Kill the Ones You Love (28 page)

CHAPTER 1

ROMEO

 

The foothills of California's Gold Rush country sweep down from the Sierra Nevada Mountains and intersect with the great Central Valley. Perched on the edge of that meeting of hills and flatlands, El Dorado Hills is a new community compared to the other towns in the area. Placerville, “Old Hangtown,” had begun along Placerville Creek when gold miners rushed into the area in 1848. In fact, gold had been discovered by James Marshall at Sutter's Mill in Coloma, only a few miles away. It was the spark that created the epic Gold Rush of 1849, when as one writer put it,
The world rushed in.

El Dorado Hills was a developer's dream of the mid-twentieth century, with spacious lots, modern homes and small horse properties for those who wanted them and could afford them. There was even a luxurious neighborhood where people could fly their private planes onto a landing strip and park it right next to their homes. The Town Center was a collection of beautiful buildings that mirrored streets in Europe with their stone facing and wrought iron lampposts.

Nineteen-year-old Steven Colver was one of the residents of that area in 2009. Steven generally went by the name “Boston,” and he liked to hang out at the Habit coffee shop in El Dorado Hills. Steven was also into the goth lifestyle. He often wore black clothes and was addicted to Japanese anime and manga.

And like many a young man in his late teens, Steven had a younger girlfriend. In Steven's case, however, the girlfriend wasn't just a year or two younger. No, she was five years younger. His girlfriend was fourteen-year-old Tylar Witt, who also lived in the area, and she, too, was into the goth scene. Over time, she began to think of Steven as her Romeo.

No two people seemed to describe Steven in the same way. To some, he was polite, quiet spoken and intelligent. To others, he was headstrong, opinionated and bombastic. But despite his love of anime with many bloody scenes depicted withn the pages, no one thought of Steven as being violent.

During the last days of spring 2009, a seven-page story that mirrored his life and that of Tylar in El Dorado County was written. It was written in one of Steven's notebooks and later either Tylar or Steven was cited as its author. Whatever the truth, the story was fiction that interweaved fact and allegory. It paralleled the actual life Steven and his girlfriend were living that year. The story was titled, “The Killer and His Raven.”

The story was set in medieval times. Its protagonist was a nineteen-year-old man who met a smart, beautiful fourteen-year-old girl at a local tavern. It began with the two meeting and becoming good friends, “almost like siblings.” As the young man learned more about the girl's life, he discovered that she lived with a drunken, abusive mother. He promised to protect her from her mother's wrath. As the young man and the girl spent more and more time in each other's company, they realized that they loved each other.

The young man lived in his father's home, but the girl was able to convince her mother into letting the young man move in with them. There, within the walls of the girl's house, they sealed their love by a forbidden, sexual relationship. They were deeply in love with each other; but one day, the girl's mother caught them being intimate. She immediately kicked the young man out of the house and demanded that her daughter never see him again.

The girl, however, could not keep away from her lover, and her resentment deepened against her mother. The mother promised not to go to the authorities if the girl kept away from the young man. Secretly, the lovers met,
and their hope returned for three weeks.
But then the mother, suspicious about her daughter, vowed to go to the authorities with the girl's diary, which she had discovered. This diary detailed the lovemaking with the young man.

The story continued:
That is when their dreams shattered, that is when their hope vanished, and that is when this man, this 19-year-old man became a killer. Late one night, the mother was drunk as usual. Before she finished her last drink, the girl spiked the mother's whiskey with herbs from the forest. Herbs that would make her sleep. At around one in the morning, the girl snuck the boy into her house, leading this man, the 19-year-old man, to her mother's room. He stabbed her in her sleep, killing her, freeing themselves.

The story continued that the lovers ran away. Knowing that they would be hunted down, they killed themselves in a suicide pact at the town's inn.

The story was fanciful, and took great liberties in some areas. Tylar Witt's mom was no alcoholic who abused her daughter. In fact, she loved Tylar and did everything for her. But in other areas, the story was hauntingly factual. Steven and Tylar's own path had been very much like what was depicted in the story.

When it was written, Tylar's mom lay dead in her house, and no one knew about it except Steven Colver and Tylar Witt. And just like in the story, they were on the run. For the moment, only they knew how much of “The Killer and His Raven” was fact, and how much was fiction.

CHAPTER 2

JULIET

Tylar Witt may have felt she was living a happily-ever-after, fairy-tale existence with Steven Colver, her older lover, but it was soon to turn into something nightmarish that could have been written by the Brothers Grimm. Just as “The Killer and His Raven” had described its heroine, Tylar was beautiful and smart. She was also a troubled young woman who acted out against her single-parent mom. She spent hours on her MySpace page and ignored her mom whenever she could. She even cut herself on occasion and ran away a few times. One thing was very disturbing. She later claimed that she drew her own blood, because the sight of it calmed her.

