Chapter 5

December 3, 1976

Dear Detective Lubertazzi,

I read in the Enquirer about Mrs. Allison helping you with a case in 1975 in helping you to find two children.

I was wondering could you please help me get in touch with her to help me find my daughter. She has been gone since July 22, 1976. Our Police and State Police can't find a thing. It will soon be five months and I and my whole family are nearly out of our minds. Her name is: Debbie Kline, she was 19 November 28. She disappeared coming home from work. We found her new 76 Vega parked in the mud and thick bushes. Her pocket book and all her I. D. cards was in her billfold along with her money $30.00. Please help me if you can. I don't know what else we can do. Please call me at this no. collect anytime.

Please do not think this a prank or anything like that.

Please please help me. I have no place else to turn and it is terrible when you try everything and found nothing.

Please call as soon as possible.
Thank you very much
Mrs. Richard A. Kline, Sr.
Waynesboro, Pennsylvania

Waynesboro is a small, conservative, and Fundamentalist community forty miles southwest of the state capital, Harrisburg, and on the western perimeter of the Quaker Dutch country. Surrounded by green orchards and rolling farmlands, Waynesboro has one main street, one high school, and one hospital. The people of the town are television watchers and churchgoers: if churches were as easy to install as televisions, there might be many more houses of worship.

Waynesboro, and its close neighbor to the north, Chambersburg, exist in a pocket-size world all their own. It is said that during the Depression, people in the two communities hardly knew what all the fuss was about. Even tourists seldom find the bucolic area; Gettysburg and the Amish areas draw most of the traffic east of the towns.

Violent crimes seldom seem to occur in the two communities; most "crimes" there are deviations from accepted religious doctrine. Religious and community leaders work together to keep the towns on an event keel. Disturbing ideas and modern changes were kept at bay as much as possible by the strong Evangelical leaders throughout the area. The local newspapers, which are published in Chambersburg, became sounding boards for public battles against invading ideas or factions not welcomed by the resident faiths.

The Richard Kline family fit into the fabric of the area. Dick and Jane Kline had known the mountains and hills around then" small comfortable home all their lives. As local folks, they had quietly tended to their own business, been respectful of God and country, and mindful of the needs of their six children.

The tall, blond-haired father had worked for the Waynesboro golf club since the age of twelve, and after twenty-eight years, still worked as the superintendent of the course. An easygoing, affable man, he and his wife had raised a Protestant family by making family concerns their priority, rather than religion. Nevertheless Dick Kline gave his children full opportunity to grow up with the church as moral backdrop.

Jane, his short, stout, graying wife, moved in the world at a rocking-chair gait, the pace sometimes broken by moments of nervousness and fear. Jane cared and tended for her family with an eye out for the unexpected, even though it seldom visited them.

Eighteen-year-old Debbie Kline, the third of the Kline children, graduated from Waynesboro High School in May of 1976. Debbie, an average student, had matured quietly; she was not one to exhibit sudden enthusiasms or emotional changes. She had her senior ring, which she treasured so much that it was safely sequestered in her jewelry box, and she had her diploma.

The reticent brown-haired beauty had had one boyfriend, with whom she had broken up just prior to graduation. Most of her free time was spent to her family, and her strongest attachment was with her mother. Debbie would spend hours sitting beside her mother, leafing through magazines, quietly passing tune.

Debbie summed up her life in a letter to a close friend by saying that "things are really starting to shape up. I got a job which I start in the beginning of July ... I got a beautiful burgundy Vega with only thirteen miles on it ... things are really looking good for me and I am enjoying every bit of it. I'm so happy ..."

On Thursday, July 22, Debbie and her mother spent the morning thumbing through the Montgomery Ward catalog, looking for clothes that Debbie might wear at her sister's wedding in October. Like a winsome kitten, she played that rainy, warm morning with her mother and her two-year-old niece, who romped around the house in Debbie's white work shoes.

Later Debbie went off to work at Waynesboro Hospital, only five minutes from her home. She called her mother around 4:30 P.M. to say that she had been paid and that she wanted to take her father out for pizza when she got home - a surprise she knew he would like.

It had rained most of that day. The sky remained overcast during the afternoon and early evening. The trees and ferns were a deep, glistening green, while the dirt road in front of the Kline's house was a muddy stream. Late in the day Dick labored on their well-manicured lawn, tending flower beds and snipping weeds.

Debbie usually got home around 6:30. When she hadn't arrived by that time, Jane stuck her head out the screen door and asked Dick if he'd seen or heard from her. He hadn't.

