997 after the biased trial judge ruled against his claim of innocence, but his attorneys are hopeful that an imminent federal court ruling will soon free Ferrell for good.

While not exactly a fine piece of balanced journalism, I thought the fact that no one apparently came forward with any recantations before Martin Yant's public involvement with the case interesting.

As I've said, I think Paul Ferrell indulged a very rich fantasy life. I think he had a particular scenario in mind in which a woman comes to meet him in a location, and eventually their meeting becomes a mutually accepted sexual encounter. And should that woman become frightened, angry, or otherwise indignant at his proposition, he figured he could easily use his position as a law enforcement officer as leverage. I think he probably felt this was all absolutely good enough, and thought it all through to that very point and nothing further. But when it didn't work for Cathy Ford, he either became enraged--or panicked--and murdered her.

It's the best theory I've heard so far. Cathy Ford was the first person to actually show up for one of Ferrell's schemes unfortunately.

Paul Ferrell in what was probably one of the last correctional file photos he had to sit for, possibly after he was granted parole:

http://arre.st/WV-999103497/

Interestingly, the only conviction listed is the kidnapping one.

Paul Ferrell in what was probably one of the last correctional file photos he had to sit for, possibly after he was granted parole:

http://arre.st/WV-999103497/

Interestingly, the only conviction listed is the kidnapping one.

Still looks like a goober.

Still looks like a goober.

I actually passed over that photo a couple of times when I was researching thinking it was some other Paul Ferrell. I came across it again last night and for whatever reason it finally clicked that it was the same person.

Paul Ferrell circa 1992 is to me sort of what Maria Armstrong is to some of the male posters here. I actually thought he was pretty good-looking. Of course, that particular aspect influences my opinion on the case at a level of pretty much zip. While I'm not completely comfortable right now with the entirety of what's been alleged about the prosecution's behavior, I still think this was a solid case and that the right person went to prison.

I find the case so interesting because it demonstrates so clearly the human tendency to want to cut off the arm if the finger has been injured, so to speak. The court admitted that it did err when it allowed the body language testimony back in 1989, but I think when it didn't then grant Ferrell a new trial and instead denied his appeal, it served primarily to perpetuate the perception of the court and the state attorney as corrupt, even if they weren't. And so these doubts of Ferrell's guilt creep into the public consciousness. And then people like Martin Yant get involved (not dogging hard on Mr. Yant as he has supported and fought for truly innocent people in the past, but I don't think Paul Ferrell is one of them). And then Final Appeal episodes get made that fail to mention things like Ferrell asking for searches to circumvent places he knew evidence would be found, or asking his own girlfriend to call Cathy Ford's parents pretending to be their daughter and lying that she is alive and well.

I actually passed over that photo a couple of times when I was researching thinking it was some other Paul Ferrell. I came across it again last night and for whatever reason it finally clicked that it was the same person.

Paul Ferrell circa 1992 is to me sort of what Maria Armstrong is to some of the male posters here. I actually thought he was pretty good-looking. Of course, that particular aspect influences my opinion on the case at a level of pretty much zip. While I'm not completely comfortable right now with the entirety of what's been alleged about the prosecution's behavior, I still think this was a solid case and that the right person went to prison.

I find the case so interesting because it demonstrates so clearly the human tendency to want to cut off the arm if the finger has been injured, so to speak. The court admitted that it did err when it allowed the body language testimony back in 1989, but I think when it didn't then grant Ferrell a new trial and instead denied his appeal, it served primarily to perpetuate the perception of the court and the state attorney as corrupt, even if they weren't. And so these doubts of Ferrell's guilt creep into the public consciousness. And then people like Martin Yant get involved (not dogging hard on Mr. Yant as he has supported and fought for truly innocent people in the past, but I don't think Paul Ferrell is one of them). And then Final Appeal episodes get made that fail to mention things like Ferrell asking for searches to circumvent places he knew evidence would be found, or asking his own girlfriend to call Cathy Ford's parents pretending to be their daughter and lying that she is alive and well.

I hate to admit it, but I do think Ferrell got screwed at his trial. Now I'm not a lawyer at all, and know little on the subject of the legal system, but I do not think the testimony of the body language should have been allowed. IIRC, it was simply Ferrell shaking his head, and this guy took that to be an admission of guilt!? He could just as easily been nodding his head to show that he was following him or paying attention. The other thing that should never have been allowed was the blood testimony. They couldn't match it to Cathy Ford (conclusively anyway), so it should have never been heard.

But despite these two "errors" (IMO), I still think Ferrell would have gotten convicted. The testimony from the other women most certainly should have been allowed because it shows prior intent. And it establishes a motive of a sexual nature. Even without the blood evidence and the body language expert, the case against Ferrell was pretty solid. You had the phone calls, the bizarre note he wrote to the Ford family, his bizarre behavior to his girlfriend, the way he told searchers not to search where Cathy's burnt vehicle would be found, the fact that Cathy's vehicle was found literally in the backyard of his property, etc. I don't see how he could have had any support, especially from someone who seems reputable like Martin Yant.

Hit some pretty interesting pieces of information today--on Amazon, of all places (how I love that 'Look Inside' feature on some of the books).

http://www.amazon.com/FBI-Inside-Worlds-Powerful-Enforcement/dp/067178658X/ref=tmm_mmp_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&sr=&qid=#reader_067178658X

This book tells the stories of a number of outstanding cases selected FBI field offices have worked. The chapter entitled Baltimore: Upholding the Image covers the Cathy Ford case.

Some interesting things:

1. Paul Ferrell and Rich Ford--Cathy Ford's brother--were bowling buddies. Paul did eat at the Old Mill frequently, so there is opportunity for him to have interacted with Cathy.

2. The phone call to the restaurant: As the author has it, Cathy Ford received a call from someone claiming he was a magistrate who knew of a liquor board investigation into the Old Mill, and that if she would meet with him he would give her some information to enable her to stop this supposed investigation. He refused to identify himself.

(What is so upsetting about this scenario is that if Ferrell spent any little period of time around Cathy or her family, he would have been aware of her dedication to the restaurant and her family [also noted in this book]. He knew that story would absolutely get her out to that location on Bismarck Road. He took advantage of her love for her family and the business.)

3. The license plates from Cathy Ford's Bronco were removed prior to the burning of the vehicle. This indicates to me that the person who put that vehicle there probably wasn't Darvin Moon. For if Moon in fact wanted to frame Paul Ferrell, wouldn't he choose to leave those plates on in order to show that it was definitely Cathy's vehicle?

4. The county sheriff's department in Maryland actually initially dismissed Paul Ferrell as a suspect "because he (was) a law enforcement officer" in neighboring Grant Co, WV. Rich Ford eventually contacted the FBI after observing how poorly the investigation was being handled by the two local agencies.

5. Paul Ferrell failed a polygraph administered by the FBI.

I hate to admit it, but I do think Ferrell got screwed at his trial. Now I'm not a lawyer at all, and know little on the subject of the legal system, but I do not think the testimony of the body language should have been allowed. IIRC, it was simply Ferrell shaking his head, and this guy took that to be an admission of guilt!? He could just as easily been nodding his head to show that he was following him or paying attention.

That is exactly how Ferrell explained it: he was nodding to show he was comprehending what the FBI agent questioning him was saying.

In fact, during the interview, the off-camera Final Appeal interviewer apparently did the same thing as Ferrell was explaining this story, and Ferrell pointed this out. "Just like the way you're shaking your head right now," Ferrell says, and points off-camera to the interviewer, "That was an 'admission of guilt', the way you just shook your head right there."

It was undoubtedly the most convincing pro-Ferrell portion of the segment, IMO.

The other thing that should never have been allowed was the blood testimony. They couldn't match it to Cathy Ford (conclusively anyway), so it should have never been heard.

The court didn't see it that way, and maintained that it did not err in allowing this testimony. I'm not sure whether I agree at this point. I would want to look at the original trial transcripts first. But the dissenting justices in Ferrell's appeal decision did make a convincing argument for why the court could have been in error here:

In the celebrated case People v. Collins...the defendants were an inter-racial couple. A witness described the robbers as a white woman and a black man who left the scene in a yellow car. The prosecution conjectured that 1 in 10 cars is yellow, and that 1 in 1,000 couples inter-racial. Thus the jury was given the figure of 10,000 to 1 odds the defendants were guilty.

In Collins, the underlying statistics were wholly conjectural.... Fearing the jury might have seized on the 1 in 10,000 figure to convict, the California Supreme Court reversed the trial court...

I believe a similar flaw underlies the testimony of Agent Lynch in this case. The most obvious problem is that the three blood samples which were used to obtain the genetic markers could not be identified as coming from the same person. Yet, this was the very premise on which the State built its case. The parents' blood was analyzed for the same markers as if they had come from a common source. I know of no court which has sanctioned such an approach.

But despite these two "errors" (IMO), I still think Ferrell would have gotten convicted. The testimony from the other women most certainly should have been allowed because it shows prior intent. And it establishes a motive of a sexual nature. Even without the blood evidence and the body language expert, the case against Ferrell was pretty solid. You had the phone calls, the bizarre note he wrote to the Ford family, his bizarre behavior to his girlfriend, the way he told searchers not to search where Cathy's burnt vehicle would be found, the fact that Cathy's vehicle was found literally in the backyard of his property, etc.

I wonder if the prosecution didn't panic knowing that it had only purely circumstantial evidence that would be fairly easy for the defense to blow over before a jury, and scrambled to find something that at least appeared quantitatively verifiable in order to bolster its case.

I reckon that maybe the prosecution was just afraid this one was going to slip through the cracks, and it overcompensated with that body language and blood evidence testimony.

I don't see how he could have had any support, especially from someone who seems reputable like Martin Yant.

This was actually Martin Yant's first "wrongful" conviction case. I would love to be able to find a copy of that six-part series of articles he published on it.

This was actually Martin Yant's first "wrongful" conviction case. I would love to be able to find a copy of that six-part series of articles he published on it.

I believe a poster on here contacted him about the Circleville Writer, and he e-mailed this poster his articles that he had written about that incident. Maybe if you find some contact info, we could contact him directly...seems like a friendly enough guy willing to share his information.

I believe a poster on here contacted him about the Circleville Writer, and he e-mailed this poster his articles that he had written about that incident. Maybe if you find some contact info, we could contact him directly...seems like a friendly enough guy willing to share his information.

I sent an e-mail to Mr. Yant this morning. Of course I'll let you know if I receive a response.

Channeling my inner dynoguy88, I have rounded up some locations pertinent to this case and found them on Google Maps. I'll organize them into a separate post.

1. Old Mill Restaurant at 47 Streyer Gorman Rd, Oakland, MD. If you look closely at the brown sign, you can just barely see "Old Mill" at the top. The blue building appears to be the restaurant itself.

2. From this screen cap you can see where the Potomac River separates Maryland from West Virginia. The building circled in red on the right in WV is the convenience store Paul Ferrell's family owned (and may still). The building circled in blue on the left in Maryland is the Old Mill Restaurant.

3. Comparison screen cap from the beginning of the Final Appeal episode.

1. Ferrell's family's convenience store, now known as Gormania Gas & Go.

2. This screen cap demonstrates the distance over the river between the convenience store and the restaurant. The restaurant would be clearly visible from the floor above the store (where Paul and his brother and sister-in-law lived before Paul moved into the trailer in Mt Storm in January 1988).

3. Closer view of the level above the store, showing windows facing the Old Mill across the river.

4. Convenience store today.

5. Comparison screen cap from the segment.

1. The turn-off for Bismarck Rd on U.S. 50, where Cathy Ford would have turned on 17 FEB 1988. Imagery isn't available for Bismarck Road; otherwise I would have explored it.

2. U.S. 50 looking west back toward Gormania, WV and Oakland, MD. The bridge crosses the Stony River, by which Cathy Ford's vehicle was found.

Update: Received a reply from Mr. Yant this afternoon. Extremely nice and gracious man. He will be sending me a copy of the article he wrote after his investigation into this case. Really looking forward to reading and sharing it.

Update: Received a reply from Mr. Yant this afternoon. Extremely nice and gracious man. He will be sending me a copy of the article he wrote after his investigation into this case. Really looking forward to reading and sharing it.

Cool! Can't wait to read it too.

And those pictures are great too. I wonder what Ferrell is up to these days.

Cool! Can't wait to read it too.

And those pictures are great too. I wonder what Ferrell is up to these days.

Just received the articles from Mr. Yant today. He was kind enough to copy all 39 pages for me from the one copy of the publication he owns.

I'm still working through it, but by tomorrow I'll have read it all and will update accordingly. There is a LOT of information there not in any article I've read before nor in the Final Appeal episode. I'm actually pretty shocked FA didn't present some of the things Mr. Yant wrote about if the object was to make a solid case for Ferrell's innocence. I'll say right now that even if Ferrell was guilty, his trial and appeal were almost certainly rife with prosecutorial misconduct. The investigators were even worse.

Some interesting facts I can remember off the top of my head (I don't have the doc in front of me right now):

-Both Paul Ferrell and Cathy Ford are twins. Cathy has a fraternal twin brother and Paul's brother David--the one he lived with for a time above the store--is his identical twin.

-According to Paul, the first time he saw Cathy's Bronco was from the air--not on the ground. He was assisting in an aerial search by helicopter at the time and did spot a Bronco much like Cathy's near a few other abandoned vehicles in a sort of dump area near his trailer. He told no one at the time and apparently no one else noticed it either during this search.

-Darvin Moon and Paul Ferrell's exchange was a bit saltier than what was shown on FA. Moon told Ferrell he knew Cathy was "screwing someone" regularly out on Bismark Road, and told Ferrell that when he found him he was going to "get this", and showed him a submachine gun he had in his vehicle.

-There are multiple allegations of Darvin Moon and Cathy Ford both being involved in small-time drug sales and use--Moon more so than Cathy. Cathy was allegedly trying to remove herself from that situation around the time of her disappearance.

-The bowling alley employee who took all those calls the evening of 17 FEB was actually named and said that the woman sounded shaken up and refused to give her name. I'll elaborate on Paul's story on what Cathy Ford told him on the phone in the next post.

-The series of murders the prosecution said were "linked" to Ferrell at Yellowstone NP was unquestionably straight-up BS. Ferrell worked summers at the park between 1982 and 1984. During the periods of time he was actually there, only one homicide occurred, and the perpetrator of that crime was tried and convicted years before Cathy Ford went missing.


Mr. Yant told me the last time he talked to Paul Ferrell was last year, and that he was newly engaged and seemed to be doing very well.

More later!

Ok, here we go. Get ready, this will take a while.

I have decided to mainly highlight pieces of information that either were not presented or extensively discussed in the FA episode rather than relay the entire article. If anyone would like the full articles, just shoot me a pm. Here is the first one. Emphasis is my own.

PROBE REVEALS MISCONDUCT BY PROSECUTORS, INVESTIGATORS

By Martin Yant
Copyright 1992, by Martin Yant


Two key witnesses who testified against Paul W. Ferrell during the 1989 trial that led to his conviction for the kidnapping and murder of a Maryland woman whose body has never been found say prosecutors intimidated them into giving false or misleading testimony.

...In an interview and later in a sworn deposition, the woman who testified that she heard pounding, a scream and a gunshot coming from Ferrell's Mt. Storm, W. Va. trailer on the day Catherine Denise Ford of Gorman disappeared said she was harassed by Garrett County, Md., District Attorney James Sherbin and Sheriff Van Evans until she signed a false statement implicating Ferrell.

Witness Kimberly Sue Nelson said she did so after being assured she wouldn't have to testify in court. When she was later subpoenaed, Nelson said, she was told that if she deviated from her signed statement she might be charged with perjury.

Mrs. Nelson's husband, Clarence "Sonny" Nelson, corroborated his wife's account in both an interview and a sworn deposition.

Tamela Kitzmiller, the other witness to recant, was one of two women who tentatively linked Ferrell to mysterious calls similar to one Ford allegedly received from an "undercover cop" who lured her to a clandestine meeting from which she never returned.

Kitzmiller said she actually had strong doubts about whether the man who called her was Ferrell, but that Sherbin and Grant Count, W. Va. Prosecutor Dennis DiBenedetto intimidated her into not expressing those misgivings. Kitzmiller said she has since compared Ferrell's and the caller's voices while under hypnosis and is now positive the caller was not Ferrell.

Mrs. Kitzmiller's husband, Gary, corroborated his wife's doubts and her fearful reaction to Sherbin's heavy-handed tactics. He said he will so testify in court, if necessary.

...Two prosecution witnesses say Sherbin also implied that the Ferrell family had "darker elements", and that Paul Ferrell's twin brother, David, who had re-entered the military to help pay for Paul's defense, was in a "funny farm."

Another prosecution witness says Evans apparently attempted to influence her testimony by leaving her alone with the results of Paul Ferrell's FBI polygraph exam facing her on a desk. The witness says she couldn't help but read the report, which concluded that Ferrell had been deceptive in several of his answers. Polygraph exam results are inadmissible in court because of their inaccuracy and are supposed to remain confidential.

Defense witnesses give even worse accounts of what they experienced before the trial. Three say they received anonymous phone calls threatening their lives and those of their children if they testified for Ferrell and endured other forms of harassment.

...Rose Ford, Cathy's mother, says that when she tried to tell Evans that she suspected the person who called Cathy Ford before she left the family's Gorman restaurant to meet the "undercover cop" was one of his own deputies, the sheriff laughed in her face.

Garrett County investigators failed to follow several potentially beneficial leads, including one in which a caller reported seeing two suspicious-acting females in a late-model Ford Bronco II bearing a license plated exactly the same as that on Ford's save for one missing digit the caller apparently couldn't remember. When Ford's burned-out Bronco II had been found in a wooded area near Ferrell's trailer eight days earlier, its license plates were missing.

...The transcript of one of several key interviews was not turned over to the defense until they were specifically requested last year by Ferrell's appeal attorney, Dan James of Keyser...Sections in which the potential suspect talks about matters that might prove disconcerting contain large gaps.

Investigators failed to interrogate any of several men other than Ferrell who had regular access to the phone from which he was alleged to have made calls similar to the one received by Ford. Two of those men had dated the only women whose calls could be linked to Ferrell's phone by long-distance records. A third had been reported to investigators as having been following one of those women.

DiBenedetto's contention that the mysterious calls tried to lure area women to two remote locations when Ferrell rented trailers there ignored reports mentioning other locations or the same locations when Ferrell didn't rent there. The recipient of one of those calls says the man who called her was definitely not Ferrell, with whom she has talked on the phone several times.

...After the U.S. attorney's office in Baltimore and the U.S. Department of Justice's civil rights division in Washington declined to prosecute Ferrell because of insufficient evidence, FBI agent Everett Robinson III used the same affidavit submitted to federal authorities in support of a Grant County warrant for Ferrell's arrest. In the process, he crossed out, but left legible, evidence obtained with a federal grand jury subpoena and noted in the margin that a West Virginia subpoena would be needed to obtain the information. Such evidence normally is not to be shown to any non-federal authority without first obtaining a waiver from a federal judge. Robinson also misrepresented what at least one of those interviewed in the case actually said, and sought Ferrell's arrest for Ford's murder while admitting he didn't know how Ford died, "if she is deceased."

The testimony by an FBI polygraphist as an alleged body language expert, who interpreted a nod of Ferrell's head as an admission of guilt, was apparently the first time such testimony had been admitted in an American court of law. And Paul Ekman, a researcher on nonverbal communication at the University of California at San Francisco and the author of Telling Lies, hopes it will be the last.

...Ekman published the most recent study to discredit their expertise in the September issue of the American Psychologist. The results showed that of the 509 people he and Maureen O'Sullivan of the University of San Francisco tested for their ability to detect lies, federal polygraphists, like most others, were found to be wrong about half the time.

Of the seven groups tested, though, federal polygraphists had the lowest percentage of participants to score in the high-accuracy range. Even college students did better.

What's more, Ekman said, head nods are the most difficult of all body motions to interpret.

...Three of the witnesses would have testified that Ferrell had discussed replacing the trailer's bedroom carpet, which the prosecution contended was removed because of blood stains, before Ford disappeared.

Another was a blood expert who would have testified that "no meaningful comparison" could be made to link bloodstains found in Ferrell's trailer to Ford, as the prosecution contended. Her conclusion was independently verified by the head of the paternity-evaluation division of Roche Biomedical Laboratories.

...Ferrell's never-before-told story, and a disturbing examination of how he came to be proved guilty "beyond a reasonable doubt" of a kidnapping and murder that may never have been, follows.

DISAPPEARANCE WAS A PHONE CALL AWAY

Behold, I show you a mystery. We shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed.
- 1 Corinthians 14:51

The phone rang shortly after 1 p.m. on Feb. 17, 1988. Pat Parker, whose shift had just started at the Ford family's Old Mill Restaurant in Gorman, Md., went to answer it.

But 19-year-old Cathy Ford, whose shift had just ended, got there first. The tall, attractive young woman with shoulder-length brown hair, brown eyes, and a magnetic personality seemed to be expecting the call. Before Ford walked out of earshot, Parker heard her a 3 p.m. meeting with a magistrate had been called off and that she could "be there."

The fact that Cathy's comments suggested a prearranged meeting would be the first of many details overlooked by investigators in the coming weeks.

The meeting with the "magistrate", on the other hand, apparently had just been arranged that morning during what later was termed a prank call similar to those other area women had received in recent months. Authorities said each cal had attempted to lure the attractive young women who received them to remote locations, although they never explained how a magistrate's office or a medical center could be called "remote."

Waitress Dottie Reall was busy putting salads in a chrome cabinet when Cathy received the "magistrate's" call. The exact time of the call is unclear. At the trial, Reall said the call was before lunch started at 11 a.m. But in her original statement, taken only two days after Cathy's disappearance, she said Cathy had answered the phone "after 11 a.m.--before noon." She now estimated the time of the call at about 11:15 a.m., a time to keep in mind.

"When she picked up the phone, I heard her say, 'My checks?'" Reall later testified. "And then I heard her say, 'Well, who is this?' And then I heard her say, '3 o'clock,' and she hung up the phone."

"Cathy, what's the matter?" Reall inquired.

"Oh, that just screws up my afternoon," she replied.

"Well, what's wrong?"

"That was the magistrate's office in Oakland. He wants to see me at 3 o'clock."

The fact that Cathy had said Oakland would later be greatly obscured. In fact, the word appears to be blocked out in Reall's unsigned statement taken by Garrett County Detective Donald W. Tucker. The emphasis, instead, would be put on Mount Storm, to which attempts were made to lure two other women that day.

But that meeting had apparently been canceled in a brief call Parker had heard Cathy answer a few minutes later--which would explain why Cathy told the latest caller that she could "be there."

When Cathy hung up, she took a long puff on her Marlboro, thoughtfully exhaled, and snuffed it out in an ashtray. She looked like she knew more than she was about let on.

"Who was that?" asked a curious Parker, who practically considered Cathy a second daughter.

"It was an undercover cop," an evasive Cathy replied. "If anyone comes in to buy beer, be sure to card them. They're sending someone young around, so if you don't know them, don't sell them any beer without asking for an ID. I've got to meet him to find out more."

"Where?" a skeptical Parker asked.

"I can't tell you."

"Who is this guy?" Parker probed, suspecting there was more to the story than Cathy was letting on. It wasn't uncommon for Cathy to receive such tips from a sheriff's deputy. It wasn't uncommon for her to secretly meet men when her possessive boyfriend wasn't around, either.

"I can't tell you," Cathy replied. "He said he'd get fired if I told anyone."

Ford left the restaurant and went to her apartment in a nearby house owned by her parents to change clothes. Cathy lived there with Darvin Moon, a fiery redheaded sawmill worker and admitted drug dealer.

...After showering, Cathy put on blue stone-washed jeans, a sparkling black underblouse, an open black blouse and black flats rather than her usual dress boots. Then she grabbed her black leather coat and pink purse, and returned to the restaurant. It was almost 2 p.m.

"How do I look?" she asked--a strange concern for someone going to see an "undercover cop".

"You look stupid," Parker replied as she looked at her out-of-character flats.

Parker had come to work already upset with Cathy because she had just found out Cathy had allowed her own teenage daughter to smoke in her apartment. Parker's suspicion that Cathy wasn't being up-front about the phone call only added to her irritation.

...As Cathy headed for the door, Parker asked her if she could at least say how long she would be gone.

"I'll be back in an hour," Cathy replied.

"Yeah, and what if you don't come back in an hour? What am I supposed to do then," replied Parker, whose skepticism was now bordering on sarcasm--a feeling, based on what was to follow, she now deeply regrets.

"Come look for me," Cathy replied with a touch of sarcasm of her own...

****

From Concern to Fear


It was no mystery, at first, to Cathy's boyfriend about where she probably was.

"She's with someone," Darvin Moon said suspiciously when Parker told him of Cathy's mysterious meeting when he stopped at the restaurant at 4 p.m. after a day's work at his family's sawmill.

As Parker filled Moon in on the details, Paul Ferrell, an off-duty rookie Grant County sheriff's deputy watched with curiousity as he waited at the main counter for a carryout hamburger.

Ferrell says he overheard Parker asking Moon if he knew where Cathy might have gone, but he didn't give the matter much thought. Ferrell had too many things on his mind.

For one thing, he was worried about his mother, who was undergoing a mammogram that day in Winchester, Va.

For another, he was concerned about the son of his live-in girlfriend, Cathy Bernard, whom she was to take to the doctor that day.

But Ferrell says he had another reason not to seem too interested in Cathy Ford's whereabouts: He had been seeing her secretly since the previous September.

And that was the last thing either he or Cathy ever wanted the mercurial Moon to suspect. Cathy said she feared Moon would kill her if he ever found out, Ferrell says.

Ferrell had gotten to know Cathy Ford during his almost-daily breakfasts at the homey Old Mill. Cathy was an outgoing, charming young woman who always went out of her way to talk to customers. And that, he says, is how things started.

"She seemed to be unhappy and feeling trapped, which was pretty much how I was feeling...I told her about how I felt like heading for Yellowstone Park, where I had worked several summers, and getting a permanent job. She said she felt like going with me. She really hadn't traveled anywhere, and had been tied down with the restaurant ever since she had graduated from high school. She was getting tired of getting up at 4 a.m., carrying the burden of the restaurant, the hassles of bad credit, things like that."

Ferrell claims they began meeting at the trailer he was renting on Wilson-Corona Rd. in Maryland at about the time Moon's drinking and drug abuse had gotten so bad that he eventually entered a rehabilitation clinic in Cumberland.

...Ferrell says the affair cooed down for a while after Moon returned in October.

Wow. Thanks for all that info. I used to think Paul Ferrell was one of the few Final Appelants I was pretty sure was guilty, but that has definititely changed now to undetermined. I'd love to see Dateline or some show do an updated story on this, I'm sort of surprised they haven't. Unless Darvin Moon has used some of his poker money to bribe them into NOT doing the story.

Wow. Thanks for all that info. I used to think Paul Ferrell was one of the few Final Appelants I was pretty sure was guilty, but that has definititely changed now to undetermined. I'd love to see Dateline or some show do an updated story on this, I'm sort of surprised they haven't. Unless Darvin Moon has used some of his poker money to bribe them into NOT doing the story.

I felt the exact same way and am also profoundly undecided. This is the crazy part, though: we're only on page 8 of the whole thing! :eek:

This case was all over TV back in the early '90s--apparently a Montel Williams episode and A Current Affair segment exist on it, so I'm surprised too that the case just seemed to kind of fade out from the public consciousness at large. It's pretty significant that the governor himself commuted Ferrell's sentence knowing he'd be eligible for parole immediately, and he apparently took a considerable amount of heat for it. I suppose he really believed what he was doing was simply the right thing to do.

Knowing the background on Darvin Moon, that scenario wouldn't be very shocking to me. It gets more interesting with him, too.

Off to work up the next section; will post it soon.

Cathy: 'All he did was torture me.'



Just how joyous of a reunion that was is open to debate.

Moon later told investigators he and Ford had been getting along "great."

...Most family members and restaurant employees seemed to agree. But a few painted a much different picture. Some of the restaurant's employees and early-morning customers quoted Cathy as saying she feared Moon might kill her someday. She also told them she felt like running away at times, but she feared Darvin would only track her down.

Cathy even left behind some evidence to back up such claims in several letters.

"All me and Darv do is argue about stupid things and I don't know what to do," she wrote to a friend on Oct. 14, 1987. "When we were broke up, all he did was torture me. He would come to my house at 4 in the morning and get me all upset just to see me cry. We only got into one fistfight, though, thank God. He knew everything I did, who I did it with. So I thought the best thing to do was to go back with the son of a bitch, just maybe so I could live my life peacefully without being followed everywhere I went. He even had my phone tapped, he said."

...After Ferrell had left the Old Mill, Moon's suspicions began to change to fear.

