Disturbed Ground (45 page)

"Was Dorothea at the house that evening?"

"Yes."

"What did she tell you?"

"She said that Mom was sick, and not to bother her. And I said, ‘I want to see her.' And she said, ‘The doctor was just here and gave her a shot. She's sleeping. Let her sleep.'"

"Did Dorothea tell you what type of illness your mother had?"

"No."

"Had Dorothea, in the past, ever said anything to you about medical training that she had?"

"Yes. She told me that she'd worked at a care home for the elderly as a nurse's aide."

The jury was intent. Even the defendant, who at first seemed to ignore this witness, set down her papers and listened.

"Did she say anything else?"

"Just that the doctor had been there, and she just kept trying to keep me from going into the room."

"Did you finally go into the room?"

"Yes."

"What did you see?"

"My mom was lying on the bed, facing the wall, on her side, and I went in and touched her and kind of moved her, rolled her over a little, and told her everything would be all right, Dorothea would take care of her, that I would be back the next night to check on her."

"Were you able to tell whether she was asleep or awake?"

"When I first went into the room, I couldn't tell. She looked like she was asleep." Voice thick, Clausen continued, "And when I rolled her over, her eyes were open and she just stared at me. She couldn't talk. She couldn't say anything. When I told her that Dorothea was going to take care of her and I'd be back to check on her the next evening, a tear come out of her eye."

"Why didn't you get any medical attention for your mother?"

"Because we trusted Dorothea," he said bleakly. "She had us believing that she would take care of Mom, she wouldn't let anything happen to her. And then when she said that the doctor had been there, I didn't know any different. As far as doctors coming to the house, I didn't think anything of it. I just figured, well, Dorothea will take care of her. I'll go home."

It had taken 114 witnesses, but O'Mara finally moved hearts with this bitter tableau.

With each of Munroe's children—William and Allan Clausen and Rosemary Gibson—the court heard the most heartrending testimony yet. But when O'Mara turned his witnesses over for cross-examination, the defense did their best to drain out all emotion, steamrolling Munroe's death to a flat, pointless suicide.

It was true that Harold Munroe, Ruth's new husband, had terminal cancer, and he'd run up a $7,000 medical bill. Yes, they'd been in the throes of divorce. And, yes, Ruth and Dorothea's restaurant business was going under.

Painting Munroe as broke and depressed, the defense carefully highlighted contradictions. Her kids had insisted that "she just didn't drink at all," yet she'd spent a lot of time with Harold in bars, and her autopsy showed an enlarged liver, which indicated a drinking problem. The children said they were close to their mother, yet they didn't know she'd recently been prescribed a mild tranquillizer. And they were wrong about her codeine allergy
.
The defense wanted the jury to wonder whether these kids knew their mother as well as they thought they did, for they had all maintained that she would never have committed suicide.

CHAPTER43

Detective Wilbur Terry stared up at the ceiling, trying to recall the morning of New Year's Day, 1986. He had the sort of rugged face you'd expect to see up on horseback, under a cowboy hat. When he spoke, his voice was low and husky from years of smoking. "When I first got there, I was directed to the edge of the river," he said. "I saw a wooden box with the lid off, about three feet off the river. There was a body in the box."

O'Mara handed him a stack of photos, and Terry stroked a bushy mustache as he looked at them.

"Was the box up against a tree?" O'Mara asked.

"It appears to be, but as I recall it wasn't," he growled. "The body in the box was wrapped in clear plastic and a bed sheet. All I could see was the clear plastic at that point."

O'Mara asked if anything was used to fasten the plastic.

"Black electrical tape. And the sheet was tied in knots."

O'Mara asked about the box.

"It was plywood. Looked fairly new."

"Did you inspect the lid?"

"Yes. The lid had been nailed on all the way around." He speculated about how the lid had been pried off, noting, "The nails on the land side were straight, on the river side, they were all bent over. And they were rusty. All the nails were rusty."

"How was the body?"

"The body had slid down in the box, more or less in a fetal position. And the box was at quite an angle…. You could see enough to tell it was a body."

"Was there an odor?"

"Yes, it was deteriorating badly at this point."

If the jurors had any trouble getting the scene in mind, John O'Mara had more than pictures to help them. At the next break, he wrestled the box into place. When the jurors returned, it was standing on end in front of the jury box, tagged "Homicide."

Without seeing it, they took their seats, joking and good-humored as usual. As they all noticed the weathered and stained coffin, their faces hardened, gravity registering in their eyes.

Lieutenant Wilbur Terry resumed the stand, and O'Mara had him identify the box. While the jurors scrutinized this ugly evidence, he asked Terry a few summary questions. Finally, he handed this witness over to the defense.

