16 Minutes: Was the Death of Baby Matthew an Accident or Murder?

By Diane Marger Moore

A grizzly arson case leads an Indianapolis prosecutor to an infant’s coldblooded killer in this chilling true crime by the author of Inconvenience Gone.
 
On the morning of March 6, 1993, an intense fire broke out in a tiny nursery. Sixteen minutes later, firefighters had extinguished the blaze. The room was burned so severely, that virtually nothing was recognizable . . . but they were told to look for a baby. What they discovered was almost too gruesome for words. Not only the baby’s charred remains, but an unsettling fact: the child’s parents were home at the time the fire broke out.
 
The arson squad declared the fire suspicious and investigators determined it was arson. But if it truly was arson, what was the motive? Along with the tenacious and determined Detective Leslie Van Buskirk, Marion County Prosecutor Diane Marger Moore persisted for more than two years to get justice for Baby Matthew Wise. In 16 Minutes, she recounts the incredible story—and the shocking revelations she made.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Open Road Integrated Media
• Release date: Aug 24, 2021
• ISBN: 9781952225819

Book preview

Chapter One

It was cold and gray as only an Indiana winter day can be. It had been an uneventful morning when my telephone rang. It was my boss, chief trial counsel for the Marion County Prosecutor’s Office.

D’you know anything about Brian Poindexter dismissing an arson murder case against a guy named Wise, who supposedly killed his eight-week-old baby?

"I didn’t even know that Brian had an arson case. He’s never mentioned it to me and I certainly didn’t agree to dismiss anything. What’s this about?" I asked.

My boss was to the point. Some bitch of a police detective wants a meeting. Fifteen minutes in the conference room. He hung up.

Unbeknownst to me, of course, that call in 1995 was the beginning of a treacherous and testing quest to bring to trial and to convict a despicable murderer, represented by capable defense lawyers, who planned and executed the unspeakable death of an infant only eight weeks old.

The dead baby’s name was Matthew Dean Wise and it was for his soul that we were seeking justice.

The unaffectionate nickname the homicide detective gave to the person she believed was the killer was Sharkeyes, because she recognized the pitiless, remorseless, deadliness in his unblinking black eyes.

***

A few months earlier, I had been appointed by the newly elected Republican prosecutor as the chief deputy arson prosecutor for Marion County, Indiana, which includes Indianapolis, the state capital. I took over all pending arson cases and worked directly with the fire investigation unit. The unit consisted of veteran detectives and fire investigators-fighters who teamed up to examine crimes that involved fire or explosives. I was the supervisor of all lawyers working on arson-related cases.

It was me who decided which cases would be filed, meaning that the accused would be criminally charged. I also had the authority to dismiss arson cases—which I was rarely inclined to do.

My predecessor was a lawyer with maybe two years of experience. She felt empowered by her possession of an official police radio. She talked like a TV cop.

As far as I knew, she also had never won a case. She hadn’t a clue how to investigate or try an arson offense. While her willingness to go to scenes and faithfully file charges against suspects had made her a well-liked part of the arson squad, her credentials as a trial lawyer and prosecutor were a vast relief to anyone charged with arson.

The chances of being convicted by her were so low that even plea bargaining an arson case had been a very hard sell for the prosecutor’s office during her tenure. Be that as it may, there was a less than enthusiastic response to my appointment. I was summarily cast by the local legal gossips as a silk stocking lawyer who had worked mostly for people of significant wealth. I was hired by the election-winning new Republican boss for a challenging job that provided more personal satisfaction for me than just a paycheck. And I brought with me a great deal of trial experience. I was offered almost no advice nor direction from the office’s so-called experienced prosecutors, and to them I was a complete unknown who had no history of criminal prosecution and definitely wasn’t from around here. The arson unit was similarly chagrinned with the substitution.

The ill feelings were never acted on out in the open. It was more enigmatic. There would be a two a.m. radio or telephone call about, say, a house fire. I would leave our snug bed, throw on jeans and a tee shirt and a seasonal coat, climb into my un-garaged car and listen to the police radio. The fire investigation team communicated over the air using numerical codes that no one shared with me.

I guessed they wanted to see if I would faint at the sight of a char-broiled body or balk at driving into the most violent neighborhoods. They were disappointed. I managed to locate the fire scenes, listen carefully to whatever the team had to say, even if the fire was obviously accidental and had absolutely nothing to do with arson. I’d keep my annoyance to myself. Then I’d head back home.

Poindexter was not assigned to the arson unit but was one of the mid-level good ol’ boys in the prosecutor’s office. He had been a prosecutor for quite a long time. He was mildly good looking; his lawyer wife worked for a big firm and she earned the bulk of the family’s income. He kept a Glock semi-automatic pistol stuffed in his waistband even when he was sitting at a computer. I guessed that screening cases could be dangerous—the computer could explode, you could get a paper cut, whatever.

