Dead Men Do Tell Tales: The Strange and Fascinating Cases of a Forensic Anthropologist (25 page)

When the investigators arrived, the collapsed corrugated metal sheets from the roof covered everything completely. Only when they began to remove the fallen roofing did they begin to see bones.

They found the bones side by side, with the burned sawed-off Ithaca 12-gauge shotgun at the feet of one set of remains. The shotgun had been welded shut by the fire, and its stock was wholly burned away. The position of the bone fragments seemed to indicate that two bodies, lying side by side, had been consumed by the flames. The second set of remains was closer to the door. Several Coleman gasoline cans were found in the ashes, missing their lids and showing no signs of having exploded. They must have been emptied out before the fire. The two sets of bones were scattered atop and beneath a wire mesh that seems to have been part of an old gate. Even though some bone fragments had fallen through the mesh, there were a few still on top of it, which demonstrated that the bodies must have been lying above this mesh when the fire started. Under the wire mesh there was something extraordinary: charcoal briquets, burned to ashes but still recognizable by their shape. Whoever had started the fire had placed a considerable quantity of charcoal beneath the bodies, to make sure they would be consumed as completely as possible.

Right away the investigators were confronted with an oddity: a single fragment of a female fibula—that is the long thin splint bone that backs up the main leg bone, the tibia—was found outside the cabin, near its entrance, some feet away from the rest of the female remains. This fragment was not as badly burned as the other remains, though it was broken off and charred at one end. How had it come to be outside the cabin, away from the other remains? We racked our brains over this and in the end could only theorize that it was flung there by the explosive force of the fire, before it had a chance to burn completely. The cabin was built of “fat lighter pine,” which is full of resin and burns explosively. In such a fire, rafters would fall, sharp-edged sections of tin roof would come hurtling down, and fierce convection currents would be swirling from all directions. In fact the ashes of a fallen roof beam were found near the leg portions of the female remains. It’s my belief that this bone was somehow broken during the fire and flipped free of the rest of the skeleton at some point. This fibula would later play a significant part in my investigation.

Several hundred feet away from these charred ruins a blue Fiat was parked in the middle of the field. In the trunk of the Fiat were found clothing and personal effects that identified their owners as Glyde Earl Meek, a forty-nine-year-old white male, and Page Jennings, a twenty-one-year-old white female. Meek’s and Jennings’s clothing was in the trunk of the car. There were his expensive-looking cowboy boots with their intricately tooled uppers and polished toes, his shirt, his blue jeans, a red windbreaker and his underpants, all folded up. Next to these garments, in a separate pile, were Page Jennings’s white Reebok sneakers. One of the sneakers had a pair of sunglasses thrust into it and a bloodstain on the side. A baseball cap from the Stacks restaurant at the Gainesville downtown Holiday Inn, where Jennings worked as a waitress, was also in the trunk. Her flesh-colored bra and floral print panties were also neatly folded on top of the pile of her clothes, which included a white pullover sweatshirt and a green plaid shirt.

If the skeletons within the cabin were those of Meek and Jennings, then it seems likely they embraced the flames naked.

In the rear seat well of the blue Fiat were found tools, a jack handle and a set of electrical connectors used to hot-wire the vehicle. Atop the back seat was an emergency first aid kit, a plastic coffee cup and a towel. The cloth car seats were split open with wear and tear.

On the front seat was a very long and very strangely worded suicide note, written neatly in longhand on four sheets of yellow legal paper, front and back. Counting front and back pages, the note was actually eight pages long, an exceptionally long message as suicide notes go. The spelling was generally correct, except for the words “separate,” “supporting” and “appalling,” which were spelled “seperate,” “suporting” and “apauling.” The vocabulary showed an above-average range, a good command of English. Occasionally the writer would add “(sic)” in parentheses, as if he were not sure of a certain spelling. Each page was carefully numbered: “#1 of 4,” “#2 of 4,” and so on.

This note proved to be one of the most vexing and ambiguous elements of the whole case. Here is what it said:

January 18 1985
.
Friday 12:45
Hilton Inn Gainesville

We have made all our arrangements and now are ready to do what Page thinks, and I, is the only way we can be together for all time. The constant interfering with our lives by outsiders is over. We know that to go on like we have in the past would only eventually turn our love into hate for each other and cause us to eventually seperate. That thought alone is what neither of us can bear to think about. The love we have had and always had since our eyes first met in Alaska has been so strong that in just 19 months we both have proven it more than most people show in a lifetime. Problems we have had surely but very few of our own—instead caused by meddling others. The pain Page has gone through because of her family is what makes all we have done in the past week bearable to me. She was rejected by her family when she came back from Alaska because she loved someone her family
didn’t approve of. Instead of suporting her and saying we don’t understand but are with you—they told her to get rid of me or get out. We went to Texas. Still the interferring (sic) from them and on her father’s birthday she was sent money to go home but not to
bring
me. They were under the impression that we had broken up and were not together, so when she got off the plane her mother took her shopping in Fortland, Me. On the way back to Jackson, N.H., she told her mother we were together still. Her mother turned the car around and took all the presents back to the stores. When she finally got to Jackson her father told her to get out and never come back. Her brother told her to get “fucked in the ass” and never wanted to see or hear from her again. She called me in Texas and told me what happened and was getting back to Portland and told me to pick her up in Houston. When she got back home I spent almost four hours with her in my lap talking her through what she was put through. Then we went to Alaska again and worked in the worst possible place for a lonely girl with all these thoughts she never really told me about until last week. The letters from her brother helps to explain what I am writing about. Pressure, rejection, pressure, castigation, pressure and then what took place several weeks ago and more pressure
.

