Rocky Ford Bridge at Night

       During early September of 2000, Rev. Ken Kothe and I were in Emporia doing book promotional work. We stopped into a gas station quick stop and became engaged in a conversation with the two clerks, both in their early 20s--a guy and a gal.

      Pastor Kothe and I wore T-shirts that said Caged Bird on them, and this prompted questions from the two young people. Pastor Kothe asked them if they every heard about Rocky Ford Bridge. The young man answered without hesitation. "Oh, you mean the Bird bridge?"

      We were astounded by his answer. All he knew about the place and the name was that it was the place where the pastor killed his wife. And it is a party place.

      What follows is a chapter written in the spring of 2000, pulled from the book because of space considerations. See for yourself what "the Bird bridge" is like and whether or not you would want to party there.

Dave Racer

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      I decided to experience the Rocky Ford Bridge for myself, about the same time of night police alleged Tom Bird was out there killing Sandy.

            Seeing the Rocky Ford Bridge in daylight, especially knowing what happened there, and armed with the details of Sandy’s death, made the death scene an eerie sight. During the daytime, though, I had the great advantage of being able to clearly see where I was going.

      Ken Kothe and I drove to the bridge the first time on a hot August day in 1999. As we approached the bridge from the south, just after passing the warning sign showing the curves in the road ahead, Ken said, “I’m going to go 25 around this turn.” “This turn” was a 90-degree turn to the east.

      “Slow down, you’ll kill us,” I yelled at Kothe as the 1999 Olds Cutlass started sliding toward the left. He got it to about 22 miles per hour before I panicked. Kansas transportation officials claim it is safe at 20 miles per hour. They have more guts than I do.

      Dr. Gabriel eventually changed the time of death to sometime between 10-11 p.m., based on the dubious “science” of stomach contents. After throwing her off the bridge, they said that without assistance, he hand-pushed the 1978 Peugeot over the riverbank next to the concrete barrier that guards the southeast corner of the structure.

      I drove south on Emporia’s Commercial Street at 11:10 p.m. on Saturday, August 21, 1999. It was a hot Kansas night just like the Saturday night when police said Sandy, whether driving or an unwilling passenger, traveled down the same street. I saw a lot of traffic on the streets and sidewalks that night. The beer joints and nightclubs did a brisk business.

      Commercial intersects Logan near the south end of town right where the mobile home dealership sits. I turned on Logan and while driving east, noticed a lot of traffic going in both directions. I spotted people out in their front yards working on cars, sitting and watching the traffic go by, or drinking beer. I noticed most of the homes in this area are much older than 20 years. They had to be built before Sandy’s death.

      A couple of miles out of town, Logan curves south. Here I spotted a car about a quarter mile ahead of me. It seemed strange that other vehicles would be on that remote road at that time of night.

      Just south of the curve in the road the pavement ends and a gravel road begins. After another quarter mile I came to a T-intersection at County Road 150. Located on the south side of this intersection are two homes, both still well lit at that time of night.

      Taking a left on County Road 150 to proceed east again, I noticed that the car in front of me turned south up ahead at the very intersection where I would turn, toward Rocky Ford Bridge. The gravel road here is a tight two lanes wide and anyone meeting an on-coming car would have to pull to the right, the right tires riding on very loose gravel.

      Another half mile or so past the two homes, I came to County Road P, the road that leads south to the Rocky Ford Bridge. It turned toward the bridge. Here the gravel road is narrower and the corn rows taller and closer to the road.

      I saw a house and the name on the mailbox was Fowler. I learned that the Fowler’s Emporia roots go back to the founding of the town.

      I had a strong sense of apprehension as I approached the bridge. I hoped no one would be there. How would I explain what I was doing as I slowly drove that road, in both directions? The bridge is a popular place for late night parties, offbeat religious rituals and sexual trysts. I saw trash – empty beer and soft-drink cans and cartons, food containers, various plastic items. Had I looked closely enough, I’m sure I would have found used condoms.

      Earlier, when I drove out in daylight, I discovered a cold campfire of charred wood right beneath the bridge. The charred ground gave evidence that campfires are common to the site. The concrete bridge supports are covered with graffiti, another sure sign that someone could be partying at the bridge that night.

      As I drove south around the last curve I saw the bridge. It is an imposing site at night. Its hulking steel beam structure hangs suspended in the darkness. Its dull dark green finish, decorated by colorful graffiti, reflects none of the auto’s headlights. It is a narrow, single lane bridge with a wood deck. If there an oncoming car got to the bridge before me, there was no where to on this north side of the bridge except to ditch the car.

      I saw that in this bridge the State of Kansas has a major lawsuit waiting for some entrepreneurial trial lawyer. For people not used to the road, it is an accident waiting to happen.

      Cautiously crossing the bridge, I drove past the accident site down below the bridge on my left, and continued driving south, following the road’s curves until I reached the intersection of County Roads P and 140. Here I turned my car back north to experience what Sandy Bird might have seen the night of her death, if she actually did the driving that night.

      As I approached the first curve, I saw the house on the ridge on the east side of the road. That could where Mark Gibbons’ mobile home sat. Just south of this driveway is a yellow sign warning that the road curves to the right and then to the left – an “S” curve.

