Lost Girls (30 page)

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Authors: Caitlin Rother

BOOK: Lost Girls
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Explaining how much pain the end of their relationship had caused him, he wrote:
You broke it off by text and then wouldn't let me see my kids. I was being good, clean and sober still at that time. You really hurt me and to be very honest with you, that's when I lost it. On top of that, you couldn't even send me an e-mail or letter one last time to say good bye. I hate you so much for the pain, but have never stopped loving you. For that, I hate myself because I want to hate you, so the pain of loosing [
sic
] you would go away, but it will never happen. At least now you won't have to deal with me anymore.
Even if she decided to change the boys' last name, he said, he urged her to let Cathy see her grandchildren:
Take care of the only good I saw left in the world for me. They are everything.
 
 
The Sunday that Gardner was arrested, his sister Melissa and her kids had spent all day at Disneyland. They were driving home when Mona, his other sister, called Melissa around eleven o'clock at night.
“Are you watching the news?” Mona asked.
“No, we're driving back from Disneyland. Why? What's going on?”
“They're saying that our brother, John, was arrested for murder and assault.”
“What are you talking about?”
Mona said she wanted to forewarn Melissa about the arrest, because she lived in L.A., and the media might start hounding her.
Melissa couldn't believe it. After bonding with her brother at their father's funeral, she'd been excited to be back in touch with him and had invited him to her son's fourth birthday party on January 24, 2009, about fourteen months earlier. He'd brought his two boys, Jariah and her son to a “bounce house” in Santa Clarita, then back to her house for cake. Gardner had introduced Jariah as his girlfriend, but he didn't hug or kiss her, and they didn't really seem much like a couple. Melissa could tell that he was still hurt and angry about Donna; he clearly hadn't gotten over her. But overall, he seemed fine.
“I would never have guessed at my party that he was going through something because he was laughing and smiling and playing with his kids,” she said.
Melissa had invited him back for a Super Bowl party on February 1, and when he didn't show up, she called and left several messages, asking “Are you coming?” But he never responded.
As the talking heads on TV speculated that Gardner had killed both girls, Melissa was in bed for a week, throwing up. Last time she'd seen him, she'd invited him and his kids to stay for the whole weekend, to involve him in her new family.
This can't be true. This can't be true,
she kept thinking. She couldn't bring herself to talk to him again.
Jariah Baker wanted to understand how and why her boyfriend had done these terrible things, and why she never knew about them, so she went to see him at the county jail. It's not clear how much he told her, but he must have shared some of his frustrations because she gave him a business card for the woman who had interviewed her, who she thought was an FBI agent.
Gardner called the woman in late March to complain that Amber's family still hadn't been told he'd led authorities to her body, and he accused his attorneys of being in on some kind of conspiracy. Only, he wasn't calling the FBI. He'd reached Sonja Ramos, one of the DOJ agents attached to the sheriff's homicide unit. She, in turn, passed Gardner on to her supervisor, Tyler Burtis.
Later that day, Gardner's attorney, Michael Popkins, heard about the call from his boss, who had been notified in a chain of calls originating from the jail. Popkins headed over there to talk with Gardner and shut him up before he ruined everything.
“What are you doing?” Popkins asked. “You're going to screw this whole thing up.”
Popkins repeated what he'd already told his impatient client, that all would be revealed in good time, but that time had not yet arrived.
“He wanted the world to know what a nice guy he was for doing the right thing,” Popkins said.
 
