II. THE IMPOSSIBLE POLICE THEORY
Van Nuys homicide detective Andrew R. Monsue elaborated the following State theory of how I'd supposedly murdered my mom.
The theory was first held out at my April 4 Sylmar Juvenile Court Dennis H./William M. detention and fitness hearing [
366], and then gradually built upon as the case progressed through the courts at my preliminary hearing and trial. They never abandoned or retracted this theory, despite its obvious impossibility.(Police theory is in boldface. Debunking is in normal type.)
[Crime Scene Diagram]
Monsue claimed I entered our house on March 10 believing my mother wasn't at home . . .
But it would have been impossible for me to have made such a mistake.
Her light blue, 1976 Cadillac Seville was parked in its customary position in the garage that morning, visible just inside the glass paned rear garage door [519], which I had to pass on my way to the kitchen window I used to enter.
As a sixteen year resident of our house, I knew my mom was the only one who normally drove her car. _Its presence was the perfect indicator of her presence, and if I'd had any reason to be attentive to signs that she was home, it would have been impossible for me to have missed it .
. . . and hoping to steal some money . . .
While $150.00 was stolen from my mom's purse during the attack [545], it is totally illogical to suppose that I would have stolen money from either of my parents on that day, for three reasons:
First, I'd been given ten dollars the night before [520], and could expect this routine, whereby my dad would give me money for various reasons each evening or two, to continue for the foreseeable future. I was still seventeen years old, and my dad would support me at least through my eighteenth birthday. Had I needed additional money, I could have just waited for my dad to get home that afternoon, probably around 4 o'clock, and asked him.
Second, to steal as of that date would have risked alienating both my parents and placed into jeopardy the generous support they gave me on a daily or, semi daily basis [520]. While I admit I'd taken small amounts of money when I lived at home, usually ten or twenty dollars about every couple of months, I'd stopped doing this when I moved out in May, 1982, both because the increased financial support my dad began giving me at that time made it unnecessary, and because I wanted to see that support continue, and not dry up because of some easily avoidable rift. (Still a user of alcohol and drugs, my motives for this improvement in my behavior were unfortunately more practical that repentant. I regret that. But they were genuine.)
Third, police believed their snitch. Hughes when he claimed I'd needed money that day to support a heavy PCP habit [421] though in fact I've never used the drug in my life [423]. But assuming arguendo that I did have such a habit, why would I have squandered my desperately needed drug money on the nuts and washers I'd purchased for the shock absorber repair [198] en route to our house that morning? These nuts and washers were found in my car, on the console between the front seats [199], where I'd left them after removing them from their Builder's Emporium packaging.
Though I have no formal training deciphering criminal motives, I do know a lot about addiction from my more than twenty years of 12 Step participation and nearly two decades of prison experience. I find it all but impossible to believe that any addict, hard up for cash to pay for either his 'jones' or his debts, could have stopped on the way to a fund raising theft and wasted a couple bucks on nuts and washers! In fact, the 'drug money' theory is about the most illogical invention police could have created to explain this crime .
. . . Monsue claimed I retrieved a pair of red handled pliers from my car in the driveway to remove the nails securing a screen over the kitchen window . . .
Why would I use my own pair of bright red pliers, which if observed or discovered for any reason would point the finger of accusation straight at me? Once again, given an apt and an inapt theory, Monsue cleaved to the inapt .
. . . and walked around the east side of the house towards the kitchen window, depositing the supposedly one way footprints in the dirt behind our garage . . .
But there were more footprints featured in photographs of the dirt than police claimed, and two way prints may be visible in these photos, as well [Cf. § VIII (1)]. And Monsue apparently felt the need to exaggerate the moistness of the dirt (which other police sources said was dry) as well as the recent rainfall totals for the area around our house [Cf. S VIII (2)].
. . . and after I passed through the dirt, he said I removed three of the louvered glass panes from the kitchen window, and climbed into the house through the opening . . .