Tylar wasn't some medieval peasant living in a cottage in the forest. In fact, she could have been likened more to a nobleman's daughter, ensconced as she was in an expensive home in a gated community. Tylar wanted for nothing. She had her own computer, cell phone, literally hundreds of CDs and DVDs and all sorts of electronic devices. Her mother worked hard at a local transportation agency to create a good environment for herself and her daughter. Tylar, however, only seemed to resent everything her mother did.

By the middle of June 2009, just as “The Killer and His Raven” predicted, the lovers were on the run from the law. But the modern-day Romeo and Juliet didn't go to the local inn to kill themselves—they had other plans in mind. Instead, they made their way across the Sacramento Valley to San Francisco.

And then a whirlwind of things began to happen, both for them and for law enforcement, which finally had discovered during a welfare check that Tylar's mom, forty-seven-year-old Joanne Witt, had been murdered in her own home. Detective work and sheer luck soon collided at an unexpected location—San Bruno, on the San Mateo peninsula below San Francisco, about one hundred miles away from El Dorado Hills. Also, being modern times, it didn't occur at a tavern. It happened at an AT&T store in a strip mall.

There was a “be on the lookout” (BOLO) bulletin put out by the El Dorado County Sheriff's Office (ECSO) for Steven Colver and Tylar Witt. A San Bruno policeman just happened to be going by the AT&T store when he glanced over and couldn't believe what he saw. It was a young man and a girl who matched the descriptions of the individuals wanted by ECSO. The police officer detained the couple and soon learned the individuals wanted in the BOLO were exactly the two standing in front of him.

 

 

Steven was taken to one room in the police department and Tylar to another. She sat down to an interview with Detective Mike Lensing and Detective Jeff Leikauf. These two detectives were determined to get down to the bottom of what had been transpiring over the last five days.

As fourteen-year-old Tylar Witt sat there, she began a bravura performance for someone so young. It interweaved guile, half-truths and just plain nerve, matching anything spoken by the heroine in “The Killer and His Raven.”

Detective Lensing began by asking how Tylar pronounced her first name. She told him to just call her “Ty.” Lensing then read Tylar her Miranda rights, and she waived them, agreeing that she would talk to both of them.

Lensing said, “Can you tell me what happened?”

Tylar said, “Thursday night?” (That was June 11.)

Lensing replied that was correct, so Tylar continued, “We just decided to go down to San Francisco. We were going to kill ourselves. It didn't work. Then we were going to try and drive somewhere, anywhere. It didn't matter. But the car got towed. So we walked. That's it.”

Lensing said, “Let's go back further. What happened on Thursday? Start on that day.”

Tylar responded, “I called Boston, maybe around midnight. He came to the house and I packed up some stuff in my bag. We hopped the back fence to my house and went up to the school parking lot, where he had his car.”

“Let me get this straight, you called Boston?”

“Yeah. I called him throughout the day. Once in the morning, once in the afternoon and again about three more times.”

“How did you contact him?”

“By cell phone.”

“Was it a text message?”

“No. I called him.”

Lensing asked, “Where was your mother that day?”

“She was at work. She dropped me at summer school.”

“What time did she pick you up?”

“Twelve-thirty
P.M
. That's when summer school gets out. She took me home and returned to work. She got home again, around six-thirty
P.M
. She had to stay late at work. Then she and I went to Safeway and a gas station by the Purple Place. I was a little upset because we'd had a fight. We had gotten into a fight when she dropped me off the first time.”

Lensing asked, “What was that fight about?”

“She wanted me to talk to a detective about something Boston supposedly had done. And I didn't want to talk to the detective, because it wasn't true, and I didn't want her pressing it. And she kept pressing it. We got into a fight. And then we went to our separate corners. We cool off and come back and talk about it later. She went back to work after that fight. I just kind of sat home.”

“Did you pick up that conversation in the evening?”

“No.”

Lensing asked, “Was all this in reference to a diary?”

“Yeah.”

“And you refused to speak to Detective Barber?”

“Yes.”

“Okay. So your mom goes back to work and she comes home at six-thirty
P.M
. What was the rest of your evening like?”

“I was watching a movie and playing on the computer. She had a couple of beers and she was really tired. She went upstairs and went to bed. Probably at seven-thirty. I went into her room and checked. And then I went to my room. When I checked later, she was asleep. She was rolled over on her side.”

“Was she under the covers or over the covers?”

“It was dark. I really don't remember. I think she had one leg out from the covers.”

“What time did you call Boston?”

“I called him at around ten. Then I called him about four times, making sure that my mom was deep enough asleep so I could get out of the house without the dog going berserk.”

“What time did he arrive at the house?”

“Around midnight.”

“Did he come to the front door?”

“No. He went to the back gate. He opened up the gate and he went into the backyard. He waited outside while I got my clothing. My dog knew him because he used to live in the house. He waited outside and then we hopped the fence.”