"About 5 o'clock, I started getting worried...So I got in my car and went into Oakland and I drove all around and didn't see her anywhere. So I went to Mount Storm and drove through there and I didn't see her anywhere. So I came home and said, 'I'm going to report it.' This was about 8 o'clock, I guess, when I reported it. I called the sheriff's department."

The clean-cut, athletic, 32-year-old Ferrell, meanwhile, had headed for the family store a little more than stone's throw away across the rocky Potomac...

Ferrell says he ate his hamburger, did some minor chores and went down the unpaved street to his parents' house to await their return from the doctor's office.

When Joe and Bev Ferrell pulled into their driveway at 6 p.m., they say Paul was in the back yard throwing a ball for his dog to retrieve.

Paul came into the house with them and asked how the mammogram had gone. Fine, he was told. But it would be awhile before they would get the results.

After some more small talk, Paul returned to exercising his dog before heading for the bowling alley, and Joe and Bev went out for a light Ash Wednesday dinner of tomato soup and grilled-cheese sandwiches.

The Ferrells were a close, Catholic, hard-working family that placed a premium on education.

...So it was natural that the seven Ferrell boys go to college, and all did. Only the twins, Paul and David, didn't earn at least a bachelor's degree.

The twins took life a lot easier. That was especially true of Paul, who was more content doing things like playing with his dog, lifting weights with his buddies in a room above the store or pursuing women.

Actually, the women pursued Paul as much as he pursued them. "I don't know how he did it," the more-serious David said. "I'd go for weeks without a date, and he always had two or three women on the line."

What set Paul apart, several of those women say, was his gentle nature in an area where men pride themselves in their tough exteriors.

But Paul's luck with women turned from good to bad in 1987, when he began seeing not one, but two women named Cathy.

It was also at this time, Ferrell admits, that he began making phone calls to bookstores and asking female employees to read a sex-related passage from The New Our Bodies, Ourselves, a book by and for women about how to keep healthy and achieve sexual fulfillment.

By the time Ferrell moved in with Bernard in December, he says, what had started out as a joke had gotten out of hand.

The calls eventually became such a source of embarrassment, Ferrell says, that he actually considered pleading guilty to murder just to save his family the shame of having details about the calls come out in court.

Ferrell says he also continued seeing the other Cathy--Cathy Ford--during this period.

"She was really confused at the time," Ferrell said of Ford. "She wanted out of everything--Darvin, drugs, the restaurant. But she said she knew too much for Darvin to ever let her go. She said the only way she could get away was to either blow the whistle on the drug operation Darvin was involved in, or have him done away with."

"I encouraged her to go to Cathy Bernard's brother, Doug Tressler, who was an undercover agent for the Garrett County Sheriff's Department. I told her he was so good he had even been written up in a national magazine [Woman's Day, March 5, 1985], and she could trust him."

But as Cathy mulled over that option, Ferrell says, she suddenly saw an opportunity as well.

"All of a sudden, she realized that if she brought down Darvin's operation, the field would be open for a new one...We had met at the trailer I had rented in Mount Storm and had planned to move into, and she started talking about using it as a base of operations. She talked about getting either Melvin Cullers or Gene Dove involved because of their tough reputations. And she said I could protect her, since I would probably be the only deputy on the Mountain when Hobert Schell retired."

Ferrell admits he didn't reject the idea out of hand. But since Ford talked mostly about getting out of drugs and not deeper into them, he says he didn't think she was really serious.

He found out otherwise on Feb. 17, 1988.

When Paul entered the Par-Matt Lanes in Oakland between 8:30 and 9 p.m. that night, manager Dennis Reams handed him a telephone message that would change Ferrell's life.

Reams had taken the message from a distraught-sounding young woman who had called for Ferrell a short time earlier. When he told her Ferrell hadn't arrived yet, Reams says the woman asked him to have Ferrell call her as soon as he arrived. She gave him a telephone number, but not a name.

Whoever the woman was, it couldn't have been Bernard. Bernard later testified that she had tried to reach Ferrell at Ferrell's Mart several times that day, but had stopped calling by 6 p.m., because she knew he normally would be on his way to the bowling alley by then.

Bernard made no mention of trying to call Ferrell after that...

'Darvin's found out about us'



According to several witnesses, Ferrell then went to a pay phone in the entrance and made a call. Ferrell says Cathy Ford answered quickly when he did.

"I've got to see you," she said. "Darvin's found out about us, and we're in real trouble."

Ferrell froze. He was a lover, not a fighter. He hated confrontations, and always tried to avoid them. Now he was facing a big one.

Then, he says, Ford dropped a second bombshell.

"She told me she had picked up four ounces of cocaine and she had to get rid of it fast," Ferrell said. "She was slurring her words a lot, and I got the feeling she had already used some of it. She asked me to meet her at the trailer so we could talk and she could stash the coke. I told her I really didn't want to do that."

Instead, once he found out Ford was at a pay phone at a nearby store, Ferrell suggested they meet at the Southern High School parking lot.

...After Ferrell hung up, he returned to the counter and told Reams he wasn't going to be able to bowl in the league that night and would have to get a substitute. Once one was lined up, Ferrell says he headed for the parking lot.

"I waited for about 20 minutes, but Cathy never showed," he said. "So I decided to go home to Cathy Bernard."

When he arrived, Ferrell says, he was met with the full fury of a woman scorned.

"She was upset I hadn't called her about her kid and also because she had gotten a call from a woman who had left a message for me to meet her at the trailer instead," Ferrell said.

Bernard later told the FBI that she was indeed upset when Ferrell arrived because she "hadn't been able to reach him all day." But she mentioned nothing about a call from a woman.

...According to Ferrell, though, Bernard made such a fuss about the call, as well as his failure to inquire about her son's condition, that he decided not to go to the trailer that night.

"I didn't want Cathy more upset than she already was...I was also afraid Darvin might show up there, too, and I didn't want to face him."

..."All I did was toss and turn all night," Ferrell said. "Finally, I got up about 5 in the morning and went out to the trailer. I didn't see her Bronco, but I went inside to make sure Cathy wasn't there. She wasn't. Everything looked OK, except that the back door was open a little bit. But that wasn't all that unusual, because the latch didn't hold very well."

As he prepared to leave, though, Ferrell said he saw something in the field behind the trailer.

"It was foggy, [B]so all I could tell was that there was some kind of vehicle there. The only reason I could tell was that there was a small amount of light--maybe the dome light or parking lights were on. I also smelled a little smoke, but I couldn't say where it was coming from."

Whatever it was, Ferrell didn't go find out.

Why?

"I was scared," Ferrell said.

...Ferrell was beginning to fear Ford's concern had been genuine and that something might have happened to her. Whether it was because of jealousy, drugs, or both, he didn't know. But he was worried enough that he called in sick to work that day.

He says he couldn't face pretending to be a deputy, a job he had quickly realized he wasn't cut out for anyway, with something so serious going on.

Moon perhaps unintentionally fed Ferrell's fears later that morning, when he drove up to Ferrell's Mart with Cathy's brother Gary.

"Is the one who's a deputy here?" he asked.

Store employee Sharon Aronholt says she called upstairs for Paul, and he came down.

Aronholt says she heard Moon say he wanted to report a missing vehicle as the two walked out onto the porch.

..."I know someone's been screwing Cathy out on Bismark Road, and I think something bad happened out there last night," Ferrell recalled Moon saying.

Whether Moon meant Ferrell in particular is unclear. But an already nervous Ferrell took it that way. So a short time later, Ferrell says, he went to the Old Mill to try to allay any suspicions Moon might have.

Moon was outside when he pulled up. He still looked angry.

"Look, Darvin, I just want you to know I don't want no trouble. I just want to help find Cathy," Ferrell said he told Moon.

"Well, I don't know for sure who's been screwing her, but whoever it is, he's going to get this," Ferrell said Moon replied.

Then, Ferrell, added, Moon reached into Gary Ford's truck and pulled out an Uzi or a similar semi-automatic weapon.

That, Ferrell says, just added to a growing sense of desperation that would cause him to begin covering up his involvement with Ford in ways that caused him to be wrongly convicted of her kidnapping and murder.

Can Ferrell be believed?

...Moon's version of events is unknown. He failed to respond to several requests for an interview.

As for Cathy's talks about bringing down Moon's regime and starting a new one in Paul's trailer and under his protection, we can take the words of Old Mill regular Melvin Cullers, who believes Ferrell is "guilty as hell."

Asked how he could be so sure, Cullers said: "You know, Cathy and I spent a lot of time talking before she disappeared...And Cathy kept telling me how some new cop was going to keep her out of trouble with drugs. So when she came up missing, I went over to Ferrell's store and checked him out. I could tell by how nervous he was that it had to be him."

Could that mean Cathy Ford had tried to recruit Cullers, as Ferrell says she had suggested she might?

Could it also explain how a jealous Darvin Moon had apparently caught onto the fact that Cathy Ford was seeing someone on Bismark Road?

Could it explain why Ferrell says--and Doug Tressler admits--that Tressler had called Ferrell a few days after Ford's disappearance to seek Ferrell's help investigating "drug activity" on Bismark Road that had a Garrett County connection?

...It's hard to say.

But sometimes the fact really can speak for themselves--or at least raise interesting questions.

The next article covers LOTS of different aspects of the case, including the quality of the initial investigation, elaboration on Darvin Moon and Cathy Ford's involvement in drugs, and Ferrell's discovery of the Bronco. I'll try to have it up tomorrow.

Also, at this point I just want to say that this entire document has been immensely humbling, and that is a good thing. I have made plenty of pretty fixed assumptions on this case without in reality having much information to go on at all. This report is challenging literally every single one of them, and again--that's a good thing.

Wow thanks for taking the time to repost all of this stuff...it's very interesting!

I know there's more to come, and the articles do bring up a bunch of stuff left out by UM (no surprise), but I just can't get over the fact that Ferrell admitted to making those phone calls to the bookstores. If the guy really was a ladies man, why did he need to do that? Sure the phone calls mean zilch in the disappearance of Cathy Ford, but then again what are the odds that there was another "phantom caller" in that small town of Gorman?

FALSE ASSUMPTIONS QUICKLY GIVE RISE TO FALSE CONCLUSIONS

It is a capital mistake to theorize before you have all the evidence. Insensibly, one begins to twist facts to fit theories instead of theories to fit evidence.
-Sherlock Holmes


By the time Cathy Ford was reported missing to the Garrett County Sheriff's Department at 8 p.m., members of the frantic Ford family and their friends had already begun scouring the area's winding back roads and logging trails looking for signs of Cathy or her Bronco.

By the next morning, they also began circulating fliers containing Cathy's photo and description. "Will give a $1,000 REWARD for anyone finding her," the flier said.

On Friday, Feb. 19, Garrett County Sheriff Van Evans personally took control of the investigation. And he never really relinquished it--even when it began to focus across the state line in West Virginia.

Most sheriffs won't allow a sheriff from the same state to cross their county line, let alone allow one to cross a state line. But Sheriff Larry Ours, in keeping with Grant County's general neglect of the Mountain, let Evans have free rein.

State's witnesses say Grant County Prosecutor Dennis DiBenedetto gave Garrett County District Attorney James Sherbin similar control until the trial. Many state's witnesses say they were coached in Sherbin's Oakland office, where Sherbin did the talking and DiBenedetto did the nodding.

Details of the probe were tightly controlled, and the true facts were selectively released. False rumors about Paul Ferrell's alleged perversions, his purported involvement in pornography, his purported homosexual activities with his twin brother and their friends were a different matter. They were freely dispensed--with a great deal of pleasure, many witnesses say--by Evans, Tucker, Sherbin, DiBenedetto and FBI Agent Everett Robinson III.

Of the three deputies Evans originally assigned to the case, the name of one, David Stoner, surfaces only once in the official report--and that was when a prank caller used his name.

Lt. Larry Gnegy, who wrote the official report of the investigation, said during a recent telephone interview that he "wasn't really involved that much in it."

"I was just more or less a minor figure," he added. "I conducted some interviews of the female subjects who were involved..I wasn't a principal investigator, and I more or less just took instructions from those in charge of the investigation and did whatever I was told."

***

'A question of trust'


The only deputy with any real involvement was Detective Donald W. Tucker, Evans' boyhood friend, and longtime subject, or victim, of almost as many rumors as Ferrell would become.

"It's well-known that Tucker can't be trusted," said a source with another law-enforcement agency.

The agent who eventually busted the Backbone Mountain Inn, more commonly known as the Bear's Den, which is owned by Moon's cousin, Mike Inglese, agreed.

"I avoided him as much as I could," he said. The agent had high praise for Evans, however. "Once he became aware of things, he was very gung-ho," he said.

Evans was gung-ho on the Ford case, too. He wasted no time jumping in--and jumping to conclusions.

Because Cathy Ford's early calls from a "magistrate" seemed similar to several prank calls reported by area women, Evans, Tucker, & Co. quickly assumed the third call she received was one as well.

But Pat Parker and Rose Ford weren't so sure.

Parker, for example, told Evans in a statement that she thought Cathy knew the caller "because of her and Darvin going up to the Bear's Den."

Evans didn't ask her to elaborate. If he had, Parker might have told him about the drug sales and usage she had seen there. She also might have told him Ford and Moon often seemed to get tips about the whereabouts of undercover agents to relay to the notorious bar, which didn't have a phone. The tips, the Old Mill's rumor mill had it, came from a deputy.

...Rose Ford did more than just hint about one deputy and the Bear's Den, but it didn't do her any better. She and her articulate sister, Anna Sutton, say that when they told Evans they wondered--probably incorrectly--if Detective Tucker might have made that final call to Cathy, he just laughed and shook his head.

Ironically, Moon himself indirectly raised the issue of Cathy receiving a call from Tucker when the detective interviewed him on Feb. 19. When Moon gave Tucker the name of a possible suspect (Moon never suggested Ferrell and reportedly defended him when he first became a suspect) and Tucker asked him if Ford would have trusted the man enough to meet with him, he replied:

"He could have told her any name. If he is the one that made all those other calls around, he could have told them that he was you, Donnie Tucker, or...anyone that wanted to give her some tips."

Whoever made the call, Parker still believe it came from someone directly connected with the Bear's Den--and that it probably had something to do with drugs. She also suspects it may not have been her first meeting with the caller, either.

"About a week before she disappeared, Cathy got dressed up after work and said she was going to town," Parker said. "But when I asked if I could go along, she became evasive and said she didn't know how long she was going to be gone. I didn't give it much thought then, but now I wonder if she wasn't going to the same lace that day that she did the day she disappeared."

But Rose Ford's and Pat Parker's suspicions were quickly brushed aside, even by the FBI.

"Every time I brought up drugs, I was told that was a separate issue, that Cathy's disappearance was sex-related, not drug-related," Parker said.

Yet Cathy's friend Melissa Miner, who lived in the same household with Cathy for the three years while Rich Ford was married to her mother, immediately thought drugs had something to do with it.

"My gut reaction was that she had gotten too deep into drugs," Miner said. "Darvin wasn't into coke when they started dating, but once he got into it, Cathy did too. And it didn't take long before they were into it bad."

"The last time I really spent any time with them was at a family reunion the summer before she disappeared. They took me into the woods and tried to get me to take some of the stuff and bragged about how much money they had spent on it. They seemed to think it was funny. But I don't think it ended up that way."

Another friend of Cathy's, who like Miner worked in the restaurant, said that Cathy was already using marijuana when the Fords moved to Gorman, and that she progressed into using cocaine after she and Moon started frequenting the Bear's Den.

'Unsuspected suspects'


But Cathy's involvement in drugs wasn't the only lead given short shrift.

On Feb. 26, Jeff Trickett, who said he had been involved with Cathy until the previous August, told Gnegy he was "sure" Cathy had called him "right before she left."

"She called me a couple of times a week, and usually Dad answer the phone when I'm in bed--I work the third shift," Trickett said in a statement. "I let it ring once or twice, and he wasn't there, so I got up, and tried to get some pants on and stuff, and stumbled around and it ended up ringing about eight times. When I picked the phone up, there was no one there. It was just a little after 1. That's when she always called me, between 1 and 2."

Trickett was asked his whereabouts on Feb. 17, but the page on which his answer appears is somewhat curious. It was typed on a different typewriter, and lacked Gnegy's usual typographical errors. It also has a peculiar break in the middle of the following exchange:

Q. Do you recall where you would have been on that day?
A. I was home in bed.
Q. Did you work that week? What shift were you working?
A. Third shift.
Q. That would be the night shift?
A. Yeah, 10:30 to 7. I usually sleep in the afternoons, so there was no one home....

End of Taped Conversation.

Q. Are you aware of any domestic or family problems involving Cathy and her family?
A. No, not that I know of. When Darvin found out I was seeing Cathy, he didn't like it. Around June 1987, Darvin was confused and disturbed, and had some problems. he went away for a while and when he returned, he checked himself in a clinic at Cumberland. Since then he has straightened up. He's a little insecure. I would usually see Cathy in the afternoons, when I did see her.


Trickett's stated belief that Ford had been trying to reach him right before she disappeared, his admission that they apparently had secretly kept in contact after Ford went back with Moon and his statement that they had met in the afternoons when they dated apparently didn't arouse suspicion, however. The official report never mentions him again.

Another suspect never thoroughly investigated was the volatile Darvin Moon. Since roughly a third of all women murdered are killed by their husbands or boyfriends, they are usually considered a prime suspect by most law enforcement agencies.

Yet Gnegy later testified that, as far as he was concerned, Moon was never considered a suspect even though there was evidence he and Cathy weren't getting along as well as Moon said.

But Moon didn't act like a suspect, either. Although some of the Fords and their friends say his role in the search for Cathy was somewhat exaggerated by both Moon and the press, he at least appeared to be relentless in his pursuit and upset with local law enforcement's less intense effort.

When he expressed his frustration with what he viewed as local law enforcement's low level of concern about Cathy's disappearance to businessman Steve Dixon on Saturday, Feb. 20, Dixon talked Moon into calling the FBI.

"He called, but he wasn't very forceful about it...So later that day I called the FBI myself and got somebody in the Baltimore office. I think that's what got the balling rolling."...


'Jumping to conclusions'


...As word circulated that Cathy had disappeared after receiving a mysterious phone call that may not really have been all that mysterious to her, reports of similar calls to other women that may not really have been that similar quickly began to surface.

Once they did, they were immediately--and possibly incorrectly--linked. And what those who received the calls originally said in court sometimes changed just enough to tie the string of calls into a neat noose around Paul Ferrell's neck.

On the evening of Feb. 19, Evans interviewed Viola Knotts, who lived across the street from the just-opened Gormania Post Office on land adjacent to Ferrell's Mart.

"Viola stated that she received a call about 11:40 a.m. from a person she believed to be young and nervous. She also stated that he didn't seem real bright. [Descriptions of the caller's or callers' voice(s), intelligence and demeanor would vary immensely.] The caller asked if she lived near the post office. Yes, she replied, she did. She was then asked to take a message to Rose Bosley that her mail carrier was broke down between Bismark Road and Cherry Ridge Road. The caller then stated that if Rose couldn't make it, other arrangements would be made."

...Bosley didn't normally work Wednesdays. She was there only because she had agreed to fill in for a short while at an unspecified time so Postmaster Juanita Bosley could leave to make arrangments for the installation of a telephone and to cancel other utility services at the old facility.

But Bosley didn't respond to the call anyway. She knew Gormania's carrier routes extended only a mile and a half east of the post office--and Bismark Road was five miles beyond that. What was not brought out in the trial, however, was that Bosley was one of two among 11 local women to testify about receiving similar calls to also receive obscene phone calls from a man with a deep, masculine voice around the same time they received the other calls.

Bosley received the obscene call the same day. When she did, she began to suspect the calls were being made from the Ferell's Mart phone booth, so she immediately called the store and asked whichever Ferrell twin had answered the phone--she can't remember which--to see if anyone was in the booth outside.

Paul and David Ferrell say the were both at the store when Bosley called, and that David answered the phone. Whoever it was, Bosley says he sounded nothing like the obscene caller.

The second report of a prank phone call was made by Melvin Cullers, whose name surfaces throughout the report but never seems to have aroused suspicion. Of course, Cullers' name often arouses fear on the Mountain. His vanity license plate tells his profession--WELDER. But it doesn't tell his history, which includes the shooting death of a man under suspicious circumstances in 1986.

Cullers was acquitted of murder charges in 1987, but the suspicions remained. Cullers did little to dissuade them, either. He seems to enjoy and foster the image of a man to be feared.

Cullers even tried to intimidate this reporter during a rambling interview in downtown Bayard.

"Did you ever hunt deer?" he asked unexpectedly, as he stuck his face within an inch of mine.

"No," I replied.

"Well you can always see the fear in their eyes--just like you can in men."

But Cullers was just trying to be helpful--as he would throughout the investigation--when he called to tell Evans that he had heard that Sherry Arnold, then of Bayard, had received a call concerning a blue car on Bismark Road.

Cullers seemed to be particularly interested--or concerned--about the prank calls. So much so, in fact, that it was the only sensitive question brought up during a voluntary statement Cullers gave to Detective Tucker. The transcript was reluctantly turned over to Ferrell's appeals attorney, Dan James of Keyser, after he was told of its potential importance by this reporter. Although the statement appears to have gaps at crucial points, enough of it remains to show Tucker could hardly be accused of giving Cullers the third degree.

"Today is Feb. 25, 1988," Tucker started..."We're in the sheriff's office, with Sheriff Van Evans, Detective Larry Gnegy and myself, Sgt. Tucker. We're talking with Melvin Grant Cullers from Aurora, and Melvin, first of all, we'd like to know what you could tell us about Cathy Ford from Gormania, what you know about her."

"She's a hell of a nice kid," Cullers replied.

Cullers then went on to name just about everyone but himself as a potential suspect.

"If I wasn't sure of me, I wouldn't be here," he said.

Not once was Cullers pressed about his activities the day of Ford's disappearance.

Not once was he asked about why he seemed so interested if investigators had any "prime suspects" yet.

Not once was he asked about a report three days earlier that he had been acting in a "peculiar manner" while talking to some young women in Bayard--nor apparently would he be interviewed again when his name continued to come up during the course of the investigation.

At least these articles have given insight into the alternate suspect Darvin Moon theory, as to how it was suspicious that Moon was the one who found the vehicle on Ferrell's property. Some have theorized that maybe Moon found out about their affair and killed Cathy and tried to frame Ferrell. But these articles hint at a different answer. When Moon showed up at Ferrell's family store to report Cathy's vehicle missing, he probably noticed Ferrell acting nervous or odd. Or (more likely), he simply heard the reports of someone seeing smoke near Ferrell's trailer and went to check it out. I do find the possible drug angle very interesting and look forward to reading more. I'm a bit confused as to motive as to why an agent investigating illegal drug sales would murder a possible informant, but I'm still looking forward to reading more.

I know there's more to come, and the articles do bring up a bunch of stuff left out by UM (no surprise), but I just can't get over the fact that Ferrell admitted to making those phone calls to the bookstores. If the guy really was a ladies man, why did he need to do that? Sure the phone calls mean zilch in the disappearance of Cathy Ford, but then again what are the odds that there was another "phantom caller" in that small town of Gorman?

So we have two sets of calls: the "phone sex type thing" (in Ferrell's words) calls and the "meeting" calls (in which someone usually claiming to be an official would attempt to lure the call recipient to another location).

Whether this is accurate or not I'm not sure (it came from the prosecution), but I think Ferrell made something like 200 phone calls to bookstores "all over the country". (I'd be curious as to what telephone he was using, as many of those calls would have certainly been long-distance.) So I wonder how many of those calls were actually made to local stores.

While there IS definite consistency in these calls (someone claiming to be a doctor and requesting the same passage from the same book be read to him--plus, homeboy admitted he made them), there isn't always consistency with the "meeting" calls, according to Yant's investigation. Some even actually stated they didn't think the caller sounded at all like Ferrell. At least one woman was certain of it because she regularly spoke to Ferrell on the phone (for business, I think). And the calls directing women to meet the caller in "locations near Ferrell's properties" were made before AND after the times Paul was living at those addresses.

I guess I don't think it's implausible that Ferrell could have been popular with women and still engage in those calls. According to him, they started out as a "joke" and apparently got very out of hand. The passage he requested the employees read over the phone describes non-vaginal intercourse. Coming from a Catholic family, perhaps he felt some sense of shame about being allegedly aroused by what the passage described. I don't know. Your guess is probably as good as mine.

In any event, I couldn't put down this stuff all weekend. Every time I read it I was finding something new.

'I'm not going to give up'


Most important, Tucker, Evans, and Gnegy didn't even bother--or perhaps have the courage--to confront Cullers with a statement by another prank-call victim, Robin Tichnell, that the only man she had been harassed by was Melvin Grant Cullers. On Feb. 22, Tichnell had told Evans that Cullers had asked her out several times after she had waited on him when he came to Garrett National Bank to close his account.

"He talked to me a long time and asked me out," Tichnell said. "I told him no, and...he called my house and asked me out. I told him no. He called me again. I again told him no, that I was seeing someone. That didn't seem to matter, and he said he didn't give up that easy. 'I'm not going to give up.'"

The only thing Cullers was pressed on at all was how he seemed to keep so current on the prank-call reports.

In the process, Tucker brought up a bizarre incident in which Cullers entered Stoners' Video in Redhouse shortly after Loretta Stoner had reported receiving one of the calls.

According to one witness, Cullers lunged over the counter, grabbed the telephone, and said to Stoner, "Got any weird phone calls lately?"

Tucker brought up the incident up midway through Cullers' rambling statement.

"[Did] you know you scared the hell out of the Stoners?" Tucker asked.

"I didn't mean to do that...Just bugs the hell out of me 'bout Cathy."

Later, Tucker asked when Cullers had heard about the prank call received by his old target for a date, Robin Tichnell.

"I work with a guy," Cullers explained. "OK, his son knows [name apparently deleted]. I talked to her. Hadn't to her for a long time. But he said his son and Robin are good friends. He was tellin' me, the two other people that told me...What did they tell her anyway?"

"Not going to say," Tucker replied.

The call Cullers reported, coincidentally, would be one of the most damaging to Paul Ferrell's case in the trial to come. An attractive, articulate blonde who even earned a sound bite on a Current Affair segment on the case, Sherry Arnold seemed to personify the kind of young woman a disturbed man might try to lure to a remote spot to fulfill a sexual fantasy.

The prosecution also argued that the time she said she received the call--9:50 p.m. on Feb. 15--on a pay phone in her dorm at Potomac State College in Keyser, had to be the 9:41 p.m. call of Feb. 15 to that number logged on the long-distance records of a phone registered to Paul Ferrell.

[B]Yet Arnold said in a recent interview that she was so quick to give her 9:50 estimate because she recalled looking up to a large clock above the phone when she answered it.

"The time just stuck in my mind," she said convincingly enough to raise the question of how the time she gave and the one on Ferrell's records could be nine minutes off.

According to a statement Arnold gave on Feb. 21, the ensuing conversation went approximately like this:

"Hello?"

"Is Sherry Arnold there?"

"Yes, this is Sherry."

"One of your friends are broke down at Mount Storm, and he told me to call you to have you pick him up."

"Who is it?"

"I didn't get his name. I am on my way to work at VEPCO [Virginia Electric Power Co.], and I don't want to be late."

"Where are you calling from?"

"The Bismark Grocery store. I dropped him off at the fire hall, but we couldn't get in so I came here."

"What is he driving?"

"A car."

"What color is it?"

"Well, uh, it's dark blue. Can you pick him up?"

"Yes, I'll come and get him."

Arnold changed her mind, though, and didn't go. Rather than the "young and nervous man" who called Knotts, Arnold described the man who called her in a Feb. 26 statement to Gnegy as someone who sounded to be between the ages of 30 and 40. She said he was sophisticated--as opposed to Knotts' not-too-bright caller--and a smooth talker who seemed to have planned questions. When she asked him something, though, he became more hesitant.

Arnold gave another statement on March 31, 11 days after Ferrell's arrest, in which she said she knew who Ferrell was, but didn't know him personally. She also reported receiving a second call that appeared to be a wrong number.

***
'Third call surfaces in court'


It was not until Ferrell's trial 10 months later, though, that Arnold's report of a third call came to light--although she said she had told the FBI about it earlier. Arnold said she had received the call during the fall of 1987 at about 1 p.m. on a Wednesday, which seemed to correspond to a Sept. 30 call on Ferrell's long-distance record.

Arnold said the caller identified himself as a doctor. She said he then informed her she had come into contact with AIDS and should come to an unspecified medical center for tests. When she started asking questions, Arnold said, the caller hung up.

A day after Arnold gave her first statement, a second Potomac State student from Bayard, Tracy Dunithan, told State Trooper Ann R. Black about receiving two calls from a man with a "deep, masculine voice". Dunithan said the caller asked her to pick up her ex-boyfriend, Bill Dignan, whose car had broken down on Bismark Road. When Dunithan suggested he go to a friend's house on Bismark Road for help, the caller said "all right."

