Then No One Can Have Her (36 page)

After persuading my editor that this compelling case was bookworthy, I drove to Prescott on a research trip the week of the sentencing hearing, hoping to meet in person Carol's daughters, members of the extended DeMocker family and other key players.

I sat in the second row on the left side of the courtroom, thinking I'd be behind the prosecution table. That's where I usually sit in California courtrooms because it gives me the best vantage point to watch the speakers and to see the defendant's face from the side, rather than the back of his head.

As people started filling in the row in front of me, I realized, however, that I was sitting behind the defense table and Steve's family—his mother, his daughters, two of his sisters and two of his brothers. At the time, the only ones I recognized from reading the
Courier
online were Charlotte and Katie. I initially mistook Steve's mother for Carol's, because they're both small, white-haired women, and I figured Ruth would be there to watch.

Watching the DeMockers interact before the hearing, my first impression was that their faces—Charlotte's and Katie's in particular—looked oddly devoid of emotion. As I'd never talked to them, I couldn't tell whether their blank expressions stemmed from a heightened awareness that they were being observed, a general numbness because they knew what was coming or a desire to hide their feelings from the cameras.

Many times a convicted killer's family members look raw, vulnerable and red-eyed at times like these, and I didn't see any of that. But like I said, I didn't know them yet; I had only just started looking into this story.

The county had recently spent $1 million to put a new roof on the one-hundred-year-old courthouse and replace the air-conditioning system. I was told later that the acoustics had been bad in the courtroom before, but the new cooling system only worsened matters. As soon as the air switched on, people sitting in the gallery couldn't hear much of what was being said by speakers facing the judge, with their backs to the gallery. Even the
Courier
reporter, who was sitting closer to the action than I was, seemed to be straining to hear. The couple behind me got up and left in the middle of the sentencing, muttering that they couldn't hear anything.

 

 

The hearing began with arguments for and against the defense's motion to delay sentencing based on new information Steve's attorneys believed could vacate the judgment against him.

“We're getting new information every day,” attorney Greg Parzych said.

The defense contended that it had discovered information indicating that Captain Dave Rhodes had lied. The prosecution should have disclosed these details, Parzych said, which the defense would have used to discredit Rhodes's testimony at trial. At issue were his actions during an investigation into a fight among members of a motorcycle club of law enforcement officers known as the Iron Brotherhood. Mark Boan, the deputy who had been assigned to babysit Jim Knapp for four hours on the night of the murder, had lost his job after thirteen years because of his affiliation with this club.

Judge Donahoe denied the motion, saying he would have had to call witnesses from the Iron Brotherhood, which “would have confused the jury and wasted a bunch of time.” The defense had ample time to cross-examine Rhodes, he said.

“There's nothing new here,” Donahoe said. “It's all collateral. I wouldn't have let it in anyway.”

As the judge listed the seven counts against Steve for sentencing purposes, Charlotte smiled a little as the judge read the last one: “contributing to the delinquency of a minor.” I wasn't sure why she would smile at that, and I never got a chance to ask her because, despite repeated requests to interview Steve's family members, including his daughters, I was told no, they weren't interested.

Carol's friend Debbie Wren Hill wrote a letter to the judge that included a “very likely” diagnosis of narcissistic personality disorder for Steve, whom she described as “a dangerous man” and a sex addict who exhibited a “sociopathic behavior pattern.”

I am thankful beyond measure that the jury found Steven DeMocker guilty of murdering my friend,
Debbie wrote, noting that she supported a life sentence for him.
I am grateful that Carol's precious mother lived to see this day in court.

Craig Williams asked to strike the letter, objecting to Debbie's offering a psychological diagnosis of Steve without being a “neuropsychologist” and “without ever talking to” Steve. Perhaps Williams didn't realize that Steve had known this woman since he and Carol were first dating. And although Debbie wasn't hired to examine Steve in an official capacity in the case, she is, as she stated in her letter, “a mental health clinician.”

Donahoe, however, saw no reason to grant Williams's request. “I usually don't give much weight to these types of personal opinions,” he said.

Prosecutor Jeff Paupore noted that Carol's mother was not at the hearing, but she'd requested that her letter be read into the record and that a photo of Carol be displayed. As such, Paupore put a blowup of Carol on an easel so she could be remembered during the hearing.

Over Williams's objection Paupore then read Ruth's letter aloud. “I think it's something that the defendant needs to hear,” he said.

Ruth's letter was short and emotional, saying, in essence, that Carol's death had “left a hole in [her] heart and a vacant place in [her] life.” The loss of Carol was incalculable to everyone who loved her, including Charlotte and Katie, she said.

All that can be done now is to seek to bring justice to the man who so violently, selfishly, and senselessly took her from us,
Ruth wrote. She asked that Steve's punishment fit his crime, and given that he'd robbed Carol's life, she hoped the judge would give him a sentence in kind. Because she didn't approve of the death penalty, she asked for a sentence of life without parole. Anything less would be neither appropriate nor reflective of his actions.

Because Carol's side of the family was not in the courtroom—other than her daughters—and Steve's was there in force, Paupore made a point of reminding everyone that this case was not just about Steve DeMocker, it was about the victim, Carol Kennedy, and “the brutal murder of a very beautiful woman. She had a thirst for life and beautiful things.... Carol had a beautiful smile that still radiates today. She loved her art, her friends, Katie and Charlotte, and the moments daily when she could talk to her mother.”

This case had been long, he said, as were the trial proceedings. Five years was “a long time to wait for justice.”

