For three years, since the Sunday morning Colleen Ritter`s parents were stabbed to death and she and her youngest brother were attacked in their Woodstock home, Ritter has lived each day in fear of her former boyfriend`s return.
”I was scared when I came home at night and put the car in the garage,” said Ritter, 20. ”I was scared when I shut the door and had to walk to the house in the dark. I was scared when I slept. I always had to look behind my back.”
She was haunted by the fear that Richard Church, 22, her high school sweetheart, would come back to finish what she alleges he began that August morning in a fit of rage sparked by their breakup.
During those three years, Church also spent his days looking over his shoulder, trying to elude capture.
On Thursday, the three-year odyssey ended for both Ritter and Church when Utah authorities and FBI agents arrested Church at a Salt Lake City apartment, concluding a massive manhunt that spanned a continent and occupied a string of television crime and mystery programs.
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Now, Ritter said, she can begin to put the horror behind her.
”I can see an end to all of this,” said Ritter, who said she was beaten on the front lawn of her home after Church allegedly broke in and killed Ruth Ann Ritter and her husband, Raymond.
For the first time in ”exactly three years and three months, to the day,” Ritter said she could begin planning her new life, including marriage to a childhood friend.
Meanwhile, Church was beginning a lengthy legal process, starting with an appearance Thursday afternoon before a federal magistrate in Salt Lake City.
The onetime starting center for Marian Central Catholic High School`s football team was charged in the brutal Aug. 21, 1988, attack that left Ritter`s parents dead of stab wounds and repeated bludgeoning.
Despite a nationwide search, Church had eluded police though the story and his photograph were broadcast on such nationwide TV programs as
”America`s Most Wanted,” ”Unsolved Mysteries” and ”A Current Affair,”
”Donahue,” ”Oprah” and ”Geraldo.”
After his blue 1981 pickup was found abandoned in Los Angeles about a month after the killings, Church`s picture was plastered on billboards in California, Arizona and New Mexico.
But in the end, basic police work by a veteran detective-along with a bit of luck-played the biggest role in Church`s arrest.
Salt Lake City Detective Craig Park was on a lunch break Wednesday afternoon when he stopped at Bennett`s Pit Bar-B-Que, a fast-food restaurant in a mall where he had worked foot patrol until his recent reassignment to the sex-crimes bureau.
Church was working behind the cash register when Park, an eight-year police veteran, stepped up to pay his bill.
”Something registered,” Park told a news conference Thursday in Salt Lake City. ”I knew I had seen this guy somewhere before, and it wasn`t good.”
After eating lunch, Park returned to his office and began looking through wanted posters. After he hit the poster issued by the Illinois State Police for Church`s arrest, he returned to the restaurant with a photograph of Church, said Eugene F. Glenn, the Salt Lake City FBI chief. Glenn said Park had seen Church`s photo in a Salt Lake City newspaper or on one of the TV programs that portrayed the crime.
Park sat down at a table and as inconspicuously as possible began comparing Church`s face with the photograph, Glenn said.
Convinced that Church and the man on the poster were the same, Park privately asked a restaurant employee to identify the cashier. He was told the employee was named Danny Lee Carson.
Park then checked the name through a Utah state computer at the police station that lists all people who have registered for a personal state identification card, and the Carson name with Church`s photo turned up on a card issued Oct. 25.
Park phoned Woodstock police to alert them that he would be sending a photo to them for verification that the man in the picture was Church.
Salt Lake City Police Sgt. Dana Orgill said, Woodstock police ”said,
`Yes, that`s him,` so he set up with the FBI to arrest Mr. Church at his place of employment.”
The plan hatched Wednesday night called for police and the FBI to return to the restaurant Thursday and arrest Church. But Church had the day off.
”The FBI came knocking on our store door and I was like, `Wow,` ” said restaurant manager Bill Reuss, who identified Church as an assistant manager. ”All I know is all of a sudden I saw all these detectives and they were eyeballing the store. Then they were knocking on the back door asking for Danny.”
About a dozen police officers and FBI agents went to arrest Church at his residence, the Brigham Apartments, a 150-year-old building once occupied by Mormon founder Brigham Young and his many wives.
Police had surrounded the apartment, which was two blocks from the restaurant, in order to search it.
Church gave up peacefully after police showed up at the building just after 8:30 a.m. He had been living there for just a few months and was described by the building manager as a model tenant who paid his $255 monthly rent early, never gave her problems and was a likeable person.
Dorothy DeShasier, who manages the apartments, said that she saw Church nearly every day when he was going to work and that they often shared pleasantries and a joke or two.
She said he rarely had visitors, though he had a girlfriend who spent the night once or twice a week. He did not own a car, and used a brand-new bicycle to get around town and take daylong bike trips on his days off.
When police told DeShasier that they were arresting her tenant, she could not believe it.
”When they showed me that `Wanted for Murder` poster, I thought I`d faint. . . . He was too nice a person,” she said.
Church was taken to the local FBI office for questioning, and he disclosed his true identity, authorities said. One tipoff was that the boyish- looking Church had listed his age as 33 on his false I.D.
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Fingerprints and a triangle-shaped scar on his nose confirmed his identity, the FBI`s Glenn said.
Church was taken to the Salt Lake City Jail and charged with possession of a fraudulent document-a state charge that would allow Salt Lake City police to hold Church for at least 72 hours, authorities said. Police were unsure how long Church had been in Salt Lake City.
Church`s arrest answered Ritter`s prayers.
”I thought about it every day. I was scared every day,” she said in an interview from the Woodstock home of her grandparents. That was where she and her two brothers, Steven, 18, and Matthew, 14, who was stabbed in the arm when he went to his sister`s rescue that morning, have lived since their parents were killed.
”I had nightmares like we were all sitting here, and Rick would appear at the door and start shooting,” Ritter said. ”Now I don`t have to do that.”
Authorities said they believe Church killed Raymond Ritter, 43, and his wife, Ruth Ann Ritter, 45, because they did not approve of Colleen`s two-year relationship with Church and because Colleen recently had broken up with him. Ritter was 17 when her parents became the first double-homicide victims in Woodstock history. She was about to enter her senior year at Marian Central. Now she is a junior studying elementary education at McHenry County College and plans to transfer to another school next semester.
She also is engaged, to Greg Geils, 21, a friend since grammar school who became her fiance Saturday.
Geils, who sat by Colleen`s side as she answered a reporter`s questions, echoed the sentiments of many of Woodstock`s 14,000 residents when he expressed surprise about Church`s capture.
”Personally, I thought he was dead,” Geils said. ”He was gone, and that`s the last you heard of him.”
Reuss, the restaurant manager, said that Church had worked at his restaurant for a few months, after being transferred from another rib restaurant owned by the same company, where Church had worked as a cook. He was hired by the first restaurant in mid-June, said a former manager at that restaurant.
Reuss also said that Church had been dating another restaurant employee for ”several months,” and that his best friend also was an assistant manager at the store who had an ”emotional breakdown today.”
Woodstock Police Chief Herb Pitzman said Woodstock police would travel to Salt Lake City Friday to seek extradition of Church.
Church`s mother, Cherry Kot, flew to Utah on Thursday, according to a co- worker of hers at the K mart in Woodstock.
Not surprised about Church`s capture were Walter Raycraft, 74, and Angeline Raycraft, 75, Ruth Ann Ritter`s parents.
”We didn`t think he was so streetwise that he could keep hiding,” said Angeline Raycraft.
”Somewhere along the line, (we figured) they would find him.”