My Stolen Son

by Susan Markowitz

  When he couldn’t take it anymore, Mark Valencia stood up and stepped right in front of Jesse, moving in on his personal space.

  “I’m Detective Valencia from the Santa Barbara County Sheriff’s Department,” he said. “Now it’s time to stop lying. Your name is Jesse James Hollywood.”

  It was as if all the blood had drained from Hollywood’s face. He didn’t realize that anyone from Santa Barbara was actually there, and once Valencia introduced himself, he almost fainted. At that moment, he knew he was caught. Then he shook it off and stuck out his hand to congratulate Valencia for catching him. “So you’re the one,” he said. “You did it. But I won’t be here in the morning.”

  At that point, Valencia had already called his department to make sure that Jack Hollywood was under arrest. He knew that whatever tricks Jesse thought his father could pull were not going to happen now. All the phone numbers his girlfriend, Marcia Reis, might have been given to call to get him freed were not going to get answered. There was no one left to get him out of this trouble.

  And so the next day, Jesse James Hollywood was on a plane to back to California.

  March 8, 2005, was a Tuesday, and the city was redoing some concrete work in our cul-de-sac, so I was stuck inside when I got the call. It was Jeff saying that one of the detectives had called and wanted to meet us at Jeff’s shop.

  “Do I really have to be there?”

  “They said it was important. They said you’ll want to be there,” he said. And I knew it in an instant.

  They had caught Jesse James Hollywood.

  I hung up the phone, dropped to the ground, and sobbed.

  Then I got into the shower and let the warm water wash over me as I cried out four and a half years’ worth of grief. I didn’t cry out of relief, though I’m sure that was mixed in there somewhere; the main thing I felt at that moment was the pointlessness of it all.

  Why did this have to happen?

  I cried and cried in a huge release, and then I walked half a mile down to the road where my mom had driven to meet me. She was lending me her car because mine was trapped in the driveway. I dropped her off and drove to Jeff’s work.

  The investigators were already waiting inside the office. “We’ve got him,” they said. “Right now, Jesse James Hollywood is on a plane heading back to Los Angeles.”

  I should have screamed or cried or something, but I had already let out all my emotions back at the house. I was drained.

  They gave us the details they were allowed to share, which were basically the same details they would share with the public. We hugged and thanked the detectives. Then I got down on my knees and thanked God that I wouldn’t have to think about Jesse James Hollywood anymore. No longer would I have to study every male face I saw, suspicious of everyone at every store and every stoplight.

  The boxes of wanted posters could be . . . well . . . what on Earth did one do with those?

  My car would be just a car again, instead of a moving billboard. My life would be . . . My life would be mine again, and that left me reeling with confusion. I had no idea what I was supposed to do next. My only goal remaining was to see Hollywood convicted, and that seemed inevitable now. I would have to find some other reason to keep going.

  The next day, a reporter from the Brazilian newspaper Extra e-mailed me the articles their paper had just printed about Hollywood’s capture. Unfortunately, the articles were in Portuguese, but I appreciated the sentiment all the same. Brazil, it seemed, was quite proud to have helped us “get the guy.”

  Just after Hollywood was booked in Santa Barbara County Jail, we participated in a press conference. Jeff and I stood behind glass doors across from the courthouse while we waited to be introduced. We looked out and saw a massive display of microphones and people, and it made my knees buckle. The investigators introduced themselves and gave the information they needed to give; then they brought us out to the podium.

  Jeff spoke first. “We thank those who have never given up on us, never given up on Nicholas. We thank you all from the bottom of our hearts. You’ll never know the depths of our gratitude. . . . This is a bittersweet moment. Nothing will ever bring Nick back to us, but we can rest now knowing all five of Nick’s perpetrators are being held accountable for their horrific acts. Thanks to all these officers, our loving son Nicholas Samuel Markowitz will receive his justice.”

  It was hard for me to speak, my voice choking and quiet. It was the most nervous I’d ever been speaking in public. In my thoughts, this was the finale. People wanted to see me look happy and relieved; they expected me to talk about closure, a word I hated. There was no closure. There should be another word for whatever it was that you can hope to achieve after a tragedy like this.

  “Since the moment that Nick was so brutally taken from us, our lives have been forever destroyed. We have been living in a constant state of shock, pain, and questions. Today, one of those questions was answered,” I said.

  Later that day, we visited Nick’s grave to tell him the news, but someone had beat us there—we found a note on the grave that simply read, “We got him!”

  On YouTube, I think, I saw a video of Hollywood getting out of a police car and being booked. The first time I ever saw him in person was in a pretrial motion; he was behind a glass window to my left as I sat in the courtroom. He looked too tan, I thought. It angered me that he had been out enjoying the beach all these years that my son had been in his grave.

  He didn’t look like as much of a thug as I thought he would. Of course, he had had plenty of time to surf it up and improve his image. His hair was wavy and gelled, lacking the backward-baseball-cap hoodlum look that had stared back at me from his wanted posters. And even though I knew his height, he was still shorter in person than I imagined; when he stood up, it made me think that if Nick had taken him on, one-on-one, there would have been no contest. Nick had been six feet tall . . . a full seven inches taller than Hollywood.

