At the time of Gail’s murder, Sergeant James A’Hearn was in charge of the fugitive and investigative unit of the OCSD. He ran the show. A’Hearn was that brassy, deep, baritone-speaking type of cop you wanted on any case that demanded results. Murder—and death—was an aspect of life that A’Hearn had had a long history with as both a police officer and veteran of the Vietnam War. He had been drafted right out of high school into the military. Once in, A’Hearn gave it his all, choosing to stay an additional year to enter into the military police (MP) division. Once out of the army, A’Hearn was immediately hired by the Birmingham (Michigan) Police Department, where he spent the next five years. From there, A’Hearn walked into a job at the Oakland County Prosecutor’s Office as an investigator. He was soon promoted to chief investigator. Then, in 1996, “after a political change,” as A’Hearn referred to it, within the Oakland County community, he was offered a job within the OCSD as a sergeant by the then-sheriff John Nichols.
A’Hearn’s interest in law enforcement is an interesting one. His father was a news editor for a major Detroit news station for many, many years. “And watching him interact with police over all those years” sparked a desire in him to want to be a cop, A’Hearn revealed.
When A’Hearn was asked to come up with a case, off the top of his head, that has bothered him for a lot of years, he didn’t hesitate.
“We had a series of child killings that date back to the late seventies,” A’Hearn recalled. “Unsolved. I was assigned to that task force. It’s probably the most important case that has ever happened here and remains unsolved . . . and . . . it’s kind of like a burr under my sweater. Depending on who you talk to, there are twelve kids involved, four of whom they attribute [connect] to one [killer].”
What a case. Some twenty thousand tips have been collected over the years; there are file cabinets full of documents and reports. It’s one of those cases cops cannot stop looking at—it has to be solved. Society can never allow child killers to get away with the most horrible of crimes. Monsters cannot win.
A’Hearn is the embodiment of a man’s man; he’s a guy who has the tough skin it takes sometimes to weather investigations that at first might seem a bit complicated, branching out into other states and involving additional perps. Perhaps more than anyone else who was working the Gail Fulton case, he knew that time was on law enforcement’s side in this case, unlike it generally is in many other murder cases. There was a conspiracy to commit murder in that adulterous marriage, A’Hearn reckoned. And George Fulton, a guy A’Hearn had little use for, had been involved in adultery for what the OCSD knew to be years. Donna Trapani was involved in this crime, and maybe even George, too; A’Hearn was certain.
Be patient. Hit the brick. Keep knocking on doors, tracking down the paper trail. A recipe for murder would surface sooner or later.
A’Hearn and Wundrach talked about Gail’s murder as it unfolded. A dead librarian found murdered in the parking lot of the library. It sounded so . . . well, Lifetime Television. . . so salacious. So intriguing. The media was on it right away, salivating, waiting for any little morsel or crumb to feed on.
Wundrach and A’Hearn kept coming back to one point that aggravated the two of them: Why had George not mentioned that affair when they first spoke to him? Why hadn’t he come clean with that? Why hide such an important fact and motivating factor in many murders?
“You don’t want to go right off the bat, ‘It’s you. It’s you. It’s you,’ pointing at George,” Wundrach explained. “You want to befriend him, keep him at ease, lock him into a story. But, you know, we found out about his mistress through his kids. That told us a lot.”
They had asked George about Donna and his reaction was, “Oh, yeah . . . her.”
“So we began to focus a little bit more on him,” Wundrach said.
The fact that George had been emotionless (A’Hearn and Wundrach’s description) was significant. Now, A’Hearn knew from experience that all they needed was a break—some sort of witness to come forward and begin talking. Whenever several people were involved in a murder—and the OCSD knew from watching the video that there were at least three people who knew the specifics of this murder—one of them will eventually get drunk, high, or feel safe enough to open his or her mouth.
It was inevitable.
15
T
HE WOMAN LYING
in the casket “did not look like my mother,” Emily Fulton recalled years later, thinking back to that day she and her family had a chance to view her mother’s body for the first time. It was the look on Gail’s face: plastic, stiff, contorted.