Lensing wanted to know why Boston parked in the parking lot of the school behind the house, instead of parking at the front of the house.

Tylar said, “Because of the gate code. My mom can check that. It tells who's been at the gate and at what time.”

“And what did you do from there?”

“We went back to his house. He took a shower and then I took a shower. We got in his car and went to sleep. We slept at the library parking lot for a couple of hours. The El Dorado Hills Library. Then we went over to Town Center. We parked in front of the Holiday Inn and stayed there and maybe dozed for thirty minutes. We decided we needed some hair dye and some food. So we got that at Safeway in El Dorado Hills. We dyed our hair at his dad's home.”

“Why did you need the hair dye and food? Were you going to run away?”

“Yeah. We just bought orange juice. We also went up to the Dollar Tree and bought some Top Ramen, Cup Noodles and sunglasses.”

Lensing wondered what they were going to do when they got to San Francisco.

Tylar explained, “Rent a room in a hotel and wait until Monday. We rented a room at the Holiday Inn. We just wanted to make the most of our last few days. Wait until Monday.” (Author's note: Tylar was implying that they would kill themselves then.) “We purchased some rat poison. We consumed it, but it didn't kill us.”

“Did it make you feel sick at your stomach?”

“Not really.”

“Did you reach out to anybody to tell them what you were going to do?”

“I called my best friend, and Boston called his best friend.”

Lensing wanted to know who Tylar's best friend was. She said, “Matthew Widman.” For Boston, it was Matthew Bogert.

Lensing asked if she had contacted any friends on Thursday, June 11.

Tylar replied, “Um, on Friday. We met up with a lot of our friends then. Matthew, my friend Richard—we all went down to the Town Center and hung out for a couple of hours. Then we went back to Boston's house. We just hung out there, and I didn't tell Matt this was the last time we were going to see him, but we kind of forced him to stay with us as a trio. Me, Matt and Boston. We're family. And we kind of told him, ‘You're not going anywhere. You're staying here with us.' He lives kind of out in the boonies. And we stopped near a crossroads and hung out there for an hour and a half. Then we gave him a hug and said good-bye. We started driving to San Francisco.”

“Did Boston give anyone his last will and testament?”

“We sent letters out. Just to our friends. And one to my cousin. It was mostly just because Matt (Widman) was my best friend, and I wanted him to be okay, and that I loved him like a brother. And my cousin has always been there for me. And I wanted him to know.”

At that point, Detective Lensing was through beating around the bush on minor details. He said, “Okay, let's get down to the point here. Why are you here?”

Tylar responded, “Because I tried to run away.”

Surprised by her answer, Lensing said, “Because you tried to run away?”

Tylar replied, “That's what I'm gonna guess.”

Lensing countered, “Well, we know that's not the reason that you're here.”

“What other reason is there?”

Lensing laid it on the line. “You're being arrested for murder.”

Tylar exclaimed, “What! Who did I murder?”

“Okay, well, let's go back to Thursday.”

Tylar insisted, “Who did I murder?”

“Your mother.”

With a great deal of emotion, and what passed for surprise, Tylar said, “What? My mom's dead?”

Disgusted with her answers, Lensing said, “We don't really need to play this. We already know that your mom's dead. My partner and I have been doing this for a long time. We've done our homework. We've talked to literally everybody you know. We know lots of things. This here is questioning to give you a chance to tell your side of what's going on. As soon as we're done here, we're going to talk to Boston and get his version. Now you can help yourself. I get the feeling you're just realizing that this may be in your best interest to tell us the entire truth, and not just part of the truth.”

By now, Tylar was shaking and crying.

Lensing said, “Tylar, can you pull yourself together for just a minute and talk to me about your mother?”

To this, Tylar declared, “Go away! It's not true!”

“What's not true?”

“She's not dead. She can't be dead!”

“She is dead.”

Like a petulant child, Tylar exclaimed, “No, she's not!”

“Tylar, talk to me about your mother. Tell me about Thursday.”

To this, Tylar replied, “I want an attorney. I want you gone! How dare you!”

Lensing replied, “You want an attorney and you want me gone? Okay. That we can do. Unfortunately, we can't talk to you again. Good luck.”

By now, Tylar was sobbing and cried out, “Mommy! She just can't be dead. It's not true! She's not dead. Mommy, Mommy, Mommy! You're not dead. No, no. You're not dead! You can't be dead!”

The two detectives looked at Tylar and her hysterics and didn't believe a word of it. They were certain that Tylar knew that her mother was dead and exactly how she had died. They believed Tylar had been right there when her mother was murdered in her own bed with more than twenty knife wounds in her body. And the detectives were determined to find every shred of evidence linking Tylar and her boyfriend, Steven Colver, to this murder. They wanted to start at the beginning of the story; and in many ways, the story began on the day of Tylar's birth.