The Crime
Heisey was 50 years old in the summer of 1998. She was principal of Browning Road Elementary School in McFarland, about 25 miles north of Bakersfield on Highway 99.
She lived at 2016 Raymond A. Spruance Court, adjacent to a huge vacant field where the Panama Lane Lowe's Home Improvement store now stands.
Late on the afternoon of June 29, 1998 she drove 10 minutes to the Bakersfield home of lifelong friend Lynn Runyan, also a teacher at the McFarland school. Runyan remembers that Heisey left just as the national news ended at 7 p.m. that Monday night.
The next day – Tuesday – the always-dependable Heisey missed a school meeting. When she didn't show up on campus the day after that – Wednesday – office personnel in McFarland called Runyan in Bakersfield and asked her to check.
It was about noon when Runyan got to Heisey's home.
Outside, she found two days' newspapers on the porch.
Inside, she found a blood bath.
"There are absolutely no words to describe it," Runyan said. "I've been in therapy seven and a half years. I never even told my therapist exactly what I saw."
Heisey was killed with a large knife, but she wasn't stabbed. "It wasn't a poking-type of stab wound," said Kevin Legg, who was the first homicide detective assigned to the case. "It was like an overhand into the upper torso, slash down until you hit bone and then you go right or left …
"There was overkill," Legg said. "which indicated to me it was personal."
"Extremely personal," said Greg Laskowski, now retired but supervising criminalist at the Kern County crime lab at the time.
It gets worse.
Legg and Laskowski believe Heisey was killed in the living room and her body dragged to her bedroom.
There, two guns were inserted into her body – a sexual statement of defiance or rage or hatred, the investigators said.
There were no witnesses.
Nothing was stolen.
There was no forced entry.
No murder weapon was found and no knives were missing, leading to the conclusion the killer, as Legg put it, "brought their own tools" for the killing and took the weapons when they left.
And whoever it was must have been strong, Laskowski said.
"It was personal, and she knew her killer," Legg said.
Possible Suspects
Who could do such a thing?
There are lots of theories. She was immensely popular in the small town where she was principal. There were a lot of guesses.
Heisey was a fierce protector of the children at her school. Some speculate she reported child abuse to law enforcement, and earned the hatred of dangerous parents. Some people heard the Mexican Mafia might be involved.
Another theory suggests Heisey might have been the victim of a serial killer. Michael Charles Brown, 41, is a serial rapist and convicted murderer on San Quentin's Death Row in connection with a series of Bakersfield crimes between 2000 and 2008. Although there is no known connection between Brown and Heisey, investigators have noted similarities in her death and several crimes known to have been committed by Brown.
Heisey's son says he has no doubt who the killer is. He says he's known from the very beginning
