21 December 1987

21 December 1987 is the day and night associated with Joseph Wieder’s death, reconstructed through accounts that do not agree. Derek Simmons describes visiting Wieder earlier that day and returning after dark, where he says he saw Laura Baines and Richard Flynn at the house; Frank Spoel’s account places him there too, but omits Laura and the argument. The date becomes a hinge in the investigation: the testimonies offer specific scenes and times, yet leave the crucial events—and the reliability of the witnesses—uncertain.

The Day at Joseph Wieder’s House

Simmons said he had gone to Joseph Wieder’s house in the morning to repair the downstairs bathroom toilet. Wieder was packing for a holiday trip to the Midwest, where he planned to stay with friends. Over lunch, which Wieder ordered as Chinese food, he told Simmons that he was tired and worried: snow from the previous night had left suspicious footprints in the backyard. Wieder also assured Simmons that he would continue to look after him while away and stressed that Simmons should keep taking his medication.

Simmons said he left at about 2 p.m. to paint an apartment near campus. After dinner at home that evening, worried by Wieder’s earlier condition, he decided to check on him. On arrival, he saw Laura Baines’s car nearby and heard an argument inside before he reached the door. This return visit, in Simmons’s telling, brought him close to the confrontation without making him an unobstructed witness to everything that followed.

Two Accounts of the Evening

Simmons placed himself outside the house, by the lake, at about 9 p.m. The living-room lights were on and the curtains open. From there, he said, he saw Joseph Wieder and Laura Baines seated at a table while Richard Flynn stood over them, gesturing and shouting reproaches. A few minutes later, Baines left; neither man tried to stop her. Simmons said Flynn and Wieder continued arguing, then appeared to settle down over cigarettes, coffee, and a couple of glasses of alcohol. Simmons was cold and about to leave when another argument began shortly after 10 p.m.

Frank Spoel’s account places him at the house at around 9 p.m. as well. He said he had resigned from the bar where he worked and, not wanting to be seen in the area, had hidden in a woodshed near Assunpink Creek until dark. He then went to Wieder’s house, where he saw the professor drinking in the living room with a young man. Spoel could not describe the man beyond saying he looked like one of the students living on their parents’ money; Roy Freeman suggested that he was Richard Flynn. Spoel did not report seeing Baines or witnessing a dispute. His account therefore overlaps with Simmons’s on the presence of Wieder and a young man, but diverges over Baines and the argument Simmons described.

The Night’s Uncertain Sequence

Simmons said that after the later argument he watched Flynn leave and then waited, expecting him to come out from the front. When he gave up waiting, Simmons went around to check on Wieder. He saw the professor still in the living room and left when Wieder got up to open a window, afraid that he might be noticed. As he departed, Simmons saw Baines’s car back in roughly the same place. He inferred that she had returned to spend the night with Wieder; he did not claim to see her re-enter the house.

The following morning, Simmons went back to make sure Wieder was all right. After nobody answered the doorbell, he used his own keys and found Wieder’s body in the living room. Simmons said he had long believed that Flynn had not really left the area after the argument, but had hidden nearby and returned to kill Wieder. He considered Baines either an accomplice or a witness, while acknowledging that he had not seen her take part in the killing. He said he had withheld her name from the police because he feared newspaper attention would tarnish Wieder’s reputation, but had told them that Flynn was present and had argued with the professor. The recollection suggests a theory of what happened after the observed confrontation, not a direct account of the killing itself.

Testimony, Memory, and Credibility

When Simmons eventually told Freeman what he said he had witnessed, he insisted that he had known who killed the professor and had reported it at the time. He also explained why he believed his statement had carried little weight: a previous murder accusation, confinement in a psychiatric institution, and the pills he was taking would, he thought, have allowed an attorney to dismiss his account as invention or hallucination. He remained convinced that he had seen what he described and had not been crazy.

The earlier police response, as later recounted to Freeman, reflects that credibility problem. A former investigator said Simmons had been interviewed but described him as ill and amnesiac, and doubted that much could be done with his statement. Baines, meanwhile, had been interviewed and was said to have a strong alibi for the whole evening; the investigator recalled that a female schoolmate had confirmed it. This left Simmons’s account in tension with an alibi the police regarded as solid, as well as with Spoel’s different description of the house.

When Freeman confronted Simmons with the discrepancy—that both men placed themselves in the backyard at about 9 p.m., yet Spoel reported only Wieder and a young man—Simmons showed little interest in resolving it. He suggested that Spoel might have forgotten what happened or might be lying, then challenged Freeman’s decision to believe Spoel rather than him. The date’s narrative significance lies in that unresolved contest: detailed recollection supplies a possible sequence, but competing witnesses, inferred actions, and doubts about memory prevent the scene from becoming a settled account.