AMY'S GRAVE WAS 256-ACRES WIDE

An early-morning fog wafted over the solitary roads of Ventura, California, on March 14, 1978. The residents of Ventura, a thriving city on the Pacific Coast some 55 miles north of Los Angeles with a population of 76,000, was brimming with people scrambling to get to the heavily trafficked freeways. Some worked in Los Angeles, some car-pooled to Orange County. Other roads, and every possible avenue of escape, were a vast mobilization of cars leading into to Riverside.

At that very time, in the insignificant Ventura County community of Camarillo, two-year-old Amy Sue Seitz, blonde-haired and blue-eyed, was being dropped off at the two story, wood-framed Camarillo home of a relative. Amy's mother worked downtown, and Amy's relative looked after the child during the week.

While Amy's relative busied herself upstairs with housework, little Amy watched Daffy Duck on television, then dozed off on the living room couch. When the relative heard the downstairs front door close, she thought nothing of it. The two-year-old, she assumed, had awakened and decided to play in the front yard. Minutes later, the relative came back downstairs and went out into the yard to see if little Amy was still there. She was not. She called out, "Amy Sue! Amy Sue!" She got no answer. She began combing the streets, yelling at the top of her lungs for Amy Sue Seitz. But the tiny tot had disappeared.

After another hour passed, the woman became extremely worried and began knocking on neighborhood doors; she hoped that someone inside might have seen Amy after she left the yard in front of her house. But the daylong search for the little girl proved fruitless. The sun was lazing in the shadows when the relative panicked and called the Ventura County Sheriff's Department. The police arrived in quick order. Given a description of the sandy-haired two-year-old, deputies immediately began searching the back alleys and streets. Others urgently banged on doors to elicit information that could be helpful in the search. In the lowering dusk, neighborhood volunteers joined the law officers, combing adjacent streets and weedy fields. The fading light made further search impossible.

Amy's relative had notified the missing tot's mother of the crisis. The frightened mother immediately left work to help with the search. But there was little she could do but hope, wait, and pray. Yelps of bloodhounds brought in from nearby Riverside County reverberated throughout the neighborhood as their sniffing black noses vacuumed every nook and cranny of the hills and valleys surrounding Camarillo. As more help arrived, the search increased over a broader area. A wan crescent moon showed through lacy clouds red-tinted by the dying sun on that March 14th, and little Amy Sue Seitz was still missing. Diligent police officers checked out the usual places - the morgue, hospitals, reports of unidentified bodies from nearby jurisdictions. But Amy Sue Seitz was not listed in any of them. By sunrise the following day, everyone involved had begun to fear that something dreadful had happened to the two-foot, eight-inch, 32-pound infant.

Helicopters arrived from Los Angeles and as far away as Anaheim. They hovered over the remote sections of Ventura County and scanned the beaches. Off-road vehicles became involved in the hunt as television crews arrived to interview some of the searchers and law enforcement officers. What was reported on the nightly news was eerily incredible. By midafternoon, a contingent of 75 highly efficient deputies was joined by civilian volunteers, but no one could find a trace of the missing tot. "We have every available police officer searching for her," said a sheriff's spokesman, "but so far, nothing."

However unhappy the police felt about the publicity, the next morning's newspapers were filled with stories about the missing two-year-old. The public became terrified not only of what they knew, but also of what they didn't know. Fathers instructed their daughters to carry pepper and ammonia in their purses to ward off would-be attackers. Mothers and fathers took their kids to school and picked them up after classes. The fact that Amy Sue had been missing for 48 hours held sinister implications for the safety of the child. The town was paralyzed with fear.

The conclusion of the hunt for Amy Sue Seitz was far worse than either detectives or neighbors could have imagined. In Topanga Canyon, a section of Los Angeles County some 28 miles from where the little girl had last been seen, Fred Straylaw peered out his bedroom window and saw his two dogs gnawing a bloody form in the driveway. He called the dogs and locked the animals inside. He then went directly outside to examine the form in the driveway. The strange, unmoving figure looked like a doll - only dolls don't bleed.

