I'll Take Care of You

by Caitlin Rother

  He said he’d written a statement, but he had changed his mind at the last minute and decided to improvise. But, clearly, he’d been practicing this speech for months.

  “What happened in this courtroom a year ago is about the worst thing the justice system can do,” he began.

  Referring to his inch-thick stack of papers, he proceeded to repeat many of the same points he’d made to me during our jailhouse interviews.

  He admitted that he had lied and “made some bad decisions. Did I lie to protect myself, Nanette, her children, and my children? Yes, absolutely. But I won’t sit here and be scapegoated,” he said, proclaiming his innocence.

  “Guilty by association, Your Honor, is not guilty. There’s a big difference, Your Honor, between sleeping with someone and committing murder for them.”

  Although Nanette was the orchestrator and “catalyst” for this murder, he said, he wasn’t the shooter.

  “I was never, ever convinced by Nanette Johnston to commit a murder. . . . I did not do the crime and I will prove it,” he said. (It was unclear, however, what more proof he thought he was going to get if this statement didn’t work its magic to free him.)

  He said he couldn’t come forward with proof before his trial because he didn’t have access to the discovery materials until afterward: “I didn’t have that information until . . . when, Gary? . . . January.”

  Eric said he knew he was seventeen years late in admitting that it was the “hit man,” Juan Gonzales, who had carried out the murder. “I apologize to the McLaughlins for that.”

  But blaming everyone but himself, Eric claimed that perpetuating this “scam”—i.e., labeling Eric as the shooter—was, in effect, “robbing the McLaughlins of the most important thing—[the ability] to solve the crime.”

  “It was a sloppy investigation, Your Honor,” he said. “I’m innocent and that will never change. Those twelve people made a mistake.”

  Following up on Eric’s indignant and righteous performance, Sandy Baumgardner led off the victim impact statements, responding to Eric’s remarks as though she’d heard them in advance.

  As she charged him with making “an absolute spectacle of himself’ and touting the “flagrant lie” that Bill McLaughlin was a rapist, Eric smiled and shook his head.

  “‘Prosecutor Matt Murphy’s numerous points on what an “innocent Eric Naposki” would have done seventeen years ago are now a matter of record,’” she said. “‘What the now “guilty Eric Naposki” has done since his arrest in 2009 has been no better. His stories changed numerous times as he exhausted every possible avenue to avoid accountability. And even after the verdict last July, he continues to weave his tall tales of innocence.’

  “‘It’s an established phenomenon that many a convicted murderer goes to his own grave feverishly denying his guilt, and Mr. Naposki is certainly no exception. His recent attempts to occlude the facts that led to his conviction last summer are absolutely ridiculous and frankly callous.’”

  As the next speaker took to the podium, Eric toned down his facial expressions, stopped smirking, and looked down as Krissy Gendron, Jenny McLaughlin’s childhood friend, read into the record the same statement that Jenny had read at Nanette’s sentencing.

  But Eric’s behavior changed when Kim McLaughlin Bayless got up to read her statement, drawing attention to himself in a display that came off as disrespectful for the grief and loss the McLaughlin clan was still feeling, surely heightened even more now that Jenny was in ill health.

  Just as Kim had done during Nanette’s hearing, she turned the podium so she could look the convicted killer in the eye. But, unlike Nanette, Eric turned his chair toward her so he could meet her gaze from about ten feet away—and with bravado, no less. His apparent lack of humility and compassion came off as arrogance and insensitivity—the epitome of narcissism.

  Kim started off by saying that it was important for Eric to hear how close she’d been with her father, and what a “very sweet friendship” they’d shared. They met on weekends, she said, and he brought her on business trips to train her how to sell his products.

  As she continued, Eric shook his head and smiled again.

  “‘Eric,’” she said, “‘you have no idea of the far-reaching devastating effects’” of this murder.

  Speaking up for her brother Kevin, fingered by Eric’s defense team as the likely killer of his own father, Kim’s voice broke with emotion.

