Haunted by night Brach died: Horseman says he was forced to shoot heiress
Anne W.
Haunted by night Brach died
Horseman says he was forced to shoot heiress
By David Heinzmann and Jeff Coen
Tribune staff reporters
Published April 10, 2005
LUDWIGS CORNER, Pa. -- Joe Plemmons has spent a lifetime running
away--from his childhood home, from people he cheated, from the
killers and crooks he once called friends, and from a sleazy
reputation in his beloved world of horses.
But he says he can't get away from his memories of the night candy
heiress Helen Vorhees Brach was killed in 1977, her body incinerated
as he looked on.
The climactic scene of one of Chicago's most vexing murder mysteries
has run through his mind over and over--and by his own account, he
fired two gunshots into Brach's already battered body.
After 28 years, Plemmons said he is finished running from the Brach
murder.
He has told investigators what he says is the whole truth about who
wanted Brach killed and how they made her vanish. Investigators remain
divided over whether this account by Plemmons--a convicted con man who
provides no corroboration--can ever lead to charges against him or
anyone else.
Plemmons told his story to the Tribune last week in a Pennsylvania
restaurant not far from his home, going public for the first time with
his version of events that night. Over a cheeseburger, he said he
fired at Brach on the order of a mob hit man who was pointing a
double-barreled shotgun at his chest.
Plemmons said he believes Brach was already dead when he shot her,
despite someone else saying he heard her moan.
He said Brach was killed because the horsemen who had cheated her for
years feared she was finally on to them and was going to tell
authorities.
"I've had to live with this story a lot of years," said Plemmons, who
at 57 says health problems have helped push him to come clean.
"If something happened to me I don't want to go to the grave feeling
how I feel about what's happened. I dream about it. I constantly think
about it."
His admission to authorities did not come completely out of the blue.
Plemmons was well known to investigators and had come to be a trusted
informant to John Rotunno, the special agent investigating Brach's
disappearance for the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and
Explosives.
Plemmons had testified at the trial of Richard Bailey, who was
sentenced for conspiring to have Brach killed--though Bailey was not
convicted of her actual murder. Plemmons testified that Bailey had
tried to hire him to kill Brach.
One night last year, Plemmons called ATF agent Rotunno. Plemmons had
been drinking, and he awkwardly began to reveal his greatest secret.
Plemmons' first version placed him at the scene, but only as an
observer seeing Brach's battered body, wrapped in a blanket, hoisted
out of a Cadillac trunk and carried to a station wagon. He said one of
the men there said Brach moaned, startling them because they thought
she was dead.
`Shoot or be shot'
But in later talks with Rotunno, he eventually told the agent that he
was given a gun and an ultimatum: He would either shoot Brach or he
would be killed too.
Plemmons claims he would like to see people punished for orchestrating
Brach's murder. Some of them are dead, but some are still living.
"I'm trying to let the truth be known so at least it's not a question
anymore," said Plemmons. He said he would like to write a book about
his experiences.
As he spoke last week, Plemmons' tanned face and hands had the look of
years of outdoor work, and he described the events of his life in a
gentle Southern drawl.
His sandy hair was parted in a boyish style, and his bright blue eyes
lit up when he told stories of Chicago mobsters that he still finds
amusing. His small frame was still wiry, though he has developed a
paunch.
Plemmons said he has been an honest horseman for more than a decade.
But he admits that in the 1970s and 1980s he was a crook, and he
enjoyed it. He liked "the money, the excitement, the fun, the
camaraderie" of being a hustler in the fast-paced world of swindlers
and gangsters that permeated Chicago's horse business.
"Chicago is a funny place. You helped each other and you killed each
other at the same time," he said. "Once you get in bed with those
people, it's very hard to get out."
He became close friends with a horseman named Ken Hansen--a man who
had a secret of his own. In 2002, Hansen was convicted of the 1955
murder Robert Peterson, 14, and John and Anton Schuessler, 13 and 11,
respectively.
When Hansen called Plemmons one night in February 1977 and asked him
to drive all the way to his Tinley Park stable from Wauconda, Plemmons
did not hesitate.
Hansen's brother, reputed mob hit man Curt Hansen, was on his way to
the stable and Ken wanted Plemmons' help, he said. Plemmons figured
something criminal was happening, but didn't know what it was.
"When you knew Kenny as long as I had, and he says come at 1 o'clock
at night, you know," Plemmons said. "Was I afraid? I didn't know what
to be afraid of. They could have showed up with six stolen tractors.
... How did I know he wasn't buying guns? Curt used to sell a lot of
guns. I had no idea."