Dunithan said she then called her foster mother, who drove to Bismark Road but couldn't find a broken-down care and returned unharmed.

A few minutes after hanging up, Dunithan said, she got a second call in which the caller said her ex-boyfriend still wanted her to come get him. He said he was on a little road just past a bridge leading to a trailer (presumably Ferrell's).

Dunithan said she had received the call "around 4:30 p.m." on "a Monday or Tuesday, probably a Monday."

...Gnegy's report on a follow-up interview five days later said it had been made "about two weeks prior to the taking of her statement by Trooper Black. The time period would be around [Monday] Feb. 8."

During Ferrell's trial, however, Dunithan said she had received the call on Wednesday, Feb. 2, which happened to match the time two calls were made to her dorm from Ferrell's phone.

...According to Gnegy's report, "The following Sunday (2/14/88), after she arrived at the college, a roommate answered the pay phone, and a male subject asked for Tracy Dunithan. When Tracy answered the phone, the caller hung up. Tracy stated she had never heard [emphasis added] the voice of the caller before."

In a statement apparently taken by Detective Tucker after Ferrell's phone records had been obtained by investigators though, Dunithan changed the date of the hang-up call to Feb. 7, which coincidentally, matched a one-minute call to her dorm room that showed on Ferrell's long-distance record.

Two other explanations for those calls were apparently never thoroughly explored, however.

One was that David Ferrell had occasionally dated Kelly Qualls of Bayard, who was also a student at Potomac State. In fact she was in Arnold's room when she received her call on Feb. 15.

When he was interviewed by two FBI agents about the calls, David Ferrell says he told them some of all of the toll calls might be his. He says he told them he had made several calls to the dorm in fruitless attempts to reach Qualls.

He says the FBI agents returned a few days later and told him they had confirmed that he had dated Qualls and that she said it was possible he may have tried to reach her, but never did.

"Then they told me they knew I was thinking of a career in law enforcement, and that if I tried to cover for Paul they would make sure I'd never get a job in the field. They also told me they could very easily charge me as an accomplice if I didn't keep my mouth shut," David Ferrell said.

A second explanation for the calls apparently was never even considered was the calls were made by one of a number of Paul's friends who hung out at the store and in his weight room upstairs. Some took working out seriously, but others just watched television, chewed the fat and drank beer.

Two of those friends had just had falling outs with their longtime girlfriends, Sherry Arnold and Tracy Dunithan.

One of the two, Bill Dignan, eventually got back together with Dunithan and married her. They have since divorced. Dignan, who was in the service at the time but whose name was used in the calls to Dunithan, said he had no idea who made the calls.

"But I never understood how they could say Paul made them," he said. "There were so many guys coming and going there at all hours that any of them could have been making the calls. I wouldn't be surprised if it was a game that two or three guys were playing."

Dignan added that Dunithan was placed under a lot of pressure before the trial by family members and officials.

The other involved with one of the calls' recipients was Vince Culp. Culp had dated Arnold for some time, but they had recently broken up. But he remains friends with the Ferrells and testified on Paul's behalf.

Culp said he also had no idea who made the calls

A third friend, Robert "Bobby" Harvey, Culp's cousin, figured in teh case far more than the other two. On Feb. 26, just five days after Arnold had reported receiving one of the mysterious phone calls, investigators received a report that Harvey had been following her.

Gnegy's report says that when he contacted Arnold, "She stated that she knew Robert Harvey and he had followed her around in the Bayard area this date."

Gnegy added that Arnold said she "didn't like" Harvey.

"She also informed me that she had returned home from college Thursday evening, when no one was expecting her. She had received information that Robert had been seen parked in Mount Storm, and appeared to be waiting for someone a lengthy period of time, around noon on Friday.

"This would have been the regular time that Sherry would have normally been coming through the Mount Storm area. Sherry described Harvey's vehicle as a tan Chevrolet 4x4 pickup truck, with a bug guard."

Four days earlier, Sherry's late father, Richard, told Evans that on Sunday evening, Feb. 21, he was following Sherry through Mount Storm, apparently out of fear she would be abducted by whoever was behind Ford's disappearance.

...As he followed his daughter at a distance, Arnold said, a large light tan or yellow truck turn around in a gas-station parking lot after Sherry had passed.

When Sherry and he stopped at their prearranged location, Arnold said, the truck and another vehicle with its lights out drove by at a high rate of speed.

Gnegy interviewed Harvey, whose address was given as Bismark Road. Harvey denied following Arnold. He said he was home on weekends only, and that he worked at a power plant near Waldorf, Md., which is where he was on Feb. 17.

Harvey was reluctant to be interviewed for this story...he insisted he knew nothing about the calls, never had the slightest interest in Arnold, and believed that Ferrell was innocent.

'Sharp comments'


(Sgt. Leslie D. Sharp, West Virginia State Police) was asked during a telephone interview if a West Virginia file on the Ferrell-Ford case existed, because none had been turned over during discovery.

"Yes, there is," Sharp said.

The rest of the interview went like this:

Q. Any chance I could see that?
A. No, there isn't.
Q. Why's that?
A. All our investigations are confidential.
Q. Even when they're closed?
A. They're still confidential. And no, you can't have them.
Q. Are you familiar with the case Sattler v. Holliday?
A. No.
Q. It's a West Virginia decision...interpreted as saying that once a case is closed, it returns to the public record.
A. Is that right? Well, go get the public record...
Q. OK...You were involved in execution of the search warrant during which the watch was found...
A. And besides that, I'm not going to discuss the case with you.
Q. Why's that?
A. Because I don't want to discuss the case with you. If you have some information that you want to give the police about the case, you could give me your information. But I'm not going to discuss the case with you.
Q. I really find that pretty amazing...
A. Well!
Q. I've talked to police departments all over the country...
A. Right!
Q. And they're never hesitant to discuss a case...
A. Right!
Q. ...that's been closed. There were a lot of comments made during the case, I don't understand why...
A. Uh huh!
Q. ...you won't comment on it when it's completed.
A. Well, you have my answer, right?
Q. OK, thank you.

Prosecutor DiBenedetto has since refused to allow Ferrell's appeals attorney, Dan James, to review the files as wel. So the only files available in a West Virginia case still under appeal are those of a Maryland sheriff's department.

Those files, incomplete as they may be, show that Evans interviewed Robin Tichnell, one of several employees at Garrett National Bank to receive a prank phone call, on Feb. 22.

Tichnell said she also had received a call from someone claiming to be a magistrate in West Virginia on Feb. 17 at 10:50--no more than a half hour before Ford apparently received one.

"All I got out of it was magistrate in West Virginia," Tichnell said. "I tried to get it, but could not understand it. He started out fast with a line of conversation, he didn't say hello or anything."

"He told me he was holding an investigation, that it was someone I know, that he needed to ask me some questions about them. He told me to come to the Mount Storm Fire Hall, he would be there from 10 to 3 p.m. That's when I said, 'Who are you?' I didn't know what he was talking about."

Then, Tichnell added, the fast-talking caller started all over again. Tichnell finally told him she couldn't get there before 3 p.m. because she didn't get off work until 4:30. With that, the caller said he would have to get back to her and hung up. Tichnell said the mystery caller sounded official, educated and in his 30s.

Could Cathy Ford have gotten out of her meeting by also giving an excuse--that she had something else planned? After all, she did complain after the initial call that the meeting with the magistrate "screwed up" her afternoon. We may never know.

***
'Timing is everything'


The timing of the Feb. 17 calls to Robin Tichnell (10:50 a.m.) and Cathy Ford (11:15 a.m.) are important. Here's how DiBenedetto put it in his concluding argument at Paul Ferrell's trial:

"What connects the defendant to those calls? You again have heard the testimony. He was at the pay phone, came into the fire hall, and without much ado with the magistrate and her assistant there, went back into the truck bay area where the public phone is located, and that is where the public phone is located, and that is where he went for the purposes of interrupting or catching any calls from those two girls coming into the office to confirm whether or not they needed to come and talk with the magistrate. He stayed there for 10 or 15 minutes and he left, and he went back to the store."

Yet neither the one available statement, nor the testimony, nor simple logic support DiBenedetto's declaration.

In her original statement given to a not-so-sharp state trooper who failed to have her sign and date it, magistrate's assistant Carol Wratchford said she and Magistrate Wanda Carter arrived at the Mount Storm satellite office "at about 10:15 a.m."

"Shortly thereafter," she added, "Magistrate Carter heard a noise outside, she got up and went to the window. She remarked that Ferrell was in the phone booth. I turned around in my chair and saw him. A few minutes later, he came into the fire hall. I spoke to him, he turned and looked at us and then went through the door leading to where the fire trucks are parked...The restroom is in that area, and there is a phone. I don't remember him coming back through."

At the trial almost a year later, though, Ferrell didn't come into the fire hall a few minutes later. He came in "10, 15 minutes later."

And instead of saying, "I don't remember him coming back through," Wratchford swore he came back through "maybe 15 minutes" later. Wratchford also said Ferrell was "pretty [pre]occupied," a fact she didn't think was important enough to mention in her statement.

The best Magistrate Wanda Carter could do was say she "would guess" she saw Ferrell talking on the pay phone between 10:30 and 11 a.m. She said Ferrell was in the back for about 10 minutes, then left.

But if Ferrell was in the phone booth shortly after Carter and Wratchford arrived at 10:15, that would certainly make it closer to 10:30 than to 11. That would make it unlikely that he made the call to Tichnell at 10:50, let alone the call to Ford at 11:15.

Actually, Ferrell insists that it was impossible to have called either. he says he did, indeed, enter the phone booth--but it was to call Cathy Bernard to inquire about her son. He says he was unsuccessful, however, because the phone wasn't working--a fact confirmed by several Mount Storm residents, who say the phone was out of order almost the entire month of February 1988.

...DiBenedetto glossed...how luring women to the Mount Storm Fire Hall in the middle of the day would provide Ferrell or anyone else the opportunity to harm them.

And then comes the clincher: Parker heard Cathy say the meeting with "magistrate" was canceled. And both Parker and Rose Ford suspected the third call Cathy received came from someone in Garrett County, not Grant County.

***
'More ties that don't bind'


Three other calls that seemed to point to Ferrell--but greatly because, as will be detailed later, the recipient of the first of those calls was told to keep her strong doubts that caller was Ferrell to herself.

When Tammy Kitzmiller answered the phone at work on Oct. 2, 1987, a man who neither said hello or introduced himself, told Kitzmiller he was thinking of applying for a job for which he wanted to use her sister, Gina Nesselrodt, as a reference, and he wondered if Ktzmiller could give him Gina's new work number.

Because the voice sounded familiar, she gave him the number. The caller thanked her and quickly hung up.

"That's strange," Kitzmiller said out loud. "That sounded like Paul Ferrell."

However, Kitzmiller says, she went on to say to herself that while the caller sounded like Paul Ferrell, he didn't act like Paul Ferrell. Ferrell was always polite and talked slowly. Whoever had just called her was brusque and fast-talking. Kitzmiller also thought it odd that someone that knew her sister as well as Ferrell did would refer to her by her full name, rather than just "Gina".

The voice also sounded hollow, like the caller was in a large, empty room with no carpet--a description echoed by several of the other to receive the prank calls, including those whose testimony was not sought because they weren't lured to an area near one of Ferrell's trailers. Several said the sound approximated that of a speaker phone when they were called on one.

It was not until later that night that Kitzmiller learned that her sister had received an unusual call from a man who tried to get her to pick up some mail supposedly addressed to her that was mistakenly delivered to Wilson-Corona Road.

Gina Nesselrodt was suspicious, however, and didn't go. Kathy Pacella did go, however, when she received a call luring her to the same location. When she arrived, though, she saw no one. After Pacella had returned home unharmed, she got another call.

"Sorry I missed you," the caller said.

DiBenedetto would later argue that the only thing that saved Pacella's life was that she had gone to Wilson-Corona Road through Bayard rather than past Ferrell's store in Gormania, where, he implied, Ferrell was waiting to follow her. The fact she returned through Gormania was what prompted the second call, he said.

But almost anyone on the Mountain would know that Pacella's route was the most logical.

...Meanwhile, Melvin Cullers' name came up once again in relation to the calls. On Feb. 26, Gnegy said he received a call from a man who identified himself as Larry Shaffer, who said he lived in the Silver Lake area near Horseshoe Run. Shaffer said he had been told by a female friend she had received a strange call in the Aurora area. He said the woman told him that she later overheard a man talking "in a public place", and asked who he was because she was positive he was the man who had called her. The man, she was told, was Melvin Cullers.

...Other calls were reported that appeared to have tried to lure area women to locations not associated with Ferrell or to areas near Ferrell's trailers before he had rented them.

...Luring phone calls, meanwhile, were also reported in Canaan Valley, Fairmont and Morgantown. Several other Garrett County women reported receiving calls that, while not luring in nature, matched the calls linked to Ferrell in other aspects that investigators chose to overlook.

The variety of times, descriptions of the caller(s)' voices, and locations mentioned can reasonably lead to two conclusions: Luring and/or prank phone calls were fairly common, and more than on person may have been making. By picking and choosing those that could be linked to Ferrell--although they just as easily could have been linked to others--officials painted a distorted picture of the calls that served their purpose very well. Whether it served justice was another matter.

Next up: Paul finds the Bronco, Sonny and Kim Nelson.

It's now fairly certain that Ferrell did not receive a fair trial. However, I still can't wrap my head around the various phone calls. Ferrell admitted to making the calls to the bookstores (over 200 of them!). I wonder, and knowing UM this is a possibility, if Ferrell and his friends started it out as just prank phone calls, and that Ferrell was not the only one who made the 200 calls. But if this were true, why would Ferrell say it was just a "phone sex thing" because he didn't have a credit card? Why not say it started out as some stupid prank phone calls that he became addicted to and couldn't stop? But even if Ferrell did make the crank calls over 200 times, this would have to mean that there were at least 2-3 other people (in a small town of only 200) that were also making similar calls at the same time as Ferrell. Just doesn't seem likely to me.

Ok, so I went back and re-read some of the stuff Meg had posted, as well as the Ferrell appeal on "Findacase". And I initially missed this part:

"On the morning of Wednesday, 17 February 1988, the victim, Catherine Ford, a resident of Maryland, received a call from a man claiming to be a magistrate at Mt. Storm, in Grant County, West Virginia. The man wanted Ms. Ford to meet him at his office at 3:00 p.m. the same day, to discuss some checks. Later that day, a man claiming to be an undercover officer called Ms. Ford with information concerning a possible investigation of her family's restaurant by the liquor licensing authorities. Ms. Ford told her family and the restaurant employees to check identifications before selling beer, and then left the restaurant to meet with the alleged undercover officer."

This seems to indicate that Cathy received a call that day from two different men, and that she had to have at least told someone about each call. The "magistrate" call seems odd, because the guy on the phone wanted her to meet him at his "office" which was at the fire hall. But then she gets another call from a man claiming to be an undercover cop who was allegedly investigating her family's diner, and she immediately agreed to go meet this guy and left shortly after. But she did not do this when the "magistrate" called. And she also (according to her coworker) had cancelled her plans to go meet the "magistrate" because she now was going to go meet the undercover cop. So it now seems to me like two different people called Cathy Ford that morning. The police wrote off the "Magistrate" call as a prank, but believed that Ferrell was the one who made the call as the undercover cop. This case just got a hell of a lot more confusing to me.

'Ferrell's follies'


Among those involved in the official search for Cathy Ford was a nervous Paul Ferrell, who, along, with Sometimes-Sheriff Ours was about to head aloft in the Buffalo Coal Co.'s helicopter.

Given the content of that last desperate phone conversation he says he had from Ford, Ferrell had feared the worst for her as soon as he had learned she was missing.

He says he began to fear the worst for himself a short time after the helicopter took off.

As the helicopter flew along the Stony River near his trailer, Ferrell says, he looked down and got the shock of his life. There was Cathy's badly burned Bronco near some other abandoned vehicles.

Ferrell says he had two instantaneous reactions.

One was shame that "something bad" really had happened to Cathy on Bismark Rd--just as he says Moon had suggested--and he could have been there to perhaps prevent it.

The other was panic. There her Bronco was, almost in his own back yard.

Then Ferrell did something he now admits was both stupid and selfish:

He did nothing.

He said nothing.

He pretended he saw nothing.

That decision would haunt him more than he could ever have imagined in the coming months.

Ferrell says Doug Tressler, Cathy Bernard's brother and a Garrett County undercover agent, added to his initial trepidation when he called Ferrell a few days later.

"He told me he had learned that someone with a Garrett county connection had been dealing drugs out of trailer on Bismark Road," Ferrell said.

"He went on to describe my own trailer, and mentioned that there were some abandoned vehicles along the river behind it and that one of them looked freshly burned. Then he asked me if I could help him. I thought he was playing mind games with me."

Not at all, Tressler says.

"I had, for a matter of time, received information a small amount of drug activity was going on there," Tressler said. "Being as it was so close to Maryland, it stood to reason some of it was coming across the line, and I thought because [Ferrell] was a deputy, if he had any information he would share it with me and help my investigation."

Why a "small amount" od drug activity several miles into West Virginia would attract Tressler's attention when there was so much going on in his own back yard and just around the curve in Bayard is somewhat suspicious.

But Tressler, who left the Garrett County Sheriff's Department just a few weeks after Ferrell's arrest on March 20, 1988, says he had no idea the trailer was Ferrell's.

Tressler says he couldn't recall where the information came from, but he was sure it didn't come from Cullers.

"I know the name, but I don't even know who the guy is," Tressler said.

Did it come from Tucker?

"To tell you the truth I don't know where the information came from."

Regardless of whom the information came from, Tressler's call, combined with Moon's remarks, gave Ferrell the feeling that he was being framed for Ford's murder.

And that prompted him to make his second mistake: He decided to try to point the investigation in another direction.

In early March, an envelope addressed to the Old Mill Restaurant arrived at the post office in Gormania. Postmarked in Pittsburgh on Feb. 29, the envelope contained $200 in cash and the following crudely printed and unsigned letter:

The only crime committed here was we had to get rid of the old man's Bronco right away. Cathy is 19 and an adult and we had to leave fast. We came into some dangerous money, so here is some money on the Bronco. More will follow. She will call you when she feels it is safe to do so. We are heading where I can get some work. Cathy made me write so you wouldn't worry. She had to get away from Moon, the Rest., and certain people. We keep the money in her green bank bag. Tell Moon to leave us alone.

It wasn't hard to link the letter to Ferrell. Ferrell's bank records showed a $200 cash withdrawal on Feb. 23. Bernard's phone records showed receipt of a collect call from Uniontown, Pa. at 9:44 a.m. on Feb. 29. And, investigators, determined, letters mailed in Uniontown at that time were often postmarked in Pittsburgh.

***
'Which way did she go?'


In the interim, the investigation was going in two directions--north toward Oakland and east toward Mount Storm.

The first person to be interviewed about what direction Cathy Ford drove in after leaving the Old Mill was Dale Moreland of Mount Storm, who reported seeing her driving on Route 560 toward Oakland between 1:30 and 2 p.m.

While Gnegy did ask Moreland if anyone was with Cathy (Moreland says she was alone), he didn't bother to ask Moreland if there was anyone with him. If he had, Gnegy would have learned that Moreland had three in-laws with him, and that two of them also saw Cathy as she honked and waved at them as she drove by.

Although it was never mentioned in the official report, Moreland and his in-laws weren't the only ones to report seeing Cathy going in that direction. James Richer Coulter Sr. of Deer Park told Gnegy he had seen Cathy driving between 2 and 2:30 p.m. further north on Route 560 near White Church Road. But at this point, Cathy was apparently no longer alone. "There was someone with her," Coulter told Gnegy. "I don't know if it was male or female."

Incredibly, the fact that Ford may have picked up someone between the two sightings didn't seem to interest Garrett County investigators, even though Cathy reportedly had drug-dealing friends on White Church Road. In fact, they didn't even bother to record Coulter's sighting in the official report, copies of which were later released to the press, which in turn spoke of its "depth".

They seemed more interested in pursuing leads that Ford had driven into West Virginia. And Darvin Moon beamed them toward the first two of three witnesses to say they saw her going in that direction. But all three were either vague or inconsistent about the time at which they saw her.

The first was Nita Ridder, who lives just past the Old Mill on Steyer Road. Ridder, whose sighting was first reported to the sheriff's department by Moon, testified that she saw Cathy "pull away in the (vehicle) and go towards Mount Storm" while she was out walking her dog. Ridder said she was "positive" no one was with her.

The report added that Ridder had seen Ford at the post office earlier in the day, but didn't bother to note the far-more important time she saw Ford head toward Mount Storm. Nor did DiBenedetto ask her for the time during the trial. Ridder's original statment, which might have offered a clue, wasn't made part of the record.

The second person rounded up by Moon was also vague about the time of his sighting. Rick Landis, who worked at the Three Lane Service Station between Gormania and Mount Storm, said he saw Ford drive by "sometime between 11 and 3." Landis said he expected Ford to stop for gas, as she had "many times" in the past.

But both statements conflicted with those Moon gave at different times.

In his original statement, Moon said Landis told him that "he thought it was in the morning that she went to Mount Storm, that she went past, because she always stops at Three Lanes at Hatley's and gets gas."

During the trial, however, Moon said he had "never known her going to Mount Storm without me."

If so, why did she "always" stop at Three Lanes to get gas? No one asked...

***
'Farsighted witness'



...On March 8, Moon and Cathy's oldest brother, Richard, had found her burned-out Bronco in the woods behind Ferrell's trailer.

The irony of Moon and Cathy's brother finding her Bronco quickly became a source of speculation--especially because Moon allegedly had discouraged several people from looking along the part of the Stony River where it was found.

In fact, Moon had been within feet of the Bronco while searching for it with Jeff Kitzmiller of Gorman within an hour or two of when he found it with Richard Ford.

Much was made of the fact that Moon and Kitzmiller came across Ferrell in the area, and that he had suggested that they search by his trailer, then called to inquire if they found anything. The fact that Ferrell had seen the Bronco from the air Feb. 22 would explain his curiosity. The fact that he had encouraged them to look suggests that Ferrell knew the vehicle's discovery was inevitable.

According to Kitzmiller's May 12 statement, "Paul asked if anyone had checked the trailer, back in the field, and Darvin said no...So me and Darvin went back there, and Paul said he was going to Petersburg or something and he went on, and we went and drove through the field. We went to about 75 feet from where Cathy's Bronco was found, and Darvin told me that he had searched all the rest by foot and there was no need to go down there."

Asked by Evans if there was anything else he should know about, Kitzmiller replied:

A. No. Just maybe the way Darvin is treating the family, selling Cathy's clothes and stuff.
Q. This is Darvin Moon?
A. Yes, he's selling Cathy's clothes, and staying with another lady and giving most of her clothes to her.
Q. This is recently?
A. Yes.
Q. In the last couple of weeks?
A. Yes.

(As best can be determined, the only piece of clothing Moon sold was a leather coat he had bought her for Christmas. But the fact that he sold it, according to most accounts within a few weeks after Cathy's disappearance, and also allegedly had Cathy's dog killed, caused some family members and friends to question why Moon seemed so certain Cathy would not be back.)

Eventually, Moon and Kitzmiller returned to the Old Mill. According to Moon, Richard Ford then said he had been told by someone at work that smoke had been seen along Stony River the day after Cathy had disappeared.

The sheriff's report seems to confirm that. But it also raises several intriguing questions.

"Squad 135 of the Bayard Fire Department spotted smoke along Route 50, west of Gorman at 11:13 hours," the report says. "I contacted Mike Steyer, assistant chief of the Gorman Fire Department, who responded to the call that day. Mr. Steyer...stated that several units, including a Bayard unit, were sent out on Route 50, , toward the Table Rock area."

"As one of the Bayard units arrived in the area of Stoners' Video Store, they reported seeing smoke, possibly in the Difficult Turn area of Route 50 [in West Virginia]. Steyer stated that he was not sure if the Difficult turn area would be visible from where the unit was. They did confirm through a road crew working in the area that Alpine Coal was burning garbage at the time. One unit also went out the Bayard Cemetery Road, and apparently found no smoke."

According to Vince Culp, who responded with the Bayard unit, the smoke was initially thick and black, and then it turned white.

Although the smoke remained heavy and seemed to be coming from the Difficult Turn area, beyond which lies Bismark Road, Culp said the Bayard unit's call was canceled by Garrett Communications, which at that time coordinated communications for Grant County as well. Contrary to the sheriff's report, Culp said Alpine reported it was [I]not burning garbage that day--a fact confirmed by a company source.

For some strange reason, though, the Mount Storm unit on the other side of Difficult Turn was apparently never called out. So a large, suspicious fire that was quite likely the one that consumed Ford's Bronco apparently was allowed to burn itself out--and a potential clue to its origins probably burned out with it.

One thing Paul Ferrell's firefighter friends Culp and Kitzmiller agree on is that Ferrell could never had started such an intense fire.

Both said Ferrell, who was often kidded about his lack of mechanical know-how--he reportedly even had trouble finding an oil dipstick in a vehicle--would have assuredly burned himself up trying.

Their opinion was echoed by almost everyone who knows him.

So it wasn't until March 8 that anyone followed the Feb. 18 fire report to its apparent causation point.

And it was Darvin Moon and Rich Ford who did. In the procss, they drove past a large tire in the middle of a logging trail that runs off Bismark Road, and proceeded to the river--and the Bronco.

Moon seemed to explain how he had missing seeing the Bronco in his other searches to a reporter the following day.

"The vehicle is hard to see," Moon said. "We were down in this area looking around, and we almost drove out of here and missed it. I was the one who saw the Bronco. With it all burned and everything, it's hard to see with the trees and laurel around it."

After making a quick search in the immediate area for any signs of Cathy, Moon and Rich Ford drove to the Mount Storm Fire Hall and reported finding the Bronco at 6:24 p.m.

What had been an ineptly run investigation was about to become a catastrophic one for Paul Ferrell--and, perhaps, justice.

***
THE PLOT THICKENS--AND THE FIELD NARROWS

...Darvin Moon's report of finding the Bronco brought a host of law-enforcement officers to the scene from both West Virginia and Maryland.

According to Gnegy's report, he, Evans and Tucker responded from Garrett County. Although the vehicle's license plates had been removed, the last five digits of the vehicle identification number on the dashboard--77534--identified it as Cathy Ford's Bronco.

Rather than the investigation becoming more serious, though, it became more ludicrous.

According to Ferrell and several others at the scene, the crime-scene investigation quickly took on a circus atmosphere. Officers tramped all over the scene, destroying any chance of lifting footprints.

In a letter he wrote to attorney Ross Maruka shortly after his arrest, Ferrell said West Virginia Trooper Leslie D. Sharp--the same Leslie D. Sharp that takes the investigation so seriously that he still won't discuss it--treated it as a joke then.

"Sharp, I guess, was the head state trooper," Ferrell wrote. "He seemed to be joking the whole time. He kept bringing up Cathy Ford being off someplace getting 10 inches..."

"When it was time to leave, Van Evans...wanted to leave someone to watch the crime scene, but [Sheriff Larry] Ours and the WV state police decided it wasn't necessary."

The following morning, Moon conducted one of his numerous admitted break-in searches of Cathy Ford. His target this time was Ferrell's trailer. Moon later admitted on the stand that, as his father watched, he picked the trailer's lock and entered the trailer looking for any signs of Cathy.

You would think a man as possessed as Moon was would have noticed a cigarette butt matching Cathy's brand lying on the floor in front of the fireplace. But he didn't.

Neither did the FBI's evidence-gathering experts who combed the trailer for evidence on March 11. It wasn't until they scoured through the trailer a second time on March 19 that they happened to find what would be--as incredible as it might seem--a crucial piece of evidence used to prove Paul Ferrell had killed Cathy Ford there.

...FBI Agent William Scobie tried to explain at the trial how the cigarette butt was missed on March 11 by saying the agents had only vacuumed the pathways in the trailer.

But when he testified before the grand jury on July 12, 1988, Scobie said: "We vacuumed the entire trailer [emphasis added] to see if we could come up with some hairs or fibers that might match anything that we might find later on."

As it turned out, none of the hairs in the trailer matched those in Cathy Ford's hairbrush, even though she was supposedly beaten, shot, and killed there.

***
'In search of a witness'


Shortly after the Bronco was found, Lt. Gnegy interviewed Clarence Lee "Sonny" Nelson, whose wife, Kimberly Sue Nelson, would eventually become the chief prosecution witness. But you would never know it by what Nelson, whose small, ramshackle Bismark Road home was the closest to Ferrell's trailer, had to say that night.

