David Leonard Wood
15 min read
In the summer of 1987, young girls started disappearing one after another. At the time, El Paso had fewer than 50 murders a year, and the city was beginning to panic. Being a 5'2 and 110-pound woman, it is sometimes difficult for me to research these cases because I fit right in with the victims' profiles. I cannot imagine the pure horror they went through. My hope in retelling these bleak endings is to keep the story alive and hopefully bring them justice.
Introduction
On June 2, 1987, Marcia Wheatley dropped her daughter Desiree off for her last day of 8th grade. Desi was wearing an oversized white shirt that she wanted all her friends to autograph. She was bobbing backward down the sidewalk to face her mother, flashed a smile and waved. "I love you." "I love you, too," Marcia said. That was the last memory she would have of her fifteen-year-old daughter.
Marcia Wheatley, Desi's mother, was twice divorced, and she did not want her two daughters repeating her mistakes. As a result, no dating until sixteen and a curfew enforced. After Marcia's second failed marriage, the three moved in with her parents, Helen and Roy Blaine, who diligently watched over the girls while Marcia worked late-night shifts. Desiree had asked her mother if she could go to a graduation party with her friends later that evening to celebrate. Marcia agreed and gave Desi strict orders to be home by 8:30 p.m. and not be out at night unescorted.
Desi's first stop on her way to the party was to see a friend who did her makeup for her; the two girls got ready and set off to meet up with their regular group of friends at Veterans Park in Northeast El Paso. Desi called her grandmother to ask if her curfew could be extended to 10 p.m. It was the last day of school, so Helen relented.
After the party, Desi and her friend split ways with the group and stopped at the Circle K convenience store on Rushing Drive, just up the street and around the corner from her home. A witness at Circle K saw a tall, blonde, tattooed white man standing behind the two young girls in line. Around 9:45 p.m., as they were leaving to go home, the man followed them outside. Desi's friend turned around just in time to see her get into a tan-colored Nissan truck.
Marcia Wheatley got home from her work shift at 2:00 a.m. her mother, Helen, was still up and said to her, "Something is wrong. Desiree is not home yet." Marcia immediately notified the police department, telling them her daughter had never missed a curfew before and there weren't any problems at home. "Look, Mrs. Wheatley, we've had it up to here with teenagers tonight," one officer said. It was the last day of school, and the police were receiving many calls that night. Marcia listened, stunned, as the officer called in the report and described Desiree as a runaway. "Why?" Marcia demanded. "Well," the officer said, "one, she's a fifteen-year-old. Two, it's the last day of school. And three, she's away from home without your permission." Marcia said, "But what if she doesn't want to be away from home without my permission?" The officer said Desi's status would be changed when the time came.
Days passed, then weeks. Still, the El Paso Police Department would not change her status from runaway to missing. In the meantime, girls were disappearing at an alarming rate, and the young women's families were having difficulty persuading the police to investigate. Finally, on July 11, 1987, friends and parents of Desiree Wheatley and Karen Baker, a twenty-year-old woman who vanished in June, demonstrated at the Stanton Street international bridge to call attention to the disappearances. Al Marquez, an El Paso city detective, realized something heinous was happening, and police finally rallied. But, little did they know, a brutal killer was lurking in the streets collecting these young women for his own personal graveyard.
Credit: El Paso Times
Childhood
David Leonard Wood was born on June 20, 1957. His father, Leo, described David's boyhood as rough and unstable. His mother was mentally ill and was institutionalized. She underwent shock therapy treatments and became dependent on perception drugs. As a result, David lived from place to place and was sometimes in foster homes, making it hard for David to form attachments to another person. He was described as hyperactive and was prescribed Ritalin.
David never made good grades and was placed in special education classes. He had an average IQ of 68. The national average is between 85 to 115. Though he was a slow learner and had an attention deficit disorder, his acquaintances spoke of David as mild and calm. In the ninth grade, he dropped out of Parkland High School and tried to join the military but was rejected.
Criminal History
Wood was convicted of indecency with a child, and served more than two years in prison from April 1977 to December 1979. Soon after his parole, he was charged with sexually assaulting a thirteen year old and a nineteen year old. The attacks occurred eight days apart, in March 1980. Wood knew the older teen, but the other girl was a stranger. Convicted of the two sex crimes, he served another seven years in prison. The state paroled Wood again on January 15, 1987, and he moved in with his father in El Paso. His return coincided with a crime rampage that summer. Teenage girls and young women, nine in all, began disappearing around the city.