Plemmons said he didn't think twice about going. Despite all the
trouble that surrounded the Hansen brothers, at the time he said he
was deeply loyal to Ken Hansen.
"When I said, `I have a problem. I need your help,' he would say,
`OK.' He would never ask why," Plemmons said.
Plemmons and Ken Hansen waited "quite a while" at the Tinley Park
stable.
Eventually, a Cadillac drove into the riding ring, pulling up near a
parked station wagon.
Body in car's trunk
The trunk was opened and Plemmons saw the battered body of a woman
wrapped in a blanket, he said. He immediately recognized her as the
woman the horsemen called "the candy lady"--Helen Brach.
She had been beaten elsewhere--her face was blue and purple--and
everyone thought she was already dead, Plemmons said.
Plemmons said he grabbed her feet, and Ken Hansen grabbed her
shoulders and they carried her toward the station wagon. Hansen
suddenly said he heard Brach moan, and they dropped her in the riding
ring dirt, Plemmons said.
Then Curt Hansen pulled out guns, Plemmons said.
He tossed a dark revolver, 8 to 10 inches long, to Plemmons. While
pointing a short-barreled shotgun at him, Curt Hansen ordered Plemmons
to "put holes in the blanket or there will be two of you in the
station wagon," Plemmons said.
"With Curt, you know without a doubt he meant it," Plemmons said.
Plemmons fired once. The blanket "jumped," he said in his statement to
investigators.
Curt Hansen yelled at him to fire again, and he did.
Plemmons said he dropped the gun in front of him and turned away,
walking off as the others loaded the body into the station wagon.
Plemmons insists he did not kill Brach. He believes she was already
gone, beaten to death by someone else before arriving at the stable.
He maintains that his own actions were literally to save his own
life--he was faced with a choice of pulling the trigger or being
killed.
"Never in the next million years, if Curt hadn't been standing there
with a gun" would he have pulled the trigger, he said.
"In my heart I didn't do anything to anybody that was going to be hurt
by it," he said.
Curt Hansen died in 1993.
Plemmons declined to go into additional detail about the disposal of
Brach's body, but stood by previous statements he has made to the ATF.
Plemmons has stated that he was in the car that contained Brach's body
as the group made its way to a steel mill with large, red brick
smokestacks just off Interstate Highway 65. He continued to cooperate,
he said, out of fear of Curt Hansen.
Two employees of the mill held open the furnace doors, he said,
remembering the incredible heat.
An empty trough was rolled out, he said, and Brach's body began to
sizzle as soon as it was placed inside. Plemmons told investigators
the sight and smell would forever be etched in his mind.
Prosecutors hear story
Plemmons has given his account to lawyers from the Cook County state's
attorney's office as well, but did so under the condition that it
could not be used to prosecute him.
On the record, prosecutors have said that the Brach case technically
remains open and that Plemmons' account does not provide information
they can use to bring charges.
Privately, prosecutors said Friday that much of what Plemmons says has
the ring of truth, particularly that Brach would have been silenced to
protect the horse traders.
ATF officials put credence in Plemmons' version and believe that the
case is solved and should be prosecuted.
The man that Plemmons blames for ordering the killing is currently
serving a prison sentence. The Tribune is not naming him because he
has not been charged in the case. That person is not Richard Bailey.
Robert Will, an attorney for the man, has said his client rejects any
notion he was behind the killing of Brach.
"He's been linked to this for years and years--I'd say 20 years," Will
said. "Nothing surprises him any more."
Lawyers for Ken Hansen have said he had nothing to do with the Brach
murder and denies any involvement. Leonard Goodman, who represented
Hansen at his trial for the slayings of the boys, has called Plemmons
a "career con man" who has lied to benefit himself throughout his time
as a government informant.
Any effort to take Plemmons' account to court is undermined by his
criminal history. He was convicted of theft in Wisconsin for swindling
his girlfriend's family out of $15,000 in 1981. He was later convicted
on federal charges of stealing more than $90,000 in two bogus horse
deals when he was living in Sacramento in the late 1980s.
Those crimes followed a troubled childhood. At age 10, he moved from
his parents' home on a Georgia Army base to his uncle's North Carolina
dairy farm because of his father's alcoholism, Plemmons said.
He then ran away from his uncle's home at age 12 to exercise horses at
Florida racetracks.
He made his home at racetracks and stables all over Florida, in New
Mexico, and by 1969, around Chicago. He first rented stable space in
the Chicago area at a farm in Crete. Mary Anderson still owns and
operates Peacock Ridge with her daughter, Barbara Chasteen. They said
they quickly sized him up as a charming con man.
