Читать книгу Grave Accusations - Paul Dunn - Страница 16
ОглавлениеDistrict Attorney Alan Whitehead believed he had more than enough motives to ensure Paul Dunn would be charged in his wife’s death. In addition, he was being pressured by the Sanchez family. While this is common in families when someone dies, here that pressure was more pronounced. The Sanchez family was a well-known, prominent Farmington family. Phone calls of sympathy and support came from everywhere, even Governor Bruce King’s office. Both the governor and lieutenant governor visited the Sanchez home after the shooting. This had to be expected, in a way, because of the political ties of Monica’s family. Whitehead, of course, denied political pressure in general and in particular, any coming from the governor.
Instead, when asked by the media, he brought up the domestic violence packet filled out the day before Monica died, which included photos taken by a police officer which revealed bruises on her body. He said it would be almost impossible for someone to kill him or herself with a shotgun. What kind of awkward suicide weapon was that? He pointed to the specter of a police officer abusing his power, his physical strength. Everyone knew police officers had control problems. Whitehead felt he had everything on his side to file charges against Paul. Meanwhile, Whitehead told callers his office was doing everything in its power to investigate the case. Among them, state police drilled holes in the bedroom wall where the shots wound up. Laboratory tests were being run. All Whitehead had to do was sit back and wait.
However, polygraph tests seemed to be a deciding factor for the San Juan County district attorney’s offices as to whether to take the case to the grand jury. In fact, a case-in-point was one which had a strange, serendipitous aspect: the gunshot wound victim also was named Monica. When Monica Eckstein died, her husband, Greg, passed a polygraph test. Strangely, though Whitehead had more evidence against Eckstein than he had against Paul Dunn, the district attorney quickly dismissed the charges against Eckstein. What was different about the two cases was that Monica Eckstein’s family was virtually unknown in Farmington, certainly not with any ties to Governor Bruce King. Dora Sanchez was a friend of Democratic chairwoman Helen Singleton of Farmington. Singleton helped bring King and Lieutenant Governor Casey Luna to Farmington to show support for Monica Dunn’s family. Their simple presence in Farmington put political pressure on Whitehead to prosecute Paul Dunn.
Superstition doubtfully played a role in anyone’s belief about the similarities in the two Monicas’ deaths. But the circumstances certainly were an uncanny coincidence.
Both women died tragic deaths by firearms with their husbands and children in the house at the time. Suspicion clouded each case, yet both men passed polygraph tests. There were major differences as well; Whitehead saw to it that Paul Dunn was arrested and charged with murder, but he didn’t go this route in the Eckstein case.
When Eckstein passed the polygraph test, Whitehead didn’t take the case against Eckstein any further. Whitehead had an unofficial policy in which he usually didn’t prosecute a case if the accused passed a polygraph test. This isn’t uncommon for district attorneys to do.
Monica Eckstein was a receptionist for the City of Farmington’s recreation department with no political ties in Farmington or Santa Fe. Her husband worked for Amoco and also wasn’t a political figure.
Evidence found in Greg Eckstein’s house seemed more suspicious. At least it was obvious Greg or someone tried to clean up after the shooting. Police found a bloodstained bar of soap and a blood-soaked towel in the bathroom. An Amoco glove with a pinkish stain lay in the trash can.
In her fifth month of pregnancy, Monica Eckstein was found wearing men’s underwear. She’d been shot through the right eye with a .22 caliber revolver. She had a bruise to her face and her tongue hemorrhaged before she died. She hadn’t written a suicide note. Although investigators say they’ve seen suicides where the person doesn’t leave a note, most people leave notes as their last connection with the living. Greg Eckstein was very open with the press after the initial hoopla died down. He believed his wife shot herself by accident while looking at the gun. Why she’d be looking at the gun around her toddler—or be anywhere near a gun while she was pregnant—is another mystery. Her husband could offer no explanation to that puzzle.
Greg also had no clue why there would be a pink or red stain on one of his Amoco gloves. He wasn’t working that day. He couldn’t explain the men’s underwear, since his wife never wore men’s underwear.