 
Gardner's ex-girlfriend Jenni Tripp first learned of his capture on Facebook, where a Rim of the World High School graduate had written something about having gone to school “with this scumbag.”
Another graduate posted a similar comment after the two-hour
Dateline
premiere on the case aired in the fall of 2010:
This episode scared the crap out of me. I went to high school with the psycho... . Makes me want to never let my kids out of my site [
sic
].
Even though Jenni was married, with three children and living out of state, reporters managed to track her down almost immediately.
“All I know is I was bombarded by phone calls, texts, Facebook, and it was all over CNN,” she said recently.
As she watched the story unfold on TV, her thought process went like this:
I can't believe that he was arrested. I can't believe that they think he did this. I can't believe that he actually did this. Oh crap, I'm getting another call from a reporter.
She let the phone calls go to voice mail as she screened them, choosing to speak to only one female TV reporter from San Diego.
Jenni spoke to her childhood friend Donna Hale right after the arrest, and every day for about two weeks after that. Jenni didn't want to believe the accusations against Gardner were true, because she didn't see how the John she knew could ever do something like this. But Donna, the mother of his children, seemed to accept it as the truth right off the bat.
“I don't know how I'm going to tell my boys what their father is,” she told Jenni.
After those two weeks of conversations, Donna stopped returning Jenni's calls and texts.
“I wanted to defend him,” Jenni said. “Every time he'd take a step forward, he'd get beaten back. I know it's not an excuse.” But maybe these things wouldn't have happened if he hadn't gone to prison in the first place, she said, or if the parole officer hadn't made him move or quit his job in L.A. “Then I think he might not have snapped.”
Cathy Osborn told Jenni that she could contact Gardner at the county jail, which she did about a week after his arrest. She first reached out to him via e-mail, then they communicated by phone.
“I was trying to understand what was going on,” she said.
When he called her, using a prepaid phone card, she asked him about Chelsea's murder.
“Did you really do it?” she asked.
“Yes, I did it,” he said.
“Well, why? You're going to have to tell me more than that.”
But he couldn't give her a good answer. “He said he was sorry that he hurt anybody, that he really hoped he'd get the death penalty, because he didn't want to live with what he'd done.”
Gardner continued to call her two or three times a week, including on his birthday. Weeks later, he told her there was “something else that was going to come to light” on the news the next day, and he'd call her to discuss it after she'd watched it on TV.
“He said he wasn't allowed to tell me,” she said.
Chapter 31
After five weeks of failed attempts to link John Gardner to the murder of Amber Dubois, District Attorney Bonnie Dumanis was ready to act on the plea deal. But before she did anything, she wanted to check with the Kings to make sure they were okay with settling for a guilty plea.
“I never make those decisions lightly,” she said, adding that she'd gathered all the information she felt she needed, weighed it and discussed the issue with others in her office, including her second in command, Jesse Rodriguez, who had been a judge for sixteen years. The DA's office had had a 94 percent conviction rate since Dumanis was elected in 2002.
When she met with Chelsea's parents, she informed them that they didn't have the evidence to make a case against Gardner for Amber's death, and that she was considering accepting his guilty plea to the two murders in exchange for a life sentence, because it would provide closure to the Dubois family.
“I would like your input into the decision,” she said, adding that if they didn't feel comfortable with this option, her office would move forward with a death penalty trial on Chelsea's death and the assault on Candice Moncayo. Dumanis didn't always comply with what a family wanted her to do, but this case was different. This one called for a higher level of sensitivity.
Knowing the Kings were analytical and methodical, Dumanis presented them with the realities of California's broken death penalty system. While sitting on death row waiting to die, more than fifty condemned prisoners had died of natural causes since 1980, and nearly twenty more by suicide. Only fourteen prisoners had been executed since 1978, when the death penalty was reinstated, partly because no executions took place until 1992, and then because of the moratorium in 2006, to which there was no end in sight. She explained the appeals process—how long it would drag out—and what this would mean to their family, to Tyler and to Amber's family.
“You and I will never see this happen in our lifetime,” she told the Kings.
Brent and Kelly, who had originally wanted the death penalty for Gardner, said they needed some time to think about it. But they didn't take long. Dumanis met with them again a couple of days later and they agreed. They knew the pain the Dubois family felt, and if this was the only way for them to get justice and a resolution to their daughter's death, then so be it.
“I think the Kings' decision was largely to spare the Dubois family,” Dumanis said. “They wanted them to have the same legal conclusion... . Amber deserves to have someone held responsible and accountable for that murder.”
On the morning of April 15, prosecutor Kristen Spieler let Michael Popkins know it was a go. Gardner's attorney was pleased, but not surprised.
“I've been doing this for thirty-four years,” he said. “I know when a case is going to settle and when it's not.”
The DA's office called Moe Dubois at nine o'clock that morning and asked him to come in that afternoon. To protect him from a media onslaught, they told him to go to a downtown parking lot a couple of blocks away at 2:00
P.M.
There, he, Rebecca Smith and Carrie McGonigle were picked up in a car with tinted windows and driven to a private lot under the courthouse. After the meeting, they were taken back the same way.
Now that the Kings were on board, Dumanis was more in a position of telling the Dubois family rather than asking them about her decision. She told them the Kings had agreed, and that she was moving forward with the plea deal. They seemed to understand that this was really their only option.
“They were grateful to the Kings and [seemed] to accept not going forward with the death penalty,” Dumanis said.
Dumanis didn't know how all of this would play out in the media, or even if they would make it through the hearing without Gardner changing his mind. She also didn't know if there would be a backlash in the community for not going to trial. “People wanted severe justice in this case,” she said. But “I had to do this, regardless of whether there was a backlash or not, because I felt this was the right thing to do.”
Popkins agreed. “I felt this was the appropriate result for this case, given the circumstances,” he said. “There's always going to be some hotheads out there who want the death penalty, no matter what,” but in his view, this deal was good for the community. Chelsea's classmates could go to the prom and start school in the fall without the court proceedings hanging over their heads. “People can move on.”
 