When I saw the unrestrained pistol wobble around his beltline when he sat down and got up, I wondered what the odds were of him leaving all three safety latches open and blowing off his do-dah. I guessed it was fairly high since he had the pistol in his belt. This meant that, in his mind, he needed to be able to get to his gun and fire fast, and to unlatch a Glock’s three safeties would, in his mind, take too long. My presumption was that his Glock was almost always loaded and all safeties were off.

In the months that I had been in the office, no one had ever mentioned that Brian Poindexter was assigned an arson case.

I dialed his extension, figuring that he could fill me in on the details of what was up. He didn’t answer. So I was going in cold.

Fourteen minutes later, I walked into the cramped conference room. It was a windowless, narrow, longish space with a table and about ten chairs jammed under it, and little room to squeeze around. The table and chairs were metallic, scratched, bruised, shaky, and at least a generation old. There was a small TV glowing soundlessly in the corner. The fluorescent lighting overhead was bluish cold like almost everything else I had experienced since joining the prosecutor’s office.

Cale Bradford, my direct boss and the chief of felonies, was already seated on one side of the table and beside him was a trim, white-haired man who I guessed was a law enforcement officer. Beside him, an attractive and slender blonde woman, about ten years younger than my forty-two years, dressed in a flowery skirt and white blouse. Disturbingly, she seemed primed and ready to pounce across the table. I figured she had to be the bitch.

What the heck was it? She radiated what I can only describe as pure hatred and visceral loathing. As I entered the room, she gave me a laser zap with her espresso-brown eyes. For a long time, she never took her eyes off me.

At the end of the table, opposite the bitch, was Brian Poindexter. A skinny manila folder lay on the table in front of him. He looked dead-eyed at the wall and said nothing. I noticed, with a certain amount of relief, that he did not pack the Glock.

Cale introduced me to Sergeant Steve West, the gray-haired cop, and Detective Leslie Van Buskirk, the bitch.

No one moved as much as a shoulder or nodded a head and no hands were shaken.

Cale started the meeting by asking me, What do you know about the William Wise case?

I honestly responded, Nothing; absolutely nothing.

I glanced at Poindexter, who remained not here and silent. Cale looked at him. Well, you know then, Brian. What’s the case about and why should it be dismissed?

Poindexter looked at me with mild scorn around his eyes and lips. But I also saw a glint of alarm in his eyes. His haughty tone attempted to make it clear that it was I who needed clueing in.

Before you arrived, he started, seemingly referring to the new political regime as a whole, as well as me, it was decided that we were dismissing this case because it can’t be won. There is conflicting evidence. The arson investigator waited too long to decide that the fire was intentionally set and the defendant has retained counsel. The case would be totally circumstantial and it’s too messed up to try.

Cale almost swallowed his tongue as he tried, and badly failed, to maintain a level-headed tone. So why did you hold on to it for this long? And why didn’t you discuss it with Diane?

There was no response.

To be fair, it was not unusual for one elected prosecutor’s regime to hold over dismissals and to dump them all on the desk of the next prosecutor after a lost election. The custom was that the newly elected prosecutor would take the heat for losing these cases, and might even be accused by the former prosecutor of being afraid to try the tough ones if a case was dismissed. The new prosecutor could also be branded as incompetent if the new deputy prosecutors tried and lost the cases.

Cale understood such politics far better than I did, but I certainly got the gist.

I had no idea if this was or would be a high-profile case or not, since I’d never heard of it.

I glanced at the bitch; her face was flushed, her neck muscles were strung out, her fingers were tensed. I thought of a cartoon dragon with steam puffing out of her ears. I have excellent hearing. I heard a low, warning growl emit from the back of her throat. The bitch seemed to be reaching a boiling point.

Poindexter directed his comments to Cale. I didn’t think I had to discuss this case with anyone... not until I read the memo you sent out yesterday. So I left you a message. I’ve already told Jimmy Voyles that the case will be dismissed... I gave him my word.

That last line snapped the bitch’s head back.

James Hugh Voyles was a well-known Indianapolis criminal defense lawyer who was as smooth and charismatic as they came. He wore elegant, well-tailored suits, white starched shirts, and oozed charm. He was revered in the courthouse for both his legal prowess and political prominence. He was lower lip deep in Democratic Party machine politics. The Democrats had been in control of county and state offices for decades. Scott Newman, the newly elected prosecutor who had hired me, was a Republican and had wrested the office from very long-time Democratic control.

I had met Voyles only once. I didn’t much like his plastic smile, big-paw handshake, or his solicitous yet condescending attitude. I had never tried a case against him, but I had tried cases with and against his ilk for years.

The "I gave him my word" of his explanation was like a lighted match tossed into a big puddle of aviation gasoline.

The bitch shot up out of her chair and the chair’s legs squawked loudly against the linoleum flooring. She caught me off guard with that move, and my mouth may have dropped open at the fury of her attack.

