Wages of Sin (24 page)

Bryan stated under oath that in June 1995, as chief prosecutor in the 167th District Court, he had been assigned to the Stephanie Martin and William Busenburg case. As such, on June 29, 1995, he had interviewed Martin at the Travis County jail.

“And I assume that you and Mr. Davis had had some kind of discussion before you all made arrangement to go to the jail and interview Ms. Martin,” said Wetzel.

They did, answered Bryan, probably more than one discussion.

Wetzel asked if he and Davis had gone over any ground rules.

“I did.” Bryan explained that, in front of Davis, he had told Martin that her answers to his questions could not be used against her when they went to trial, since he was not giving her her Miranda warnings. “I explained, however, that if she got up on the witness stand in the trial and told something inconsistent with, or in some way different than what she was telling there in the jail, that I could impeach her with that.”

“And did you explain what it meant to impeach her?”

He did, he said.

Wetzel asked Bryan to summarize what Martin had told him, and Ira Davis objected on the grounds of irrelevancy.

“I think it is relevant to motions that are on file with the court,” argued Chris Gunter, Busenburg’s attorney.

The judge overruled “for purposes of this hearing.”

Bryan said that he had had two interviews on two different occasions with Stephanie Martin, each interview lasting a couple of hours. Bryan stated that Martin had told him basically the same story she had told polygrapher Heller—she absolutely was not present when Chris Hatton was murdered.

Wetzel asked if Bryan had discussed with Davis and Martin the possibility of Martin submitting to a DPS polygraph test.

They did, he said.

“And did she indicate in the interview at the jail that she had already passed one polygraph?”

“She did,” said Bryan.

“Do you recall ever having a discussion with Ira Davis that these statements that Ms. Martin was making could not be used against her for any purpose?”

“No, I don’t recall that. Mr. Davis mentioned to me before court today something to the effect that he thought these discussions were in the process of plea discussions. And he also mentioned to me that he’d mentioned that during the interview at the jail with Stephanie Martin.”

Bryan professed that he didn’t recall that. “He may have and I can’t say he didn’t. But it was my understanding that the ground rules were what she said could be used as impeachment.”

“Did you ever agree with Mr. Davis that this was a conversation that was in the nature of a plea discussion?” Wetzel asked.

“No.”

“In fact, did you ever offer Stephanie Martin any punishment in exchange for a guilty plea?”

“No.”

“What was the purpose of having these discussions with Stephanie Martin?”

The truth, said Bryan, had been the purpose—to determine whether or not he believed her new story. The interview had been intended to help him decide what to do next if he did, indeed, believe Martin’s new scenario, he explained.

“Did you consider this part of the investigation of the murder?”

“Yes.”

“Did you expect that Stephanie Martin would fail the polygraph at DPS?”

“No. Well, I need to add to that answer. My personal opinion of her story that she told me in the jail was that I didn’t believe everything she told me at the jail, no. And then I understood that she was going to take a polygraph on the issue of whether or not she was the shooter. And I guess I need to correct my earlier answer. I expected her to give that same version that she had told me at the jail to the polygraph examiner.”

After the witness was passed, Ira Davis looked at Frank Bryan and asked the prosecutor whether he recalled meeting with Will Busenburg’s former cellmate—the cellmate, reminded Davis, who had heard Busenburg claim responsibility for killing Chris Hatton. Davis was referring to Mac Opara, without mentioning Opara by name.

Bryan said he recalled the meeting.

“And subsequent to that, you and I entered into discussion about Ms. Martin’s version of those events. Is that true?”

“Yes.”

“Okay,” said Davis. “And I indicated to you that her story might be quite in line with the discussion in that letter.”

“You told me that she wasn’t the shooter, right.”

“Professionally and personally, is it your belief that when a defense attorney approaches you and asks you, ‘Can we talk? Maybe there’s some way to work this out,’ that that is that defense attorney’s way of indicating to you that he’s attempting to begin the plea negotiations?”

“If he said those words, yes.”

Davis asked Bryan if he recalled Davis’s precise words when he broached the subject of plea negotiations.

“I’m nearly one hundred percent certain you didn’t say, ‘Maybe we can work this out.’ ”

“Okay.” Davis didn’t respond to the prosecutor’s cattiness.

Bryan didn’t give the lawyer a chance to respond. Bryan pushed on, despite no question being asked. “I don’t recall us—you ever saying those words to me in this particular case. And no, I don’t recall the exact words.”

“To be more precise,” Davis finally said, “probably I have on more than one occasion indicated to you that we could enter into plea negotiations over a particular term of years. I have indicated a number of times a term of years that would be acceptable, haven’t I?”