Her brother who was “helping” her got to pressuring her thoughts into telling me to leave forever. She couldn’t tell him to hurt him or me to hurt me. She kept it all inside and it became too much for her. The final straw for Page came when her brother said we had to get out “by 5:00
P.M.
tomorrow” or he would “pull the plug.” He left a note telling her to take “the milk, half an onion, cheese, Beck’s beer, soup, etc.” Which said to Page get everything that will remind me of you and get out of my life. AGAIN
.

All our letters to one another have been burned so no one can touch them. All our pictures likewise. She made me promise to burn the home in N.H. to make sure there were no mementos left for anyone to have. It seems that she wants to just disappear so as if never to have been on earth
.

In the past week we have talked over plans that were brought up many times when ever she was depressed. At first we would go together and “make them pay.” Then it finally came to me going
while she waited for me to get back and we’d die together by cremation. Why—because I love her so very much—is the only reason I can think of. More than my own life itself. Sometimes, as I drove up and back, I think she thought I would get up there, do what we wanted and get caught coming back all that time and distance. Only one road out and a fire would attract immediate attention so would be reported quickly. Just a feeling I guess from our meeting on Thursday at noon at her brothers house. She hasn’t said much to me since, only that she is ready and was “meditating” the days I was gone. Spiritually she is ready
.

You are thinking—this guy is crazy—No I am not. I have functioned like a rational person in every way since we made our plans such as getting motels, eating, driving, selling things in Hartford, buying the shot gun in the event I got stopped on the way back I would use it on myself and not hurt any other innocent person. Page would jump from the bridge in Jacksonville with a car battery tied to her if we couldn’t go on together as we had planned. But yes—crazy from love and caring for this lady to want to forever be with her at least mind spirit, and ashes. We are to go together so our ashes cannot be seperated only our bones can be put in two different places as her brother will do. Page says if we died whole he would seperate us by two graves and this way it is impossible
.

As I sit here contemplating what is ahead for me is apauling [appalling] (sic) but I have given my word and that is and always has been my bond. Nobody can say about me that once I say I will do something that I’ve ever not done it. Page knows this and maybe used it. I am not regretting what’s been done because if we ever would have called it quits permanently I would have taken all their lives anyway. But now I have to take Page’s life with my hands and kill the only love I have left. Page says she needs it that way—her meditation time—directed her. She knows that I will do it and isn’t worried that I’ll “wimp out” on myself. By not joining her. My word, and she believes in me that much
.

Her brother won’t be harmed so that he can live with everything for the rest of his life. A pay back for rejecting her and writing that she was “insane” in his journal. Personally I would
like to wait around and do him but she has made me promise not to give him the easy way out but to think about it every day. I have promised to go with her and so we shall
.

The place we picked out was found by
driving
around many miles and it was history, on top of a hill and seemed to be just right
to her. We had two “picnics” there and that is where we made our plans and promises to one another. She is waiting now and I must do what I can’t believe I’m going to do but I must do for me and her
.

Here a line is skipped in the note. The last two lines above, beginning with
“She is waiting now
…” are written in a more hurried and slantwise script, as if dashed off in haste. Several blank lines follow. The note then resumes:

Maybe I am crazy at least now for I have taken the life of the only lady I feel I’ve ever really been in love with. And I don’t want to die but will just to see if we can be together again as Page seems to think. It was the most terrible thing, but feel her love more than ever now it seems
.

The next five words are crossed out, but plainly legible:

I took her in my

The note then continues:

First I should tell that as we built our cremation it was the happiest I’ve seen her in many weeks. She kept talking and had such an air about her afterwards we talked for about two hours and just enjoyed each other and hugged and repeated our wedding vows to one another and hope we are doing what’s right
for us
.

When we were ready I took her in my arms and said “Page I love you.” The answer was, “Mike it has always been only you and I want it to always be that I’m you’re very last love.”

She sat in front of me with me sitting behind and put a choke hold on and held it for at least two minutes. She never once seemed
to struggle and when I thought she had expired I released and lowered my arms to hug her. Damn, she started to move and I couldn’t do anything else but start rubbing her shoulders and talking to her and in about twenty minutes she was crying in my arms and hoarsely started talking to me and crying too. She said “Mike you promised, you promised”—But I just felt I couldn’t anymore. We talked for a little while and then the very last words she said were “Mike I love only you forever” and this time I kept the hold on her until my arms, fingers and body cramped. Lay her down on the blanket and she was still and turning blue. I readied the wood under the platform and she started to jerk a little. I looked at her with the flashlight and this time she wouldn’t be coming back but I couldn’t stand to see her twitch so hit her with a large stone. That’s why her head may be crushed on the right side
.

I have decided to rope myself down before I use the shotgun in case I might do the same and fall from our platform. That’s the only reason why there may be rope marks on me if they don’t burn off or something. The little brown bag are the ashes from her puppy that died in Texas last year. We had it cremated in San Antone and she wanted the ashes sprinkled with us and the present puppy, Chelshea, are the bones with us. I brought her back with me from New Hampshire
.

It’s time for me to go back up there and finish and be with my love for all times. Page was the most beautiful lady in the world but at times a devil. I feel just because she had so many things working against her—pressure—that finally made us do this last step. If I can spend the rest of my time with her somewhere is all that I can hope for. I loved her