Widow of slain Saxonburg police chief gets some answers 37 years after he was killed
Saxonburg police Chief Greg Adams didn’t go down without a fight. In fact, in the words of police, he “fought like a lion.”
The 31-year-old husband and father of two was shot in broad daylight Dec. 4, 1980, but before he died, he had nearly bitten off the lip of his assailant and had broken the man’s left leg in at least two places.
That assailant — Donald Eugene Webb of North Dartmouth, Mass. — was so badly injured, he required a month of hospital care and, until his death, walked with a limp.
And his widow, Mary Ann Adams Jones, said Thursday she was glad to hear it.
“When [the police told me] Greg gave him a compound fracture and just about bit off his lip, I was glad. I was glad to hear he fought as hard as he did. That the only way Webb was going to stop [Greg] was to
shoot him dead. That’s the man I remember marrying,” she said.
Less than a week after authorities unearthed Webb’s skeletal remains from the Bay State backyard of his wife, Lillian Webb, officials from the FBI and Pennsylvania and Massachusetts state police conducted a telephone conference call with Chief Adams’ widow, one of her two sons and her attorney.
The purpose of the call Tuesday was to tell Ms. Jones what they had learned last week from Lillian Webb, 82, during an interview she agreed to give after prosecutors promised she would not face criminal charges for any information she relayed.
Pennsylvania State Police Cpl. Chris Birckbichler, the lead investigator on the case the past 12 years, described in an interview Thursday with the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette what Mrs. Webb had to say.
Webb had been away from their home in New Bedford, Mass., for some time, as often was the case.
When he returned to New England in a white car that he had used to escape Pennsylvania, he was in bad shape. His left leg was fractured, a bone protruding from the skin. A part of his lip was nearly bitten off. Webb told his wife he had been in a fight with a police officer.
Mrs. Webb had him go to Toby Hospital, about 20 miles from their home, and he checked in under an assumed name. He remained there for about a month.
“She didn’t really recall the exact date he showed up but she said she was leaving her mother’s house when Donald drove up in the white car and he told her he was hurt. His leg was broken, the bone was protruding through the skin and it was bleeding. His lip was real bad. It was almost torn through, nearly bitten off,” Cpl. Birckbichler said.
He followed her in the white car to Toby Hospital, then she got rid of the white car. She said she drove it to a motel in Warwick, R.I., figuring that she would get police to focus their search for him in Rhode Island instead of Massachusetts.
“She got a ride back from a girlfriend. Lillian is a mobster’s wife. A thief’s wife. A criminal’s wife. She knew what to do,” the corporal said.
“She said Donald admitted he was responsible for the chief’s death. He said it was an accident that Greg got shot. Law enforcement always thought Greg got off a shot, but that didn’t happen. During the fight, Greg had actually kicked Donald’s leg, causing a compound fracture. She said he walked with a limp the rest of his life.
“[An autopsy] showed his left ankle was fused. It couldn’t swivel. We figure that every step he took since that day, it was a step with pain. With every step he had a painful reminder of what he did. Every step gave him a reason to remember.”
Cpl. Birckbichler said that by Christmas Eve 1980, a warrant had been issued charging Webb with murder. When Webb got out of the hospital, his wife moved him to a rented room and he would keep in touch with her by calling the 800 number at a business where she worked as a receptionist.
“He was there about a year. He got around some, though she said he didn’t have a car. She didn’t know if he stole vehicles or what,” the corporal said.
“He became suicidal and, after that, they moved into a house in the New Bedford [Mass.] area, where he spent his days like a dog cowering in the garage or sneaking into the basement at night.”
In 1997, she bought her current house in North Dartmouth, where investigators found a hidden room that locked from the inside when they searched it recently.
“Donald was ill. He couldn’t get around real well. She wasn’t forthcoming about the hidden room. We think she didn’t want to tell us who built it, maybe. She was adamant no one knew Donald was there,” Cpl. Birckbichler said.
“In 1999, he had a stroke. She said he was paralyzed all over and he said he was dying and she needed to start digging a grave. She said she started working on it in the nights, a little at a time. It was winter and she said it was hard to dig through the frozen soil, but it was a shallow grave, about 3 feet deep.”
On Dec. 30, 1999, Webb died, his wife told investigators. She put his body into a plastic tub, pushed it down three steps, dragged it into the backyard “and dumped his body into the hole.”
The corporal, whose father is a retired state police trooper from the Butler barracks, had worked the investigation following the chief’s murder.
“It was very satisfying to call him and the other guys who worked so hard over the years and to say, ‘I stood over Donald Webb’s remains today,’” he said.
As the years passed since the chief’s murder, Donald Webb was the target of a nationwide manhunt. He was on the FBI’s “Ten Most Wanted” list for a quartercentury. Rewards were offered; he was the subject of national crime-solving TV shows.
Meanwhile, Mary Ann Adams Jones went on with her life, working and raising her sons and, ultimately, remarrying.
She said she learned to live with the lack of resolution, the nagging mystery surrounding her husband’s murder, the unanswered questions.
In April, she received a telephone call from the FBI, saying the case had taken a turn; the secret room had been discovered in Mrs. Webb’s home.
She said Thursday that the FBI wanted her to produce pictures, anything that might be used to stimulate the conscience of Mrs. Webb, to make her sympathize with the widow of the man her husband had slain.
Mrs. Jones decided to take a different path. She and her sons filed a wrongful death suit against the Webbs in Butler County Common Pleas Court. At the same time, the FBI and state police from Pennsylvania and Massachusetts were turning up the heat.
A lengthy affidavit filed in support of a search warrant for Mrs. Webb’s home gives a glimpse of what culminated in the July 13 unearthing of Donald Webb’s remains in North Dartmouth, and the positive identification on July 14 of those remains following an autopsy.
• Chief Adams was shot after a traffic stop near the Agway store in Saxonburg. A trail of type O blood — Webb’s type —led to Chief Adams’ cruiser, where investigators found that the radio handset had been torn out. The blood trail then led back to where a white vehicle had been parked, according to witnesses.
• A witness told police he had seen a man walking toward the police cruiser, holding a blood-soaked towel, with his pants bloody between the knee and the ankle. Police later found the white vehicle in Rhode Island and type O blood was inside it.
• In November 2016, an FBI agent said the hidden room had been found inside Mrs. Webb’s home. It was the size of a large shower stall. Inside, a hook lock fastened the door. “The only rational purpose of this hook lock was for a person to lock the door after entering the room ...,” the affidavit says.
• Authorities searched Lillian Webb’s home on June 26 and 28. She later told police that Webb “lived, hid, died and was ultimately buried” at the home.
Mrs. Jones’ attorney, Thomas W. King III of Butler, said he received personal satisfaction in the telephone conference call with police on Tuesday.
“I had a clear picture of the chief’s last minutes: It was a ferocious fight. He probably delivered several kicks with his boots, to break Webb’s leg that way. The chief bit off part of Webb’s lip. Lillian said it was a bad injury to his face. The [police] used these words, the chief, “Fought like a lion.’ It’s a wonderful part of the story. It made me feel good,” Mr. King said.
Ms. Jones said the recent events have made what happened nearly 37 years ago feel like it’s happening again. And, in the end, she said, she’d rather know than not know but, “It’s still not going to bring him back.”