"He was short, like a jockey, and he had a Southern accent. But he had
all these little girls following him around," Chasteen said. "He was
the kind of guy who could sell a refrigerator to an Eskimo."
Anderson said she threw him out after a client who boarded a horse at
the stable accused him of drugging a horse. Anderson said Plemmons
denied doing it, "but I made him open the trunk of his car," and she
found a kit of banned equine pharmaceuticals inside.
Plemmons remembers the accusation but denies he did anything wrong.
He soon moved over to Hansen's Tinley Park stable, he said. It was the
beginning of a friendship that would define the rest of Plemmons'
life.
Jayne family ties
Hansen had close ties to the notorious Jayne family--a clan of
criminal horsemen--as well as to other underworld figures. Soon the
young, good-looking Plemmons was involved in cheating people out of
their investments in horses. While some of his associates were
killers, Plemmons said he was just a con man.
"I'm not a violent person. The things I've done, I've stolen money,"
he said.
He said his victims were typically wealthy people who could afford to
lose the money.
The victims of his Sacramento swindles, which led to the federal
charges against him in 1991, see it differently, however.
Plemmons stole $58,000 from Tom and Debbie Long in a horse deal.
"We borrowed money to make this happen," Tom Long said. Long said it
took his family a long time to pay off their debts after Plemmons
disappeared with their money.
From the early 1980s to the early 1990s, Plemmons lived with a series
of younger girlfriends who were either accomplices or victims in his
scams, according to court records.
Plemmons now lives with his girlfriend on a horse farm she owns in
southeastern Pennsylvania. During the winter, they stable horses in
Wellington, Fla., at the center of the ritzy Palm Beach equestrian
scene. He is well known in Florida at shows for hunter and jumper
horses. Plemmons said serious horse people respect him for his skill
with the animals.
But to many people in the horse world, he is a pariah because of his
criminal past and rumors about the Brach case.
"I walk around at the horse shows and people point at me and say,
`There he is,'" he said. "I have a very hard time selling horses
because of this."
What Plemmons says he wants now is to commit to a life apart from the
days when he would get a thrill from ripping someone off. There will
be doubters, he said, but he promises he is telling the truth this
time and taking himself in a clean direction.
Helen Brach did not deserve the brutal death she was handed, Plemmons
said. He would testify against more of the men responsible, but
realizes that day may never come.
He wants to stop carrying so many dark memories in silence, he said,
in the hope he will come away with a little peace.
"I was tired of feeling the way I felt," Plemmons said. "There were at
least some things I could get straight. ... For me, I am not a killer.
I am not a terrible person."
With his health concerns, Plemmons said, he has been forced to think
more seriously about his own mortality.
"What if there is a hell?" he said.
- - -
Characters in the Helen Vorhees Brach murder
Richard Bailey, 75
A swindler convicted of racketeering in federal court for cheating
Brach in a horse deal. He is imprisoned at a low-security facility in
Coleman, Fla., for allegedly taking part in a conspiracy to kill her.
He failed this year in a bid to reduce his life sentence based on
horse trainer Joe Plemmons' account.
Kenneth Hansen, 71
Serving 200 years in prison for the 1955 killings of Robert Peterson,
14, John Schuessler, 13, and his brother Anton, 11. Plemmons twice
testified against Hansen, his onetime friend and confidant. Hansen was
a stable owner allegedly present when Brach was slain. He also has not
been charged in Brach's disappearance.
Curt Hansen, died in 1993
Was a reputed mob enforcer for organized-crime figures, including
Albert "Caesar" Tocco and James "The Bomber" Catuara. Curt Hansen,
Kenneth's brother, threatened to kill Plemmons if he did not shoot
Brach, according to Plemmons. Herb Hollatz, a prosecution witness in
the Scheussler and Peterson murders, refused to testify against
Kenneth until he was shown Hansen's death certificate.
Source: Tribune archives
Copyright © 2005, Chicago Tribune
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/local/chi-0504100385apr10,1,2838462.story?coll=chi-news-hed
--
Anne W.
indigoace at goodsol period com
http://www.goodsol.com/cats/
G W Shrub
"Anne W." <indi...@seesignature.com> wrote in message
news:425964e4....@news.prodigy.net...
> From the Chicago Tribune--
> LUDWIGS CORNER, Pa. -- Joe Plemmons has spent a lifetime running
> away--from his childhood home, from people he cheated, from the
> killers and crooks he once called friends, and from a sleazy
> reputation in his beloved world of horses.
>
> But he says he can't get away from his memories of the night candy
> heiress Helen Vorhees Brach was killed in 1977, her body incinerated
> as he looked on.
I still don't believe it. I remain convinced it was the 'house man' who
killed her.
--
GW