You hoping to get a fuckin’ job from Voyles!? the bitch roared into Poindexter’s face. I saw the fine spray of her spittle in the blue light. That’s got to be it! You sure don’t give a rusty fuck about the kid Wise murdered.

I felt better that he did not have his Glock in his belt. But while he seemed a bit taken aback by the attack, he was not overwhelmed. I wondered whether other women in his life got in his face in a similar manner.

In fact, there was gossip that Poindexter was preparing to leave the office and to move to more lucrative private practice. This is customary for top-ranking prosecutors, but line deputy prosecutors like Poindexter were rarely fired, and most like him continued semi-competently in their jobs from one administration to another.

But I was puzzled. Was it possible that the bitch actually knew something about a job offer for Poindexter? I really doubted it.

She slipped around the table and dropped a 15x18-inch photograph in front of me. It looked mostly black with shades of gray. It was of a room burned from the ceiling to the floor. I could virtually smell the stench.

I looked closer. I saw piled grayish ashes that reached to roughly five or six inches above the floor.

The bitch loomed over my shoulder. She pounded her forefinger into the photograph in front of me.

Where’s Waldo!? the bitch demanded of me.

I looked closer.

Where the fuck is Waldo!?

As a mother of two daughters, I was familiar with the children’s books of busy drawings of people and places creating a camouflage, and the hidden little boy/man with glasses and a horizontal stripped shirt and a knit cap you are challenged to locate in the drawing. That’s Waldo.

I looked more closely at the color photograph. It was dreadful to imagine that a two-month-old child had been incinerated in this room. I scoured the picture, trying to gain a sense of the room itself. I noticed a small bit of white and maybe some pink in the upper corner. I took off my glasses so I could more meticulously inspect the little specks of light material.

I saw what looked like a tiny baby penis, and some white, maybe diaper, material, directly below it.

There were no arms or legs attached to this miniscule portion of an infant boy’s genitalia because almost the entire body was burned down to baked organs and ashes. Only a slight amount of lower abdomen, a small appendage, and a burnt half of an infant’s head were what was left of Baby Matthew.

I swallowed. The bitch was still standing over me pointing to the photograph.

She said, in a very clear and accusative way that was not lost on Poindexter, He killed that baby and Poindexter wants him to get away with it! She shared some additional salty and sexually demeaning characterizations of Poindexter, never taking her eyes off him. She then turned to me and demanded to know, Have you got any balls?

Well, I don’t, and never did. But balls are not what win arson cases. I took my time, and then I told the bitch in my most tactful way, so I didn’t sound too ballsy, We don’t dismiss murder cases, especially arson murder cases, unless there are good reasons to do so.

I pushed the photograph across the table to where Cale could see it. He was the one with authority to make the decision. To Van Buskirk (oh poop!!! That’s the first time I thought of her as anything except the bitch), I asked, What was Wise’s motive?

Who the fuck knows? Van Buskirk responded. I think he hates kids. This guy is really sick. Wait until you see the video of his interview from Elkhart. He’s got shark eyes. He has no conscience, no respect for life or the law, no remorse. The man is a killer who never blinks.

Something is odd, I thought. I asked, Why would there be an interview in Elkhart? I was thinking, if Wise’s baby had been killed in Marion County, which is Indianapolis, there would be no investigation in Elkhart.

Van Buskirk explained, "Before our infant was killed, Wise was the prime suspect in the homicide and feticide of a teenager and her unborn twins. About a year before his marriage and the death of Baby Matthew, Wise was dating an Elkhart teenager who became pregnant with twins. Wise was the last person to see her alive. He claimed that they met the evening of her death and after spending a few hours together, she dropped him off in a parking lot. The girl never made it home.

Wise volunteered to talk to the police, he gave a videotape-recorded interview and told the detectives that he wanted to help find the missing teenage mother. When the body of the teen was found later in a wooded area, she and her twins were dead. Blunt force trauma—she was beaten to death. The killing of Rae Ann Symons was ruled a homicide. Wise was the best and only suspect, but the Elkhart police could not make the case and it remained unsolved. Wise’s current wife, Michelle, was his ‘alibi’ in the Elkhart case.

I was surprised and halfway pleased by the way the former bitch presented her facts. I sat thinking for a few seconds longer than I usually did. To Van Buskirk, I guess, it seemed that I was unimpressed.

Well? she demanded.

I looked at Brian Poindexter. He avoided my eyes. He was writhing and I didn’t mind that. Cale was pokerfaced and said nothing. Van Buskirk’s partner was slyly amused but mum.

I turned back to Poindexter and in my most judicial tone and no-appeals-accepted voice said, You’re off this case. Thank you. You will have no further responsibility for what happens, so you can leave now, unless Cale has anything for you.

With a sneer on his lips, he lifted himself out of his chair slowly, took a deep breath while he struggled to mind his tongue, and glared venomously at me. He turned to Cale. I gave Voyles my word this case would be dismissed, he blurted. I also told Judge Barney that I would be dismissing the case and explained why I intended to dismiss it. He dropped the file with a noisy slap on top of the picture in front of me, turned and walked out of the conference room. He contemptuously left the door open.