      That sign was fairly easy to spot the night I saw it, unlike the sign that stood in its place in 1983. Virginia Bird wrote about it on July 24, 1983, a week after Sandy’s death:

      “After church on Sunday several friends and members of the church arrived to extend condolences. Dr. Jerry and Jane [Grismer] were there too and later in the afternoon it was suggested that we go to the accident site in the Grismer van. Dr. Jerry Grismer drove Jane, Tom, and I and also the three children.

      “As we neared the site Andrea became apprehensive about the accident involving her mother and told us not to go so fast because we might crash. Tom was a bit unsure of what road to take and we hesitated a few times to make sure we had the right road. When we arrived at the scene Andrea was in my lap crying.

      “We crossed the bridge from the opposite direction that Sandy had taken. We drove past the site and around the turn and on past the trailer home and then turned around and came back the way Sandy had traveled.

      “I noticed a very faded squizzley sign partly obscured by tall, dry grass that showed a curve coming. This was the only sign present for the whole area approaching the bridge. The sun caught some small pieces of broken glass near the bridge.

      “Dr. Jerry stopped the van for a few minutes and he and Tom got out and looked around for a short while. Several minutes. The rest of us stayed in the van.

      “It was apparent to me that a person driving that road would have to leave the right hand lane and enter the left lane if one wanted to cross the bridge. Jane Grismer and I both said, ‘Now I understand how this could happen to Sandy.’

      “A feeling of indignation and a desire to berate the Highway Department about this bridge crossing came to my mind and we discussed several ways of protesting this lack of road upkeep on the way back.” 

      When Sandy drove her car passed the warning sign, it was nearly invisible, covered by long grass. It was rusty, faded, and riddled with bullet holes.

      As I drove along, I saw that the roads in this area are strewn with loose gravel that drums up quite a bit of noise and leaves a long contrail of dust in the car’s wake. When I stopped the car and rolled down the window, I heard nothing. It was perfectly quiet. I wondered how anyone could drive past the nearby homes without being heard, except for the noise of a fan or air conditioner, or because of the familiarity of road sounds, like those who live near train tracks.

      I approached the first curve, which turns sharply 90 degrees to the right. Even a professional diver would have trouble holding 20 miles per hour on that curve without feeling like he was headed into the ditch, and the ditches are immediately adjacent to the road.

      Just after making the 90 degree turn to the right, I turned back immediately to the left, finding a pronounced curve, greater than 90 degrees, bending back toward the south end of the bridge. I guided my car down the 10 percent grade toward the bridge –steep enough to increase the coasting speed of my car. Just to the right of the bridge I spotted a parking area large enough for one vehicle (John Rule called this area the “parking”).

      As I drove around the two curves leading to the bridge, I the light from my headlights reflected of the signs on the edge of the road. Kansas highway workers installed them to keep people from running into the ditch or hitting the concrete abutment that guards the river’s edge. These reflective signs were not there at the time of Sandy’s death. “How could anyone keep from running off the road?” I spoke into my tape recorder. “Except for the reflective signs, all I could see were trees and the light tan color of the gravel road.”

      I paid close attention to detail as I rounded the C-curve. If I drove a little too fast, had been thinking deeply enough to be fixated on a problem, was startled by headlights coming at me from across the bridge or if a deer darted out in front of me, I could easily miss the bridge opening and head over the embankment. Tom Bird said, “Sandy would do everything she could to avoid hitting an animal.”

      To the right of the bridge abutment I saw a clump of trees and bushes that camouflage the riverbank. John Rule’s report said this growth was not there in 1983, and he believed here lay the spot that Sandy’s car went over the bank. I saw that driving over the embankment rather than driving to the mouth of the bridge could be as simple as not completing the turn. This reality begs the question, though; were such accidents common to the bridge and the answer is “no.”

      Although Tom’s attorney tried to raise the issue of autocide – suicide by car – as a possible explanation for Sandy’s death, Tom Bird had never really believed this to be a real possibility. My experience that night showed me that it is easy to see how autocide could have happened, as Bird’s attorney Ben Wood suggested in a 1987 appeal. Driving directly for the riverbank next to the abutment, without breaking, was very possible. There was nothing with which to collide until the car came in contact with the razor-sharp stones that are strewn haphazardly down along the river. And if Bird’s accident reconstructionist was right, hitting the concrete abutment (rather than wandering farther to the right) is also very easy to understand. The abutment was dark and had neither reflective devices nor anything to break the forward momentum of a car.

      I turned off the car lights. It saw nothing but darkness. I felt very uneasy.

      I tried to imagine Sandy Bird laying on the rocks below, dazed and battered, bleeding internally. I saw her regaining consciousness, grabbing hold of the small tree that stood near where she came to rest and pulling herself up, and trying desperately to make her way toward the light shining from the headlights. It would have been the only visible light. I imagined that she dragged herself toward the car, bruising her arms on the jagged rocks. Coping with a broken wrist and shoulder, she collapsed, and fell into the river where her body was found Sunday morning. “It could be,” I thought.

