To Die For (38 page)

“I'm Detective Greco with the Perris Police Department,” he said, holding out his badge. “I was wondering if you could help me with something. Do you have a minute?”

Greco didn't want to tell them he was investigating a homicide. Sometimes potential witnesses will offer dubious information or shy away from answering questions completely because they are afraid of getting involved with a murder case.

There were five men, most of whom spoke Spanish but very little English. The youngest worker, 17-year-old Gustavo Lopez, was fluent in English and agreed to translate for Greco as he interviewed them individually. Through Gustavo, foreman Concepcion Limon said they were hired by the city of Canyon Lake to keep up the premises and perform sprinkler and pool maintenance. On Mondays, two of them—Jesus Limon and Gustavo Lopez—worked on the sprinklers and pools. First Greco showed each worker a photo of Dana's brown Cadillac, but it didn't register. Then Greco pulled out a photo of Dana with blonde hair.

“Yeah, yeah, I remember this woman,” Gustavo said immediately.

Greco was elated but also a little surprised. He hadn't even asked a question but Gustavo was so certain, he was nodding his head emphatically and showing the photo to his father, who also a groundskeeper. Even though they spoke in Spanish, it seemed obvious to Greco that Gustavo was trying to prod his father's memory about seeing the woman, but the older man shook his head.

“What do you remember?” Greco asked Gustavo.

“Well, it was a few months ago. I remember she was walking around over there,” Gustavo said, waving his hand. From where they were sitting, Norma's condo was down the U-shaped street to the left.

“What was she doing?” Greco asked.

“She was just wandering around,” Gustavo said. “It was like she was in a daze. She had a blank look on her face. It was weird—like she wasn't there. I was looking at her because I thought maybe she was sick or something and because of the funny look on her face. I thought she needed help.

“I went over and asked her if she was OK and if she needed help but she just brushed me off.”

“You talked to her?” Greco couldn't believe it.

“Yeah,” he said. “She just said, ‘No, no, I'm OK.' That was it.”

“Did you see where she went?” Greco asked.

“No, I just went back to work,” he said. “When I looked up again, she was gone.”

Gustavo couldn't fix the time he'd seen her, so it would be impossible to tell whether it was before or after Dana had killed Norma. Greco's mind was racing through the possible scenarios. Was she pumping herself up to go in and murder Norma? Or had she just killed Norma and was looking around to see if anyone could identify her? Greco thought that Dana had parked her car on the street, as opposed to the U-shaped driveway area, which would explain why the workers didn't recognize it. Maybe she had killed Norma, then paced the grounds a bit as she made her way back to her car. Perhaps Dana was looking around to see if she had left anything behind that would identify her, or was hesitating as she contemplated going back inside the condo for some reason.

Gustavo recalled that she had on a flowered print shirt or dress. He also recalled that she “wasn't skinny,” but had a sturdy build. When asked if he could narrow down the date he saw the woman in the photo, Gustavo said he was positive it was a Monday because he was working on the sprinklers. The closest he could get to the date was that it was several months ago.

Greco asked Gustavo again if he was sure about the identity of the woman. Did the photo accurately depict the woman he had seen?

“The woman and the picture are one and the same,” Gustavo said.

This is going to do it, Greco thought. Although he was ecstatic, he fought to keep a straight face as he collected their contact information and thanked them for their time. He continued knocking on doors in the neighborhood, but found no one who had seen anything. Although Greco didn't mention Norma's murder, several people knew it was his reason for canvassing the neighborhood and invited Greco into their homes so they could question him. Greco obliged them because he knew the neighbors were curious and he wanted to reassure them that the killer was in custody and he was simply wrapping up loose ends. It was dark by the time he finished the interviews and left the quiet Canyon Lake neighborhood.

Greco would call Bentley in the morning. He couldn't wait to let him know that a groundskeeper had placed Dana at the scene. The local DOJ criminalist had compared the dusty shoeprint lifted from Norma's entryway with the Nike shoe taken from Dana's house and come to the conclusion that the same brand of Nike had indeed made the print in the dust—but there were no individual markings, like wear marks or cuts in the sole that could identify that shoe and that shoe alone as the one that made the print in Norma's entryway. In the rush to comply with the statutory forty-eight-hour deadline, Bentley didn't feel comfortable filing the charge for Norma's murder because there were no credit cards or bankbooks connecting Dana to it, and the criminalists, of course, had not yet examined the shoeprint. Placing Dana at the scene with a live witness might give Bentley enough evidence to file the murder count, Greco thought.

