Daisy Zick Unsolved featuring Empress Eyes

A quick overview of the Daisy Zick mystery.  Stabbed so many times and nobody to hold accountable. 

We leave you with a happy ending and on a good note as promised with:

EMPRESS EYES

song title:  Running in Circles

Bandcamp: https://empresseyes.bandcamp.com/

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Transcript

Battle Creek, MI  aka Cereal City.  Home of many tales, haunts, horrors, wrong doings.

On January 14, 1963 a new horror would occur that would never, ever be solved.

43 year old Daisy Zick was married to Floyd the two of them had two children and lived in a cute little ranch brick house in a burb called Emmitt Township. It’s called Waddles Park and they lived on a dead end street, 100 Juno and I love that street name.

Waddles Park in 1963…

Daisy had a good job at the local company, Kellogg’s, in the packing department.  She worked the 2nd shift

On Tuesday, January 14, 1963 Daisy and Floyd were starting their day just like they did every single day.

Floyd left at 7:45 a.m. to go to work at his butcher job.  Before walking out the door, he would wake his wife up so she could get the kids ready for school.  

Floyd stopped and picked up a coworker who rode with him daily, five minutes later at 7:50 a.m.

Daisy had plans to meet her friend, Audrey for coffee at a local place called Fellow’s 

They planned to meet between 10 & 10:30 

Around 9:00  a.m. Daisy would get a call from her longtime lover, Raymond Mercer.  she had been dating him for 2 years at this point. 

Daisy was apparently known to go out on her husband.  Raymond was a coworker at Kellogg’s and everyone there knew that the two of them were going on.  

Daisy and Floyd had a very regimented lifestyle.  The neighbor even knew their schedule was so on point. 

That day, the neighbor's house cleaner, Mrs DeFrance, noted that the curtains in Daisy's home were open far earlier than they normally were.

That day she also noted that a man was standing in their breezeway. She didn’t think much of it because Daisy was known to have fellows visiting her after the Mister went off to work.    

Later that same day, Mrs DeFrance once again noticed something odd.  Daisy and Floyd had a  2 stall garage and Daisy’s side was open and the car was gone.  It was super odd that the door was left wide open.

1959 Pontiac 2 door, Daisy’s car

Daisy never showed up for her coffee date at Fellow’s with her friend and coh-worker, Audry.  

Daisy also never punched in for her job that day.  She was a no call, no show.  

It seems that Raymond was the last person to talk to Daisy that day.  

12:30 Audry called Floyd at work and told him that his wife didn’t meet her for coffee and also did not show up for work.

It was unlike her to do any of this, so both her husband and her friend were quite worried about her.  She wasn’t even answering the phone.

Floyd left work to go check on his wife.  

Daisy’s car was on the side of the road and Floyd pulled a u turn to park behind his wife’s car.  Thinking maybe she was in the car sick or hurt, not really knowing.

Daisy was not in the car.  Her keys were not in the car.  

When he went home, he noted the open garage.  Again, totally unlike his wife.  Then he realized that the door from the breezeway into the kitchen was slightly open.

Daisy’s lunch and shoes were still on the kitchen table.. So she had never even left for work.

There were small things in the house that seemed off to Floyd but when he got into their bedroom, he realized that their bed was covered in blood.

Daisy’s purse was dumped at the end of the bed, contents all over the floor.   But the wallet and the checkbook were on the bed.

While checking through the house for his wife, he discovers that the lines to their telephone in the kitchen, had been cut.

In the very last room that he checked, he discovered his wife in a brutal position.  Nothing looked right about this.

Blood was on the walls.  Blood was on the door.

Her feet were visible from behind the bed in the spare bedroom.  He could tell by the direction of her foot that one leg was twisted in a very unnatural position.

When he fully saw his wife, he realized that her hands were behind her back, her body was soaked in blood leaving pools of blood in the carpet around her.

Daisy had been savagely killed in her own house.  

He called his boss, he had panicked and called him instead of the police, I guess.  He thought that Daisy had been shot, there was so much blood.  So he told his boss, Daisy’s been shot, call the police.  Oh, they had a recreational room in their basement and there was a phone line down there…so that’s how he called. 

His boss Lowell McDonald called the MSP at 1:15 pm that afternoon.

The ranch home has a trove of evidence, none of it would be helpful to catching the murderer.

Blatantly Floyd was questioned up, down & sideways.  

The spare bedroom had blood splattered upon the walls.  There was a highfig? That had been moved from the wall.   The patterns of blood made it appear that most of the wounds happened when she was already down on the floor.  

There was struggle.  Daisy had been stabbed.  She not had been stabbed once or twice.

-Her pants were pulled down from her waste but not her undies.

-Her hands were tied behind her back with a sash from her housecoat.

-There were dirty smudges found on her white shirt and her panties.

-There was blood on her bed in her bedroom.  

-No signs of robbery.

-Kitchen telephone line was cut 

-A small carpet was bunched up in front of the kitchen sink

-Front door unlocked

-Slush in the living room

-Wooden handled knife found in kitchen, with blood spot

-Blood on the garage door knob

-A random button was found

-The knife was tested it was actually a factory box cutter like thing that everyone at the Kelloggs plant used.

-Her purse had been gone through leaving the checkbook & wallet on the bed

Detectives believed that the struggle happened throughout the house.  They tested everything in the house.  They printed everything that they could print.  12 usable prints were found.

Fibers and hairs were looked for.  Yellow fibers were found that were very different from other fibers found in their house.

The zipper of her pants were jammed with fabric also.  Yellow fibers. 

The car was checked and tested for evidence.

