Brother's Keeper

When Floyd S. Bledsoe spoke publicly for the first time in eight months, he did so with desperation befitting a man in shackles. "First of all, I want to say I didn't do it," he said at his July 14 sentencing hearing, commencing a monologue that rambled for nearly five minutes. Floyd insisted the case against him was rife with doubt. He simply couldn't have killed his sister-in-law, Zetta "Camille" Arfmann -- a 14-year-old whom friends and family hailed as a model Christian, a girl so gentle, her mother said, that bunnies would flock to her like tame kittens. Floyd's final plea was barely coherent. He spit out fragments of evidence: the sound of his car; his work schedule; a receipt from a sporting-goods store. He lashed out at his family -- "Tom Bledsoe, my brother, why he's done this, I don't know" -- and the Jefferson County Sheriff's Department -- "There's only a few good cops left in this county." Emotion rippled across his slight frame. His lower lip and receding chin quivered. He slammed his fists across the edge of the defense table.

Judge Dennis Reiling's eyes glazed over as Floyd babbled on. And when the rant ended without summary, the judge calmly laid out the 23-year-old's future: life in prison for first-degree murder plus 16 years for kidnapping and indecent liberties with a child.

For Heidi Bledsoe, the sentence was unsettling. Camille was her younger sister, and her husband's life-long imprisonment provided little closure on the lurid family tangle surrounding her death.

On the afternoon of November 5, 1999, a school bus lumbered along Fairview Lane, just north of Oskaloosa, Kansas. It eased into a curve and pulled to a stop in front of a beige trailer tucked into a dense swath of woods. Camille Arfmann gathered her books and stood up from her perch in the front row.

"Have a nice weekend," the bus driver said, yanking open the door.

"You too," Camille replied. She stepped off the bus and greeted a pair of dogs in the trailer's driveway.

It was Friday, and the shy, quiet ninth-grader had plans. Her church, Countryside Baptist, was holding a retreat that night at the farm of Jim Bolinger, her Sunday-school teacher. After playing games and eating a meal with her young Christian friends, Camille would go to her mother's house in Winchester, a dusty cluster of houses nine miles to the north. She'd spend the weekend there as she usually did, since the trailer was home only on school days. It was a new arrangement. Camille had been performing poorly at Jefferson County North, the school she attended while living with her mother in Winchester. She had moved in with her sister, Heidi; her brother-in-law, Floyd; and her two young nephews, Cody and Christian, right before the start of the school year so she could go to Oskaloosa High School.

Camille's weekend plans never came through. Within an hour, she had disappeared. About 5 o'clock, Camille's best friend, Robin Meyer, pulled her white Sunbird into the trailer's driveway. She'd just gotten off work at the TLC Daycare in Winchester and had come by to hang out with her best friend, as she did on most days.

Robin knocked, but there was no answer. She tried the doorknob. It was unlocked, so she poked her head inside.

"Camille?" she called.

No answer. She must be with her mother, Robin thought. Unconcerned, she headed back to Winchester and watched TV.

An hour later, Jim Bolinger pulled up in one of Countryside Baptist Church's vans to take Camille to the retreat. Usually she was waiting out front, always eager for any church activity. He sent Jennifer Snell, a church member, to the front door. She knocked, but there was no answer. It was dark outside. A couple of lights burned from inside the trailer. Bolinger thought her absence odd. But like Robin, he assumed Camille was with her mother.

By all accounts but her own, Tommie Sue Arfmann had a peculiar relationship with her daughters. She often undermined their social plans by hauling them home to do unfinished chores. Tommie Sue was restless and liked to drive all over Jefferson, Douglas, and Leavenworth counties. Sometimes she'd pull her daughters from church activities or school to ride with her to Atchison or Lawrence, where she'd stop at a store only to emerge with a loaf of bread. "She never made us go to school," Heidi says.

Tommie Sue expected Camille to arrive home from church at 10 o'clock. When 10:15 rolled around and the girl still hadn't arrived, she grew worried. She called the Bolingers, but Jim's wife, Rose, said Camille had never made it to the retreat. She hung up and called her son-in-law, Floyd, at Zule's Dairy, where he had been working since mid-morning: "Do you know where Camille is?"

Floyd and Heidi arrived home from work at about the same time, near midnight. As Floyd pulled up the drive, he saw Heidi approaching the front door with a co-worker who had given her a ride home from her job in Lawrence. Floyd hopped out of his green Nova, leaving the car running.