So far, the cases were shaping up. Detective Mason Yeo, the sheriff's department detective who was at the Perris station the night Dana was arrested, had been collecting the checks, store receipts, bank records, and other paperwork needed to establish the timelines for the murders and for examining the handwriting. Meanwhile, Ora Brimer, the elderly owner of the antique store where Dorinda was attacked, went to pick up some photos at a Photomat kiosk and was told by the clerk in passing that Dana had left four rolls of film there to be developed. The clerk didn't know what to do with them because Dana had been arrested. Brimer called Detective Rene Rodriguez, who had investigated the attack on Dorinda, and got a search warrant for the photos. The snapshots, taken around Christmas, showed Dana—as a blonde—unpacking Christmas decorations from a big box and decorating a Christmas tree with Jason and his stepsister. They also showed Dana playing on the sofa with Jason and her chocolate lab, Bosco, and bathing Penny, her white and black Queensland Healer puppy, in the bathtub. Rodriguez forwarded copies of the photos to Greco and the other detectives so they could show them to the store clerks to ID Dana.

Evidence taken from Dana's house, as well as from the crime scenes, was routed primarily to the DOJ lab, where it was sorted, catalogued and stored. Some of the evidence remained with either the Perris police or the sheriff's department.

Greco and Antoniadas were getting regular lab reports from the criminalists, but there were no breaks. No blood was found on any of the ropes from Dana's car or house. None of the items collected from the crime scenes had clear, identifiable fingerprints. Although it wasn't surprising, it was disappointing. Greco had been hoping for a palm print or a thumb print from the handle of the glass bottle used to hit June. There were also no palm prints on the iron used on Dora, but since the iron was found in the sink, it was obvious that it had been rinsed off, if not wiped off. Dana was either very careful or had worn gloves. Because of the volume of hair collected at the various crime scenes, the criminalists were continuing to catalog and compare the hairs and fibers collected at the crime scenes with those of the victims, with Dana's and with those of the animals in the various households.

Detective Rodriguez had taken the soft, coiled key ring found hanging from Dana's entertainment center to the antique store, where it unlocked the display case and the cash register. He also showed the collection of ropes from Dana's house and car to Dorinda, but she said that none if them resembled the rope used on her, including the rope separating the framing area from the rest of the store.

Sheriff's detectives searched the empty Canyon Lake house that Dana had shared with Tom on Ketch Avenue, but it stored only a few boxes of cookbooks, cookware and old clothing. Antoniadas thought that Dana might have ducked into that house to change clothing or to stash rope or gloves, but there was nothing with visible blood on it. Another search was made of the boat sold to Dana and Tom by Jeri, which Jeri said she was never paid for anyway. The police confiscated some rope, but nothing else of evidentiary value.

A Riverside detective fluent in Spanish was assigned to interview Gustavo and the other workers to see if he could get any more details. Gustavo again identified Dana from the photograph. The detective asked if he remembered when the body was discovered and Gustavo recalled that it was a Wednesday because on Wednesdays, they worked on lawn maintenance in that area. In relation to the time the body was discovered, the detective asked when he recalled seeing the dazed, blonde woman. This time, Gustavo said it was the Monday prior to the body's discovery. He said he was able to place the time at about 10:30 or 11 a.m., based on the type of work he was doing as well as the fact that they knew that Norma played cards every afternoon, at the time he saw the blonde woman, Norma would have been alone in the house. Later, he recognized the woman who discovered the body, Alice Williams, as someone with whom Norma played cards.

After speaking with Greco, he remembered exactly where the blonde woman was walking. The detective asked if he would show him. Gustavo took the detective over to the U-shaped driveway off Continental Way and walked right up to Norma's condo.

“Here,” Gustavo said, standing in front of the postage stamp–sized front lawn. “This is the path she took.”

