“You’re told to tell. She did the thing she was supposed to do by telling.” The 2005 killings of Katelind Caudill, Lisa Kendall and Kendora Furr

“You’re told to tell. She did the thing she was supposed to do by telling.” The 2005 killings of Katelind Caudill, Lisa Kendall and Kendora Furr.

A very sad case that I’ve never heard of until recently. On September 19, 2005, 13 year old Katelind Michael Marie “Katie” Caudill was preparing for school inside the Cosmos Drive home in Loveland Park, in Deerfield Township, Ohio. Katelind was a seventh grade student at Kings Junior High School. At approximately 6:45 a.m., Linda Wilson heard what she described as two loud bangs coming from Katelind’s bedroom. When she entered the room she found her granddaughter on the floor, bleeding from fatal gunshot wounds. Reports stated that Katelind had been shot several times in the head and chest.

43 year old Melvin M. Keeling lived in the neighboring house directly behind Wilson’s residence. Keeling was an employee of Ford Motor Company plant in Sharonville. News reports sometimes described him simply as Katelind’s neighbor, but the geographical relationship was much closer than that wording suggests. The two households were close enough that Wilson had allowed Keeling’s financially troubled household to draw electricity from her home through an extension cord after the electrical service at Keeling’s residence had been disconnected. It was 200 feet behind Caudill’s home and was considered a “rented ranch” on Oak Drive. FOX19 reported that the cord still physically connected the properties after Katelind was killed. Police further believed that Keeling entered Wilson’s home through a door that had been left open for Katelind’s sister.

The main conflict before the murder centered on Katelind’s best friend, who was described in different reports as Keeling’s oldest stepdaughter and the daughter of his girlfriend Veronica Smith. A television transcript identifies the friend only as “Tiffany”. During the 911 call, Linda Wilson referred to the children’s mother as Veronica.

According to Katelind’s mother, Gina Eaton, Tiffany had been confiding in Katelind about Keeling’s conduct for months. Eaton said:

“Katelind had just told us the things that, you know, Tiffany had relayed to her. This had actually gone on for months that he was doing things to her. She would not go into detail as to what was happening. Probably a week before Katelind was actually shot, she had confided in Franki as to, you know, the events that actually he had done to her. And that’s when we decided to bring the police into it because something had to be done about it.”

Katelind’s aunt Franki Phelps, said she privately questioned Tiffany after an argument with Keeling because she wanted to understand what was happening and protect the girl. Phelps recalled telling her, “I need to know so we can protect you. I need to know what he has done to you.” After Tiffany answered several specific questions affirmatively, Phelps told her, “You won’t go back. You won’t go back. You won’t ever have to go back there to him.”

Based on a Warren County sheriff’s affidavit, the sexual abuse had continued for approximately three years. Katelind confronted Keeling and called him a pedophile, and she subsequently became involved in the authorities’ investigation. Katelind’s father, Charles Caudill, said Keeling confronted her after she spoke with police and threatened, “You took my family, and now I’m going to take yours.” That statement was reported by Katelind’s father and was not tested in court, but it became central to the family’s belief that Keeling killed Katelind in retaliation for helping her friend.

After hearing the shots on September 19, Linda Wilson called 911. A transcript of the call:

Linda Wilson said, “I don’t know! I heard two bangs! She’s laying on the floor with blood all over her head! Please! Oh, God! Oh!”

In the second excerpt, the 911 operator asked, “Now, do you think you might know who it might have been? Has she been fighting with anybody, an angry boyfriend?”

Wilson answered, “Oh! We’ve…we’ve been into it with Melvin in the back here.”

The operator responded, “With Melvin?”

Wilson then said, “He molested his children, Veronica’s children. That’s the only thing I can think of!”

When asked later why she suspected him so quickly, Wilson replied:

“Because there was no one else that would have done anything like that. There was no one. Everyone loved Katie. We get along with people. And the only thing that was, we were arguing with Melvin and had a thing ongoing with him for a while. So you know, it had to be him. There was no one else.”

Gina Eaton learned about the shooting when Franki Phelps called her at approximately 7:00 that morning. Eaton later gave a detailed account of the moment she realized her daughter was dead:

“Actually, I got a call from Franki about 7:00 o’clock in the morning, telling me to, I needed to get to my mother’s, that Katelind had been shot. It actually wasn’t until I got there, you know, and realized that there was no ambulance there, you know, and I asked Franki, I said, ‘Where is she?’ And Franki just yelled, ‘She’s gone!’ You know, never in my mind would I ever have thought that someone would actually walk into our home and kill my child.”

The family questioned why Keeling had not been taken into custody before Katelind was killed, particularly in light of the threat Charles Caudill said had been reported. Prosecutor Rachel Hutzel responded that the rape and gross sexual imposition allegations had not been reported until Saturday night and that Keeling had not yet been interviewed. Katelind was killed early Monday morning, leaving investigators very little time to substantiate the accusations and establish lawful grounds for an arrest.