He also didn’t know why she would have a bruise to her chin or hemorrhaging of her tongue.
After finding his wife dead, he washed the blood off his hands, never figuring he’d be considered a suspect of any crime. He knew his wife was dead when he found her. He said he wanted to get cleaned up before going to the hospital since he couldn’t do anything to help her survive.
He was downstairs when he heard the gunshot coming from their upstairs bedroom. He found his wife bleeding from the eye while their one-year-old son, Jordan, looked on. She had just come upstairs after eating breakfast. She brought the toddler with her. She’d never kill herself on purpose in front of their child. Greg Eckstein was sure of that.
So was Monica Eckstein’s family, who still believes Greg had some part in Monica Eckstein’s death, even if it was just an accident. The dead woman’s sister, Vicki Goodall of Farmington, said she knows her sister didn’t kill herself. She doesn’t really believe her brother-in-law would kill Monica Eckstein. She thinks maybe they argued over the gun or he was cleaning it and accidentally shot her. She wishes Greg would just explain how the accident could’ve occurred.
A dramatic change in wording of both Monicas’ autopsy reports proved to be the clincher for Whitehead, although others saw the alteration of findings a different way. The same medical investigator, Dr. Patricia McFeeley, performed both autopsies. Monica Dunn’s report had initially indicated the shotgun was pressed to her abdomen. Later, the medical investigator changed this to indicate the gun was one to three feet away, which was the theory of investigators for the prosecution. The manner of death in the autopsy report for Monica Eckstein was changed from “homicide” to “undetermined” when Whitehead decided not to prosecute.
Family members of both women wondered if two killers were wandering around loose. Family members of the men in question wondered if “justice” was synonymous with “politics.” Or was it just like that in Farmington? Of course, money is thrown in there somewhere. To prosecute Paul would eat up a lot of state tax funds. Defense in such a case can cost a great deal. Either way, family members didn’t get their answers through the system. Neither did Paul Dunn or Greg Eckstein.
And Whitehead was getting lucky. Unlike the first autopsy report, the final autopsy report beautifully matched the ballistics tests. According to it, the shotgun had to be one to three feet from Monica Dunn’s body when it was fired. There was no way anyone could kill themselves with a shotgun that was one to three feet away from their body when fired! A problem was solved for the prosecution. Political pressure could be eased by such an easy case. Whitehead wouldn’t have to worry about reelection. Adding to the evidence was testimony of Monica’s friends, who were continuously worried about her because of her declining health after she and Paul separated. The last few weeks before her death, bruises appeared on her body and a sullen Monica would only tell her friends that she fell. When pressed into explanation, friends said there was no way the bruises could have occurred the way she described. Her friends told the prosecutor they began to suspect Paul abused her.
To Whitehead it all fit together. A conviction would take a bad cop and killer off the streets. Not to mention what it would do for Whitehead’s reputation.
As a Tennessee Williams’ character once observed, “The unmistakeable smell of mendacity is in the air.” Titus may not have had experience in murder cases, but he had an astute nose for such odors. Realizing that his own legal experience was not relevant, he now talked Paul into hiring a more well-known defense attorney, Gary Mitchell.
Gary, born in Santa Fe, is the oldest of five Mitchell boys. His father worked for years in the highway department in Encino, where Gary and his brothers went to “the smallest school in the state.”
Mitchell gets his true-blue fighting spirit from his mother, Manon Mitchell of Ruidoso, New Mexico and his father, Arney Mitchell. His mother always divided her time between the kids and keeping the books at the Methodist church.
“My mom had this fiery passion about protecting the underdog. My dad was a World War II veteran,” Gary states.
His mother’s “fiery passion” must have affected Gary, who always spoke up for injustices as a youth and as a general loudmouth. He received a scholarship to Illinois Wesleyan College and went to law school at the University of Seattle, Washington.
“Early in life, my father had a great respect for lawyers. He felt lawyers more than anyone else held freedom in their hands. He felt that if we were strong people and stood up for ourselves, we’d always be free.”
Growing up without a television, Gary Mitchell read a lot of books, mostly histories and biographies of people who loved their country and fought to strengthen democracy and rid it of corruption.
