The Courier-Journal from Louisville, Kentucky • Page 16

A 16 THE COrRIER.JOl-R.NAL TIMES, Sl.NDAV, FEBRUARY 8, 1976 Did Indiana man die, or assume new identity? Continued From Page One Much of the insurance settlement if there is one will go toward paying the debts Roberts incurred before the fire, but Geneva Roberts will still be left with some money after all the notes are paid. In the meantime, the Indiana State Police will continue to follow up on leads concerning Clarence Roberts' whereabouts. So will William "It's just a matter of time," he said recently. "There's no question the man's alive." So far Roberts has been reported seen in Switzerland, Cuba, Mexico, Austria, Germany, Canada, Missouri, Texas, Alaska and several other states. But all the leads have proven false, and no one knows for certain if Clarence Roberts is walking the face of the earth or is buried six feet beneath the Brown County topsoil.

It may be that no one will ever know. rumors about the Mafia, foreigners and Swiss bank accounts. "But if he were going to pull something like this off, he'd need help and he'd need money. Our polygraph operator told us tests on the family showed there was no deception on their part, and I don't know where he'd have gotten the money to live on all this time," he said. In November of 1977, seven years from the date of the fire, the family can ask the courts to have Clarence Roberts declared legally dead.

And if that's accomplished, Mrs. Roberts then stands to collect the $1 million in insurance. The million in insurance policies is held by a half-dozen companies, and Walker noted that the large sum "isn't unusual" for a man involved in high-finance business ventures. "The insurance he had was mandatory, to a large extent, and was to cover mortgages and notes he'd taken out in the course of his business career," Walker said. The one tooth found, according to Walker, was located beneath the body bag containing the torso while it was being examined in an Indianapolis morgue.

"If I went into a courtroom with that tooth as evidence, I'd be laughed out of the place," Walker said. Walker said he did have what he be-, lieves to be "a lot of circumstantial evidence some strong points in favor of the dead man being Roberts." "We asked his wife where he bought his underwear, and she told us he bought it at one of the major chain dime stores," Walker said. "The underwear on the torso came from that same dime store chain. We know he was drinking the day of the fire, but we don't know how much." "Somewhere out in that dump I believe the evidence lies that would clear up this mystery," he said. "As for all the rumors, well, when we began our investigation there, there was more rumor than fact Clarence Roberts Grand jury has indicted him Widow finds life 'rough 'among doubters rather than together, and they made inaccurate decisions based on inaccurate information," Pless said.

"It began with the first fellow who said it was a suicide." Roberts was known to have had a partial dental plate, yet only one tooth has ever been found and identified with the case. Whether or not that one tooth came from the torso found in the garage also is open to debate, and the lack of more conclusive dental evidence is the source of yet another controversy. Walter said that after the discrepancy in blood types was determined, Det. Sgt. Donal Kuster went back to the fire scene and, with the help of others, shoveled up seven plastic garbage bags of debris.

"He said he sifted through that debris and found maybe two or three pieces of bone and nothing else of value," Walker said. Kuster then called the head of the state police laboratory, Capt. Ray Thompson, and, according to Walker, was told the debris was of little value and should be thrown away. "He (Kuster) caused it to be taken to the dump there in Brown County, and it was bulldozed under," Walker said. "Now I'm not condemning any police officer, but I know I'm not capable of sifting through debris like that and saying what it is.

We have experts who can do that, but they never had a chance to look at the debris. "I personally believe the entire case things one way or the other was in those bags," Walker said. The state police did attempt to recover the debris from the dump, but it was an impossible task, Walker said. "And we went back down there with a tent and our experts after the debris was discarded," he said. "We set up at the site of the fire and sifted through the area again, but didn't find anything." Brown County prosecutor James Roberts (no relation to Clarence) said he doesn't believe the material in the garbage bags was significant.

"I know that debris was examined by officers who went through it with a Jablespoon," he said. William Mitchell, a private investigator with offices in New Jersey, agrees with prosecutor Roberts that it is unlikely that Roberts' dental plates are in the discarded debris. "More and more, the evidence points to the person who died in the fire being an old wino with no teeth," said Mitchell, who is working for Wabash Life Insurance Co. and is still looking for Roberts. But when the six-member grand jury reported to Judge David Woods in 'December, the judge ordered the report sealed.

