Bad Boy From Rosebud (80 page)

Read Bad Boy From Rosebud Online

Authors: Gary M. Lavergne

Tags: #Biography & Autobiography, #General, #Law, #True Crime, #Murder, #test

BOOK: Bad Boy From Rosebud
3.7Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
 
Page 300
In early July, Bill Johnston went before a federal district judge and filed a motion to dismiss, without prejudice, federal charges against McDuff. He did so in order to allow the McLennan County District Attorney, John Segrest, to pursue capital murder charges. ''Our posture is a safety net. It would not be prudent for us to stand in the way of the state's capital case that has a death penalty exposure that we can't offer," Bill said. He could reinstate charges within a five-year period. His motion was granted.
5
Even in jail, McDuff managed to get into trouble and make the headlines. After several weeks in the McLennan County Jail, McDuff had been moved from isolation into the general population. He had been a "model" prisoner until September 15, 1992, when he convinced a fellow prisoner to "swap" cells with him so he would be incarcerated with an inmate who was willing to have sex with him. McDuff offered him $30 for the encounter. By the next morning, McDuff's punk was pleading for an end to the endless hours of sex. The jailers returned McDuff to isolation.
6
The McLennan and Travis County District Attorneys Offices met and informally decided that whoever had the stronger case should prosecute McDuff first. The longer Travis County waited, the more compelling was the argument that Colleen was dead. While they had an eyewitness/accomplice to Colleen's abduction, her body had never been recovered.
In Melissa's case, there were questions about venue. Melissa's body had been found in Dallas County, and she was almost certainly murdered there. But Dallas County had "only a body floating in a gravel pit"; the advanced decomposed state of the victim made prosecuting a homicide case there problematic. In the same case, the McLennan County District Attorney started with the discovery of McDuff's car near the scene, a witness who placed him at the car near the time of the abduction, a few TSTI students willing to testify that McDuff talked about robbing the Quik Pak, a woman willing to testify that she saw a man who kind of looked like McDuff walking along Bilingsday Road, a few hairsand Hank Worley. But there was no guarantee that Hank would be able to testify, since he had witnessed an extraneous offense.
Everyone knew Kenneth Allen McDuff to be a sadistic killer; everyone knew he had done it. It was easy for the general public and law officers to be angry at and hate McDuff, and to believe that a conviction
 
Page 301
would be a cinch. In reality, the opposite was true. Getting a conviction in a court of law outside the Central Texas area was going to be tough.
McLennan County District Attorney John Segrest is a quiet and reserved man. He could have let Dallas County take the case; he could have argued that Travis County's Reed case was stronger because they had Worley; and he could have decided that if a judge would not allow Worley's extraneous offense testimony, the risk of an acquittal for an animal like McDuff was too great. Instead, John Segrest decided to prosecute McDuff for the capital murder of Melissa Ann Northrup.
7
John Segrest has deep roots in Waco. He was born there and graduated from University High School. After matriculating at Baylor University, he completed requirements for a law degree in three years at Baylor Law School and practiced in his hometown. In 1990, he was elected McLennan County District Attorney, and thus, the McDuff trial came towards the end of his first term. He had held no other elected office. John never discussed or considered the political implications of his decisions, but his assistants knew that mishandling the McDuff case, or even one or two adverse rulings, could have meant the end of Segrest's political career.
8
Segrest picked First Assistant Crawford Long and another Assistant D.A. named Mike Freeman to help in the McDuff trial. Crawford Long was born in Ohio, but his father moved the family to Waco early enough for Crawford to develop a thick Texas drawl. He speaks impeccable English in the deliberate manner of a wordsmith. With ease he quotes from great pieces of literature to embellish and empower important points. Indeed, like Bill Johnston, and the McNamara Boys, he was influenced greatly by his father, the head of the Baylor University English Department. His questions, and especially his summations, have imagery normally lacking in the minutiae that often plagues complicated trials. Those oratorical skills must have had an impact on judges and juries; in every capital murder trial he has ever prosecuted, the juries have levied the death sentence.
9
Mike Freeman grew up on a farm in the Texas Panhandle, attended Abilene Christian University and went on to law school at the University of Tulsa. Mike also served as a Russian Linguist for the United States Navy. For a time he lived in Nebraska; he had moved to Waco to report to a new job with the McLennan County District Attorney's Office on March 1, 1992the day Melissa Northrup was kidnapped from the Quik
 