"You can set time by her," Dick said. "Debbie's never late. Maybe she's having trouble with that new car."

At 6:45, Dick and Jane got in their car and drove down the quiet rural road alongside the golf course. Then, forking to the right, they rode through a shady Revolutionary-period neighborhood to the hospital.

Debbie's new Vega was not in the parking lot. Jane looked at her husband. Neither said a word. They drove the route Debbie usually took home, Jane's eyes darting in all directions, but they found nothing. Jane suggested the gas station, but no burgundy Vega was visible.

Next, back through the small town and on to a girl friend's home, where Debbie sometimes stopped to visit. She had not been there that afternoon. Jane Kline was showing signs of fear.

The couple headed back to their home via the same route. They passed a vacant lot where ten days before a minister's home, in the last days of construction, had burned to the ground. It was at the bottom of the hill below the Kline house. Jane noticed a township police car parked alongside the road. A lot of policemen had been in and around the razed site, so the Klines didn't think their presence odd.

As they passed the site, however, Jane turned around to look into the lot through a break in the high hedge of bushes, and she glimpsed a burgundy car.

Dick backed up instantly and they discovered that the car behind the bushes was Debbie's. Jane, now panic-stricken, took hold of her husband's arm for support. The policeman had been running a license check on the car, they learned, but it had proved futile, since the car was too new for the registration to have been processed.

Nowhere could they see their daughter. Frantic, Jane and Dick began searching the area. The sun, still penetrating the cumulus cloud cover, allowed plenty of light for seeing into the bushes and trees. No trace of their daughter was found. They checked the two-story shaft of the still-standing fireplace and chimney, a last, lonely appendage of the destroyed house, but found nothing.

How could Debbie have disappeared in daylight at the side of an often traveled residential road? The policeman, in words that would be repeated by uniformed men for the next several days, suggested that their daughter might have run away. Her parents knew she had not run away. It wasn't even a possibility.

For several grueling weeks the Kline family hunted everywhere a possibility sprouted. The vaguest clue, like a hiker's report that he had smelled rotting flesh at a spot high in the mountains, was pursued by Dick Kline. State and local police gathered what little they had to go on and interviewed anyone who had seen or known Debbie Kline.

A special phone installed by the Klines for information regarding Debbie's whereabouts proved both aggravating and fruitless. There were several crank calls, and others giving information that led only to disappointments and more sadness. One call came through that Jane believed was truthful. The whispering caller said nothing more than, "Debbie's dead," and hung up.

Prayer sessions and public search parties were organized as the small town's own speculative fears were increased by circulating rumors. Headlines during the first period of the investigation reveal the agonizing pace the investigation took: "Bloodhound Search Futile"; "Third Search Launched for Missing Girl"; "Quarry Search Proves Fruitless"; "Search for Debbie Enters Sixth Week." State police, headed by Sergeant Hussack, had tried everything within possibility.

"I don't think Debbie is going to come home alive," the frenzied mother told Marie Lanser of the Public Opinion, one of the two local newspapers. "In my mind I want Debbie home. I've got to see her, you know how you've got to see someone. But in my heart I don't think I'm going to see her."

The distraught mother recalled her daughter's perilous entry into the world. Debbie had been born two months prematurely at 5:13 A.M. on Thanksgiving morning, after Jane had begun to hemorrhage internally. For two months the helpless infant had hung precariously between life and death. That battle she had won.

"I sit in this room with my hand on the Bible and I pray," Jane said, rocking back and forth in her chair, bringing her hand to her tearing eyes.

"It's like a nightmare," the saddened father said. "You want to wake up, but you can't wake up. You watch things like this on television, but it doesn't happen to you."

"The nighttime's the worst," Debbie's twenty-four-year-old sister said. "You don't sleep."

"It's a small world when you're trying to hide," Dick said. "But it's a big world when a person's lost."

As the leaves on the trees began to color, and cooler weather eased in after the heat of August, the torment and anguish of the Kline family began to take its toll. Jane Kline became a recluse and spoke only through tears. Their children talked little, one sister often closing her door and crying herself into oblivion.

For the Kline family holidays took on a different meaning, as would the notion of giving thanks. By late October Jane and Dick had decided that Thanksgiving would go unheeded.

"We've got nothing to be thankful for," Jane said.

It was the desperation that fermented over months of waiting that led the quiet, small-town family to examine the idea of using a source never before considered: a psychic. In November the Klines contacted several people claiming to have psychic powers. One psychic from Chicago mailed them a price sheet, demanding money before arrival. All the psychics they approached had a price. The Klines were willing to pay for further investigation, but money was not easy for them to find.