That has made Mrs. Roberts unhappy. "If there's new information about tha case, I'd like to know about it," she said. "I wish they'd open the report and let everyone know what's in it. I don't know why the whole thing's been getting so much attention now.

I don't know when it's all going to end." In November 1977 Mrs. Roberts can ask the courts to declare her husband legally dead, then set about getting the insurance companies to pay the $1 million in policies held on his life. There's only one aspect of the case surrounding her husband that still has Mrs. Roberts confused she doesn't know if the fire was accidental or if it was suicide. "That's something that's never been quite clear in my own mind," she said.

munity of skeptical, curious people and with wild and sometimes malicious rumors about Clarence Roberts and his death or deception. "Some of the rumors are totally unfounded," Mrs. Roberts said. "They're just a figment of somebody's imagination." Mrs. Roberts believes much of the fuss over her husband's death or lack of it could have been avoided.

"Right after the fire happened, I wanted a coroner's inquest," she said. "I kept asking for one repeatedly, but they never had one. I really wanted to get the whole thing resolved then." Though she has "no doubts whatsoever" about her husband's death, Mrs. Roberts admits that the rumors recently revived by the grand jury probe have made life in Nashville "a little rough." Roberts was heavily in debt at the time of the fire, and Mrs. Roberts sold the family's house on Grandma Barnes Road shortly thereafter.

Last March she went to work for the Nashville House, a restaurant and curio shop in this tiny tourist center of about 900 people. "The boys (the Roberts' four sons) have helped me out whenever they could things were terribly bothersome at first," she said. "But I believe everything's getting a little better now." Mrs. Roberts has been reluctant to talk to reporters; she believes the press had sometimes sensationalized the events surrounding the fire and her husband's disappearance. In fact, the family filed suit against an Indianapolis newspaper that published a picture of Clarence Roberts, embellished with a moustache and beard added by an artist, and connected the face with a bank robbery in that city.

Newspapers around the Nashville area have reported that Brown County prosecutor James Roberts (no relation) has said he had new information on the death or disappearance of Clarence Roberts. By GLENN RUTHERFORD Courier-Journal Staff Writer NASHVILLE, Ind. The last five years haven't been easy for Geneva Roberts. It's bad enough losing your husband of nearly 30 years, but it's especially hard to be a widow when some of the people in your town don't believe your husband really died. Geneva Roberts is a pleasant, sad-eyed woman who is convinced that her husband, Clarence, died in November 1970 in a garage fire behind their home here.

But others including a Brown County grand jury and the Indiana State Police aren't convinced. The grand jury indicted Roberts for murder and kidnaping in December, but Mrs. Roberts believes it's "all a bunch of nonsense." "I have no doubts at all that my husband is dead," she said in a recent interview. "What people forget, you know, is how bad it is to lose your husband." At first it was hard living in a com IF WOTIM, 20,000 SMJ SIZES 4 TO 7 SIZES 8 TO 16 2400 pairs famous maker pants. Rugged cotton-polyester blends by our most famous manufacturer.

Solids, checks and plaids in navy, green, brown or red. Sizes 4 to 8 to 16 regular and slim. reported that Roberts has been charged Jvith kidnaping and murder, i To understand why it took legal au-I thorities five years to decide 4hing is amiss in the Roberts case, and hy a death certificate for Clarence Rob-t Jerts is yet to be issued, it's necessary to consider the events surrounding the fire Jind the state police investigation that fol-' lowed. According to Lt. Col.

Walker, who now heads the department's personnel divi- fcion, the fire in Roberts' garage was burn-r ing furiously when firemen arrived. "Since the fire was going with such 'great force, the firemen asked one of the 6ons (Roberts and his wife have four) if they could let it burn and concentrate on keeping it away from the house," Walker said. The fire then burned for quite a while before members of the Roberts family discovered they couldn't account for their father. 1 firemen then turned all the hose they had on it, they put it out and that's when discovered the body inside," he said. Roberts left a note for his wife a note dated Nov.