With watery eyes, the startled man ran inside and dialed 911. A dispatcher at the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Station answered. A rescue team arrived first, but there was nothing they could do for the lifeless, little victim. Hot on their heels was patrolman Robert Owens, a 12-year-veteran of the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department. In his report a second deputy, Lawrence Boddenstadt, noted: "I couldn't understand what I was seeing. I suppose it was the body of a little girl, but - my God - her face was a bright, beet red, down to her lower lip. I recognized human buttocks and hip joints, from which the skin had been peeled."

Owens and Boddenstadt examined the victim's mangled remains and observed that the tot had suffered vicious skull fractures and facial injuries; Amy's tiny, cupid-bow lips were swollen and puffy. Her purplish face had been punched in and her eyes were blackened beyond recognition. Police officialdom was represented by a quote from one technical services specialist: "This is the most heinous and revolting sight I have ever seen. Only a monster could have done something like this."

The two patrol deputies radioed for sheriff's homicide units and investigators from Ventura County. As the hours passed, the different law enforcement officers and homicide investigators pursued their tasks of reconstructing how the corpse had ended up in the Straylaw driveway. The sleuths speculated that the girl's body had been tossed from a car into a ditch, and Straylaw's dogs had dragged the scrawny carcass into the driveway. At this point in the investigation, the body had not yet been identified.

The remains were bagged, placed in an ambulance, and driven downtown to the Los Angeles County Coroner's Office. "Mrs. Seitz wanted to view the body to see if it was Amy Sue, but there was no way we could permit that," one deputy said. Dr. Manuel Benton, a deputy medical examiner for Los Angeles County, made an initial examination of the corpse. He observed extensive fractures on the victim's skull. He concluded that the child had suffered massive brain hemorrhage caused by blunt-force trauma. He noticed flaps of skin had been peeled back, like the hide of some skinned animal.

The corpse would not remain nameless for long. Using palm prints, the M.E. identified the cadaver as little Amy Sue Seitz. A great deal of effort had been put into the search for the missing tot, but now that was over. The hunt now shifted to finding her killer. That hunt was intensified as the results of Dr. Breton's examination reached the far corners of Southern California. Even the department's most hard-nosed cops were shocked by the M.E.'s written report.

The exceptionally pretty, golden-haired little girl had evidently been forced to drink alcohol. She had been raped and then punched in the face with full force. Finally, Amy's killer had strangled her to death, and her limp body was unceremoniously dumped into a ditch adjacent to the Straylaw house.

But that's not all. There was something else found during the postmortem on Amy Sue Seitz, something that would be kept from the media because it was so bizarre and unexplainable at the moment. It was something that brought tears to the eyes of some of Ventura County's most stone-hearted law officers. Dr. Breton said the child's skin had been peeled back by pliers or some sort of vise grips - while she was still alive!

The horrifying news flooded through Ventura County with the force of a tidal wave. Parents snatched their kids out of yards and off the streets. The playgrounds were suddenly empty. Youngsters were instructed to come home immediately after school, and most parents were there to pick their children up. Patrol units were increased and the area was cruised around the clock. A patrol car was parked across the street from every school in the area, both in the morning and after classes. Yet, this did not alleviate the uneasiness around town.

One woman interviewed by scribes, said she walked her child to and from school. In her purse, she said, she carried a pressurized canister of orthochlorobenz-almalononitrite, also known as "CS spray." A Crime Watch officer held meetings at various houses in the neighborhood, instructing people to be especially careful of their children until the killer of Any Sue Seitz had been collared. At one of these meetings a reward fund was established for the arrest and conviction of this monster. Friends of Mrs. Seitz went door to door collecting money. The reward fund shot up to $3,000, then a whopping $5,000. Sheriff's Sergeant Ernie Rogers was assigned to the case. An athletically built man of medium height with a brooding expression, Rogers didn't have to utter a word to his crew. His sleuths were well trained and proficient in their duties, and whatever organization was necessary would be provided by Rogers.

On March 20th, Amy Sue Seitz was laid to rest in a little white casket with pearl handles before 200 mourners. In the days to follow, the largest, most extensive manhunt in the entire history of Ventura County took place. Boy Scouts, Explorers, off-duty firemen, and policemen were joined by civilians from as far away as Lake Elsinore. Fourteen detectives were assigned to the case. Even this gallant effort failed to unearth one single clue that would led to the killer of Amy Sue Seitz. Although no one dared mention it, everyone was aware of the strong possibility that this might be the beginning of a long series of such crimes.

