Who Killed Chrissy?: The True Crime Memoir of a Pittsburgh girl's Unsolved Murder in Las Vegas Read online

  I’m only a few inches taller than Chris but somehow I feel much taller standing next to her. I’m just bigger boned and longer legged than her, and we are opposite for looks—her having classic Italian features, black wavy hair, tight lipped, olive skinned, and me having blonde hair and ivory skin. I’ve been told I am the spittin’ image of Stevie Nicks or the other singer, Blondie. I have been involved in the modeling and entertainment industry since my teens in Pittsburgh. The two main influences in my early teen years were two Pittsburgh women, mother and daughter, named Virginia and Dana Pugar, who happened to be friends with my family. They were models and airline stewardesses and appeared in the Ivory Soap TV commercials that featured mothers and daughters washing dishes together. These glamour girls unknowingly molded me in my early teen years. I poured pure peroxide on my mousy brown hair at the age of thirteen, determined to become the blonde bombshell of a woman that Dana was in my mind. She had the sassy personality and looks of Cybill Shepherd, and that’s who I wanted to be—frivolous, blonde and casting my fate to the pure romance of life, which, upon thoughts of it, smelled like a magnolia blossom to me, sweet and fresh and peachy….

  I convinced my parents to pay for Victoria Modeling School in downtown Pittsburgh, which was the only place to go if you wanted to learn how to walk and talk with class. I also attended the Pittsburgh Playhouse for acting.

  My other friend growing up was Cathy Cahill. I was convinced she was the younger sister of Elizabeth Taylor, who I worshipped after first seeing her in National Velvet, which was also about horses, my other passion in life.

  Coupled with periodic worship of Natalie Wood and Vivian Leigh, I found that living in the movies kept me wanting more and more glamour. These women were all hopeless romantics, searching for true love and being discarded along the way by men who only wanted their beauty. How does one know this at such an early age? You don’t. You only know that romance and glamour brought attention and high emotional drama in and out of your life on a regular basis. The highs and lows kept you wanting more and more.

  I have known Christine Casilio for over six months now since moving into the spacious apartment at 151 Riverview Avenue near Observatory Hill on the North Side of Pittsburgh.

  It’s an old building that I stalked for a year while waiting for a vacancy, a building that is the last structure on Riverview Avenue before entering Riverview Park. This park holds sacred memories for me from my childhood—skating on the frozen pond in winter, testing the cracked ice for weakness, trying to bust through it with your blades, getting half soaked, then standing cold and wet by the barrels of raging fires near the woods. Wild ice skating, no restrictions, nothing holding you back from sliding into the danger area where thin ice was waiting to be smashed through, and no one there giving you instructions or rules to follow—you were on your own on the ice, you could make your own decisions on whether to take the risk or not. No restrictions, only pure romance of the mind, pure unadulterated joy of life’s passionate pursuits.

  Finally my voice emerges, “What do you mean Chris—you’re naked? You’re talking about a real knife? Why would you be doing that kind of weird shit?” I still can’t imagine why she’s telling me this, maybe for the shock value, maybe because she wants to show me how brave she is. In the short time that I’ve known her she impresses me as the type of person who always wants to show or prove how tough she is. I understand the “North Side thing”—I, too, was raised on the North Side of Pittsburgh, where everyone was scrappy, tough and prone to trouble, alcohol abuse and breaking the law. I went to St. Cyril of Alexandria school on Brighton Road in the fifties until graduating eighth grade in 1964. We had to attend mass every morning in grade school, and we had the toughest nuns in Pittsburgh. They had to be tough. The North Side boys were bold and followed no one’s rules. Sister Augusta had to occasionally pick up a desk and hurl it across the room at Chick Conley or Bart Klemz, and she was my favorite nun. She was young, tough and pretty, and eventually left the convent when I left the grade school. She confided in a few of us girls that there were things going on with the priests that were wrong, she knew they were wrong and she had to get out.