“Government is an evil we have to tolerate in order to live together. You have to butcher your cattle in order to eat. You don’t want to have to do it, but you do it. The government’s the same way.”
Mitchell was a prosecutor in Thurston County, Washington, before moving to New Mexico, where he worked his way up from being a “nobody” at low wages to being one of the most well-known New Mexican lawyers of his day.
Mitchell’s expertise has kept numerous people from being sentenced to death by lethal injection in New Mexico and kept many others from prison. His supporters believe him to be one of the best lawyers in this country; his detractors call him nasty names, but Dave Pfeffer, the investigator he often employs, says anyone who knows the guy knows he’s a cowboy with a heart who would provide a stranger a great meal of his own cattle if he was to visit Mitchell at his Ruidoso home.
Recognizing that proving Paul innocent would be difficult, Mitchell decided he needed the services of private detective Dave Pfeffer. Born in Lodi, California, on a black angus ranch, Pfeffer was raised by parents Walter and Darlene in Carmichael, California, until his sophomore year in high school. The family then moved to Long Island, New York. At the high school he attended there, he learned at an early age what it’s like to be on the outside, looking in. The school was ninety-eight percent Jewish and two percent Catholic. The Protestant Pfeffer was immediately distinguished. Also separating him from his classmates was the fact that he wore “funny” clothes, jeans and wild shirts with belts to match and “frat” shoes, which were basic gym shoes with red, white and blue stripes. The Beach Boys were popular in California and Pfeffer’s look emulated them. But the popular people on Long Island wore white shirts, ties, penny loafers and nice slacks underneath their long overcoats.
Nevertheless, it didn’t take long for the charismatic Pfeffer to fit in. He started hanging out with the “in” crowd, which were the jocks then. The “in” crowd for teenagers in later years ditched too many classes for parties to be on sports teams.
After graduating high school, Pfeffer moved back to California, this time to Fresno. He started working at Sambos family restaurant chain. His endeavors with the chain led him to move to Roswell, New Mexico, where he managed the restaurant. In his time off, he worked with the Roswell Police Auxiliary. He got status early, because he was placed immediately with detectives. That was initially through no fault of his own—the uniforms just weren’t large enough to fit Pfeffer. Later, it became obvious Pfeffer was a natural at the job.
“They liked me working with them because I always seemed to find things in my searches and was continually able to figure out what the next move of the criminal was.”
It was that knowledge without proof that came naturally to him, without Pfeffer having taken his first police academy class. The auxiliary was a volunteer organization and didn’t have the funds to send its officers to school.
When the Sambos restaurant chain folded, Pfeffer talked to then Ruidoso Police Officer Paul Lukens, about becoming a full-time police officer. Lukens couldn’t understand—and who could blame him—why Pfeffer would want to go from making $60,000 a year to $450 a month. Finally, Lukens hired the persistent Pfeffer. The department staff never regretted the hire.
Pfeffer’s twenty-year career in Ruidoso was plagued by cases of political pressure. Pfeffer was supervisor over the criminal division and ordered the district attorney and the state police to report what his narcotics officer, who was assigned to a special task force, was doing at all times. Pfeffer was told the narcotics officer’s actions were none of his business. Pfeffer responded that if he were not made aware of all the officer’s duties—as a supervisor should be—then he would immediately transfer the officer onto another assignment out of the task force.
Almost immediately, the district attorney’s office and the state police began an investigation into the Ruidoso Police Department. Pfeffer was accused of stealing a nine-millimeter pistol. It was found in the glove box of Pfeffer’s marked police unit. Pfeffer showed it to them, pointed out that it was checked out of evidence and approved by the department’s deputy chief, which was later confirmed by the deputy chief, although the evidence card with Pfeffer’s signature to show he checked it out was oddly missing. The district attorney’s office considered charges against Pfeffer since the evidence card was missing, but the office backed down when Pfeffer hired Mitchell as his attorney.
“They were looking for anything to tag me with as they were very upset at my insistence to know what that officer was doing,” Pfeffer asserted.