Eldon Joiner, a close friend and golf pro, offered to help the family out. The son of a highly regarded Southern criminal lawyer, the white-haired, lively Georgian had moved to the quiet area around Waynesboro in 1945. He had been a successful lawyer, made some money, and after changing jobs a few times, finally opted for the gentlemanly profession of golf. Though a staunch disbeliever in psychics, the family friend was willing to help them try anything.

The same day Lubertazzi received the letter from Jane Kline, he received a similar letter from a desperate mother in Florida whose daughter was reported missing on July 22, the same day Debbie Kline had vanished. All Dorothy's mail went to the Nutley Police Department. This method was used for her protection. Finding dead bodies was not particularly unsafe, but hunting murderers and rapists could jeopardize her life and the safety of her family. Consequently Dorothy's address and phone number were given out to few people. Lupo and his wife, Phyllis, would present Dorothy with the cases and requests, and according to her own schedule and the feelings she might get when looking over a case, she would choose which cases to work on.

Dorothy immediately grabbed both the Kline case and the one in Florida, feeling that "doubles" would play an important role in them. She believed that information she might give to the Klines would be pertinent to the Florida case.

When Dorothy phoned Jane Kline, she told the desperate mother that she would not be able to get to Waynesboro until some time after the New Year. With occasional visits made in connection with a Staten Island case, plus two other cases with which she was occupied, and a promised flight to Flordia to search for the missing twelve-year-old, her time was seldom her own. Over the past two years Dorothy's time had been consumed more and more by her work, which had long since taken on the fervency of a life's mission. Instead of three or four cases, she was handling up to ten cases at a time, some within the region, other via phone communication. Her dining room was stacked high with newspaper clippings and police photographs and data. Her phones, sitting side by side on the bookcase, would ring at all hours of the day or night, with calls giving her last minute details on cases or feedback from clues she had gotten psychically sitting at home in her den.

In addition to her pressing schedule, with the holidays and her own birthday imminent, Dorothy felt she must focus on her family for the next several weeks, trying to keep travel at a minimum.

Jane Kline offered to fly the psychic to nearby Harrisburg, but Dorothy refused, saying she would drive and save them the expense.

"I feel something very important is going to happen around the thirteenth of January," Dorothy told Jane. "I'm not sure what it is, but in the end it will make sense. Do you know any Richards?" Dorothy inquired.

"My whole family is Richards," Jane said nervously.

"How about a Robert or a Ronald? I'm looking for a man whose middle name is either Lee or Leroy. There will be double letters in the last name of one of the men," Dorothy predicted,

"One of the men?" Jane Kline queried.

"Yes, there are two men involved. Your daughter was with two men," Dorothy told her.

Dorothy proceeded to describe a car in the scene and an area where a building had burned recently. A building which she felt had belonged to a priest. A building with an outdoor oven standing.

Yellow. Dorothy said she saw a great burst of yellow. Not flowers, but something that was expansive and brightly painted.

"We need to find that yellow. It's important to where Debbie is right now," Dorothy said. "Also, have the police locate double bridges," Dorothy instructed, "because that's the route they took.

"Mrs. Kline, I'm going to give you some dates," Dorothy told her. "Please write them down and see if they have any meaning to your family. This will help me know if I'm on the right track." Dorothy gave Jane four dates: October 2, October 11, December 3, and April 4.

Dorothy received a call the next day from a Chambersburg reporter saying that he and another reporter would be available to her when she arrived in the area. The two veteran reporters, Bob Cox and photographer Ken Peiffer, saw the beginning of an exciting newspaper story, which two years later they would also publish as a book.

It was not until January 22 that Dorothy traveled with Bob and their son Paul to Waynesboro. It was on a cold, bitter Saturday that the trio drove the five and a half hours across Pennsylvania. They went first to Chambersburg, where they were met by the two Record Herald reporters. They, in turn, drove the Allisons to the Kline house, where the entire family sat waiting in suspense.

Dorothy's phone conversation had floored the grieving parents as they had instantly recognized some of Dorothy's clues. The burned house had to be the remains of the Moser house, where Debbie's car had been found. Moser, the Klines knew, was a minister, hence Dorothy's "priest" was nearly correct.

The dates Dorothy had offered had surprised the family, as well. Three of the dates were family wedding days, one of which Debbie had been planning to attend in October. The fourth date was important only to Debbie: in her journal it was the day highlighted for her first date with her boy-friend.