Based on Carol's work at women's shelters and as a therapist, she was very familiar with domestic violence. She understood what it could do to someone's ego and self-esteem. But Carol likely never considered that it would take her life in a way that no one deserved, he said, a way that “defines domestic violence at its extreme.”

Although Carol battled with Steve till the end “over money, honesty and his fidelity,” he said, she'd finally found the strength to let go of the love of her life. She made it clear to her newly divorced ex-husband over coffee that last Sunday that their relationship was over and that she was moving on.

Based on the text messages they exchanged in those last days and hours, he said, the evidence showed that Carol thought Steve was coming over to exchange checks the night she was murdered.

“He set her up,” he said, noting that the violence that occurred in Carol's home office “was fueled by hatred and rage,” and the nature of the crime was “overkill.” He couldn't even describe what that experience must have been like for her.

But as if that weren't enough, he said, Steve then went after her trust account. By manipulating others, he took control of her estate.

“He invaded Carol's spirit, her will,” Paupore said, knowing that she'd wanted that money to go toward maintaining her daughters' health, education and welfare. Never in the hundreds of cases he'd prosecuted had he seen the victim victimized again in her grave like this.

“This case is about money, and it always has been.”

Turning around to face the defense table, he looked directly at Steve and called him a “murdering, lying thief.” If the punishment was set to fit the crime, he said, Steve deserved the maximum sentence allowed.

Paupore asked the judge to hand down a sentence that would keep Steve in prison for the rest of his natural life for the murder, compounded with consecutive five-year sentences for each of the four counts relating to the anonymous e-mail and insurance money transfers. He also asked for a consecutive six-month term in jail for the misdemeanor delinquency charge, and that the credit for time served be applied only to the life sentence.

In addition, the prosecutor asked that Steve be forced to pay $756,628 in restitution for $700,000 in insurance payouts that “unjustly enriched the lawyers,” the $6,000 in alimony that he didn't pay in July 2008, the more than $20,000 in car insurance money he received after Charlotte totaled Carol's Acura and the $28,500 he was reimbursed for cleanup of “the mess he made” at the house on Bridle Path.

“Justice really cannot be served unless that money is put back into Carol's trust,” he said.

When the judge asked if any other victims wished to speak to the state's case, Paupore said no. Till the end the Arizona law that prevented Charlotte and Katie from being called victims in this case still seemed very odd to me. I wondered if, in the end, that roadblock had helped inspire Katie to graduate magna cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa from Occidental, to enter Boalt Law School at the University of California, Berkeley, my alma mater, and to attain a clerkship at the U.S. Attorney's Office in San Francisco.

 

 

Speaking for the defense, the DeMocker clan made a series of statements, starting with Steve's mother, whose quiet voice did not carry well back to the gallery. The gist of Jan's long statement, which she sent me several months later, was that she wanted to tell the judge and reinforce for Steve that he'd done many positive things in his life. Turning around to face her son, she directed her preamble to him before speaking to the judge once again.

Describing Carol as “an inspiring teacher,” Jan acknowledged that Carol had been repeatedly described as a victim who had finally done what she told her battered clients to do, which was to walk away.

Carol and Steve met when both were starting grad school, she said. They lived in a house on his parents' property in New York and interacted with his parents quite a bit. The couple had a lot in common, she said, including a love of being outside. Writing their own wedding vows, they promised to support and nurture each other.

“Both of them really, really wanted to make a difference,” she said.

Jan proceeded to tell stories of how Steve had saved the lives of the rock climber and the kayaker, and had served as a leader among his siblings and others with his heroic, larger-than-life deeds.

During the time she and Steve's father spent with Carol and Steve every year, she said, she never saw any sign of their disagreements turning physical.

“There isn't any possibility of justice,” she said, which would be to see Carol sitting with her daughters in the courtroom.

Because Carol lived her life with fairness and compassion, Jan said, she thought that even Carol “might very well be here with me asking for leniency and hoping for a sentence that would allow her grandchildren to have a chance to visit and to play with their grandfather sometime in the far future, when he was a free man again.”

As Jan slipped along the front row of the gallery to return to her seat, Katie hugged her.

Next up was Michael DeMocker, Steve's youngest brother, who at forty-eight was twelve years younger.

Saying he'd met Carol when he was a teenager, he recalled being so upset one day that she pulled the car over in the middle of Boston traffic to hug and comfort him. She had also posed for photo portraits, and he felt he owed her for encouraging him to pursue the avocation that ultimately became his career.

Michael described Steve as even-tempered, noting that on a scuba-diving trip to Belize with all four DeMocker brothers, they headed out to sea with a group of strangers and lost their boat while the waves were high. Even though Steve was not a terribly experienced diver, “he kept his head,” and his first instinct was to save the lives of others, not his own.

As a “very loving father,” Steve was a good role model for him and had made a positive impact on so many lives, Michael said. Steve and Carol had passed on their “strength, love and resiliency” to their daughters.

Steve's sister Mary, a self-described “stay-at-home mother,” related how she and her family had moved to Prescott in 1998. They used to play tag outside the courthouse, but never went inside until this case began.

When Carol was killed, she said, “I lost a sister, I lost a friend, and I lost a mothering mentor.... I miss her. I miss her terribly.”

Mary said she didn't understand why the rules within the courthouse had been so different during this case than they were in the community at large, where mothers taught their kids to play fair and not to lie. Turning around to face the prosecution table, her voice dripping with disdain, she said that in this case she saw “an investigation seeking not truth, but the conviction at any cost of someone close to me. It succeeded.”

“My question is, why are we here at all?”

The scenario simply didn't fit with the evidence, she said, or who her brother had been for the past fifty-three years of her life.