Secrets in the Box

The Kirkup family, once so apparently successful, was fractured now. Shana, the eldest, had stored up bad memories about their mother.  Susan, a mother herself by now, harbored dark memories of father. Sister sherry disappeared, broke off all contact, fed up apparently. Three sisters estranged, the marriage dead.

Mother  Janet Kirkup was gone, apparently left for a richer life with another man.  Washed her hands of the lot of them.

Keith Morrison: You, personally, could see your mother doing that.

Shana Thomas: Yes.

And where had she gone? Robert told his girls that the mystery man with the big motorhome had been camping close by at some point. Must have been secretly wooing their mother.  And then one dreadful day she insisted Robert drive her to the buffalo airport, drop her off at a nearby hotel.  And he never saw her again.

Susan Waller: Who was this person?  What did he look like? What did the motorhome look like?" 

Robert said he couldn't be sure, didn't know exactly. And so, alone, he drifted. And landed finally at Shana's place here in the broad stretch of desert where California meets Arizona.  A tiny place called big river.  Here he parked his motorhome in Shana's backyard.

And two hundred miles across the desert, in Susan's closet, a box of documents, unopened, gathered dust for years.

Susan Waller: I was scared.  I didn't want to face the box, and what was in that box.

It isn't clear anymore exactly what it was that made her feel like that box was calling her one day nearly sixteen years after her mother vanished. Maybe it was Susan's own maternal instinct asserting itself.  Something must have made her mother leave - everyone.  Maybe the box held an answer.  It was the spring of 2008, and she had just put her two young daughters to bed. 

She went to the closet, took out the box, opened it up.

Susan Waller: To face that, it was, it was, it (laughter) was difficult.

Just like Pandora's Box. Once opened, all was unavoidably changed.

Susan Waller: I said, "We have to do something.  This isn't right.

What, exactly, did Susan find in that box? Police reports, mostly. Lots of them. Turns out the police had been looking for her mother all these years -- quite diligently, in fact.  And this was the man who had done so.

Mark Siegel: There was no phone calls home, no letters home. No driver’s license.

It was six years after Susan's mother left before California investigators handed the missing person's case to Michigan state police detective/sergeant Mark Siegel.

Michigan because that's the last place anybody in the family besides Robert saw her....the visit with Robert's mother in the summer of 92. The trail very cold when Seigel picked it up.

Mark Siegel: It's like she vanished from the face of the earth.

If he could just find that mysterious man she'd run off with... But it was years later by now. People in motorhomes move around.  A lot.

With only the scant information Robert had given his girls, Siegel contacted one campground after another, hoping to elicit a memory from someone, anyone, about a lone man, a flirtatious woman, a broken marriage. 

All to no avail. This was 1998, Robert was still drifting. Siegel thought he might be able to help find his ex-wife. But:

Mark Siegel: With Robert traipsing about the country.  You know, you couldn't find him here.  You can't find him there. 

And then in August 1999, Siegel learned that Robert was back in Michigan.  So he and his partner tracked him down.  Went to see him.

Mark Siegel: We told him that we're just trying to locate Janet Kirkup.

Kirkup told them he had no idea.  How could he?   Janet had run off with another man. But then, as the conversation progressed, Robert said something, well, weird.

Mark Siegel: Then at one point he said, "I had nothing to do with her death." And I just leaned up to him, and I said, "Bob, nobody ever said that she was dead.  Nobody at all.  You're the one who mentioned it."  And he just hung his head, and he looked down.  He didn't say anything. 

In fact Siegel had suspected Janet was dead.  He also suspected that Kirkup might have played a role in that death.

Mark Siegel: And so we said, "Bob, it's over.  The girls have a right to know what happened to their mom. Get it off your chest.  And do the right thing."  And he just looked up, he didn't deny it. 

He just said, "I-- don't I have any rights?"  I said, "Well, yeah, of course. Were you telling me that you want an attorney?"  And he says, "Yeah.  I-- I need an attorney." 

And with that, the interview was over.  No further questions answered. Was Janet dead?  Did Robert Kirkup have something to do with her death? What he said wasn't evidence of anything.  But it was enough to generate a search warrant in that motorhome of his.

Mark Siegel: There was calendars from 1992 through 1996 in there.

Of particular interest was the calendar from 1992 -- the year Janet disappeared.

The cross-country trip had been meticulously logged -- each date in the calendar book crowded with destination, miles traveled, ending mileage for each day.  Crowded, that is, except for one of the entries: two days, left almost blank.

Mark Siegel: It listed a New York State Park, on the 16th and 17th of August of '92.  But there was no information.  That was the only place in the entire calendar that we found that had no location.  It was just New York State Park for those two days.  So, that, that's maybe where Janet Kirkup had met her demise.

Possible.  Maybe.   But it wasn't enough to make a case for murder - or anything else for that matter.  And so that was that.

Mark Siegel: Pretty much everything that could be done, was done. 

All this, in the spring of 2008, Susan found in that box in the closet. Siegel's decade old reports, the interview with Robert, analysis of those detailed calendar entries from her parent's life on the road.

Susan Waller: I said we've got to do something. He's getting away with murder.

Suddenly a memory flooded back. A summer night, 1992, during the time Susan was traveling in the motorhome with her parents -- after another of their alcohol-fueled blowouts, just weeks before Janet disappeared. 

Susan Waller: I said, "Let's go.  Mom, let's go.  We're-- we're leaving.  We're -- we're getting away from him. I got in the car.  And my mom got in the passenger seat. And I didn't know where I was going or what I was doing or anything.  I just wanted to go.  I wanted to get my mom and I wanted to go.

Keith Morrison: And she wanted to go back, didn't she?  She said, "Turn around.  Turn around."

Susan Waller: "Susan, we don't-- we don't have any money.  What are we gonna do?  Where are we gonna go?"  And I said, "I don't care.  Let's just go."

Keith Morrison: And then she made you turn around.

Susan Waller: And shortly after that, I left.

It was the last time she would see her mother.  And for all those intervening years, Susan had believed the story her mother had abandoned Robert. That she'd found something better.  But now she confronted a new belief.  She never left.  She must be dead.

So maybe it was guilt that formed the crazy idea in her head.

Susan Waller: I decided that I would start doing my own detective work. 

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