Discovery
On September 4, 1987, a city water utility employee was checking water wells in the desert about a mile east of McCombs Street in northeast El Paso. He noticed something sticking up out of the ground and walked over to look closer; it was a human hand. The man immediately called the police, who roped off the scene. As they looked closer, they saw the remains of a nude body lying facedown in a shallow grave about two feet deep. The police started excavating and whisked away closer to the body; they began to smell the decomposition. In the desert, a corpse can deteriorate at a faster level due to the heat, many bugs and microorganisms that live there.
Credit: Mark of a Killer: Bodies Will Talk To You
(Season 3, Episode 9)
As the police are discovering a pair of moccasins and a floral shirt next to the victim's body, a person calls out, "You might want to see this." Another woman is found 50 feet away. She is buried the same way, facedown in a shallow grave with her clothes next to her. Skeletal remains and the state of decomposition told detectives that the second body had been in the ground considerably longer than the first. They instantly understood this suggested the offender had come back to this area a second time to dispose of a body.
The medical examiner determined the cause of death of the first body to be from asphyxiation due to a broken jaw and hyoid bone - the second victim was determined to have been strangled as well. The police started checking missing person reports to try and identify these two girls based on the garments found. They matched victim one as Maria Casio and the second as Karen Baker. The parents of the young girls positively identified their clothing.
When news broke about the missing girls found in the desert, Marcia Wheatley called detective Juan Guerrero and retold her story about the night Desiree went missing. Police contacted the National Guard and Border Control, who began an intensive investigation on the desert's one-and-a-half-mile area. Helicopters, heat-sensing devices, and cadaver dogs were brought out to the scene. Not long after the search began, another shallow grave was discovered.
The body was buried facedown, partially undressed, with her jaw open and full of dirt. As the police uncover her body, they see an oversized white t-shirt with autographs. They suspect it to be Desiree Wheatley. While they are still excavating the body, a fourth grave is located, buried the same way as the other three girls and severely decomposed.
Credit: Mark of a Killer: Bodies Will Talk To You
(Season 3, Episode 9)
Detectives move quickly to positively identify the two young women while the autopsy is underway. They called in Marcia Wheatley, and before they could pull the shirt out of the bag, Marcia screamed and put a hand over her mouth. Confirming it belonged to Desi. The medical examiner told police that Desiree had dirt in her lungs and had been buried alive, during the autopsy they also uncovered some orange fibers by her head. Through dental records, they matched the fourth body to Dawn Smith.
A fifth grave was found not far from Wheatley's and determined to be Angelica Frausto. At this point, the El Paso police department knew they were on the hunt for a serial killer. A few months later, hikers, collecting alumni cans, stumbled over a sixth victim, Susanna Williams. She was buried in the same plot of land, several yards away from the others. Medical examiners listed Williams's cause of death to be from stabbing with a sharp instrument.
Victims
All nine missing girls shared the same physical characteristics: petite, slender, and young.
Marjorie Knox, 14, went missing on February 14, 1987. Her body was never found.
Melissa Alaniz, 13, went missing on March 7, 1987. She attended H.E. Charles Middle School. Her body was never found.
Desiree Wheatley, 15, went missing on June 2, 1987. She attended H.E. Charles Middle School. Her body was found on October 20, 1987.
Karen Baker, 20, went missing on June 5, 1987. She was last seen at the Hawaiian Royale motel. Witnesses spotted her getting on a red motorcycle with a tall, thin, blonde man with tattoos. Her body was found on September 4, 1987.
Cheryl Vasquez-Dismukes, 19, went missing on June 28, 1987. She attended H.E. Charles Middle School. Her body was never found.
Angelica Frausto, 17, went missing on July 11, 1987. She worked as a topless dancer and was last seen at the Hawaiian Royale Motel with a tall, tattooed man getting onto a red motorcycle. Her body was found on November 3, 1987.
Rosa Maria Casio, 24, went missing on August 12, 1987. Casio lived in Addison and was in El Paso visiting her mother from college. After meeting up with her friends at a club, Casio vanished. Witnesses told detectives that a strange-acting, fair-haired man with tattoos was bothering Casio at the bar, and she had tried to get away from him. Upon leaving, her friends spot the man following just a few steps behind Casio as she walks to her car. There is a scuffle outside the bar, and their attention turns towards the fight. A few minutes later, they look around and see the white male getting into a beige truck with Maria nowhere in sight.
Dawn Marie Smith, 14, went missing on August 28, 1987. She was a frequent runaway, and her family never reported Smith as missing. Her body was found on September 2, 1987.
Ivy Susanna Williams worked as a topless dancer and frequented the Hawaiian Royale Motel. She was never reported missing. Her body was found on March 15, 1988.