  Jack Hollywood had been arrested on suspicion of manufacturing the date-rape drug GHB (though those charges were later thrown out because although he had the ingredients and a recipe, there was no proof he’d actually made it). However, he was kept in custody on a DUI warrant, because he had failed to pay a fine, and on marijuana charges. He ended up pleading guilty and serving eighteen months in an Arizona prison.

  But the wheels were already in place for Jesse’s legal team—Jack had hired James Blatt and Alex Kessel, two rather notorious criminal-defense attorneys known for being ruthless and aggressive. And they were obviously prepared in advance for this day to come, because almost immediately after Jesse was arrested, they began trying to have the entire Santa Barbara County district attorney’s office thrown off the case, and trying to block the release of Alpha Dog, which was filmed but not yet released.

  What his lawyers argued was that Deputy District Attorney Ron Zonen had acted inappropriately in sharing his case files with Alpha Dog’s producers. He had shared boxes of material—photos, tapes, reports, trial transcripts, rap sheets, contact information, notes. Zonen explained that he was trying to ensure accuracy in the film and hoped that it would be a way to get international attention to help capture Hollywood.

  “I asked only that Hollywood’s picture be shown at the conclusion of the film along with a phone number to call with information as to his whereabouts,” Zonen said. “I asked that the audience be told that Hollywood remains a fugitive and that there is a reward for his arrest.”

  Two judges agreed that he had done nothing improper—there was no money involved, nothing to indicate that Zonen’s motives had been suspect. But the defense attorneys appealed it until they got the decision they wanted: the appeals court ruled that Zonen be taken off the case and not allowed to prosecute Hollywood. They didn’t want to set a precedent for prosecutors to share all their information with the media, especially in a death-penalty case, where the prosecution is held to an even higher standard of integrity to ensure that the defendant gets a fair trial.
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  It didn’t end there, though. Next, the California Supreme Court took up the case and ruled that Ron Zonen should not be removed from the case and that there was certainly no reason to remove the entire Santa Barbara district attorney’s office. The district attorney’s office decided that Ron Zonen would step down anyway, though, just to remove that as a basis of a potential appeal down the line if Hollywood were to be convicted. It was too messy and too important a case; this one would have to be conducted with the knowledge that it was going to be in the spotlight and that Hollywood had the resources to hire lawyers who could drag it on and on through the system. They had already managed to drag it out for eighteen months.

  It was a tough blow for us, as Zonen had handled every other case, and we knew he cared about Nick and our family. It had been a big mission of his to make sure Hollywood was brought to justice. But the case would now be in the capable hands of Senior Deputy District Attorney Joshua Lynn, a handsome, compassionate man with a calm and classy demeanor. Lynn had been preparing for this role; he was the “understudy,” as he put it, from the moment they first learned about the motion to remove Zonen. The two men were ordered not to speak with one another about the case until the California Supreme Court finally ruled that Zonen did not need to be removed. After that point, Zonen and Lynn were allowed to talk, but Zonen had no meaningful role in Hollywood’s prosecution. I’m sure it was heartbreaking for him, after all these years of waiting for the day to come, to be sidelined.

  Another veteran prosecutor, Senior Deputy District Attorney Hans Almgren, would aid Lynn, and Paul Kimes was the criminal investigator assigned to the case.

  The defense team’s next objective was to block the release of Alpha Dog. Even though the filmmakers had decided to change everybody’s names (Nick was now “Zach Mazursky,” Ben was “Jake Mazursky,” and Jesse James Hollywood was “Johnny Truelove”) and locations (the Lemon Tree Inn was now the “Caliente Tropics Hotel”), it was still marketed as being based on a true story, and people in the Santa Barbara area certainly knew it was based on Nick’s murder. So the defense team tried to say that Hollywood could never get a fair trial if the movie were released.

  Truthfully, we were worried about the movie, too. Reporters kept coming to us and asking for our thoughts—how did we feel about the film? Well, we had no idea how we felt, really, because we hadn’t seen it yet. We had a lot of fears about how it might portray Nick, and us. And we had misgivings about how it could be sensationalized. Jeff told one reporter, “How would any loving parent feel about a Hollywood movie that glamorizes their son’s death and allows celebrities to cash in on a brutal, evil murder?”

  But no matter how we felt, the movie was already finished and ready to be released. So Jeff wrote to Nick Cassavetes and asked if we could have a private screening.

  “Of course!” he said, and told us to call and set up a date. We did . . . and canceled, about six times, chickening out every time. I didn’t know if I really wanted to see this movie, if I could handle seeing this movie. Nick’s best friend, Ryan, definitely didn’t want to see it. I felt like it was something I would have to do sooner or later, but I stalled as long as possible, hoping I’d feel more stable.

  In the meantime, I was hospitalized two more times, bringing the tally to about thirteen hospital stays, either voluntary or involuntary.