Lawmen conducted a street-by-street, door-to-door inquiry of the family-oriented community. Had anyone seen anything suspicious? Had anyone seen a stranger lurking near the school or in the neighborhood who looked suspicious? How about a strange truck, car, or a van? To the neighborhood's knowledge, there had been no strangers or strange vehicles around town, and no suspicious characters lurking in the area. After a week of frustration, the police still hadn't come up with a single clue as to who the killer was. The newspapers were calling the case the worst sex-murder in Southern California history. Camarillo groaned as tabloids released anything but minimal details of the case. Ventura County Sheriff's Commander John Wurner put it this way: "I talked to a number of our investigators, and though we've had a number of sadistic sex crimes, they usually don't go down to this level. At least, no one could recall a case involving a child of that tender age." While a special task force was formed to begin the tedious task of pounding the pavements, Sergeant Ernie Rogers scanned the files at the Ventura County Sheriff's Office for known sex criminals released by parole boards into the area. He gave each of his sleuths a list of names to look into. "I want you to find out exactly where these guys were at the time Amy Sue Seitz disappeared," he announced.

It was a long, tedious task, but the relentless probers were unconcerned about the strain. They only had one thing on their minds - "Get Amy Sue's killer!" Spring turned into summer, with no solid clue as to who the killer was. Although investigators continually hit the bricks - following up on leads that had been furnished by concerned citizens, and although every tip phoned in was checked out, the case seemed to languish in slow motion. Nor did a roundup of known sex offenders living in the Los Angeles area prove effectual. Chief Daryl Gates cooperated fully with the Ventura County Sheriff's Department in the matter. Most of the rounded-up perverts had steely alibis.

The heartbreak for those who had known and loved Amy Sue Seitz and her family was still heavy by September 1978, and the reward for finding her killer had mushroomed to $6,000. Sergeant Rogers sent his probers back to the beginning of their investigation, with orders to knock on every door and talk to every person in the vicinity until someone remembered something he or she had either forgotten to tell on the first go-round or had been afraid to tell for fear of reprisal.

Following their usual pattern, the sleuths spread out across Camarillo's quiet residential tree-lined streets, knocking on doors all over again. The detectives questioned every member of each family, asking them to think back to see if they could remember anything. Maybe they could come up with a recollection of a stranger or strange vehicle that would be beneficial to the investigation. "We decided, in desperation, we had to speak to every person who had been in the neighborhood the day Amy Sue was kidnapped. That's what we did," Sergeant Rogers would later say. But if anybody knew anything, they weren't talking.

One woman who Rogers himself questioned seemed immobilized from sheer fright. When he explained that he was going from door to door hoping to find someone who might remember something to help in the investigation into the murder of Amy Sue Seitz, the woman panicked and slammed the door. Rogers let it go at that, but the following day he went back and talked to the woman's husband. "Come in," the man said. "Sit down. My wife has something to tell you."

The woman, appearing to be very frightened, sauntered into the living room. She was alternating between tears and recriminations. Her husband, apparently provoked, spoke some harsh words to her in Spanish. "All right," the woman said in broken English. "I'll tell you." Sergeant Rogers leaned forward in his seat. After her peculiar reluctance to talk, the woman went into detail about what had happened a few days before Amy Sue Seitz's disappearance. She said her daughter was playing jump-rope outside in her yard, and she peered out the window just in time to spot a stranger leading her daughter away by the hand. When she screamed, the man let go of the child. Before she could get to her front door, the man was gone. The woman was asked why she hadn't reported the incident.

She was afraid it might cause some trouble, she said. Despite her hysteria, the woman was able to give Sergeant Rogers a fairly sound description of the man. She estimated his age between 35 and 40, and remembered that he had worn turtle-rimmed glasses and had a gray beard. She recalled he was exquisitely dressed in a light-colored suit. Sergeant Rogers thanked the woman and assured her that she would be in no trouble for withholding evidence, a crime that is punishable by a stiff fine and a jail term.

Rogers hurried back to police headquarters and went directly to the file marked "Sex Offenders." He compiled a stack of photos of sex offenders with beards, and another of men without beards, just in case the suspect had shaved off his beard or had not had one at the time of his previous arrest. The next day Rogers was spreading out a magnificent muster of photos on the woman's kitchen table.