Credit: El Paso Times
Capture
With news breaking about the bodies buried in the desert and a possible serial killer on the loose, the public became afraid to let their young girls walk the streets of El Paso. The police assembled a homicide task force and began trying to piece together what kind of person would commit these horrendous crimes. A profiler was called in and suggested that burying the bodies was symbolic or spiritual for the perpetrator, collecting the victims and placing them together in pairs. Almost as if they were meant to keep each other company. The profiler also said that the way the girls were being killed indicated a sexual element. Police began to look into males in the area who had been convicted of sexual offenses with young women. As the investigation went on, police learned that some of the victims went to the same middle school.
Detectives were hopeful that one of the H.E. Charles Middle School students may have seen something suspicious. So they began interviewing the children and started receiving information about a man who had just been released from prison, with tattoos on both his arms, going by the nickname of Skeeter. He was known to drive either a small beige pickup truck or a red motorcycle. Bells started sounding for the detectives, knowing that this description matched many witness reports in the missing girls' cases.
Police thought back to a call they received on September 22, 1987. A woman known as Judith Brown Kelling stated that in late July, she had been walking outside of a convenience store in the northeast part of El Paso when a man, matching the same description as Skeeter, asked if she needed a ride. She accepted his offer, but the man did not take her home. Instead, he stopped at an apartment complex and went inside. When he returned, a piece of rope was hanging from one of his pockets. He drove northeast of town toward the desert, stopped the truck, and ordered Kelling to get out.
Kelling saw him get a "brownish red" blanket and shovel from the back of his vehicle. After tying her to the front of his truck with the rope, he proceeded to dig a hole behind some bushes. Ten or fifteen minutes later, the man returned with the blanket and began ripping her clothes and forcing her to the ground. Finally, he gagged her and raped her. Immediately afterward, he stated that he heard voices and threw his belongings back into the truck, and drove away, leaving Kelling naked in the desert. His final words to her were, "Always remember; I'm free."
After news broke on the discovery of two girls buried in the desert, Kelling knew that it was likely the same man who had attempted to murder her. She finally dared to tell her story and said she would never forget him and would be able to identify him. Police asked if she could take them to the location of the alleged rape. She said, "I sure can." So they put her in the detective car and set off. The assault of Judy Kelling ended up being less than 100 to 125 yards, from where Karen Baker and Rosa Maria Casio were found buried in the desert.
Police interviewed another group of middle schoolers at H.E. Charles; one student claimed the man known as "Skeeter" was actually David Leonard Wood. They began looking into his file and discovered he had been convicted of raping two teenagers. They brought a photo line up to Kelling and students at the middle school, who immediately pointed to Wood as the culprit. The police knew that they had their man. Though they did not have enough evidence to pin him on the serial killings just yet, they had enough to charge him with the rape of Kelling. Upon his arrest on October 24, 1987, Wood immediately made a statement to the police, "You've got the wrong guy; I didn't kill those girls in the desert." Yet police had never said he was being charged for those crimes.
Police searched Wood's house and uncovered hundreds of photographs of fifteen year old girls, most of them taken at car washes. However, when they searched his vehicle, it was immaculately clean. He had scrubbed the truck inside and out with detergent and vacuumed it, leaving no forensic evidence to be found. This was a setback, but the detectives confiscated the vacuum bag and sent the contents to the lab to be processed for hair and fibers. Inside, the FBI revealed orange fibers that matched perfectly to the fibers found on Desiree Wheatley’s body. Wood could now be charged with the murder of the six young girls buried in the desert.
Credit: Mark of a Killer: Bodies Will Talk To You
(Season 3, Episode 9)
Trial
On October 21, 1992, David Wood went on trial. The first time he walked into the courtroom, he saw Marcia Wheatley sitting in the front row and blew her a kiss. Though there was no DNA evidence, prosecutors brought forward the findings of the orange fibers. Wood's girlfriend, Joanne Blaich, testified that he owned a burnt orange blanket and some shovels, all of which he kept in the back of his pickup truck. A forensic chemist attested these orange fibers were found on one of the victims, and it matched fibers taken from a vacuum cleaner bag that Wood had left in their apartment.
Cellmates of David Wood were also brought in to give testimonies. Randy Wells testified that Wood told him about the murders and that he would lure each girl into his truck with an offer of drugs or a ride home, drive out to the desert, tie her to his vehicle, and dig a grave. Next, he would tie the victim to a tree and rape her. Another cellmate, James Carl Sweeney, Jr., testified that Wood had shown him numerous clippings about the El Paso, Texas murders and had confessed to him that he was the one who had committed the murders.
More testimonies about Wood's character were given during the trial. On September 19, 1987, Virginia Staples said that Wood offered her money for sex while she was standing on a street corner. Eventually, she got into Wood's truck and told him to go to the Mesa Inn Motel. However, Wood did not drive to the motel; instead, he pulled a knife on Staples and told her, "I'm going to fuck you, stab you and throw you in the river." Wood was laughing at the time. When Wood drove by the river, Staples jumped out while the truck was still moving.
