Murder an Act of Friendship, Prosecutors Say; Town Rebels

Bill Mahan was a neighborly guy, always eager to pitch in to help a friend in this rustic patch of farm country. No favor was too big, no job too hard.

He was the guy to call to unclog a sewer, to fix some faulty wiring, to run a backhoe to dig a ditch. He had nimble hands and a big heart and folks knew he’d get the job done. Often, he didn’t even ask for money.

“Bill would do anything in the world for you,” says a onetime employer, Jim Boes. “And he could do just about anything.”

But exactly how far Mahan would go to help someone is at the heart of a murder that, authorities maintain, was committed in the name of friendship.

Prosecutors contend the handyman killed his boss because he was asked to do so. They say he was paid to pump three .357 hollow-point bullets into the chest and back of Rick Whitehead, a coal mine owner who happened to be one of the richest men in town.

And they say that, shockingly, the person who orchestrated the evil deed was the victim himself, a self-made businessman deep in debt who had taken out a $5-million life insurance policy shortly before his death and supposedly saw murder as his only way out.

Now, William Mahan sits in jail awaiting trial this fall on murder charges, cracking jokes as his friends and family rally to his defense.

Some wear “Free Willie” T-shirts featuring a cartoon whale jumping over a jail wall, a takeoff on the movie. They insist Mahan is the proverbial wouldn’t-hurt-a-fly guy--a prankster, for heaven’s sake.

When his former mother-in-law asked if he needed anything in jail, Mahan, 43, asked if she had a Monopoly game. Then came his request:

“I need the ‘Get Out of Jail’ card.”

*

By most measures, Bill Mahan and Rick Whitehead seemed to have little in common.

Mahan sweated just to earn a high school diploma. “He wasn’t the brightest kid I ever taught, but he was the finest kid,” says Joe Frey, a former teacher who now owns an excavating business.

Money mattered little to Mahan, material possessions even less. The two-bedroom trailer he shared with his third wife, Mary, and her two teen-age sons didn’t even have a phone.

He tooled around the two-lane blacktops of this corner of southwestern Indiana in his rusty red flatbed truck, wearing flannel shirts and muddy work boots, his long, curly hair flying every which way. His false teeth, depending on how he felt, were optional.

Friends say he’d do anything for a laugh--jump in a river, even drop his drawers after a Budweiser or two at the VFW hall.

His chicken and egg money, as folks call it, came from odd jobs: building a grain bin or septic system, pulling trailers, fixing a lawn mower.

“He didn’t want nothing steady--30 days, 60 days--and [he] was ready to move on,” says neighbor Jack Scarbrough, an electrician and grain-bin seller helping spearhead community support for Mahan.

“Bill thought about tomorrow when he got up tomorrow,” says Scarbrough’s wife, Pat, Mahan’s friend for 25 years.

Rick Whitehead, in contrast, was as deliberate as a chess player, always plotting his next business move. Over the years, he owned a car dealership, a coal mine, calves, a community dinner theater.

“Rick always talked about plans, from tomorrow up to 10 years,” Mary Mahan says.

Whitehead was affable and generous, maybe to a fault. Some say privately that he made a lot of risky loans, trying to get folks back on their feet, only to have them drag him down.

“Rick might have let his heart get in the way of business decisions,” says Rick Risinger, his former partner in the coal operation. “He had a lot of irons in the fire--maybe too many irons.”

It all made him a mighty big fish in this small pond.

A former schoolteacher and principal, he served on the school board. He donated money. He had grown up poor, and now he reveled in his riches.

Some folks grumble that he was too eager to flaunt his wealth: He invited one man to fly to Atlantic City for a boxing match, put up the flashiest Christmas decorations and built a castle-like brick home, complete with a pool and man-made lake. The house was such a behemoth that a drunk once drove up its long driveway, mistaking it for a hospital.

Whitehead met Mahan when he bought the Sherman House, a quaint storefront dinner theater on the town square that, in the ‘80s, featured Nashville headliners such as Ricky Skaggs and Mel Tillis.

Mahan was the jack-of-all-trades there. And, after the theater closed, he became Whitehead’s handyman, tending calves on his farm, doing chores at his house, always just a beeper away.

They were boss and worker, but they were friends too. Some say Mahan reminded Whitehead of his father.