-small amount of blood by the door handle

-men’s footprints leading away from the car imprinted in the snow

-Yellow fibers in various areas of like hood latch

-fingerprints

Employees at Kellogg’s would be printed and compared to the prints found at the house and on the car.

Raymond Mercer was looked into, as her lover and all.  In later years, a woman involved with Raymond was questioned.  

Her car had been left on Michigan Ave. a very busy roadway, so detectives were hoping it was spotted.

Many people noticed it and it would lead to a variety of stories or suspicions but nothing that could be nailed down as a good, solid lead.

There was a mysterious man that was seen at various places in the area and a mysterious vehicle in the area.

People in the area were interviewed, neighbors and her friend Audrey were all interviewed.

People who lived around where her car was abandoned.  People who drove Michigan Ave regularly.  They even called the postal dude, the cab drivers.   

They put pictures of her car in the newspapers to see if any worthwhile tips would come in.  They received numerous tips but still nothing led to an arrest or even a good suspect.

After the autopsy took place by Dr William Walters the savage, personal feel of the murder came through

-15 stab wounds around her left breast

-A cut on her left collar bone

-4 slashes on upper left arm

-6 more stab wounds on her back, like by her armpit 

-2 broken finger nails

-3 fractured ribs

-blunt object blow to her head behind her right ear

Daisy died from blood loss and all evidence pointed to the fact that she didn't go down easy, she fought for her life, they even found two fingernails on the floor.

Daisy’s love life was gone through with a fine tooth lice comb.  Current co-workers were questioned and vetted, as were recently fired and ex employees.

Many offered not only their fingerprints but also offered to take polygraph tests.  87 men from Kelloggs were fingerprinted and looked into.

The local veteran’s office was dug into, the Kimball sanatorium was looked into to see if one of their patients may have done it.  The Kzoo state hospital was looked into.  

Feb 2 a conference was held to let the public know what happened to give details and receive tips.

Crime of passion or a sadist was the final decision on who killed Daisy.

The yellow fibers were one of the biggest clues that they had.  Despite those, the case went cold.

The main lead was still a mysterious person seen around.  The descriptions and times seemed to vary quite a bit though.

In general, there seemed to be a person that people did or did not see and the stories varied quite a lot.  But it was noted that there was a strange person in and around the area the day of Daisy’s brutal, personal murder.

Detective Steinbacher had led the investigation for years following leads that continuously turned up empty leads.  He finally retired in  ______  leaving a lifelong empty feeling of a case that was still open.

In 1998 the newspaper had talked with Detective Steinbacher, and the case that he couldn’t leave behind,  he would continue to work the case.

The case went cold and years went by until new people cycled through the department.

19 years after the day the Daisy was stabbed,  Mrs. DeFrance, remember her?  She received a call in May 1982  and the caller just told her that a woman killed Daisy.  She hung up on the person and contacted the police. Sadly, they could do nothing with the call.

22 years later MSP held a meeting and went over all of the evidence in the Daisy Zick case and Detective Z was included to give all of his knowledge and suspicions of the chase.

They brainstormed and went through evidence, ultimately I think they agreed the most likely suspect looked like William Daly.

Unfortunately, they had circumstantial evidence at best.  They could not arrest him or even search anything.

Their suspects included:

The postal worker, aka the mailman.   William Daily (Daly) 

-Williams stories varied and they all seemed suspicious

-Williams had previous assault charges

-Coworkers claimed that he was different after the murders and that a coat he always wore was gone.

-Some people swear it was this guy, the mailman that was driving Daisy’s car.

-He had become transient and moved a lot after leaving Kalamazoo

-

-Audrey Hemminger (the friend she was to have coffee with that morning)

-Her lover, Raymond Mercer

-Floyd Zick, her husband

Aug 7, 1988 Floyd Zick passed away after having remarried and losing his 2nd wife the year previous to his death.

June 1990 Detective Gary Hoff opened the Zick case to give his go at the closed case.   After reading and scouring all of the evidence, transcripts of interviews his own theory was that Daisy was killed by a woman.

Battle Creek Inquirer  27th anniversary of murder gave an interview stating that he thought it was a case that could be solved and that he believed a woman did it.

After this, more tips came in and fell through.  

Detective Gary Hoff also retired without solving the Daisy Zick case.  

January 2000 William Daly was in the hospital in Florida with cancer, so detectives quickly flew down in hopes to get a death bed confession from William.  He wouldn’t say a damn word about it and also, it wasn’t his death bed.  He lived for 11 more years, never confessing to anything having to do with Daisy Zick.

It’s now 2026 and the murder of Daisy Zick has still not been solved.  It leaves so much room for speculation and theories.  The case has been dissected by numerous people.   It’s probably the craziest case with the least amount of clues that I have ever read about. 

A few things that were interesting to me.  

The Zick home was very regimented and almost ocd in the way it ran everyday.  Their home was immaculate and so clean that every bit of evidence was easy to spot.   

Their schedule matched the home.  They had a schedule so tight that the neighbors cleaning lady knew when Daisy opened her curtains daily.  

The schedule led to a predictable way for Daisy to conduct her affairs, her literal affairs.   It was easy for her to be promiscuous when her husband was working first shift and she was working second shift.  It gave her the time. 

Like one detective stated, how did this person GET TO THE HOUSE?   We know that they left in Daisy’s car, leaving it abandoned a few miles away…. How did they arrive?  It’s winter and there were no footprints leading up to the house. 

It also gave the opportunity for a lot of tentacles to stretch out from this story.  Lovers and their wives.  The possibilities are endless but I definitely feel like it was a personal vendetta.