Christi LeClaire testified that she met Wood on March 10, 1980. At the time, LeClaire was only thirteen years old. While walking home one day from a gymnastics class, she thought she saw a friend behind her. But the person grabbed her. LeClaire tried to get away from the man, but he said to stop fighting, or he would beat her up. Wood told her someone had broken the windshield of his truck and that he was taking LeClaire to her house so that her family could pay for it. Instead, when they walked underneath a bridge, he raped her. Joan Capps testified that on August 30, 1976, when she was twelve years old, Capps was playing with a friend of hers when Wood approached her and asked her to help him find his dog. Wood eventually grabbed and brutally raped her.
Dora Morales Padilla stated in April 1987; Wood sexually assaulted her. Padilla was twenty-three years old and was working in the New Yorker Bar. She got a ride home with Wood at 2:30 a.m. They drove to some apartments on Montana Street, and Wood went inside. Wood returned to the truck, offered Padilla drugs, and verbally demeaned her. At one point, Wood pulled off to the side of the road and began attacking Padilla. She tried to get away, but he caught her and tied her up in the truck. Wood had a pocketknife and threatened her with it; he then pulled off Padilla's clothes and raped her. He kept hitting her during the assault. Eventually, Padilla made it home by stopping a taxicab.
Debra Morgan, the prosecutor, wanted to be on the David Wood case because it was happening in her neighborhood, and she knew that she fit the profile of the young women he murdered. Her attempt to get under his skin worked, a little too well. During Morgan's closing argument, she felt a breeze behind her and turned around. She saw the defense lawyers pulling Wood back across the table; he was violent and aggressive, trying to grab Morgan from the podium. The jury deliberated for four and a half hours and found him guilty of all six murders, recommending he be put to death by lethal injection.
Where is he now?
David Wood was formally sentenced to death on November 30, 1992. He is currently on death row at the Allan B. Polunsky Unit State Prison in Livingston, Texas. He has made many appeals in the 30 years he has been incarcerated. Wood remains innocent and claims the El Paso police are using him as a scapegoat because of the city's pressure on the department to solve the case. He has also attempted to convey that his actions were due to mental retardation. However, the various witness descriptions and testimonies cause me to believe he is guilty.
Credit: El Paso Times
There is no longer any sign of the desert graveyard between McCombs and Dyer. It has since become the Painted Dunes Golf Course. Some people who moved into new homes nearby said they had never heard of the desert deaths or David Wood.
"I said ten years ago that I was afraid that he was going to outlive me," said Marcia Wheatley, who will be 70 soon. "And so I'm thinking now - no, I'm not going to let him off that easy. I saw it from the beginning, and by God, I want to see the end. The more I keep it in the public realm; I think the more people will just be outraged that this has gone on for so long. A lot of people say the death penalty is like revenge. No, it's justice. That's part of our justice system. I just want this over. Because after 30 years, a lot of people just forget, you know, and I don't blame them. It didn't happen to them; it's just human nature. But I'll never forget."
Credit: Mark of a Killer: Bodies Will Talk To You
(Season 3, Episode 9)
Sources
https://www.supremecourt.gov/DocketPDF/18/18-9262/112415/20190814184654950_Wood%20Second%20BIO%20ID.pdf
https://www.newspapers.com/image/?clipping_id=21101270&fcfToken=eyJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiIsInR5cCI6IkpXVCJ9.eyJmcmVlLXZpZXctaWQiOjQzMTYxNzczMCwiaWF0IjoxNjQxNzQ3NDEwLCJleHAiOjE2NDE4MzM4MTB9.e7MuF-_l_o2liOQzlGl5DdT1_CHAx1QhziFb6IewFDU
https://www.ktsm.com/local/el-paso-news/mark-of-a-serial-killer-looks-at-el-pasos-desert-killer-of-1987/
https://www.elpasotimes.com/story/archives/2009/08/09/el-paso-serial-killer-on-death-row-led-stormy-life/73896380/
https://www.elpasotimes.com/story/news/crime/2017/08/10/desert-deaths-david-leonard-wood-murders-30-years-later/547396001/
https://www.oxygen.com/mark-of-a-serial-killer/crime-news/texas-serial-killer-david-leonard-wood-buried-victims-dead-or
https://www.elpasotimes.com/story/archives/2017/08/10/2009-david-wood-scheduled-executed-aug-20/488213001/
https://kvia.com/news/2009/08/20/families-of-woods-victims-frustrated-by-stay-of-execution/
“Oxygen | Mark of a Killer: Bodies Will Talk To You (Season 3, Episode 9)”