“Yes.”

“So you would certainly consider that a form of plea negotiations—very rudimentary?”

“Right,” said Bryan, returning to only answering the question asked.

“And those discussions have gone on between us for some time now.”

“Right.”

“. . . What was your opinion,” Davis asked, “of where we were going when I entered into these discussion with you concerning possibly interviewing [Stephanie Martin] and her taking the polygraph examination?”

“Well,” said Bryan, “I certainly believed you were trying to convince me that she was not the shooter.”

“Towards what purpose?”

“Well . . .” Bryan didn’t answer.

“Negotiating a resolution of this case?”

“Yeah, in a broad sense, that’s true.”

“You took copious notes of the interviews in the jail,” said Davis.

“I did.”

“And do you have those notes with you?”

“They are in my trial notebook, and you all have had discovery of all of those notes.”

Davis flipped his gaze over to the judge. “Well,” he said, “I beg to disagree on that, Your Honor.” Davis groused that he hadn’t been given any copious notes, and even if he were to be given the prosecutor’s notes, they would be so lengthy that he wouldn’t have time to go through them prior to cross-examination.

The notes had been available to the defenses, claimed Bryan.

“For the record,” Chris Gunter interrupted, “today is the first day that I have learned that the district attorney had had two two-hour interviews with defendant Martin. Today is the first time that I have heard anything about any copious notes of those interviews.”

Judge Lynch tried to soothe all sides and move on.

Bryan, still sitting in the witness chair, requested that he be able to ask Davis a question.

“It’s a reversal of roles, but I’d be happy to answer his question,” Davis replied.

“Go ahead,” said the judge.

“Are you saying that [the notes are not] in the binder you have looked at?”

Davis said that the notes he had looked at were not typed. Then he confessed, “The last I looked at your binder was some time long before this pretrial.”

Davis proceeded on and urged the prosecutor to recollect that he, Davis, had said that the Martin interview was pursuant to plea negotiations. They disputed the point back and forth, with Bryan still stating that he didn’t recall. Davis emphasized that he and Bryan had had additional discussions about the case and that Bryan had indicated that he had reservations about Martin’s story.

“That’s true,” said Bryan.

“And you asked that before we proceed any further, sort of along those lines that we were talking, that she agree to submit to a polygraph examination. You told me that she would need to pass a polygraph. Is that what you told me?” said Davis.

“I don’t remember saying it that way, and I don’t remember whose original idea it was. But we did talk about her taking a polygraph.”

“You don’t recall saying that she would need to pass a polygraph on this story?”

“Well,” said Bryan, “need to pass it for what?”

“That’s exactly my point,” Davis grumbled.

It might have persuaded him to try Busenburg first, rather than Martin, said Bryan.

“And . . . it never flashed at any time across your mind what was going on here were negotiations between you and a defense attorney on a resolution of this matter?”

“No, I—”

And Davis and Bryan continued to bicker until Davis finally passed the witness.

“I have some questions, Judge,” said Chris Gunter.

“Your Honor,” pleaded Wetzel, “I don’t know what the relevance of Mr. Gunter’s questions is.”

They argued, and finally Judge Lynch let Gunter cross-examine Assistant District Attorney Frank Bryan.

“One thing that has come out, been pretty clear from Mr. Davis’s questioning, is that plea discussions had been going on for some time between you and defendant Martin,” said Gunter.

“My question,” said Gunter, “is I would like to know what the status of the plea negotiation—what has the defendant been wanting? What has defendant Martin been wanting in exchange for her testimony against Will Busenburg?”

“I object to the relevance of that,” said Wetzel.

The judge overruled.

“We’ve never discussed any plea bargain in terms of an exchange for her testimony,” said Bryan.

Gunter asked again, “What have they been asking for? What has the defendant Martin been asking for? I am using your own words, Mr. Bryan. You said Mr. Davis asked you—”

“If you would like. A couple of times Mr. Davis has approached me with a number of years. ‘What about this?’ And I have said no.”

“What has he approached you with?”

“Twenty or twenty-five, something like that, TDC [meaning Texas Department of Corrections].”

“In exchange for her testimony against Busenburg?” asked Gunter.

“It was never stated that way,” Bryan replied. “And I don’t make plea bargains in exchange for testimony in that way, like in exchange for testifying against a codefendant.”

“You don’t make that a condition of a plea in a joint defendant case?”

“No. It would be truthful testimony—in exchange for truthful testimony,” insisted Bryan.