During that time, lots of people were suing police departments and Pfeffer wanted to make sure officers under his supervision performed properly so the department didn’t get sued.
In another vendetta in Pfeffer’s past, he was accused of being the biggest dope dealer in New Mexico when he ran for sheriff of Lincoln County, Ruidoso’s county. “No one in the history of the Ruidoso Police Department had, to that point, ever put more drug dealers into jails and prison than I. Anyone with any sense would know that it would be impossible for me to be dealing drugs and busting drug dealers at the same time.”
Then rumors spread that he beat his children and sexually abused his daughters.
“Interestingly enough, they checked the schools and found that all but one of my children, a boy, were getting straight A’s and that after questioning them, they had told the officers that their ‘daddy was the best daddy in the whole world,’” Pfeffer said, quoting police documents.
Nevertheless, the rumor mill worked. Pfeffer wasn’t elected. He believes part of the problem was that his family lived in a beautiful home in the upper canyon area of Ruidoso. Pfeffer’s parents had put down a substantial down payment for them, which is how Pfeffer was able to afford it. The home was worth about $125,000 after Pfeffer made some improvements to it. People probably wondered how a police captain in Ruidoso could afford the house. Ruidoso is a beautiful, mountainous area that attracts a lot of visitors because of the horseracing track and the view. It’s a vacation spot—and the average home is very expensive there. Nobody bothered to ask Pfeffer how he was able to afford the home.
After Pfeffer retired from the Ruidoso Police Department, he began working as a private investigator. Finally, he opened his own business, calling it “Shamus,” an Irish word that means “sleuth” or “investigator.” Aside from the meaning, the word sounded to him like a perfect match to his golden retriever named Sherlock Holmes.
Pfeffer’s nose as well as his instincts had helped him solve some high priority cases, like a rape case in Ruidoso because of a bunch of partially-smoked Salem 100s strewn about in an obscure area in the stunning, hilly Hondo Valley of New Mexico, not far south of Ruidoso.
Gary Mitchell will never forget that case. “Doggone his hide!” The defense attorney smiled in exasperation speaking of then-Sergeant Pfeffer.
Both Pfeffer and Mitchell believe this old case is one of their most memorable on opposite sides of the law.
Pfeffer worked the case of a woman who was kidnapped late night from her job as manager of a motel by three unmasked men. Threatening to beat her with nunchuks, a martial arts weapon made of wood and chain, they forced her onto the floor of their car while they drove to a bar and bought beer. Then they drove a few more miles; the woman couldn’t really tell because she was on the floor, although she wasn’t blindfolded. She could tell they turned off the road and onto a dirt road. Finally they stopped. Each raped her in the back floor of the car. Then they forced her to sit in between them in the car seat. They were smoking. She smoked along with them, she told Pfeffer.
Pfeffer wanted to go to the scene of the crime. Asking the victim to close her eyes, Pfeffer drove her in an unmarked car past her motel onto a road to the only bar he knew of in the vicinity she described, if her left and right turn descriptions were correct. He parked at the bar and went inside to talk to the owner and see if he recognized anyone from her descriptions.
“All of a sudden, I heard this screaming and I mean this ungodly screaming.”
Pfeffer raced out of the bar, gun ready for action. A car was pulling out of a parking space. The woman in his car was pointing at it from the passenger seat.
“That’s them!” she screamed hysterically.
Pfeffer, dressed in plain clothes, pointed his gun at the driver. The driver stopped. The ashtray was stuffed with cigarette butts. Pfeffer found a pair of nunchuks under the seat of the car.
Pfeffer arrested the men.
He thought his job was pretty much over at that time, although he didn’t have much evidence other than her word against theirs. Or so he thought.
Later he drove the woman past the bar and she told him to “turn soon” when she thought he was near the right place where the men had turned onto a dirt road. Pfeffer found one quickly.
He drove to a fairly secluded spot and parked. Stepping out of the vehicle, he began walking around looking for any evidence. Not far into the walk, he found a patch of ground covered with cigarette butts which appeared to have been tossed out of either side of a parked vehicle. The partially-smoked cigarettes still had the Salem 100s markings on them. He knew he found the right place.