  “‘My dad’s murder really messed with him. He was so angry and so frustrated. Kevin never got over the image of his dad lying on the kitchen floor, lying in a pool of blood in the house that we grew up in.’”

  Kim said her family was grateful that Kevin was upstairs in his room at the time of the shooting, “‘or we’re sure you would have taken him from us as well.’”

  As for the claim that Eric had never set foot in the house, she said, “‘That’s a lie.’”

  “It’s not a lie,” Eric interjected. “Your father knows.”

  Crying now, Kim continued. Whatever the motive was for the murder—jealousy or anger or greed—she couldn’t grasp it. But the one thing Eric couldn’t take away from her and her family was the “intense” and “abundant amount of love” that Bill McLaughlin had given them, and the way he’d taught them to do random acts of kindness for others.

  Eric looked away as Kim challenged him to honor Bill McLaughlin, the man he murdered, to change his “horrific ways” and to live by the same credo.

  With that, Judge Froeberg pronounced the only sentencing option for Eric based on the charges and conviction before him: life without the possibility of parole for murder in the first degree with the special circumstance of financial gain, as well as the additional weapons charge, which added four more years.

  After the bailiffs had cuffed Eric’s hands behind his back, he stood up from the defense table and leaned his shaved head toward prosecutor Matt Murphy to deliver one last message.

  “You blew it,” Eric said. “You fucking blew it.” Murphy, who always enjoyed an opportunity to spar with a defendant, spoke right up. “Bye-bye,” he said from his chair.

  “I’ll see you again,” Eric fired back.

  Afterward, spectators in the gallery shook their heads with disbelief. “The Eric Show” had been remarkable, even to the most veteran court watchers.

  Murphy and Pohlson said later that they were shocked by Eric’s behavior, and Pohlson was embarrassed, to boot. Neither attorney had ever seen a defendant challenge a victim’s family member while he or she was reading a statement at sentencing.

  “I did support Eric Naposki, but I did want him to have some class,” Pohlson said. “No matter what happened, those people deserved the utmost respect.”

  Angelo MacDonald said he wasn’t surprised, but “I was not happy about it. We repeatedly told him not to say things, not to react.” But in this case, “I think [Eric] felt he needed to respond. ‘I’ve got to let them know I didn’t do this.’ That’s who he is.”

  MacDonald said he didn’t believe that Eric meant to be disrespectful, however, he noted that such outbursts are much more common in Eric’s birth state of New York, where people are more vocal and animated in general.

  But, thankfully for the McLaughlin family, this was the last they would have to see of Eric Naposki—other than in his TV interviews.

  Outside the courtroom, a reporter asked MacDonald why the defense never presented any information about the alleged hit man, Juan Gonzales.

  “Didn’t come together,” the attorney said. Back in 1994, “[Gonzales] was a young guy with a lot of contacts.”

  Downstairs during a quick news conference, Murphy made a few comments to address the media’s questions about Eric’s story. The prosecutor dismissed it once again as “lie after lie after lie after lie,” which had no truth, no corroboration, and no relevance.

  “We investigated it,” he said. “I have absolutely no doubt that it’s complete crap.”

  Even if the story were t
rue, Murphy said, Eric’s own admissions made him guilty of murder: Eric had said that Gonzales used Eric’s gun in the murder, that Eric introduced Gonzales to Nanette, and that Eric and Gonzales were across the street from Bill’s house the week before the murder.

  Clearly, Murphy said, “Naposki hasn’t researched conspiracy law,” because given these self-proclaimed facts, Eric would still be guilty of murder. It would only “take ten years off his LWOP sentence. He would still be a murderer for financial gain.”

  On September 5, 2012, Eric Naposki was transferred to a state prison in Wasco, a reception center where corrections officials would decide which institution was best suited for his life term. They also would likely take into account that he was a somewhat high-profile prisoner due to his multiple TV appearances and his brief time in the NFL.

