Zoar's Cannibal Pizza Investigation

submitted by Eugene Tirpitz

Cedar: The story Inspector Dick Slake of the Zoar Police Department wants to tell could get him kicked off the force.

     "Chief Jim Branson explicitly told me we need to keep what happened to Amy Ladson and Arron Keller in the dark," says Slake, a ten year veteran of the Zoar Police Department. "He thinks it'll start a panic like what happened to beef on Oprah. It better. People gotta learn just how big this thing is!"

     Slake first heard of Amy Ladson on March 30 only because he happened to be standing in the Dispatcher's office when Georg von Podebrad Medical Center reported her missing from the Psych ward. Though escaped psychos were uncommon, Slake took no notice and continued working on the mystery of a human hand found in an apartment dumpster by a garbage truck crew. No one claimed it or complained one was missing. And that was the mystery.

     It wasn't until later that day when Amy Ladson's severed head turned up in a convenience store's ice chest that Slake took more notice of her. Chief Branson pulled him off the severed hand case and put him on the Ladson murder. And it was murder all right; the city medical examiner determined she had been garroted with a length of wire and then beheaded. Of course, the rest of her body was still missing.

     Slake instinctively began his investigation at the last place Amy Ladson had been seen: the GvP Medical Center. In her medical files, he discovered that she wasn't just a basket case angling for Prozac. For more than a year, she had been a happy straight-A 19 year old college student. For several months she'd lived at 400 S. Podebrad St. Apt. #2 doing all the typical things a young women does in her first very own apartment. Attractive, sandy-haired with a friendly smile, she was well-liked and had no known enemies. But sometime after New Year's, something broke her. She grew agitated and morose. Missed classes and drank too much. At the beginning of February, she moved to another apartment, stayed there for two weeks and moved again. Her parents, who paid her rent, were outraged at having to bear the cost of three leases. They rushed into Zoar to confront her, but when they found her standing amidst unpacked boxes in her new apartment frantically searching the newspaper for yet another apartment, they scarcely recognized the young woman before them. Amy was pale with deep hollows under her eyes. She acted jittery and distracted and refused to discuss her actions. She was also thin. Auschwitz thin.

     Blaming the pressures of school for what appeared to be anorexia nervosa, her parents committed her to the Georg von Podebrad Medical Center's Eating Disorders Program on March 9. There it was determined that her weight had sunk from a healthy 135 pounds to 94 pounds in just three weeks. Treatments to stabilize her radical weight loss succeeded within a few days. Psychological assessment meanwhile revealed that her morbid aversion to food---the mere sight of a sandwich paralyzed her with terror---were more in keeping with post traumatic stress syndrome. However, her steadfast refusal discuss her fear made her case difficult to treat. Only after several weeks of subsisting on a liquid diet and group therapy sessions did she grudgingly agree to eat solid food but with the caveat that she made it with her own hands in the Program's kitchen.

     On April 17, the patients and therapists sent out for pizza for lunch. Amy had been talking with her psychiatrists and didn't know about the pizza until a young man carrying two large pizzas appeared at the Program's door.

     Most of patients didn't see what happened first but Amy's horrified scream seized their attention. In a fit of incredible fury, Amy launched herself at the pizza delivery boy, punching him in the jaw him with every once of savagery she could muster. Though dazed, the young man tore himself lose from her grip and fled down the corridor. Before any one could restrain her, she took off down the corridor after the pizza boy.

     Three hours later, she had a product's perspective of the ice vending business.

     Slake soon learned the pizza boy was named Arron Keller and he worked for Mullen's Pizza, one of the more popular pizzerias in Zoar. When he questioned Keller at the scene he denied knowing Amy Ladson or having ever seen her before that afternoon. He also denied killing her and dismembering her body. All he wanted to do, Keller said, was to get away from "that crazy woman as soon as she laid eyes on me!"

     Keller sounded believable. He had that wholesome face and submissive look in his big brown eyes, a classic hard-working Iowa boy itching to do anything to get ahead.

     Slake had seen the same look in the eyes of a roofing apprentice who had crucified his boss on the side of a house with a nail gun. From his facts, Slake knew that Amy Ladson's attack on Keller and the traumatic incident that put her on the Gulag Diet Plan were all connected. And her moving three times indicated fear---whether real or imagined, she was very frightened that someone was after her.

     When he got back to his desk, Ladson's phone records from December through March 9 were already there. In a few minutes, he found what he was looking for. through the month of December, 1997, Amy Ladson had phoned Mullen's Pizza using the advertised number: xxx-3576. But on the evening of January 3, 1998, she dialed xxx-3567. According to the phone company, both numbers belonged to Mullen's Pizza. After the call that night, she made no other calls to Mullen's Pizza---or any other pizza place ever again.

