My Stolen Son

by Susan Markowitz

  Once he got into talking about Nick, Hollywood’s answers appeared well rehearsed and repetitive. It was as if he were trying to work in certain key phrases over and over: primarily, “I regret that” and “I feel terrible about that.”

  “I just feel terrible about everything that happened. I feel terrible for the Markowitz family. I feel terrible for all the families involved. I feel terrible that people would think I would do something like that.”

  It got to the point where Josh Lynn would say, “I appreciate that, but now . . .” and try to get him to actually answer a question instead of just talking about his supposed remorse. Of course, Hollywood had probably been told to show remorse for the jury’s sake, but where had that remorse been for the past nine years?

  The prosecutor asked how much force Hollywood had to use to pin Nick against a tree. Hollywood said that it had taken quite a bit of strength because “Nick is taller than me.”

  “Nick was taller than you. He was taller than you, Mr. Hollywood,” said Josh Lynn. He also made fun of Hollywood’s euphemisms for kidnapping, at one point referring to it as “the event that caused Nick to be ushered into the van.” Even the jury couldn’t help but grin at that one.

  At another point, the prosecutor approached the witness stand with an envelope. He pulled Jeff’s ring out of the envelope and showed it to Hollywood.

  “Do you recognize this ring?” he asked.

  “No,” Hollywood said.

  “You’re telling me you don’t recognize this ring?”

  “No.”

  He let that answer just hang there in the air for a few seconds before moving on. It was the ring that Hollywood had taken off Nick’s finger, then had been pressured by Rugge to give back. It was the only piece of jewelry Nick had been wearing when he died. And there it was in an evidence envelope right before us.

  We could have it back after the trial was finished, I was pretty sure. Would Jeff want it back? I thought he might. He would probably give it back to Ben, to pass along to his own son.

  Hollywood took the stand for several days. One morning before the jury was called in, the attorneys met with the judge to complain about each other. Blatt said he was “concerned” that the district attorney was editorializing and commenting too much with sarcasm, which “destroys the decorum and dignity of this case.” On the other hand, Josh Lynn told the judge that Kessel had “loudly called me a dickhead” on three separate occasions, and he could call in a witness who had heard it, too.

  So much for decorum and dignity.

  That was the same day I just fell apart. I’m not sure why it was then; it wasn’t during Hollywood’s testimony but during a lull in the day’s events when the jury was waiting for something, and I just burst out crying and had to excuse myself. No displays of emotion were allowed in the courtroom, so my friend Nadine accompanied me outside, where I could sob freely. A million thoughts had been going through my head, not the least of which was an unexpected sympathy. Sometimes, while Hollywood spoke, I actually felt bad for him. He looked so guilty and scared, and for the first time, I thought, “That’s someone else’s son up there.”

  Then he would open his mouth and another lie would fall out, and my sympathy would disappear. Hollywood’s mother, Laurie, had gone up to Jeff before court on the first day, put her hand to her heart, and said, “I am so sorry.” The same woman who’d flipped me off. And although I saw her in that courtroom every day, she never saw fit to say a word to me. Why did I care that this was her son?

  Now that Hollywood himself was testifying, the media had packed the courtroom for the first time since opening statements. Which made it harder for me to escape unnoticed. I was overwhelmed and just wanted to disappear for a while. I was tired of this circus and just wanted it all to be over.

  In talking about the TEC-9, Hollywood said Ben was the one who’d given it to someone to have it modified into an automatic weapon. Then Hollywood said that that he, Ryan Hoyt, and Ben had all gone to a firing range to shoot it but that an employee told them they could get jail time just for having it modified that way. At that point, Hollywood said, he gave it to Hoyt to store in his grandmother’s house, which is why Hoyt had had it when he murdered Nick.

  Ben had forgotten that he had testified earlier that part of that was true—at some point, the gun was being stored at Ryan Hoyt’s grandmother’s house. But it still belonged to Hollywood, and it didn’t make a whole lot of sense that Hoyt would have chosen to use it to murder someone he’d never met if Hollywood had actually just told him to go drive Nick home, as he claimed.

  When at last we reached the closing arguments, I felt like a boxer in the ninth round. Finally, Jeff was allowed to join me in the courtroom because there was no chance he would be called back to testify—but he didn’t last long.

  The prosecution showed pictures of Nick in his grave. The last photo was of Jeff’s ring on Nick’s bloated finger, and Jeff cried. I rubbed his back and tried to shield him from view.

  Ohh, hold it together, Jeff, I thought. Hang in there or they’re going to kick you out.

  And indeed, the defense did complain. They suggested that Jeff was putting on a show for the jury with his tears, because, after all, we had seen pictures like that several times already and should be used to them by now.

  Exactly how many times were you supposed to look at pictures of your son’s decomposing body before it became no big deal?

  So the next morning, the judge addressed the jury.

  “Yesterday, apparently, in the audience there was some audible crying or displays of emotion at some point in the proceedings. I didn’t notice it, but it has been brought to my attention . . . I’m going to admonish you that that is not to be considered at all during the course of this trial. During your deliberations sympathy has no role.”