"Mr. Nelson stated [that] about Feb. 20, he and his wife, Kimberly Sue Nelson...were at their residence when they detected a rather strong odor of smoke, which resembled burning wiring," Gnegy wrote. "They checked the house and found nothing out of the ordinary. Mr. Nelson also stated that he observed smoke moving down through the valley in the area. See statement."

It would be nice to see that statement. But it was never turned over to the defense. Instead, prosecutors turned over three statements by Mrs. Nelson that were progressively more damaging to Ferrell.

The first was given to Grant County Deputy Randy Keplinger the next morning. It also mentioned smoke that smelled like wires burning. it then went on to say that "a white car like an El Camino with a green hood on it, kept driving back and forth up and down the road. there was a man with long black hair in the car. He was driving slow. He kept going up and back a lot."

Whoever that mystery man was, it couldn't have been Ferrell, who says he was on duty the night of Feb. 20, had short hair and drove a light-blue Cavalier.

But another potential suspect apparently was in the area that night. According to the Garrett County report, Leslie Randolph Paugh, who lived in a blue house next to the Bismark bridge on Route 50, reported that, on the Saturday after Cathy Ford disappeared, Feb. 20, the everpresent Melvin Cullers "came to the Paugh residence, and was let inside by Randy. Cullers then began asking questions concerning Cathy Ford, specifically, if Paugh knew anyone in the Bayard area of a suspicious nature, and stated that [he] knew Cathy from stopping at the restaurant, and felt it out of place for Cathy to disappear under these circumstances. Cullers also stated that he knew Cathy was close to her father."

"Cullers then asked to see a photo of Paugh's wife, and then asked where she was employed. He was given this information by Randy Paugh. Cullers then observed Paugh's 18-month-old son, and made the statement, 'Your son could probably bring $40,000 to $50,000 on the market."

"Cullers made some reference to some persons in the Bayard area who were 'living beyond their means' and stated that they would be the type to snatch young children, mentioning possible connections of these subjects with 'cult groups.' Randy Paugh stated that he knew that Cullers had previously lived in the Petersburg area, with [coal mine owner] Bill Moomaw, and would have access to strip mines along the Potomac River. Cullers stated that he had keys to some of the gates to these areas, and he intended to conduct some searches of his own."

What the report doesn't say, Paugh said in an interview, is that Cullers went on to suggest that the person responsible for Ford's disappearance had to be someone who could be out on the road at a time most people are at work.

Someone like a deputy.

Someone like Paul Ferrell.

Yet, when Cullers was interviewed five days later, he didn't include Paul Ferrell in his long list of suspects.

Maybe he thought they would think he was crazy.

Or maybe he thought time would tell for him.

Paugh wasn't the only person to place Cullers in the area, either.

Steven "Beaver" Junkins, who had rented his trailer to Ferrell a month before Ford was allegedly killed there, said his former father-in-law, Charles McCrumb Sr., had come across Cullers at the time McCrumb was burying some silver foxes in the woods behind the trailer around the time Ford disappeared. The foxes' grave was discovered during a search after the Bronco was found.

McCrumb was cooperative when he was asked if he would be willing to discuss the Cathy Ford case. But as soon as Cullers' Name was mentioned, he panicked.

McCrumb: "That guy...you'd better..."
Woman in background: "You keep your mouth shut. Do you want to get killed?"
McCrumb: "I'm not going to say anything more. Goodbye."

Former Gormania resident and bar owner Bud Barkley had no such fears. Barkley is safe behind the thick walls of the dungeon-like West Virginia State Penitentiary in Moundsville, where he is serving up to 20 years on an attempted rape charge he claims was trumped up by a former Grant County deputy. (Ferrell, who participated in Barkley's arrest, says some of the things he observed at the time lend credence to Barkley's claim.)

...Barkley said he was in his truck with two other men when he saw a fire in the woods along Bismark Road--and Culler's white Pontiac Fiero parked beside the road.

"I didn't think anything about it at the time...There is a big house down there, so I thought they were burning a big trash pile. That white car was sitting right there that same night," Barkley said.

Barkley added that he saw Cullers' car parked at the same location a second time a few days later. He said he tried to get word to Ferrell's attorney about what he had seen, but Maruka apparently didn't think Barkley--a convict by then--would be a credible witness.

When Barkley asked Cullers about the coincidence, he said Cullers told him "he was getting drunk."

"But that's funny," Barkley said, "because two times his car was exactly right there where the [Bronco] was. I know the property. He said when the automobile was sitting there, he and a buddy was out there getting drunk. The next time I seen him sitting down there, he never did explain to me what he was doing there. It was sitting right where the spring was."

Barkley said Cullers later told him not to say anything about what he saw.

"When he came to tell me, my wife was there," Barkley said. "He asked me about saying nothing to nobody about it..."

...But that wasn't all Barkley claims Cullers told him to forget. He says Cullers also asked him to forget that he had told him where Ford was buried.

"He said that girl was buried out there in the strip mines, 'Right there, you know, where I was working on that there tank. Right there on the side of the hill. Right there where they were filling in'", Barkley quoted Cullers as saying.

Barkley stressed that Cullers never said he had killed Ford, only that he knew where she was buried.

"You know where the dozer was sitting up on the hill? That's where she's buried," Barkley quoted Cullers as also saying. Others recall Cullers saying much the same thing. But because Cullers was usually drunk whenever he said it, they said, no one took him seriously.

Bar owner Barkley did--especially after Cullers came back the next day and told him to forget what he had told him.

Asked if he could still find the place where Cullers had said Ford was buried, Barkley replied: "I know I could. I know for sure. He told me she was buried up there."

I just started reading the most recent post and this stood out to me:

As the helicopter flew along the Stony River near his trailer, Ferrell says, he looked down and got the shock of his life. There was Cathy's badly burned Bronco near some other abandoned vehicles.

So Farrell's up in a helicopter and looks down and sees Cathy's car, burned, and near some other vehicles.

What condition was her car in at that time? Scorched but recognizable? Burned up with nothing left but the metal?

How could he identify the Bronco as Cathy's from his point of view up in the air? It was among other abandoned cars. How did he know it was hers and not some other Bronco that had been torched and dumped?

The sheriff was up in the helicopter with Farrell and must have known that Cathy drove a Bronco. Why didn't he ID it as her car? Wouldn't a burned up Bronco-shaped vehicle near Farrell's property be kind of obvious to the sheriff? Why was it up to this suspicious guy, Paul, to locate the car and keep that info to himself instead of the sheriff using his time up in the coal company's helicopter to be searching for clues?

---

ETA:

Good grief. Just finished reading the last post. Seems like Cathy was surrounded by idiots, and most of them look guilty. And no wonder this ended up on UM and Cathy's body was never found. What a screwed up investigation. Even the FBI goofed up and missed evidence.

I just started reading the most recent post and this stood out to me:

As the helicopter flew along the Stony River near his trailer, Ferrell says, he looked down and got the shock of his life. There was Cathy's badly burned Bronco near some other abandoned vehicles.

So Farrell's up in a helicopter and looks down and sees Cathy's car, burned, and near some other vehicles.

What condition was her car in at that time? Scorched but recognizable? Burned up with nothing left but the metal?

How could he identify the Bronco as Cathy's from his point of view up in the air? It was among other abandoned cars. How did he know it was hers and not some other Bronco that had been torched and dumped?

Not really sure. Without knowing how low the helicopter pilot was flying, it's hard to ascertain whether Ferrell's story is likely or not. (Although being that it was winter, the view from the air would have been less obscured as no foliage would be on the trees yet.) But I reckon that since Ferrell lived several hundred feet away from that dump site, he may have been aware of the abandoned cars that were already near the river. Perhaps he found one out of place (the Bronco), and jumped to the conclusion that it was Cathy's.

Or he could have been totally making it up.

The sheriff was up in the helicopter with Farrell and must have known that Cathy drove a Bronco. Why didn't he ID it as her car? Wouldn't a burned up Bronco-shaped vehicle near Farrell's property be kind of obvious to the sheriff? Why was it up to this suspicious guy, Paul, to locate the car and keep that info to himself instead of the sheriff using his time up in the coal company's helicopter to be searching for clues?

The best I can figure:

A. Sheriff Ours was not particularly observant, careless, or both.
B. Ferrell's attention was automatically grabbed because he knew they were about to fly over his property. (This isn't necessarily an indication of guilt, in my estimation. I know I'd definitely look down and around if I knew I was about to fly over my own home.)
C. Some combination of the two.

Probably C.

---

ETA:

Good grief. Just finished reading the last post. Seems like Cathy was surrounded by idiots, and most of them look guilty. And no wonder this ended up on UM and Cathy's body was never found. What a screwed up investigation. Even the FBI goofed up and missed evidence.

I agree completely. Before I even received the articles, the first person Mr. Yant brought up in our correspondence was Melvin Cullers. Even if he didn't have anything to do with Cathy's disappearance, he sure stuck his nose into the investigation constantly in various suspicious ways, and I'm shocked he wasn't treated as a suspect--almost as much as I am that Moon wasn't, being that he was probably the closest person to Cathy at the time.

I agree completely. Before I even received the articles, the first person Mr. Yant brought up in our correspondence was Melvin Cullers. Even if he didn't have anything to do with Cathy's disappearance, he sure stuck his nose into the investigation constantly in various suspicious ways, and I'm shocked he wasn't treated as a suspect--almost as much as I am that Moon wasn't, being that he was probably the closest person to Cathy at the time.

I can't for the life of me figure out why Moon wasn't treated as a suspect from the get-go. I don't even think he was looked at as even a person of interest in the case. IMO, Ferrell would have never even been a suspect if he didn't write that stupid letter. Which doesn't bode well for his innocence claims. But then again, other people in the area were acting just as suspicious as him, and they weren't even looked at. I don't think Ferrell was railroaded, but I do think once the investigators figured he was the likely suspect, they did everything in their power to convict him and ignore other possible leads.

But if it wasn't Ferrell, that means there are two other alternate theories/suspects: either she was murdered by a jealous Darvin Moon for seeing other people (or possibly because of her attempted work at exposing drug deals), or this local "boogeyman" Cullers killed her. The first person this investigation should have looked at (after Moon) was Cullers. Especially considering he was involved in a murder in 1986, held an active interest in the search for Cathy Ford, AND allegedly told someone where he knew she had been buried.

Weird Cathy Ford isn't on Charley Project.

This might be a wee bit off topic, but here is some interesting information about Cecil Underwood, the governor of West Virginia who commuted Ferrell's sentence. He was first elected in 1956, served a full four year term, ran for re-election in 1960 and lost. He was out of that office for 36 years before coming back to win a second term in 1996, served another 4 year term and lost re-election again in 2000. He was also the very first guest ever on To Tell The Truth.

Weird Cathy Ford isn't on Charley Project.

Yeah, I always thought that was weird too. There are quite a few people who are incarcerated for the murders of missing people with Charley Project pages. Micki Jo West comes to mind.

'Mystery car'



Barkley wasn't the only person to see a white car parked along Bismark Road at that time...

...David Crane Bell, who traveled Bismark Road to get to work, told Gnegy that, sometime in mid-February, he observed a white Chrysler product, possibly a Dodge Dart, parked on Bismark Road near the trail leading to where the Bronco was found.

Asked if it was a pure white, or off-white vehicle, Bell said "there was something about the car that was green, and I told one of the guys that it either was a light green car or a white car with something green...For some reason, green stands out."

David Duckett, another Buffalo Coal employee who traveled the same route to work, told Gnegy he also had seen "a light-colored Chrysler-Plymouth product" at the same location.

Duckett said the car's size "would be like a Dodge Dart, something I took in driver's training...That vehicle has stuck in my head ever since--and it looked very similar to that."

A comparison of the statements of Kimberly Nelson, Bell and Duckett shows that they are quite similar--and Sonny Nelson would give one that also matched: a Chrysler product that gave the impression of being both white and green, possibly because of a green hood. There was, in fact, a Dodge Dart in Bayard at that time that had white fenders and a green hood.

The car belonged to Ford's cousin, Chuck Carr Jr. And Carr would later figure in statements that Cathy Ford might be alive, not dead.

Daley "Butch" Uphold gave a statement that would prove interesting for quite different reasons.

Uphold told Gnegy that, on March 3, he was traveling on Bismark Road when he observed flames from a fire burning at the base of a hill at the same road marked by a large tire that Moon drove down to find the Bronco.

Since the Bronco was almost certainly burned by then, that raises the question of what the fire could have been for.

Could it have been a touch-up job, or a fire in which to plant things like burned zippers and a watch? Perhaps. According to the FBI lab report, the burned watched identified as being the same model as Cathy Ford's found in a burn pile near Ferrell's trailer--after being overlooked in two FBI searches and others--stopped working at 5:16:27. Uphold said he saw the fire between 5:30 and 6:30 p.m.

Uphold also said that, on an evening that same week, he observed a small dark-blue compact car, believe to be a Toyota, at the same site. He said the car had a magnetic-type CB antenna on the trunk and appeared to have Maryland plates.

According to several sources, that description matched that of a car then driven by bear's Den owner Mike Inglese, Darvin Moon's cousin.

Coincidence?

Perhaps. The Ingleses did participate in searches for Ford. But the car's description and location should have at least raised some questions. If any were asked, though, they are not part of the record.

...On March 17, nine days after Ford's Bronco was found stripped of its Maryland license plates bearing the registration 026245M, Gnegy received a call from a man identified as Clarence Stark.

Stark reported that at 9:30 the previous evening, he had observed a newer gold-colored Ford Bronco II bearing Maryland registration 06245M at C.D. Martin's store in Mountain Lake Park. Stark said a woman driver and a younger girl in the passenger's seat were acting suspiciously. He added that the driver of a newer-model blue pickup appeared to be watching the women in the Bronco.

"When they left," Gnegy wrote, "the women in the Bronco went toward Deer Park, and the truck, which left at the same time, left in the direction of Oakland. I made a check through Motor Vehicle Administration records. There is no listing for 06245M..."

...But if Gnegy had placed a 2 between the 0 and the 6, he would have struck gold. It would have--or should have--produced Maryland registration 026245M, which is the number listed in the Garrett County, West Virginia Fire Marshal and FBI reports as being the registration for Ford's Bronco.

That apparently means Gnegy missed a golden opportunity to perhaps track down a same-model vehicle as Ford's bearing her license plates. And whoever the vehicle's owner was would have--or should have--had a lot of explaining to do.

Gnegy said he couldn't comment on the discrepancy until he consulted his report, which he said was locked in Evans' office. Two days later, Gnegy said Evans had told him to refer any further questions on the investigation to him. After failing to return previous calls, Evans finally agreed to an interview, but only past this publication's deadline and under his conditions.

The most likely answer to why investigators ignored such potentially important reports is that tunnel-visioned investigators already had their man. All the had to do to get him was to fit the facts to their theory.

But that would prove easy.

All they would have to do was debase, degrade and disgrace the precious principles of the U.S. Constitution, violate basic tenets of criminal investigation, and terrify the residents of the portions of two states with horrifying but false rumors in their pathological pursuit of the least likely of several possible suspects for a murder that may not even have occurred.

***
'Tough questions'


Investigators had received Ferrell's permission to go through his trailer on March 11 at the end of a 45-minute interrogation in the Garrett County Courthouse.

Unlike the friendly chat with Melvin Cullers, a man recently acquitted of murder charges whose name popped up repeatedly in the investigation, this was a hardball interrogation conducted by FBI Agent James Zopp and Detective Donald W. Tucker.

By the end, Zopp almost seemed to be taunting and ridiculing Ferrell rather than questioning him:

Q. Physically, is there anything similar about these women?
A. Y'know, they're good...they're fairly attractive women. But, you know, other than that...
Q. How about their ages?
A. I couldn't even tell you that.
Q. What do you think ought to happen to the person that's responsible for this?
A. Well, if, y'know, if there's been foul play, there ought be, there oughta be, you know, something done to 'em.
Q. What do you think would be the proper thing?
A. Aw, I don't know...I talk mean sometimes. But as far as actually doing something to somebody, I don't know. You hear a bunch of people say, "Let's get him," you know. But come right down to another human being, I don't know...
Q. What reason can you think of that a person would make a phone call and try to get a woman to come out and meet 'em someplace? What would be in the person's mind? What do you think would be a motive for a person to make a phone call, and try to get a woman to come out and meet him, meet him somewhere?

And so on and so on.

Zopp was clearly trying to get Ferrell rattled. And he did. He didn't come close, however, to getting him to confess.

But the psychological warfare may just have been beginning. That, at least, is how Ferrell tells it.

And it was Doug Tressler, he says, who was the chief operative.

Ferrell says the games started shortly after the Bronco had been found near his trailer. After attending a funeral in Gormania, Ferrell says he called Bernard from Ferrell's Mart before heading for work.

"She was very upset," Ferrell later wrote in a letter to attorney Maruka. "She said Doug had called and said someone was definitely selling drugs out of my trailer. She asked if someone else used my trailer to sell drugs out of. I told her no and to relax and to tell Doug the truth. She kept saying, 'What am I going to tell him? Paul, I will lose my kids. Who else has been in your trailer? I will lose my kids.'"

"She hung up very upset. I called Larry [Ours] and took the night off and headed back up to Cathy's to see what was going on. As I headed down Garrett Road, where Cathy lives, she was just leaving. I again told her to relax. She again asked if I knew anything about Cathy Ford or drugs in my trailer. I told her no."

"When she came back, she was a little better. She said Doug had a copy of her phone bill, and asked her a lot of questions about whether I used or sold drugs, whether I was gone a lot, who I had been calling."

In another letter, Ferrell claimed that Tressler "was wanting to know about the long-distance bookstore calls. She stated hysterically that she didn't know what to do, that she would lose her kids. [Cathy Bernard Pariseau denied any knowledge of the phone calls and said she never feared losing her children.] I told her to tell him to mind his own business...She said she told Doug that I just liked to call stores for my brother, and she knew that I didn't have anything to do with Cathy Ford's disappearance..."

"The next day, she told me that Doug was back at the trailer checking blood under my new carpet. She said [her sister] Sherri would let her know about any further developments, so I should call her and keep checking..."

"According to Cathy, Doug was at my trailer several nights doing 'forensic tests' to see if Cathy Ford had been there. She said that she was worried about Doug being out there by himself, that the people responsible for the burning of Cathy Ford's Bronco might kill him. I volunteered to go out and check on Doug...She begged me not to go, that Doug would get in trouble if his bosses knew that he had told Sherri, who had told her. So I didn't go. She stated to me several times that she would lose her kids if she was connected to this thing..."

"She stated to me on several different occasion when she wanted to see me, that someone was calling her and threatening to kill her, she would say, 'I need somebody.' During the period when the Bronco was found...she was stating that she was afraid. She kept telling me that someone was outside, or that she heard cars running outside. One night during this time period she woke me up in the middle of the night and said she heard someone on the porch. I thought I heard someone too. She was looking scared. I pulled out my gun and looked outside; no one was there. She was very scared during this period. She seemed to connect it to Doug checking at my trailer, or Doug talking to me about drug activity on Bismark Road."

"I told Cathy that if Moon knew I was involved with Cathy Ford, there could be real trouble, that he was dangerous and [had] organized crime ties...I told her that I didn't want to lose her and the kids."

(Doug Tressler said he did not care to hear what Ferrell had said about his communications with Bernard. "All I can say is that I talk to my sisters all the time, and if that made Paul Ferrell paranoid, that's his problem," Tressler said.)

Ferrell says that both Bernard and he had become emotional wrecks by March 19, when Bernard had to take her daughter to Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore for an operation.

It was there, when Ferrell says Bernard's emotions were most vulnerable, that FBI agents cornered her for a statement in which she said that:

-On Feb. 17, she noticed a scratch near the beltline on Ferrell's back. (Ferrell claims it was caused when he was removing the things from the trailer that he burned.)

-On Feb. 19, Ferrell took her to buy carpet for the trailer. (True, Ferrell says--which is something he wouldn't have done if he had anything to hide from her.)

-On Feb. 21, while washing his deputy's uniform, she found a note in his pants pocket in his handwriting that said, "They may set you up by posing as a young couple, they may use a video card as an ID" (Ferrell claims this was part of the notes he took when local officers were briefed about the circumstances leading to Ford's disappearance.)

-That she had visited the Bismark Road trailer on Feb. 14, and noticed no stains or smell. (She wasn't interested enough in the trailer to have noticed, Ferrell says.)

-That Ferrell had been extremely nervous since Ford's disappearance and obsessed with the investigation. (True, Ferrell says--but to a great extent because of Bernard's own obsession with the case.)

-That Ferrell had an affair with Ford and hadn't told anyone about it out of fear of Darvin Moon. (True, Ferrell says. So why would he have to lure her anywhere?)

-That some of Paul's clothing was missing from her trailer, and she had not seen the items since Feb. 17. (Ferrell says they had the items for submission as evidence at the trial if Bernard raised the issue, but she did not. The trial transcript of Bernard's testimony, in fact, shows no mention of the supposedly missing clothing.)

-That about one week before Ferrell was arrested, she had told her brother that Ferrell had replaced the carpet in the trailer. She added that, "After I began talking to Doug, Paul began to call me at home or at Sherri's or my mother's, frequently three times a day...I felt he wanted to l know everything Doug told me. (Ferrell says an increasingly panicky Bernard volunteered everything Tressler had told her, and constantly expressed concern that she would lose her children if she got dragged into the case.)

On the same day, Ferrell says investigators did just what they were about to accuse him of--lure him across state lines under false pretenses. He says he was called at the Ferrell Mart and asked to come to the Garrett County Courthouse to discuss plans for new searches for Ford. But when he arrived at 9:45 a.m., he says, he was informed by investigators that he was a suspect in the Ford case and they wanted to ask him more questions.

Despite what Ferrell's attorney, Dan James, calls "a clear-cut rule"...Ferrell was not advised that he was free to leave at any time.

Among those present at the interrogation were Evans, the FBI's zealous Zopp, and Sgt. Leslie D. Sharp of the West Virginia State Police.

The interrogation continued almost continuously until 11:20 p.m. When Ferrell's father, Joe Sr., and brother, David, arrived at the courthouse and asked to see him, they say they were forcibly refused entrance and asked to leave.

During Ferrell's trial, Zopp admitted that Ferrell had said twice that morning that he wanted an attorney if he was going to be charged.

Zopp further admitted that he "felt that there was significant evidence at that point in time on March 19 to charge Mr. Ferrell in connection with the disappearance of Cathy Ford," but that he told Ferrell he was not going to be charged at that time.

"It is clear from this set of events," James argued in his unsuccessful writ of certiorari brief to the U.S. Supreme Court, "that the officer knew with certainty that the petitioner would be charged, however, they used the occasion to gather statements from [Ferrell] without advice of counsel. In fact, within two hours of the termination of interrogation and upon [Ferrell's] return to West Virginia, he was arrested and formally charged."

Some thoughts:

1. Luring Ferrell to the courthouse, not advising him he was free to leave, and then culling information out of him by knowing they had ENOUGH to charge at the time, but WEREN'T going to do so (the legality of which is questionable at absolute best) is pretty sickening. I have no doubt the object was to reap more statements from Ferrell while "ensuring" he had no counsel, just as Dan James said.

2. I think the note Cathy Bernard found in Ferrell's pocket is very, very suspect.

3. I have to play Ferrell's advocate here, though: Why would he take Cathy Bernard along to buy carpet if he was trying to conceal a crime scene? Why--if there was a secret affair between Ferrell and Ford--would he need to pretend to be someone else like a magistrate or undercover officer to lure her out someplace? (Besides the obvious: she would have easily recognized his voice.) She had a stake in keeping that relationship on the down-low just as much as Ferrell did, and was allegedly already not always a forthcoming individual to begin with.

4. Perhaps no need to state the obvious, but the law enforcement in this case was a monstrous, collective fail.

2. I think the note Cathy Bernard found in Ferrell's pocket is very, very suspect.

Ok, I feel like an idiot here, could you explain to me what exactly that note means? It's confusing to me.

And that bit about asking for an attorney during the interrogation should have gotten the whole case thrown out in court. Law enforcement is supposed to immediately halt any and all questioning the second someone brings up a lawyer. And to top it all off the guy admitted it at Ferrell's trial!

And in regards to the affair, if it could be proven somehow that there was indeed a relationship between Ferrell and Ford then you can surmise that Ferrell is innocent. I wonder if there was ever any testimony from anyone that there was a relationship between the two. But Ferrell's brother says that if there was an affair, he would have known about it.

Meg, your research into this is PHENOMENAL.

Call me crazy, but does anyone else want to entertain the idea that Cathy Ford may still be alive? I don't normally put too much stock into eyewitness accounts, but wasn't there one from somebody that knew her, that said she acted strangely when they spotted her?

if Paul Ferrell turns out to be innocent, I will eat my shoes.

Looks like I'm about to have an unpleasant meal.

Ok, I feel like an idiot here, could you explain to me what exactly that note means? It's confusing to me.

Don't feel like an idiot--just because of the sheer volume of all this information I've had to read and re-read this stuff multiple times just to make sure I had everything straight.

The note relates to the last phone call Cathy Ford received, with an "undercover cop" calling to tip her off about supposedly underage people going around trying to get people to serve them alcohol as part of some kind of sting operation. I think the note in Ferrell's pocket reads almost like a script, and that's why it bothers me.

And that bit about asking for an attorney during the interrogation should have gotten the whole case thrown out in court. Law enforcement is supposed to immediately halt any and all questioning the second someone brings up a lawyer. And to top it all off the guy admitted it at Ferrell's trial!

It's pretty egregious. I can't believe the guy was ever convicted, let alone lost his appeal.

And in regards to the affair, if it could be proven somehow that there was indeed a relationship between Ferrell and Ford then you can surmise that Ferrell is innocent. I wonder if there was ever any testimony from anyone that there was a relationship between the two. But Ferrell's brother says that if there was an affair, he would have known about it.

We do have Ferrell and Ford having a pretty substantial stake in keeping the relationship under tight wraps, however, in Darvin Moon. Perhaps both put in considerable effort to keep it quiet.

Additionally, according to what we've read here, while Paul most certainly had a home address, he seemed to have numerous places he probably slept at night or otherwise spent his time: the floor above Ferrell's Mart, the trailer (both the one in Maryland and finally the one in West Virginia), and Cathy Bernard's house. So I do think it's possible his brother could've gotten that wrong, simply because Paul wasn't consistently staying with him above the store.

Meg, your research into this is PHENOMENAL.

Call me crazy, but does anyone else want to entertain the idea that Cathy Ford may still be alive? I don't normally put too much stock into eyewitness accounts, but wasn't there one from somebody that knew her, that said she acted strangely when they spotted her?

Thank you, but that credit really goes to Martin Yant. He interviewed close to a thousand people in multiple states to put together this report, and was definitely working against an institutional grain at the time (as is probably obvious by now). Law enforcement and at least one prosecution attorney was openly hostile to him at times. If it weren't for Mr. Yant and his efforts, we would definitely have none of this information.

There is some pretty extensive discussion on the theory that Cathy Ford is alive in the upcoming articles. I think at least two of them are entirely devoted to the subject. On the FA episode Mr. Yant relays a story told by couple from the area that was passing through Tennessee while returning home from vacation, and was sure they saw Ford waitressing in a restaurant off the interstate (and so the story goes, this person was made nervous by the presence of that couple). That story is also covered in detail in the articles.

Looks like I'm about to have an unpleasant meal.

Hey, no shame. We were all working with what we had at the time. I'm not sure whether the FA episode did the best that it could given the time constraints to present Ferrell's (complex) story, or if it really did just utterly fail at making a convincing case for his innocence.

Thank you, but that credit really goes to Martin Yant. He interviewed close to a thousand people in multiple states to put together this report, and was definitely working against an institutional grain at the time (as is probably obvious by now). Law enforcement and at least one prosecution attorney was openly hostile to him at times. If it weren't for Mr. Yant and his efforts, we would definitely have none of this information.

There is some pretty extensive discussion on the theory that Cathy Ford is alive in the upcoming articles. I think at least two of them are entirely devoted to the subject. On the FA episode Mr. Yant relays a story told by couple from the area that was passing through Tennessee while returning home from vacation, and was sure they saw Ford waitressing in a restaurant off the interstate (and so the story goes, this person was made nervous by the presence of that couple). That story is also covered in detail in the articles.



Hey, no shame. We were all working with what we had at the time. I'm not sure whether the FA episode did the best that it could given the time constraints to present Ferrell's (complex) story, or if it really did just utterly fail at making a convincing case for his innocence.

Yeah, the prosecutor in the segment came off as smug and unbelievable.

I think another reason the eyewitness sighting might be credible was that they said she was working in a restaurant, which was Cathy's line of work when she disappeared.

I think Ferrell perhaps just didn't interview well. I don't think it was quite up to Tim McClure-level, but it was close.

I definitely think Ferrell was cheated out of a fair trial. And the segment said the West Virginia Supereme Court voted 3-2 to let his conviction stand, so that was decided on one vote.