Fake.
Gail’s lips were pulled taut; her forehead was “furrowed”; her eyes (which had not been shut yet) had, quite shockingly, a look of surprise on them. What was more than obvious to Emily as she stood and stared was the wax the mortician had used to cover the bullet hole in her mother’s forehead.
“The hole . . . the size of a fifty-cent piece,” Emily recalled, “looked beyond painful and made me cry all the harder. I could not believe that that bastard did this to my mom—my mom that weighed [about] one hundred pounds and was [just over] five feet. Her long beautiful nails were chopped off and were not still quite jagged, [but] the mortician painted them a pinkish color. My mom
never
wore nail polish.”
That shell of a person, lying dead before her, “did not look like my mother,” Emily said. More than that, all the lines etched in Gail’s face—that expression frozen by her death—told Emily that “this person went through terrible pain and suffering” as she died.
“This person” might have seemed an odd choice of words. Yet for Emily, her mother was gone. This body left behind—a cocoon, really—had nothing in common with the woman Gail Fulton was, or the mother she had been to her children. For Emily, regardless of what the body displayed, or the pain and suffering her mother endured while dying in that parking lot, Emily was convinced of something that was more important to her than anything else at this point: “I also believe that God does not want innocent people to suffer and that the soul leaves the body prior to feeling any real pain.” Emily thought later she might have read that theory somewhere, but nevertheless, “I hope [it] is true.”
After seeing this, “needless to say, we decided to have a closed casket,” Emily recounted.
It was early evening, October 6, 1999. Emily and her family wanted a private viewing before the funeral home in Michigan readied Gail’s casket for a trip south to Texas.
Corpus Christi, Texas, is a 1,500-plus-mile trek south from Lake Orion, Michigan. But that’s where Gail’s mother and her children wanted this wonderful woman laid to rest. The funeral was set for October 8. The funeral mass was held at St. Theresa’s Church in Corpus, the same parish the family had been members of when they lived in Texas.
“I understand the cultural significance of having funerals, as it helps to make the death of your loved one a reality for the survivors, and I think this is a good thing,” Emily remarked. “However, when the family member who dies is so significant in your life, funerals are draining on so many levels.”
Hallelujah. Saying a final good-bye to someone close sucks the life out of you.
From the moment Emily stepped back into the church, the building of St. Theresa’s itself brought on a flood of memories. Masses weren’t generally packed at this parish, but the church had good attendance from week to week. It felt like home to Emily as she entered through the front doors. When they lived in Texas, Emily, George, Andrew, and Gail had been involved in the church on many different levels. Emily and George were lectors. Gail and George were Eucharistic ministers (helping the priest and deacons give out Holy Communion every week). Andrew was an altar boy. Emily volunteered at church events, including bingo and other fund-raising festivities, along with Gail’s mother, who, with Gail, was part of the Altar Society. In many ways this was a homecoming for the family. Everyone in the church knew the Fultons. Gail’s untimely death was a punishing blow to this community—many of whom had known Gail personally and adored her immensely.
“And, of course, they knew my grandma,” Emily added, “as she is basically a pillar of the community. And then you add the fact that my
papu
was so well regarded, even though he had died so many years before.”
The OCSD needed to send a team down to good old boy country so it could work with Texas authorities to set up surveillance at the funeral and conduct one very important interview. There was always the outside chance Gail’s killer would attend the funeral and take part in the sick satisfaction of enjoying the fruit of his or her labor—and, heck, maybe he was even part of the mourning crowd of attendees. A photo of Donna Trapani was distributed among investigators, who were told to be on the lookout for the woman who, authorities believed, had had the most to benefit from Gail’s demise. Of course, at the same time there would be many eyes on George Fulton. His every move scrutinized and recorded.
“The sexual revolution sort of bypassed us here in South Texas during the late sixties and early seventies,” an old friend of Gail’s said with a laugh.