  Then he turned to the audience and said, “I’ve admonished the audience; I’ll admonish them again: no displays of emotion. Any display of emotion will result in removal from the courtroom.”

  But not long after that, defense attorney Kessel was talking about how it had been some time since Nick’s death. A few years, he said.

  “Nine years!” Jeff blurted out.

  That was it. The judge admonished Jeff and called for the bailiffs to escort him out of the courtroom.

  Jeff didn’t come back to the courtroom until he was called back to speak. It was a relief for him, really—he felt he needed to be at work to keep the business afloat, whereas I felt I needed to be in that courtroom every day.

  The closing arguments went on for hours and hours over the course of two days, and finally, the jury was sent off to deliberate.

  After six weeks of talk, talk, talk, now suddenly there was . . . nothing. There was nothing else I could do or see. Now we just had to wait. It could be hours, days, or weeks before the jury reached a verdict, and all we could do was wait by the phone for someone to alert us that the verdict was in.

  It took the jury four days. I rushed off to the courtroom, fielding a few last-minute calls on my cell phone to wish us luck. Jeff was to meet me there.

  Because no one knew which day we’d get the call, Jeff had been taking his “court clothes” to work with him each day. In a hurry, he threw on the shirt and slacks from the dry cleaning bag he had brought, and then realized . . . it was my blouse he was wearing.

  “Someone’s got to get me a shirt!” he said on the phone. Luckily, his cousin’s husband was in the area and was able to bring a shirt to the courthouse. Once Jeff arrived, people were running around trying to find him to hand him the shirt, and the sheriff grabbed him and brought him into a van where he could change. With no time to spare, Jeff emerged from the van and walked into the courtroom . . . with his fly unzipped.

  The foreman read the verdict.

  On the charge of first-degree murder:

  Guilty.

  On the “special circumstance” of murder using an assault pistol or machine gun, which would make Hollywood eligible for the
death penalty:

  Guilty.

  The rest of the world faded away. Justice had been served.

  CHAPTER 18

  SON RISE, SON SET

  Ben had been late to court to hear the verdict, so he walked in while they were reading the kidnapping charges. They found Hollywood not guilty of aggravated kidnapping but guilty of simple kidnapping. That’s all Ben heard, and he was not seated next to us, so we couldn’t reassure him. He was very concerned: had Hollywood just gotten away with murder? Eventually, we were able to ease his mind.

  We all hugged, both in and out of the courtroom, while the media snapped their cameras and expected us to say cheerful things. I couldn’t talk about how I felt. All I knew was that it was a relief to be done; it was a relief that the verdict was the right one. Aside from that, I couldn’t offer the words they wanted to hear about “closure” or happiness.

  Next came the penalty phase, where our family members would answer questions from the prosecutor and the defense could cross-examine us. I tried to explain to the jury that if they saw that my reactions were sometimes blank or not what they would expect, it was because I had been forced to disconnect from reality for a very long time in order to survive.

  When the defense cross-examined Jeff, they asked him when Nick’s birthday was. I shouldn’t have been surprised, but it still managed to freshly horrify me that they would be so cruel. They were attempting to catch Jeff off guard, so that they could make it seem like he was exaggerating his closeness with his murdered son. Did they really think Jeff would forget Nick’s birthday?

  The penalty phase should have been the easiest part of the trial—the main decision of guilt or innocence had already been decided, and now it was just a matter of deciding which of two sentences was most appropriate. But several things came out during this stage that complicated the proceedings and almost derailed them.

  After court one day, a stranger with a ponytail approached us to offer his sympathy, then walked over to Jack Hollywood and began talking to him. We thought that was odd, for this man to go from one family to the other. It turned out that the man was the husband of one of the jurors—juror number three—and he told Jack that his wife had been unable to sleep since the verdict was announced. She was very upset about something that had happened during the course of deliberations.

  This became a break for the defense in two ways: first, the juror wasn’t supposed to talk about the case to anyone, including her husband. And second, what exactly was she troubled about? Of course, the defense team hoped to dig up some dirt to help their client get off the hook, so they asked the judge to question her.

  The juror said that she had not talked about the case to her husband, but that he could see that she was obviously upset about something. She had written the judge a letter earlier but had not given it to him. When questioned, she cried and said this trial was the worst thing that had ever happened in her life and that there were “ugly things” going on in the jury box.

  What were these ugly things?

  The only example she gave was that, after Casey Sheehan said he was an electrician, juror number 5 had said, “Maybe Jesse can get Casey to do one last electrical job for him” and made a buzzing sound to imitate an electric chair. “I thought that was terrible,” juror 3 said.

  “OK. And certainly in poor taste. I would agree with you,” said the judge.

  And juror 5 had also made a comment about a “surprise witness” on the day Jerry Hollywood testified, saying something like, “I wonder if it’s a cousin.” When it turned out that it was a cousin, juror 3 decided that juror 5 must have been reading outside material about the case. She didn’t think it could have been just a guess. She really, really did not like juror 5, who she claimed didn’t want to hear anything “redeeming” about Jesse James Hollywood. I wondered what the redeeming things might be.

