Murder at the Washington Tribune - Margaret Truman [134]
When he was finished, and the camera and tape recorder had been shut off, he said to Roberta, “Don’t give me too much credit, Robbie, for having the courage to come forward like this. I would not have had I not known that the police wanted to question me again about the murder. Your father was to pick me up at my apartment and bring me to their headquarters. I would have confessed to them, I know, but decided that if my deed was to become public, the least I could do was to give my favorite and only niece the exclusive story.”
His words reached one of Roberta’s ears. The other was pressed to her cell phone as she called her boss at the station to tell him she had a sensational story, every bit of it caught on tape, and that she would be there with the crew as soon as possible. She was about to leave when Michael said, “What about the police, Robbie? Must I call them myself?”
“No,” she said. “I will.”
And she did.
CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX
In the Weeks that Followed
No one in Kankakee, Illinois, would have believed a half-century ago that the Wilcox family would become famous. Of course, there had been the notoriety when Michael Wilcox, older of two sons, went on trial for having killed a neighbor girl and was found not guilty by reason of insanity. But that was a regional story and was quickly forgotten once Michael was put away in a mental institution, presumably for good, and the rest of the family had dispersed or died.
But that quickly changed in 2005 when the first of many news reports reverberated around the nation. Washington Tribune reporter Gene Hawthorne wrote the lead story for his paper. It appeared not on the front page of the Metro section, but on page one of the paper itself. It was syndicated by the Trib to sister papers, and the wire services ran with it, too, as did cable news channels and network newscasts.
Hollywood quickly took notice and a bidding war erupted for the screen rights. It had, as a Hollywood columnist wrote, “All the trappings of the ultimate family saga: sex, greed, betrayal, ambition, failure, and success.” All it lacked was drugs, which didn’t keep some tabloids from speculating that Michael Wilcox had been high when he knifed Rudolph Grau, his neighbor, to death in a Washington, D.C., park.
The arrest of Tribune Metro editor Paul Morehouse for the murder of staffer Jean Kaporis was big news, too, but was nothing compared to the Wilcox chronicle. Hawthorne also wrote those stories, which had a ready and anxious readership in D.C. He duly reported that Morehouse pleaded not guilty at his arraignment, although he pointed out that the MPD had uncovered additional evidence to go with information provided by Morehouse’s estranged wife, Mimi Morehouse, who had sued for divorce citing multiple adulteries.
The revelation that the letters allegedly written by Washington’s serial killer had been a hoax brought a collective sigh of relief to the city. TV and radio talk shows across the nation booked media pundits and college journalism professors, who decried what Joe Wilcox had done, condemning him for further eroding the public’s faith in its media. They frequently evoked the names of legendary figures in journalism as examples of integrity and independence, and portrayed sellouts like Joe Wilcox as a rare and warped aberration who gave the media an unwarranted black eye.
The Washington Tribune took a double hit. One of its top editors was a murderer, and its best cops reporter was a liar and forger. Management did everything possible to put a positive spin on things, citing the paper’s long and distinguished history as a first-class newspaper whose corporate motto, Ethics First, would never be compromised by the wayward acts of a few.
While Hawthorne’s stories captivated those who still got their news from the printed page, Roberta Wilcox almost instantly became