  As inmate #AM2598, the forty-five-year-old prisoner was finally placed at the High Desert State Prison in Susanville in December—presumably just as muscular, if not more so, in anticipation of protecting himself from other convicted killers.

  In January 2013, Investigation Discovery host Aphrodite Jones aired a show on the case in which she said she received a jailhouse letter from Nanette and also spoke on the phone with her. After all these years of silence and claims that she didn’t think Eric had anything to do with the murder, Nanette finally had decided to change her story too.

  She said she’d never told Eric that Bill had raped her. Yet, somehow he’d found out about her engagement to Bill, planned the murder on his own, and killed Bill “in a fit of jealous rage.”

  “I’m a victim of Eric’s jealousy,” Nanette told Jones.

  It just wasn’t Nanette’s style to let an ex-boyfriend get away with blaming her or having the last word. That’s how she took care of her men.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  I want to thank the following people for helping me put this book together. I couldn’t have done it without you: Dave Byington; Tom Voth; Joe Cartwright and Scott Smith, of the NBPD; Matt Murphy, Larry Montgomery, Susan Frazier, and Dena Basham, from the Orange County DA’s office; Laura Hoyle; Eric Naposki’s attorneys Gary Pohlson and Angelo MacDonald and friend John Pappalardo; Nanette Packard’s attorney, Mick Hill; Debbie Lloyd; Jeff Stempien, of the Greenwich Police Department; Brian Ringler; Sandy Baumgardner; Kim McLaughlin Bayless; Patrick and Jenny McLaughlin; Barbara LaSpesa; Billy McNeal; Tom Reynolds; Suzanne Cogar; Adrianne Reynolds; Patricia “Tricia” Stearns; Rebecca Allen, Frank Mickadeit, and Michele Cardon, of the Orange County Register; Don Kalal; Donna Hakala; Chris Fiore; Angie Naposki; Terry Thornton; Michael Signora; Carole Levitzky; Susan Ludwig; Mike Matteson; Susan Leibowitz and Allen Larson.

  I also want to thank Michaela Hamilton at Kensington, along with my agent, Peter Rubie, for helping me keep the dream alive.

  Special thanks to my readers, and also to those who have graciously supported and helped keep me sane while I wrote this book: Carole Scott, Susan Gembrowski, Géza Keller, Samuel Autman, Rachel Ingersol, Carlos Beha, Bob Koven, Myra Chan, and the crew at Einstein Bros Bagels #3048.

  Seventeen-year-old Bill McLaughlin with a date in Chicago, the year he enlisted in the U.S. Marine Corps. (Photo by Barbara LaSpesa)

  Bill and his three kids (from left) Kim, Jenny and Kevin, on Kevin’s birthday in March 1994. (Photo by Sandy Baumgardner)

  Aerial view of the house in Balboa Coves (second house from left) in 1994. (Photo by Newport Beach Police Department)

  Nanette swims with Lishele and Kristofer. This picture was taken while she was married to her first husband, Kevin “K. Ross” Johnston, in Arizona.

  Nanette met Bill through this “Wealthy Men Only” singles ad in early 1991. (Courtesy of Newport Beach Police Department)

  Several months after Nanette and Bill started dating, she moved into his two-story house (shown in 2012), where her kids each had a bedroom. (Author photo)

  Nanette told people she owned or co-owned Bill’s beach house on Seashore Drive in Newport Beach, where she brought men to have sex. (Photo by Newport Beach Police Department)

  Nanette forged Bill’s signature on this $250,000 check to the Nanette Johnston Trust the day before he was killed in December 1994. (Photo by Newport Beach Police Department)

  Tom Voth (shown in 2012) was appointed lead detective on the case in 1994. He came out of retirement to help bring the case to trial. (Author photo)

  The killer left behind this newly copied key, stuck in the front door lock at the McLaughlin home. (Photo by Newport Beach Police Department)