The aunt of Katie reported the allegations to Warren County deputies Saturday evening, Dennis Caudill said. Katelind confronted Keeling that night, he said. “Katie told him: ‘I hate you. You will pay for what you’ve done to my friend,” Caudill said. Police began investigating Keeling on Saturday evening, but efforts to question him were unsuccessful because detectives couldn’t find him, and he never returned home. Smith’s children stayed overnight at Katelind’s house Saturday, Caudill said, and their biological father picked them up Sunday and took them to his home out of state.

Police believed Keeling fled the Ohio residence in a silver Ford 2005 Windstar van. Approximately four hours after Katelind was shot, another deadly shooting occurred more than one hundred miles away at a Family Express convenience store near Interstate 65 in Remington, Indiana. Katelind was found at approximately 6:45 a.m. Eastern time. The Indiana victims were discovered at approximately 10:00 a.m. Central time, which was approximately 11:00 a.m. in Ohio and a little more than four hours after the first shooting.

The Indiana victims were 29 year old Lisa Kendall of Rensselaer and 38 year old Kendora Furr of Remington. Kendall was the mother of two young boys (Jordan aged 10 and Conner 7) and Furr was the mother of three girls (Deana aged 17, Selena aged 16 and Rheanna aged 11). A customer entered the store because a gas pump was not working and discovered the women after they had been shot. One victim died inside the store and the other was pronounced dead a later at a hospital. Furr faced the tragic and accidental death of her youngest child and only son, 4-year-old Lucas almost 2 years before. The boy died on May 23, 2003, when a friend of Kendora’s accidentally ran over the boy while backing a pickup truck out of Furr’s driveway in Remington.

The store’s surveillance recording showed a man investigators believed was Keeling attempting to obtain cigarettes without enough money. It was reported that the recording showed a man resembling Keeling draw a gun and shoot one employee across the front counter. He then walked around the counter and shot the second employee.

Keeling’s minivan was found abandoned in Gary, Indiana, early on September 20, the morning after the three killings. Police and FBI agents focused their search on Gary and the nearby Chicago area, used dogs to search a field near the abandoned vehicle, examined wooded areas, followed tips, and publicized the case through America’s Most Wanted. The FBI offered a $25,000 reward, and Family Express offered an additional $10,000.

Investigators also found evidence in or connected with the vehicle that suggested preparation. Indiana authorities reported recovering a handwritten checklist believed to have been written by Keeling. It reminded him to obtain a gun, pack clothing, and gather other items. Authorities also learned of a handwritten message to his family stating that they would not see him alive again. Before the shootings, Keeling had obtained a .40 caliber Glock handgun from a Cincinnati area pawnshop.

Here is a excerpt from a interview which included Dog the Bounty Hunter:

Duane “DOG” Chapman, Bounty Hunter: You know, through my sources—I‘m looking at my notes here—after the murder, Melvin went to his wife‘s workplace and met with his wife. His wife told him to turn himself in. Then Melvin went to his mother‘s house, OK? At his mother‘s house, his mother noticed that, Rita, he had more than one gun. What he did was had a hit list of five people on the list. The mother, of course, told him, you know, Melvin, turn yourself in, same as his wife. Melvin then wrote a will out and gave it to his mother. In the will, he said he wanted to be cremated, you know, so on and so forth, and said that he was going to shoot it out with the cops, that he was not going to kill himself but that he had a hit list of five people. On the five people, of course, is, you know, the one little girl as a victim. There were two or three other people. Now, of course I have not seen the hit list, so I can‘t confirm, but I think, you know, a couple of family members were on it. The—his stepdaughter is on the list, I‘ve heard. And he has vowed to get these people before he goes down.

The abandoned minivan was therefore located almost immediately, but Keeling’s body was not. For nearly a month, authorities conducted a multistate manhunt without realizing that he was apparently already dead close to the place where the vehicle had been found. On October 19, teenagers discovered badly decomposed human remains near railroad tracks in Gary. The body was only a few hundred yards from the location where the minivan had been recovered on September 20. It was also approximately one hundred yards from an area that investigators had searched several times.

Lake County Coroner David J. Pastrick concluded that Keeling had probably died on or near September 20, likely the day after the murders. Pastrick believed Keeling had shot himself while lying in a concealed location on a blanket. The coroner further suggested that animals later moved the remains into a more exposed area, which could explain why the body was not discovered during the earlier searches. That explanation was the coroner’s reconstruction based on the condition and position of the remains. The point is that Keeling appears to have been dead near the abandoned minivan for most or all of the month long manhunt. Keeling’s left arm, fingers and hand were missing. There was enough skull fragments to reconstruct the skull.

Medical and dental records confirmed that the remains were Keeling’s. Pastrick determined that he had died from a self-inflicted gunshot wound to the head and ruled the death a suicide. A .40 caliber Glock was recovered near the body. Its serial number matched the handgun Keeling had obtained from the Cincinnati area pawnshop two days before the shootings.

“She was just trying to protect her friend,” Debbie LeBlanc, a cousin of Katelind, told the Cincinnati Enquirer. “You’re told to tell. She did the thing she was supposed to do by telling.”

“Katie was that way. She always believed in the right thing. Whatever the cost was, she always did it” said Dennis Caudill, Katie’s grandfather.

As always may Katelind “Katie” Caudill, Lisa Kendall and Kendora Furr rest in peace.