Dorothy arrived with a composite she had worked on with a Clifton, New Jersey, police artist. She had tried to see through the victim's eyes at the time of her struggle, hoping to have a picture of at least one of the perpetrators of the crime she knew to have taken place. When she met Dick Kline, however, she was startled. The composite she held in her hand looked like him.

It's logical, she thought, that Debbie was reaching out for her father, whom she loved, in her last desperate moments.

Jane Kline took Dorothy into Debbie's bedroom, letting the psychic feel articles of Debbie's clothing. Dorothy saw the shiny high-school ring and put it on her finger.

"Let me wear this for a while," she asked the mother. "I feel it will bring me luck."

Handling beloved possessions of victims often triggered strong impressions for the psychic. As with Doreen Carlucci's bracelet, Dorothy often found that these articles helped her feel sure she was on the right track. If an object did not seem to fit her feelings about a person, then she would question the veracity of those feelings or the genuineness of the article. She felt many tunes, too, that the auras of personal articles brought her luck, as she had said to Jane Kline. In this instance luck meant being certain that Debbie Kline was the person she had in focus.

As soon as Dorothy had the ring, she felt that its owner no longer lived. She knew that Debbie Kline was dead.

Paul Weachter, a young, dark, curly haired state trooper in his late thirties, waited with the family as Dorothy prepared herself psychically and physically for the day's hunt. Weachter had not worked on the Kline case before but had been assigned to work with the psychic over the weekend, since the trooper who had been working on the case was on vacation. Bright and energetic, Weachter was willing to try anything Dorothy requested. Along with the two newspaper reporters and Dorothy's family, he helped her interpret clues.

Others, however, were not as willing to acquiesce to her visions. Sergeant Hussack, Weachter's superior, let it be known that he was not in accord with the psychic's investigatory procedures. What Dorothy did not yet know was that her presence, in less than one week, was to stir a wide wave of public skepticism.

While everyone stood in the Kline's living room, where pictures of children and grandchildren were placed all around, Dorothy pulled out a set of long underwear and went into Debbie and her sister's room for a quick change. She was not going to take any chance of getting frostbite on this bleak January day.

The Kline children stood silently as Dorothy reappeared, her short, solid body wrapped in a bright ski parka and black knitted pants, and a colorfully woven ski cap pulled over her forehead. She smiled and motioned her arm as if leading troops forward. Trooper Weachter followed Dorothy to his car, where Bob, Paul Allison, and the two reporters joined them. A second car, containing friends of Dick Kline, followed close behind. This group was openly skeptical, questioning Dorothy's moves and vision at every turn. It seemed as though a sports event were about to begin.

Dorothy's first instinct was to head for a dumping ground in the area. She tried to describe to Paul Weachter how she envisioned the dump, but any site would be difficult to recognize under two or more feet of snow. Following her instructions, the officer drove to a hill where a small dumping area was located. Rather than point to the ground, though, Dorothy indicated a house at the bottom of the hill, which she felt was important to Debbie. It was the home of Debbie's former boyfriend.

One of the group who had come in the second car was Eldon Joiner. He asked Dorothy why she couldn't just tell the police where to go and find the girl. Dorothy explained that her psychic sense did not work that way.

"I have to proceed at a pace that takes me closer and closer to feelings I can identify within me. When something is right, I know it," she told the Southerner. "I know this girl is dead." Eldon blanched at the psychic's brutal pronouncement.

"Surely you don't just see that?" he wondered in amazement.

"I do just see that. If she was in water, I could tell you where she is and what time we'd find her. But she didn't drown. So, if you want to follow us around, you better keep quiet and quit complaining."

Joiner admired Dorothy's confidence, even if he didn't particularly like her tongue.

Dorothy repeated to Weachter and Joiner her older statement to Jane Kline, that she saw an outside oven somewhere, and something "burnt."

"Burnt?" Joiner asked.

"No, I see the word "burnt," not necessarily something burned."

The men were confounded. "What kind of oven?" Weachter asked.

"I don't think it's still used. What's more important," Dorothy went on, "is the yellow I keep seeing. We have to find all that yellow. I saw it the first time I spoke with Jane Kline. We'll find her just beyond that yellow. Her body is near a blue swimming pool. That's what we should be looking for."

Joiner looked at the state trooper and shrugged.

When they arrived at another field surrounded by dense trees on the outskirts of the town, Dorothy began to get a picture of the man she felt had murdered Debbie Kline. Paul Weachter was walking next to her. She told him that the man she saw had straight, thinning hair worn combed to one side. He was about five feet eight, but she reminded Weachter that height was not her best dimension.