Monsue claimed the absence of dirt in the kitchen sink, and its presence on the concrete east walkway approaching the kitchen window, contradicted my having passed twice through the dirt area behind the garage just before climbing in the window above the sink. But that same lack of dirt is equally damning of the State's theory that I'd passed only once through the dirt en route to breaking in and stealing money.
In reality, the dirt present along the concrete east walkway probably came from the unpaved dirt patch at the southeast corner of the house, a corner I'd rounded in a hurry the first time I approached the kitchen window after seeing my mom on the floor through the rear windows, before retrieving the red handled pliers from my car and using them to enter .
. . . Monsue claimed that, unbeknownst to me, my mom was indeed at home, preparing to dress and leave on errands, and that she'd heard me entering or already inside . . .
Once again it is impossible for me not to have known my mom was inside the house, in this case because of our small, raucous Poodle and Papillon mix, Baby Doll, who was in the house at the time.
Baby would bark in loud tirades whenever she heard anything outside, especially me or my car's distinctive exhaust note, which she recognized from half a block away [524]. And she was never present inside the house unless at least one of my parents was with her [Id]. Even if I'd miraculously managed to sneak up to the kitchen window on the east walkway without the dog going nuts, and started removing the screen and louvered window panes to enter, she would have issued her torrent of barking from right inside. But in almost two years experience since I'd gotten my car, I'd never arrived with her inside the house and not heard barking from almost the moment I turned off my engine.
There is zero chance I could have been oblivious to the dog and not realized my mom was at home, especially if I'd been possessed with some fool plot to break in while my mom was away, and so sought to verify her absence. I'd readily told Monsue that I could hear the dog barking at me from inside the entry hall from my first moments at the scene [183] .
. . . Monsue said that after I'd entered, my mom confronted me in the hallway adjoining the bedrooms, and I picked up a trophy near where her keys were found . . .
But if she had been in the master bedroom at the southwest corner of our house preparing to dress and leave, why were her keys found thirty feet north of that point, in my former bedroom at the northwest corner [625]? She always kept her car keys in her purse, yet the purse was found on the love seat in still another room, the living room, near the center of the house. This seems illogical and inconsistent with the insights Monsue claimed to have had into the dynamics of the crime. Moreover, the trophy had come from a shelf in my former bedroom [626].
. . . and he said I struck her with the trophy, whereupon she fell to the floor in the master bedroom hallway . . .
But blood spatter evidence revealed multiple blows were struck at this location, not just one. These occurred both outside the master bedroom [632] and inside it [636]. The Deputy Medical Examiner, Dr. Irwin L. Golden, indicated at least ten trophy blows had been struck to my mother's head [571], and the State's bloodstain expert, Ronald R. Linhart, testified that at least one of these was inflicted as she lay on the floor in the master bedroom hallway [636]. Dr. Golden said her attacker had held the trophy in his hand [574] and used it in a 'stamping' fashion [634] in this close in attack, until the weapon actually broke from the beating, and was discarded beside the large bloodstain on the carpet [640] presumably where her head lay and bled after the brutal assault.
Despite all the blood spattered onto the walls from that horrific bludgeoning, I still had only eight (8) tiny blood droplets on my clothing [70], and _all of these droplets, according to Linhart, were consistent with the innocent acts which I told Monsue I'd performed [Cf. § III (2) (a)].
. . . (Several white animal hairs were found adhering to blood stains on the walls [528A] and the marble trophy base [528B]) . . .
I had no pets of my own as of March 10, so I was apparently not the source of these hairs. The only four legged pet besides Baby Doll I ever did have, my orange cat Peaches, died of smoke inhalation in a December 28, 1982 fire at the 6500 Sepulveda apartment building [528C]. And Baby Doll was jet black.
The presence of the hairs in the bloodstains is strong evidence that someone, the source of the hairs, had been inside our house that morning, after the blood was deposited, yet before it had dried. Despite this, Monsue apparently never investigated the origin of these important hairs. Had he done so, he would have learned that John Richard Scapicchio, Jr., the only person from 6500 Sepulveda besides suspect John "Mike" Ryan, Jr. who knew where my parents lived (a fact I'd told the detective on April 1, 1983 [460A]) did have a long haired, white cat living with him in the Studio City motel room he shared with his girlfriend, Kelly [528D].