No one uttered a word.

After Poindexter was gone, I got up, walked over, and closed the door. I said, I don’t want anything we say to get back to Voyles.

I quick studied their faces. I did not believe that secrecy would be a problem.

Chapter Two

Cale made it clear the disposition of the Baby Wise case was my decision.

Politically, he explained, the case should be tried. A newly elected prosecutor hopes to solidify relationships with the local police department. Besides, winning a difficult case was a way to show his constituents why they were correct to elect him and not the former prosecutor. On the other hand, if the case was lost, it would reflect badly on the current prosecutor, which was exactly the way it was planned by the former.

The only way through for me was easy. Own it! Make the disposition of the case my decision alone, and hence my loss and not the higher ups’ loss if the jury acquitted. Cool for them. And fine for me too. Own it! works.

Since I was not an elected official, and an unlikely candidate ever to be elected to anything, I would make my decision based entirely upon the evidence as I saw it, not the fraught demands of a law enforcement officer or department or politician.

I was the one who must try the case and I must prove it. I didn’t care if it would be hard or if I could lose. What I cared about was whether I would become convinced, beyond all glimmer of doubt, that William Wise murdered his son.

I pensively exited the conference room and returned to my small window office. I asked myself again, why would a father kill his own eight-week-old son? Can I prove it if he did? Far more troubling: what if I can’t prove it and he gets away with it?

I would not allow that grim possibility to remain for an extra millisecond in my mind.

Instead, I thought about my husband Steve’s face when each of our two daughters was born. He was in the operating room with me and the instant he saw the girl’s tiny face, that look crept into his eyes. It was pure, unadulterated love.

What would provoke any parent to kill her or his own child?

I reminded myself that the State does not have to prove the why. Despite all the television and murder mystery novel emphasis on motive, the why, motive is not an element of the crime of murder. I was not required to prove why William Wise killed his son Matthew, only that he did.

What would Van Buskirk and our witnesses have to prove—to me and me alone—that would enable me to persuade a jury to convict a deliberate and cruel monster?

No need to go into why, but I’ve long relied upon the law to light my way. The law lets me know what I am required to prove if the case goes to trial. Later is when I will have to consider what additional facts a jury will insist upon before it will convict.

The jury always wants more than the law requires is a truth the best trial lawyers know and that I do not underestimate.

I printed out the legal requirements and put the page on the metal ledge near my window that served as the only personal space in my cramped office: A person who knowingly or intentionally kills another human being commits murder, a felony. IC 35-42-1-1.

This meant I had to prove that William Wise was a person and knowingly or intentionally killed Matthew Wise and that Baby Matthew was a human being.

I thought about it. Of course Wise was a person and Baby Matthew was a human being. How would I prove that Wise knowingly or intentionally killed the infant? Harder yet, how would I prove Wise’s reason for killing his innocent child? Although I had no legal obligation to prove motive, the jurors, or at least one of them, would want to know why.

From our short meeting, it seemed to me Van Buskirk hadn’t a clue as to motive. Her unsupported hunch that William Wise did not like children wasn’t going to cut it. Not nearly enough.

I urged myself to focus on whether there was sufficient evidence to prosecute the crime. But I kept drifting back to motive.

As so often happens when the physical and intellectual going gets really rough, an urgent craving for chocolate swept over me. I reached into my stash of M&Ms and munched as I pondered.

To prove motive may have been impossible before 1994 when a dreadful woman named Susan Smith, from South Carolina, entered the public knowledge. Smith was the mother of two boys: one a three-year-old toddler and the other a fourteen-month-old baby, both healthy and adorable.

She put the children in her car, buckled them in their car seats, and slowly let the car roll into a lake. The children drowned. I cannot fathom their terror, and wonder if they could have seen their mother watching as they fought for breath and lost consciousness.

Smith infamously appeared on television to beg the Black man who she claimed had carjacked her and kidnapped the children to release them.

Soon, her story completely fell apart; Smith confessed to the murders. The public was stunned as this tragedy played out, particularly since the public’s heart had been at first with Smith, the mother, a white woman, and against African American males in general.

Few could imagine the truth. But with her confession and conviction, the public could no longer plausibly deny that there are some people, even parents, who are killers of their own children.

Even so, no murder prosecution of a parent is easy. Few jurors are willing to believe that parents, with malice aforethought, will kill their own children. Jurors are notoriously resistant to the notion that this kind of gross deviance from the expected is even humanly possible.

I thought, I must simply prove that a parent killed his child, in a most horrible way, by burning him to death.

I tried to convince myself of how much I love a challenge. I began to read the fire investigation report in Poindexter’s file.

