Now if only I could provide enough evidence to support my hypothesis.

CARL’S INTERVIEWS WITH me sent up many red flags.

“I have my own theory,” Carl told me. “This is way out in left field. I really wondered about Mickey, her husband. Me and him… he was intimidating to me… I had peculiar feelings about him… She couldn’t have sex; maybe it hurt too much.

“It also could be something she just said to me. Like we were a lot like mother and son but a lot more than that. But there was never anything physical between us…

“I didn’t care a whole lot for Debbie’s husband at the time,” Carl added. “Something about him I didn’t care for. He was in the military…

“The windows were always closed and locked. Wood frame windows with a swing lock on the top. And no ladder…would be impossible without a ladder.

“[There was a] double window in the family room and the couch was against the wall under the window. No footprints that I know of. I think one of the younger girls said he left and came back. I don’t know if the girls know if it was the same person… Maybe someone else came to the house and left. That was always something Doris [did] that meant they were in bed. If she was in bed I don’t think the door was open and if someone knocked, she probably wouldn’t hear it. In my younger days, if I was driving by and the lights were off, I wouldn’t stop.

“I couldn’t tell you a whole lot about Mickey.

“At the time I didn’t have a gun, not even an air gun.

“I only know that Doris had a gun. I just took her word that she had one. I know she told me she had one under her pillow or mattress. She always had it there in case she needed it.

“I think back then there was a three-day wait to pick up a pistol.

“I don’t remember the police questioning anyone. I just think it was people there that evening.

“They didn’t ask me to voice the words on the tape.

“For an injury, you would call the firehouse, not the police. I don’t know which one they called. As a matter of fact I did hear that they called Mickey’s station.

“[There were] four different pay phones-one at the corner, one up the street at the shopping center, within a mile or mile and a half or two. Or maybe eight phones. At that time most of them were inside stores. 7-Eleven was probably open all night… No, it was [the] other store-open at least until eleven.

“They asked me where I was at and I said, ‘At Marilyn’s house.’ They just asked what time I got there and what time I left-I arrived at eight p.m. and I left at eight a.m. I don’t know if they checked with Marilyn-[or] even talked with Marilyn.

“I sure hope you get some answers.”

Carl was a friend of the family and spent time alone with Doris, talking about life and taking walks. Without a doubt, he had established a personal relationship with her.

He was extremely familiar with the layout of the house and the address, as he visited quite often. He also knew Doris ’s children and was friendly with some of them.

One of the daughters told me that Carl owned a gun similar to the one used in the crime; however, during my interview with him he said he didn’t own any gun at the time of the murder. He even added, “I didn’t even own an air gun at the time.”

I learned that Carl was unhappy with his relationship with his own mother and commented that Doris filled in as a kinder, older woman who would listen to his problems. A number of Hoover family members believed he might have been infatuated with Doris.

Carl commented that Doris knew things about him that no one, including himself, had told her. This bizarre statement was made more than once.

“I told Doris I would be back later but I never made it back,” he told me.

I wondered why he would be returning at a later time that night and why, if he told her he would come back, he didn’t.

“To me he wasn’t odd,” Debbie told me. “Denise thought [he was]. He was a quiet person. He was very friendly. He would do anything for anybody. He liked me a lot. We dated a couple times in high school. He was good to my kids and husband.

“He was kind of my best friend,” Debbie continued. “I could talk to him about the problems with my dad. Maybe he had a crush on my mom. I know he didn’t think my dad treated her right… Monte, my husband, got a dog from the police department, and [my mother] at one time had raised shepherds. Mom wanted to see him [the night she was killed], so I went over, took the dog. Monte took care of the kids. I was there till midnight or later. I left because she got a phone call from my dad and argued.”

Debbie said she didn’t see Carl that night at the house. Carl couldn’t remember if she was there before or after him. Her sisters Laurie and Denise, however, said that they were there together, and that it was quite late. If they were there together, it would have had to be after eleven. Carl said he was there from seven to seven thirty p.m. and was going to come back later. Did he return after eleven p.m. with or after Debbie? He said he was there at around seven p.m. and told Doris that he would return later but didn’t. But what if he did return? Carl’s alibi was that he was a mile away at the home of his girlfriend, Marilyn, by eight p.m. This conflicted with others’ recollections of him being at the Hoover house late that night.

There seemed to have been a family confrontation that night. But who was involved is unclear. Some reported that Doris had fought with her husband over the phone. Others told of an argument between Doris and Debbie over Debbie leaving her husband (and possibly for Carl). Carl seemed to be involved in some way or another.

Carl brought up the issue of taking his watch over to Doris to have it fixed. This was a watch she gave him, supposedly for graduation. He said, “It never showed up again.” It was highly unlikely that a thief would have chosen to steal Carl’s broken watch. It was more likely he was concerned that the watch was in her purse, evidence perhaps that he had returned that night.

Finally, Carl’s parents lived nearby and this would be the direction the perpetrator would have been heading after leaving the Hoovers ’ house, shown by the crayon marks on the sidewalk the perpetrator left after he stepped on them at the crime scene. There was also a convenience store with a pay phone at the end of the Hoovers ’ street along that same route, the phone the killer used to call the fire station.

LAURIE HOOVER SAID she never completely shook off the nagging fear that her father could have had something to do with her mother’s murder, that maybe he had hired a hit man. It was a feeling that stuck with her over the years.

The police investigation stalled and the survivors waited for years and years for some hope that the case would be reevaluated and a suspect would finally be identified and brought in. A recording of the emergency call disappeared shortly after the murder. And although they hypnotized and polygraphed Laurie, they never interviewed Doris’s eldest daughter, Cathy, who lived across the street, or Debbie, who had been at the house that evening, or Doris ’s two best friends. Nor did they talk to Mickey Hoover’s coworkers. They did question Carl.

“It was screwed up,” Mickey told me in an interview. “One detective had a daughter who was very ill. He didn’t have the time to put into it. Finally, they changed lead detectives. Naturally, I would like to know what happened.

“The police told one of my daughters it was a hit. I didn’t hear it from the police. They never questioned me on the hit theory. They questioned my buddies; they never asked me to take a polygraph.”

By the time of my investigation, the police no longer had any evidence from the case. They gave the Hoover children a number of reasons for this: it “got lost in the chain of command,” “became contaminated,” or was “lost in a warehouse fire.” It didn’t help me that the house where the murder occurred subsequently burned down.