Joe Plemmons has spent a lifetime running away--from his childhood home, from people he cheated, from the killers and crooks he once called friends, and from a sleazy reputation in his beloved world of horses.

But he says he can't get away from his memories of the night candy heiress Helen Vorhees Brach was killed in 1977, her body incinerated as he looked on.

The climactic scene of one of Chicago's most vexing murder mysteries has run through his mind over and over--and by his own account, he fired two gunshots into Brach's already battered body.

After 28 years, Plemmons said he is finished running from the Brach murder.

He has told investigators what he says is the whole truth about who wanted Brach killed and how they made her vanish. Investigators remain divided over whether this account by Plemmons--a convicted con man who provides no corroboration--can ever lead to charges against him or anyone else.

Plemmons told his story to the Tribune last week in a Pennsylvania restaurant not far from his home, going public for the first time with his version of events that night. Over a cheeseburger, he said he fired at Brach on the order of a mob hit man who was pointing a double-barreled shotgun at his chest.

Plemmons said he believes Brach was already dead when he shot her, despite someone else saying he heard her moan.

He said Brach was killed because the horsemen who had cheated her for years feared she was finally on to them and was going to tell authorities.

"I've had to live with this story a lot of years," said Plemmons, who at 57 says health problems have helped push him to come clean.

"If something happened to me I don't want to go to the grave feeling how I feel about what's happened. I dream about it. I constantly think about it."

His admission to authorities did not come completely out of the blue. Plemmons was well known to investigators and had come to be a trusted informant to John Rotunno, the special agent investigating Brach's disappearance for the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives.

Plemmons had testified at the trial of Richard Bailey, who was sentenced for conspiring to have Brach killed--though Bailey was not convicted of her actual murder. Plemmons testified that Bailey had tried to hire him to kill Brach.

One night last year, Plemmons called ATF agent Rotunno. Plemmons had been drinking, and he awkwardly began to reveal his greatest secret.

Plemmons' first version placed him at the scene, but only as an observer seeing Brach's battered body, wrapped in a blanket, hoisted out of a Cadillac trunk and carried to a station wagon. He said one of the men there said Brach moaned, startling them because they thought she was dead.

`Shoot or be shot'

But in later talks with Rotunno, he eventually told the agent that he was given a gun and an ultimatum: He would either shoot Brach or he would be killed too.

Plemmons claims he would like to see people punished for orchestrating Brach's murder. Some of them are dead, but some are still living.

"I'm trying to let the truth be known so at least it's not a question anymore," said Plemmons. He said he would like to write a book about his experiences.

As he spoke last week, Plemmons' tanned face and hands had the look of years of outdoor work, and he described the events of his life in a gentle Southern drawl.

His sandy hair was parted in a boyish style, and his bright blue eyes lit up when he told stories of Chicago mobsters that he still finds amusing. His small frame was still wiry, though he has developed a paunch.

Plemmons said he has been an honest horseman for more than a decade. But he admits that in the 1970s and 1980s he was a crook, and he enjoyed it. He liked "the money, the excitement, the fun, the camaraderie" of being a hustler in the fast-paced world of swindlers and gangsters that permeated Chicago's horse business.

"Chicago is a funny place. You helped each other and you killed each other at the same time," he said. "Once you get in bed with those people, it's very hard to get out."

He became close friends with a horseman named Ken Hansen--a man who had a secret of his own. In 2002, Hansen was convicted of the 1955 murder Robert Peterson, 14, and John and Anton Schuessler, 13 and 11, respectively.

When Hansen called Plemmons one night in February 1977 and asked him to drive all the way to his Tinley Park stable from Wauconda, Plemmons did not hesitate.

Hansen's brother, reputed mob hit man Curt Hansen, was on his way to the stable and Ken wanted Plemmons' help, he said. Plemmons figured something criminal was happening, but didn't know what it was.

"When you knew Kenny as long as I had, and he says come at 1 o'clock at night, you know," Plemmons said. "Was I afraid? I didn't know what to be afraid of. They could have showed up with six stolen tractors. ... How did I know he wasn't buying guns? Curt used to sell a lot of guns. I had no idea."

Plemmons said he didn't think twice about going. Despite all the trouble that surrounded the Hansen brothers, at the time he said he was deeply loyal to Ken Hansen.

"When I said, `I have a problem. I need your help,' he would say, `OK.' He would never ask why," Plemmons said.

Plemmons and Ken Hansen waited "quite a while" at the Tinley Park stable.

Eventually, a Cadillac drove into the riding ring, pulling up near a parked station wagon.

Body in car's trunk

The trunk was opened and Plemmons saw the battered body of a woman wrapped in a blanket, he said. He immediately recognized her as the woman the horsemen called "the candy lady"--Helen Brach.

She had been beaten elsewhere--her face was blue and purple--and everyone thought she was already dead, Plemmons said.

Plemmons said he grabbed her feet, and Ken Hansen grabbed her shoulders and they carried her toward the station wagon. Hansen suddenly said he heard Brach moan, and they dropped her in the riding ring dirt, Plemmons said.

Then Curt Hansen pulled out guns, Plemmons said.

He tossed a dark revolver, 8 to 10 inches long, to Plemmons. While pointing a short-barreled shotgun at him, Curt Hansen ordered Plemmons to "put holes in the blanket or there will be two of you in the station wagon," Plemmons said.

"With Curt, you know without a doubt he meant it," Plemmons said.

Plemmons fired once. The blanket "jumped," he said in his statement to investigators.

Curt Hansen yelled at him to fire again, and he did.

Plemmons said he dropped the gun in front of him and turned away, walking off as the others loaded the body into the station wagon.