Oh yes, the fingerprints. If Lanie’s testimony was what put Warren in a jail cell, the discovery of his fingerprints in the Buhrman home—and the way he lied about it—was what padlocked him inside. Warren initially insisted that he had never been inside the Buhrman home. Later, after his attorney had been hired and he had been presented with the indisputable fact that his fingerprints placed him inside the house, Warren changed his story.
WARREN:
I broke in. It was a Wednesday afternoon, just a few days before Mr. Buhrman died. I’d skipped school and was hanging around in my bedroom when I noticed Mrs. Buhrman leaving the house with the twins. She never really went out because, you know, she was kind of not right in the head. I’d heard my mom talking on the phone about how crazy she was, and I figured that meant she probably had some pretty good drugs over there. So when I saw her leave, I just went. Got the key out of the hiding spot—they used one of those fake rocks, like everyone else—and went inside. She had some Xanax, so I took that and some cash.
Admitting to burglarizing the victim’s home is not an admirable defense, but I believe it’s an honest one. The State’s interpretation of the fingerprint evidence has always failed to fully account for the fact that Warren’s fingerprints were not just in the kitchen—they were on both floors of the house, including the upstairs bathroom and master bedroom. If the fingerprints were left in commission of the murder, what was Warren doing upstairs? How did he even get up there? I’ve been in the Buhrmans’ former home, and take it from me, it’s not a home with a lot of hallways and dark corners. More importantly, there’s only one staircase. While it’s theoretically possible Warren could have snuck upstairs undetected and back down again without alerting Chuck Buhrman to his presence, it’s unlikely. At the end of the day, Warren’s problem might have been that he was too good a thief: no one noticed the house had been burglarized, and no one believed him after the fact.
With all this discussion of where Warren’s fingerprints were, I think it’s only appropriate to mention where they weren’t: on the bullet embedded in the wall.
The State was untroubled by this. Warren wore gloves, they suggested—in my opinion, an unlikely scenario given that his fingerprints were found in many other places—or someone else loaded the gun. Wait a second, Poppy, you say. Someone else? Did Warren Cave have an accomplice? While it’s certainly a theory that Warren might’ve had an accomplice, the State’s implication has always been more shocking: the State believes that Chuck Buhrman loaded his own gun.
Here’s the thing: Chuck owned a .38 caliber handgun, and that gun is still missing to this day. Erin told police her husband had purchased the gun for her parents after a breakin on their farm and the gun was only registered in Chuck’s name through a bureaucratic error. She stated she was unsure what happened to the gun after her parents’ deaths in 2000, but she claimed to have never seen the gun in her home.
I’m not sure what—if anything—this diversion about a weapon that may or may not have belonged to Chuck means to the larger narrative. To those who are convinced that Warren Cave is guilty, it’s a handy explanation for how he got his minor hands on a gun: he stole it from his intended victim, of course. They assume the gun had been passed back to Chuck after Erin’s parents’ deaths—or that the gun had never actually changed hands in the first place—and that Warren exploited that. But how likely is that scenario, really? Likely enough, it seems, for a jury.
In the end, the physical evidence was shaky and circumstantial, and the foundation of the State’s case against Warren Cave was the testimony of the victim’s fifteen-year-old daughter, who had changed her story twice in the first thirty minutes that she spoke with police. Was she just traumatized, as the State maintained at trial? Or was she telling a calculated lie?
For Melanie and Warren Cave, it doesn’t matter.
MELANIE:
All we want is the truth. Lanie, if you’re listening, I want you to know that we forgive you. I give you my word that neither my son nor I will pursue any charges or seek civil penalties against you. We just want you to tell the truth. We just want Warren to be free.
chapter 2
It was nearly five in the morning by the time I finished listening to the second episode, and I didn’t think I would be able to sleep even if I wanted to. My head felt full of static, and beneath that was an insistent drumbeat of discontent. If the fingerprints were left in commission of the murder, what was Warren doing upstairs?
Had Warren been upstairs that night? Could he have been standing in the hallway, just yards away from where I slept, gun in hand? I shivered. For that to be true, he must have been exceptionally quiet to avoid detection by not only my father but also my sister, who had been awake.
But if he hadn’t left the fingerprints that night, he must have left them another time. Warren was right about how infrequently my mother left the house then; I could easily recall the afternoon he described. We had gone to the mall to pick out a gift for Aunt A’s birthday. I had a vague memory of Mom digging through drawers that night, muttering to herself. I asked what she was doing, and she mumbled something about losing her mind and misplacing things, or was it vice versa? Our mother was often absentminded about her belongings; I didn’t place any significance on it at the time. But what if she was looking for the medication or cash that Warren stole? And if he left the fingerprints on the second level days before the murder, did it stand to reason that he left the fingerprints downstairs then, too?
Stop it, I ordered myself. It didn’t matter when the fingerprints were left. Maybe he left more the night he killed my father, or maybe that night he decided to wear gloves. It was just a diversion, a distraction from the real evidence: Lanie saw him pull the trigger.