The fire investigation report was written by David Lepper, a fire investigator from the Indianapolis Fire Department (IDF) arson squad. I’d heard about Lepper, although I had never prosecuted a case with him before. What I had heard was uninspiring. Word was that Lepper was adequate and nearly ready to retire. That meant that he may have given short shrift to the investigation; although it was hard to imagine that Van Buskirk, in her scary bitch role, had not pushed him to the max to determine the cause of the fire.

Usually, the reports I received from the fire department were spreadsheets with the time of call out, time of response, personnel on the vehicle (by numbers), certain activities indicated by a very brief or numeric description, and then the time of recall. But this case included a complete write-up of the investigation in addition to the usual chronology. Lepper’s grammar and syntax were less than perfect, but I got the point.

Which was as follows: If we believed what the department was told by William Wise, the fire lasted a total of sixteen minutes from start to finish. More precisely, William Wise looked at his watch at five a.m. when he went to the bathroom. From that time, to the time William and Michelle Wise claimed to have first heard the fire alarm, to the time when the fire department arrived and extinguished the fire, was sixteen minutes.

I had to repeat this to myself because the time was so very short. I recalled the photograph: everything in the room, and I mean everything—wood, metal, flooring, everything—was burned beyond recognition and to ashes.

The fire department put out the flames of the fire, which were only in Baby Matthew’s tiny bedroom area, in less than three minutes.

What they saw shocked and immediately raised concerns among the firefighters. The fire had been burning at an alarm-detectable level for less than thirteen minutes, yet everything more than six inches off the floor was burned beyond identification: the crib, the changing table, other furniture, and lamps in the room.

All the firemen knew that such complete burning doesn’t happen in an accidental fire. It didn’t take an arson investigator to realize something was wrong. Lepper was required to choose among three official ways of describing the fire. He could call it a) accidental; b) suspicious; or c) arson. He had designated the Baby Wise fire as suspicious.

That posed a problem. If the fire investigator couldn’t determine on the scene that the fire was intentionally set, then how could I prove beyond a reasonable doubt that it was?

I looked at several additional photographs taken the morning of the fire. These were the only photographs in the file.

I made a note: where are all the other photographs and other information? I knew there would probably be a video taken at the Wise home as the investigators dug out the debris and sifted through it. Photographs would be taken at every stage in the investigation of the death of an infant. There would also be an autopsy and photographs from that autopsy. Yet nothing in Poindexter’s file. Note: check with Van Buskirk.

Sixteen minutes, one death, two parents.

I looked to see when the parents had called 911. No phone call from the residence. I wrote another note in the margin of the report: why didn’t they call from their house? Why didn’t they take the baby with them when they left the house? What the heck? Were either of them burned trying to save this child?

911 calls had come in from neighbors’ houses. One call was from Michelle Wise, Matthew’s mother, made at 5:09 a.m. Another call came from a different neighbor’s house at 5:10. That call was made by William Wise. Note: where are the 911 call tape recordings? What did the parents say? Why weren’t they together? What about the house phone?

The fire was extinguished by 5:16 a.m.

I also wondered why Poindexter really wanted to dismiss the case. Did the former prosecutor approve the dismissal of the case as Poindexter claimed, and if so, why? Was it about losing the case or about something else?

I called my husband Steve at his office. Will you please check all of our smoke detectors when you get home?

Steve did not even ask questions. He recognized that my job as an arson prosecutor had heightened my concerns about house fires. He did not yet know anything about the Baby Wise case. Yet, at my insistence, he had already installed smoke detectors in every room in our home, including the garage, laundry room, and attic. He promised that he would check every one as soon as he got home. I told him for the umpteenth time that I would be home a little late. We said I love yous and hung up. I would explain the situation to Steve after we put the kids in bed.

I called Lepper and asked to meet him at the unit. He agreed but seemed surprised when I told him it was about the William Wise case. I thought that Poindexter was dropping that case, Lepper volunteered.

Why, do you doubt that Wise killed the baby? I asked.

Lepper didn’t hesitate, Hell no, he did it. I just don’t know if we can prove it.

My jaw ached from the effort not to say what I was thinking out loud. Well, that’s my problem, not yours. Just the facts, Lepper, just the facts.

When I reached the arson unit, Lepper had his file laid out and sat down with me. He was a tallish man with short, military-style hair. He seemed in good shape but had a stoop. I identified it immediately as back pain. Many firefighters suffer back injuries while carrying people or animals out of fires, or being hit with fire debris, or from moving heavy objects, holding high-velocity water hoses, or from falling during their efforts to extinguish a fire. The fireman’s stoop is an occupational hazard.

I respected this man; he had risked his life and his health for decades to rescue people and pets. The pay was low and the risks very high. Inhaling the smoke and toxic fumes, falling, burns, back and neck problems—all were part of the daily grind of working firemen everywhere. Whether he was a great investigator or not, he had earned the respect that I gave him.

Lepper spread his report out on the table and we examined it together. He said that the first firefighters at the scene did not realize that an infant had been in the nursery and so the fire was put out quickly but without a real search for a survivor or body. Within a few seconds, they were advised to look for an infant in the room and it took them some time to isolate the tiny white material, body part, and charred extremities.