On Thanksgiving Day, 1982, barely three months before the robbery and murder, I'd bragged to Scapicchio of a stamp collection belonging to my dad in the house, which I told him was worth over $100,000.00; Scapicchio suggested we steal it, but I declined [611].
Also, Scapicchio's motel room was on Ventura Boulevard between Laurel and Coldwater Canyons [Id], and it was in one of these two canyons, both several miles from our house, that Ryan claimed to have spent the night immediately preceding my mom's murder [Cf. § VII (10), (11)]. Scapicchio, or, assuming they'd been in contact with one another in Scapicchio's motel room, Ryan could easily have tracked the hairs into our house on their clothing, and deposited them during the attack .
. . . Monsue said I then began to rummage through my mom's purse . . .
But why would I, after living with her for sixteen plus years, need to rummage her purse to find money? I knew exactly where she kept her cash; in the brown wallet she stowed in the central compartment of her purse. I'd seen her retrieve money from her purse on too many occasions to count. Yet police said there were papers strewn about on the love seat beside the purse [529], and papers still inside the purse were in disarray, as well [316]. Police I believe correctly attributed this to the purse having been rifled by the killer/s.
If I'd been the rummager, there should have been at least a fingerprint of mine, or a trace bloodstain from my hands [187] found in it. Yet neither was, despite whoever killed my mom having obviously succeeded in stealing the money [544]. And since one of my mom's fingerprints was found in the purse [279], it apparently wasn't wiped clean, either. I had only the pocket change left after the Builder's Emporium purchase when I was arrested minutes later [544].
In April, 1998 Monsue lied yet again, claiming that subsequent residents of our house had found the stolen $150.00 secreted in the attic space above my old bedroom [669], confirming, Monsue claimed, his theory that I'd robbed and killed my mom and then cleverly hidden the money before police arrived. But this was a lie. No money has ever been found by the subsequent residents, either in the attic space or anywhere else [Cf. § IV (18)].
. . . but she regained some functioning, rose and confronted me once again, and in that confrontation ripped my shirt . . .
But if my mom had confronted and struggled with me at this point in the police theory, ripping my shirt, then she would have done so with her head dripping blood from several severely lacerated scalp wounds [531], a fact safely inferred by the large pool of blood she'd moments earlier bled onto the carpeting in the master bedroom hallway [526].
Yet, I bore no obvious, large blood stains on my clothing or person [54, 55, 66], only the eight tiny droplets [70] attributable to innocent causes [Cf. § III (2) (a)]. No shirt fibers were found beneath her fingernails [227]. Her hands bore no injury consistent with having grabbed and ripped my shirt [228]. And not even one of her fingernails was broken [Id]. Similarly, I bore no injuries on my hands, face or body [373], as one would expect to find on the perpetrator of such an attack.
. . . He claimed I then retrieved two steak knives from our kitchen . . .
All the way across the house. While my mom did what? Waited patiently for me to return and continue this violent attack? The State's claim that I'd just beaten her on the head with a trophy is at odds with her not having fled, at least to a telephone, or behind a locked door, if not from the house altogether. If she'd been physically capable of rising and ripping my shirt as they alleged, why not just leave? Imagine the State's scenario: her son, who it can be assumed has never attacked her with a trophy before, suddenly does so, and she sticks around to see what's next. The "fight or flight" response, let alone sheer logic, makes this a very unlikely possibility.
. . . and used the knives to stab her. . .
Though her injuries reveal this simple 'stabbing' allegation was a gross understatement. My mother's killer/s slashed and struck at her with the knives many times, over and over, inflicting several deeply lacerated 'defensive' wounds to her left hand, only, when she raised it in a brave attempt to fend off the blows [360]. This action would have flipped blood from the gaping defense wounds all over, yet only a tiny amount of blood was found on me [70], and not in patterns consistent with that cause.