*   *   *

Busted during the weekly cell searches for having a rubber band wrapped around her
People
magazine—“my channel changer”—and a razor blade secreted in the back of her TV, Dana moaned to Indio, “What am I supposed to do with a rubber band? So now if I get another one, do I have to hide it? How stupid!” The television set was mounted so high on the wall, she had to reach up and use a pencil rolled up in a magazine to change the channel. She claimed the razor blade was left there by the previous occupant of the cell. “This is not a good day. I'm going to take a shower to cool off. But what I really need is a hug.” Being in isolation with an orange plastic “parakeet band” around her wrist signifying her status in the keep-away ward, Dana demonstrated a masterful array of personas in her letters. She was a saucy flirt with Indio; a remorseful, devoted girlfriend to Jim; demanding and pushy, but full of loving thoughts to her father, and mostly upbeat with touches of wistful loneliness with her friends. A distinction became clear in her letters depending on whether the recipients were in custody or “on the outs.” She took advantage of that, particularly in the poem “Contraband Dreams,” written and sent to her by Indio. Dana immediately claimed it as her own, knowing that her worlds inside and outside bars would never blend, and that inmates confined to the same institution rarely cross paths.

In solitary confinement, the mail surged in importance for Dana as she wrote up to four and five letters a day and urged her new pen pal, Indio, to write. He, in turn, wrote tender letters 12 pages long and more, caressing with words the woman he was inspired to write to after gazing at her photo in the newspaper. The unspoken rule was to avoid discussing your case—with anyone—and they held fast to that. Dana underscored that point to Indio and her other friends by saying that other inmates who got to know her for a few days before seeing the news articles would have been against her if they had read the articles first. Since Dana was committed to lockdown twice within the first month, and afterward banished to solitary confinement for, in Dana's own words, not getting along with her fellow cellies, one wonders if such exchanges even occurred or if they were a fiction created to reassure a potential suitor and friends inside and outside jailhouse doors.

The letters read like diaries that chronicled the monotony, the spats, the despair and the indignities of life behind bars. With no work to rush off to, no meals to prepare, no children to tend and no other distractions, writing letters became an end unto itself, where time was measured in increments of waiting for the next sliver of paper to get shoved underneath the cell door. From souls scarred by street life and violence and hardened from cycling in and out of jail, heartfelt intimacies spilled onto painstakingly handwritten letters, some in the crookedest scrawls, searching for romance on lined sheets of college rule. To most, it was an inside joke. Inmate courtship-by-letter was merely an escape from wasted days and lonely nights that was shed when they were released or sent to prison. Dana, pining for release, knew full well that she would never “kick it” on the outside with a heavily tattooed, 39-year-old Hispanic drug dealer who had been in and out of prison his entire adult life. But the exchange was even. Indio's intention, like that of any other inmate, was simply to do his time.

Many of Dana's letters included cartoons, articles, Bible verses and poetry, but they revealed much about Dana when she not only claimed to have authored Indio's poem “Contraband Dreams,” but “dedicated” it to Jim and, on top of that, tacked on a copyright symbol.

Dana mailed the poem to a half-dozen other people, mostly on the outside. Being in her cell 23 1/2 hours a day, Dana had little to occupy her time besides reading, sleeping, and watching television to drown out the twenty-four-hour piped-in country western music. She told Jim that watching an Oprah episode featuring low-fat recipes brought her to tears because she longed for doing “normal” things like cooking him and Jason dinner. Other times, she said she used TV to escape: “I forget where I am and escape into the program.” To inmates she'd left behind on the lower floors, she bragged about niceties, like being able to sit on her bunk and use the phone in peace and quiet and not have to wait to use the communal phones in the day rooms. She wrote to the state unemployment office to appeal the fact that they turned her down for unemployment; to the State Labor Commission for the same appeal; to the Department of Consumer Affairs, Board of Nursing to update her file to include her divorce, changing her name from Gray back to Armbrust, and a request for them to send a list of approved correspondence courses. In response to her request, Dana got Bibles from her friends, and completed a lengthy questionnaire from the prison ministries, signing her name and dating a form to document her conversion as a born-again Christian so she could receive Bible studies through a correspondence course. She continued to coordinate the storage, sale and interminable rearranging of her personal items between Jim and her father. In preparation for her trial, which Dana believed was just around the corner, she directed Jim to take her “nice, hang-up clothing” from his closet as well as from Jason's closet, which apparently she had also used to store her clothing, and requested Polaroids of her shoes so she could select complete outfits to wear to court. She asked Jim to put her “special sunglasses,” her clown poster from Sweden and her art portfolio somewhere safe. She successfully “sold” her silk-screening equipment to Jim for $3,000 without money ever changing hands and directed Jeri to auction her antique player piano, which had an appraised worth of $2,500, and her wedding ring, which was valued at $3,700. With the TV as her sole companion, Dana asked for subscriptions to two magazines:
People
and
TV Guide.