'Disputable evidence'


While Ferrell was being interrogated...several FBI agents were going through Ferrell's Bismark Road trailer, Ferrell's Mart, all vehicles Ferrell had access to and Bernard's trailer in search of incriminating evidence.

Whether they found any is open to dispute. While almost every speck of blood found in Ferrell's trailer and his sheriff's Bronco was "tentatively identified as human", much of it turned out to be non-human, inconclusive in origin or human but of small amounts that no grouping identification could be made. The rest of the evidence, as will be detailed later, turned out to be spurious at best.

After his early-morning arrest at Ferrell's Mart, Ferrell was taken to the Grant County Jail in Petersburg, where he was placed in a third-floor overheated isolation cell. He remained there until bond could be arranged 10 days later. During that period, Ferrell and friends say, Ferrell was never allowed to shower and was tormented by a Grant County deputy.

...Contrary to normal jail procedures, Ferrell's belt was never taken from his possession, Ferrell and those who visited him say. According to Ferrell, the deputy on more than one occasion told him how bad things looked for him, then said, "If I were you, Paul, I'd use that belt and get it over with."

On more than one occasion, Ferrell admits, he actually considered taking the deputy's advice.

Ferrell was eventually released on bond after a preliminary hearing.

In the interim, attempts to develop something more than the circumstantial evidence against Ferrell were launched. To date, investigators didn't have anything close to an eyewitness. And they apparently decided to get one, regardless of the cost.

The most obvious candidate was Kimberly Sue Nelson, who was at her home near Ferrell's trailer on Feb. 17. The fact that neither her husband Sonny's March 8 statement nor Nelson's March 9 statement implicated Ferrell--and in fact spoke of a man with long black hair instead, apparently didn't stop officials from trying for more.

Kimberly Sue Nelson is a shy, down-to-earth, gentle woman whose life centers on her husband, her two engaging daughters and her extended family. Her contact with the outside world was somewhat limited. She had no phone, nor a car during the day.

Mrs. Nelson's unassuming nature made her easy pickings for investigators intent on proving Ferrell had murdered Ford in the trailer a short distance behind her home. Mr. Nelson was another matter. He seems to fear no one, is forthright and doesn't have a very high opinion of "the law". He says he has seen too many reasons not to trust the law.

So Mrs. Nelson was visited in the middle of the day on March 26, when Mr. Nelson was at work, and encouraged to give a second statement. Apparently pressed to focus on Ferrell, she came up with a statement quite different than the previous ones she and her husband had given.

"My husband and I was in bed," she said. "He told me [he] heard a scream. I didn't hear it, but I heard a gunshot. It sounded like it was down in back."

"A couple of days after, I saw the deputy sheriff or a man that I thought was a deputy. He was burning something that I thought was brush, in behind my trailer."

"This was during the month of February, and it was a school day. The kids had come home from school. It was about 4:30 p.m. The dogs was barking and they went down there and I went down to get them. And he said, 'Don't worry about the dogs. They're OK.'"

"I didn't get a real good look at him. I did see a light blue car, but can't say what model it was."

***
'Evans, Sherbin go to work'


Although Mrs. Nelson in no way linked the gunshot and scream to Ferrell, and implied she had heard them in the evening, rather than during the daytime, when Ferrell was alleged to have killed Ford, her statement gave Garrett County Sheriff Van Evans and District Attorney James Sherbin the lead they needed.

The fact that the case was now in the West Virginia courts didn't stop the Maryland officers from making a series of visits to Nelson in which , she said in an August 8, 1991 interview and a subsequent deposition, Evans and Sherbin terrified her into eventually signing a false statement in which she heard pounding, a scream and a gunshot come from Ferrell's trailer on Feb. 17, then saw Ferrell leave the trailer and rive away in his light blue Cavalier.

Mr. and Mrs. Nelson said Evans and Sherbin--with Sherbin taking the lead--told Mrs. Nelson that she wouldn't have to testify if she signed the statement. Later, she said, they told her she would have to testify, and that if she didn't say exactly what she had said in her signed statement, she would be put in prison for perjury.

Ferrell's appeals attorney, Dan James, picks up the story there in a deposition Mrs. Nelson gave on Aug. 12, 1991.

Q. If memory serves me correctly, I don't think that this was ever brought out at trial, but how many times, to your best recollection, did Mr. James Sherbin and Van Evans come to your house between the time you gave the second statement to Randy Keplinger and the time that they have a typed statement dated May 13 of 1988?
A. Quite a few times...I'd say around five or six.
Q. Kim, during those first five or six times, until they got this typed statement, did they keep questioning you about the events surrounding Feb. 17, and where you were and what you may have heard or had seen on that day?
A. Yes.
Q. Did you continue to tell them basically that, "Other than what I've already told Officer Keplinger, I really didn't see or hear anything of any value to you that would aid in your investigation"?
A. Yes.
Q. Did they keep coming back, though?
A. Yes, sir.
Q. How was their attitude toward you? How would you describe it?
A. Mean.
Q. Did they keep coming back, though?
A. Yes.
Q. Do you remember them asking you if you had ever heard a scream at any time?
A. Yes.
Q. You told them that you had heard a scream from time to time, is that correct?
A. Yes, sir.
Q. Did they ever ask you if you had heard a gunshot at any time?
A. Yes...
Q. But, Kim, under oath today, did you ever tell them that yo heard a scream as if it were a woman inside Paul Ferrell's trailer on the 17th and a gunshot and a terrifying scream coming down from the trailer on the 17th of February? Did you ever tell them that?
A. No...
Q. You testified at trial in Mr. Ferrell's case up in Grant County, is that correct?
A. Yes, sir.
Q. I believe your testimony even then, I think this was on cross-examination, was that the officers had made some mistakes.
A. Yes.
Q. You had mentioned that the officers had made mistakes in the taking of your statement. Do you remember that?
A. Yes, sir.
Q. You also made the statement to Mr. Maruka that you just glanced over the statement that was presented to you, this typed, four page, question and answer statement that was dated May 13 of 1988...
A. Yes, sir.
Q. When you glanced over it, was there anyone else present?
A. My husband and my children...
Q. Did anyone else ever pay you a visit at your home concerning this investigation?...Did Mr. DiBenedetto, the prosecuting attorney from Grant County, ever come to your home?
A. Yes, he did...
Q. Did Mr. DiBenedetto ever pressure you into saying things that weren't true and accurate...
A. Yes.
...Q. Did anyone ever make a statement to you that, if you testified differently than what was on this May 13 statement, something would happen to you?
A. Yes, sir.
Q. Who was that?
A. Sherbin...
Q. What did he say to you?
A. That if I don't testify the way if says there, that I will go to jail.
Q. That you'd go to jail? Did he say that you wil have committed perjury or something?
A. Yes, that I'd be lying on the stand.
Q. Did anyone ever tell you that, if you gave this statement, you wouldn't have to testify?
A. Yes, sir.
Q. Were you led to believe that, if you gave this statement, you wouldn't have to go to court?
A. Yes, sir.
Q. Who led you to believe that, Kim?
A. Evans and Sherbin...
Q. What you're saying is that it was twisting and putting words in your mouth and coming up with a statement that you're saying now is totally inaccurate and that really, when you look back at the events, being as honest as you can be, there's nothing that you can remember about the day of Feb. 17 of 1988, when Cathy Ford disappeared, to the effect that you heard a woman scream, that you heard a gunshot go off and that you heard all of this activity at the trailer? You can't remember any of that?
A. No, sir.
Q. Is there anything else you want to say, Kim?
A. Let's get Paul off. I believe he's innocent.

***

'He kept hounding her'



Sonny Nelson wasn't nearly as reserved as his wife when he gave his deposition that Sunday morning.

"When they came over, they just kept on...and I mentioned to Sherbin one day, I said, 'What you're wanting her to say is, yes, I seen Paul Ferrell kill Cathy Ford'. Everytime he come over, he kept hounding her. He had her crying because he had her to believe that Paul Ferrell would come to the school, maybe kidnap her kids or kill her or another innocent person."

"They made her believe that he was sick, he needed help. She was scared. When I tried to talk, they wouldn't leave me talk. I tried to tell them about the wires I smelled burning, which was Feb. 20, around that date, but they didn't want to hear that. That was two different dates. They was interested in linking Paul to Feb. 17, of Cathy Ford's disappearance..."

"He [Sherbin] had her so scared that she did not know which way to turn. She had cried several mornings to get me to stay home from work. For the things they told her about Paul, she was scared that Paul was going to come after her."

Asked what he thought of Sherbin, Mr. Nelson replied:

"I wish I could say some things on this tape that I know I can't, but he's a man not to be trusted. That could have been me up there blamed for the same murder trial, and if he had focused on me, I'm afraid I'd have been where Paul's at. He didn't want to hear nothing about anything else...except Paul."

Nelson added that, for some reason, he was not allowed in the courtroom on the day his wife testified. So, he said, he went out to watch the trial in the WUSA-TV van along with two supposedly sequestered witnesses, Darvin Moon and Rich Ford.

"As I was standing there watching...when Kim was testifying against Paul," Mr. Nelson said, "Darvin Moon was going...'Kim, you've got him. Don't let Maruka mislead you. You got him. We got him. We've got to get him. He's a psycho.'"

Rich Ford expressed the same opinion during an interview last summer. Asked what he had thought of Ferrell before he was accused of his sister's murder, Ford said: "He always went out of his way to be nice. If you bought something at their store, he helped you carry it out to the car. At the bowling league he was always the peacemaker when things got heated. He was always such a nice guy--a typical psychopath."

Question of Sonny Nelson by Dan James: This portrayal of Paul Ferrell as a psycho was basically from whom? Who was saying he was a pyscho...

A. Mr. Sherbin...
Q. Sonny, is there anything else that you want to add for the record?
A. Yes, I hope that, hope to God that they can do something with Sherbin...

***

'Witnesses become victims'



Tamela Kitzmiller's story of what happened to her after Cathy Ford disappeared and her sister reported receiving a call similar to one of those Ford had received is a good example of how ugly this campaign became. It also corroborates Kimberly Nelson's claims on several points.

It is not a pretty story that Kitzmiller had the courage to tell in an interview and a subsequent affidavit of what it was like to be a witness for the prosecution in this case. But it is one several other state's witnesses repeated, and that makes it worth considering in detail.

"Because of my doubts about my original assumption," Kitzmiller said, "I did not discuss Paul's name with my sister early in the investigation. I was even hesitant to disclose the name to the deputy who first interviewed me. But, finally persuaded to do so, I told him that initially I had believed the caller sounded like Paul Ferrell but had doubts about this, as Paul was a virtuous, well-respected citizen and would certainly not make the kind of call my sister had received."

"The deputy agreed that I must have assumed wrong during that brief encounter by phone, and he did not enter Paul Ferrell's name in my inital statement."

"As the investigation progressed, I was also interviewed by an agent from the Federal Bureau of Investigation. Once aware that the FBI was on the scene, I felt assured that we would have some clear answers at last."

"I was not, however, prepared for the extensive line of questioning that we would go through, nor was I expecting the type of personal questions, they would ask that caused us to wonder if we were suspects or victims."

"In subsequent interviews, I continued to state that I had given the phone number only because I believed the call to be authentic and that the caller sounded like someone I knew and trusted. Again, when pressed for that name, I indicated that at the time I gave the number, I had assumed I was talking Paul Ferrell. In addition, I continued to declare my respect for Paul...But my assessment of Paul's character went seemingly unnoticed, and on March 20, 1988, Paul Ferrell was arrested and charged with murder and kidnapping."

"On the afternoon of his arrest, I received a call from the FBI agent who had interviewed me. He asked if I had heard the news of the arrest. I stated that I had, but I expressed concern that Paul had been arrested because of my statement. I was told that the evidence against Paul Ferrell had 'snowballed.'"

"Sometime after the arrest, Ross Maruka contacted me regarding my statement regarding the call. I explained that the voice did sound similar to Paul's, but I would be willing to provide witness to his character, as I had known the entire Ferrell family for about 12 years and had great respect for the entire family. I had always known Paul to be honest and sincere, displaying virtues of goodness and decency...I had never witnessed any indication of violence of hostility. As it happened, I was never called to make that testimony."

"Late in 1988, just before the original trial date, I was asked to go the Garrett County Courthouse in Oakland, Md., to review the details of my statements before the actual trial. Dennis DiBenedetto and James Sherbin were present for that interview."

"...The first several questions were basic, but it finally led to details of the call. I was asked if I could identify the caller, and I expressed doubt about being able to positively identify Paul...At that point, I was told I would look 'ridiculous' in court if I did not appear more definite than that, having given out a phone number without knowing who I was talking to."

***

'Real sicko'


"In once instance, when expressing doubt about being able to positively identify anyone by phone, Mr. Sherbin indicated that they were certain it was Paul Ferrell who called me and they had evidence that would prove he had made those calls."

"I expressed doubt that Paul Ferrell was even capable of murder, and Mr. Sherbin told me of the 'stacks of evidence' against him and that he had been linked to several murders in Yellowstone Park. He referred to Paul as a 'real sicko', stating that there two Paul Ferrells--the Paul Ferrell you know and the 'other Paul Ferrell'. During the same session, he referred to Paul as a 'pervert' and a 'psychopath', and I was told of the blood evidence, which was described as 'blood splattered everywhere.' He said it was up to me to help convict this man so he could not do this again, and told me that the victim could have been my sister instead of Cathy Ford. He said I should answer briefly, and not elaborate on doubts, as they could 'prove' that Paul was guilty. He further stated that they felt Paul's twin brother, David, was in on it as well, but they had been unable to get any solid evidence against David. I asked where David was, indicating that I heard he was in the Army. Mr. Sherbin said they had checked that out, and that he wasn't in the Army, he was in a 'funny farm' somewhere."...

***

'More horror stories'



Several other state's witnesses went thought the same sense of terror after their sessions with Sherbin and DiBenedetto.

Those whose testimony was cut-and-dried said they were told little or nothing. Those who expressed or showed uncertainty were told much the same as Nelson and Kitzmiller.

And, without fail, it worked.

Another state's witness who went to the Garrett County Courthouse with strong doubts about Ferrell's guilt said she came out absolutely convinced he was.

No wonder.

She was told Ferrell had been linked to several murders in Yellowstone.

She was told the Ferrell twins had been playing "mind games" with her, and that even though she thought it was David who had asked her out, it was probably Paul pretending to be David.

She was told Paul Ferrell was a "real sicko" and "real pervert."

She was told that he had a "split personality", and that he was two different people.

She was told that the prosecution had "stacks and stacks of evidence" against Ferrell and that there had been "buckets of blood" in his trailer.

...When it was all over, the witness said, she had felt "victimized" by Sherbin's assault on Ferrell's character. She said she also felt terrified because she had apparently been so wrong about Paul Ferrell, whom she had considered such a gentleman.

***

'Smear campaign continues'



...This is how Tammy Stullenberger, who was one of three witnesses who said they saw Ferrell at the Short Stop in Oakland at the time he was supposedly killing Ford in his trailer 25 miles away:

"They got me at work," Stullenburger said. "It was Donnie Tucker and Robinson--who kept making snickers the whole time they talked to me. They didn't question me at first. They said they wanted to tell me something, then they would question me. I said fine. So Tucker said, 'Did you know Paul made all these phone calls to these women?' and they were telling me things he said. And they were telling me about the books he had gotten from the library and they told me about the phone calls to the bookstores. Then they told me how there was blood all through the trailer and how there were puddles of blood--not just small bits of blood. But they didn't really question me. They were telling me all these things just like...oh, that he had slept with all the women that they had talked to and that I was on of them too. And I was specifically asked if I had had sex with Paul Ferrell, and I had not."

Q. Did they ask about your personal sex life?
A. Oh, yes. Oh, yes. Yes, they did. I told them I have four children living in the house and I don't have anyone living there or coming in. I mean, this just went on and on and on.
Q. Did they say anything about Paul being linked to murders out West?
A. Yes, when he worked out at Yellowstone Park. Yes they did...And how he had made phone calls out West, how girls had been beaten and raped in the park when he worked there.
Q. Did this make you angry?
A. Oh, yes I got angry with them. I really did. Because they weren't actually questioning me about him. It was about my personal life and what went on. And like I told you, Paul had kept my kids for me. So, like any mother, I called them. And they were fine. They said they were playing hide and seek and things like that...They didn't really question me. They were just feeling me out to see my reactions. And they told me how they had talked to Tom Lower, and Tom Lower knew things.
Q. But Tom Lower was going to testify for Paul. But he died rather mysteriously right before the trial, didn't he?
A. Yes, that's for sure.
Q. Did you date Paul?
A. No.
Q. Did you date David?
A. David and I were more like very close friends. That's what I tried to tell them. And they said, "You're his girlfriend." And I said, "We're good friends." That's exactly what I told Tucker and Robinson--that we were very good friends.
Q. What else did they tell you about Paul?
A. How he had sexually abused Cathy Ford, that he had tied her up...
Q. But based upon [I]what? There was no body.
A. Oh, they were telling me about all these puddles of blood and how the blood was from one end of the trailer to the other. It was like they were trying to scare me into believing these things so I wouldn't testify.
Q. And they apparently scared others into testifying with the same tactics.
A. I guess...And they wanted to know why I was out at midnight some nights. But at the time, the store didn't close until midnight. So I even asked them, "Would you like me to get my time card?"...But my boss finally came back and said, "Hey, she's got things to do. She's on my time."...
Q. Did their tactics works?
A. When I came back home that night, David came up, and I didn't have much to say. And he said, "They talked to you, didn't they?" And I said, "Yes, they did."
Q. Did they let you tell them anything positive about Paul?
A. I told them that he had kept my children, and that I trusted him. And they said, "Did he ever make any passes at you or any overtures?" And I said, "No." They said, "What about the kids?" And I said, "No, not that I know of...But that's where they pushed the button. Nobody does that, because I get hostile. And I did have my say then...I wouldn't have dreamed [Paul] would do something like this. My opinion on this would be he would not hurt her or kill her, but he'd help her get away...
Q. Did they ever say Paul had a split personality?
A. Yes, and they asked if I had ever seen that. And I said no. So then they asked about David--are they that identical? How could you tell them apart?
Q. Did they suggest to you that there were darker elements in the Ferrell family in general?
A. Yes. They were telling me about what happened back where they used to live--a shooting or something. Mr. Ferrell had a dispute with someone...And one other thing: They talked about the trailer on Wilson-Corona Road, how they had found rubbers and homosexual goings on and how they found a tape that was made. That's another thing they brought up. And did I know what went on upstairs [at the store] and did I know about the chains hanging down from the ceiling. I told them those chains were for a punching bag, and that when I worked there, I could hear them lifting weights because I could hear them clanging.

After her interview ended, Stullenberger said, the harassment began...

I actually lol'd at the chains hanging from the ceiling thing. What a bunch of idiots.

Wow, just wow.

This investigation might on West Memphis 3 levels of how bad it was. And how did he even get convicted with this crap? Did he kill her? I don't know. But there's no way looking at this you can say 100% he killed her, no question.

As for the trial not being thrown out once it came out that cops questioned Ferrell without a lawyer, after he demanded one. That's worse than the episode of How I Met Your Mother where Brad got into Marshall's firm and looked at all their files and case strategy, while he was opposing counsel. At least that's fiction so you can write-off that Brad's side wouldn't immediately lose.

Wow, just wow.

This investigation might on West Memphis 3 levels of how bad it was. And how did he even get convicted with this crap? Did he kill her? I don't know. But there's no way looking at this you can say 100% he killed her, no question.

that's exactly what I was wondering, how could the jury return a guilty verdict, especially when you consider things like Cathy's body has never been found, the body language "expert" testifying that Paul's body language "proved" he was guilty when it did not and that had never been used as evidence in a case in the U.S. before, things like that. I think they belong on my "stupidest juries" list.

...First it was someone looking in her window. Then it was someone leaving a sign. Then it was someone entering her house, taking nothing, but leaving it wide open just so she knew someone had been there.

And after Paul Ferrell's trial, it all stopped. What a remarkable coincidence.

So was it a remarkable coincidence that two other defense witnesses told very similar stories. As did Stullenberger, they also said they received a number of phone calls with the same message: "Keep your mouth shut, or you or your kids could get hurt."

The other two witnesses said they also suddenly found themselves being investigated by child protective agencies based on anonymous complaints. They said the cases were closed after the trial.

Even defense witnesses who had moved out of the area received not-so-friendly visits from alleged investigators.

In an interview shortly before his death, Ted Marshall and his wife, Shirley, told of a visit they received at their new home in Martinsburg, W. Va. from FBI Agent Robinson.

"He started by wanting to know information on Paul, and we gave him a good recommendation," Mr. Marshall said.

But that wasn't what Robinson seemed to want, said Mrs. Marshall, a former Old Mill employee who testified that she had heard Cathy Ford remark at the restaurant that she feared Darvin Moon might kill her someday--a statement several restaurant regulars also quote her as saying.

"His attitude was definitely belligerent," she said. "He was trying to get us to say something against Paul. But we liked Paul. Ted had had three heart attacks, and if it hadn't been for Paul and David, I don't know what we would have done. If I needed something moved that was too heavy, or if we ran out of money, they'd let us charge stuff at the store."

Added daughter Dawn: "David even gave me money so I could start school."

The Marshalls said Robinson also told them that Ferrell had failed his polygraph exam on the questions of whether Cathy Ford was dead and if he killed her.

"He also said that they had cases with the same MO when Paul was working in Yellowstone," Mrs. Marshall said.

After Maruka subpoenaed Mrs. Marshall, Stacey Marshall said, DiBenedetto subpoenaed her in the apparent hope she would contradict her mother.

"He was telling me about the phone calls and that Paul was a pervert and all that stuff, and I told him, 'Look, I grew up with him and I saw Paul off and on from age 15 on up and I spent a lot of nights up there till 10, 11 o'clock and then he'd walk me home and I told him if I had to, I'd spend all night with him in a room without the slightest fear he'd hurt me because he wouldn't touch me.' He didn't like that very well, but that's the way I felt. And it's still the way I feel."

***

'Another Ted Bundy'



Witnesses weren't the only ones told false horror stories about Ferrell. Their families were told the same thing. For example, Steve Durst of Bayard, foster father of Tracy Dunithan, said he was told that Ferrell was "another Ted Bundy", a serial murderer whose execution was nearing during the time of the investigation.

But was Paul Ferrell another Bundy?

Had he been linked to several murders that occurred while he worked there during the summers so his college-age brothers could earn money at the family store?

Was he truly the "psychopath", "pervert", and "sicko" authorities said he was?

Did his telephone fantasy intersect with reality at the time Cathy Ford supposedly responded to one of his calls?

Did Sherbin and DiBenedetto violate legal ethics by making such statements to witnesses?

The answer to the first four questions is no. The answer to the last question is yes.

Paul Ferrell is no Ted Bundy...(H)e doesn't begin to match the FBI's own profile of such a killer.

Nor could he have been linked to several murders in Yellowstone Park, because there has only been one murder there in the past decade--and it was solved.

Actually, Ferrell's employment record at Yellowstone, where he once supervised a women's dormitory, appears to have been very good.

Patty Bishoff of TW Recreational Services, for which Ferrell worked during the summers of 1981, 1982, and 1983, says his evaluation forms rate his performance as "above standards to excellent."

Bishoff, who worked with Ferrell as a residential assistant in 1982, said Ferrell made a very positive impression on her.

"We had a great summer together," Bishoff said. "Paul was a really easy-going guy. He was always willing to help out, and had a great sense of humor."

Mike Cloghessy, who started working at Yellowstone with Ferrell in 1982 and is now TW Recreational Services' print-shop manager, said Ferrell "was just about the nicest guy I ever worked with. He was always considerate of others and always the peacemaker...The idea that he was linked to nine murders here is ridiculous. I can think of only one murder in Yellowstone since I've been here, and someone was arrested for it almost immediately."

Beth Neidhold, now a teacher, began dating Ferrell when she met him while working in Yellowstone and maintained a close relationship with him until he was imprisoned. They still keep in contact by telephone.

"Paul was probably the nicest person I met out there," said Neidhold, who lived in Minnesota at the time she was interviewed but has since moved to California. "He was always polite and sensitive to others' feelings. I couldn't imagine him hurting anyone at all."

Neidhold felt so secure with Ferrell that she invited him to come to visit her so he could get away from the pressure of his pending trial.

"Do you think I would have done that if I had any doubts?" Neidhold asked. "There was no question about having him visit because I knew I could trust him. And he was nothing but a gentleman when he did."

After Ferrell left, Neidhold said, she was interviewed by an FBI agent.

***

'Ferrell called normal, caring'



"He wanted to know if Paul had given me any gifts," Neidhold said. "He said, 'You know, it's a pattern of these types to give away the jewelry of his victims.' I told him Paul had never given me anything because he was always lending his money to others so much he never had any for himself."

"Then he asked me if Paul had ever tried to lure me any place. And I told him Paul didn't have to lure me any place. I was always glad to be with him."

After every question, Neidhold said, the agent would tell her something more horrifying about Paul.

"He really stressed Paul's interest in pornography, which I had never seen any evidence of," Neidhold said. "He told me Paul had rented an astronomical number of porno films, and asked if I'd ever heard of the film Body. I told him no."

(Ferrell said that, as far as he knew, no pornography was found. he said he had rented a few adult films, which he and some of his friends watched as a joke--a statement confirmed by Jeff Kitzmiller. He said that, as best as he knew, he had never seen a film called Body, and he had no idea what it was about.)

Cathy Bernard Pariseau, with whom Ferrell was living at the time of his arrest, said she also saw no evidence of Ferrell having any interest in pornography.

Neidhold said she had dated Paul steadily for more than a year and that he was "very respectful of my wishes. He never forced himself on me."

Neidhold, who was listed as one of the many possible character witnesses Maruka failed to call, said the agent "definitely tried to make me think worse of Paul."

"If I had known nothing about Paul, I'd have thought he was a horrible man based on what he told me," she said. "But I knew better."

Cathy Bernard Pariseau said much the same. "He was very normal, and very caring," said Pariseau, who testified as a prosecution witness. "People keep expecting me to say the opposite, but I can't. Paul was nothing but good to me--and to my children. He went out of his way to be good to them at a time they really needed it. I suppose someone could be like that and still be a killer, but all I can say is that I never saw the slightest sign of violence in him. I'm honest about that, just as I'm honest about some of the things he did that cast suspicion on him."

...Asked if he had heard statements about Ferrell's link to other murders, interest in pornography and sexual proclivities, DiBenedetto said he couldn't recall. then he said he might have heard such things being said, but couldn't remember by whom.

"It's not my way of doing things," DiBenedetto said. A minute later, though, he said, "I don't have any problem with it."

"All I concern myself with is what witnesses say under oath, not what they were told beforehand," he said.

Asked if that was true even if what witnesses were told might have caused them to give false testimony, DiBenedetto heatedly replied:

"If you have knowledge of perjury having been committed I want to know by whom."

When I told him that wasn't possible because guarantees of confidentiality hadn't been waived at that point, DiBenedetto threatened to charge me with "failure to report a crime"--a requirement, a former prosecutor later told me, doesn't even exist under West Virginia law.

Not realizing that then, I tried to tell DiBenedetto that reporters were normally exempt from such requirements if the information was given in confidence. At that point, DiBenedetto told us to leave.

When I tried to explain why a reporter can't provide such information, DiBenedetto shouted:

"I don't give a ****!"

"Can I quote you on that?" I asked.

"Yes!" he shouted, as he slammed the door.

DiBenedetto is a jerk, plain and simple. His response in the Final Appeal segment every time he was accused of using intimidation was to laugh and deny it. What's funny about that? I wanted to smack him.

The pornography angle is a devious one, too. It's not illegal to own pornography, unless it involves children or is stolen. But the prosecution undoubtedly felt some jurors may have been influenced by it and decided to make an issue of it.

COULD CATHY FORD STILL BE ALIVE?



...It is commonly estimated that over a million Americans "disappear" every year.

Most reappear within a few days.

Some are victims of foul play.

But thousands of them simply run away and are never seen or heard from again.

Could Cathy Ford have been one of them?

Two statements under oath, a possible sighting and Cathy Ford's own expressions of deep discontent in letters written as late as a week to the day before she disappeared suggest that possibility.

Most people who run away show signs of unhappiness before they disappear. But because the signs are subtle, they are often overlooked.

The most important of those signs is withdrawal--and Ford's letters, as well as statements from friends, strongly suggest that her winter of discontent was nearing a climax in February 1988.

According to her co-workers and regular early-morning customers, Ford had stopped going to the Bear's Den in the final weeks before her disappearance. She also was expressing dissatisfaction with her life and fear of her boyfriend, Darvin Moon.