  “What kind of craziness is that, I mean, why would you enjoy a sharp knife being dragged all over your body; doesn’t it hurt?” I stare in amazement at her, swatting my blonde bangs away from my eyes and lighting a cigarette. I’m agitated and nervous, which will inevitably lead to a chain smoking frenzy and will piss her off because she doesn’t smoke and doesn’t like smoke. She seems amused, flashing her crooked smile—she has shocked me, made me pay attention to her; it pleases her. She’s dancing around the oversized kitchen, palming the little meatballs, rolling and tossing them into the bubbling pot. The wonderful aroma of chicken broth and parsley fill the kitchen, and I just want to eat Wedding Soup now and forget everything else. My son is at my Mom’s house, and I’m sure she’s feeding him a lunch of leftover roast beef, carrots and potatoes. The thought makes me hungrier than I already am.

  As I study her reactions to my reactions, I realize that she is enjoying my disbelief, and this strange feeling comes over me, as if I have connected with her psyche. I catch her eye and she turns away from me; she knows I’ve connected with her and she rejects the connection. I want to connect with her; I want to be a close friend because I do not believe that she has close female friends, or at least ones that she trusts.

  I also feel that there are two distinct personalities going on here. The Chris that I see every day jogging the park is not the same Chris that is now telling me this story of horror and shock. I believe that Chris knows that I know she’s not the person in this knife story at all. She just wants to have the whole world think she’s a bona fide bad ass.

  Sometimes I just look at her and I know that she is immature, flighty and opposed to learning anything from someone older than her, but I am not a teacher either. I have my own life to deal with right now. Quite often she annoys me with her reckless attitude about life in general, but I have to remind myself that since moving back to Pittsburgh, I have very few friends. I left in 1975, after being swept off my feet in a romantic love rush by my son’s father, Rick, who was with the singing group, the Drifters, and I lost touch with most of my old friends during that time away.

  Chris and I are neighbors for now, and I do like having someone in the building that I know and can confide in. I am alone in single motherhood with my son, who is now the only person that I care about in life, other than my family.

  Chris always wears sweatpants and a tank top, sports bra showing halfway out of the tank, but it’s the gold jewelry that is out of place on this permanent getup that I see her in most of the time. Our first meeting was when she jogged out of the building one morning, dressed in her running clothes with all the jewelry bobbing around her neck. Gold chains, crosses, saints, I never understood how she was able to run with all the jewelry, but I know that she cherishes it all; she won’t go anywhere without every single piece of it displayed around her neck. It symbolizes something to Chris—success maybe. I wouldn’t be caught dead in all that gold jewelry, and every time I see her in it, I cringe. I cringe because I feel like she’s inviting someone to grab it and rip it right off her neck and run with it, and having lived in Manhattan briefly with my son’s father, Rick, I knew that it was not smart to advertise your jewelry in public places.

  The apartments are all the same size in this building, six units stacked on top of each other with enclosed sun porches in the front of each, kitchens that are L shaped with pantries leading into the dining room area, then a back door from the kitchen which opens to a New York style heavy metal fire escape that snakes all the way up to the top floor. There are three apartments stacked on the left side and three on the right side, with the front doors right in the middle. I live on the first floor, right side, and Chris lives on the third floor, right side, directly above me, with one apartment in between us. There are wooden steps with carpet and double wooden doors to the street.
No elevator.

  It is the spring of 1981. I returned to Pittsburgh in 1979, twenty-nine years old, pregnant and unmarried, and I’ve been living in the Stanton Heights section of the city of Pittsburgh since my son was born; he is now two years old. I was happy to have been able to move from Stanton Heights back to the North Side where I grew up. I settled in Stanton Heights when I returned to Pittsburgh so I could be close to West Penn Hospital where my obstetrician was located—and until I could find a job, with hopefully, a company car. My background is forever in sales, and I landed a position with a local company as a regional sales rep when my son was close to seven months old.