  The final time was the one that stuck, though. In March of 2006, my sister dragged me out of the closet, where I was crying and drinking. Apparently, I had called her. I had also called my little brother, which I don’t remember either. I went to Las Encinas Hospital and entered a 12-step program. This was the thing that finally made the difference for me. The program wasn’t specific to drugs or alcohol—it was directed to any sort of addiction or bad habit, and for me, that included my suicidal thoughts and risky behaviors.

  I felt for the first time in a long time that I had found people like me. The only other people who I had been able to relate to in recent years were the ones in Parents of Murdered Children. Here, I was in a regimented program that taught me some key principles for living my life in a more healthy way. I was able to earn some privileges while I was in the hospital this time, such as the right to walk across the magnificent grounds and enter another building where Dr. Drew Pinsky was holding a conference.

  Dr. Drew was the star of VH-1’s reality show Celebrity Rehab and the syndicated radio show Lovelines. But his “real job” was as the medical director for the department of chemical dependency services right there at Las Encinas Hospital. That’s where Celebrity Rehab was filmed.

  Patients had to earn the privilege to go see him speak, because once you were over there, you really weren’t monitored, though the staff would get calls sometimes to note that someone from our loony ward was missing.

  I didn’t want to escape, though. Things finally seemed to be clicking for me. During that hospital stay, I had the dream I had long been waiting for. I often dreamed of Nick, but he was always a baby or a young boy in the dreams, never a teenager. I wanted to see him in my dreams the way he was before he died, but it just didn’t happen—until then.

  There he was, wearing the same shirt he wore in his last class photo. Fifteen years old.

  “Mom, you look so good. You’re doing great!” he said.

  “So do you,” I said. “You look great, too.”

  There really wasn’t a conversation beyond that, just both of us standing before each other talking about how well we were each doing. It was all I had needed for so long. It was as if he were no longer mad at me. And something was released inside me, like letting go of a balloon and watching it float into the sky.

  After I left the hospital, I kept going to Alcoholics Anonymous meetings. I had a sponsor and a good support system. I also joined a support group called Action, a parent and teen nonprofit organization. I needed structure after coming from the hospital, and this group gave me that and so much more. After March 2006, I never again had another suicidal thought. I had decided to stay alive after all . . . and to do something positive with my life. I tried to get stronger each day for the tasks that might be ahead of me. I didn’t yet know what I was going to feel drawn to do, but I knew that my primary responsibility was going to be to maintain my mental health so I would be capable of whatever I was meant for.

  Hollywood lost his lawsuit against Universal Studios to block the release of Alpha Dog. His attorneys said it would be impossible for him to get a fair trial if the movie came out—after all, it portrayed their client as a “monster,” they argued—but a judge saw the film and disagreed. He refused to block the release, making it the first time that a major motion picture about a criminal case had been released before one of its trials had even begun. Hollywood’s attorneys appealed the decision but lost, and Alpha Dog was finally released in January of 2007 in the United States and Canada.

  We never did go for a private screening, but we did go to the official premiere of Alpha Dog. They were going to seat us with the celebrities, but we chose to sit off to the side on a private balcony, so we could feel like we were watching it by ourselves.

  Parts of the film moved me to tears, but for the most part, I remained detached from it, not really seeing it as my reality. The first thing that struck me was that the actor Anton Yelchin had done a terrific job of playing “Zach.” He managed to capture Nick’s innocence and warmth; the mannerisms and tone were right. About the only thing the film didn’t capture about Nick was his crazy sense of humor, but given the context, that was understandable.

  The other thing that really moved me was Sharon Stone’s scene where she donned a “fat suit” and said, “If God’s got a purpose for me, he better get the fuck down here and tell me what it is, because I don’t see it.” She had really been listening to me; I felt like she had incorporated exactly what I told her into the role. The way she laughed, the way she spoke . . . She said that her goal was to show people what rock bottom really looked like, and I thought she did a stellar job of
capturing it. That was my rock bottom—angry and lost and laughing in a mental hospital.

  Watching that scene made me feel a little better, at least, because I was a long way away from that place now. Although my recovery was still pretty raw, I was able to look back on that woman and feel sorry for her. No one who’s been through a tragedy like mine should ever have to worry about hospital bills and therapy bills; the world should just scoop us up and coddle us and tell us that things will be all right.

  There were, of course, things about the film that were dramatized and exaggerated for effect. Much of it was about our family.

  Jeff and I never fought the way the film depicted, yelling at each other over Ben. I could actually count on one hand the number of times that Jeff and I had even been angry with each other, and none of them involved yelling matches.

  Nick and I did not ever have “homework parties . . . with hats,” though, on reflection, that sounded like a pretty good idea. The part about how I would sometimes just sit and stare at him while he slept, and he would wake up and see me there just smiling at him . . . well, that was true.

  Ben was not a heavy drug user until after Nick’s death; he was a user all along, but he was primarily a dealer. He didn’t get all twitchy and sweaty and fight with his boss over a drug test, and he didn’t defecate on Jesse James Hollywood’s floor. He also didn’t get into a big bar brawl while Nick was missing and tell everyone in the bar that he was looking for Hollywood—in truth, Ben didn’t even know that Hollywood was involved until after Nick’s body had been found.