Well, it's 11 o'clock and snowing, she wrote to a friend on Feb. 7. I don't think it's going to amount to much. Maybe I'll get snowed in my house, all by myself, but I'm not that lucky...Ever get a chance, give me a call--that is if you haven't forgotten my phone number. I'm home all the time. Even all the weekends. I ain't partied for so long, I forget what it feels like. I haven't done coke for over a month now. Aren't you proud of me?

I didn't even get drunk New Year's. I should get ****-faced more often. Maybe I'll be in a better mood, but I doubt it.

On Feb. 10, a week to the day before she disappeared, Ford appeared to be full of both intrigue and despair.

I'm sending you something, but I can't tell you what it is because then it won't be a surprise, she wrote. Give me a week or two to send it. You'll be very surprised. You'll never guess in a million years.

No such surprise ever arrived. It could well have been included in a letter she was writing to her friend the day she disappeared. But the letter apparently was never mailed.

***

'It's so gloomy outside'



The last paragraph of that last letter her friend would ever receive from Ford concluded with despair.

Today has been a very, very sorry, long day, she wrote. It's so gloomy outside. I'd like to see some warm weather come soon. We'll send you the cold and you send me the warmth. How's that sound? Well, gotta go. Time to get back to work. Smoke a Dube [joint] for me. Since I haven't partied for so long, I forget what a hangover feels like.

Someone in that frame of mind, especially if faced with a crisis like the one Ferrell claims she faced--fear that Moon had found out about their purported secret relationship--will often disappear.

...Ford didn't have any hysterical features, but a close friend said she was "a compulsive liar."

"We didn't realize it at the time, but she hid an awful lot from us--even from her mom," the friend said.

...Clarence "Sonny" Nelson, who lived near where Ford's Bronco was found, says he tried to tell District Attorney Sherbin and Sheriff Evans that he saw someone matching Cathy Ford's description being driven away from the area, "but nobody wanted to hear my story."

...Nelson made the following statement to attorney Dan James:

A. ...OK, I come home, which...was around 3 to 3:30, and the water plant road is just maybe 75 yards below the house. There was a silver-and-blue Bronco sitting there. Nobody was in the Bronco. I go tout of the car when I pulled in the driveway to the house, and there was this green car. It was a Chrysler product of some sort. There was this guy in it. He had long hair. It was sort of a blondish color. He had a scar under his right eye that come down towards his nose, which they--he was accompanied by a woman sitting on the passenger's side that had long black hair and wore a black coat, but she never looked towards the house.

There was boxes in the back of the car along with garbage bags, and the guy just waved at me. I went in the house, I eat my supper, and I'd heard a vehicle go down through the field. Now, I don't know if it was a car or a truck or what. I have no idea. this same green car that I had seen with this long-haired guy was in the field, you know, at a later date.

They mentioned about the spin marks up at the pond where they had pumped out searching for Cathy Ford. This car was in the field. The spin marks was there where he turned around. This was the second time I seen this guy. The second time, he waved again and went on...
Q. Clearly, the person that you saw was not Paul Ferrell?
A. No way.
Q. Could the woman that you saw, had seen in the car, have been Cathy Ford?
A. At the time, I didn't know but, after seeing her picture in the paper, yes...
Q. It fit her general description?
A. Right. It just looked to me like two people was a-leaving town--and in a hurry.

Nelson said it was later that night--Feb. 20--that he smelled something like burning wires and saw smoke along the Stony River. He added that when he tried to tell this to Sherbin and Evans, they said "that would link two different dates, and they wanted the 17th to pin it on Paul to put him away."

If the woman was, indeed, Cathy Ford, who could the mystery man have been?

One possibility would be Chuck Carr, Jr., Cathy Ford's cousin. Carr drove a Dodge Dart with white fenders and a green hood that seems to match in some respect the descriptions given to investigators by Sonny Nelson's wife, Kimberly, and Buffalo Coal employee David Crane Bell.

DiBenedetto is a jerk, plain and simple. His response in the Final Appeal segment every time he was accused of using intimidation was to laugh and deny it. What's funny about that? I wanted to smack him.

Yes. My ears really perked up when he said he would've been "totally out of his mind" to have influenced prosecution witnesses, yet never directly denied doing so during the portion of the interview that was aired.

The pornography angle is a devious one, too. It's not illegal to own pornography, unless it involves children or is stolen. But the prosecution undoubtedly felt some jurors may have been influenced by it and decided to make an issue of it.

Especially since not ONE shred of pornography allegedly owned by Ferrell--a "sicko" and "pervert" who had an "astronomical" volume of pornographic films--was ever presented by the prosecution! :mad:

I've always had the feeling of "I don't know if he killed her" (never agreed with the conviction), but with everything that's been presented, and in these last couple of posts, I'm coming down on the side that he's innocent.

This lends more credence to the theory that she ran away.

'More dead ends'



And Carr's mother, Ann Riley, said in a sworn statement given to this reporter that her son told her shortly before he died in a suspicious auto accident that he had harbored Cathy Ford for two days. That would possibly place her in the area on Feb. 20, the day Nelson saw someone matching her description on Bismark Road.

Riley said she first suspected that Carr may have hidden Ford when she visited her late grandmother's home five miles out of Bayard.

"My son Chuck had a trailer just across from my grandmother's house, and I'd go up there to get things, look for things...or to get jars for canning," Riley said.

Shortly after Ford had disappeared, Riley said, she and her sister Roberta Dignan were surprised to find evidence that someone had been staying at their grandmother's when they had stopped by there.

"The sink was full of dirty dishes," Riley said. "There was cigarette butts in the ashtray."

Riley said her sister, who told the same story in a separate interview, immediately remarked: "Someone's been staying in here."

Riley said she finally decided to feel out her son about her suspicions in the summer of 1990.

"I told him there was something in the paper about Paul Ferrell," Riley said. "And I really can't say that my son said anything at that point right there, because I said, 'I know he's not guilty'...

"And I asked him if he wanted to, you know, see what was in the paper about Paul, and he said, 'No.'...

"I said, 'You know he's not guilty.' Then, that's when I brought it up. I said, 'Cathy stayed at Grandma's, didn't she?'

"He said, 'Mom, Cathy stayed two days, and you're getting into something you don't want to know about.'"

Unfortunately, whatever, if anything, Carr knew went to the grave with him. He was killed in a two-car automobile accident on July 29, 1990--five days after Riley says he had told her two of his friends were trying to get him killed.

Two days after that, Riley said, her son told her how he wanted to be buried. Two days after that, he was dead.

Carr's former wife, Rita Carr, might have been able to provide insight on Carr's claim. But she was killed in a single-car accident in Easton, Md., last April.

Another possible candidate as the mystery driver would be Curtis Eugene Dove. Ferrell claims Ford mentioned Dove as another person she might turn to for help. Dove, who rotated residences between Grant County, Baltimore, and Akron, Ohio, drove a greenish-blue Chrysler and had long hair and a beard at the time.

But he can't talk either. Dove was killed in his fortress-like Akron home on June 4, 1989. Police said Dove almost definitely knew his killer. There were no signs of forced entry, and Dove was seated on the couch counting Quaaludes at the time. No drugs, weapons or money apparently were taken.

Dove's murder remains unsolved. The Akron Police Department's homicide investigation led detectives to Grant and Garrett counties and beyond. Their top suspect is a distant relative. But their evidence is weak, and the trail is growing cold. Detectives said Dove, in turn, was a suspect in at least one murder in Akron. So that trail is very cod.

Dove's case files contain nothing to link Dove to Ford. But they do reveal that Dove, in the word of one detective, was "a master of fake IDs". Dove had social security numbers and driver's licenses under several names.

Dove, who was white but lived in a predominately black neighborhood, kept to himself, police said. The only exception was a couple that lived a few houses down the street. In fact, the friendship was close enough that police checked them out to make sure they weren't in the same business. It turned out that they weren't.

"They were just good neighbors," one detective said.

A knock on the door of the family's neat, attractive home brought a pleasant, middle-aged woman to the door. After her initial suspicion was overcome, she talked openly about Dove, whom she knew only as "a nice friendly neighbor who would do anything for you."

"If you asked to borrow a tool, he brought it down and fixed whatever you were going to use it on," she said.

What she didn't know was that police found Dove's house full of expensive tools--all of them stolen.

Shown Cathy Ford's picture to see if she recognized her, the neighbor looked through the screened door and shook her head no.

Then her facial expression changed dramatically.

"Wait a minute," she said as she opened the door and grabbed the photo. "That's the woman who was with him earlier the day he was killed. They were riding around in his old convertible with the top down."

"Are you sure?"

"I'm sure. She was with him that very day."

Eyewitness identification is never very accurate. Eyewitness identification based on a single photo is even less so--even though that's all it takes for some police departments to charge a person with even the most serious of crimes.

Yet, the change in the woman's expression was swift and seemed genuine.

And Gene Dove was a "master of fake IDs..."

***

'She may have worked here'



In late December 1989, Jack and Jackie (not their real names), a retirement-age couple, were on their way home to Garrett County from a holiday visit in Florida.

As they approached Chattanooga, Tenn., on I-75, Jack and Jackie agreed they were hungry and tired--in that order.

So they agreed to stop at the first exit past the city. That led them to Cleveland, Tenn., what was later determined to be a Cracker Barrel restaurant and a strange encounter of the improbable kind.

It was peak dinner time. The Cracker Barrel was packed as tight as a can of sardines.

As the Mountain Lake Park couple waited for a table, Jack noticed one of the waitresses staring at him. She looked nervous and confused. Every time their eyes met, though, she would look away.

When they were finally seated, Jack noticed the same waitress approach the one serving their section and saying something to her.

As their waitress approached their table, she smiled broadly.

"You must be strangers here," she said. "Where are you from?"

"Western Maryland," Jack and Jackie replied in unison.

"Great. I'll be back to take your order in a minute," the waitress said.

Jack couldn't help but watch as the waitress headed back to her serving station. When she did, the other waitress approached Jack and Jackie's waitress. They exchanged a few words once again. Then the nervous waitress stared at them with a quick, agitated look and rushed into the kitchen.

That's when Jack realized where he had seen the girl before--only by then, he says, her hair was a little shorter and lighter.

"Jackie," Jack said. "I know where I've seen that girl before. That's the girl who's supposed to be dead."

The report from journalist J.C. Grouchot, who ably assisted the latter stages of this investigation, was kind enough to send Tammy Kitzmiller south when this reporter, who had unleashed a hurricane of determination to right a wrong after he finally persuaded her to talk, told her he couldn't get there immediately.

Kitzmiller had been outraged at the end of Ferrell's trial. To her, the "stacks and stacks of evidence" District Attorney Sherbin, who failed to return calls for comment about the case, had promised to produce looked more stacks and stacks of unsubstantiated rumors and innuendos.

Kitzmiller felt the system had let both the area's residents and Paul Ferrell down in 1989. Who, she wondered, could right what she saw as a wrong?

Not the West Virginia Supreme Court, which upheld Ferrell's conviction, albeit in a close 3-2 vote with a scathing dissent.

Not the U.S. Supreme Court, which is now headed by a chief justice who was the court's only member to vote for the execution of convicted cop killer Randall Dale Adams. The West Virginia-born, Ohio-raised Adams was freed shortly after Ferrell was convicted after spending 13 years in Texas prisons for a murder the award-winning documentary The Thin Blue Line proved in dramatic fashion he hadn't committed.

That put Paul Ferrell's case in the hands of the only court more powerful than the increasingly cynical and callous Supreme Court--the court of public opinion.

***

'Witness sees the light'



Once she had talked and discovered other witnesses had been used and abused as she felt she had, Kitzmiller was determined to see the full story of Ferrell's case made public as soon as possible.

Soon, she was pounding the pavement for the reporter, getting essential facts, encouraging others to talk and writing detailed, informative reports.

On Dec. 28, Kitzmiller drove non-stop to Cleveland, Tenn., hoping for a miracle--to find Cathy Ford alive.

Miracles are rarities, and this was not to be one of them.

But it wasn't a waste, either...

***

'Final exit'


Then she got off a winding exit like the one Jack and Jackie had described. It was the second exit north of Chattanooga...Across the divided highway, there stood a restaurant, gift shop and motel, just as Jack and Jackie had said there would be...

It was 11:30 p.m., and the restaurant was closed. Kitzmiller stayed in the adjacent motel, and visited the restaurant first thing the next morning.

None of the waitresses looked like Cathy Ford. But Kitzmiller was undaunted.

"After talking to one of the waitresses for a while," she wrote, "I showed her the photo, and it seemed to spark immediate recognition. She said, 'She may have worked here a couple years ago. Who is she?' I told her she had been missing since 1988, and was not sure what name she was using, but that we had information that she may have been working in this area in December 1989. She said, 'That's very possible, but they come and go here so much. Sometimes they only stay a month or two and move on. She does look familiar, though.'

"One of the other waitresses came by and she stopped her. She asked if she knew who this was. This waitress also thought she looked familiar, but none of them could remember her name.

"They all seemed to feel that she may have worked there at one time."

Kitzmiller also talked to one of the managers, who had just stopped by. He also thought Ford looked familiar, but he couldn't be certain.

A subsequent call to Cracker Barrel headquarters resulted in a check of personnel records. No Catherine Denise Ford, possible variations of that name or other likely aliases surfaced.

A photo was faxed to Pat Elliott, the Cleveland Cracker Barrel's general manager. In a telephone interview, Elliott could not say whether anyone who looked like that had worked there or not. But she said it was possible.

"You should check with New Life Bible College," she said. "They take in a lot of runaways and try to help them straighten out their lives. We hire some of them, and some work out great. But others just work a week or two and disappear."

Clifford and Sue Scott at New Life Bible College were friendly and cooperative.

"We do help a lot of runaways," Sue Scott said. "I worked nights at the Cracker Barrel myself then, so I just might recognize her picture. On the other hand, we got through so many of these kids that I might not."

As it turned out, she didn't.

So the Cathy Ford case still remains such as Winston Churchill once described the late and not-so-great Soviet Union: "A riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma."

And trapped within the case's Soviet-style gulag of chicanery, duplicity and deceit is a man Tammy Kitzmiller wrote of after Ferrell's conviction in a poem called Confined. It reads:

In a delicate despair,
Corridors echo with injustice;

Theories and deception
Create collusion or inept rectitude;

Yet who will hear the voice
Of the presumed, crying out for innocence?

***

Copyright 1992, by Martin Yant

That story about Carr really freaks me out. So does the one about Gene Dove. I've also eaten at that Cracker Barrel before.

Sort of related fun fact: one of Paul's brothers lives in my hometown and is a federal public defender. He also teaches classes toward paralegal certification at the University of Tennessee. I wonder if his brother's case motivated him to work in public defense.

wow, this whole thing is just so bizarre. I don't think anyone could write something as baffling as this. As they say, truth is stranger than fiction.

I really have no idea what would possess the prosecutors or anyone to single out Paul Ferrell. Most people tend to hold law enforcement in a pretty high regard, and Paul was, by all accounts, a genuinely friendly, helpful and generous human being. What would cause some people to go for his throat? Did he issue a speeding ticket to the wrong person or something?

Admittedly, Ferrell did do a few stupid things early on, such as not mentioning about the Bronco near his property. But reflecting on it, if someone planted it there, what could he have done? He could have reported it, but suspicion would naturally be drawn to him. Perhaps he just found himself in a no-win situation.

I seriously doubt Cathy Ford is still alive. Maybe back in the late 80's early 90's it was a possibility, but I don't see how she wouldn't have resurfaced or attempted to contact one of her relatives by now. Cullers seems like an interesting suspect in this case. He worked in mines and bragged that he knew where Cathy was buried.

I'm still confused on the phone calls. Ferrell admitted to calling the libraries and book stores, but says he never called anyone posing as an undercover cop or a magistrate. But, as Meg pointed out, that note found on him is highly suspect. If they were simple notes he was taking during a debriefing, what could they possibly be referring to? Sounds more like a script he was reading from when he called posing as the undercover cop. However, if the relationship was true he wouldn't need to pose as anyone to get her to come to his trailer. And if Darvin Moon was that feared, Cathy apparently flaunted the fact that she ran around on him, and nothing ever happened to the other guy (named in one of the articles) she was with. So why would she not once (to any friend, coworker, or relative) say she was seeing Ferrell? Just doesn't make sense.

Ferrell was definitely screwed, and should have never been convicted, much less charged due to the shady and corrupt way the prosecution intimidated witnesses. But I still can't shake the feeling that he's guilty.

I don't even know what to think about Cathy Ford. She did NOT sound like a happy person at the time of her disappearance, and was involved in some pretty high-risk behaviors, including using cocaine and living with someone who allegedly physically assaulted her on one occasion. Darvin Moon should have been checked out immediately, regardless of whether he was "acting like a suspect" or not. Melvin Cullers should have been next.

After reading the comments from multiple women who had relationships with Ferrell--both platonic and romantic--I am nearly absolutely convinced he definitely did not commit a sexually motivated kidnapping and murder. All we ever heard is not only how profoundly normal he was, but that he was also a very considerate, caring person. "I never saw the slightest sign of violence in him" is something at least two different women said. Despite the lame attempt to draw comparisons by the police, that's definitely not what all the women Ted Bundy came into contact with (and survived) had to say about him. Men held in high regard as well. He seemed like he was almost universally liked and respected.

Furthermore, if Ferrell truly had those kind of terrible tendencies, why did he not try anything while he was out at Yellowstone (the opportunities would have been endless as an RA in a women's dorm and plenty of remote locations all around) or while he was in the Army? Why would he wait until he was back home and suddenly kill someone locally?

And speaking of Yellowstone, learning the whole Ferrell-linked-to-nine-murders-there thing was absolutely false was the first thing that caused me to really doubt his guilt. If police and the prosecution team were so willing to lie to witnesses in such a profound way as this, I think they're capable of just about anything.

I also think the point about Ferrell's mechanical ineptitude is an important one, that he would have "burned himself up" had he attempted to torch Cathy's Bronco. I guess I don't know any other way to say it, but I could see that.

Then there's the phone calls at the bowling alley. A completely neutral third party testified that those calls were real and that Ferrell responded by leaving. Cathy Bernard seems like a forthright person by all accounts, and she says she did not make those calls. Who on earth else could it have been? Paul claims Cathy told him she just purchased some cocaine--which I think might very well be true, given Cathy's laments in her letters that she missed partying and felt like doing so might make her feel better. She also mentioned in those letters that she hadn't used cocaine in a month.

I think Cathy Ford was in a bad place in her life and involved with some bad stuff--and bad people--and Paul Ferrell, given his nature and desire to help others, was pulled in and subsequently entangled. I don't know who set him up, but it wouldn't surprise me at all if it was one of Cathy Ford's drug contacts.

The note in his pocket did initially give me pause, but after thinking about it, the explanation given as to why it was there and what it was for does make sense. I don't even know if we were told whether Paul worked that day. Given Cathy Bernard's repeated calls to the store, the fact that three people saw him at a gas station (while he was supposed to be killing Cathy Ford, no less) around 2:30 p.m., and then waiting for a take-out order at the Old Mill around 4 p.m., it sounds like he had the day off. So why would that note be in his uniform pocket if he supposedly used it that day, the 17th?

In any event, Paul Ferrell's civil rights went unprotected, his trial was a joke, and his imprisonment was unfair. That should have been enough, but DiBenedetto so successfully managed to nail him to the wall the first time that I'm not sure if any defense team could have hurdled over that mountain of underhanded, illegal, good-old-boy tactics and techniques.

I don't think he did it. I just don't think he did it anymore.

I also think the point about Ferrell's mechanical ineptitude is an important one, that he would have "burned himself up" had he attempted to torch Cathy's Bronco. I guess I don't know any other way to say it, but I could see that.

That was my favorite line from the article, I lol'ed.

ETA: If Ferrell is innocent, perhaps the person who killed Cathy suspected he was investigating into the drug dealing in the area and set him up to hinder the "investigation"?

ETA: If Ferrell is innocent, perhaps the person who killed Cathy suspected he was investigating into the drug dealing in the area and set him up to hinder the "investigation"?

That's possible, I think. It could also be a "bonus" by-product of setting up someone else to go to jail over Cathy's disappearance. A sort of killing two birds with one stone thing.

I think that person would have had to have had some knowledge of the relationship between Ferrell and Ford beforehand, though. Apparently Melvin Cullers made a comment about Cathy saying something about a police officer who was going to help cover her with the drug stuff, so perhaps she told others about it as well. Now, Cullers doesn't exactly seem the most honest person in the world, but Ferrell himself even admits Cathy presented this very idea to him and that he did momentarily consider cooperating. Guess it wouldn't surprise me if she had told someone else in "the trade" about it, either.

It seems to look more and more like Cathy Ford might have taken Paul Ferrell for a real sucker. And by all accounts, it doesn't seem too unusual that Ferrell would have been a good candidate for one. I think he might have tended to trust people implicitly.

I still can't get over that note found in his pocket. What exactly could have been discussed at this briefing that would make him write that down? Why not more about her last known whereabouts, associates, etc.?

I still can't get over that note found in his pocket. What exactly could have been discussed at this briefing that would make him write that down? Why not more about her last known whereabouts, associates, etc.?

After thinking about it, I could also see how that could have been a relay of what Cathy told Pat Parker just before she left, which probably would have been included in that brief.

I guess it's not too outlandish to consider that Paul, knowing Cathy personally, would have known her last known whereabouts (the restaurant) and probably any associates that came out at that time. In fact, he might have actually known more than what was put out in the brief!

Admittedly, Ferrell did do a few stupid things early on, such as not mentioning about the Bronco near his property. But reflecting on it, if someone planted it there, what could he have done? He could have reported it, but suspicion would naturally be drawn to him. Perhaps he just found himself in a no-win situation.

Yeah, I think that's probably what happened. He didn't know what to do, so he did exactly what we were sure he couldn't have been serious about: he panicked.

I guess the impression I have of Ferrell is of someone who was not only exceptionally trusting, but someone who didn't have an excess of street smarts, much less criminal savvy. The term "Pollyanna" comes to mind--or whatever the male equivalent would be.

Instead of calming down and immediately finding an attorney, he let himself freak out and languish in worry, and as a result started doing stupid things fueled by all that emotion and near-total ignorance of how to negotiate a situation such as the one he found himself in.

Instead of calming down and immediately finding an attorney, he let himself freak out and languish in worry, and as a result started doing stupid things fueled by all that emotion and near-total ignorance of how to negotiate a situation such as the one he found himself in.

As we know finding an attorney wouldn't have mattered in this case. Hell, had he done that, the cops may have tried to say he was The Zodiac.

As we know finding an attorney wouldn't have mattered in this case. Hell, had he done that, the cops may have tried to say he was The Zodiac.

I agree. He was fighting an uphill battle at 90 degrees from the day that Bronco got dumped by his home.

I agree. He was fighting an uphill battle at 90 degrees from the day that Bronco got dumped by his home.

He did help create that uphill battle, though. Logically, he should have been a suspect. He was the one who attempted to get the search party organizer to call off the search for Cathy or her vehicle. When the lady couldn't call it off, he was the one who told her not to search the roads where her vehicle was ultimately found. Ferrell also admits to writing the letter to Cathy's parents, and getting the $200 out of his bank account. Ferrell's girlfriend said he had asked her to call Ford's parents pretending to be Cathy or someone she knew saying that she was alright. Ferrell called out sick the day of (or after, I can't recall) her disappearance. He ripped up the carpet in his bedroom and replaced it shortly after Cathy's disappearance. Now I know he did take his current girlfriend shopping for carpet with him, but why would she suspect anything at all out of the ordinary? All he had to do was say, "hey I'm replacing the carpet in my trailer, want to come with me to pick out some new carpet?" This would not cause his girlfriend to raise any red flags or think this was suspicious. He also (although the vehicle could have been planted there by someone trying to frame him) was a few hundred yards away from where her vehicle ultimately wound up.

Now I admit that I agree 100% about the fact that Ferrell was not given a fair trial, and was screwed by the prosecution who lied to witnesses to help get a conviction. The fact that they ignored other potential suspects is also appalling. But, even if Ferrell is innocent, he still did some stupid things that any normal innocent person wouldn't have done. And he certainly caused the focus of the investigation to shift directly to him once he did these things. Think about it, if it wasn't for the note he wrote to Cathy's parents, or the way his girlfriend described him becoming somewhat obsessed with her disappearance (and trying to get her to call Cathy's parents to say she was alright, trying to call off the search for her, etc.), would he have even been a suspect in this case? Sure her Bronco was found near his trailer, but Ferrell did have neighbors who had trailers within the same vicinity. He probably would have been questioned as to what he saw that day or if he noticed anything out of the ordinary, but I doubt the investigators would have focused the investigation squarely on him just because the Bronco was found somewhat near his trailer.

He did help create that uphill battle, though. Logically, he should have been a suspect. He was the one who attempted to get the search party organizer to call off the search for Cathy or her vehicle. When the lady couldn't call it off, he was the one who told her not to search the roads where her vehicle was ultimately found.

Right. However, Darvin Moon did exactly the same thing--attempt to dissuade others from searching that very area--and was never once questioned about it.

But, even if Ferrell is innocent, he still did some stupid things that any normal innocent person wouldn't have done.

The first thing that comes to mind (and I promise, my intention is not to pick on you here) is Tim McClure.

McClure goes to check every casino parking lot for his missing mother except for the one she's eventually found in (because, he claims, of a feeling "guiding" him away). He embarks on a journey to find a purse he had no way of knowing was missing at the time. Now, to me, that's a couple of things a normal, innocent person wouldn't have done.

McClure, like Ferrell, according to the general consensus of the board, also interviewed quite poorly, displaying palpable nervousness. Both also failed polygraph examinations.

Why, then, does McClure get off the hook while Ferrell does not? I'm not trying to jerk your chain or anything; I just am curious about what makes the difference for you.

And he certainly caused the focus of the investigation to shift directly to him once he did these things. Think about it, if it wasn't for the note he wrote to Cathy's parents, or the way his girlfriend described him becoming somewhat obsessed with her disappearance (and trying to get her to call Cathy's parents to say she was alright, trying to call off the search for her, etc.), would he have even been a suspect in this case?

I'm not sure. The letter was postmarked 29 February. The Bronco was found on 8 March. What isn't known is the exact date Ferrell saw that Bronco from the sky, for the first time. I think that'd be good info to know.

Sure her Bronco was found near his trailer, but Ferrell did have neighbors who had trailers within the same vicinity. He probably would have been questioned as to what he saw that day or if he noticed anything out of the ordinary, but I doubt the investigators would have focused the investigation squarely on him just because the Bronco was found somewhat near his trailer.

I dunno, man. Those investigators seemed like they sucked pretty hard.

Right. However, Darvin Moon did exactly the same thing--attempt to dissuade others from searching that very area--and was never once questioned about it.

I agree that Darvin Moon should have been the first person investigated. But if we are to imagine (for a second) that both Moon and Ferrell are innocent, who would have a better reason to dissuade people from searching the area for fear that they would be implicated? The boyfriend or the guy who (other than his own word) no one could ever tie with Cathy Ford who just lived in the general area?

McClure goes to check every casino parking lot for his missing mother except for the one she's eventually found in (because, he claims, of a feeling "guiding" him away). He embarks on a journey to find a purse he had no way of knowing was missing at the time. Now, to me, that's a couple of things a normal, innocent person wouldn't have done.

I just cannot fathom that McClure checked every single lot on his mother's route home. I can't believe he would even know each and every single casino, nor would he know the exact way his mother drove home that night. So I take the "every lot except one" to more or less mean he just missed it. When questioned why, he gave the "Holy spirit" line. According to Tim, his sister was the one that brought up the purse. Tim said something to the effect of, "they made a big deal because I said I was looking for evidence of her purse". For all we know he could have told the investigators he was looking for her car and even checking the sides of roads for "remnants of her purse". That's not suspicious at all.

McClure, like Ferrell, according to the general consensus of the board, also interviewed quite poorly, displaying palpable nervousness. Both also failed polygraph examinations.

I don't think Ferrell came off bad in his interview. It's just that there was absolutely NOTHING presented in the segment (minus the ridiculous body language expert) in his favor. At least UM presented a possible "alternate suspect" in the Ferrell segment with Darvin Moon. McClure wasn't so lucky. And I wasn't even aware that Ferrell failed a polygraph.

Why, then, does McClure get off the hook while Ferrell does not? I'm not trying to jerk your chain or anything; I just am curious about what makes the difference for you.

It's just McClure did not have any past problems with his mother, so murdering her on his wedding night makes no sense. Ferrell on the other hand did make some stupid phone calls before Cathy Ford disappeared, and then acted very suspicious and nervous for someone who was innocent. At least McClure reported his mother missing, called family and friends looking for her, searched for her, etc. He wasn't trying to conceal anything. If anything, he was too revealing to the things he told investigators. And McClure was not even convicted at the time of the UM segment, he contacted them so the investigation would shift away from him. It's definitely different circumstances, IMO.

