In 1975, the Reverend Andrew Elkhorn, an evangelic preacher with a local Sunday TV show, was found by his housekeeper stabbed to death in his bedroom in the church parsonage. That in itself would have caused Harry to investigate the death as a murder, but it was more than just a stabbing death. The Reverand was lying on his back, his underwear had been puled down to his knees and he had a brass cross a foot and a half long jammed up his rectum until the cross part stopped it from going any deeper. His penis had been cut off at the base and stuck in his mouth.
The coroner determined the cross had been pushed up Reverend Elkhorn's rectum after he died, and that his penis had also been severed post mortem. The stab wound that killed him was also different from any Harry had seen before.
Most stabbing victims are either stabbed in the chest or stomach from the front. A few are stabbed in the back or side. Killing someone with a knife requires close contact and it's messy. It's messy because multiple stab wounds are usually required and the more stab wounds, the more bleeding. To cause death the knife wound must produce profuse internal or external bleeding or remove the ability of the lungs to absorb oxygen. It's difficult to do that with a single thrust unless the killer has knowledge of internal anatomy and a few specific techniques. Stab wounds in the abdomen can cause death, but it's usual for that death to occur hours or if untreated, even days after the initial stabbing.
That's because the most vulnerable and critical-to-life body organs, the heart and the major artery, the aorta, and the lungs, are protected by the rib cage. The untrained killer must keep stabbing at the chest until by chance, the knife slips between two ribs. Said multiple stab wounds also indicate rage by the killer against the victim. Without rage involved, most people give up the stabbing attack as soon as the blood starts to flow.
The only wound on the victim was one thrust from above and just under his left collarbone that went deep enough to pierce his heart. There did not appear to have been any type of struggle between the killer and Reverend Elkhorn. The autopsy revealed that the knife blade slashed through his heart and resulted in his blood being pumped into his chest cavity. The coroner said the pain and shock would probably have rendered Reverend Elkhorn unable to defend himself after only a few seconds, and he would have essentially been dead after less than five minutes.
The coroner said the butcher knife lying on the floor beside Reverend Elkhorn was probably the murder weapon since the blade was long enough and was extremely sharp.
Harry had the butcher knife handle checked for fingerprints and when the technology became available, for DNA, but both turned up nothing of use. There were no prints on the knife blade and the DNA the tech found there turned out to be DNA from an animal, not human source.
Harry needed a motive for the murder, but when he talked to the people of the congregation, there didn't seem to be one. His congregation viewed Reverend Elkhorn as about as close to God as any human can get.
Apparently Mr. Elkhorn said God worked through his hands and he not so subtly implied that he could cure anything if people donated enough money to his church. He proved that on his weekly TV show. Someone who was crippled so badly by pain or disease they had to be helped onto his stage would come up and tell him their story.
He'd put his hand on their forehead, then bow and pray out loud for God to give him the strength to cure the person. After that, he'd look up and shout "By the power of God, I heal thee", and then push hard enough on the person's head to push them backwards. Usually the person fell down, but then stood up on their own and walked off the stage.
Harry had interviewed a lot of the congregation and they all were believers in Reverend Elkhorn's divine gift. Few of them had experienced his curative powers, but they'd seen it work nearly every Sunday.
Harry did find a few who were former members of the congregation who told him Reverend Elkhorn wasn't what he claimed to be. One of those former members had decided to find out what had gone wrong.
The man was well off financially and had exhausted every avenue that medical science had to offer to cure his wife of cancer. As a last resort, he'd brought his wife to Reverend Elkhorn in hopes he could cure her because he'd seen the TV shows. She'd fallen down like all the rest, but then got back up and said she didn't hurt anymore. The husband was overjoyed until his wife died a month later. The man had hired a private detective to find out the truth about Reverend Elkhorn.
It was when Harry talked to the private detective that he got the other side of the story.
What the PI found was that many of Reverend Elkhorn's supposed "cures" turned out to be paid actors he'd planted in his audience. The few that were successful were people whose problem was just a mental thing. They'd somehow convinced themselves that they were in pain or couldn't walk or do something else, and all Reverend Elkhorn did was unconvince them with his praying and by pushing on their forehead.
When Harry had asked the coroner about that, the coroner said it was probably similar to the well-known "placebo effect" used by drug companies to test the efficacy of a new drug. A study group is chosen of people who all exhibit the same symptoms. Half the study group are treated with the new drug. The other half are given a "placebo" - either pills that mimic the new drug but contain only inert ingredients or they're injected with a solution of saline.
In some trials where there is no scientific way to determine the true cause of the ailment like recurring headaches or back pain, some of the people given the placebo appear to have recovered as quickly as those given the actual drug. The scientific explanation is that some people, after hearing about an ailment, begin self-examination for the same symptoms and then imagine they have the same symptoms caused by the aliment. Though the placebo could not possibly have had an effect on the actual ailment, those people believed the placebo had cured them.
According to the PI, Reverend Elkhorn also did his cures during the week at his church, but many of those didn't seem to last if they even did anything. Reverend Elkhorn's answer was always that the person didn't believe strongly enough or hadn't given enough money to the church to convince God to give him the power to heal that particular person.
The private detective had spoken with several people who'd donated a lot of money to the church, i.e. essentially paid Reverend Elkhorn to cure them of various things. Most had accepted Reverend Elkhorn's reasoning and kept trying. There were a few who had threatened to sue, so Reverend Elkhorn paid them off before they could.
Harry contacted all those people or their surviving relatives and they all told him the same thing. They said Reverend Elkhorn had gotten what he deserved.
Each one of those people became a "person of interest", but when Harry investigated them, he couldn't find any evidence one or more had killed Reverend Elkhorn. They either had alibis that checked out or were incapacitated to the extent they couldn't have physically done what had been done to Reverend Elkhorn.
Reverend Elkhorn was married, so Ruth Elkhorn was also a person of interest. Harry did interview her, but she was in another city visiting her mother and other relatives at the time of the murder and had witnesses that she was there.
When Harry turned the case over to me he frowned.
"This one I finally gave up on. I'm sure somebody killed the bastard because they paid him but he didn't cure them. I just couldn't find that person to talk to them. I'm also sure there are more out there who would have liked to see him dead. The problem was that most of his followers were extremely loyal to him even after he was killed and they wouldn't tell me anything. They even kept him lying in state in the church for a week before they finally buried him."
The case was over forty years old when I took the case file home one Friday night and showed it to Rochelle.
