An Alternative Theory

It’s now been a little more than a year since I started working on the Christian “Kit” Martin story. For those of you wanting an update on the book, I can tell you that I do have a rough first draft as well as a completed book proposal. I’ll be sending out the book proposal to prospective agents this January.

I started posting updates on this project in January of this year. In this post, I want to highlight some of those prior posts and provide what I believe is the most likely scenario of what happened based solely on the evidence.

The first victim was Calvin Phillips. The evidence suggests that he was first shot outside. The most likely scenario is that Calvin heard someone pull into the driveway. He was expecting the washing machine delivery between 10:00 am and 12:00 pm. My guess is that someone other than the delivery truck driver pulled into the driveway around 10:00 am, maybe earlier. Calvin opened the front door to see if it was the delivery truck. From his front porch, he saw that it was a car. It might be that he just heard someone pull into the driveway and assumed it was the delivery truck. Either way, Calvin put on a rain jacket and cinched the hood tightly around his head. It was raining heavily. As he approached the vehicle, the occupant of the car rolled down the window and fired up to three shots. Two bullets exited the body. They exited on a downward track, indicating that perhaps Calvin had stooped down. One shot hit the car door frame, window, or perhaps the mirror. Three trocars broke off from that bullet and entered Calvin’s upper chest.

There was no blood evidence from Calvin found inside the house, except for a small amount found on the back porch. Calvin fell to the ground in his driveway, with most of the blood evidence washed away in the rain. He was still alive as he lay there.

At some point in the early afternoon, the person who shot Calvin drove by the scene. Maybe they noticed that Calvin was no longer in the same spot where he was when they left him. Maybe they became uneasy that Calvin could be spotted from the street should someone look that way. There’s a good possibility that this person saw an opportunity to point police in the direction of the neighbor across the street. For whatever reason, they came up with a plan to return to the crime scene. They then sought out help from a second individual.

The two individuals parked in the old elementary school parking lot and walked the short distance to Calvin’s house. Once there, they used the blue tarp on the back porch to transport Calvin from the driveway to the back porch. Only someone familiar with the house would likely know about the cellar door under the dog bed. The two individuals opened the cellar door and then dumped Calvin head-first down the cellar stairs. The blunt force trauma to his face and upper extremities occurred as he went face-first down the stairs. Blood on the stairs and a tooth found under Calvin’s body support this scenario. Calvin was still alive at this point. He may have made an audible sound or moved. He was then shot again in the chest from the top of the stairs. One trocar was found under his body. The medical examiner retrieved only three bullet bases from his body.

Some towels and t-shirts were used to clean up the blood on the porch, the blue tarp, and perhaps the driveway. They then placed those items under Calvin’s body with the idea of burning Calvin’s body to destroy evidence. I believe these two individuals remained at Calvin’s house to stage the scene. They located the two subpoenas and laid them out for the police to find. I now believe both the dog tag and the shell casing were planted.

All of this took time. My guess is that whoever was responsible knew Pam’s schedule and believed they had enough time to accomplish all of the necessary tasks. It’s also possible, as explained in the book, that Pam was also an intended target, and they were waiting for her to return. I also believe that the perpetrators were in the house each time Marlene Larock visited the house.

They didn’t count on Pam coming home early. Trapped inside the house when Pam came home, they may have tried sneaking out the back door when Pam was on the phone with Marlene. Pam spotted them and was shot several times. Neighbor Ed Dansereau, who had been on the lookout for the missing Cal, heard the shots ring out. Maybe he saw something that alarmed him. He grabbed his phone and small handgun and dashed out his back door. As he rounded the wooden privacy fence he was shot. He dropped his phone. He may or may not have returned gunfire. In either case, he managed to work his way along the fence and toward the backyard, where he was shot a second time. As he lay there in the grass, Ed received another gunshot, this time in the temple. There was no military precision in any of the killings.

At this point, they now had to come up with a plan for disposing of Pam and Ed’s bodies. They backed Pam’s car up to the house near the back porch. They tried dragging Pam by her hair from the kitchen to the car. A tuft of hair came loose in their hands. Eventually, they managed to get Pam into the front passenger side seat. They then worked to get Ed Dansereau into the back seat. It’s also possible that they left the scene after the killings of Pam and Ed and returned later to load the bodies into the car. This is the most likely scenario. They were there when Marlene Larock visited the house the third time around 7:30 pm. They may have been spooked and left the scene only to return later that evening.

Kit’s dogs started barking at around 11:30 pm, suggesting that perhaps this was when the bodies were placed into Pam’s car. Before leaving the house sometime between 1:15 am and 1:30 am, they set the items beneath Cal’s body on fire, closed the cellar door, and then placed the dog bed back over the closed door.

One person drove Pam’s car and the second individual followed behind in Ed’s car. It’s quite possible that they planned to set Pam’s car on fire in John Homick’s burn pile. Either way, they had to know about the turnoff from Rosetown Road. It would have been too dark to just randomly pick that gravel road, which is tucked away behind a curve in the road and a tree line. The first car missed the turn on the gravel road and got stuck in the mud. They used the light from the second car to help them spread kerosene and set Pam’s car on fire. All of this commotion caught the attention of Earl Jet’s German Shepherd. The two loud bangs heard by both Homic and Earl Jet around 2:15 am were most likely the two airbags exploding.

The two perpetrators then drove back to the gravel parking lot, left Ed’s car there, and then fled Pembroke via the highway. Pam’s phone evidence shows that one or both perpetrators were in the Pembroke area at around 8:05 am. They then headed toward Elkton, Kentucky. Later that day, Pam’s phone showed movement once again further east from Elkton and away from Pembroke.

No evidence supports Kit’s involvement in any part of this crime.