Mean Justice (17 page)

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MONTH AFTER THAT NIGHTLONG SEARCH AND
interrogation at Pat Dunn’s house, the sheriff’s department still had no case against its prime (and only) suspect in the murder of Alexandra Paola Dunn. They had no murder weapon, no witnesses, no evidence. They had sprayed every room in the house with Luminol, a substance that, under ultraviolet light, reveals minute and hidden blood stains, even on surfaces that have been scrubbed clean to the naked eye. That was why they had showed up late at night to search Pat’s house, so they could conduct the Luminol tests in darkness. A similarly extensive examination had turned up evidence in the Dana Butler murder case years before, even after Police Commissioner Glenn Fitts had commercially steam cleaned the rug on which Dana bled. Yet the Luminol had revealed not a drop of blood anywhere in the Dunn house, not in the bedroom, where they figured Pat had stabbed Sandy, not even in the plumbing, parts of which they dismantled and tested for evidence that he had washed off bloody hands or clothes. And it had been a bloody murder, no doubt about that: The coroner said Sandy would have bled profusely from her abdominal wound.

The search had come up empty everywhere else as well: There were no telltale plants, fibers or traces in the
home or in any of the Dunns’ three cars that might link Pat to the place where Sandy was buried. Two of the cars, the old fin-backed boat of a Cadillac that had been Pat Paola’s and Sandy’s old Chrysler Cordoba, had been under canvas covers and likely had not been moved in months, if not years. Still, the criminalists had vacuumed and sprayed and printed them right along with Pat’s white Chevy Blazer. They had scraped dirt from the axles and wheels, combed foxtails and seeds from the carpets and upholstery. But nothing in the cars matched the burial site. If anything, the search of the cars had suggested none of them had ever been to the place where Sandy’s body was found. Soliz had even gone to the gravesite and, though weeks had passed since the body was found and a previous search had turned up nothing, he still reported finding several gray carpet fibers there. He excitedly brought them to Dunn’s house for yet another search, expecting a match. But there was no gray carpeting anywhere in the house or in the cars—the fibers had to have come from someone or somewhere else. Pat Dunn’s was exactly the opposite of the Dana Butler case, in which the physical evidence seemed so overwhelming while the suspect was given every benefit of the doubt.

These setbacks aside, John Soliz remained more certain than ever that Dunn was guilty: Pat’s seemingly odd behavior, his drinking, his failure to tell friends and associates about Sandy’s disappearance for days, his failure to produce a photo of Sandy or to take a lie detector test, the fact that he stood to inherit all of his wife’s considerable wealth—all reeked of guilt to the veteran homicide detective. Everyone who looked at the case from this perspective said the same thing: Pat must have done it.

And it wasn’t
all
just hunches and perceptions—there
really was some damning testimony out there, Soliz knew. There was the secretary for the Dunns’ accountant, for one, an earnest young woman with a firm, clear memory and a set of office calendars to back her up. The secretary, Ann Kidder, had contradicted Pat’s story in a big way when she recalled Sandy telephoning her on July 1 to reschedule an appointment. Nothing unusual about that—except that this phone call came twelve hours
after
Pat Dunn swore Sandy had disappeared. This discrepancy was one of the main reasons the case had become a homicide investigation long before the body turned up. Such a glaring inconsistency could not be easily explained away. Soliz considered the secretary a great witness, and she was absolutely certain that she had spoken to Sandy at the critical time. Which meant, as far as Soliz was concerned, Pat Dunn had to be a liar. Maybe he reported Sandy missing first, to set up an alibi, then killed her, Soliz theorized. Was that why Pat had not wanted anyone to know she was missing? Because he hadn’t done it yet?
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Another big hole in Pat’s story, Soliz believed, was this whole Alzheimer’s business. Friends of Sandy, particularly Kate Rosenlieb and Pat DeMond, were emphatic that Alexandra Dunn had no memory problems—Pat had to be lying about that, too. A few people had supported Dunn on this, but many others said no way, Sandy was bright and alert. Soliz had even asked Pat why so many people contradicted him on the Alzheimer’s question, and all he would say was, “They don’t know Mom like I do.” Rosenlieb had insisted this was a cover story, and Soliz tended to agree with her.

Finally, there were friends of the Dunns—Rosenlieb especially—who described the couple’s marriage as a battleground.
One friend said she was certain Sandy planned to get a divorce—plans a tearful Sandy supposedly had announced just weeks before her demise. That was the key, Soliz figured. Because of Sandy’s will, Pat had a lot to gain if his marriage outlived his wife, and a lot to lose if the marriage died first. Pat had five million reasons to kill, Soliz knew. But odd behavior and a possible motive, as suspicious as they might be, did not amount to hard evidence. If he was going to nail Pat Dunn, the detective needed more.

John Soliz had a reputation as a dogged investigator, a Texas transplant who had been with the Kern County Sheriff since 1975, first as a patrol deputy, then in narcotics, and now in the most prestigious assignment for a detective in any police department, robbery homicide. He trusted his instincts in a case—which is why, after observing Pat Dunn, hearing him talk, seeing him refuse the lie-detector test, he felt confident that Dunn was guilty, a lack of hard evidence notwithstanding. In Soliz’s estimation, Pat was smart enough and wily enough to clean up a crime scene. Enough time had passed, perhaps, to account for the fact that even microscopic evidence was missing from Dunn’s home and cars. He felt Pat had been trying to divert him toward fruitless avenues of investigation—spurious sightings of his wife, tales of Alzheimer’s—and he observed Pat getting defensive and resistant as he pressured and provoked him, another sign of guilt in Soliz’s opinion.