"He's thin, maybe no more than a hundred forty pounds. I see him with someone who looks to me like an animal." And she made a face of disgust.

"Wait, I feel you should know something about one of these men," Dorothy suddenly said. "Yes, one is known by the police now. I think he recently tried to rape someone, but she managed to stop him. Something went wrong. The police somewhere in the area know him," she said confidently.

Dorothy kept walking slowly, her short legs kicking up puffs of snow as she tried to focus on the man she saw in a prison cell. Once again she stopped. "I'm beginning to see this beast. This man doesn't deserve to be alive."

Weachter immediately showed Dorothy pictures of suspects that he was carrying in his car. Dorothy flipped through the stack quickly, stopping once and handing the selected photograph to the officer.

"This is him. If his name is Robert, Richard, or Ronald, you've got number one."

"You're sure there were two ...," he started.

"I see what I see. I know there were two men," she insisted, "and neither of them had ever seen Debbie Kline before that day. It's the other animal that has the double letters in his last name. God protect us from people like this. This guy" - pointing to the picture Weachter held - "will lead us to the other bastard. You're not going to want to see what these guys did to that girl."

Weachter felt chilled and excited by what he sensed Dorothy was seeing. The photo he held was of a man he knew was sitting in jail. His name was Richard Lee Dodson, a thirty-year-old from nearby Greencastle. He wondered if Dorothy knew this man was being held in the Franklin County Prison on a charge of attempted rape of a twenty-six-year-old housewife in Fort McCord.

Richard Lee Dodson, as Dorothy had sensed, was not a neophyte criminal. His dealings with the Franklin County juvenile authorities had begun at the age of thirteen in 1959, and his dalliance with the authorities had continued through a series of altercations, until 1972, when twenty-six-year-old Dodson, then married with four children, was picked up for raping a fourteen-year-old girl. The rape charge was dismissed in plea bargaining, leaving him guilty of indecent-liberties charges.

Then, two days before his sentencing, Dodson's house had mysteriously burned to the ground, killing his wife and three of his children. His still-breathing four-year-old son was severely burned and permanently institutionalized in a burn clinic. People thought it odd that Dodson had been home at the time but had escaped unscathed.

He was, in any case, sentenced to four to six years in the Illinois Correctional Institute. Later he was transferred to Vienna Prison, where his cellmate was Ronald Henninger.

Henninger's record made the justice system look like a hunk of Swiss cheese. Henninger had eight AWOL counts against him before his dismissal from the navy; later he accrued up to eighteen years of prison tenancy, though paroles were twice awarded him.

After his second parole in February, 1973, he was charged with fleeing police, aggravated assault, several motor-vehicle violations, and murder. The violations were part of an attempted escape from a rifle-shooting incident, in which Henninger killed Francis "Frank" Fenton, a murder which he had been hired to commit. After two trials Henninger pleaded guilty to involuntary manslaughter and was sentenced to three to ten years in Joliet Prison. In 1975, he was transferred to Vienna Prison, and paroled on April Fool's Day, 1976.

Henninger's daughter, Lome, who at the age of five had been shipped off to a foster home with her two other siblings, found her father in Vienna Prison after years of not knowing anything about him. Lome, then eighteen and beautiful, was introduced by her father to his cellmate, Richard Dodson, with whom she fell in love. Dodson's parole, on May 26, 1976, was partly arranged by Henninger's claiming him as a relative. Lome and Richard were married shortly after his parole, when he was full of promises and new horizons.

In December, Dodson took a job with a local oil delivery company. It was while making the rounds through a Fort McCord neighborhood that he stopped at a house under the pretense of delivering oil on a cold winter day and attacked the attractive woman who answered the door. The rape was thwarted, however, by the woman's resistance. Dodson left, warning her he would be back to finish the job.

It was Trooper Paul Weachter who had been summoned to the Fort McCord woman's home. She identified Dodson, and Weachter persuaded her to testify against him in court. Leaving the quiet residential home, Weachter noticed an oil truck passing through the street, slowing down in front of the house he had just left.

He stopped the truck and found that the driver fit the description the woman had given. It was Dodson, coming back for more. That afternoon he was charged, without bail, with attempted rape. That was on January 13 - the day Dorothy had predicted to Jane Kline as a significant date.