 
John Gardner already had a status hearing scheduled for April 16. Not wanting to jeopardize the plea deal, the DA's office gave no heads-up to the media that this would be a significant event. The prosecutor had quietly filed a new charge for Amber's murder right before the hearing. So when Gardner stood up and entered his guilty plea, admitting to both murders, it came as a surprise to most everyone but the small group that knew about the deal. Sentencing was set for June 1.
Coincidentally, the media had only just filed a motion objecting to the gag order, calling it “vague” and “overly broad in violation of the U.S. and California Constitutions” and “unnecessary to protect the right of the defendant to a fair trial.” And now that Gardner's plea deal had been finalized, Judge Danielsen questioned the need for such an order.
At this point, a shift change occurred in the parties that wanted to keep the gag in place, with the victims' families now being the enthusiastic advocates. Their attorneys argued that search warrants, affidavits, autopsy photos and investigative reports should also be kept under seal because releasing them would violate Marsy's Law, also known as the Victims' Bill of Rights Act of 2008, which protected the memory and privacy of Amber, Chelsea and their families. As each judge who had issued multiple warrants was asked to release the related affidavits, some agreed, and a number of the warrants were unsealed.
In light of the families' concerns, Danielsen amended the gag order to allow Dumanis to hold a news conference on the plea agreement, but he kept it in place until the parties could discuss the matter further. At a hearing a couple of weeks later, he lifted the gag and ruled that all parties could discuss the investigation.
Looking back on these rulings in 2011, Judge David Danielsen said, “There is nothing more fundamental to our society than freedom of the press.”
After John Gardner's plea was accepted, he said, the families were trying to prevent what he considered the inappropriate use of legitimate information, but it “was not the role of the court to predetermine what's newsworthy and what's important.”
“That's why you were our hero that day,” reporter Paul Krueger, of KNSD-TV, the NBC affiliate, told Danielsen at a bar association dinner.
 