Clymo said he had no questions and quickly removed the box to the back of the room. The defense had other tactics.

Sure, Everson Gillmouth had been found dead in a box by the side of the river, but that still didn't prove he was murdered. The man was seventy-seven years old, had phlebitis in his leg and a heart condition. He could have died of a stroke, a heart attack, any number of things. Dr. Hanf had testified that his autopsy showed nothing suspicious. Even his toxicology reports came back clean.

It was Ismael Florez, the builder of the box, that seemed dirty.

O'Mara got nothing more out of Florez than he'd learned from the preliminary hearing transcripts. Florez had built the box for Dorothea for "storage." He'd dumped it at her direction without asking a single question. And he'd bought Gillmouth's nearly new pickup truck for eight hundred dollars and a few days of work. Sure.

Peter Vlautin wasn't buying any of this, and he struggled to get Florez to admit more on cross-examination. He asked, "Didn't Dorothea Puente tell you that Gillmouth had a heart attack and she needed a coffin?"

Florez denied this. He didn't know what was in the box. He'd just built it, then left it with the lid off.

Steering the witness over to the makeshift coffin, Vlautin asked, "You said Mrs. Puente told you she nailed the lid, right?"

"Yes."

"The nails on the lid all appear to be in a nice, straight line, don't they?”

"Yes."

Florez admitted that he was a pretty good carpenter, that he could hammer nails in straight, but then he balked and Vlautin pushed: "Anyone would be able to put in all these nails without hammer marks, is that what you're saying?"

"Yes."

"I don't believe you," Vlautin muttered in disgust.

"You're arguing with the witness," Virga interjected.

Florez was excused, and he exited the courtroom, taking his secrets with him.

Reba Nicklous, Everson Gillmouth's sister from Oregon, came in with hair now as white as Dorothea's. She was a bit more halt of step, but just as clear of mind as she had been at the prelim.

Clymo remembered her as a dangerous witness. O'Mara had only just met her, but he knew that she—and the letters—were key.

Dressed up in purple, she looked so pretty and frail that it was almost a shock when she spoke in her strong, full voice, explaining how her brother had left Oregon in August 1985, intent on marrying Dorothea Puente. When she'd received no word from him, she got worried and asked the Sacramento police to check on him. Then she'd received a phone call from her chagrined older brother. "That was the last time I ever heard from him," she said.

She couldn't remember when, exactly, but she later received a phone call from Dorothea Puente. "She said they were planning on coming up around Thanksgiving time," Reba recalled. And Dorothea had wanted to know "would she be accepted. And I said, if everything was on the up and up, she would be."

Now O'Mara moved to the letters, those damning, duplicitous letters that the defense could do nothing about, that Puente was surely vexed were still in existence. (Even Reba was amazed that she'd kept them.) In a clear voice, she read the first one, dated October 14, 1985:

Dear Reba,

Gill is staying at my home. He's got the trailer parked for now.

He asked me to write and let you know he's O.K.—said you know how much he hates to write.

He’s doing well with selling some of his carvings.

Said he did not want you to have the police out again.

I’ll try & drop you a line every couple weeks. We might get married in November.

Take care and God Bless,

Dorothea Puente

Maybe it seemed innocent enough to the unenlightened, but to O'Mara this sounded like a death notice. He had to wait until closing arguments to explain, so he hoped the jury was paying attention. Glancing over, he saw some of them taking notes.

The second letter, written on flowered stationary and dated October 22, was chatty and rambling. Reba Nicklous also read this one into the record:

Hello,

Gill's busy with his carving, getting ready to take some to Palm Springs to sell.

He sold five for a nice price. He’s made six redwood coffee tables real pretty odd shapes, made one for the living room—looks real nice, and matches nice with my furniture.

They turned him down at the Vets.
But when we get married next month he can get on my VA Insurance.

His leg been bothering him again, and he’s having trouble driving a little. He got new glasses so sees a little better.

We will get married on November 2nd.

He wanders around in my big flat. He sold his trailer 9 days ago. And is getting a patio room for the back yard to work in.

He’s fixed a lot of furniture for people and is making quite a bit extra money for himself.

We will go to Palm Springs next month so he can sell most of his carvings.

Hope this finds you and yours well.

Write soon

Dorothea & Gil

Gillmouth was surely dead when Puente wrote this—but Reba couldn't have known.

Next, O'Mara handed his witness a brief, disconcerting mailgram ostensibly from Everson. He specifically asked Reba the date, November 2, hoping the jury would notice that this was the day that Everson and Dorothea were supposed to marry.