“Bill listened very well,” Mary Mahan says in her husky smoker’s voice. “Bill never asked anything from Rick. I’m sure he got tired of people who were out to use him.”

Mahan, in turn, admired his boss. “He just believed there was a lot of good in Rick,” his wife says.

What was not publicly known then--as it is now--was that Whitehead, 45, was in big financial trouble, millions and millions of dollars in debt. It was that predicament, prosecutors contend, that drove him to plan his death.

It all happened just two months after Whitehead took out a $5-million life insurance policy.

Whitehead was shot in May 1995 at his Black Diamond Mine, which was shut down at the time. Burglary was suspected because of reports of vandalism and equipment theft in prior weeks.

Mahan, as Whitehead’s employee, was given a lie detector test, which proved inconclusive, his attorney says.

That’s how it stood for nearly two years until a man named Donald Bickel was arrested in February on charges including conspiracy to deal in methamphetamines. He was looking for a deal. And, yes, he had something to trade.

Bickel, according to a court affidavit, said Mahan told him Whitehead was “distraught over financial problems” and believed “arranging his own homicide was his only solution.”

According to Bickel’s account: After Mahan sought help, he drove him to the house of a man named Jay Honchell, where Mahan bought a gun and ammunition. Bickel then dropped off Mahan near the mine; he and Honchell picked him up 45 minutes later.

Mahan reported having killed Whitehead, according to Bickel, and gave the two men small amounts of cash; he allegedly was paid, too, though no amount has been disclosed.

Authorities say Mahan dumped the gun in a stream near his trailer. Navy divers and police searched the waters and found nothing. But prosecutors had enough to get a murder indictment.

Honchell, in turn, was accused of aiding in murder and conspiracy to commit murder.

And Bickel? He’s a free man. His drug charges, which carried a potentially lengthy prison term, were dropped and he was given immunity.

The prosecutor has declined comment, but friends of the accused and the victim are bewildered.

They say Whitehead adored his two children and would never plan his death. And they say Mahan wouldn’t have been stupid enough to plot a crime with accomplices or buy a gun when he owned many. Most important, they insist, he wouldn’t harm anyone--much less a friend.

“That man [Whitehead] fed him,” barks Gene Scully, a retiree and Mahan friend. “He’d be cutting his nose off to spite his face. There’s something wrong here. Somebody’s lying.”

“There’s no way Bill would do it,” declares Mary Mahan, who still lives on Whitehead’s farm. “Bill loved Rick. He really did love him. There was something there. They clicked. And Bill cared about Susan and those kids. He would not do that to them.”

Susan Whitehead will not speak about the incident. But she does make one thing clear: She’s on Mahan’s side.

“I do believe in his innocence,” she says. “He was a good friend. And he still is.”

*

On the shady patio of Jack and Pat Scarbrough’s home overlooking lush green fields, the “Free Willie” crowd has gathered--businessmen, farmers, bar buddies, an ex-wife, ex-in-laws, a daughter, and more.

They trade tales about Mahan and his jailhouse letters, penciled chicken scrawls with hand-drawn cartoons of a man behind bars and the words: ‘Bring the key. Get me free.’

This spring, supporters held a fish fry to help pay the attorney they hired for him. They sold “Free Willie” shirts, the whale jumping over the concertina wire of a brick wall plastered with the sign, “Greene County Jail.”

Some have stopped by the jail to put money in Mahan’s commissary account. Others have sent donations to the Scarbroughs. One farmer nicknamed “Tootie” offered to put up his farm as bond.

“This could happen to any of us and he’d be doing the same thing,” Pat Scarbrough says of Mahan.

A few miles away, in Sullivan, the executor of Whitehead’s estate says it could take years to untangle the mess left by three insolvent companies; there are lawsuits and 82 claimants seeking up to $18 million.

One of Whitehead’s companies was the beneficiary of the $5-million life insurance policy.

Mahan, meanwhile, waits for his October trial, weaving bracelets, visiting with family--and, yes, joking. He sent his pals at the American Legion some Monopoly money, urging them to buy some beer, his treat.

But there are more serious moments, of course.

“He has his ups and downs,” Mary Mahan says. “Who wouldn’t in this kind of situation? He tries to be happy for everybody else. But it’s killing him. He doesn’t want anybody to see that.

“Bill’s always believed there’s a better tomorrow--no matter what.”