 
After the plea deal was formally accepted in court, Bonnie Dumanis held a news conference to explain her reasons for going forward with it.
“The murders of Chelsea King and Amber Dubois have shaken the collective soul of our community and beyond,” she said, flanked by both families, prosecutor Kristen Spieler, Sheriff Bill Gore, Chief Jim Maher and Lieutenant Bob Benton. “San Diegans especially came together to wrap their arms and hearts around these families as they faced their darkest days. Today is an especially hard day as these families now face the reality of it all.”
The decision to accept Gardner's offer to lead them to Amber's body, knowing the prosecution couldn't use the information against him, was necessary “to end the anguish of the unknown for the Dubois family and to bring Amber home,” she said.
A multijurisdictional task force and area crime labs had tried but failed to connect Gardner to Amber's murder, she said. “We could not make a case. We kept the information about how we located Amber's body secret to protect the integrity of the case. Unfortunately, we still do not have enough evidence to prove beyond a reasonable doubt, independent of the defendant's cooperation, that would convict him in court. This means our office would not be able to pursue charges against Gardner for murdering Amber. In the case of Chelsea King, there were no agreements made.”
By going forward with this deal, she said, “we are obtaining a conviction for the murder of Amber that we otherwise would not have been able to obtain... . While Chelsea's case was moving down the path of a death penalty decision—most of us realize a death sentence at this time is a hollow promise in California. Even if death was imposed, Brent, Kelly and their family would have to endure a preliminary hearing, a trial, decades of appeals and the pain of reliving the murder over and over again.”
Both families, she said, “understood that in the end, this was the best possible outcome we could hope for everyone involved. As a result of this plea, we will not be seeking the death penalty. But we do know that a sentence of life without parole means this defendant will die in prison... . Nothing can replace the lives of Chelsea King and Amber Dubois, but today is another step as their families come to terms with their loss. Our hearts go out to them—and to our community deeply affected by these crimes.”
A somber Moe Dubois said he was thankful for the past year's work by all parties involved to help forge “a resolution in the case and allowing us to have justice and closure for Amber's case... . As you can imagine, this turn of events in the case came as a surprise to us when we were informed about the details yesterday.”
Brent King said the decision whether to bless this plea deal was torturous, but he and Kelly decided to go along with it to help Amber's family and their own, particularly their son, Tyler.
“The Dubois family has been through unthinkable hell the past fourteen months,” he said. “We couldn't imagine the confession to Amber's murder never seeing the light of day, leaving an eternal question mark.”
Not having to endure a trial that could span several years meant that Brent King and his family could focus on the legislative work they'd started to help protect other children. “While our unequivocal first choice is the death penalty, we acknowledge that in California that penalty has become an empty promise,” Brent said. “There is nothing satisfying about this moment. It is only one more unbearably painful day that we will have to carry in our memory as long as we live.”
 
 
The community's reaction to the plea deal was mixed. There was behind-the-scenes grumbling in some circles that Dumanis had made the deal too soon and that ending a murder investigation after just five weeks was premature. Gardner, they said, could have buried more bodies in the remote areas where his GPS bracelet showed he'd visited at odd hours, sometimes in the middle of the night. If given more time, witnesses or informants could have come forward with important details or evidence linking Gardner to Amber's murder, details that would allow prosecutors to win a death sentence that many felt Gardner so richly deserved.
Sheriff Gore said he was unaware of this criticism because no one had complained to him. “I can't think of anything else we could have done,” he said in 2011. “Nobody on the law enforcement side was pleading with the DA, ‘Give us more time.'”
Even though they all thought a death penalty case against Gardner for Chelsea's murder would be a “slam dunk” conviction, he said, there was no doubt in his mind that “it was the right thing to do for that family, for the Dubois family, and for Tyler, especially.”
EPD's Bob Benton agreed, noting that with no links to Gardner other than his confession, this was almost the perfect crime.
 
 
Jenni Tripp watched the news that day as Gardner had instructed. When he called her, as promised, her queries and his answers came in spurts during their hour-long conversation, because she couldn't take too much information at a time.
“Why didn't you tell me?” she asked. “I could have saved Chelsea.”
“I'm sorry, I don't have a why,” he said.
Later, Jenni recalled that he didn't seem to be trying to downplay what he'd done, but she did notice that he never used words like “kill” or “murder.” He just said he was sorry he didn't tell her “all this bad stuff.”

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