Thumbing through the collection very slowly, the woman kept shaking her head no. The man who had tried to lead her child down the street was not in any of the photos, she said. Rogers thanked the woman and told her he would be back the next day with more photos. This time he went to the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department, being assured of full cooperation by Chief Daryl Gates. It was possible that the man with the beard had never been booked in Ventura County. But it remained a strong possibility that he had been arrested in Los Angeles County. Chief Gates assigned a Los Angeles County detective to help Sergeant Rogers weed through photos of L.A. sex deviants. The two law officers burned the midnight oil. A county line meant little when the torture-rape of a baby was involved.

The following morning, not having gotten any sleep, Sergeant Rogers was back in the woman's kitchen with an enormous stack of pictures of sex fiends. Slowly, she thumbed through them, shaking her head as one photo after another was eliminated. The pile was diminishing, and Sergeant Rogers was slowly diminishing along with it. Suddenly, the woman gestured toward a photo. "I can't be sure," she whispered. "I...I think this looks like him." Rogers leaned forward and gazed at the photo. "Take a good look...take your time...you must be certain," he urged. The woman studied the photo more closely. "I can't be certain...I can't...but I think that's the man." The sergeant thanked the woman and returned to headquarters. He got a cup of coffee from the machine and sat down at the desk, staring at the photo. He flipped over the picture and read the police information listed on the back.

The pervert's name was Theodore Francis Frank. He was 43 years old and lived in Woodland Hills, California. His street was approximately nine miles from the Topanga Canyon location where Amy Seitz's body had been chewed and dragged up by dogs.

Reading further, Sergeant Rogers noted that Frank's previous arrest was in connection with the molestation of an eight-year-old girl. "I just sat there and let it all sink in," he told this writer in an exclusive interview. "All those months of fruitless searching, of leads that went no place, of suspects who turned out not to be suspects at all -- all the frustration and all the dead ends. And suddenly this -- a real lead, a real suspect." The sergeant said he flipped the picture over and stared into the eyes of the bearded man with the glasses. "I got you, you sonofabitch!" he muttered.

Theodore Francis Frank

But first Rogers would have to build a case for the district attorney that would be free from prejudicial conduct in a court of law. He began by delving into the background of Theodore Frank. The horror of little Amy's torture-death became real again as the helter-skelter information on Theodore Frank materialized into a solid case against him. During a 1974 interview with aides at Atascadero State Hospital, Frank supposedly admitted to having molested approximately 150 children over a period of 17 years. One of the notebooks found in Frank's dingy, one-room apartment read" "I didn't have a happy childhood, neither will they." Theodore Frank had spent 14 years locked up in hospitals or prisons in Missouri and California. In January 1978, Frank was released from Atascadero where he had served time for raping a slender, delicately pretty four-year-old Bakersfield girl. Six weeks later, Amy Sue Seitz was raped, tortured beyond all unconvincibility, and murdered. Since Amy's Death, Frank had been arrested for two other molestations in the San Fernando Valley.

Frank was convicted in those two cases. A presentencing report by a probation officer said that Frank's own admissions sketched a profile of perversion. Apparently, sex was a forbidden topic in the Frank household. Frank once said: "Since it was strictly taboo, I feel I developed an unnatural curiosity about sex." At the age of 14, Frank entered a seminary to study for the priesthood. He stayed at the seminary for two years, leaving when he was accused of homosexual activity. Later, he joined a monastery. Eight months later, he got caught masturbating and was kicked out. For the next three years, Frank attended St. Louis University, studying electrical engineering. He dropped out when he got married in 1957 at the age of 22. The couple had three children before his wife divorced him because he couldn't stay out of trouble.

"Sex was an experimental thing with us," she was quoted as saying. "It was a totally normal relationship with no weird aberrations, no weird fantasies. It was more of a companionship than any strong sex relationship." The trouble began a year after they were married. Frank got arrested for indecent exposure and for peeping into his neighbor's bedroom window while masturbating. In 1958, he was arrested and charged with fondling a 10-year-old girl in front of a church. A stern judge shipped him off to Fulton State Hospital in Missouri. Two years later he was back on the streets. During the 1960s, Frank was charged with several sex offences. He served a second hospital term and another Missouri prison term. In Illinois, he was questioned about several sex crimes and the sex-murder of a seven-year-old boy in Missouri. He fled to California.