  But did juror 3 think that the deliberations were fair?

  “I do think they were fair. They were extremely difficult. Our foreperson was determined that in order to do our job we had to come back unanimously. He was not willing to accept I guess what you call a hung jury.”

  As soon as the juror left the room, the defense team wanted to have juror 5 removed.

  “How can my client have a fair trial with juror 5? How can he even have a chance? How can you allow her to remain on this jury?” Kessel asked the judge. “But more importantly, Your Honor, how can you let juror 5 remain without even asking her . . . and I don’t even think you have to query her because I bet she won’t be truthful about her insight. But I think juror 3 was very credible. She was very honest. You can see from her emotion she’s been troubled by this.”

  Josh Lynn said he took issue with Kessel calling juror 5 a liar before even speaking with her, and the judge said juror 3 was “emotional.”

  “There’s nothing I’ve heard from juror 3 that is so strongly suggestive of misconduct that would rise to the level of setting aside the verdict that we’re going to interrupt these proceedings.”

  So the penalty phase continued, even with the knowledge that the defense team was surely going to file for a new trial afterward. And with the knowledge that juror 3 would almost certainly not agree to the death penalty.

  The following day, a new controversy arose. It turned out that after the jury had turned in their guilty verdict, and it was in a sealed envelope locked in a room, some of the jurors asked the bailiff to see the TEC-9 gun. The foreman called it “morbid curiosity.”

  The bailiff showed it to them. Then the foreman started asking some questions about it—why the grip was hollow, for instance. Then he asked, “So a gun like this would be illegal, right?” and the bailiff said, “It would now.”

  Then the bailiff realized that this kind of discussion wasn’t proper—he was not allowed to speak to sitting jurors about any aspects of the case, including about the evidence. So he went to the judge and “told on himself.”

  The judge and the defense team questioned the bailiff under oath.

  “Did you seek any advice from the Court or your supervisors with respect to their request to see evidence?” asked Kessel.

  “No,” he said. “Because they had access to all the other evidence.”

  “Well, the gun was not accessible to them as the other exhibits were, correct?”

  “It was locked, but I was under the impression—understanding that they could see it whenever they asked.”

  So despite this having all occurred after the jury had already turned in a sealed verdict, here was another nit for the defense team to pick. I hated that they had any loose threads to pull on; all it meant was that this case was going to drag on much longer than anyone realized. Even after the media went home and forgot about us, this case would haunt my life until the verdict was final and Jesse James Hollywood had run out of appeals. That could literally take a lifetime. But for now, I reminded myself to just focus on that day. We had to get through sentencing.

  The district attorney’s office warned us that the death penalty would be unlikely, so I had already come to terms that life in prison would be the probable outcome. And it was—or at least, that was the jury’s recommendation. The judge still had to approve the jury’s recommendation, and that would take weeks, at minimum, though I don’t know why.

  When the media asked me what we thought about the sentencing, I told them that I didn’t think it served anyone to have someone else’s son die. I was satisfied with the jury’s decision, and so was Jeff.

  Of course, Hollywood was not satisfied.

  His team searched for every possible reason they could to throw out the whole trial and start from scratch with a new jury. Even before the trial was complete, they had already once asked for a mistrial based on Graham Pressley’s testimony, because the judge had allowed Pressley’s “impressions” to enter the record. Now that it was over, they did their best to prolong our misery—the defense team asked for and received extra time to prepare their motion to file for a new trial.
So weeks turned into months, and we remained in the dark about exactly what it was that was holding up the process.

  We knew the defense team was going to question some of the jurors. In October 2009, they requested and received some jurors’ contact information. At that hearing, the defense also approached the bench to complain that the court reporter had sent me a letter that had been posted on the Internet. I have no recollection of any such letter, and the prosecution never saw it, but the court reporter was removed based on their complaint. That made me feel terrible. The only contact I remember having with the court reporter was when I wrote to her to request copies of transcripts, which I paid for and she sent to me.

  At the end of that hearing, Hollywood began tapping loudly on his table and talking in an aggravated and angry fashion, interrupting his attorneys and the judge. He was complaining about something a juror had said, though the record didn’t make it clear what he was talking about. Then he said to the judge, “They’re still saying to the media I ordered the killing, that’s what—”

  “Mr. Hollywood, we’re going to exclude you from the courtroom if you continue to speak out,” the judge said.

  “Take me back to the jail then.”

  So they did.

  The results of the jury questioning were supposed to be presented in November 2009, but instead, we drove three hours just to hear the defense team say that they needed more time (again). The judge again granted it. I turned and saw Ryan Hoyt’s mother sitting just a few seats away from me in the row just behind me.

  I don’t know why she showed up on that day; I hadn’t seen her at any court procedure in years, since her son’s trial. She still had the same bugged-out eyes and wiry hair, the same look of a woman who’s been emotionally unstable for a long time. She was heavier now, but aside from that, she looked the same.