“Okay. That goes without saying. Has defendant Martin been asking for a sentence of twenty to twenty-five years in exchange for her truthful testimony against Busenburg?”

“I don’t believe that has ever been mentioned in his—when he’s approached me, Mr. Davis has approached me, it’s just been a term of years. That’s my recollection.”

“And your testimony,” said Gunter, “is the current offer of the defendant or request of defendant Martin has been for twenty or twenty-five years?”

“I believe it’s one of those two. May have been twenty. I’m not—twenty or twenty-five. Whatever it was, I said no.”

“Have you made any counteroffers?”

“No.”

“None?” asked Gunter.

“None,” Bryan replied.

“Okay. Well, I have to concur with Mr. Davis then. What was the purpose of meeting with Stephanie Martin two times last summer? I mean if it was not in an effort to get her case resolved somehow?”

“It was an effort to find the truth of what happened,” said Bryan.

“Okay. And in those two interviews, are you satisfied, based on your knowledge of the case, that she made inconsistent—or she made untruthful statements to you?”

“Am I satisfied that she—”

“Well,” said Gunter, “let me just be more direct. In your opinion, was she untruthful with you on matters in both of those interviews?”

“I did not believe everything she said to me, no.”

On Tuesday, July 23, 1996, prosecutor Frank Bryan met at the Travis County jail with inmate Tonya Williams to discuss Williams’s former cellmate, Stephanie Martin.

Williams, who also went by several aliases, said, “Stephanie seemed like a nice person.” For the ten days they had been cellmates, just the two of them, Williams explained, they had been separated for only an hour a day—to shower and use the phone.

“One night, though, Stephanie broke down. She cried sometimes. And sometimes she laughed. She said on the day of the murder that Will wasn’t feeling like his normal self.”

“She said Will was going over to Chris’s apartment. And Chris came home while they were both there. She said she left because Will asked her to leave. Then, around twelve or twelve-thirty, Will called Stephanie and asked her to come back to Chris’s apartment. She said when she got there Will was pacing up and down, but she could hear Chris snoring.”

Bryan thought about the facts he knew: Chris Hatton was at the Conway home at 12:30
A.M
. Maybe she’d gotten the time wrong.

“Chris had six hundred dollars,” said Williams. “Will needed six hundred dollars.”

Bryan knew the figure bantered around was $6,000, one zero off.

“Will was saying, ‘Chris has it, and he’s not going to give it to me.’ Will said, ‘I know how I can get it.’ Then he got up, walked into Chris’s bedroom, and Stephanie heard a gun go off.”

“She said she was in the apartment when the gun went off?” asked Bryan.

“Yeah, she was in the apartment, and she said she was thinking, ‘What do I do?’ Will came back into the living room. And Will said Stephanie should call her house. That would show that she wasn’t there when it happened.”

Bryan pondered the situation as he wrote on his legal pad. Williams’s story explained the phone call on Martin’s caller ID.

“After that,” said Williams, “they left the apartment and drove around, thinking about what they should do with the body, and talking about what to tell the police. Later, she said, they went back to the apartment, carried the body from the bedroom to the bathroom. And Stephanie said she stuck her hand in the opening where Chris’s head had been to see what it felt like. Then they went to clean the blood up out of the room.

“She said Will went into the room and found between five hundred and six hundred dollars in cash in a box, and he took it. They put the body in a tarp and wrapped it up.” She backed up and mentioned that Martin and Busenburg stole a Walkman and a bike.

“They took the body to a park. She said she was saying to Will, ‘Let’s drop it at the dam.’ But Will said, ‘No, we have to burn the body.’ They carried it out of the truck. Stephanie cut the hands off, they burned the body, and then they were going to pack up their things and leave town.

“But the detectives searched her apartment, she was taken to APD, and she asked for an attorney. She said they planned the story of Stephanie shooting Chris in self-defense. And she’s been fighting it ever since. She said she’d changed her story before. She said she trusted me.” Tonya smiled. “She said she’s being reindicted and getting a light sentence. Stephanie reads true crime stories, but she only reads the real graphic parts.”

Tonya Williams also told Frank Bryan about herself that she didn’t have a drug problem at that moment, but she used to.

“I don’t want my husband to know.”

 

 

On October 10, 1996, Bryan returned to the Travis County Correction Center. With him were Allison Wetzel, their investigator John Phillips, and attorney Ira Davis—all there to talk to Stephanie Martin.

Bryan and Wetzel were still considering prosecuting Will Busenburg first. The meeting, they believed, was to help them make that decision. The meeting, Martin believed, was to prepare her to testify against her former lover.