Lepper said, Everyone knew that this fire was no accident. Too fast, too hot, too little left. Too horrible that this child was incinerated nearly to nothingness.

The fire investigation unit was called in. Later, homicide would arrive to take control of the scene, but not before it was cleared and signed off on by the fire department and the fire investigation unit.

Lepper explained how he conducted his investigation. He started outside the Wise house and worked his way inward to Baby Matthew’s bedroom. I always go from the area of least burn to the area of most burn.

He said that the fire was located only within the confines of the baby’s room, which was the size of a small walk-in closet. No more than, say, eight feet by five feet. Once in the room, he sifted through the debris with the same equipment that a gold miner might use. I looked at every piece that could be examined and then sifted through the rest looking for any possible source of the fire. Once I sifted through the debris, I threw it out the bedroom window into the yard for further examination.

I’d been to several fire scenes as a prosecutor and previously as a defense lawyer, both civil and criminal. You never forget the smell. It lingers, even days after the fire is extinguished. Char stench. It gets into your hair, clothing, shoes. Even worse, the smell of burning flesh is instantly, sickeningly recognizable. It almost smells of agony, although most victims of a fire succumb to the smoke and lack of oxygen, not from burning. That ghastly odor is never forgotten. I wondered if this child had died before he was burned to death. It was not likely. Not enough time. Just sixteen minutes.

Lepper continued to describe his actions. Unlike most fire scenes, the sifting only took a few hours because there was so little left to look through. He had sifted about six inches of charred debris.

The remains of Baby Matthew were covered with a small tarp so the investigator knew where the remains had been found after the fire was extinguished. But because of the burst of water that had been used by firemen to drown the fire, the location of the baby’s remains was not a reliable indicator of where he had been at the time of the fire. The water or firefighters could easily have moved the corpse, if it could even be called that. The lifeless remains, both human and inanimate, were documented in photographs and a video recording.

When the debris was painstakingly removed from the floor of the room, Lepper inspected the floor for burn patterns, telltale markings that are evidence of the type of burning caused by an accelerant, that might help him determine where and how the fire started. To locate the source of the fire allows the fire investigator to look at possible accidental causes and other purposeful causes.

Although there was evidence of burning on the floor and even a pattern, Lepper explained that he did not want to give his opinion of how the fire started until he had additional information. He did identify a burn pattern but wanted to be cautious about making a hasty determination about the cause of the fire.

That’s why I called it suspicious and not intentional, he told me. I wanted to have all accidental causes ruled out by an expert, like an electrical engineer. This was a homicide and I didn’t want to be accused of calling it arson before I had ruled out every possible accidental cause. Especially since Wise was one of us.

One of who? I asked without comprehension.

He worked for IFD; didn’t you know that?

Wise was a firefighter? I asked incredulously. Up to this point, I had no idea who Wise was or what he did for a living.

Wise worked for the Indianapolis Fire Department as a dispatcher. He was IFD, one of us.

I painfully realized how much I needed to learn about this case. The facts that everyone took for granted, and I didn’t know, could be extremely important. My head ached at my own ignorance, but I nevertheless began to think about how fires actually start.

A fire can be started by a number of accidental events or an act of nature. A fire can be started by faulty wiring, a lit cigarette, forgetting to turn off the stove, the heat from electrical appliances (coffee pots and curling irons are frequent causes), or from other unintentional means. Because there are many unnatural but noncriminal ways of a fire starting, to prosecute an arson case first requires the State to prove that the fire was not caused by lightning or wind or any other act of nature. Then the prosecution must prove that the fire was not an accident. Only after proving that the fire was not an act of God or accidental can a prosecution move forward to prove the intentional act of arson.

Finally, after all of that, the prosecution must prove who started the arson fire.

In fact, most arsonists are caught because they burn themselves in the fire. They may leave a container with the accelerant in the area, which is then traced back to them, or brag about the fire later and get caught through their admissions. The identities of arsonists are frequently confirmed when scene photos are reviewed and the suspected arsonist is in the crowd watching the fire and the firefighters extinguish the blaze.

Most arsonists love to watch a fire burn. Many have a history of setting fires: from playing with matches as a child and setting things (and pets) on fire to the real thing—burning down a car or a building. But the very worst of them use fire as a weapon, no less deadly than a gun, to kill another human being.

Lepper said that he inventoried the items he was able to identify in the room. Several blobs of plastic were found; melted and degraded, but blobs nonetheless. In the meantime, they interviewed witnesses, searched the rest of the house, and spoke with the dead newborn’s parents, Michelle and William Wise.

The Arson Investigation Unit was composed of teams consisting of one fire investigator and one detective. Lepper’s Indianapolis Police Department (IPD) partner worked with him to take statements from everyone involved.

