Body Parts (20 page)

Franklyn approached the bathroom door, noticing that it was closed with the light on. The toxic fumes were growing stronger with each step.

Inside, Franklyn found a glass vial floating in the bathtub, a hot plate behind the bathroom door, and a glass beacon and flask, filled with clear liquid, behind the toilet. The officers also found a propane tank with a heating element. Once the cooked mix cools and dries, it turns into crystals, thus the name crystal meth.

Patricia and James were both arrested for possession with intent to manufacture meth. Rudolfo got her an attorney, who plea-bargained the charges down on the two motel incidents. She was sentenced to 190 days in jail, but she was released on her own recognizance on the promise that she go to rehab.

At the time, she told her probation officer that she’d been using drugs since the age of thirteen and was $30,000 in debt.

She entered an inpatient rehab facility on May 26, 1993, and although she could’ve stayed a full year, she left after two months, just long enough to satisfy the court.

Her sentence was suspended in July and she got three years’ probation, which was revoked after she tested positive for meth seven times in early 1994.

Although she was ordered to go to jail for a year, it appears she escaped incarceration and got sent to rehab again. Court records show that the now pregnant Patricia successfully completed a fifteen-hour parenting program from the Chaffey Adult School in Substance Abuse in Ontario on May 18, 1994.

Rudolfo found renewed hope in 1995, when Patricia gave birth to a baby girl. She seemed to be doing better, living in Barstow in low-income housing with the baby’s father. Rudolfo thought she was a good mother.

But when the baby was eighteen months old, Patricia had a psychotic break, most likely caused by meth use, which can bring on schizophreniclike symptoms, such as hallucinations and delusional thinking.

Patricia called the police, claiming that someone had broken into her house and moved a knife on the counter. They picked her up on a “5150”—the term for when police deem someone is a danger to himself or others—and put the baby into protective custody. Rudolfo took Patricia’s daughter home with him, where Patricia would often visit her.

Patricia spent sixty days at the MFI Recovery Center in Riverside that year, but again, it didn’t stick.

Rudolfo was distressed that the drugs were increasingly affecting her mind. When she was sober, she was capable of having an intelligent discussion, but when she was high, she rambled and became irrational.

Rudolfo saw her less and less as she drifted in and out of his house, often choosing to stay with friends instead.

He felt he had tried everything: tough love, begging, getting angry, and sometimes just talking to Patricia for hours, urging her to do something with her life. But looking back later, he realized he’d always focused on the moral values of addiction; he’d been ignorant of the physiological aspects of the disease—the changes in brain chemistry that are brought on by methamphetamine.

Patricia used to tell him that she wasn’t like other addicts she’d met in rehab, who’d had horrible childhood experiences that pushed them into drugs. To Rudolfo, that just proved addiction can devastate any family.

“You know, Dad, I don’t ever want you to blame yourself for any bad decisions I might’ve made,” she told him. “You’re the best father any daughter could have ever wanted.”

“We’ll fight this demon,” he replied. “We’ll beat it.”

In October 1996, Patricia was arrested for attempted grand theft of items worth $400 to $1,000 at St. Mary’s Hospital in Apple Valley. Patricia was confronted by hospital staff after being seen pulling a linen cart through a corridor. After a brief struggle with security, she was handcuffed and detained.

She had stopped reporting to her probation officer in mid-June. However, there was no record of any charges being filed in the hospital incident.

Patricia’s mental state was clearly disintegrating and the system was failing her.

On January 20, 1997, she was arrested in Victorville for commercial burglary, went to jail until February 7, and was arrested again on March 6, this time for sending a false bomb, stalking, and making terrorist threats at the army armory in Victorville.

She’d first gone to the armory in January, telling recruiter Jerry Astudillo that she was interested in signing up, but she was asked to leave after she started acting irrationally.

She subsequently pinned an envelope, addressed to her from Tony Rogers, to an armory bulletin board. She sent letters there as well, also addressed to Tony Rogers, which spoke of “secret government conspiracies” and wanting someone to “take out” a list of people. She also left threatening messages on Astudillo’s answering machine.

(Tony Rogers, who was in prison when she was killed, later proved to be her last-known boyfriend, and likely her daughter’s father. The District Attorney’s Child Support Division filed a complaint against Patricia in May 1997 for repayment of public assistance the county had paid within the past three years for her child, Toni Rogers, born July 15, 1995.)

Things came to a head when a suitcase, bearing the same name and return address as the letters, was left on the armory doorstep the morning of March 6. Given Patricia’s previous behavior, the employees alerted the sheriff’s department that they had a potential bomb.

Patricia came back, retrieved her suitcase, and headed for the bus stop, where she was arrested and refused to speak to the officers. The bomb squad showed up and, after carefully opening the case, found it contained only an assortment of Bibles and other books.

Patricia was released on her own recognizance until sentencing.

In June, when she was arrested for petty theft from a retail store, someone finally noticed that Patricia’s mental state was erratic at best, and the court ordered her to be psychologically evaluated before her prosecution went any further.

The report summarizing her August 7 assessment by forensic psychologist Robert L. Suiter is the only source of Patricia’s version of reality in her court records.

Curiously, her negative perspective and some of her life experiences—not the least of which was that she’d been given Haldol while hospitalized for psychiatric problems—were in some ways remarkably similar to Wayne’s.

She said she left high school after finishing the eleventh grade, completing her degree in 1995 through adult education. She said her marriage ended when her husband was charged with “throwing people off cliffs in carpets,” but she refused to elaborate.

