St. Louis Post-Dispatch from St. Louis, Missouri • Page 49

ST. LOUIS POST-DISPATCH 9D SUNDAY, DECEMBER 17, 1989 Ganey want to see me, I'll decide, I can't say either way at this time." It was signed Charlie Hatcher. Hatcher's tone changed after Ganey sent him copies of his newspaper series. In a letter from the jail at Wa) rensburg, where Hatcher awaited trial in the killing of ll-year-oja" Michelle Steele, he said: 'A "Dear Mr. Ganey, I don't knoif where you got all your information Don't send me any more of your trashr As the media, or anyone you're su posed to have talked to, couldn't knoj me or anything about me, as I been to all the places you stated it your story, and never heard of thes people.

"As for relatives, I don't have ariy? as I was an orphan. And I never had Hatcher died when the prison was in lockdown, a time when inmate movement is greatly restricted. "Who really knows what happened? Charlie was capable of having one last joke on the system." For Ganey, Hatcher's death closed some doors, but opened others, ularly the records kept by mental institutions and other documents that would have been difficult to obtain if he were alive. It became a paper chase, psychiatric documents, FBI records. Sixty percent of the factual material in the book came from documents, Ganey said.

Ganey, who started working for the Post-Dispatch in 1977, and before that was a wire service reporter in Jefferson City, came to the Hatcher case when an editor in St. Louis asked him to go to the prison and interview Melvin Reynolds, a young man from Kansas City, the headless girl mystery in St. Louis; we need to think about these things, as unpleasant as they are." Ganey, citing the Federal Bureau of Investigation, said it is believed that at any one time at least 35 serial killers who murder randomly are roaming the country. Hatcher was merely one of them. Hatcher's death was ruled a suicide.

But his death, like his life, would be cloaked in mystery. Had he been murdered, as some thought, by vengeful guards or inmates who loathed Hatcher because he was a convicted child molester and killer, a class of inmates who are always outcasts and at risk in the prison population? "The official account was suicide," Ganey said. "But there are people in authority who still think he was murdered." From page three "It seemed fatalistic, that he would go back to where his crime career began," said Ganey, who spent years unraveling the deadly and twisted story. For Ganey, the Hatcher case is gruesome and chilling for a number of reasons, not the least of which is the lesson it offers about the need for a national network to keep track of kill-erg like Hatcher who travel across the country using aliases. ''As the Wetterling disappearance in Minnesota shows, there are characters like Charlie Hatcher out there, and they're smart," Ganey said.

"Take the missing girl in Frederick-town, the five murdered women in 1983. "After the Reynolds interview, I just got deeper and deeper in the case," Ganey said. He wrote a series of articles about Hatcher, a serial killer, which appeared in the Post-Dispatch in 1984. "If ever there was a book in a story I'd written, with all the twist and turns, this was it." Nevertheless, Ganey piled up 20 rejection slips before finding a publisher. "I believed in the book.

If this bad happened in New York or LA, there would have been all kinds of things written." So far, the reviews have been good, he said, although The New York Times, calling the book a "well-researched recitation of Hatcher's mon-sterous crimes, but little beyond that," did quibble. The Times said that it was as if Ganey could not bear to look too deeply into his subject. The St. Joseph News-PressGazette thought the book's conclusion left readers uncertain: "It's hard to know what to think. And hard not to feel that the heart of this book remains as hollow as whatever beat in Hatcher's chest." Both newspapers seemed to want more speculation about what demons drove Hatcher to do the things he did.

The 1978 Christgen murder, for which Melvin Reynolds spent four years in prison, seriously divided law enforcement authorities in St. Joseph. Chief of Police James R. Hayes, who retired 10 days after Ganey 's book came out, continues to maintain that Reynolds was guilty of Christgen's murder. Perhaps Hayes was steadfast because of a note Hatcher sent him after his confession, saying, "You're right about the Christgen case.

I didn't do tnat one." Once again, the chief said, Hatcher had hoodwinked law enforcement officials. If Terry Ganey has any regrets, it is that Hatcher never consented to talk with him. "I wished somebody could have probed his depths to figure out why he did the things he did." Of course, Ganey does have the notes that Hatcher sent him in his last year. They offer some insights. On May 24, 1984, in a note from the Missouri State Penitentiary, Hatcher said, "I'm not sure I could trust anyone with the truth anymore.

If you any brothers. So don't write any mor garbage or send me any. The signature this time the Lone Ranger, Hatcher was not an orphan. But bis! brother Floyd would not talk to Ganey; either. In a final note, Hatcher said: "And now the rumor is someone wants to write a book.

A myth does sell, but it also brings lawsuits. "See you around, Charlie." St. Joseph who had been convicted of killing a child named Eric Christgen. It was a crime Hatcher later said he committed in a long, tortuous confession to Joe Holtslag, the FBI agent in St. Joseph who Ganey credits with breaking the Hatcher case.

Reynolds was released from prison in October CELEBRATE i jm li Mitchell life!" she told me, soft-voiced in wonderment. She did indeed come often to the newspaper city room, always reveal ing how carefully she read the paper in ST. LOUIS by singling out reporters whose stories she had liked, praising and questioning them. Once I had a continuing series on two ancient women, members of an old Atlanta family, who dwelled in poverty, catching rainwater to drink and subsisting on food from garbage The principal identity deterrent was that she did not act like a celebrity. She hadn't mentioned her name and obviously didn't give a hoot whether a new acquaintance was aware of her fame.

She was simply Peggy Marsh, wife of public relations man John Marsh, at home among old friends and glad to meet a newcomer, offering a ride home in gas-rationing days. For the next eight years, until her death, my work and some of my leisure time brushed Margaret Mitchell's life. I never lost my impression of her as funny, endearing, totally unpretentious. We met often on the Piedmont bus when I was going to work and she was on her way to Grady Hospital to see GUIDE TO DIMMG From page three recognizing Margaret Mitchell. But the passage of even the couple of years since the "GWTW" premiere, when she was slim and beautiful, had blurred the author's looks somewhat.

She had taken on weight. The fine-boned face was chubbier, the chin line less firm. An old foot injury caused her to wear flat sandals instead of the high heels she must have preferred. And she was, of course, 41 years old getting along, as a young reporter thought. some old family friend or retainer.

We shopped together on 10th Street, where I took my children to Saturday movies and the dime stores. Once when we stopped in front of the Roxy delicatessen, where she was buying delicacies to put in one of her innumerable packages to feed the hungry in war-torn Europe, our visit was interrupted by my little girls tugging at my skirt to move me on to Woolworth's. Peggy laughed. "I know how you feel," she told them. "I used to shop here with my mother and she would stop and talk with one of her lady friends.

I'd have to swallow my locket to get her attention and make her move on!" She sold war bonds, and I went to cover her talk of how the Confederate women gave up rings and necklaces for the cause. She christened the USS Atlanta and I called her for a report. "I felt it I felt that ship come to ENTERTAINMENT cans. One of them was arrested for throwing rocks at passing schoolchildren, and when she was made to strip NEW YEAR'S EVE PARTY TRAIN! and shower at the jail, it was discovered she had $10,500 in little cloth bags tied to her underwear. Peggy whooped with delight at that story, dropping by my desk to talk.

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