Wednesday, October 29, 2008

Where is Professor Stees?


Where is Professor Stees?
by Robert A. Waters

On February 21, 1970, Gene Isaac Stees walked away from the state prison in Columbus, Ohio and disappeared. He’d been convicted of bludgeoning his pregnant wife and dumping her body in Dow Lake, near Athens. For 38 years, he’s escaped justice. Today, if he’s still living, he would be 76.

It was a classic love triangle. Gene Stees, 31, a professor at Ohio University, and his wife, Helen, 30, had separated because of his dalliance with a third woman. Patricia Weathers had caught his eye. Married and with three children, local newspapers described Weathers as “svelt,” “doe-eyed,” and “beautiful.”

Gene and Helen had met at Grace College in Indiana where both were students. They married in 1955. A nurse, she worked to put him through school. He obtained his Master’s Degree from the University of Indiana and began working toward his doctorate. During the course of their marriage, Gene and Helen had two children.

While attending classes at the university, Stees met Weathers and they became lovers. She later testified that he told her he was divorcing his wife. After the divorce was legal, he said, they would get married.

A few months before the murder, Stees took a job as an assistant professor at Ohio University in Athens. He rented a small farmhouse and moved in with his lover.

On October 20, 1962, Helen, who was living with her parents in Ashland, Ohio, arranged to meet her husband in Athens. She told them she hoped they could work out their problems and reconcile. (Weathers had flown to Florida to see her husband and children.) The next day, when Helen didn’t come home, her parents called police.

Investigators found a pool of blood on the seat of Stees’ car. An article from the Athens Messenger describes his confession: “Shortly after [Gene and Helen] arrived at the farm, Stees [said he] struck his wife in the head with a crow bar and then pulled a plastic bag over her head. That night, he stuffed her body into a metal drum, placed it in his station wagon and drove to the upper end of Dow Lake. There he carried the barrel to a boat, lifted it into the craft, rowed out into the lake near where the swimming area is located, and dumped the metal coffin with his wife’s body over the side.”

At the trial, prosecutors established two motives for the slaying: the desire to marry his lover and the fact that at their last meeting Helen had informed Stees that she had become pregnant.

The evidence was overwhelming and Stees was convicted of “first degree with mercy.” That meant he wouldn’t face the death penalty, but he would have to serve life without the possibility of parole for twenty years.

Stees entered the Ohio Penitentiary on February 14, 1963. He was a model inmate and was eventually transferred to the records office, where he became a clerk. The job had two major benefits for Stees: first, instead of wearing striped prison clothes, he dressed in khakis, much like blue collar workers on the outside; second, the records section was only a few feet from the door that led outside.

On February 18, 1970, almost exactly seven years after entering prison, Stees simply walked out the door and vanished.

Several glitches in prison protocol gave him a head-start. Although Stees was thought to have left the prison in the morning, a head count wasn’t made until late in the afternoon. Once he was reported missing, the Ohio State Police wasn’t notified until three days later. By that time, the trail had run cold.

Where did he go after his escape? Did he have help? Police interrogated Patricia Weathers but found no sign that she had ever contacted Stees after he was arrested for the murder. In fact, she made up with her husband and had lived in Florida since 1963.

The best guess is that Stees had saved some money from his job. (He made a few cents an hour.) On the day he vanished, he may have taken his money, walked out onto Spring Street, a busy thoroughfare, and blended in with construction workers nearby. Had he boarded a Greyhound bus, he could have been anywhere within a few hours.

Athens County Sheriff Harold Shields, who arrested Stees, often transported prisoners to the penitentiary. While there, he spoke with Stees, who helped with the paperwork for the new inmates, on many occasions. Several times Stees spoke of his interest in Australia. Shields always maintained that Stees could have easily caught a bus to Canada, changed his name, and migrated to Australia.

While it was possible that Stees had outside help, prison officials regularly monitored all inmates’ mail and phone calls. They never got an indication that he had any friends on the outside.

For years, Ohio officials and the FBI searched for Stees. The FBI eventually closed their books on him. However, his 1960s-style mug is still shown on the Ohio cold case website.

Is the deadly professor still alive? Or is he lying in some anonymous grave? It’s a mystery that may never be solved.

6 comments:

R.Meentzen said...

I was a young girl and I lived around the corner from Helen Taber Stees. Her son was in my class at school. Her father was a wonderful man & a pastor at our church.The day she went missing , the story was all over our little community. My mom had been crying when I woke up in the morning and told me to be real nice to the Stees son- I think his nickname was Billy- as something bad had happened to his mom, but he didnt know it yet. He was sort of a terror ,but me and some other kids played ball with him at recess. After recess someone came to remove him and the teachers at Pleasant Street school were all crying. A friend of mine stayed friends with the son as penpals, and in 1970 when Stees escaped ,the FBI showed up at her door. They were concerned that Stees would try to find his children through his childrens old schoolfriends. The FBI were in Ashland for several days questioning people and doing surveilance. The murder was a terrible tragedy for Rev Taber and he did not stay in our town much longer. He was a great man of God with tremendous faith and compassion, but the light went out of his eyes after that.
Helen Taber Stees is buried in the cemetery in Ashland Ohio. Her memorial is at Findagrave at this link.
http://www.findagrave.com/cgi-bin/fg.cgi?page=gr&GRid=28767486
Please stop by and leave a flower on her grave,
Randi Bowles Meentzen

S said...

Thank you Randi for telling everyone more about the family hurt by this evil man. I will visit her online grave and leave a flower. I'm originally from Athens but never heard this story before, fascinating but sad for those hurt by this man and Helen most of all, and her unborn child and children.

Unknown said...

My husbandfirst met Gene at a workplace in Harrisburg, PA. They became friends and they ended up going to Winona Lake, IN, to enroll in Grace College. They were room mates and my husband was the best man at Gene and Helen's wedding. My husband and I were dating at the time. On the drive home from that wedding, I accepted my husband's proposal of marriage. A year later at our marriage, Gene was a groomsman. We were friends for a number of years. In fact, just a few months before this fateful day, Gene was a guest in our home. When he escaped we often wondered if he would show up at our house. Of course, that didn't happen and we have wondered what actually happened and where he might of escaped. We did know that Helen's family believed that he ended up in Australia. I learned some things that I did not know about in reading this article. As close as we were to Gene, he never mentioned the other woman although we did know that Gene and Helen were separated. The last time we talked to Gene, he told us that he and Helen might be getting back together.

Sean said...

Helen was my 4th cousin. Her great great grandfather was my great great grandfather's brother. I just learned about this on Ancestry doing family history research. This is awful - so sad. I read somewhere that they had 3 children, but I only found 2 on Ancestry: William "Billie" and Cathy. Can someone tell me the name of their 3rd child?

Sean said...

Helen was my 4th cousin. Her great great grandfather was my great great grandfather's brother. I just learned about this on Ancestry doing family history research. This is awful - so sad. How traumatic for their children. Whatever became of them?

Unknown said...

He had only two children, Billy and Kathy. Gene had told us a couple months before the murder that Helen was pregnant with
twins.