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FD-35¢ (Rev 5-93-81] . ' (indicate page, name-of héwhpeper city arict phate. | (Mount Cipping in Space Beiow) THE COLUMBUS DISPATCH [MM Matix’s n mother oa baffled by ital!) ™ ’ By Michael J. Berens . Character Gog ynght I nen th Dispatch Printing Ce. endl 'Classitication NEW MADISON, Ohio — The FEI called Submitting Office William R. Matix a cold-blooded killer, but Matix treasured a stuffed toy elephant from his childhood and kept it on his bed until the day he died. ; The William Matix who was killed Friday ip # Miami shootout with eight FBI agents was a person who laughed while his mother spanked him then ran to the barn to weep. Columbus police say Matix is a suspect in | the 1983 murder of his wife. \ Tn an interview yesterday, Yvonne Emer- . ick, 60, Matix’s mother, said, “I swear to God, * if he dropped me dead on this spot, that had so idea that Bill was like that. _ ae “jf I had bro Tl, Vd ave gone 1 tha ier, Bat ease . | police myself.” Emerick and her husband, Ray Emerick, wat in their amall farm house here, about 30 miles weat of Dayton, and talked, cried and sometimes laughed while recalling their son. Mr. Emerick had open-heart surgery sev- eral years ago. He sat in a living room chair where tears gave way to words. Mra. Emer- ick, a victim of six strokes and one heart 4 attack, sat at a kitchen table. Mre. Emerick wept the most when she talked abopt the two FB] agents gurined down by her aon and his busineas partner, me Michael Lee Platt. _ “I know what their wives must be going - through. It’s a terrible thing,” she said. And, deep in ber heart, she wonders how her aon, a man who wrote poems of love to his family, became such a stranger. “My only feeling i is somewhere down the line, and it hasn't been too far, something BDA . It bad to,” she said. Matix was born in 195] in Lewisburg, Ohio, near Dayton. By age 12, his father and mother were divorced. Hia mother remar- - ried, and he, his brother and two. sisters inoved to New Madison. a