  Chris balances herself leaning against the sink and washing the spinach leaves and chard for her bubbling pot of soup while I sit in deep thought about this creepy guy, Marty—the knife she’s been using for her dramatic demonstration has been laid casually in the sink, and she’s thinking about her next move. Who the hell is Marty I thought, as I flicked ashes into the ashtray….

  I sit straight up in my chair and look at her, and I’m trying to think of the next move with her. I guess the only polite thing to do is ask about the guy in this scene she’s describing. I haven’t known her long enough to do much more, and besides, I’m a listener; I’m the kind of friend who tries to be helpful without being overly critical. I listen intently as she continues to tell me this story that I don’t want to hear and have no clue why she’s telling it to me. I’m going to try to just listen without being judgmental.

  She is fanning the smoke that’s drifting towards her and is now making excuses for Marty. “Marty’s a little strange, but mysterious, and he’s from the North Side, you know, that’s where I grew up, so did you, so you know all about that North Side deal. He tells me stories about how it’s easy to kill a person and never be found out, how you can stick a pipe down the throat, and no one can ever tell how the person died.”

  “A pipe Chris? What kind of a pipe?” I said quickly, but it seemed weird saying it, talking about a pipe in someone’s throat. In fact, when I pictured this, I thought of jungle soldiers in Vietnam or something like that. I couldn’t think of anything else about a pipe, it was just so damn weird to me.

  “Why does he tell you way-out stories like this about pipes, Chris?”….she ignores my question.

  She has now gotten more intense. “He’s a street guy; you know, the kind that isn’t afraid of anyone. He hates niggers with a passion because of being a cop and with living on the North Side; well, everyone knows how bad the nigger situation is on the North Side, right?”

  “Marty who, Chris? Who is Marty? Can you please explain to me who the hell this Marty guy is, how did you meet him?”…I am nervously picking at my newly manicured nails, feeling an explosion building up. I am quite even tempered, but once I reach the level of feeling frustrated and vulnerable, I am going to respond dramatically.

  I jump up out of my chair, somewhat lunging towards her, my words are fast and furious, while she stands there with her arms crossed, looking dazed. “What do you mean he hates niggers, Chris? You know my baby is biracial, and you know his father is a black man. Don’t tell me you think the same way this Marty feels, I mean, you’re going to generalize about all black people now because you grew up on the goddamn North Side?”

  I acted shocked, but I wasn’t. The way she was describing Marty was just a typical Pittsburgh white Irish cop; they were all racists—they’d seen enough from black crime in the local neighborhoods and the ruination of houses and properties turned into trashy ghettos. They were the ones who had to risk their lives at crime scenes and endure their fellow cop friends getting shot. I understood these sentiments well, but I didn’t understand the blanket racism that consumed this city, and I certainly didn’t want to be grouped into the Pittsburgh mentality that if you hang with blacks you are white trash. My son’s father wasn’t like those black ghetto dwellers; he was an entertainer with the oldies singing group, the Drifters, from New York. I had never been exposed to what these racists talk about all the time in Pittsburgh, but I understood it completely because I heard it from everyone I knew who lived in the city. I went to a city school on the North Side, but technically we lived in Ross Township North Hills, which was considered a suburb right on the city line. I escaped having to stay in city schools after the eighth grade at St. Cyril’s, and moved on to better schools in the suburbs by the time I reached my early teens.

  My impressions of Pittsburgh are of strong Irish or Italian roots, along with equally strong German Irish roots. Or like myself, German Irish Crow. The Crow meant Croatian, and the Croatians landed in a section of Pittsburgh called Troy Hill, where the hunky, muscled Croatian men walked to work every day at the Heppenstall Steel Mill on the river’s edge. They had to walk down “pig-shit hill,” which was a steep, narrow unpaved hill to the river below. The pig part was because the farmers also drove pigs down the hill to Herr’s Island, the meatpacking district. My grandfather Zelkovich walked that walk to the Heppenstall Mill; other members of my family worked at the slaughter houses. The Croatians were branded “hunkies” for this association of ethnicity and pure hunks of muscle, while all other mill workers would forever be referred to as mill hunks in the Pittsburgh dictionary of colloquialisms.