Page 302
Pak.
10
He is a big man with an easy-going manner and an infectious smile.
John Segrest, of course, took the role of lead prosecutor. He did much of the more important legal legwork, such as crafting and responding to motions and later responding to appeals. Crawford handled the scientific portions of the case such as the hair samples, andin case it became necessaryDNA. Mike Freeman did the initial investigation.
11
Earlier, the Valencia Joshua case had been severed because of the potential difficulty in showing a common scheme or a "continuing course of conduct." Segrest explained that "it is an area of the law which the Court of Criminal Appeals has not written upon. It would be risky at best to proceed under the multiple murders portion of the indictment." It was just easier to try the Northrup Murder alone. That there would be a change of venue for McDuff was a forgone conclusion. The trial was moved to Houston.
The presiding judge was a large, robust man named Robert N. "Bob" Burdette of the 184
th
District Court in Harris County. Reading the transcripts of the Northrup Trial suggests a rude and impatient judge. For example, instead of asking for the attorneys to proceed, he often glared at them and said, "Hit it." He intimidated the attorneys and witnesses as well. During jury selection he often curtly told prospective jurors, "You don't mean that!" On another occasion, instead of asking people standing in the back of the courtroom to be seated, he asked sarcastically "are those people just standing there because their legs don't bend?"
Judge Burdette's unpleasant reputation preceded the Northrup Trial. During her reporting of the capital murder trial of Theodore Goynes, a reporter named Barbara Linkin wrote that "Burdette seems to want all those involved to know he's less than pleased he's presiding over the trial. To that end he had been twirling his chair during testimony and fidgeting and sighing to express his annoyance. He also had balked at ruling on defense objections and has interrupted witnesses by asking attorneys if they are finished yet."
Judge Burdette made another annoying decision. One morning he started proceedings with information for the jurors: "Ladies and gentlemen, I have noticed that there is a puzzled look on the faces of several of you. In the evenings, to get the full service out of this courtroom, we hang meat in here." Earlier in the trial one of the prosecutors had heard Burdette tell the baliff to "hang meat." Burdette kept the courtroom so
 
Page 303
cold that at times Mike Freeman had to blow into his hands to keep them warm. On another day, a Houston reporter arrived with a furry, Russian hat.
12
But what Judge Burdette lacked in the way of patience, social graces and common courtesy, he made up for with his grasp of the law. The Northrup Case was a hard one for everyone, and the fact that the appeals courts never overruled any of his major decisions spoke for his expertise.
Identity was the sticky issue, and since there were no witnesses to the abduction and murder, identifying McDuff as a murderer rested on the accumulation of circumstantial evidence. Segrest decided to infuse the testimony of Hank Worley, and the Colleen Reed Case, into the Northrup Trial to prove the identity issue. But as Segrest has said, "Proof of offenses other than the one on trial is disfavored by the law." Evidence and testimony of extraneous offenses is not admissible to prove that a person is of bad character, but it can be admitted for other purposes. It can be used to show proof of motive, opportunity, intent, preparation, plan, knowledge, and in this case, identity. The prosecutor is required to give a reasonable notice to the defense. Defense attorney Michael Charlton argued strenuously that "the state wants to try this Colleen Reed Case here in the Melissa Northrup Case." Getting Burdette to allow Worley's testimony was going to be a complicated legal taskyet the Judge did allow it. He may not have been pleasant while he did it, but Judge Burdette handled the issue in an expert fashion and was upheld by the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals.
13
One of the first witnesses was Addie McDuff. For the past year, Addie felt she had been hounded as a result of the publicity surrounding her infamous son. (She certainly had been. The media reported extensively on the location Worley identified as the Colleen Reed murder site, and the fact that it was near Addie's house. Undoubtedly, the curious visited the area and probably used the McDuff driveway to turn around. She also had a listed phone number.) On the day Kenneth was arrested, a reporter from the
Waco Tribune-Herald
called her and asked for a statement. She replied, "I'm not allowed to say anything," and hung up the phone. In a series of telephone calls to Tim Steglich, she outlined a series of fears and frustrations. On one occasion she asked if charges had been filed against her and her husband. "We never broke no law. Never even got a speeding ticket."
 