William and Michelle Wise were asked to describe Matthew’s bedroom and everything in it so the debris could be matched with the room’s contents.

Although they were interviewed shortly after Baby Matthew’s body was found, Lepper said that William Wise was calm, cool, and anxious to help. Lepper knew that Wise was a dispatcher for IFD but knew nothing else about the man. Lepper had not met him before.

I asked Lepper to describe the house.

It was a split floor plan with three bedrooms, a bath, kitchen, and living area on the top floor, and downstairs was another living area and a bedroom. There was a fire alarm system installed in the house. It was there in the house when Bill and Michelle bought it a few months before. Matthew’s room was the first door on the left as you entered the upstairs bedroom hallway.

Lepper said that despite all the work he had done, at first, he could not explain how the fire started. I had suspicions, but no conclusions. I ruled out any electrical defect. No lightning or other natural event caused the fire. The rest of the house was intact; it had not even been damaged much by smoke because the fire was extinguished so quickly.

I really couldn’t fault Lepper for wanting to be certain before labeling the fire arson. Still, I wondered if his hesitancy was because William Wise worked for the Indianapolis Fire Department. I’m always looking for a hidden agenda, I scolded myself, because there usually is one.

After his physical inspection of the property, but before he released the scene or finalized his report, Lepper had wanted to hear what the occupants said about the fire. So he and his partner interviewed William and Michelle Wise.

Tell me what the Wises are like, I asked.

Lepper’s take on the interviews were that William Wise was more than strange; he was disturbing. Bill is small. Not just short, but thin and wiry, with very dark eyes. His face was blank when we talked to him. Like, no expression, no guilt, no grief, no nothing. Lepper thought a moment and I could tell that he was reliving the interview. Wise answered our questions and seemed to have thought about his answers before we asked them. He, like, um, seemed like he was enjoying the attention.

What about Michelle? I asked. I really wanted to know about this mother who didn’t try to save her son.

Michelle is a real dog: fat, swollen looking face, stringy brown hair, no makeup, and thick legs. I mean the kind of woman who no one asks out. His tone was dismissive. As they said at school, too stupid to live, too mean to die.

I left the unit annoyingly puzzled. The fire must have been accelerated, but testing of the debris failed to reveal any of the usual accelerants. There had been no gasoline, kerosene, or lighter fluid found in any of the debris, although William Wise was a smoker and there were matches and lighter fluid in the home. Dave Lepper told me that he was convinced it was an arson fire. It appeared to him that the fire started in the middle of the nursery. Michelle Wise had said that the only things in the middle of the room were the child’s crib and the baby monitor.

I drove home thinking about that little room and the fire that had incinerated Baby Matthew. I intended to hug my girls before bed—tonight and every night from now on.

Chapter Three

The Baby Matthew case was not my only case at the time. I was responsible for every arson case in the county, and I also had half of a regular case load in one of the six major felony courts. I was assigned to Criminal Court Five, so I had about thirty run-of-the-mill-serious felony cases, including armed robberies, attempted murders, aggravated assaults, and aggravated battery cases—as well as the arson case load and a few other murder cases that I’d inherited or adopted.

Every case was important to me, but the Baby Matthew case woke me up and troubled me in the middle of the night.

Poindexter did not return my calls or messages. I noticed that he was friendly with my supervisor, John Commons, a Marine (one of those there-are-no-former-Marines types) who still wore his hair as if he were in the Corps. Commons was about as glad to have me as part of his team as I would have been to meet a band of armed street thugs in a dark alley. After the conference room situation, I saw him speaking with Commons in Court Five. As soon as I walked into the room, the conversation abruptly ceased.

Apparently, Poindexter had no intention of discussing the Wise case with me. Que será, será. I had no time to play cat and mouse with him. I doubted he had anything of value to tell me anyway. But I had to interact with Commons. I felt my already cool relationship with him chill significantly.

I thought a lot about Baby Matthew and those sixteen minutes. I even mentioned the case at dinner with Bruce, my mother’s husband (stepfather was not in my vocabulary).

My mother married Bruce shortly after my high school graduation. Bruce was tall, maybe six foot-three, very thin, with thick salt-and-pepper hair that he brushed back. He rarely spoke, but when he did, it was heartfelt and intelligent. There was something very gentle about him.

Bruce and my mother had decided to move to Indianapolis to be closer to us. Although Bruce had been a member of the family for nearly twenty-five years, I had never lived in the same part of the country as him and my mother, so our interactions were limited. They bought an adorable cottage in Beech Grove. Bruce was redoing the bathrooms to my mother’s specifications. When they were finished, she would move in.

Bruce immediately took an interest in the Baby Mathew case, which surprised me. He had watched the news and read a great deal, yet I had never really shared my work with him. But Bruce was a good listener and talking to him helped me organize my thinking.

It was now time to telephone Van Buskirk. It had been about a week since our first meeting and I was sure that she was fuming that I had not gotten in touch with her. But I’d been doing my homework and she needed to know that I planned to be in charge. The telephone rang.