18 saying he'd be working in the garage on a pickup truck. "At first I was concerned about his dating the note," Walker said. "I did some checking on this, and I found that a lot of people date their notes to their wives and such. It's not nearly as unusual as I thought it was." At the time of the fire, Walker said, all of Roberts' business ventures were biting the dust. He'd been involved in grain elevators that had gone bankrupt, as had an apartment complex he'd built on Ind.

46 east of Nashville. "His goal in life was to buy back the apartment complex," Walker said. "He was heavily in debt, everything he'd touched had gone sour, and he was on the verge of being arrested." Roberts had apparently forged the name of his brother, Warren then the Brown County sheriff on loan applications enabling him to buy two new cars. He was to be charged with fraud. "He'd talked to his sons about committing suicide," Walker said.

"He told one son he'd gone south of town and laid skid marks down leading up to a tree at full throttle, and with the skid marks already there, people would think he tried to stop." Roberts' finances were so bad, Walker said, that he'd cashed small bad checks for $2 and $3 at local stores, just to get enough money together to buy food. "He was down and out; he had no funds whatsoever," Walker said. Once the fire was out, Walker said, investigating police officers had no reason to believe the. charred torso found in the debris wasn't that of Roberts. But cause for doubt arose when the coroner removed some blood from the torso's heart and mailed it to the Indiana State Police laboratory in Indianapolis for analysis.

"When the blood was typed, we found it wasn't the same as Clarence Roberts was supposed to have," Walker said. The only records that investigators had to go by was Roberts' military medical history, and it showed he had type blood. "We typed the body in the fire as having AB," Walker said. However, Dr. John Pless, a pathologist at Bloomington Hospital who serves as a consultant to the Indiana State Police, said the question of the torso's blood type shouldn't even be considered when trying to solve the Roberts case.

"The blood typing is worthless," Pless said in a recent telephone interview. "They (the Indiana State Police) apparently typed the blood by ordinary means, and you can't do that with bodies that have been in a high combustion atmosphere. The temperature in the fire could change the typing of the blood. It's not even worth discussing." But what is worth discussing, Pless said, are comparisons of rays some taken of Clarence Roberts before the fire and others taken of the torso found irj the burned garage. According to the state police laboratory, the private investigator working for one of the insurance companies and Dr.

Pless, the Bloomington pathologist, the rays are the best available evidence in the Roberts case. They show, Pless says, thaf the body found in the garage "couldn't possibly hve been Clarence Roberts'." Walker doesn't agree. I'm a layman, and all my work ntas been police work field investigations. But they keep talking about scientific evidence, and the scientific evidence they're talking about is one set of rays taken of a living person under ideal conditions; the other is a set taken of a part of a body with all the fluids and most of the flesh gone," Walker said. "People talk about so many points in the rays that don't compare, but' there are points that do compare favorably," he said.

"Now I'm not criticizing any doctor, but I am saying this is one of the poorest types of comparisons we can make." Walker says that the late Dr. Georg K. Neumann of Indiana University, an anthropologist, was "80 per cent certain" Clarence Roberts died in the garage fire. "He said the torso had a hat size the same as Roberts', the curvature of the back of the head was unique and the same as Roberts' and so was the bridge of the nose," Walker said. Neumann, according to Walker, said the ray comparisons were favorable.

"He made ray comparisons in front of us, put bones from the torso right into place over the rays," Walker said. But Pless says that, to his knowledge, Neumann wasn't extensively knowledgeable about ray comparisons in cases of this type. "There are few specialists in the field of anthropology who do comparisons like this every day," Pless said. "I don't know if he had any knowledge of ray comparisons or not, but my information suggests that he didn't." Pless said that reports on the rays he saw indicated there were five points of comparison that show the torso wasn't that of Roberts. "And they were at points that would not have been affected by the exposure to fire," he said.

"There were things present in the torso found in the garage that weren't present on the Clarence Roberts rays. "When Dr. Neumann said he was 80 per cent certain the torso was Clarence Roberts, well, I'm afraid this is just a case where the other 20 per cent proved to be accurate," Pless said. "The problem with the Roberts case in a nutshell is that there were expert working independently of one another FOR SIZES 4 TO 7 dJ FOR SIZES 8 TO 1G 1000 famous maker shirts. Short sleeve cotton-polyester knits, crew or mock turtleneck styles.

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