and pretty soon, just about everybody knew that this was not the first crossbow shooting in ken creamer s house. officers got a first look at the family s crossbow back in october. that time police say it accidentally struck anna creamer. lightning striking twice, a person could understand, actually. but this? resuscitative efforts were attempted, however, she was pronounced deceased at the house. a detective put creamer into a police car. kenny said good-bye to his son. said he d be back. the detective drove down to the station. i appreciate you coming down. am i in any trouble? no, you re not. we re just talking. ken creamer told the officer that he under the direction of his wife anna was cleaning up the garage. picking out things to save, items to throw away, or give away. rearranging. then he picked up this one bag. didn t know what was in it, he said. he kind of threw it off to the side. i heard it hit the side of the refrigerator. i heard you right, so you
it perforated the heart basically impaled the heart. as the arrow came from back to front, it went through the aorta, completely severing it. just cut it right in half. no doubt about the conclusion, she said. i determined that the manner of death in this case was homicide. the x right here is where mr. creamer said he was standing. the detective who interrogated kenneth creamer right after the shooting testified when he asked creamer why the crossbow was loaded and with a hunting arrow, that the answer that his wife must have loaded it didn t seem believable. last time i touched it, it was in october. remember, this was the second time anna was shot. so now the prosecutor looked back to that first incident. was creamer s story about that time consistent or believable? here s what creamer s brother-in-law, anna s sister s husband, remembers him saying
perhaps insurance was the motive, said the prosecution. the creamers kept policies for heart attacks, for cancer, even for their dog, about $1 million in all. enough for murder? but motive wasn t at the heart of the prosecution s case. rather it was two witnesses who claimed they had evidence to show it couldn t have been an accident. here was the first. a man named j.j. mason, a firearms expert who said he tried to make that weapon fire by accident, hit it with a mallet a couple of dozen times-and during the course of my examination of this crossbow, i found no reason why it would fire without pulling the trigger. in other words, the arrow that went through anna creamer must have been fired on purpose. i saw anna laying there facedown with an arrow square in her back. but the true star of the case against ken creamer was the next-door neighbor. that retired naval commander, randall howes. ken is just kind of babbling, making noise or whatever, and saying, we need help, we
this is randall house, retired naval officers and, well, it was something about the chemistry with anna, wasn t good, especially after an altercation over howe s dogs. i said, your dogs, they bark, bark, bark. she really got mad. i said, okay, anna, we are not going to have this conversation. that really made her mad. after that, i never spoke to her. so there was tension across that strip of grass. then, howe got the idea that maybe ken had some trouble with anna s temper too. he gave him the cold shoulder when she was around but was friendly when she wasn t. he asked me what was the problem with his wife. i said, i just ignore her. he said probably the best thing because she has a trigger. the cramers did seem to get along except for that one time when he overheard all that
it, conspired about it, set it up, did the whole thing yourself thinking you were going to get away with it and walk away with $1 million in cash at the same time. not true, not true. it s not true. what is true said ken creamer, is that he and his wife had a wonderful relationship, loved each other, never fought in the way the neighbor, the one anna didn t like, randall house, described. fighting in the house, anna running out of the house? never, never, never happened. every family fights. my wife never stormed out of the house, never, no. as for the crossbow, he insisted he didn t know it was loaded. i never loaded it. you are saying she did. most probably yes. why would she do that? i don t know. i am just trying to get through my head why would