The busy day was not over yet. Pfeffer went back to the police department. An officer told him the prisoners were yelling for cigarettes. Back then, inmates could smoke in their cells; in fact, most places allowed smoking. On a hunch, Pfeffer brought two uniformed officers with him when he went to their cell.
“You want cigarettes?”
“Yeah!”
“What kind do you smoke?”
“Salem 100s.”
“Salem 100s?” Dave wanted to make sure he heard right.
“Yeah, that’s all I ever smoke.”
At the trial, Pfeffer and two uniformed police officers testified about the defendants’ smoking preference. Pfeffer and Mitchell believe it was the turning point for jurors, who convicted the rapists.
Mitchell was happy to have Pfeffer share an office with him.
Others of the more famous New Mexico cases the two worked include the murder of nine-year-old Dena Lynn Gore in Artesia by Terry Clark, who awaits death by lethal injection and has begged courts to kill him and get it over with. The investigator for the defense on the case, Pfeffer says even having been a cop for twenty-odd years didn’t prepare him for the skin-crawling viciousness of his client.
The “Hollywood Video Murders” is also a famous Albuquerque case Mitchell and Pfeffer worked together in the mid-1990s. Their client was convicted of being an accessory to the murders of three employees in the store. While the murders were occurring, the unsuspecting grandparents of one of the victims were waiting in a vehicle outside the store to pick up their grandson from work. The store was about to close.
The murderers made off with about $136,000.
Then they spotted the grandparents. The killers notched off two more killings on their belts after they forced the grandparents out into the hills and killed the witnesses. Pfeffer’s client was convicted.
The day Mitchell and Pfeffer drove from their offices in Ruidoso they strutted into Farmington in cowboy boots, their hats tilted perfectly in that “Evening ma’am,” cowboy-polite fashion. At least a foot taller than everyone else, they were quite a pair. Mitchell wore his golden-brown mustache thick, his knowing, hazel eyes appearing innocent. Pfeffer’s baby face contrasted with his large, powerful body. Lord, Titus thought, they’re going to get killed for sure. First for being intimidatingly annoying. Then, they had the nerve to go against the flow and believe in the “impossible”—that Monica killed herself with a shotgun.
It’s hard not to like Mitchell if you meet him. His country drawl and reasonable questions make most people who aren’t on his side feel at best uncomfortable, at worst, stupid. It’s unclear if he means to terrify people into spilling their guts with his innocent face or if he doesn’t realize how his appearance affects people. However, this time Mitchell asked the wrong questions to the right people and managed to anger police and prosecutors immediately. Titus didn’t care what the attorney’s personality was. Whatever it was—cowboy charm or horseshit—Mitchell was good. Titus felt like he took his first non-shaken breath since being told of Monica Dunn’s death.
Mitchell wasted no time. Next he brought in ballistics expert Nelson Welch of Cochiti Pueblo outside of Santa Fe. These experts look at guns, pictures of wounds and piece together what happened at crime scenes. They look for signs of who did the shooting and how. Welch and Pfeffer spent most of one day searching the Dunn home, looking for clues the police overlooked. While Mitchell described Welch as honest, police officers and prosecutors have said he’s just a hired gun. Welch, very passionate of his convictions and work, would be angered at these criticisms, but would not put much stock in them.
Prosecutors didn’t really understand what the defense experts were doing in the Dunn house, because the police had already been there and gathered evidence. Whispers intensified. Surely, they couldn’t add to the job the police had done.
Word of mouth was that prosecutors believed they had an open-and-shut case.
Welch believed no such thing. He suggested bringing in forensics expert Dr. Martin Fackler. Fackler worked with another expert together on the wound characteristics trying to ascertain why there would be certain marks on Monica’s entrance and exit wounds. The experts were shocked at what they learned.
Titus waited impatiently for them to finish their work. He had plenty of other cases to work on but this one occupied his mind. A dim hope flickered in the experts’ minds that if they proved Paul couldn’t possibly have killed Monica, the district attorney wouldn’t prosecute. Little did they know what was going on on the other side of the fence.