Moreover, by the police theory the exercise bar which Dr. Golden determined had caused the fractured right arm [357] had not yet been used. So why did my right handed [359] mom not have a single defense wound on her right hand?
. . . and she fell to the floor in the entry hall, beside the stone planter, with her right arm resting on the planter's edge, her head pointing east and her feet roughly west. Monsue said I retrieved the large, metal exercise bar from my parents' bedroom . . .
Though by the time he elaborated this theory, Monsue had already made the false statement in his report that my dad had supposedly given me the "Bull Worker" exercise bar, and that I'd put it in my former bedroom or taken it to my apartment, such that it was not present in the house at 0730 hours that morning when he left for work [272]. But that was a lie, and my dad testified that the bar was in its typical location when police found it in the master bedroom [273].
It seems an awkward and illogical assertion that if I'd come to the house to rob and kill my mom for $150.00, I would have packed along the three foot long exercise bar from my Van Nuys apartment and then (presumably, by Monsue's theory) lugged it into the house through the kitchen window in order to execute this supposed attackusing a weapon which, if it had been given to me, would directly implicate me in the crime.
Or, as an alternative theory, that I hadn't brought it in through the window but had at some point paused my supposed assault with the other weapons, gone out to my car, retrieved the bar, returned and incorporated it into the murder.
A more illogical, frankly ridiculous theory is difficult to imagine .
. . . and struck her once with the bar . . .
But one blunt force event was not struck here, at least two were [643, 648].
. . . in a downward fashion, across her raised right arm and upper forehead, causing the severe fractures of her humerus (upper arm bone), and frontal skull (i.e., forehead). Monsue said I returned the bar to the master bedroom where it was found by police, bloody on one end and absent any fingerprints. He said I became concerned and brought the den telephone into the entry hall and called police . . .
Though police said a 'suspicious' bloodstain on the phone made them doubt my account of having used it to call my dad, police and paramedics after finding my mom, it is equally damning of their theory that I'd called those same folks as an alibi after committing the crime [Cf. S IV (2) (j)].
. . . He said that I retrieved the two larger knives from the kitchen and used one of them to stab my mother in the right cheek . . .
This is totally illogical [Cf. sect; IV (10)].
I'd retrieved these knives to arm myself as I searched the house, believing the attacker/s might still be present and fearing for the safety of my mom and myself if that were so. If I'd used the knives to stab her, as Monsue claimed, then why would I have mentioned them to police as part of my account? Since my carrying them through the house had connected me with them, this would implicate me rather than put me in the clear.
Conversely, if I'd planned to use the knives as my alibi, then why would I have used them to supposedly stab my mom, instantly fouling their blade/s with her blood and ruining them as my alibi?
And if I'd needed an alibi, it doesn't make much sense to have chosen 'knives from the kitchen' if I'd just attacked my mom with 'knives from the kitchen'.
Monsue lied about the knives, as well, claiming the Medical Examiner had found them to be a "match" with certain of my mom's stab wounds, when in fact no such "match" has ever been made [Cf. § IV (10)].
. . . in the eight minutes or so before police arrived . . .
Monsue suggested that during the brief eight minutes which elapsed between my 11:26 A.M. phone call for help [454] and the police and paramedics' 11:34 A.M. arrival [703, 704], that I'd somehow managed to perform the following list of fifteen actions:
Monsue alleged that I:
[*] Although Monsue's April 7, 1998 claim that money was found stashed in the attic proved to be just another of his many, many lies [Cf. § IV (18)], elements 3) through 7) are listed to demonstrate the State's disregard for logic in their reckless allegations. As for 15), although the allegation that I'd altered the kitchen window following the supposed attack has been debunked [Cf. § IV (4) (1)], it is included in the interest of completeness, and to display the State's strategy; namely, to blindly attack every facet of my account, even for want of a viable theory.