Soliz saw himself working hard and diligently on this case, interviewing far more witnesses than in many other murder investigations. Throughout, he would later reflect, he tried to keep an open mind, to look at other possibilities. But everything kept pointing at the husband.
No surprise there, really: It has long been a truism that a majority of homicides are committed by family members or lovers, rather than by strangers (though this balance has in recent years shifted somewhat). Every indication in the Dunn case suggested to Soliz that the old pattern applied here.

And so it had galled the veteran detective that, after their long interrogation, they had to leave Dunn’s house empty-handed, their handcuffs still clipped to their belts instead of on Dunn’s wrists. Soliz
knew
what happened. And there’s nothing worse for a cop than knowing what happened—and not being able to prove it. What they needed, he knew, was a witness, someone who could finger Dunn as the killer. The vain searches, Pat’s denials, none of it would matter if they had a witness. And for a long time, Soliz had felt certain something would pop up: The case had been all over the papers and television, with increasing hints that the authorities suspected Pat Dunn. Soliz’s boss had even made an on-air appeal for information. But nothing came of it.

Then, on August 19, a month and a half into the case and just as it was drifting to the bottom of the pile of human misery accumulating on Soliz’s desk, the call came in that would change everything. Anonymous. A gruff, male voice who asked the secretary for Soliz by name and claimed to have information on the Dunn case. As the secretary transferred the call, Soliz wondered: Would it be another worthless tip, like the dozen other calls they had gotten reporting Sandy, dazed and dirty, supposedly roaming around a Bakersfield slum—a week after the body was found in the desert. Or would it be something of value? The detective grabbed the phone and barked one word, as he always did: “Soliz.”

Silence. Then the voice. “I don’t want to get involved. I don’t want to identify myself. But I have some information for you . . .”

“I’m listening,” Soliz said. And he did.

After the caller and the cop chatted for a while, and Soliz heard enough to conclude that there might be something of value here, the caller abruptly abandoned his desire to remain anonymous. He would get involved after all, and agreed to meet the detective for lunch at a Denny’s restaurant off the freeway, so he could pass on his information in person.

Once they were together and the waitress had filled their coffee cups, Soliz’s new informant had quite a story to tell. A month and a half ago, he told the detective, he drove to a market on the east side of Bakersfield for a rendezvous with a drug dealer named Ray. It was after midnight, the parking lot deserted and quiet, perfect for scoring a fix. But upon arrival, Ray lamented that he had lost his dope. A police cruiser had started tailing him and he panicked, tossing out the window his bindle of heroin wrapped inside a crumpled cigarette pack. The cop car had moved on, but the dope was gone, Ray said. He wasn’t sure exactly where this happened—he had no street names—but he described the intersection. Faced with a gnawing need for heroin, Soliz’s new informant decided to try to find it himself, and he began trolling the area at one in the morning in search of an old Marlboro box with a precious, dirty secret inside.

While cruising through an east-side neighborhood of spacious homes with broad green lawns, the informant spotted an intersection that looked like it might be the right one. He stopped his car so he could search for Ray’s lost drugs. Then, while poking around in the middle of
the street, he heard a strange noise. It sounded like furniture moving inside one of the houses.

“I got scared. So I hid behind some trash cans,” he told Soliz. That’s when he saw a man dragging something out of a house across the street, about thirty feet away, a large, heavy bundle wrapped in a sheet and a blanket. The man loaded his bundle into a white Chevy pickup truck with a camper shell, which was parked in the driveway next to a white Ford Tempo or Taurus. Then, just as the bundle was sliding out of sight, the informant saw something else. “A human hand flopped out of one end—a woman’s left hand.”

The man was Pat Dunn, the informant told Soliz, and the hand had to have been his wife Sandy’s. The witness was so shaken by what he saw that he hightailed it out of there and fled in his mother’s green Pontiac Sunbird, borrowed for the evening drug buy.

It was a wild story, Detective Soliz knew. But he saw no reason to doubt the tale, which confirmed all of his suspicions about his prime suspect. And if it checked out, the detective had his witness—just what he needed to nail Pat Dunn.

There was a catch, though. The informant had some legal troubles of his own. For him to cooperate with the police and testify in court against Pat Dunn, he would need a break on his own grand-theft charges. He was out on bail, but his sentencing hearing, after many delays, was coming up soon.

“I need a deal,” Jerry Lee Coble told the homicide detective, shaking his ponytailed head. “I can’t do any more time.”

Soliz nodded. He could have put in a call to his department then, so he could talk to the man who had
busted Jerry Coble for grand theft. Detective Eric Banducci, after all, occupied a desk close to Soliz’s. Soliz might have asked his colleague about Coble’s background, his credibility, his penchant for truthfulness or lies, his fervent desire to snitch his way out of going to prison for his many thefts and frauds. But Soliz saw no need to do that: He believed Jerry Lee Coble. He
needed
Jerry Coble, to complete his quest for justice in the murder of Sandy Dunn.

“Let’s talk to the DA,” Soliz told his new witness. “See what we can work out.”
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PART II

Laura

It becomes inescapably clear that the prosecutor, for good or ill, is the most powerful figure in the criminal justice system.

—B
ENNETT
G
ERSHMAN
,

Prosecutorial Misconduct

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