HAZLETTVILLE, Del. -- The biggest problem is that police just don't know how it happened. They don't know how the Lynches knew the Gibsons, or how they knew Beverly had given birth just a few days before.
They don't know if the Lynches entered the Gibson trailer as guests, or intruders. They're not even sure what the scenario was once they were inside, or how bodies ended up where they were.
For that matter, they're not even sure whether they had plotted to kill the young couple for months in advance, or if the shootings had just been an inspired twist to a macabre baby-snatching plan suddenly gone wrong.
What police do know is thatthe morning before Christmas, 5-year-old Rebecca Gibson woke up and found her father face down in the hall. When she couldn't wake him, and couldn't find her mother, she tried to make a call, and the story she told the wrong number she reached was sufficiently frightening that the wrong number immediately called police.
And what unfolded from there is one of the most bizarre, grisly stories to befall these parts in a long time.
Joseph Gibson Jr., 32, face down in the hall, gunshot to the side and another to the head. Beverly Gibson, 27, clad in a nightgown and slumped over in the car outside, gunshot to the back and another to the buttocks. Rebecca, unhurt. Another child, John, 1, unhurt.
But the infant, 9-day-old Matthew, vanished.
As news of the slayings spread shock and grief throughout the largely Amish community of Hazlettville, 30 miles away in the rural community of Houston Richard Lynch was spreading the joyous news that his wife Joyce had given birth to a son.
A social column in the local weekly paper announced the birth and congratulated the proud grandparents.
No one in Houston connected the two events.
It was not until Delaware State Police and the FBI traced telephone records from the Gibson grandparents' home to the Lynches' brick house on Broad Street and found Matthew alive and well, did the puzzle finally come together.
As one official would sum up later, 'There are a lot of easier ways to get a baby than murdering the parents.'
Before the baby was found, wild theories circulated proposing sinister undercurrents to the case. Had drugs been involved? Was this some kind of underworld vendetta against the Gibsons? Had Beverly been a surrogate mother who was refusing to surrender the child? Had Matthew been sold on the black market.
Kent County officials, however, steered a simpler course.
'I didn't feel somebody had come from another state to do this,' said Lt. Mark Bundek. 'That (the Gibson trailer) is a hard place to find. We felt that our best bet would be somebody who was in Delaware.
'I felt all along the child had been taken away safely, that it had probably been cared for, even though it was very bizarre to discover a crime where the child had been taken away with that much violence.'
The residents of Houston, in whose midst Joyce Lynch was celebrating her new child, had no such confidence about the tragic case over at Hazlettville.
'We figured the baby was dead or out of the country,' said Mabel Moore, owner of the Houston Mini-Mart. 'We never would have thought it was right here in our backyard.'
Nevertheless, just seven days after New Year's, Joyce Lynch, 35, and Richard Lynch Jr., 26, were taken into custody and charged with first-degree murder.
Police willfully concede the strongest piece of evidence they have against the Lynches is that the child was found in their home. Important questions remain unanswered, including what the link was between the two couples and even what exactly happened in the trailer the night of the killings.
Neighbors reported hearing gunshots and the sound of a car roaring away, but they didn't report it at the time.
Police had few clues at first, and as days turned into weeks, frustration mounted. Even a $20,000 reward yielded no new information.
But investigators did have two leads to work on.
One was a vague report of a woman in a car who had stopped a pedestrian in Hazlettville and asked directions to the Gibson home several days before the killings.
They also knew that a woman identifying herself as 'Dawn,' and claiming to have befriended Beverly in the hospital, had called the nearby home of Joseph Gibson Sr. several days before the killings and gotten directions to the trailer.
The arrests came rapidly, though, after police obtained records from Diamond State Telephone Co. on Jan. 7.
That morning, investigators traced the call from 'Dawn' to the Lynch residence in Houston.
On visiting the home that afternoon, police were invited in 'cordially' by Joyce Lynch. They noticed baby toys scattered around.
'She told them about the child and said he had dark hair like her husband,' an investigator said. She also said the child was delivered at home Dec. 23 by a midwife.
'We had pictures of that child in our squad room and we all looked at it every day. The minute I saw him I knew it was him. I had to wait for confirmation but in my heart I thought it was him,' Bundek said.
A footprint comparison with hospital records confirmed the child's identity, and the Lynches were arrested.
A search of the Lynch home turned up a baby's garment in the trash, a .357-magnum and ammunition box with four shells missing, three spent shells and handwritten directions to the Gibsons' trailer, police said.
During the all-night interrogation that followed, Joyce Lynch implicated her husband as the killer.
The Lynches, both natives of the area, were married last June. They moved into Houston, where they lived off food stamps and disability assistance.
Joyce, a dark-haired woman with two teenage children, had told relatives and neighbors she was going to have a baby, even though a doctor had told her in August she was not pregnant, and even though several recalled later she had undergone a partial hysterectomy.
'She came in in maternity clothes and one of the girls asked her if she was going to have a baby,' recalled Mabel Moore at the Mini-Mart, although she also recalls, '(her stomach) was flat -- I could see she wasn't pregnant.' But she said the thought didn't register because of her preoccupation with customers.
Between Christmas and New Year's Day, Richard Lynch showed up at the store for gasoline and informed Moore's husband, David, that his wife had delivered.
'He said, 'Well, my wife had a baby. She had a little baby boy,'' David Moore said, recalling Lynch's words. 'I said, 'Congratulations, we're happy for you.'' Mabel Moore said Joyce put off bringing the child into the store because of illness. 'She said, 'Having a baby really tears your back up.''
Lola O'Day, the author of a social column in the Harrington Journal, said she was on vacation for several days after Christmas and asked for social news from members of her crafts club. One of the members was Thelma Kemp, Joyce Lynch's mother.
'The girls in the crafts club told me she had the baby,' said O'Day, who announced the news with congratulations in the Harrington Journal. When she learned later the child was identified as Matthew Gibson, 'I was just sick,' she said. 'I feel terrible for all concerned.'
The recovery of Matthew sent waves of gratitude through the county, particularly at the church where the Gibsons had been married six years before and where family and friends had prayed for a miracle.
But the relatives of the dead couple were left to pick up the pieces.
Nancy Webb, the mother of Beverly Gibson, said the shock of losing her only daughter remains.
'It's just inconceivable how someone could come into somebody's home and take two lives of the parents of three beautiful chidren,' she said, her voice flat with grief. 'You put all that time into educating them and bringing them up and then somebody comes and takes their life.'
Yet she said the safe recovery of the infant is some consolation.
'I couldn't believe it was true. I personally thought he had gone out of state. You tend to think the worst,' she said. 'The Delaware State Police and the FBI deserve an awful lot of credit.'
Matthew, Rebecca and John are being taken care of by the elder Gibsons.
'The baby's still adjusting,' Joseph Gibson Sr. said. 'A baby can feel a difference in who has him. He's still going through a period of adjustment.'