Weachter led Dorothy and the psychic posse back to his car, telling her that he was planning to go to the jail later. After hours of searching, Joiner and his friends also decided to return to their warm houses. Dorothy was glad to see the skeptics leave her in peace. However, after years of working with police, she preferred honest skeptics like Eldon Joiner to people who pretended to trust her. She knew she would have him convinced by the end of that week.

All the hours that Dorothy trudged through the snow, following her psychic instincts, the townspeople were listening to radio reports of her arrival, each station promising to be the first to get news of Debbie Kline's discovery. Believers and skeptics alike listened from their homes, from the hospital, the jail, and businesses. A small contingent of nonbelievers had voiced their opinion that the psychic was a "devil woman," and soon their views developed into a small controversy carried over into the local newspapers.

As Appolonia had told her, it was God who gave Dorothy the gift of vision, and she had never doubted that. God worked in odd ways, allowing so many children to see so much tragedy. But Dorothy knew it wasn't God who took those children; it was human ignorance and perversity that destroyed lives, and she only wanted to help the victims safely on their way to God's protection.

As Dorothy had matured, with the help of believers, practice, and hypnosis, she had begun to see that her life had taken on a special meaning. She felt she was a messenger of St. Anthony, whose image never left her. She would spend her time helping the totally helpless and innocent, especially children. No one, Dorothy felt, spent enough time worrying and caring for children.

In fact she believed that those people claiming she was a "devil woman" could spend their tune better by communicating with their children and families. She was deeply saddened by this undercurrent of bigotry, realizing its potential power.

But at the moment Dorothy was more concerned with a new mental picture she was getting - a vision of trouble at the jail.

"Someone is going to try and break. Warn the guards," she told Weachter. "Today is very dangerous for a policeman. Someone at the jail had better be careful. I get the feeling of being unable to breathe. It's funny, it's not like being buried or underground or something like that ... just unable to breathe. It's like being smothered."

Cox and Peiffer took down the words verbatim. Weachter absorbed the information, not knowing what to do with it.

As it happened, a jailbreak was attempted at the Franklin County Detention Center at 4:50 P.M., just three hours and twenty minutes later. A sixteen-year-old inmate grabbed a matron and tried to choke her to death in order to secure her keys. As it was reported on the front page of the next day's paper, another guard, overhearing the scuffle, rescued her, breaking the grip of the boy's hands on her neck, thus thwarting the escape attempt.

Weachter, in the meantime, made certain that all the inmates of Franklin County Prison heard the news of the visiting psychic on the radio. And the next day the young state officer, having heard of the predicted escape attempt coming to pass, would go beyond the call of duty. He went to visit Richard Lee Dodson.

Weachter met with Dodson in a small, windowless room while a guard stood at the door. Dodson was nervous, his cocksure attitude having diminished in the past week. The Kline case, after so many months of dormancy, seemed to be boiling again. On the table Weachter had placed various newspaper articles Dorothy had given him which covered some of her previous cases. Weachter asked Dodson to leaf through the material. The officer was not going to use any other force than logic.

"I've spent the last two days working with this woman," he said to the prisoner, pointing to a picture of Dorothy and her dog Jason. "Do you believe in psychics, Dodson?" he asked.

"Guess so," he shrugged. "They say she's a devil woman."

"Maybe so," Weachter said. "She's got me convinced, though. She told us there was going to be a break yesterday in the jail. Did you hear that?"

Dodson nodded. "Yeah, they've been buzzing it up all morning."

Weachter was glad everyone had heard about Dorothy's prediction coming true. Next he took a stack of photos from his briefcase and held them before the accused rapist.

"I handed these to Mrs. Allison yesterday. She looked through them and picked out one picture." He let the photo of Dodson drop to the table. "She handed me this picture and said, 'If his name is Richard, Robert, or Ronald, you've got your man!' " Weachter stared directly into Dodson's eyes. "Do you have anything to say?"

Dodson looked away.

"She also said that Debbie Kline's body was next to a blue swimming pool. Does that mean anything to you?"

Dodson said nothing.

"She also said there were two of you and that both of you had been involved in rape before, and that now you hated each other. Well, what do you have to say?" Weachter pursued.

"Nothing, damn it. I never met the woman before." His voice sounded angry. "She's no cop. She can't accuse me of a thing."

"Right. She can't, but we can. You just think about it for a while and anytime you want to talk, just let the guard know. I'll listen anytime."

Weachter got up, picked up the scattered papers, and left the prisoner staring at the blank wall.

Dodson sat in his prison cell, the world slipping away from him. Anger permeated his thoughts as his chances for freedom grew dimmer.