Page 304
"What?" asked a bewildered Tim.
"They spray stuff in here that chokes me. They light up my house all night long."
"Mrs. McDuff, I don't know what you are talking about. What are you telling me?" asked Tim.
She then went into a long complaint about Gary Cartwright's
Texas Monthly
article on the McDuff Murders, but she ended her diatribe by saying she had not read the article. Even before McDuff had been found she had complained to Tim.
"They call me and tell me they are different people," she said.
"I'm sorry that happened."
"Well ain't that your deputies that are doing that?" Addie asked.
"No," Tim replied. He explained that the attention paid to her and her family would likely continue until Kenneth was found. "He has got to be located one way or another." Addie hung up.
On July 27, 1992, Tim and TDCJ Investigator John Moriarty went to the McDuffs for an interview. By that time, J. A. seemed almost unaware of his surroundings, but in a moment of fatigue, he said quietly, "You know, it is almost like an old mongrel dog. You don't know what he is doing when you are not there to watch him."
14
Addie took the stand on February 3, 1993. She had not seen Kenneth since he disappeared on February 29, 1992. She still refused to entertain any notion that Kenneth could have done what he was being accused of. She was not called to be a character witness. Instead, she established that she paid all of the bills Kenneth rang up. More importantly, she confirmed that she had given him a credit cardthe card that would be used to establish his whereabouts on the night of February 29/March 1.
15
Addie's testimony also established the credibility of the woman McDuff spent much of his time with on that infamous nightHolly. Holly's strange evening with him had been discovered almost by accident. In early May she had been arrested and brought to the Bell County Jail. As she walked past Tim Steglich's office she saw a picture of McDuff and said, "That's the man who tried to keep me in his car." That caught Tim's attention and he spoke to her. She kept referring to him as "Cowboy." Shortly afterwards, she gave a very valuable statement, which was corroborated by credit card records.
The jury clearly believed every word Holly said. "In front of every-
 
Page 305
body she owned up to her past," remembered Crawford Long. Tim thought Holly's attitude was "here is who I am and if you don't like it stay away from me." He knew Holly to be an intelligent woman. She handled the defense attorneys very well.
Holly's testimony reminded Crawford Long of a Shakespearean playcomedy interspersed with tragedy Her account of how she, One-Arm, T-Bone, and Darrin handled McDuff had people sitting on the edge of their seats. When a defense attorney tried to attack her credibility by asking about her aliases, she replied, "I have eighteen aliases. Do you want to know them all?" The courtroom erupted in laughter. It continued when she described McDuff's crack-induced tantrums in the middle of tough, black neighborhoods: "I told him to get his crazy ass back in the car." They even laughed when she described how McDuff tried to abduct her, and how she got away by taking off her shoe and hitting him on the face.
16
The prosecution team never let Melissa's husband, Aaron, become more than a factual witness. That way, their troubled marriage never became an issue at the trial. Her relationship with an abusive boyfriend never became a serious issue either. Reportedly, McDuff himself nixed the defense approach of creating reasonable doubt by casting the boyfriend as a suspect. The prosecutors surmised that McDuff opposed such a move because if the prosecution could clear the boyfriend (which they could) the focus would just return to McDuff. They were relieved that the defense did not take such a turn. "[The boyfriend] was such a jerk that he is someone the state does not want to sponsor," Crawford Long remembered.
17
The star witness took the stand after Judge Burdette accepted the prosecution's motion to allow evidence and testimony from the Reed case. Citing more than a dozen similarities prepared by the prosecution between the two cases, Burdette made possible the testimony of Alva Hank Worley. For the first time in court, Worley related the grisly events of December 29, 1991, and the abduction and murder of Colleen Reed. Crawford Long thought to himself that "in order to prosecute the devil you may have to go to hell for a witness." Predictably, the defense grilled him over the inconsistencies in his five statements. When Hank testified that Colleen never fought him, Dwight Goains zeroed in on him.
"You want to tell the jury that you were just being a nice guy? You raped her, is that correct?" Goains asked with disgust.

Other books

Out of Body by Stella Cameron
On the Run by Tristan Bancks
A Lover of Men by Julia Talbot
Path of Needles by Alison Littlewood
Shadowgod by Michael Cobley
Cold Quiet Country by Clayton Lindemuth
Under the Bridges by Anne Forsyth