Lizzie Borden meets Power Plant Man

I have many stories that I am going to write about the extraordinary Power Plant Men in North Central Oklahoma from 1988 to 1994 this year, but it happened that I was watching a recorded episode of Forensic Files (otherwise known as Mystery Detectives) on TV tonight and it made me remember….  The story I was watching was about a women that was kidnapped in Pennsylvania  June 1988 and murdered in order to draw the husband to a location where the kidnapper could collect the ransom and murder the husband.  The man guilty of the crime was found to be a person that shared a pew in the Presbyterian Church with the couple but held a grudge against the husband for turning him down for a loan at the bank a few months earlier.

While I watched this show, I flashed back to June 9, 1988 and suddenly remembered the moment I was standing in the parts cage in the back of the electric shop in the main switchgear at the coal-fired Power Plant in North Central Okahoma when I heard about the murder of Mark Stepp.  Mark Stepp was an Instrument and Controls employee at our plant.  Both he and his wife had been brutally murdered while they slept in their home in Stillwater, Oklahoma. Mark Stepp had been shot in once and stabbed many times.  His wife Delores had been stabbed to death an excessive amount of times until she was passed dead.  I cringe to think about it to this day.

The next thing that entered my mind while watching this video was one month earlier on May 6, 1988.  We had a new Electrical Supervisor, Tom Gibson, and he had sent Terry Blevins and I with two of the Instrument and Controls men to Tulsa to a class at Nelson Electric to learn how to program an Allen Bradley PLC (programmable Logic controller).

PLC Training Certificate

When I think about this instance, I remember Ron Madron driving us to Tulsa to the training (Ron.  I know you read this post, so you an correct me if I’m wrong).  It could have been Glenn Morgan.  One thing I definitely remember is that Mark Stepp was with us that day.

My dear friend Terry Blevins

The reason I remember that Mark was with us that day, was because when the training was over around 1:30 or 2:00 pm. Mark didn’t want to go directly home.  He wanted to go for a ride.  This wouldn’t be so peculiar, except that a little more than a month later, Mark Stepp was brutally shot and stabbed to death while he slept in his bed along with his wife.  Somehow I always felt that Mark’s behavior the day when we went to learn how to program Allen Bradley Programmable Logic Controllers was somehow related to his death.  Maybe it was.  Maybe it wasn’t.  I’ll let you decide.  I have no loyalty to the dead, unless they deserve it.

So, let me describe what happened early morning on June 8, 1988 (or 6/8/88 for those of you who are fascinated with numbers like I am).  In the middle of the night,  someone walked into Mark Stepp and his wife’s Dolore’s bedroom, and shot Mark Stepp in the neck.  Then proceeded to stab Mark Stepp and his wife an excessive amount of times until they were past dead.  I lost count of the number of stab wounds.  They were stabbed so many times.

I remember first hearing about this when I had walked into the electric shop parts cage when I had gone there to look for some receptacle boxes when Andy Tubbs came into the cage and told me about the murder.  The entire Instrument and Control Shop was on “high alert”.  Suppose this person was murdering Instrument and Controls Power Plant Men at our plant!  That day, no one really knew the motive.

I think some people from our plant were interviewed about the murder.  I don’t know.  I do know that Francine Stepp, their daughter was often mentioned in the discussion.  She was on the same Softball team with her mother and father and many people at the plant were on this same softball team.  They were all concerned with her well-being since after spending the night at her friend’s house, she came home and found her parents murdered in their bed.

During the next month while the police were investigating the crime, many revelations came out about Mark Stepp and his wife Dolores.  None of which surprised me, though, it may have surprised those that worked more closely with Mark.  You see, Mark has showed his true colors that day when we had all driven together to Tulsa to go to training.

When training had finished for the day, Terry Blevins and I  (and Ron Madron, if he was the person driving) had counted on getting back to the plant in time to go home at a decent time.  Mark Stepp, on the other hand had something else in mind.  He wanted to go for a drive through Tulsa.

This didn’t make much sense to me at first, since I couldn’t figure out why someone wouldn’t want to return to the plant in  plenty of time to fill out our time cards and get ready to go home to our wives and children (well… I didn’t have any children at the time, but I do remember wanting to go home at the regular time).

It didn’t make sense to me until we were driving down what seemed to be the frontage road of I-44 at the time and we came up to 6410 E. 11th Street.  A similar thing happened to me just last week when a friend of mine was celebrating his 20th year at Dell and a person from Security who was playing a joke on my friend pulled into a location at 6528 North Lamar in Austin Texas.  My gut sucked up like I was going to be sick as his friend pulled up to the entrance and proclaimed that this was the second part of his 20 year anniversary present.  Well.  my friend happened to be in like mind with me, which felt a sudden urge of betrayal and confusion.  I’ll let you do your own homework at this point.

Mark Stepp asked us if we wanted to stop at a “Gentleman’s Club”. Really? With three die-hard Power Plant Men in a company car? The rest of us unanimously voted to go back to the plant. Ok. That was an indicator that Mark had something going on with his life that was not quite wholesome.  What made this seem surreal was that I was the youngest at 27 years old, Mark was 40 years old and the other two in the car were in their 30s.  It wasn’t like we were young unmarried irresponsible kids.

