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Back Bake Sale Murder Save as PDF
Chapters (29)
  1. Cover
  2. MURDER IN THE KITCHEN
  3. Bake Sale Murder
  4. Contents
  5. Chapter 1
  6. Chapter 2
  7. Chapter 3
  8. Chapter 4
  9. Chapter 5
  10. Chapter 6
  11. Chapter 7
  12. Chapter 8
  13. Chapter 9
  14. Chapter 10
  15. Chapter 11
  16. Chapter 12
  17. Chapter 13
  18. Chapter 14
  19. Chapter 15
  20. Chapter 16
  21. Chapter 17
  22. Chapter 18
  23. Chapter 19
  24. Chapter 20
  25. Chapter 21
  26. Chapter 22
  27. Prologue
  28. Chapter 1
  29. Copyright

“Bonnie, it’s not all right. Because of me three people are dead. That’s too many. It’s over. I’ve been living a lie and I can’t do it anymore.”

From the distance Lucy heard a siren approaching, then several more. The cavalry was coming. She passed out.

Chapter 22

HOUSEWIFE CHARGED IN DOUBLE SLAYING

By Edward J. Stillings, Staff Writer

GILEAD—Prudence Path housewife Bonnie Burkhart’s days were filled with carpooling, homemaking, and baking until yesterday when the mother of six-year-old twin daughters was arraigned in Gilead District Court on two counts of first-degree murder. Prosecutors charge that Burkhart, 35, was responsible for the stabbing death of Mary Catherine (Mimi) Stanton, 39, on September 3 and the drowning death of Thomas Preston O’Toole, 41, on September 12. She was also charged with the attempted murder on September 26 of Lucy Stone, a reporter for this newspaper.

District Attorney Frederick P. Smith told Judge Wilfred P. Lawless that Burkhart committed the murders in an attempt to protect her husband, Buck Burkhart, 55. Buck Burkhart, who coached the Tinker’s Cove Warriors to an unprecedented 3-0 winning season, has admitted that he was wanted by Massachusetts police in connection with a 1976 bank robbery that resulted in the death of a Boston police officer, John Joseph O’Toole. Police killed two of the robbers, later identified as members of a radical leftist group known as the People’s Liberation Front, but Burkhart, who was never identified, escaped and successfully eluded capture for nearly thirty years.

“This man,” said Smith, pointing to Coach Burkhart, “whom we know as Buck Burkhart, upstanding citizen, educator, coach, and father, has been living a lie. He now admits he was the getaway driver in the robbery that took the life of Officer O’Toole.”

Bonnie Burkhart, who entered a plea of not guilty, displayed no emotion during the brief arraignment proceeding, but Coach Burkhart listened with his face in his hands as Smith described the alleged murder of Mimi Stanton by his wife. “When Bonnie Burkhart realized that her new neighbor on Prudence Path was the daughter of John Joseph O’Toole, the police officer killed in the robbery for which her husband was wanted, she feared her husband would be recognized, so she took matters into her own hands. She viciously stabbed Mimi Stanton to death in her own kitchen, using the victim’s own carving knife. And what was Mimi Stanton doing when she was killed? She was baking cookies for a charity bake sale.”

Burkhart is also charged with murdering Stanton’s brother, Thomas Preston O’Toole, by drowning. Investigators allege that Burkhart met O’Toole, a recovered alcoholic with no permanent address, in the Tinker’s Cove harbor and supplied him with a bottle of bourbon. When he became drunk she tipped him into the water, holding him down with one of the life-saving poles that are kept at the docks in case someone accidentally falls into the water.