I'm not sure. The letter was postmarked 29 February. The Bronco was found on 8 March. What isn't known is the exact date Ferrell saw that Bronco from the sky, for the first time. I think that'd be good info to know.

Ferrell had the benefit of the doubt, according to some of the articles, because he was a law enforcement official. They didn't even consider him a suspect until they determined that he wrote the letter, IIRC. I'm not sure if it was one of the articles you posted, or if it was on another one online, but it said that once her Bronco was found close to Ferrell's trailer, they didn't even think he could be involved because he was a deputy at the time.

ETA: Found the reference for Ferrell not being considered a suspect. It was an excerpt from a book called, "The FBI". Here's the quote:

"The sheriff's office immediately dismissed Ferrell as a suspect because he was a deputy sheriff in the neighboring county. "He [deputy who interviewed Kitzmiller] wrote that he is a deputy sheriff in Grant county; he's not a suspect because he is a law enforcement officer", Sheriff Evans said."

I agree that Darvin Moon should have been the first person investigated. But if we are to imagine (for a second) that both Moon and Ferrell are innocent, who would have a better reason to dissuade people from searching the area for fear that they would be implicated? The boyfriend or the guy who (other than his own word) no one could ever tie with Cathy Ford who just lived in the general area?

Law enforcement may have been able to make that connection, however, provided Ferrell's claims about Cathy Ford--the affair, the drug plans--are true. Doug Tressler (Cathy Bernard's police officer brother) himself testified that he had received information about drug activity on Bismarck Road and had asked Ferrell about it. Ferrell admitted he considered complying with Ford's alleged plans to deal out of the Bismarck Road trailer, and Ford allegedly bragged about it.

I just cannot fathom that McClure checked every single lot on his mother's route home. I can't believe he would even know each and every single casino, nor would he know the exact way his mother drove home that night. So I take the "every lot except one" to more or less mean he just missed it. When questioned why, he gave the "Holy spirit" line. According to Tim, his sister was the one that brought up the purse. Tim said something to the effect of, "they made a big deal because I said I was looking for evidence of her purse". For all we know he could have told the investigators he was looking for her car and even checking the sides of roads for "remnants of her purse". That's not suspicious at all.

Nah, I don't agree. But we've been over that in other threads. :)


I don't think Ferrell came off bad in his interview. It's just that there was absolutely NOTHING presented in the segment (minus the ridiculous body language expert) in his favor. At least UM presented a possible "alternate suspect" in the Ferrell segment with Darvin Moon. McClure wasn't so lucky. And I wasn't even aware that Ferrell failed a polygraph.

Darvin Moon wasn't presented as alternate suspect at all in that episode. If anything, he was presented as being almost beyond reproach. The reenactment actor is shown tacking up missing fliers, encountering a nervous-looking Ferrell outside the Old Mill, and running up on the burned-out Bronco with Rich Ford during a search for Cathy. And that's pretty much all we get on Darvin Moon. No mention of his drug activity, his stormy relationship with Cathy, nor his attempt to divert the search from the area Ford's vehicle would eventually be found. The ONLY person ever looked at as a possible suspect is Paul Ferrell himself, and the only alternative theory presented is that she ran away on her own. Period. So perhaps McClure and Ferrell's treatments are more similar than different.

Ferrell's polygraph--which was administered by the FBI--wasn't mentioned in the Final Appeal episode, unlike McClure's in his UM segment. It was covered in the articles, however.

It's just McClure did not have any past problems with his mother, so murdering her on his wedding night makes no sense. Ferrell on the other hand did make some stupid phone calls before Cathy Ford disappeared, and then acted very suspicious and nervous for someone who was innocent.

Ferrell had no past problems with women. At all whatsoever. Nor any semblance of a criminal record prior to his conviction, nor has he committed any crime since being released from prison--let alone a sex crime or murder. Suddenly deciding to murder Cathy Ford after months of an on-again, off-again "more friends than lovers" affair in the middle of the afternoon doesn't make a whole lot of sense, either.

I don't know any other way to say this, so I suppose I should probably just say it outright: Mr. Ferrell didn't seem to be the brightest crayon in the box. I don't mean that uncharitably; it takes all kinds.

Ferrell spent a little time in the Army (and that couldn't have been too long, being that he would have been eligible for military service in the spring of 1974 at the very earliest, and began his regular summer gig at Yellowstone in 1981) and a few summers out west, and the rest of his life had been spent in rural West Virginia. He had not completed any education past high school. He seemed content enough with the family store and weightlifting. Hell, he even felt being a sheriff's deputy in a profoundly rural county was something he wasn't really cut out for. Bear in mind, he's 31 years old at this point. The poor man--as kind, thoughtful, and generous as many attested him to be--seemed to be the walking definition of 'sheltered'. He's not sophisticated. He's not savvy. He's certainly not criminally experienced. Provided his claims are true, he has a connection to a missing woman, and a sordid one at that if we consider the drug angle in light of the fact that he was a law enforcement officer at the time. And on top of all of that, this person who loathes confrontation has Darvin Moon to worry about, too. His actions might have been atrociously stupid, but I can understand his motivations for them, considering the entire picture.

At least McClure reported his mother missing, called family and friends looking for her, searched for her, etc. He wasn't trying to conceal anything. If anything, he was too revealing to the things he told investigators. And McClure was not even convicted at the time of the UM segment, he contacted them so the investigation would shift away from him. It's definitely different circumstances, IMO.

Or a different approach. ;)


Ferrell had the benefit of the doubt, according to some of the articles, because he was a law enforcement official. They didn't even consider him a suspect until they determined that he wrote the letter, IIRC. I'm not sure if it was one of the articles you posted, or if it was on another one online, but it said that once her Bronco was found close to Ferrell's trailer, they didn't even think he could be involved because he was a deputy at the time.

ETA: Found the reference for Ferrell not being considered a suspect. It was an excerpt from a book called, "The FBI". Here's the quote:

"The sheriff's office immediately dismissed Ferrell as a suspect because he was a deputy sheriff in the neighboring county. "He [deputy who interviewed Kitzmiller] wrote that he is a deputy sheriff in Grant county; he's not a suspect because he is a law enforcement officer", Sheriff Evans said."

I don't understand this. The letter Ferrell sent was postmarked 29 February and received at the Old Mill on 2 March. The Bronco was found on 8 March. Three days later, investigators were interviewing Ferrell and had obtained his permission to search his trailer.

Ferrell would have then been considered a suspect from 11 March 1988 onward--before he admitted to writing the letter and well before the FBI handwriting expert determined that he had indeed written it.

So was this before the Bronco was found? Was this some kind of miscommunication resulting from multiple LE agencies in different states attempting to concert a single investigatory effort?

FWIW, I did purchase a used copy of that book. I have immense respect for the LE profession, but it essentially reads like a chapters-long FBI praise piece. Each chapter--and especially the one about Ferrell and Ford--describes the Bureau coming in to "revive" or "rescue" an on-going investigation from local authorities before they completely botch it up. (In fact, Rich Ford is quoted as saying that was precisely the reason he contacted the FBI in the first place, as he feared local authorities wouldn't be able to fully handle his sister's case). There is a proud proclamation of Ferrell's conviction, but given what it took to get there--as well as a curious omission of the infamous "body language" testimony from one of the Bureau's own--it might be prudent to keep in mind the context and theme of that book.

Law enforcement may have been able to make that connection, however, provided Ferrell's claims about Cathy Ford--the affair, the drug plans--are true. Doug Tressler (Cathy Bernard's police officer brother) himself testified that he had received information about drug activity on Bismarck Road and had asked Ferrell about it. Ferrell admitted he considered complying with Ford's alleged plans to deal out of the Bismarck Road trailer, and Ford allegedly bragged about it.

I just think had Ferrell not written that letter, none of his prior phone calls would have been investigated, and he wouldn't have even been looked into as a suspect.

Nah, I don't agree. But we've been over that in other threads. :)

Not to get too much off track, but I rewatched the segment (about McClure) and he said he told police he was searching along the sides of highways for evidence of her purse. He did not say this is solely what he was looking for, just the fact that he brought up the purse is what caused the police to become suspicious. He obviously was looking for her car and her, or else he wouldn't have went through casino lots.

Darvin Moon wasn't presented as alternate suspect at all in that episode. If anything, he was presented as being almost beyond reproach. The reenactment actor is shown tacking up missing fliers, encountering a nervous-looking Ferrell outside the Old Mill, and running up on the burned-out Bronco with Rich Ford during a search for Cathy. And that's pretty much all we get on Darvin Moon. No mention of his drug activity, his stormy relationship with Cathy, nor his attempt to divert the search from the area Ford's vehicle would eventually be found. The ONLY person ever looked at as a possible suspect is Paul Ferrell himself, and the only alternative theory presented is that she ran away on her own. Period. So perhaps McClure and Ferrell's treatments are more similar than different.

Not by UM, but the mere mention of him being the boyfriend certainly caused viewers (and posters on here) to suspect him of possibly being involved. At least there was another man in Cathy Ford's life presented. And they also bring up the fact that both were in a "secret romance", hiding this from Darvin Moon. They don't outright say it, but it's hinted. Especially since Darvin Moon was the one who found the Bronco. When I first watched the case, these are all things I noted and wondered why more wasn't elaborated on him or why he didn't appear in an interview.

Ferrell's polygraph--which was administered by the FBI--wasn't mentioned in the Final Appeal episode, unlike McClure's in his UM segment. It was covered in the articles, however.

That certainly would have crushed Ferrell's case (as presented on UM) even more.

Ferrell had no past problems with women. At all whatsoever. Nor any semblance of a criminal record prior to his conviction, nor has he committed any crime since being released from prison--let alone a sex crime or murder. Suddenly deciding to murder Cathy Ford after months of an on-again, off-again "more friends than lovers" affair in the middle of the afternoon doesn't make a whole lot of sense, either.

Calling up bookstores getting women to read passages about anal sex is not exactly normal behavior. The women testified at his trial that the man on the phone started to breath heavy in anticipation of the next sentence. And Ferrell admitted to these calls. That doesn't make him a murderer, but it does show a darker side to Ferrell. And Darvin Moon hasn't been involved in any noteworthy crimes since the disappearance. He seems to be doing fine.

I don't know any other way to say this, so I suppose I should probably just say it outright: Mr. Ferrell didn't seem to be the brightest crayon in the box. I don't mean that uncharitably; it takes all kinds.

I agree. Don't get me wrong, I'm not convinced of his guilt. I really think it could go either way.

Ferrell spent a little time in the Army (and that couldn't have been too long, being that he would have been eligible for military service in the spring of 1974 at the very earliest, and began his regular summer gig at Yellowstone in 1981) and a few summers out west, and the rest of his life had been spent in rural West Virginia. He had not completed any education past high school. He seemed content enough with the family store and weightlifting. Hell, he even felt being a sheriff's deputy in a profoundly rural county was something he wasn't really cut out for. Bear in mind, he's 31 years old at this point. The poor man--as kind, thoughtful, and generous as many attested him to be--seemed to be the walking definition of 'sheltered'. He's not sophisticated. He's not savvy. He's certainly not criminally experienced. Provided his claims are true, he has a connection to a missing woman, and a sordid one at that if we consider the drug angle in light of the fact that he was a law enforcement officer at the time. And on top of all of that, this person who loathes confrontation has Darvin Moon to worry about, too. His actions might have been atrociously stupid, but I can understand his motivations for them, considering the entire picture.

Which is exactly what fits the profile of whoever caused Cathy Ford's disappearance. But anyway, I could forgive him for trying to stop the search in finding the Bronco. But I can't overlook the letter and trying to get his girlfriend to try to act like Cathy Ford to pretend she was alright. This makes absolutely no sense. Especially someone who was involved in law enforcement. Even though he's not the brightest bulb in the lamp, he still would have known that finding that Bronco near his trailer AND writing that letter would have brought more heat on him than do him good. Had he simply said something to the Sheriff (in that helicopter flight) about spotting something, I doubt Ferrell would have ever been implicated.

I don't understand this. The letter Ferrell sent was postmarked 29 February and received at the Old Mill on 2 March. The Bronco was found on 8 March. Three days later, investigators were interviewing Ferrell and had obtained his permission to search his trailer.

Ferrell would have then been considered a suspect from 11 March 1988 onward--before he admitted to writing the letter and well before the FBI handwriting expert determined that he had indeed written it.

So was this before the Bronco was found? Was this some kind of miscommunication resulting from multiple LE agencies in different states attempting to concert a single investigatory effort?

I think this was in reference to Kitzmiller id'ing Ferrell as the man who had called her. They were trying to find out who this "mystery caller" was, and when she said it was Ferrell who had called her, they just brushed it aside because he was in law enforcement.

So, I had my non-UM-watching husband view the Final Appeal episode with me last night to get his take on it. He tends to be a man of few words, but the first thing he said after it was over pretty well sums up his thoughts exactly:

"Well, he made a really good case to show he got screwed. He didn't make a good case for his innocence, though, and there's a difference."

So I asked him to elaborate. He says the body language testimony, blood evidence, and phone calls to bookstores damaged him greatly and kept him from receiving a fair trial. However, throughout the program Ferrell never once offers any alibis or alternate explanations in his favor, nor does he offer any explanation for the things that cast great suspicion on him except that they were "mistakes" or "irrational things".

I think my husband unknowingly pointed out the problem with the episode. It makes a good initial case to cast doubt on whether Ferrell received a fair trial. It does NOT, however, make a good case to cast doubt on Ferrell's guilt.

I think my husband unknowingly pointed out the problem with the episode. It makes a good initial case to cast doubt on whether Ferrell received a fair trial. It does NOT, however, make a good case to cast doubt on Ferrell's guilt.

I think that your husband is 100% correct. The segment is set up to show the injustice Ferrell received at his trial, but does little to nothing in favor of showing his innocence. But Ferrell doesn't do himself any favors in the segment. When they bring up the phone calls, he says one of the most stupid things ever uttered on UM for his explanation. Instead of saying, "it started out as a prank that got way out of hand" he brings up the lame credit card excuse. Same with the blood found in his trailer. But I do think UM does some service to Ferrell because they devote a portion of the segment to show that Cathy Ford could still be alive.

I still believe they got the right guy, but he really got screwed big time at his trial and should have never been convicted.

I don't know why but I've been thinking a lot about this case recently. Even though Gorman is in the same state that I live, it's still about a 3 and a half hours drive for me. Always wanted to go see some of the locations featured. Anyway, I was trying to pinpoint specific locations on Google, so I went back and re-read one of Ferrell's appeals:

On the same day that Ms. Ford disappeared, two other women received telephone calls from a man purporting to be a magistrate. This man, however, was not a real magistrate; at the time, both magistrates in Grant County, West Virginia, were females and nearby Maryland does not have magistrates.

A Grant County magistrate is usually on duty at a satellite office in the Mt. Storm Fire Hall on Wednesdays. Sometime between 10:30 and 11:00 on Wednesday, 17 February 1988 (the day the victim disappeared), the magistrate and her assistant observed Mr. Ferrell using the public pay phone outside of the office. The magistrate told her assistant that the man talking on the phone outside was their new deputy sheriff. Paul Ferrell had recently begun working as a deputy sheriff for Grant County. Mr. Ferrell then went into the truck bay area of the fire hall, where a phone available to the public was located, remained there a while and then left.

At 10:50 a.m. the same day, Robin Tichnell received a call from a man claiming to be a West Virginia magistrate. The alleged magistrate said that he was conducting an investigation of someone she knew, and needed to question her at the Mt. Storm Fire Hall sometime between 10:00 and 3:00. When she asked who or what the investigation concerned, he would not tell her. Consequently, she refused to leave work to meet him, and he responded that he would have to get in touch with her at a later date.

Paul Ferrell lived here (https://www.google.com/maps/place/4151+Bismarck+Rd,+Mt+Storm,+WV+26739/@39.2626669,-79.2599692,1645m/data=!3m1!1e3!4m5!3m4!1s0x89b54ee90242847f:0x832136279ee7f171!8m2!3d39.260899!4d-79.2593), or very close to this spot. The Mt. Storm Fire Department and Hall was less than a 5 minute drive to Ferrell's home (https://www.google.com/maps/dir/Firehouse+Road,+Mt+Storm,+WV+26739/4151+Bismarck+Rd,+Mt+Storm,+WV+26739/@39.2693951,-79.259911,3299m/data=!3m2!1e3!4b1!4m13!4m12!1m5!1m1!1s0x89b54faa68601023:0xdf1c9f24882ab5!2m2!1d-79.2417713!2d39.277909!1m5!1m1!1s0x89b54ee90242847f:0x832136279ee7f171!2m2!1d-79.2593!2d39.260899).

Another woman who received a strange invitation that same day was Rose Bosley, a part-time postmistress in Gormania who usually worked on Saturdays. The new post office had opened two days before, and did not yet have phone service, so Juanita Bosley, the regular postmistress asked the younger woman to fill in for her while she made telephone calls to various utility companies. While the young woman was filling in, a man telephoned Viola Knotts, an elderly woman who lived across the street from the post office, and asked her to tell Rose Bosley to come and get her mail carrier whose car had broken down between Bismark and Cherry Ridge Road. The Gormania route, however, would not take the carrier to those roads.

The distance from Ferrell's trailer to Cherry Ridge Road is 3 minutes (https://www.google.com/maps/dir/39.2719423,-79.2750694/4151+Bismarck+Road,+Mount+Storm,+WV/@39.2651796,-79.2721579,3319m/data=!3m1!1e3!4m9!4m8!1m0!1m5!1m1!1s0x89b54ee90242847f:0x832136279ee7f171!2m2!1d-79.2593!2d39.260899!3e0).

From the room in Mr. Ferrell's family store in which his telephone was located, Mr. Ferrell could see people come and go from the post office, and could also see Ms. Knotts' residence. Mr. Ferrell's store was also within sight of the restaurant where Cathy Ford worked.

Gathering all of this information together, to believe Ferrell was innocent, there must have been another man who lived close to Ferrell, who also either knew or could observe the coming and goings of the 3 women who received calls that day, who also coincidentally got lucky enough to try and lure women to the fire hall on the same day Paul Ferrell was seen making phone calls there. Either this person accomplished all of this in some weird attempt to frame Ferrell, or Ferrell is guilty as sin. The fact that 2 other women besides Cathy Ford also received calls that day, pretty much rules out the Darvin Moon theory, IMO. Ferrell is the only person consistently present at virtually every point in this case. He could observe every woman who received phone calls on the day Cathy Ford disappeared, and he lived on Bismarck road, the last place Cathy Ford was seen alive. All of the women were told to meet up with this mysterious magistrate all within 5 minutes of Ferrell's residence. Cathy Ford's vehicle was found on Ferrell's property. If the phone calls were simply prank calls phoned in by Ferrell, and Cathy Ford did get duped into travelling to Bismarck Road, who the hell killed her? If Ferrell was absent from his residence when Cathy arrived, why didn't she go back to work? And if Ferrell was present and simply told her that it was just a crank call, why didn't she simply get angry and go back to work? Someone stopped her from leaving Bismarck Road that day. And the only logical person is Paul Ferrell.

So, I had my non-UM-watching husband view the Final Appeal episode with me last night to get his take on it. He tends to be a man of few words, but the first thing he said after it was over pretty well sums up his thoughts exactly:

"Well, he made a really good case to show he got screwed. He didn't make a good case for his innocence, though, and there's a difference."

So I asked him to elaborate. He says the body language testimony, blood evidence, and phone calls to bookstores damaged him greatly and kept him from receiving a fair trial. However, throughout the program Ferrell never once offers any alibis or alternate explanations in his favor, nor does he offer any explanation for the things that cast great suspicion on him except that they were "mistakes" or "irrational things".

I think my husband unknowingly pointed out the problem with the episode. It makes a good initial case to cast doubt on whether Ferrell received a fair trial. It does NOT, however, make a good case to cast doubt on Ferrell's guilt.
I know I'm replying to an old post, but I'm going for it anyway. This was a Final Appeal segment. In may cases, the whole point of an appeal, at least in a legal sense, is to refute the way the case was handled rather than the actual facts of the case. The facts of the case and the guilt or innocence of the accused is for the jury to decide. And, under our system, if the right man was found guilty through unjust means then that needs to be rectified. And if going on UM is how that needs to be exposed then that's how it needs to happen.

I know I'm replying to an old post, but I'm going for it anyway. This was a Final Appeal segment. In may cases, the whole point of an appeal, at least in a legal sense, is to refute the way the case was handled rather than the actual facts of the case. The facts of the case and the guilt or innocence of the accused is for the jury to decide. And, under our system, if the right man was found guilty through unjust means then that needs to be rectified. And if going on UM is how that needs to be exposed then that's how it needs to happen.

But the Ferrell case was the sole Final Appeal segment featured on UM where the appellant didn't present ANY evidence that was indicative of his/her innocence, or that someone else was a viable suspect. UM always did that with their Final Appeal segments. They would present the prosecution's side and back history, and then they would present the defense's side which poked holes in the prosecution's case. Ferrell's segment just seemed to be an odd choice for a Final Appeal segment, IMO.

But the Ferrell case was the sole Final Appeal segment featured on UM where the appellant didn't present ANY evidence that was indicative of his/her innocence, or that someone else was a viable suspect. UM always did that with their Final Appeal segments. They would present the prosecution's side and back history, and then they would present the defense's side which poked holes in the prosecution's case. Ferrell's segment just seemed to be an odd choice for a Final Appeal segment, IMO.

We're divorced now, but I still think my ex-husband was right on at least this 'Final Appeal' episode: near-zero case made for innocence and/or alternative suspects. All that's really explored is the way the prosecution screwed up by presenting "that blood evidence", as Ferrell says. The rest of the story actually does a fine job at making Paul Ferrell look like an extremely good suspect.

I appreciated Martin Yant sending me his article, and I have to admit I have my doubts and questions with things he brought up there that 'Final Appeal' never covered. But at the end of the day, I highly suspect they got the right dude regardless.

I think the only reason that they even selected this for a Final Appeal segment was because of the witnesses who thought they saw Cathy Ford alive and working in a restaurant one year later. If there was stronger evidence to suggest that Ferrell was serving time in prison for a murder which never even happened, this would have been a very compelling story, but they really needed hell of a lot more than one eyewitness account.

I think the only reason that they even selected this for a Final Appeal segment was because of the witnesses who thought they saw Cathy Ford alive and working in a restaurant one year later. If there was stronger evidence to suggest that Ferrell was serving time in prison for a murder which never even happened, this would have been a very compelling story, but they really needed hell of a lot more than one eyewitness account.

Good point.

Cathy's family is barely even mentioned in the segment. Her brother gets about 15 seconds of screen time, and that's at the very end of the segment where the witnesses claim to have seen Cathy working at a restaurant in a different state.

Good point.

Cathy's family is barely even mentioned in the segment. Her brother gets about 15 seconds of screen time, and that's at the very end of the segment where the witnesses claim to have seen Cathy working at a restaurant in a different state.

I had this paperback that was called something like The FBI and each chapter featured an FBI case from nearly every state. This was Maryland's. The book is probably long gone but I do remember reading that Rich Ford was very instrumental in getting the FBI involved. It may not have even happened if he didn't press as hard as he did to have the case handed over.

ETA: I seem to remember reading somewhere--it may have even been the same book--that Rich and Paul were actually pretty close friends at the time of Cathy's disappearance.

After learning some new things, I believe Paul Ferrell is guilty as heck. I find myself in a weird position though because there is just enough reasonable doubt (but just barely) that I can *sort of* understand why he is a free man. But I do believe he murdered her and unfortunately, I think he raped her as well.

But even in the slightest possibility that he is innocent of the aforementioned crimes, he still went around and made sexually obscene phone calls to numerous women and in some cases, made them participate in a conversation that made them feel uncomfortable. He sexually harassed women. Which is unforgivable. And I would imagine the women don't ever forget an experience like that. The man is a pig.

Honestly, I'm glad that so many women are speaking out about the sexual harassment they've endured from people like celebrities, politicians, etc. I think they have taken the power back from the men who harassed them, and that's a good thing. These women are very courageous!

For whatever reason I've been thinking about this case over the past few days and even rewatched the FA episode last night.

Cathy reported to her mother and Pat Parker, another waitress at the Old Mill, that the caller had stated he was some kind of law or justice official (I can't remember off the top of my head what exactly), and that the sheriff's office was sending undercover officers to local restaurants to see which establishments weren't consistently carding customers purchasing alcoholic beverages. Cathy would've been vulnerable to such a set-up given her young age and its accompanying naivete, and because she would've been especially interested in protecting her family's business.

Paul Ferrell himself admits to sexual offense against several women when he made those so-called "crank sex phone calls" to various bookstores and libraries, and unwittingly involving the women who answered the phones in his own sexual gratification. I'm not sure what the exact timeline is, but I would be thoroughly unmoved to learn the sex calls ceased around the time the "meeting" calls began. In other words, I think Ferrell may have been engaged in escalating behavior. Cathy Ford may have simply been the first woman to have taken the bait.

Evidence would indicate Paul Ferrell and Cathy Ford were probably pretty well-acquainted with each other, but that relationship wouldn't have been necessary for the phone call and proposed meeting discussed therein. I have the feeling Ferrell was likely at least acquainted with the women that he phoned, but wasn't particularly close to any of them. I noticed a pattern: just as he did with the sex calls, he avoided truly confronting these women by presenting himself as someone else (and in positions of some kind of authority, such as a doctor or a magistrate) and refraining from identifying himself by name. I'm no psychologist, but I find that element intriguing, and in no small part for this reason:

To my knowledge, nobody has ever claimed that Cathy Ford was having an affair with Paul Ferrell but Paul Ferrell himself. There's over a ten year difference in age between Ferrell and Ford, with Ford being barely out of high school and Ferrell a 30 year-old man. By all accounts, they ran in somewhat different social circles: Ferrell's family was well-respected and church-going, and Ford's boyfriend and friends skirted the edge of the law. However, Ferrell did have a friendship with Ford's brother Rich, and frequently ate at the Old Mill. He would've known Cathy, certainly, but it's never really been established how well. Even when Ferrell describes their relationship on Final Appeal (one that Stacks says, by Ferrell's account was more friends than lovers), it sounds like he might as well have been talking about the kid who sat next to him in history class in high school. I realize it's totally anecdotal, but I could provide as much information on some of the cashiers at my local grocery store as Ferrell did about Cathy Ford, and this was supposed to have been someone with which he was having a romantic affair.

Furthermore, Paul's twin brother David and his wife lived with Paul at the time of the alleged affair, and they both stated that they were completely unaware of any relationship between the two--that had there existed such an affair, "we would've known about it." In sum, I'm not sure Ferrell and Ford ever had a relationship of the character Ferrell describes, and the possible reasons why are an interesting consideration.

It may be possible that Paul Ferrell either conflated or flat-out fabricated the nature of their relationship after he became a suspect in order to explain any trace of Cathy that might later be found in his trailer or property. Cigarette butts of the kind Cathy smoked were found in Ferrell's home; that isn't particularly remarkable if the two were having an affair. The fact that Darvin Moon, Cathy's boyfriend, was known to be something of a rough character with an alleged jealous streak only bolsters this narrative: it creates a motive for Moon to have killed Cathy and framed Paul for it.

Additionally, Ferrell, given the avoidant, indirect nature of the phone calls, may indicate some sort of feeling of inadequacy in Ferrell himself. Perhaps the narrative concerning Ford and an illicit love affair is, for Ferrell, a demonstration of prowess. Maybe it "does" something for him psychologically. Who knows.

The fact that Paul Ferrell demonstrated a pattern of escalating behavior with women revolving around those phone calls, and then later became a law enforcement officer is chilling to consider. It may even be possible that he planned to exploit his authority in order to contact and perhaps assault women. Again, who knows. But what we do know doesn't seem particularly good.

In spite of it all though, I still think dude got a sh*tty trial on account of the unsophisticated blood evidence and the way it was presented, and on the "body language" testimony. Had he been retried, however, I think it's highly likely he still would've been convicted.

Paul Ferrell himself admits to sexual offense against several women when he made those so-called "crank sex phone calls" to various bookstores and libraries, and unwittingly involving the women who answered the phones in his own sexual gratification. I'm not sure what the exact timeline is, but I would be thoroughly unmoved to learn the sex calls ceased around the time the "meeting" calls began. In other words, I think Ferrell may have been engaged in escalating behavior. Cathy Ford may have simply been the first woman to have taken the bait.

It has been awhile since I read the series of articles that Martin Yant wrote about the case. However, I seem to recall the articles mentioning that there was some possibility that these calls were made by different individuals. I believe Ferrell admitted to the first set of calls, but not the second.

Just playing devil's advocate here, but do you think that Ferrell made both sets of calls? Was it established that he did - either by evidence or his admission? I'm legit blanking on the details in the previous sentence.