After her divorce, she said, she spent two years attending classes at two community colleges, but she didn’t earn a degree. She said she “floated around,” lived with a man and had his baby, who was now living with her mother. Her only job was a six-month stint at a college library. Most of the time, the report said, “She survived financially by begging. She stated she is at times homeless and, in certain instances, she ‘sleeps in a sleeping bag under a bush.’”

She said she mostly took drugs at parties, but she had a history of consuming four mixed drinks a day. However, she denied having any alcohol since February 1997, when, she said, she was voluntarily admitted to a psychiatric hospital for three days “to treat an alcohol problem.”

The psychologist noted that she showed up fifteen minutes late to the interview, looking unkempt and disheveled. She had trouble filling out a fairly simple intake form, and she demonstrated “overt paranoia and delusional thought processes.” He said she also didn’t seem to understand the court system, or the roles of the prosecutor and her own attorney.

He diagnosed her with a nonspecific psychotic disorder with schizoid traits, found her incompetent “to assist with her own defense in a rational manner,” and recommended that she be sent to Patton State Hospital in San Bernardino “for a period of observation and treatment.” She was admitted to Patton on November 21.

Ninety percent of the population of California’s five state hospitals is made up of forensic patients—ranging from people deemed mentally incompetent to stand trial to those who are found not guilty of crimes by reason of insanity.

After undergoing inpatient treatment at Patton for about six weeks, she was deemed competent to face the charges against her.

At the time, she was on four prescribed medications: BuSpar and Klonopin (also known as clonazepam), both of which are antianxiety drugs; Risperdal, an antipsychotic drug used to treat schizophrenia, bipolar, and other personality disorders; and trazodone, a sedative and antidepressant used to treat withdrawal from cocaine and other stimulants.

“It is critical that Ms. Tamez continue taking the prescribed medication while in custody in order to ensure continued competency,” her doctors wrote upon her release from Patton.

Through another plea agreement in February 1998, Patricia pleaded guilty to making felony terrorist threats. But, yet again, she was placed on probation for three years in exchange for rehab and no jail time.

In a meeting with her probation officer on April 6, Patricia admitted that she’d left the suitcase at the armory a year earlier, but she denied any attempt to make it look like a bomb. She said she’d been suffering from severe hallucinations at the time, caused by her drug use.

“I don’t think that I threatened him [Astudillo] at all,” Patricia said. “I don’t really remember what I said . . . but I must’ve done something because I was convicted.”

Patricia told the officer that she’d attempted to check herself into a hospital with the suitcase, but the doctors refused to admit her, so she left the case at the armory.

When she came back for it the next day, the place was closed due to a bomb threat. She said she returned later to find that the police had blown up her suitcase. Patricia later said she’d believed that “the police were using computers and VCRs to do illegal things with people’s minds.” Based on her mental instability, it is unclear what actually happened that day.

“Ms. Tamez feels that she is in dire need of rehabilitation as well as psychological treatment,” her probation officer wrote. “She is currently scheduled to enter a sober living rehabilitation program and hopes to be a resident of that program for approximately eight months.”

“I just want to turn my life around,” Patricia told the officer. “I know it’s never too late. I want to work on my recovery, get a place of my own, and become a good citizen.”

The officer noted that Patricia already had 409 days of “custody credit,” and recommended that her probation be reinstated, underscoring that further violations could result in state prison time.

A few days after that meeting, Patricia was turned away from the Gibson House for Women in San Bernardino for being under the influence.

Unfortunately for Patricia, she earned the mercy of the court once again. In 2007, no court records for Patricia could be located after her April 17 court appearance, when she was placed back on three years’ probation and released on her own recognizance.

However, after being rejected from the sober-living program, her case fell through the cracks of the system and she went back to life on the streets.

“You know, you get to the point where, when you’ve got this type of addiction . . . , you have nothing left to sell, you sell your body,” Rudolfo said later. “It was the addiction that, you know, that put her there.”

Rudolfo would always remember the last time he saw Patricia.

He had gone to a friend’s house to use the Internet at 3:00
P.M.
on a Saturday. Patricia was there, so Rudolfo used the opportunity to tell her once more, “Life is short. Don’t waste it. Do something with your life.”

Patricia seemed rational, lucid, and clear that day.

“I want you to have this, Dad,” she said, handing him a red ribbon that said: “Drugs Destroy Dreams.”

When she was about to leave, he offered to take her for a hamburger, but he ended up having to stay and deal with a computer problem.

“Okay,
mi hija,
take care,” Rudolfo said. (
Mi hija
means “my daughter” in Spanish.) He said it several times, wishing that he could offer her something more in the way of concrete advice, but this was the best he could do.

By the time he realized the full extent of his daughter’s problem, it was too late. And despite her kind words, he still blamed himself for failing to do more research into addiction sooner.

“I guess I could’ve tied her down for two years to the bed, and then I would’ve ended up in deep trouble,” Rudolfo said later.

Larry Halverson, a conductor for the Burlington Northern and Santa Fe Railroad, spent afternoons doing paperwork in his office, across the street from the south-east corner of 6
^th
and D Streets in Victorville, where Patricia worked three to five days a week.

He would see her out of his picture window, standing provocatively with a couple of other “ladies of the evening.” Soliciting dates by curling suggestively around the stop sign’s pole, she would get into cars with men and return a while later to “advertise again.”