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Reapp affidavit details facts that led to murder charges
Published: Saturday, June 24, 2006
By Sam Hemingway
Free Press Staff Writer
Michael Reapp lied to police about where he was when his wife and
young daughter disappeared in 1978, according to a new police
affidavit in the 28-year-old case that finally persuaded prosecutors
to charge Reapp with two counts of murder.
Police say he was not at work the night before his wife, Grace, and
daughter, Gracie, supposedly vanished June 7, 1978. In a 1996
interview, he told police he came home from working a night shift,
went to bed, and discovered Grace, then 32, and Gracie, 5, gone after
he woke up. The couple had two boys who attended school as usual that
day.
"Officials with the FAA revealed that Michael Reapp was not working
at the airport June 6, 1978, that he had called in sick," the
affidavit made public Friday said. Reapp, in a 1996 interview with
police, also said he could not remember whether he worked in the days
after their disappearance; police determined he did not go back to
work until June 13.
The discrepancy between Reapp's story and his former employer's
records is one of a number of pieces of circumstantial evidence woven
together by police to determine Reapp killed his wife and child.
No bodies or murder weapon have been recovered in the case. Reapp,
living in Florida in 1996, went missing shortly after learning from a
WPTZ-TV reporter that police were searching the ground around his
former home in Jericho for the remains of his wife and daughter.
Chittenden County State's Attorney Bob Simpson acknowledged that
murder cases built on circumstantial evidence are rare, but said he
was convinced that, with Reapp, the pieces fit together. Although the
affidavit is new, the evidence contained in it was gathered years
ago.
"This is the first time this matter has been presented to me,"
Simpson said. "I felt there was a sufficient basis to bring a
charge." Reapp was charged with second-degree murder in his wife's
death and first-degree murder in Gracie's death.
Simpson said now that the decision to charge Reapp has been made, he
expects the FBI to launch an aggressive search for Reapp, last seen
withdrawing money from an automatic teller machine in New Orleans
shortly after he left his home in Florida.
"The FBI is ready to make a concerted effort to find this gentleman,"
Simpson said. Reapp, now 60, is believed to be living in Mexico or
the Caribbean.
"He's very cagey," said Grace Reapp's sister, Juliana Woodworth, 63,
of Franklin, Conn. "He has a brilliant IQ, and he knows if he told
anybody what he did, he'd be gone. It'd be the end of him." Woodworth
has stayed in close contact with the Vermont State Police
investigation into what happened to Grace and Gracie Reapp.
According to the affidavit, the Reapps' marriage had become an
unhappy one by 1978; Reapp was involved in an affair with a woman who
was a car-rental clerk at the airport. The Burlington Free Press is
not publishing the identity of the woman because she was later the
victim of an alleged assault by Reapp.
Police said the woman recalled getting a phone call from a distraught
Reapp on a "summery day" around the time his wife and daughter went
missing.
"Reapp was emotional over the telephone, crying hard and upset," the
affidavit said the woman recalled. "Reapp had told her that his wife
Grace had left him and that she had also taken their daughter,
Gracie."
The woman said she told police she asked Reapp why he was so
upset. "I thought that's what we were heading for," she said she told
Reapp. The woman said Reapp told her he couldn't talk anymore,
adding, "I'll talk to you in a while, and just hang in there for me."
The woman moved into the Reapp home shortly after the disappearance
of Grace and Gracie Reapp, purportedly to be the two boys' live-in
baby sitter. She eventually married Reapp. Later, the woman said
Reapp beat her and might have killed her had relatives not stepped in
and stopped him.
The woman told police about a time Reapp had his hand around her
throat and declared, "Yeah, it's me; I'm back, and I'm your worst
nightmare." After another fight, she said he told her that she "did
not physically fight back like Grace."
The affidavit also said Reapp filed for divorce from his first wife
just 10 days after she disappeared and did not inform police that she
and his daughter were missing for four days.
Reapp told police at the time that his wife had left a note saying
she was leaving him and asking that he not try to find her. When
police asked to see the note, he claimed he had lost it.
"Michael Reapp had both motive and opportunity to kill his wife," the
affidavit said. "It is reasonable to believe he killed his daughter
because she was a witness to the killing of his wife."
POLICE AFFIDAVIT file of Michael Reapp's police affidavit, go to:
http://www.burlingtonfreepress.com/assets/pdf/BT32278623.PDF ://http://www.burlingtonfreepress.com/...BT32278623.PDF