      “What about anyone, like Tom for instance, going down to the riverbank, unaided, picking up Sandy and placing her in the water?” I asked myself. “Not possible.”

      I tried to walk on the riverbank during the daytime, but because of the slippery, sharp rocks and the thick, greasy mud on the shoreline, had to move slowly. I nearly fell more than once. “Maybe two people could do this, but not one. No way! And they would need light.”

      I got back in my car and started driving back across the bridge while glancing east, above where Sandy’s car was found. In that darkness, I saw that someone looking in the same direction should have spotted the headlights reflecting off the water, had they been on. But I also knew that someone concentrating on where they were going, who was tired and distracted by their own thoughts, could just as easily missed seeing anything. I would never drive this road in the pitch dark without concentrating on where I was headed. If someone drove by after the car sank into the water, the lights would have been submerged shedding no light on the river’s surface or the trees on the opposite shore.

      Leaving the bridge, I started to drive back north on County Road P. Once again I turned off my lights and once again, I was enveloped by absolute blackness, so black that I had difficulty making out the road directly ahead, guided only by the tall corn stalks on the east side of the road. I looked up at the sky and noticed it was a perfectly clear night. The stars danced across the heavens and a half-moon tried in vain to break through the darkness. Even a full moon would probably fail on that road. On July 17, 1983 there was no moonlight.

      The prosecutors said that Tom Bird took off his shoes and ran along this gravel road back to town. I wondered as I drove up the road how he could have seen where he was going? I certainly couldn’t. Did he carry a flashlight? Did he wear one of those miner’s hats with the light attached to the brim? And how would his bare feet hold up on this loose gravel? His feet must have been either covered with rock hard calluses or were cut to shreds by the time he got home. He would have been unable to walk for days following such a run. Even wearing running shoes aided by daylight, this would be a hard road on which to run given its inconsistent grade and loose gravel inviting sprained and twisted ankles.

      I do not know which direction the prosecutors suggested Tom Bird ran that night. I retraced my route back to Logan where the pavement began and drove back west into town. My clock said 11:35 p.m., near the time they theorized that Tom ran back to church. I could see the lights up ahead toward town although on this east end of the road it remained very dark. Once on the pavement, I could see that a man could run more easily, but there are always stones, glass and other kinds of litter to avoid.

      On that stretch of road before coming to Commercial I met four vehicles that were driving east and a car followed behind me. I saw a few folks out in their front yards. If Tom ran that way, it is likely that somebody would have seen him, I thought.

      If he crossed Commercial Street and ran west to Congress before going north toward the church, his route would take him past hundreds of homes. Again, I should think someone would have spotted him jogging up the road, and if he was wearing bloody clothes, somebody would have noticed him.

      In May of 1983, Tom ran a six-mile race in which his time was estimated at 8 ½ minutes per mile. The distance measured by the Lyon County Sheriff between the Rocky Ford Bridge and Faith was 8.2 miles, meaning that under the best conditions, Bird should have been able to run the distance in about 70 minutes. Running in the pitch darkness on loose gravel roads would have significantly slowed him down, even with a flashlight and wearing shoes.

      As I drove back to the motel around 11:45 p.m. I had several additional impressions.

      If Tom Bird had murdered Sandy and dumped her into the river during the time of night I drove there, it is unlikely he did so without being seen somewhere along the way. If he and Sandy stopped at the river and drank wine before the murder, the car would have been totally visible parked along the road if anyone drove past. Yet no one testified seeing him anywhere at this time of night.

      If Tom Bird had murdered Sandy earlier, and then took her out to the river after midnight, someone would have had to help him. There would not have been time for him to drive out and run back to town to make the phone calls that are a matter of record. The prosecution never charged anyone as an accomplice.

      If Sandy purposely drove off the riverbank trying to commit suicide, it seems hard to believe she could be sure of death in this manner. Rather, it seems more likely that a debilitating handicap would result. I recognize, though, that it is more common among women who try suicide to fail in their attempt than do men. But this does not explain the blood on the bridge.

      If Sandy died in a single car accident, how did she end up in the river as she did? The blood on the bridge and on the tree is difficult to rationalize as well.

      Someone else may have murdered Sandy. With assistance, this person could have committed the crime in the manner posited by the prosecutorial team, and pushed her car over the embankment sometime after 2:30 a.m.. Sandy could have been beaten and murdered earlier in the evening, or at least beaten enough that her digestive processes slowed down. She could have then been taken out to the bridge and thrown over the edge. Before pushing the car over the edge, the murderer(s) could have finished the Cold Duck in a sordid celebration, and left cups under the bridge. Together, they carried her body to the water, laying her face down, to appear drowned. This seems plausible, because it was about 3:10 a.m. when Mark Gibbons, the neighbor who lived 300 yards south of the bridge, reported hearing what he described as “hissing sounds” like those made by a hot radiator sinking in cool water. This is what I believe happened.

      The last scenario creates a huge problem for police because they were with Tom at his home at the time Gibbons’ dogs were barking.

      In reality, only Sandy Bird and God knows what happened at Rocky Ford Bridge that night, or those, who still may be living who killed Sandy. I also know that Tom Bird is paying the price.

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