  In his haste to flee, the killer also dropped this newly copied key to the pedestrian access gate on the doormat. (Photo by Newport Beach Police Department)

  On the day of Bill’s funeral Nanette used his credit card to pay for three motorcycles, later claiming one was his Christmas gift. She signed the bill “Nanette McLaughlin.” (Photo by Newport Beach Police Department)

  After learning that Nanette had been dating Eric Naposki on the side, detectives arrested him on a traffic warrant for questioning on December 23, 1994. (Photo by Newport Beach Police Department)

  Eric was a football star at Eastchester High School in New York. He later played as a linebacker in the National Football League. (Senior yearbook photo)

  Police found this license plate number written in a notebook in Eric’s car on the night of his arrest in December 1994. (Photo by Newport Beach Police Department)

  The plate number was for Bill’s white Mercedes, which was parked in the garage at Balboa Coves. Eric insisted he’d never been to the house. (Photo by Newport Beach Police Department)

  Detectives learned that Eric had recently copied keys at a Tustin hardware store, where he also had a fake silencer like this one made for his Beretta 92F, reportedly as a movie prop. (Author photo)

  Authorities believe that Eric shot Bill, ran out the pedestrian access gate, along this bike path, and over the Newport Boulevard bridge to the Thunderbird nightclub, where he worked. (Author photo)

  In 1994, it took less than three minutes to walk across the bridge from Balboa Coves to the Thunderbird. (Photo by Newport Beach Police Department)

  After Eric and Nanette broke up, he remarried and had two more children. Here in 2000, Eric swims with his son in Yorktown Heights, New York. (Photo by Angie Naposki)

  Nanette lived the high life in Orange County with her second and third husbands, chartering this boat for drinks and dinner in 2005.

  Nanette (shown in 2007) had a sizable collection of pricey designer dresses, which she wore to eat lavish meals and dance at nightclubs every weekend.

  Orange County District Attorney Investigator Larry Montgomery helped bring this case to trial. (Author photo)

  NBPD Sergeant Joe Cartwright (left) and Sergeant Dave Byington, now retired, worked together on the 2009 arrests. (Author photo)

  Eric was arrested in a “felony stop” by Greenwich, CT, police detectives and their SRU team on May 20, 2009. (Photo by Newport Beach Police Department)

  Eric was stopped just down the street from this duplex, where he lived with his fiancée. (Author photo)

  Nanette was arrested the same day at the $1.3 million home in Ladera Ranch, California, she shared with her third husband, Billy McNeal, and their baby son. (Author photo)

  Senior Deputy District Attorney Matt Murphy was the winning prosecutor at both trials for Eric Naposki and Nanette Packard in July 2011 and January 2012. (Photo by The Orange County Register)

  New York attorney Angelo MacDonald gave the defense’s opening statement in Eric’s trial. (Photo by The Orange County Register)

  Orange County attorney Gary Pohlson delivered the closing argument. (Photo by The Orange County Register)

  Bill McLaughlin’s older daughter Kim showed her joy at hearing the guilty verdict for Eric Naposki. (Photo by The Orange County Register)

  Kim and her sister Jenny hugged after Eric’s verdict. (Photo by The Orange County Register)

  Nanette, whose trial began in January 2012, flashed a bri
ef and rare smile the day of the prosecution’s opening statement. (Photo by The Orange County Register)

  Nanette’s attorney, Deputy Public Defender Mick Hill, painted her as a liar, cheat and thief–but not a killer–during his opening statement. (Photo by The Orange County Register)

  Kim McLaughlin Bayless hugged Nanette’s third husband, Billy McNeal, while her first husband, Kevin “K. Ross” Johnston, waited in line for a hug after the jury found Nanette guilty. (Photo by The Orange County Register)

  Nanette was led into her sentencing hearing in handcuffs in May 2012. (Photo by The Orange County Register)

  Matt Murphy gave a news conference with the McLaughlin sisters after Nanette’s sentencing, which drew national media attention. (Author photo)