     Without further rumination, Slake dialed the pizza place's other number. An answering machine greeted him with this insidiously chilling message:

     "Welcome to Mullen's Specialty Pizza Line. If you would like to order 'The Man Eater', push one. If you want to order the 'Chilean Soccer Surprise', push two. For the 'Cast Away Combo', push three. The 'Cast Away Combo with Pineapple', push four. And for the 'Donner Party Super Supreme' push five."

     Slake ordered a "Man Eater" and gave 400 S. Podebrad St. Apt. #2, Ladson's first apartment, as the address and the name "Robin Burns". An automated voice haltingly replied that the pizza would be delivered within one hour. An hour was all the detective needed to get a team of officers in position in the empty apartment. A junior officer dressed in civilian clothes posed as Robin Burns and sat waiting on a sagging sofa borrowed from students living next door while Detective Slake and another officer concealed themselves in a bedroom around the corner. A video camera and microphone, secreted in a large potted palm, stood ready to capture everything on tape. After being fifteen minutes overdue, there came a knock on the apartment door. The officer posing as Robin Burns opened the door and a pizza delivery boy entered holding a large flat cardboard box. The apartment filled with the tantalizing aroma of tomato and cheese and a strangely sweet pork smell.

     "Twelve-fifty," said the buck-toothed gangly youth holding the pizza. Slake had expected Keller. He watched the youth sway slightly and realized the kid was so high he was probably a part-time satellite.

     As Robin Burns counted out thirteen dollars, the kid suddenly complained, "What's that, pal, a down payment? What you're getting here is fuckin' worth twelve hundred fifty dollars, buddy. Comprendé, Home Boy?"

     Slake broke cover, walking straight to the kid, pressing his 9mm Barretta into the kid's temple. The ersatz Burns took the pizza to the kitchen counter and opened the box. "Oh God," he screamed, whirling to vomit in the kitchen sink. Slake looked up from handcuffing the kid's hands. In the middle of the pizza, decoratively ringed by ten browned and blistered fingers, a shriveled and glazed eyeball stared at the ceiling.

     "Where's Aaron Keller?" demanded Slake.

     "Chill dude," replied the kid blinking in astonishment. "He's right there...looking at us. Ain't 'cha, Killer Keller? Ain't 'cha, man?" The kid burst into obscene giggling.

     Detailing several officers to process the kid and wait for the coroner, Slake took two other officers and headed up Podebrad Street to Mullen's Pizza. After stationing one officer around the back of the building, Slake and the other officer drew their weapons and stormed the pizzeria, ordering everyone onto the floor. As Slake vaulted over the counter, he glanced up just in time to catch a glimpse of two men, one short, balding and fat, the other a gigantic blonde steroid addict, stumble down a pizza-box-lined hallway for the back door. The shorter of the two raised a pistol and fired. The bullet struck a pizza oven door. Slake's well aimed 9mm barked back, neatly kneecapping his dumpy assailant and throwing him to the floor screaming in pain.

     By the time Slake reached the back door, the officer he had stationed at the rear entrance was just getting to his knees, his mouth streaming blood and his jaw broken. The back of a refrigerated semi-trailer with a steel ramp leading down to the pavement loomed at one side. Suddenly, a diesel engine snorted to life and Slake caught a whiff of oily truck exhaust. He raced down the steps just as the grimy blue Freightliner roared down the alley and turn into the far street.

     All eight employees were arrested and charged with at least two counts of murder. Mullen's Pizza owner, Alfonse D'Onofrio, whom Detective Slake wounded in self defense, was also arrested and is in stable condition at GvP medical Center. Zoar's Coroner summoned help from Medical Examiners with the State and FBI. So far, they have found the dismembered remains of four people (including one missing a hand) in the pizzeria's walk-in refrigerator. According to DNA tests, these included the rest of Amy Ladson and Aaron Keller. Evidence for as many as ten other victims has been found frozen in shrink-wrapped packaging in the refrigerator trailer. Authorities are combing various national data-bases in order to identify them.

     How did Amy Ladson wind up cooling her heels at Mullen's Pizza? Detective Slake thinks she called Mullen's Cannibal Pizza line by accident. "We have her account records. She ordered a pizza with a credit card and didn't notice the real price when they said it cost thirteen-twenty-five. Same thing that happened to us. I bet it scared the living crap out of her when she opened the box. Maybe she ate some before she realized just what she was eating. Maybe she was too scared to call the police or too confused by then. Later on, she recognized Aaron Keller as the guy who delivered her the pizza that scared her so bad. That's why she went after him. He must've let her chase him out into the parking deck and killed her there. When we talked to him, I bet D'Onofrio decided Keller's future with the company had to include seasoning with oregano."

     As for the bad guy that got away, Slake says documents found in the trailer hint at a nation-wide market for human flesh. "That guy's just another pizza delivery boy with a bigger truck. There's sick, slimy bastards out there making a shit-load of money because there's some very twisted people out there that get off on eating other people. Law abiding folks need to know about these freaks and start protecting themselves! Ain't nobody gonna have me over for dinner!"





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