Van Buskirk, Homicide, she answered.

Let’s discuss the Wise case, I said.

About time, she said. She agreed to meet me in my office. I asked her to bring her entire file. I’ll be right down. Clear your desk.

To clear my desk was a challenge. My entire office consisted of a door, a metal desk with faux wood veneer on top and three drawers on the left side, a metal chair for me, one metal client chair, and a file cabinet near the doorway. The desk was pushed up against the window wall. The remaining space could accommodate one very lean person standing and no more. The desk supported a large computer screen, the top of which held photographs of Steve and my girls and two white legal pads, plus several accordion folders filled to the brim. There was also the skimpy manila folder labeled Wise, William that I had received from Poindexter.

I heard a knock at the door, which I always kept closed. I do not like surprises. I need quiet to work and that is hard to come by in a crowded prosecutor’s office. When I opened the door, there was Van Buskirk and a flatbed cart loaded with two or three Banker’s Boxes of files. She lugged them into my office.

Van Buskirk glided like a dancer on long, graceful legs. She was slender, with incredibly long eyelashes, a pretty face, and a manner that was almost elegant, although tempered a little by her amazing ability to swear and curse and cuss with greater intensity, vision, and precision than any person I had ever met. She dropped into the client chair. She was quiet as I looked in the boxes.

I scanned the contents; I smiled when I saw that Van Buskirk had ordered the 911 tapes from MECA, the Metropolitan Emergency Communications Agency.

MECA is housed in its own building in a rundown, poor section of Indianapolis. It is fenced and gated, although the gate is rarely closed. The interior of the building contains various sections, but the dispatch area is separate, and each dispatcher has his own cubicle. The cubes are a circular formation, with the open end of the cubicle accessible to all the other cubicles. The dispatchers have a screen, computer keyboard, headphones, and multiple incoming call lines.

Every call in and out of MECA is recorded. The computerized equipment also shows all calls received by the center where there is no contact with the caller, so if a 911 call is placed and no one speaks, the fact that a call is made is recorded and a follow-up call or dispatch will be made.

With this configuration, one dispatcher can listen to the caller while also sending fire engines and emergency responders to the scene.

Few people knew that MECA tape recordings are only kept for thirty days and then they’re recorded over. If a detective failed to order the recordings from a particular incident promptly, the recordings are forever lost. While the timestamped printouts remained part of the permanent record, to hear the caller’s voice was often important evidence, especially where, as in this case, the suspect made the call himself. Many arsonists call 911 to report the fires that they set.

Sometimes these recordings are hard to understand because there are sirens and other background sounds, like shouting, whimpering, coughing, sobbing, or other noise reflective of the emotional impact of a witness’s observations. Because the large majority of calls are not related to a crime, the tape recordings are not maintained for long. Only knowledgeable investigators order the tape recordings preserved or order transcripts made from the recordings. There is no automatic system to obtain transcripts and they are only ordered when approved by higher ups because of the cost.

For me, just finding the MECA request was a major point in Van Buskirk’s favor. Maybe this detective knew what she was doing. I noticed that no tapes of the 911 calls were in the file and no transcripts of the calls either. I wanted to hear what the voice of William Wise sounded like on the morning he killed his son. I wanted to hear what Michelle Wise sounded like when she called to report the fire yet failed to mention that her child was still inside the burning house.

Okay, I said, tell me everything and start at the beginning.

Naturally, Van Buskirk did not do as I asked. She instead started by saying (and I will not directly quote her lest I wear out the f and the u and the k on my keyboard) that William Wise had been out on bond for more than a year.

What!?

I was astounded. Murder is a capital offense in the state of Indiana, as it is in most states. Bond is rarely granted for accused murderers; and if bond is permitted, the accused must post a cash bond for the entire amount of the bond or pay a bondsman a fee for the bondsman to post the high-dollar bond amount. Even where a high-dollar bond is set, the Court is likely to place conditions on the release, such as home detention, an ankle monitor, pretrial services reporting, and other means of the State keeping an eye on the accused. Most accused murderers remain in jail until trial.

Brian Poindexter, representing your office, agreed to Wise being released on, like, a ten-thousand-fucking-dollar bond, Van Buskirk said disgustedly.

I suffer from red-face-and-neck syndrome, meaning that as my temper rises, so does the flushed scarlet color from my chest up. I usually wear high-collared blouses to cover this tell, but that day, my consternation was obvious. I could see she was pleased that I had reacted so strongly and negatively to Wise’s release status. She had obviously wanted to see my reaction too.

Well, nothing now could be done about his being released. Wise had apparently been walking free for nearly two years. No judge was going to lock him up just because the case was now assigned to me.

So what do we know about William Wise? I asked. What has he been doing since he made bond?

What do you mean? she asked.

Look, I said, "guys don’t kill their kids for no reason; even sickos have some imagined reason for the killing, so I want to know everything about this guy, including what he