The other drawing showed a faceless figure reclining in a casket, a fringed blanket covering her from the waist down, a heart at the base of her throat. Around her floated Native American icons, flowers, a flute, and a cross. At the time, Wagner concluded that her friend was finally getting over Maria Silva's death.
Wenell called Wagner on Thursday, March 11, the day after Ron Huff was found guilty. She said she'd lost her money at a casino and wanted to go to the Twin Cities and see her mother. A chaplain she knew arranged to have a ticket waiting for her at the Duluth bus station, but Wenell never picked it up. "She was that close to getting out of town," Wagner says. "Seeing her mom would have helped." That night, Wenell was overheard telling people at a Duluth drop-in center for the homeless that she wanted to "go down to the lake to be with Maria."
Polly Becker
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Two days later, on Saturday, March 13, Wenell was arrested in Cloquet, 20 miles south of Duluth, after allegedly wandering the halls of an apartment building at dawn, banging on doors. According to reports in the Duluth News-Tribune, she was released from the Carlton County Jail at about 6:30 p.m. and had a drink at a nearby bar. Someone she met there drove her back to Duluth.
According to the criminal complaint against the three people now charged with Wenell's kidnapping and murder, she ended up at the Red Lion Bar, where she ran into Stacey L. Mullen, Kenneth J. Budreau, and Daniel Deegan. Mullen later told police Deegan was angry at Wenell because he thought she had once made a pass at his girlfriend, and Budreau said he wanted to "get that bitch."
According to Mullen, the two men suggested that she chat up Wenell and talk her into coming with them at closing time. She said they drove around for a while and finally stopped near the lakeshore, where Budreau began swinging the broken end of a pool cue at Wenell. According to the police report, she recalled that "Ms. Wenell tried to defend herself, but was overcome and eventually lost consciousness," and that the beating continued nonetheless. Mullen said she got out of the car because she feared one of the blows would hit her. Eventually, she said, the trio carried the body to the sand pile and drove off. (The two men gave police considerably different accounts, with each saying he had gotten out of the car shortly after leaving the bar while the others drove on.)
Wenell's body was found at 10:30 the next morning. She was clothed, but without the maroon jacket she had last been seen wearing--presumably the one she'd had on during Huff's trial. A witness told police she saw Mullen bagging up a maroon blazer at about 3:30 Sunday morning.
Investigators discovered few clues in the room Wenell had rented for the month she'd been in Duluth. There was a box of condoms--one used--and a Bible opened to the 31st Psalm: "For my life is spent with sorrow, and my years with sighing; my strength fails because of my misery, and my bones waste away. I am the scorn of all my adversaries, a horror to my neighbors, an object of dread to my acquaintances; those who see me in the street flee from me. I have passed out of mind like one who is dead; I have become like a broken vessel."
After medical examiners released the body, Faye Wenell's remains were sent to a funeral parlor in Richfield. Kelly Wenell, Patricia Rock Wenell, and other family members drove out to the home's parking lot and sat in the car, "just to be near her," Kelly says.
While they were sitting there, they concluded that Faye would have hated lying inside, naked and alone with a male undertaker. So, just as Wenell had chosen to carve a headstone for her brother some 20 years earlier, Kelly Wenell decided to wash and dress her sister. Arguing that the corpse was badly battered, the mortician tried to talk her out of it. Wenell prevailed, and bought Faye a simple white linen shirt and a black jacket and pants. Faye's head had been shaved during the autopsy, so Kelly bought a hat, too. Her sister had always liked hats, she says, and she looked good in them.
Faye's funeral was held in Cass Lake; her mother, in the letter she sent to City Pages, said that people traveled from all over the nation to attend. Later, Wagner organized a memorial service that packed Duluth's Peace Church to capacity. Faye's drawing of a woman in a coffin was reproduced on the cover of the program, and some of her poems were printed inside. "Many of the attendees had not spent time with her in years," Wagner notes.
In the three months since the funeral, Wagner and the Wenell family have kept in touch. Much of Faye's art was stored at Wagner's house, and she has shipped it to the family. Kelly Wenell has been reading journals Faye kept. She and Wagner have talked about how odd it will be if Duluth police finally conclude Faye died because of a simple barroom brawl. "It was just so strange the way it went down," Wagner says. "She kept saying it was over for her."
Intern Marlene Huwe contributed to this story; research assistance in Arizona was provided by Zach Thomas of the University of Arizona Department of Journalism.