Evidence would indicate Paul Ferrell and Cathy Ford were probably pretty well-acquainted with each other, but that relationship wouldn't have been necessary for the phone call and proposed meeting discussed therein. I have the feeling Ferrell was likely at least acquainted with the women that he phoned, but wasn't particularly close to any of them. I noticed a pattern: just as he did with the sex calls, he avoided truly confronting these women by presenting himself as someone else (and in positions of some kind of authority, such as a doctor or a magistrate) and refraining from identifying himself by name. I'm no psychologist, but I find that element intriguing, and in no small part for this reason:

To my knowledge, nobody has ever claimed that Cathy Ford was having an affair with Paul Ferrell but Paul Ferrell himself. There's over a ten year difference in age between Ferrell and Ford, with Ford being barely out of high school and Ferrell a 30 year-old man. By all accounts, they ran in somewhat different social circles: Ferrell's family was well-respected and church-going, and Ford's boyfriend and friends skirted the edge of the law. However, Ferrell did have a friendship with Ford's brother Rich, and frequently ate at the Old Mill. He would've known Cathy, certainly, but it's never really been established how well. Even when Ferrell describes their relationship on Final Appeal (one that Stacks says, by Ferrell's account was more friends than lovers), it sounds like he might as well have been talking about the kid who sat next to him in history class in high school. I realize it's totally anecdotal, but I could provide as much information on some of the cashiers at my local grocery store as Ferrell did about Cathy Ford, and this was supposed to have been someone with which he was having a romantic affair.

Furthermore, Paul's twin brother David and his wife lived with Paul at the time of the alleged affair, and they both stated that they were completely unaware of any relationship between the two--that had there existed such an affair, "we would've known about it." In sum, I'm not sure Ferrell and Ford ever had a relationship of the character Ferrell describes, and the possible reasons why are an interesting consideration.

It may be possible that Paul Ferrell either conflated or flat-out fabricated the nature of their relationship after he became a suspect in order to explain any trace of Cathy that might later be found in his trailer or property. Cigarette butts of the kind Cathy smoked were found in Ferrell's home; that isn't particularly remarkable if the two were having an affair. The fact that Darvin Moon, Cathy's boyfriend, was known to be something of a rough character with an alleged jealous streak only bolsters this narrative: it creates a motive for Moon to have killed Cathy and framed Paul for it.

Additionally, Ferrell, given the avoidant, indirect nature of the phone calls, may indicate some sort of feeling of inadequacy in Ferrell himself. Perhaps the narrative concerning Ford and an illicit love affair is, for Ferrell, a demonstration of prowess. Maybe it "does" something for him psychologically. Who knows.

To be transparent, I never gave much thought to this particular aspect of the case aside from just mentally writing it off as Ferrell's excuse for why Cathy Ford's cigarette butts and blood might be in his trailer, and perhaps, to a lesser degree, why Moon might have a reason to frame him. That being said, I never was convinced he was having any kind of romantic relationship or "affair" with Cathy Ford as he stated.

However, you make some interesting points, especially in light of your analysis of the sequence of the phone calls. I really am left wondering just what kind of a person Paul Ferrell was.

Calling women on the telephone and asking them to read sexually explicit passages from books -there must have been a lot of fantasizing going on here. It's also antisocial when you consider the deceptive and coercive nature of it. It suggests he had very little regard for the well being of the women he telephoned for his own sexual gratification. He objectified them to some degree. Further, if these are women he sort of knew, or at least saw, it does suggest some objectification and fixation beyond a mere voice on the telephone. That's a long winded way of saying that he victimized from afar and was not concerned about engaging these women he personally knew and drawing them in to his fantasy world. If this is the case, you have to wonder at what point this type of behavior would become uninteresting, and he would want to move beyond these phone call contacts and toward something more tangible and physical.

He also had a girlfriend too, correct? If so, I wonder what their relationship and sex life were like.

It just seems that Ferrell might have gotten so wrapped up in this fantasy life that he did feel a need to escalate to trying this with an actual woman. But, if you consider what we are alleging he tried to do here, it suggests, to me anyway, a very rudimentary, almost underdeveloped understanding of interpersonal relationships, communication, and sexuality. The whole plan is almost juvenile in nature.

That's a roundabout way of saying that when you look at the big picture of what allegedly happened to Cathy Ford, the hurried and poor disposal of the Bronco, the writing letters and sending money hoping the problem would "go away" the begging the girlfriend to call the Fords and pretend to be Cathy (these last two acts also strike me as pretty juvenile), the diversion of the search party, and so on, that the post offense behavior we CAN attribute to Ferrell, without question, matches the MO and behavior pre-offense. Therefore, I think it is unlikely that someone else committed this crime.

The fact that Paul Ferrell demonstrated a pattern of escalating behavior with women revolving around those phone calls, and then later became a law enforcement officer is chilling to consider. It may even be possible that he planned to exploit his authority in order to contact and perhaps assault women. Again, who knows. But what we do know doesn't seem particularly good.

No doubt.

In spite of it all though, I still think dude got a sh*tty trial on account of the unsophisticated blood evidence and the way it was presented, and on the "body language" testimony. Had he been retried, however, I think it's highly likely he still would've been convicted.

For sure on the trial. I also think the appellate history is telling. I think one, or possibly two(?), justices dissented on an appeal that, even though rejected, probably got the ball in motion in terms of securing Ferrell's pardon. There is an unfortunate perception among the public that pardon/acquittal/not guilty is the equivalent of factual innocence. That is often not the case, and I think Ferrell is an example.

It has been awhile since I read the series of articles that Martin Yant wrote about the case. However, I seem to recall the articles mentioning that there was some possibility that these calls were made by different individuals. I believe Ferrell admitted to the first set of calls, but not the second.

Just playing devil's advocate here, but do you think that Ferrell made both sets of calls? Was it established that he did - either by evidence or his admission? I'm legit blanking on the details in the previous sentence.

Ferrell never admitted to the second round of calls, but I strongly suspect he was the caller. Several of the calls were placed to an institution or business within sight of the Ferrell family store. At least one was placed to a woman who was asked to meet a "magistrate" at a location in which Paul Ferrell was witnessed using a payphone on exactly the date and time described by the woman who received the call.

The prosecution did introduce much of the "phone call evidence" at trial (as you probably remember from the episode), but according to at least one woman who testified for the prosecution (a woman named Tamela Kitzmiller*), they were never able to "prove" Paul Ferrell made those calls. I assume she means proof beyond a reasonable doubt, but I reckon "prove" can mean something quite different than its legal definition to different people.

I really am left wondering just what kind of a person Paul Ferrell was.

Calling women on the telephone and asking them to read sexually explicit passages from books -there must have been a lot of fantasizing going on here. It's also antisocial when you consider the deceptive and coercive nature of it. It suggests he had very little regard for the well being of the women he telephoned for his own sexual gratification. He objectified them to some degree. Further, if these are women he sort of knew, or at least saw, it does suggest some objectification and fixation beyond a mere voice on the telephone. That's a long winded way of saying that he victimized from afar and was not concerned about engaging these women he personally knew and drawing them in to his fantasy world. If this is the case, you have to wonder at what point this type of behavior would become uninteresting, and he would want to move beyond these phone call contacts and toward something more tangible and physical.

He also had a girlfriend too, correct? If so, I wonder what their relationship and sex life were like.

It just seems that Ferrell might have gotten so wrapped up in this fantasy life that he did feel a need to escalate to trying this with an actual woman. But, if you consider what we are alleging he tried to do here, it suggests, to me anyway, a very rudimentary, almost underdeveloped understanding of interpersonal relationships, communication, and sexuality. The whole plan is almost juvenile in nature.

That's a roundabout way of saying that when you look at the big picture of what allegedly happened to Cathy Ford, the hurried and poor disposal of the Bronco, the writing letters and sending money hoping the problem would "go away" the begging the girlfriend to call the Fords and pretend to be Cathy (these last two acts also strike me as pretty juvenile), the diversion of the search party, and so on, that the post offense behavior we CAN attribute to Ferrell, without question, matches the MO and behavior pre-offense. Therefore, I think it is unlikely that someone else committed this crime.

I had precisely the same thoughts. I just can't help but feel this odd mixture of bemusement and disturbance at the thought of a man over 30 being so apparently arrested in some early developmental stage.

He also did have a girlfriend, who actually had two children of her own. She described him as attentive and sensitive. I believe they were also talking about marriage at the time of Cathy Ford's disappearance. I'd love to have a cup of coffee with that woman.

There is an unfortunate perception among the public that pardon/acquittal/not guilty is the equivalent of factual innocence. That is often not the case, and I think Ferrell is an example.

Yes sir.




*I met someone about a year ago by the name of Kitzmiller. Being the weirdo I am, I asked that person if he/she was from West Virginia shortly after we were introduced. The individual stated he/she was actually from Kitzmiller, MD, and I asked if that was close to Gorman. Indeed it is; they're in the same county. Being that I live in East TN, I was asked how I knew anything about that part of the country, and I flubbed something about having traveled through there once. Looking back on it, I probably should've just told the truth. Chances are good that the person may have even personally known the parties involved in the case.

I agree with the escalation theory, but I'm still confused as to what exactly Ferrell's end game was. What would've happened if that woman, Robin Tichnell, had agreed to meet him at the Mt. Storm Fire Hall? And for the other woman, Rose Bosley, why would he tell her obviously false information to try and goad her into coming out? He said one of the post office trucks were broke down off of a road that was not part of that particular route for that post office. I have never thought Ferrell was particularly bright, but these phone calls are just downright stupid. What did he want to accomplish?

I agree with the escalation theory, but I'm still confused as to what exactly Ferrell's end game was. What would've happened if that woman, Robin Tichnell, had agreed to meet him at the Mt. Storm Fire Hall? And for the other woman, Rose Bosley, why would he tell her obviously false information to try and goad her into coming out? He said one of the post office trucks were broke down off of a road that was not part of that particular route for that post office. I have never thought Ferrell was particularly bright, but these phone calls are just downright stupid. What did he want to accomplish?

I've thought about this too, and there are a couple of possibilities and sub-possibilities I considered:

- Ferrell could've planned to assault outright shortly after the women arrived to the meeting location. Personally, I think this is unlikely.

- He could've planned to make the meeting appear like a chance encounter between himself and the phoned women. He would've been able to accomplish this easily as he would know exactly where these women would be well ahead of time. From there, he could either treat the meeting as a "confidence builder" (similar to the way the Route 29 Stalker left several of the women unharmed after giving them rides), or he could've even feigned alarm and concern upon hearing the women relay their stories of a caller asking to meet them in prearranged locations. As a law enforcement officer, Ferrell would seem to be especially interested in such reports, and it would further allow him prolonged contact with the target (filling out police reports, following up with "investigation" progress, etc.). Alternately, he could have used the opportunity to make some sort of advance. No matter what his intention, this scenario doesn't necessitate Ferrell following through on any actual prearranged meeting at all. The only thing the phone call accomplishes is getting the woman out to and waiting at a predetermined location for Ferrell to "happen by".

As far as what happened to Cathy Ford, I think something happened to either severely frighten her (and perhaps she began to scream, or otherwise attempt to attract attention), or she defiantly threatened to tell someone what had happened (possibly Darvin Moon, or her brother Rich). Whatever it might have been, it scared Paul Ferrell enough to lead him to believe his only recourse was to kill Cathy Ford. During the original trial (as part of that controversial "body language" testimony), it was stated that an FBI agent who interviewed Ferrell threw out a scenario in which Ford might have said something to "taunt" or "tease" Ferrell, which angered him to the point that he murdered her. I personally think it's far more likely that any threat Ford might have presented was to Ferrell's reputation--not his ego or sense of masculinity. Ferrell's family was well-regarded in the small area and devoutly Catholic. Paul had never been anywhere near being in trouble with the law prior to this event. He had a steady girlfriend who he was reportedly making plans to marry, a girlfriend who described him in glowing terms. In other words, he may have been something of a golden boy who would come out tarnished had Cathy Ford lived to tell anyone about Ferrell's advances. Furthermore, he may have been a tarnished golden boy about to get his a** kicked by Darvin Moon and/or Rich Ford.

As far as Rose Bosley is concerned, I honestly think Ferrell never even considered that the postal route didn't go out to Cherry Ridge Rd--kind of like he never considered that anyone would recognize the writing in the bogus letter to Ford's parents as his own, or that he couldn't explain blood found in his trailer as having come from someone "that maybe cut their finger".

Ferrell could've planned to assault outright shortly after the women arrived to the meeting location. Personally, I think this is unlikely.

I agree, because all of the women he called would have known Ferrell, and would have known he's not a magistrate.

He could've planned to make the meeting appear like a chance encounter between himself and the phoned women. He would've been able to accomplish this easily as he would know exactly where these women would be well ahead of time. From there, he could either treat the meeting as a "confidence builder" (similar to the way the Route 29 Stalker left several of the women unharmed after giving them rides), or he could've even feigned alarm and concern upon hearing the women relay their stories of a caller asking to meet them in prearranged locations. As a law enforcement officer, Ferrell would seem to be especially interested in such reports, and it would further allow him prolonged contact with the target (filling out police reports, following up with "investigation" progress, etc.). Alternately, he could have used the opportunity to make some sort of advance. No matter what his intention, this scenario doesn't necessitate Ferrell following through on any actual prearranged meeting at all. The only thing the phone call accomplishes is getting the woman out to and waiting at a predetermined location for Ferrell to "happen by".

This is an excellent theory. I didn't even think about that.

As far as what happened to Cathy Ford, I think something happened to either severely frighten her (and perhaps she began to scream, or otherwise attempt to attract attention), or she defiantly threatened to tell someone what had happened (possibly Darvin Moon, or her brother Rich). Whatever it might have been, it scared Paul Ferrell enough to lead him to believe his only recourse was to kill Cathy Ford. During the original trial (as part of that controversial "body language" testimony), it was stated that an FBI agent who interviewed Ferrell threw out a scenario in which Ford might have said something to "taunt" or "tease" Ferrell, which angered him to the point that he murdered her. I personally think it's far more likely that any threat Ford might have presented was to Ferrell's reputation--not his ego or sense of masculinity. Ferrell's family was well-regarded in the small area and devoutly Catholic. Paul had never been anywhere near being in trouble with the law prior to this event. He had a steady girlfriend who he was reportedly making plans to marry, a girlfriend who described him in glowing terms. In other words, he may have been something of a golden boy who would come out tarnished had Cathy Ford lived to tell anyone about Ferrell's advances. Furthermore, he may have been a tarnished golden boy about to get his a** kicked by Darvin Moon and/or Rich Ford.

No doubt. The only thing I could think of that would have created such a reaction from Cathy is if he made an unwelcome advance towards her. Ultimately I've always thought the motive was sexual in nature, but I could never wrap my head around what exactly Ferrell thought was going to happen. Was he stupid enough to think that these women would throw themselves at him when they met up with him?

As far as Rose Bosley is concerned, I honestly think Ferrell never even considered that the postal route didn't go out to Cherry Ridge Rd--kind of like he never considered that anyone would recognize the writing in the bogus letter to Ford's parents as his own, or that he couldn't explain blood found in his trailer as having come from someone "that maybe cut their finger".

That's another good point. He wasn't the sharpest tool in the shed. Essentially, Cathy Ford was the unlucky one who actually agreed to meet up with him that day.

Cars, have you seen the original Final Appeal episode? If not, let me know!

Cars, have you seen the original Final Appeal episode? If not, let me know!

The only version that I've seen is the Farina version. Aside from Jeffrey MacDonald, I don't think I've ever seen any of the original Final Appeal spinoff episodes.

After watching the full segment for the first time, I have to say that the reason they actually featured the case was because of the witnesses who claim to have seen Cathy Ford alive a year after Ferrell's conviction. And I also like the scene showing one of the investigators wearing a Baltimore Orioles hat after finding Cathy's burned Bronco.

#LetsGoOs

After watching the full segment for the first time, I have to say that the reason they actually featured the case was because of the witnesses who claim to have seen Cathy Ford alive a year after Ferrell's conviction. And I also like the scene showing one of the investigators wearing a Baltimore Orioles hat after finding Cathy's burned Bronco.

#LetsGoOs

Same. I think this was was probably the "juiciest" aspect that could be served up on the show, hence why film and reenactment time was devoted to it. I personally think the blood evidence was probably the most compelling issue in any consideration of a Ferrell appeal, and it was definitely discussed in the segment. But thoroughly dissecting such evidence might have been considered too technical and dull for audiences, and an after-disappearance sighting makes for an easy story and a dramatic re-creation.

Also, the decision on Ferrell's 1990 appeal seemed to be, essentially, 'Sorry you didn't get a perfect trial, but your rights weren't violated.' I personally would have liked to have seen more in-depth interview from the prosecution and defense attorneys on that particular issue, instead of say, Kim Nelson--who I have conflicting feelings about as to the value of her testimony, at least on the 'screams' stuff.

I thought you'd like the Os hat. :lol:

After watching the full segment for the first time, I have to say that the reason they actually featured the case was because of the witnesses who claim to have seen Cathy Ford alive a year after Ferrell's conviction. And I also like the scene showing one of the investigators wearing a Baltimore Orioles hat after finding Cathy's burned Bronco.

#LetsGoOs

You also have to factor in the context of the time it aired. It was the second episode of a new TV series they were hoping would hit. Hell, they opened the season with the MacDonald case the week prior.

My point is the Ferrell story was tawdry, trashy, and had sex appeal. The much older cop having an affair with a teenage girl, the phone calls, the possibility that the chick was still alive. It made for good, sensational, tabloid entertainment. It was the perfect case to profile.

You also have to factor in the context of the time it aired. It was the second episode of a new TV series they were hoping would hit. Hell, they opened the season with the MacDonald case the week prior.

My point is the Ferrell story was tawdry, trashy, and had sex appeal. The much older cop having an affair with a teenage girl, the phone calls, the possibility that the chick was still alive. It made for good, sensational, tabloid entertainment. It was the perfect case to profile.

It's true. All you get are some attorneys on opposing sides of the trial making some broad statements (the prosecution saying, in essence, "We didn't do anything wrong" and the defense saying, "The prosecution's evidence was crappy and never should have been admitted" without really elaborating), the accused's parents and former fiancee talking about how wonderful he is, a young woman making some brief remarks about being mislead by the prosecution, and what many would consider a hillbilly couple claiming something about being forced to testify to an affidavit. And Martin Yant thrown in at the end with the "eyewitness" story for the final twist (if you can even glean a twist from this particular story).

I personally think the blood evidence was probably the most compelling issue in any consideration of a Ferrell appeal, and it was definitely discussed in the segment. But thoroughly dissecting such evidence might have been considered too technical and dull for audiences, and an after-disappearance sighting makes for an easy story and a dramatic re-creation.

I honestly had forgot that blood splatter was found on the floors as well as the ceilings in what was described by the prosecutor as having "proven" that Cathy Ford was killed in that trailer. In other words, the blood was not small enough in quantity to have simply come from someone cutting their finger. Meaning there was a substantial amount found. And although the blood was not proven to have come from Cathy, the blood was proven to have come from a woman. What other woman could have bleed so profusely in Ferrell's trailer?

I personally would have liked to have seen more in-depth interview from the prosecution and defense attorneys on that particular issue, instead of say, Kim Nelson--who I have conflicting feelings about as to the value of her testimony, at least on the 'screams' stuff.

Same.

Witnesses who testify at trial (and essentially "help" convict people) change their tunes all the time. It could be due to pressure from the grassroots movement that Ferrell was innocent, or it could be a guilty conscience that they have because of the thought that perhaps Ferrell may have been innocent. The prosecutor echoed this in the segment.

You also have to factor in the context of the time it aired. It was the second episode of a new TV series they were hoping would hit. Hell, they opened the season with the MacDonald case the week prior.

My point is the Ferrell story was tawdry, trashy, and had sex appeal. The much older cop having an affair with a teenage girl, the phone calls, the possibility that the chick was still alive. It made for good, sensational, tabloid entertainment. It was the perfect case to profile.

Oh I have no issue as to why they profiled it because as you say it is a perfect segment for a new spin off show. But I'm not so sure this segment would have made it had Cathy's body been found.

Oh I have no issue as to why they profiled it because as you say it is a perfect segment for a new spin off show. But I'm not so sure this segment would have made it had Cathy's body been found.

It was a great hook. I have some advertising for this particular episode of the show on an old tape and in the commercial they play up the fact that Ferrell was convicted, but "could she still be alive?!?!"

Witnesses who testify at trial (and essentially "help" convict people) change their tunes all the time. It could be due to pressure from the grassroots movement that Ferrell was innocent, or it could be a guilty conscience that they have because of the thought that perhaps Ferrell may have been innocent. The prosecutor echoed this in the segment.

That town was microscopic. Didn't Ferrell's family run the general store? I'm sure everybody knew everybody and there was probably a lot of informal pressure to rally behind the "innocent/wrongful conviction" angle.

I’ve only ever seen the Farina version of this segment myself. If someone could PM me and point me in the right direction to the original, uncut Stack version I would appreciate it ever so much. ✌️

It was a little subtle, but even Robert Stack's narration sounded dubious when he said, "But Paul claims it was just another stupid mistake" over him writing the letter posing as Cathy.:lol:

Just saw this for the first time (it's only available on Farina UM).

What a complete waste of time this segment was. His whole interview can be summed up as "I did a whole bunch of stupid things and yes, it makes me look bad...uhhh, what was my argument again? Never mind I don't have one. You should just believe me lol."

YT Link (official): https://youtu.be/sAWgwMr5TUE?t=90

I did notice that journalist Martin Yant was interviewed, who I recognized from the Circleville Writer segment.

What a complete waste of time this segment was.

I agreed until I saw the full "Final Appeal" episode about this case which had interviews with witnesses who swore that they saw Cathy Ford alive over a year after Ferrell was convicted. There were other odds and ends that were ultimately cut out of the Farina version that made the segment seem more "balanced".

I finally found a picture of the restaurant that the Ford's owned. You could never see it clearly from Google Earth. Looks like someone bought the property recently.

https://www.railey.com/listing/1002029414/47-steyer-gorman-rd-oakland-md-21550/

I had no idea Darvin Moon died (https://twitter.com/PokerNight_Todd/status/1307460985293340673?s=20&t=3AbbMvfSWHrfMWKP6fRtvw) back in 2020. He was only 56 years old.

I recently re-watched this segment (Farina version), and one thing stood out to me. Ferrell says that he went bowling on the night Cathy disappeared at around 8:30 p.m. Employees said that a female had been calling repeatedly trying to reach Ferrell. MegtheEgg had received several articles from Martin Yant a few years ago, and on this (https://www.sitcomsonline.com/boards/showpost.php?p=4889352&postcount=40) post confirmed that these phone calls were real, and that it couldn't have been Ferrell's girlfriend making the phone calls. So who was this woman? Ferrell says he called the number and Cathy answered and wanted to meet him at his trailer. He refused, but said he would meet her at a local high school parking lot. Which would make sense, because the school was right next to the bowling alley (https://www.google.com/maps/place/499+Oakland+Dr,+Mountain+Lake+Park,+MD+21550/@39.4035605,-79.3889147,576m/data=!3m1!1e3!4m5!3m4!1s0x884aacb1e0a3122d:0x261fc64a6c759083!8m2!3d39.4028641!4d-79.3872946), and Ferrell claimed that Cathy said she was calling from a payphone of a nearby convenience store. My question is: if this woman wasn't Cathy Ford, because in all likelihood Ferrell had already murdered her, who was she?

Cathy was last seen alive at 2:00 p.m. on the day she disappeared. Ferrell's neighbor testified that she heard terrible screams coming from the trailer between 1:00 p.m. and 2:00 p.m. that lasted about a minute, and then a gunshot. I think she could have been mistaken about the time, and that it was really between 2:00 p.m. and 3:00 p.m. She saw a man driving Ferrell's vehicle leaving and then returned roughly a half an hour later. He drove away "later in the afternoon" and she identified the driver as Ferrell. Ferrell's parents saw him at their home at around 6:00 p.m. that evening, and then he was seen at the bowling alley at 8:30 p.m., but only stayed for a few minutes before leaving. The next morning, the neighbor saw "the same man" she saw driving Ferrell's vehicle burning something in Ferrell's backyard.

IMO, Ferrell lied and enticed Cathy Ford to his trailer, tried coming on to her, she freaked out, and in a panic he struggled with her before shooting her. He hastily had to get rid of her body and clean up the scene, but he also had to be seen by witnesses. Cathy's Bronco was already at his trailer, so he didn't have to move it too far and he (stupidly) torched it on his property. But the phone calls to the bowling alley still bother me. Who called him there? Was it someone looking for Cathy? If it was, that would explain him freaking out and leaving the alley shortly after placing the phone call to the number left for him. Ferrell also called out of work sick the next day, so he had all day to attempt to cover up the crime and ditch Cathy's body.

I had no idea Darvin Moon died (https://twitter.com/PokerNight_Todd/status/1307460985293340673?s=20&t=3AbbMvfSWHrfMWKP6fRtvw) back in 2020. He was only 56 years old.

I recently re-watched this segment (Farina version), and one thing stood out to me. Ferrell says that he went bowling on the night Cathy disappeared at around 8:30 p.m. Employees said that a female had been calling repeatedly trying to reach Ferrell. MegtheEgg had received several articles from Martin Yant a few years ago, and on this (https://www.sitcomsonline.com/boards/showpost.php?p=4889352&postcount=40) post confirmed that these phone calls were real, and that it couldn't have been Ferrell's girlfriend making the phone calls. So who was this woman? Ferrell says he called the number and Cathy answered and wanted to meet him at his trailer. He refused, but said he would meet her at a local high school parking lot. Which would make sense, because the school was right next to the bowling alley (https://www.google.com/maps/place/499+Oakland+Dr,+Mountain+Lake+Park,+MD+21550/@39.4035605,-79.3889147,576m/data=!3m1!1e3!4m5!3m4!1s0x884aacb1e0a3122d:0x261fc64a6c759083!8m2!3d39.4028641!4d-79.3872946), and Ferrell claimed that Cathy said she was calling from a payphone of a nearby convenience store. My question is: if this woman wasn't Cathy Ford, because in all likelihood Ferrell had already murdered her, who was she?

Cathy was last seen alive at 2:00 p.m. on the day she disappeared. Ferrell's neighbor testified that she heard terrible screams coming from the trailer between 1:00 p.m. and 2:00 p.m. that lasted about a minute, and then a gunshot. I think she could have been mistaken about the time, and that it was really between 2:00 p.m. and 3:00 p.m. She saw a man driving Ferrell's vehicle leaving and then returned roughly a half an hour later. He drove away "later in the afternoon" and she identified the driver as Ferrell. Ferrell's parents saw him at their home at around 6:00 p.m. that evening, and then he was seen at the bowling alley at 8:30 p.m., but only stayed for a few minutes before leaving. The next morning, the neighbor saw "the same man" she saw driving Ferrell's vehicle burning something in Ferrell's backyard.

IMO, Ferrell lied and enticed Cathy Ford to his trailer, tried coming on to her, she freaked out, and in a panic he struggled with her before shooting her. He hastily had to get rid of her body and clean up the scene, but he also had to be seen by witnesses. Cathy's Bronco was already at his trailer, so he didn't have to move it too far and he (stupidly) torched it on his property. But the phone calls to the bowling alley still bother me. Who called him there? Was it someone looking for Cathy? If it was, that would explain him freaking out and leaving the alley shortly after placing the phone call to the number left for him. Ferrell also called out of work sick the next day, so he had all day to attempt to cover up the crime and ditch Cathy's body.

This has always bothered me too.

I have considered a few possibilities:

A. The caller was a woman Ferrell was clandestinely involved with, hence why she never came forward to clarify that it was she and not Cathy Ford calling for Ferrell that night,

B. The caller was a relative or friend of Ferrell's who was attempting to reach him over another matter, and remained silent when Ferrell claimed it was Ford calling for him because it would supposedly strengthen his innocence narrative,

or C. Reams, the bowling alley employee, fabricated the story in an attempt to cover for Ferrell, who was a regular patron of the establishment and a relatively well-known and liked community figure.

Reams, the bowling alley employee, fabricated the story in an attempt to cover for Ferrell, who was a regular patron of the establishment and a relatively well-known and liked community figure.

I did not consider this. On the surface, it sounds ludicrous that someone casually known to Ferrell would lie to help shore up his innocence narrative. But I was listening to a podcast about this case a few days ago (for the life of me I cannot remember the name or find it, but it was roughly 2 and a half hours long) and towards the end of it they mention Ferrell's parole and how the people of Gormania were probably worried that a killer was about to be back on the streets, but the other host chimed in and said that the people from this town legitimately thought Ferrell was being framed by law enforcement and they considered him something of a folk hero. So with this context, I could see why someone would fabricate an alibi of sorts to help him.

Randomly came across a new show that featured this case. It can be watched here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XJiejBqyTyE