funny the things that become so terribly important later on. on top of a box on blue wrapping paper the far side of the refrigerator. that s what howe remembered. the rest of us might have missed it. here s what else he saw. he was beside himself. he was very, very, very upset, agitated. and i ll say this. my impression was if you were standing on the edge of hell, when i walked in and i saw her laying down with the arrow in her back, it was my first impression was, it was a dead kill shot, because it looked like it went right through the heart. if it wasn t, it was very, very close, but it was dead on. i mean, 90 degrees, straight in. and that s what you told the police? that s what i told the police. so if it had gone off by accident, it would have had to
ken creamer killed his wife anna. of that, there was no doubt. shot her with a crossbow, right here in his garage. and the shock of it was, he d done it before. just didn t kill her that time. so the charge that put him in this place, first-degree murder, no surprise. but still, justice crawled. the boy adjusted to a new life with anna s family, a family that came to believe firmly in creamer s guilt. and for 2 1/2 years, he sat in jail waiting to answer the question. how do you plead, guilty or not guilty? not guilty. this was june 2008. the commonwealth s evidence will show this was no accident. and this, the prosecutor, tabitha anderson.
threw the bag, you heard the sound of the crossbow going off immediately. yeah. okay. i heard sound, and i didn t really know what was happening. an accident, said ken creamer, horrible, unbelievable but true. creamer told the cop he didn t even know the crossbow was still in the house, didn t know it was in the bag he tossed across the garage, didn t know it was loaded, with a hunting arrow, no less. maybe she loaded it, he says. can you explain to me why you think she loaded the bow before she put in it the bag? i don t know. i don t know. sometimes she does she my wife does whatever she wants to do. you can tell her not to do something, and she ll do it? really? even after she d already been injured in that earlier crossbow incident, asked the interrogator? i didn t touch it. i didn t say you did. kenny, i didn t say you did. and only then it seemed to dawn on ken creamer that the man in the room did not believe him. we ve been married 13 years. you can ask
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
in our strange drama. because of what happened on another fine morning, a sunday it was, about three months after that bizarre crossbow accident. almost beyond belief, really. if you haven t guessed already, the reason we are telling you all this, what did we say? lightning striking twice. but happened? sir, don t hang up with me. what s happened? sir, sir. a frantic call, a frightening sight. there is anna laying at the end of the treadmill with an arrow stuck straight in her back. when the crossbow incident continues. sent her back to college for her sophomore year