Even though Ellen emphatically warned me not to listen to the podcast, I remained tempted, the same way one was tempted to pick at a scab or tug at a torn cuticle until it bled. I knew nothing good could come from listening, but I wanted—no, I needed—to know what this Poppy Parnell person was saying. How could she possibly justify “reconsidering” my father’s murder? And how could that be the premise for an entire series? I could effectively summarize the case in one sentence: Warren Cave killed Chuck Buhrman. End of story.
I topped off my wine and wished Caleb were home. I ached for the calming sensation of his big, warm hands on my shoulders, and his soothing voice assuring me that everything was going to be all right. I needed him to fix tea and turn on that odd reality show about toothless men making illegal whiskey. If Caleb were home, I would have been comforted and protected; I would not have been gulping wine alone in the dark, electric with terror.
And yet part of me was relieved by Caleb’s absence. The very idea of having to tell him about the podcast, and thereby being forced to admit all the lies I had told, filled me with liquid dread. I desperately hoped Ellen was right, and that the podcast would fizzle out on its own before Caleb returned from Africa.
I didn’t listen to the podcast, but I could not stop myself from obsessively Googling Poppy Parnell all night. She was in her early thirties, not more than two or three years older than myself. She was midwestern, like me, and held a BA in journalism from Northwestern. I also saw she had once run a popular crime website, and had a long list of bylines in publications like the Atlantic and the New Yorker. When I had exhausted that, I switched to an image search. Poppy Parnell was a thin strawberry blonde with angular features and wide, almost startled eyes—not conventionally attractive enough for television, but too pretty for radio. In most photographs, she wore too-large suit jackets and leaned forward, her mouth open and one hand raised, mid-gesture. Poppy looked like the kind of girl I would have been friends with a lifetime ago.
Scowling at Poppy Parnell’s smiling face, I poured the rest of the wine into my glass. I reached out to slam the computer shut, but something stopped me. The podcast was still open in another tab.
Daddy.
Cursing Poppy Parnell and myself, I pressed Play.
Excerpt from transcript of Reconsidered: The Chuck Buhrman Murder, Episode 1: “An Introduction to the Chuck Buhrman Murder,” September 7, 2015
I didn’t know what to expect when I first met Warren Cave. By the time we were formally introduced, I’d spent several long afternoons with his mother, Melanie, a classically beautiful woman of enviable style and impeccable poise. Melanie’s son is one of her favorite topics, and she speaks highly of him, extolling his warmth and generosity, his skill with computers, and above all, his faith.
In addition to—and in contrast with—Melanie’s glowing characterization of her son, I had done my homework on Warren Cave. I scoured the police notes, trial transcripts, and articles profiling him.
Like most people who have even a passing familiarity with the case, the image I had of Warren Cave was that of a skinny kid with stooped shoulders and acne, his hair stringy and dyed black. Photographs depicted him perpetually clad in all black and never making eye contact with the camera. Warren Cave was the kind of teenager most of us would cross the street to avoid.
I had difficulty reconciling that image with the young man his mother had so favorably described. Had her maternal love blinded her to her son’s true nature? Or was the hardened image of his youth nothing more than posturing? Did the truth lie, as it so often does, somewhere in the middle?
When I first met Warren Cave in the Stateville Correctional Center, the maximum-security prison near Joliet, Illinois, where he’s been living for the last thirteen years, I didn’t recognize him. He has embraced weight training and replaced his skinny frame with hulking muscles. As he explained to me, his weight-training regimen is more for necessity than pleasure. In prison, he says, one cannot afford to be weak. This is a lesson Warren learned the hard way: his face is marred by a scar stretching across his left cheek, a harsh reminder of an attack by a fellow inmate one year into his sentence.
Warren, who keeps his hair close-cut and natural ash-blond now, still avoids eye contact. His expression is usually guarded, but he smiles warmly when I mention his mother. Melanie drives two hours every Sunday to visit her son, and he says that she is his best—and only—friend. Aside from his mother and Reverend Terry Glover, the minister at First Presbyterian Church in Elm Park, Warren has no other visitors. Andrew Cave, Warren’s father, left the family shortly after Warren’s arrest and died from prostate cancer eight years ago. None of Warren’s friends from his youth have kept in touch.
I don’t waste any time getting to the important questions.
POPPY:
If you didn’t kill Chuck Buhrman, why would his daughter say she saw you do it?
WARREN:
That’s a question I’ve asked myself every day for the last thirteen years. And you know what I’ve come up with? Diddly-squat. The Lord works in mysterious ways.
POPPY:
Are you saying she made it up?
WARREN:
Well, I didn’t kill Chuck Buhrman, so, yeah, kind of. But I guess I can kind of see how she might’ve gotten confused. Back then, I had strayed really far from the path. I was using a lot of drugs and listening to music with satanic themes. The beast had its claws in me, and I have to wonder if she saw that somehow. It must’ve confused her. She was just a kid.
POPPY:
You were just a kid yourself then.
WARREN:
I was old enough to know better.
POPPY:
Had you spent much time with her or the family before Chuck was killed?
WARREN:
No. We moved to Elm Park in 2000, so we’d only been living there for two years by the time Mr. Buhrman died. I wasn’t exactly the block-party-attending type, if you know what I mean. I mostly kept to myself. I don’t think I ever spoke to Mrs. Buhrman. Sometimes I’d spot her in the garden, but other than that she basically never left the house. She was kind of weird, you know. She joined a cult, right? I did talk to Mr. Buhrman once, though. One afternoon my mom was having trouble with the lawn mower. My father was traveling for work, and I was too much of a jerk then to help her out so Mr. Buhrman came over to give her a hand. He and I ended up talking about the Doors for a while. He seemed pretty cool.
POPPY:
Did you know your mother was having an affair with Chuck Buhrman?
Maybe it was the abruptness of the question or maybe it was the strength of his religious beliefs which condemn adultery, but Warren visibly tensed when I asked this.
WARREN:
My mother is not an adulteress.
POPPY:
So you had never witnessed anything that made you wonder whether your mother was sleeping with Mr. Buhrman?
WARREN:
Don’t come here and insult my mother.
POPPY:
I didn’t mean to offend you. I’m only trying to get to the truth. I understand that, at that point in time, your father was frequently away on business and your parents were having marital problems.
WARREN:
Can we move on?