In reality, I'd done only seven of the State's laundry list of fifteen actions, and I'd been frantically rushing to do all that I did, fearing if I did not, that she would die before the paramedics could arrive and help her. I had:
Then the State presented Dr. Golden, who said my mom couldn't have survived her injuries for more than fifteen minutes [554]. If true, that meant my estimated 11:00 A.M. arrival actually fell before the attack and I must have been present when it took place, implying that I was the attacker. But the doctor admitted in testimony that he'd merely been estimating, and that his opinion was not medically certain [560], and that to arrive at the estimate he'd wrongly assumed that my mom received no emergency treatment whatsoever prior to paramedics' 11:34 arrival [556], despite the fact that Monsue knew I'd performed first aid at the direction of the Fire Department's call back [557].
Even without such treatment (which would admittedly have extended the survival estimate), Dr. Golden conceded that my mom could have survived completely unaided for up to forty-five minutes with her injuries [561]. So as many as forty-five minutes, plus whatever my first aid treatment may have extended her survival, places her possible time of attack at as early as eleven minutes before my estimated 11:00 A.M. arrival, and possibly even earlier. The 'thump' sound I'd heard while standing on the front porch [706] waiting for my mom to come to the door may have been the killer/s administering the final blow of their attack, or it may have been a distant door being slammed shut as they escaped through it. Whatever the case, the doctor was wrong, likely influenced by detective Monsue's presence and input at the March 11 autopsy [708].
And whatever the survival estimate, the claim that I'd done all those fifteen things in eight short minutes is impossible .
. . . And at some point the theft of the $150.00 was actually accomplished. Police arrived a short time later . . .
As discussed, not only did I have no reason to steal that day, but I had several compelling reasons not to. Further, when police arrived at the scene minutes after my call for help I still had only the pocket change left over from my earlier Builder's Emporium purchase [544].
And when they arrived not long after my mother's brutal, five weapon bludgeoning, stabbing and choking assault, I had no large drops or other obvious bloodstains on me or my clothing [54, 55, 66], and I bore no visible injury to my body whatsoever= not even the tiniest cut, scratch, bump or abrasion [373]. I had only eight practically invisible blood droplets on my clothing [70], which State bloodstain expert found entirely consistent with the innocent actions I'd indicated to Monsue having performed, such as lifting my mom's arm to take her pulse and dropping it back to the floor, or cradling and releasing her head in my hand [Cf. § III (2) (a)], or perhaps the most logical cause given my mother's severe airway injuries, 'expiratory blood' [Cf. § III (6)].
Contrast, my mother's attacker/s had brutally beaten her on the head and scalp, very close up, with a hand held [574] marble based Little League baseball trophy, at least ten times [571], amid the extensive hemorrhage to her scalp [573]. They thrust and stabbed at her with two razor sharp steak knives between five and thirteen times as she bravely raised her left hand in defense, causing many deep, gaping slash wounds to her left hand, only [576], which we can safely infer bled heavily as she flailed at her attacker/s in a brave but futile fight for her life. They slammed a large, bat like exercise bar into her forehead with enormous force, shattering her skull completely through its base [647], and smashed the bar into her upper right arm, totally fracturing that bone, as well [584]. They stabbed her twice in the back with the two steak knives, first inflicting two tiny, pinpoint 'hesitation' wounds [650] before raising and then plunging the knives deeply into her body [651]. Finally, they looped a narrow, yellow cord around her throat and drew it tight, using enough force to inflict several very visible ligature abrasions on her neck [609].
The brutal crime resulted in many bloodstains being deposited at various
locations within our house: Two blunt force events and one contact smear were
present outside the sewing room [632]; A blunt force blow, near floor level, and
one contact smear were apparent in the master bedroom hallway [636]; A large,
soaked in bloodstain was found on the carpet in the master bedroom hallway
[640]; Blood drops existed on the sink and the door frame of the master bathroom
[641]; Two blunt force events [643,
648] and one contact smear [644] were
evident in stains on the northern living room hallway mural wall; The exercise
bar was left bloody from all this mayhem [649]; There were numerous, "teeny"
(per Monsue) spatter droplets high up, near the ceiling on the walls of the
living room [705], indicative of still more bludgeoning and beating, stains
which for some reason were never photographed by police.