Henninger, his mentor, was in prison in Illinois, but Dodson had learned from his wife that Henninger intended to return to Pennsylvania and finish him off.

Dodson might have wondered how it could be that he had managed to dance with the law for so many years, winning so much of the time, only to be hounded by a devil woman. He must have reflected on that drunken summer afternoon in July when he and Henninger had picked out Debbie Kline coming out of the hospital, and how Henninger had decided to show Dodson "how to really pick up a woman with ease." And how Henninger had slit her throat after they had both had sex with her, and how she had stood silent before them, as if defying them in death. Whatever his thoughts, Dorothy was zeroing in on him quickly, and so, too, were the police.

At the Kline house Jane and Dick wondered what kind of success this psychic would have. Would this woman find their daughter? Could she, in two days, do what dozens had been unable to do in six months? Was it worth being hopeful, only to be disappointed again?

Before Dorothy left for the hotel with her husband and son, Jane cornered her in Debbie's room.

"Mrs. Allison, I just want to know the truth," Jane said in her nasal, Southern accent. "Please, I beg you, tell me the truth. Is my daughter still alive? Do you see her living?" the poor mother struggled.

For the first time, Dorothy was going to break one of her cardinal rules.

"No," Dorothy said, taking the woman's hand into her own. "I'm afraid I don't. All I can tell you is that in my vision I feel she died quickly, not long after you missed her." The grieving mother sat on the bed and wept

Before Dorothy left on Sunday evening, she told Weachter and the two reporters that they should keep "doubles" in mind. The area in which Debbie would be found had double letters in it; the incidents she predicted might happen twice; and the murderers, of which there were two, had performed such crimes twice before.

She told Dick Kline that she sensed this was the second murder in Ms family, that he had had a close relative killed not too far from where Debbie was taken. Surprised, Dick corroborated the fact that his uncle had been mysteriously murdered only seven years before in the general area in which Debbie had disappeared.

Before she drove back to Nutley with Bob and Paul, the tired and cold psychic told Weachter that Debbie had not been buried. She would be found on a high spot from which great expanses could be seen and that she would be on some sort of "line." Again, she was bothered by a large plastic sheet that she was beginning to think might be the swimming pool.

"Look in two directions," she told him. "If we've been looking south, then head north tomorrow and see if any of the clues fit."

She also promised to undergo hypnosis with Dr. Ribner on the following Friday. At that tune she would "get in the car with Debbie" and drive the last miles with her.

"Hopefully, I'll never make it to Ribner's," she said, hugging everyone good-bye. "I think you're going to find Debbie this week. Before Friday."

Monday's Record Herald headlines were about Dorothy's prediction of the attempted break and her prophecy that Debbie Kline would be found within days. A photo was run of Dorothy holding a Princeton T-shirt, which had been given her by the Hearsts. It had belonged to their daughter, Patty. The article accompanying the photo described the psychic's more famous involvements.

Richard Dodson read the papers and thought about Weachter's words and Dorothy's visions. That afternoon he told the guard to have word sent to Weachter that he had something to say to the officer.

On Tuesday evening Dorothy spoke with reporter Bob Cox about further feelings she was getting from her home regarding the case. She told him that she felt something "drastic" would happen in the area within six hours. As the reporter told it in the paper, she said, "I see a brick building. Watch the corners. There could be a knifing. The building looks like the one I saw before."

As before, Dorothy's prediction was accurate.

"At 10:45 P.M. a second assault on a matron at Franklin County Detention Center was made by an inmate," Cox wrote. "It came less than four hours after the telephone call."

Again Dorothy had foreseen an event at the jail in which Richard Dodson was being held. She was focusing so acutely on the prisoner that she was picking up other prisoners' vibrations. Weachter was excited by the news.

It was on Wednesday morning that Paul Weachter and three other officials drove with Richard Dodson to the point where he claimed he could find Debbie Kline's body. Heading north over the double low bridges on Route 16, they drove fifty-one miles toward the Franklin-Huntington county lines. As they approached the mountainous area where the body was supposedly located, they passed a barrage of yellow warning signs and then, a large yellow billboard advertising rooms at "Burnt Cabins," a small resort area.

Dodson pointed them to an area high on the mountainside that commanded a view of the valleys. This was where they had taken the quiet, frightened girl that summer day and shattered her life. Now, snow covered everything.

They parked the car and walked toward a pile of rubble. One of the policemen picked up a blue plastic swimming pool that was on top of a pile and saw a white shoe and part of a leg sticking out.