In Bakersfield in 1974, Frank was convicted of molesting a small boy, and as a result, he was sent to Atascadero. At Atascadero, a report by a psychologist stated that "Frank is a chronic, habitual child molester whose patterns are almost impossible to change." On October 19, 1978, a month after Frank became a suspect and seven months after Amy Sue Seitz was murdered, Sergeant Rogers and a cluster of detectives went to Frank's Woodland Hills apartment with a search warrant. Frank was not at home, but his wife let the lawmen in and allowed them to search the place.

The search proved relatively successful. In Frank's bedroom, the probers found a newspaper clipping from March 16th, describing the discovery of Amy Seitz's body. There was another clipping that described a series of murders in Los Angels County known as "The Hillside Stranglings." But the most damaging evidence sleuths found was a notebook in Frank's dresser drawer. While he was at Atascadero, he scrawled: "Why do I want to degrade and humiliate children? Sadism...I enjoy the humiliation. Defile the innocent. Make them scared of sex. It's dirty. I didn't have a happy childhood, neither will they...Revenge." Sergeant Rogers couldn't believe prison psychiatrists had released back into society, a man who was so full of terror, anguish and inconceivable horror.

Additionally, the search of Frank's apartment uncovered a receipt from a car wash -- a car wash that was directly across the street from where little Amy had been snatched from her relative's yard. Rogers put the receipt in a file with other evidence. Back at headquarters each scrap of evidence, no matter how insignificant it seemed, was checked out and catalogued for future use in court. On January 17, 1979, armed with an arrest warrant, police returned to Frank's apartment. To their astonishment, they discovered he was being held in Los Angeles County Jail, charged with the molestation of yet another child, whom he had lured into his van, while trolling elementary school yards.

They were further surprised to find that Theodore Frank had been recently sentenced to eight years in prison in connection with the molestation of more adolescent females. Those incidents had occurred five months after Amy Sue's tragic death. Manacled at the hands and feet, Frank was taken under heavy guard from Los Angeles to Ventura to face trial in connection with Amy Sue Seitz's rape and murder. Ventura County Prosecutor Irv Prager, the man who would prosecute the case, announced at a press conference on January 18, 1979, that he was going for the death penalty against Frank. No one seemed surprised, since residents of the little ocean-view community were outraged when the news media detailed the defendant's prior criminal record.

William Wiksell was appointed as Frank's defense counsel. He immediately bombarded the Ventura court with various legal motions. Most of them he knew would be rejected - and they were - but the maneuver bought him time. One motion that was not rejected was Wiksell's request that the case not be tried in Ventura County because of the adverse publicity it had received there. Judge Byron McMillan agreed and shifted the trial 100 miles south, to the Orange County Courthouse on Civic Center Drive in the hub of Santa Ana.

Thanks to the speed, professionalism, and dedication of Ventura and Los Angeles County law officers, Theodore Frank's trial got underway on November 5, 1979, a year and eight months after Amy Sue Seitz's brutal murder. Frank was charged with kidnapping, rape, child molestation, and first-degree murder. The Los Angeles County M.E., Dr. Manuel Breton, testified about his findings during the postmortem examination. He said little Amy's nipples had been pinched horribly with pliers or vise grips. "There was not only damage to the nipple itself, but there was also the imprint of the weapon," Breton told horrified court spectators. Asked whether the child was alive during this torture, the doctor somberly answered, "Yes, she was."

The doctor further testified that Amy had been raped, had suffered several vicious blows to her skull. Bruises on her neck were characteristic of manual strangling, and, beneath these, he said, he found a fracture of the hyoid bone of the voice box and bruising of soft tissues behind. Two blows to the defense's case came in succession. Judge Byron McMillan ruled that the notebooks seized at Frank's apartment could be admitted as evidence. He also allowed jurors to hear the testimony of an inmate who testified, "Frank told me that he was, in fact, a child molester. He said he would find the children and go up and talk to them and lure them into his vehicle, where he would have sexual intercourse with them."