“What’s your explanation for the receipt found in your apartment for firewood bought at Albertsons on Friday, January sixth, at one-thirty-five
A.M
.?”

“Um, we didn’t go to Albertsons on January sixth,” said Martin. “We went to Randalls on January seventh. We bought firewood the week before for the fireplace at Will’s mom’s, and that had nothing to do with this.... I don’t remember if I went with him to buy it. I probably did. We stayed overnight there at his mom’s.

“Uh-um,” she corrected, “I think the night we stayed at his mom’s was New Year’s Eve. I know we went to Randalls on January seventh. We only bought firewood. . . . I don’t know who bought the firewood on January sixth. He could have. Um, I know I didn’t.”

On Sunday, January 8, said Martin, they went to Levitz Furniture late in the afternoon. “Will had Chris’s Levitz card. Will went into the closet and got the box the week before that had all the credit cards.” She rattled off the names of the cards: Levitz, Sears, Kay Jewelers, Montgomery Ward, maybe a MasterCard, and Chris’s military ID.

“We got to Levitz around five or six in the evening. Will signed the receipt. He used Chris’s ID. I saw Will sign the receipt. We, um, picked up some furniture on Wednesday night, three days later. We put the furniture in the back of his truck.”

They showed Martin photographs of the furniture, which she identified. “We took the table and chairs with us on Sunday. Will put them together. We picked up the couch on Wednesday.” She brushed back her hair.

“Did you talk about why you were using Chris’s cards?”

“Will said that Chris had stolen money from him, so Chris deserved it. Will said that Chris was fixin’ to move and leave the country and he wouldn’t notice. At the time we were using his card, we didn’t discuss killing him.”

The prosecutors handed Martin a receipt from Montgomery Ward for the purchase of a camera and battery at 12:54
P.M
., on Monday, January 9, 1995.

“Can you identify this?”

Martin looked at it. “Yes. I was with him.”

“Did you see him sign the receipt?”

“Yes.”

“What happened to the camera?”

Martin looked over at Davis. “I don’t remember. Maybe we put it in my apartment.”

They showed her another receipt for the same day, a little over an hour later—2:13
P.M
.—from Kay Jewelers.

“We both shopped around and bought some jewelry.” Again she said she saw Busenburg sign the receipt. “He used Chris’s ID. We bought an emerald-and-diamond ring, an emerald-and-diamond necklace, a woman’s watch, a man’s watch, and a diamond stud earring.”

They showed her a receipt for a tarp from Academy sporting goods at 8:59
P.M
.

“I bought that by myself. Will was working.”

They showed her a receipt from January 13, 1995, from Franklin Federal bank. “Did you make a hundred dollar deposit?”

She glanced at Davis. “Uh, I guess so.”

“Where was it?”

“On Airport Boulevard going toward Highland Mall.”

“Did you drive through or go inside?”

“Uh, I can’t remember. Probably drove through.”

Busenburg made a deposit, picked up his paycheck on Friday around noon, she said. “I waited in the truck, and he went in and got his check. He called in sick Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday.”

They then went to a 7-Eleven where Busenburg checked his balance, Martin said. “We were trying to get money to get his truck out of impound.”

Davis listened to the way his client spoke. She continually said he, without clarifying who he was. That concerned him: Would jurors be able to follow Martin? Would she sound like she was implicating herself when a “he” referring to Hatton was really a “he” referring to Busenburg, and vice versa?

Martin continued. She and Busenburg went to Albertsons, she said, still trying to get the money together to get Hatton’s truck out of impound, then to Brunner’s home. “We got twenty dollars from Todd and got the truck out about four
P.M
. I was standing next to Will when he signed to get his truck out.”

Still a problem with “he,” noted Davis.

At 7
P.M
., said Martin, she and Busenburg went to the pawnshop and pawned Chris’s ring.

“What kind of ring was it?”

“A wedding ring.”

“Did you see Will sign the receipt?”

“Yes.”

They went to the Movies 12 on Wells Branch Parkway at 9
P.M
., she recounted. “Will told Beck [his ex-boss] that he was planning on moving to Colorado right away. Oh, yeah,” she said, with a “this is so stupid” tone to her voice, “Will told me he owned stock in Movies Twelve.” Martin got serious. “We were exploring the possibility of going somewhere together. I think Will asked Beck if he wanted to buy some things. We were selling Chris’s things and our things.”

The prosecutors asked Martin about the hacksaw. They wondered if Busenburg had bought the hacksaw in preparation for the murder.