I bring this up because later I was not surprised to learn during the investigation of Mark Stepp’s murder that he had been involved with a group that included “Wife Swapping”.  I know there were a lot of rumors going around at the time that one of there persons involved in the murder must have been involved in the occult, and that it made sense given the manner of death.  None of this surprised me.

At one point we learned that videotapes had been found in the house of hidden tapes of their daughter while she thought she had privacy in her bathroom or bedroom.  I don’t know if this was true or not, but I wasn’t surprised if it had been true.  Actually, after that day in Tulsa, nothing surprised me about Mark Stepp anymore.  I don’t mean to sound cruel.  I grieved when I learned about Mark and is wife’s death as much as many other Power Plant Men.  No matter the circumstances.  It was a great tragedy.  Whatever hatred had been the cause of this murder, it had been caused by tragic events proceeding this murder, I have no doubt.

I say this, because within a month of the murder, the murderer had been located.  It turned out to be their own daughter Francine.  I didn’t know the family at all, and I have never met Francine.  Other Power Plant people knew them much better.  As I said, they were on a softball team together.  Francine played on a team with her mother and father.  This came as a shock to them all.

Many people blamed her accomplice Cindy Sue Wynn.  Francine’s parents had told Francine that they didn’t like Cindy and wanted her to stay away from her.  The story is that Francine was spending the night at Cindy’s house when they devised a plot to kill Mark and Delores. Francine was 18 years old at the time, and was a Freshman at Oklahoma State University.  If you would like to learn more about the murder you can find articles from the Daily Oklahoman here: “Two Stillwater Teens Facing Death Charges” and “Man Says he Heard Death Plot“.

They both pleaded guilty and Cindy was sentenced to 10 years in prison.  In 1990, two years later, Cindy pleaded to be placed on a “pre-parole” program which was denied.  Francine was sentenced to life in prison.  Since that tragic day, Francine Stepp was eligible for parole in 2003.  She was denied parole then, and has since been up for parole in 2006, 2009 and 2012.  Francine’s next parole hearing is June 2015.

Francine Stepp

Just like the day that Jim Stevenson walked out of the shop telling Bill Ennis about the Snitch stealing the portable generator (See the post, “The Power Plant Snitch“), I sat back and didn’t say anything when I heard about Francine’s conviction.  What I had to say really wasn’t relevant.  Just because it didn’t shock me that this particular daughter was so easily talked into murdering her parents by her friend, what I knew was no proof that she had been abused as a child.

Francine has now served 26 years in prison for murdering her parents.  Her accomplice has been our of jail for at least 16 years.  Francine is now over 44 years old.  After 25 years, I think someone needs to take a fresh look at the motive as to why she would have wanted to take the life of her parents.  Was it really because her parents didn’t want her to “play” with Cindy?  Does that make much sense?  Especially with all the other possible motives floating around.

I have recently been watching reruns of “Forensic Files” (also known as Mystery Detectives) on Headline News (CNN).  I keep waiting for the episode about Francine Stepp running to her neighbor’s house on the morning of June 8, 1988 screaming that her parents have been murdered.  Knowing full well that she had murdered them… But what really was the motive?  Was it really that her parents didn’t let this 18 year old girl spend time with her friend?  Then how was she spending the night with her on June 7?  Which parent hasn’t forbidden their child to play with someone because they were a bad influence?  When did that ever do any good or amount to a hill of beans?

The little time I had spent with Mark Stepp a couple of months before his murder gave me a small glimpse into his life, and maybe the life of his daughter.  I didn’t really know the guy.  I do know, however, that a true Power Plant Man wouldn’t try to drag three other married Power Power Plant Men (though I was only a pseudo-Power Plant Man myself), to an indecent “Gentleman’s Club” (especially while on the clock).

So, I have to wonder.  Will anyone go to Francine’s defense June 2015?  Does she even care anymore?  I don’t think she even showed up to her own parole hearing in 2012.  She has spent many more years in prison than out of it in her life so far.  If she was released, what would she do?  Can you start your life over again when it came to a halt when you were only 18?

This is a hard post for me to write.  I have a daughter who is 24 years old this month.  She was born almost 2 years after this tragic even took place, and one year after Francine was convicted of murdering her parents.  During my own daughter’s entire life, Francine has been in jail for murdering her parents.  Her father worked at the Power Plant in North Central Oklahoma.

If Mark Stepp could speak from the grave today at Francine’s next parole hearing, I wonder what he would say?  I only know what those at the plant who knew her would say.  They all thought she got along with her parents.  They thought her parents were proud of her.  Billy Joel sang a song called “The Stranger“.  It is about looking in the mirror and seeing that other side of you that you don’t let anyone else see.  I suppose some people really have one of those lives where they aren’t really honest with the rest of the world.  Billy Joel did, evidently.  Maybe Mark Stepp did as well.

I have known for a while that I had to write about this story.  I have dreaded this post.  I am glad to have finally written it.  Now I can put it behind me.