On November 26, 1979, a nine-year-old girl testified that Frank had kidnapped her four months after Amy Sue's death. She said he drove her to a remote area, undressed her, and attacked her. She said Frank forced her to drink beer and pinched her breasts. "He took my panties and tried to stuff them down my throat," the child nervously told the court. Seven days into the trial, Prosecutor Prager introduced into evidence a pair of vise-grips that Sergeant Rogers had found during his search of Frank's apartment. A tool company manufacturer testified that the marks on Amy Seitz's body appeared to have been made by the exact model of vice grip as those presented. Jurors gasped as the expert gave a vague description of how the pliers could apply 2,000 pounds of pressure when clamped tight. A chief of forensic dentistry testified that he spent 200 hours examining the vise grips. "It is my conclusion that these similarities do exist because the suspect's pliers did in fact make the marks on Amy Sue's breasts," he said. Defense Attorney Wiksell tried to mount a defense, but he was severely hampered by a tide of overwhelming evidence. On December 15, 1979, the seven-man, five-woman jury found Theodore Frank guilty of rape, child molestation, kidnapping, and murder. The Christmas holidays were coming up, so Judge McMillan asked the jurors to come back January 7, 1980, to decide whether Frank should get the death penalty or life in prison without parole.

Jurors experienced no emotional difficulties in deciding Frank's fate. They quickly voted that the convicted baby-snatcher should be executed in San Quentin's gas chamber. Judge McMillan announced that he would formally sentence the killer on February 4th. If he had found some reason to do so, the judge could have set the death sentence aside and sent Frank to prison for life. But the judge, saying that he doubted the death sentence would actually be carried out, remarked, "Frank will die of old age before he is executed." With this in mind, McMillan ordered that Frank be sent to San Quentin and directed that he be put to death immediately after his automatic appeal to the California Supreme court was heard. But that would never happen. On January 12, 1983, attorney Donald Kerson of the public defender's office told the State Supreme Court that police had violated Frank's Fourth Amendment rights to privacy by seizing, without justification, his personal notebooks from his Woodland Hills residence.

On Thursday, June 6, 1985, the State Supreme Court upheld Theodore Frank's conviction but overturned the death penalty. The Supreme Court agreed that the Superior Court had mistakenly allowed Frank's writings to be admitted into evidence. Judge McMillan, now retired, was asked on television to give his reaction. "My reaction?" he responded. "I told him, I'm going to give the death sentence but it won't happen. You're going to die on the street of old age. I think it was foreseeable. I'm not surprised." Fifty-one-year-old Theodore Frank's second penalty hearing began on Monday, October 13, 1986. According to news reports, the trial was being used to unseat Chief Justice Rose Bird. Bird was one of the four justices who had voted to reverse Frank's death penalty. Later ousted by irate citizens for her liberal attitude toward death row inmates, she was the only one who had voted to overturn Frank's conviction.

Attorney Wiksell told the court, "Frank is a kind, and loving person - who can't control his behavior. Amy Seitz died a brutal death, but we don't kill a man who can't control his behavior." Wiksell's innovations were, of course, wanting against a rising tide of public outcry against the "cruel and inhuman treatment" of inmates most graphically portrayed in the controversial book, Killer, A Journal of Murder, scrawled out by the incredibly sadistic Carl Panzram, while he was in prison during the fall of 1928 ( See Chapter Seven).

Calling Frank a "sexual psychopath and a sadistic pedophile," Orange County Superior Court Judge John Ryan followed a jury's recommendation. On Wednesday, February 11, 1987, he again sentenced Theodore Frank to death. Frank's attorney, Public Defender Kent Barkhurst, said he would immediately petition the State Supreme Court for a rehearing to appeal the sentence to the United States Supreme Court, which the D.A. Called "another waste of the taxpayer's money." Frank's attorney took another beating on Thursday, November 1, 1990, when the State Supreme Court unanimously voted to uphold his death sentence. At this writing, Theodore Frank is still on death row at San Quentin prison. There is little reason to grieve for a man who had been delivered from a world of illusions cruel to himself and dangerous to all around.

NOTE: For this article, the author conducted a personal interview with Prosecutor, Richard Farnell, as well as family members of Amy Sue Seitz.

 


Bill Kelly and Patti Linebaugh, grandmother of murdered Amy Sue Seitz