  Chris softens her voice and is suddenly more demure as she stares at the large piles of spinach and chard on the kitchen counter.

  “It’s not me, I’m not prejudiced, but Marty is beyond that. It’s because of being a cop and trying to deal with their bullshit every day, all the crimes and bullshit. His name is Marty Walsh; he’s a city cop and he’s cool. I’ve known him for quite a while now, and he’s teaching me things. He says they…you know, his cop buddies and him, they drive around Pittsburgh looking for blacks they can pick up off the streets and toss in the paddy wagon. Then they drive about an hour or so out of town and drop them all off in the middle of nowhere, maybe Butler County or further out; they leave them there to walk back to town. This is usually in the middle of the night, so they’re pissed off and confused as all hell. Marty thinks it’s hysterical.”

  I sit back down in the kitchen chair and I’m chain smoking and I can’t help but wonder what kind of crimes against humanity have been committed by this heartless man.

  I knew I didn’t want to meet this guy, and I’m sitting there mulling it over when she changes the subject suddenly, and says, “Should I put chicken livers in this soup or what—what do you think?” She’s going through the recipe her Italian aunts, Angeline and Josephine, gave her. I am not sure at this point what family she has and who she is referring to—I don’t know much about Christine, or as her friends call her, “Chrissy.”

  I can’t bring myself to call her that, it seems so childish, I just call her Chris.

  “It’s up to you if you want chicken livers, but personally I like a lot of greens, you know, chard, whatever…I want to talk more about this guy Marty and why you’re seeing someone who plays with knives and sounds very scary to me. What’s up with that, Chris? Doesn’t he scare you or give you the creeps?” I am pretending to be interested now; I am bored and want to get the hell out of her kitchen and back to my apartment where I can do my toenails.

  Chris is now settling into a more relaxed mode of soup making, and I can feel it. She’s not impressed me with this goofy story, and I think she knows that, too. I am, however, more confused than ever about who she really is as a person. I’d like to help her if I can, but what can I do for her? She obviously has not had the Ozzie and Harriet life that I’ve had, where the family is normal, and dinners are served daily at five o’clock and mom and dad are there for you all the time. I didn’t know any other life; most of my friends had the same kind of life—strong family structure and support for their children.

  She dumps the chicken livers in the pot, then copious amounts of chard and spinach, spins around from the steaming pot and quite casually and calmly declares, “I’m not afraid of Marty, I feel protected when I’m with him. He’s actu
ally teaching me various methods of self–defense, like Karate and boxing; he spars with me all the time and he’s in great shape, always has been. I think I met him when I was fourteen or so.”

  “Okay fine”…I’m mumbling; I don’t like the subject anymore. I’ve never met Marty, and I don’t like him, don’t want to meet him. I want to steer clear of him—don’t like what she’s telling me about him. I am frightened of Marty, not even knowing him; he is what my son’s father, Rick, has warned me of for the last four years—white racist cops that simply do not like interracial relationships.

  As an interracial couple, we had experienced these types in restaurants and the nightclubs where Rick performed with his singing group. There were times when I was so frightened I wanted to run away and hide. The only thing that kept me from losing it was the fact that Rick was a black belt in street fighting Karate, and after watching him annihilate quite a few people who had picked fights with him in public places, I gradually developed a sense of relief from the fear when we were out in public. I never understood why people who knew nothing about you would want to walk up to you and pick a fight with a total stranger….

  We stood out like a sore thumb, in that Rick was a dark-skinned, handsome black man, and I a blonde bombshell who fell in love and never looked back—a love at first sight encounter that I refused to explain to anyone, including my family and friends.

  “He’s giving you a false sense of security Chris, that’s what he’s doing!” I yelled at her. The crooked grin slowly emerged as she sauntered to the other side of the kitchen like it meant nothing, so I shut up.

  I don’t know why she chose to tell me this story except that now I believe it was just meant to be. It was the splinter that lodged in my brain and stayed there.