Gail was a junior and her friend Jeanette Cantu-Bazar was a sophomore when they met at an all-girls school outside Corpus Christi. This was a time in Gail’s life when coming of age was innocent and clean; it was something to enjoy without much fear of the dangers and social pitfalls that kids face today. Both Gail and Jeanette had come from traditional American-Hispanic Catholic homes, where Mary, the Virgin Mother, and the seven sacraments played key roles in everyday life. Gail’s father was a federal judge. All of her family members were educated and popular within this large, predominantly Catholic community. They had friends, same as everyone. They gave to local charities. They went to church more than just on Sundays. They took to raising their kids with the utmost sincerity, seriousness, love, and care. They gave of themselves. Life was full of promise and peace. The American dream was a reality for Dora and Noe Garza, Gail’s parents, who had worked extremely hard and raised great kids.
“Gail was a lot of fun in high school,” Jeanette remembered. “The word that comes to me as I think back is ‘prim-and-proper.’ Our school uniforms [consisted of modest] hemlined skirts, cardigan sweaters.” Every part of the body was covered. This was quintessential Catholic school attire. “The sisters that taught us were all in their full habits, and most of us, at one time or another, talked about and wanted to be nuns.”
It was a good time to be a teenager. The United States—if not the world—was in a state of continuous transformation and innovation. When social commentators talk about Texas during the sixties, the space program comes to mind, as well as JFK’s assassination and the rise of the Republican party. Strong family ideals. An iron-clad economy.
The kids went to church every day while in school. Religious instruction was mandatory teaching.
“We also participated in the Catholic Youth Organization for our parish, and that’s where we met George,” Jeanette recalled.
George Fulton was one of Jeanette’s neighbors; he and his family lived down the block. George hung out at Jeanette’s house because she had three brothers. Gail took to George, a cross-country runner and senior class president, almost from the moment that she met him. In high school George was considered “Mr. It,” according to several classmates. He was first-chair clarinet and all-around pretty boy whom the girls chased. “George’s dad had worked at a newspaper.” George had the makings of a potentially perfect husband. During an era when girls were looking for boys to run off and get married to before the war took the men away, George was a catch. Marriage was much more of an expected aspect of life for a young girl then, especially in devout Catholic homes. For a young Catholic woman, there were two vocation choices: marriage or religious life. Being single was not an option that parents or the Church pushed. Gail, who prayed the rosary every night (right up until her death), had grown up with strong family values. She wanted to have a family of her own and pass on that legacy to her own kids.
George’s father had died when he was young, and his mother had raised nine kids on one income, so it was hard for them, a friend later explained. They did not have it easy. And then George’s mother died. This, some later suggested, hardened George.
The one thing George wanted out of life as he entered into his senior year of high school was to be a career officer in the military. He knew the military could pay for his education and allow him the opportunity to excel in whatever career choice he made. If he was going to be drafted, why not jump in headfirst and take control of a presumed destiny himself?
As Gail and George spent time together, talking, hanging out, it was a period in their lives when Gail and Jeanette loved nothing more than going to the local revival movie house and watching old films. They had those actors they bit their palms over and became rubbery at the sight of: Randolph Scott, Tyrone Power, James Dean. They adored the likes of Maureen O’Hara and Elizabeth Taylor. The movie
West Point
was a favorite of the girls. So when George was appointed to go to West Point, a romantic dream—a manifestation of Hollywood—came into focus for this conservative Catholic schoolgirl. As George left and went off to West Point, Gail graduated high school and enrolled at Baylor University, which was a family legacy. Baylor was a Christian university located in Waco. The school was in the same state as her home, but it was a 320-mile, near six-hour drive from her house. It seemed George and Gail’s paths had crossed and separated. The white-picket-fence dream quashed before it had a chance to blossom. Gail was one of those who believed that if God wanted it to be, the relationship with George would find its way. The next several years were about studying, anyway. She could wait.
They lost touch and did not write much as George pursued his dream of becoming an officer. Gail sank herself into her major, speech therapy. But when George returned from West Point and Gail came home from Waco as a college graduate, they ran into each other again and started dating. The dream of a house filled with kids was back on.