The body, essentially a skeleton now, was dressed in a white pants suit and white shoes. The remains could not be readily identified as male or female, and the autopsy would have to be delayed until the body had thawed. Cumberland County Coroner Dr. Robert J. McConanghie eventually attributed death to hemorrhaging from a neck wound.

"It's hard to pinpoint," he said. "When you don't have skin or tissue or a windpipe to work with. There was evidence of blood around the neck."

Using teeth, chest X-rays, hair, and clothing found on the corpse, the police were able to identify the body as Deborah Sue Kline's.

News spread quickly in the quiet communities that the psychic's predictions had come to pass. Dorothy was in Florida working on the other case she had taken on when she heard that Debbie had been found. She had several other cases demanding her help, so the success of the Kline case gave her a new boost of energy.

A confession to kidnapping and rape came from Richard Dodson the following day. At the same time he named Ronald Henninger as Debbie's murderer. As Dorothy had foreseen, plenty of doubles were involved, including double rapist-murderers.

After Debbie's burial, the community continued its tug-of-war over the use of the psychic. Different religious groups had their own reasons for either not wanting her to be credited or wanting her to receive proper reward for her work. In an interview in the Public Opinion, Sergeant Hussack said he was not one to join the bandwagon of accolades.

"To the best of my knowledge," he told reporter Marie Lanser, "she hasn't helped us. We weren't pursuing her predictions - we weren't relying on Mrs. Allison."

The following Wednesday's edition ran two letters from irate citizens, shaking an angry finger at Hussack, under the headline of "State Police Said Unfair to Mrs. Allison." Both letters were from Chambersburg residents who did not know the Klines personally. One said "Give credit where it is due - to Mrs. Allison. May God bless Mrs. Allison as she continues the fine work she does of helping police find missing children."

In pointing out that Sergeant Hussack was "downplaying Mrs. Allison's role," the same writer enumerated all the details given by the psychic and the consequent discoveries. Dorothy had a strong support base.

But was God on her side? In this religious community it was a controversial question.

As far as the Klines were concerned, God was a topic better left alone. Jane Kline declined to discuss the subject. For months she had placed Debbie's picture on her white Bible, always left open on the mantel. Everyday the desperate mother took hold of the Book and prayed. She read till she could feel no more.

Richard Kline said, "This kind of thing makes us wonder. Something like this happens and you don't know which way to turn. Feels like a fence walker: either side looks wrong."

Both of the Klines credited Dorothy with being the strongest influence in locating their daughter. One of the local Methodist ministers, however, took exception. In an article entitled "Psychics Forbidden in Biblical Times," Reverend Glen A. Miller of Greencastle saw the psychic's involvement as an omen of universal bad times.

After thanking the Lord for returning Debbie's body, he went on to say "that it is recorded in I Samuel 28" where "Saul wanted to hear from God. He sought answers in the appointed ways and God refused to give answers. His refusal came because of wickedness and disobedience in the government." So Saul sought a medium.

The minister emphasized that psychics are forbidden in other parts of the scriptures, as well. "It is a sad commentary on the spiritual level of our nation when psychics are called upon to give answers."

And yet another prominently placed argument was run by a concerned pastor from State Line, Pennsylvania. Pastor Fisler of Trinity United Brethren Church wrote that the Record Herald had given "extensive coverage to Dorothy Allison and her role," overlooking the "community prayer service held at the Antrim Faith Baptist Church on January 6, 1977."

Reminding the readers that "God can still perform miracles" and that "if you want an amazing turn of events, consider the stated purpose of that January 6 prayer service and what actually happened last week when the suspect from the Franklin County Detention Center stepped forth to show authorities where Debbie's body was buried.

"It seems to me that prayer was answered explicitly. It would be good to see headlines that say 'God Answered Prayer' instead of continual headlines telling about a psychic's predictions."

Dorothy was irritated by all the religious hooplah. It was her being called a devil woman that had triggered fear in the incarcerated suspect, however. She felt that perhaps, in this case, being partnered with the "devil" was a godsend.

The Washington Township Police made Dorothy an honorary member of the department and presented her with a badge.

In February stories about Dorothy began to appear over the AP wires across America, in police journals, and in the Star and National Enquirer. Each month she would receive hundreds of letters begging for her help. All the letters were handled by Lubertazzi and his wife. Many of the letters would be from spouses whose "better halves" had absconded with their children. "I know they've got to be in the Pittsburgh area," the plea would say, "couldn't you help me find them? Look at these faces, wouldn't you miss them too?"

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