“Uh”—she glanced over at Davis—“the first time I saw it was when Will got it out of his truck. I wasn’t with him when he bought it. I think he had had it for a long time.” The day Hatton was killed, she said, Busenburg went to work.

The prosecutors noted that Martin jumped around a lot in her story.

“He said he wanted to do things normal. His body was in the bathtub all day Tuesday, the tenth.”

Davis stared at the wall. His client was once again not clarifying who “he” was. That just wouldn’t work well in court, he knew.

Martin proceeded. “Will worked that day, all day, from three to eleven. And then he went back to the apartment that night. Will told me, uh, to get back over to Chris’s apartment and wash the bottle of Jim Beam and wash the glasses. He called me from work and told me to go get a tarp. We went to the apartments together at eleven-thirty or twelve. And he got some gloves from work.”

“What was Will wearing?”

“Um, jeans. Dark clothes. Black tennis shoes.”

They moved the body Tuesday night, said Martin. “Before Chris was killed, we talked about the sleeping pill plan.”

She was still jumping around.

The prosecutors wanted to zero in. “Is there anything Will did or bought that we can use to prove there was planning or knowledge that the murder was going to happen?”

Martin said they bought sleeping pills at Randalls on Saturday and sleeping pills at Albertsons on Sunday. And on Tuesday, she noted, Busenburg called her from work. “He told me to get garbage bags, carpet cleaner, and paint. I got the”—she shook her head—“paint and garbage bags from my mom’s house and carpet cleaner at Chris’s apartment.”

“What about the phone call from the pay phone at four-forty-nine
A.M
. on Tuesday morning?” The prosecutors thought about Tonya Williams’s statement.

Martin ran her fingers through her hair. She looked at Davis. That phone call could prove her innocence, she believed. “I’d been driving around, and I went back to Chris’s apartment, and Will said, ‘I just tried to call you.’ ”

The prosecutors didn’t blink.

She explained that when she had talked to the sheriffs detectives on the night she had been picked up and had told them she had called Will from Chris’s apartment that she hadn’t known where Busenburg had phoned from. “I knew Chris’s phone was disconnected.” She looked at Davis.

“Did you tell him you wanted to kill someone?”

“No. Of course not. I never said that. I asked Will a couple of times what it was like to kill someone.... I wanted to
know
what it was like. I didn’t want to do it.”

“But did you want to participate?”

“Yeah. I was turned on to the spy thing. I wanted to be involved in a mission.”

“Well,” Bryan said, “three people said you told them you wanted to kill somebody.”

She looked over at Ira Davis. “I did talk about the subject. Will knew I was into it. Mostly, the conversation was me listening to his stories. He knew I was intrigued and impressed.”

The first month she was with him, she said, Busenburg told stories about the CIA and going on missions. “After that, he said he wanted to get out of the CIA. He said he had nightmares about the men he killed. Um, he said he, um, wanted out because he had found someone to be in love with.”

She looked at Bryan and smiled.

Busenburg, she pointed out, slipped Hatton the sleeping pills. “The plan, uh, was for me to search Chris. Will thought Chris had some money on him or some money in his truck.” Busenburg, she noted, had already searched the apartment.

“When did you first discuss this plan? This sleeping pill plan?”

“Friday night. Will said that he would get Chris drunk and sedate him. And that he would put sleeping pills in Chris’s drink. I thought Chris was training to be a professional hit man. On Saturday Will said that he would take Chris fishing or camping at Lake Travis.”

They went to Randalls grocery, she explained, and got firewood, lighter fluid, and a pack of Sleepinal. They took the pills and crushed them up in a Baggie. “Will went over about eleven. The plan was that Will would ask Chris if he wanted to go camping that night. If Will didn’t come back by one, I was supposed to come over.”

Busenburg was then to pour Hatton a drink and dump the crushed pills into the drink while Hatton wasn’t looking, she said. “The Jim Beam was Chris’s.” She said she went over to the apartments at 1
A.M
. and waited in the parking lot. “At two-fifteen or two-thirty, uh, Will came out and said the sleeping pills weren’t working.”

Sunday night, she said, the plan was the same, but Hatton never showed. “Will and I went to the apartments in separate cars. Will went in and came right back out and said Chris wasn’t there. We waited thirty minutes, then gave up and went back to my apartment.” They would try again the next night.

“Will told me that Chris was leaving the country to become a French assassin.”

On Monday, she said, they went back to the apartment, in separate cars. She returned to her place at 1
A.M
., waited until 2:30 or 3:00, and worried that something had happened to Busenburg.