CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
“A spooky stare.”
February 11, 1999
On the third day of the trial, it was a lawyer who cried first. The defense was again objecting to showing the jury more of the murder scene, this time a videotape made by the police.
Excusing the jury, Judge Parrish decided to view the film first before ruling. Watching the camera pan slowly along the length of Jacine’s body, pausing to show the knife wounds and the mud between her legs, Cleaver broke down. “I am moved to tears,” she said. “Her hair is blowing, and it reminded me how alive she was and how cold and empty she is now. … I’m sorry about that, but I can’t bring her back to life.”
She pleaded tearfully with the judge to keep the videotape from the jurors. “I don’t know how much of this they can take.”
As she cried, her co-counsel Mike Enwall, a former judge and also a member of the Alternate Defense Counsel, sat quietly in his seat. He and Cleaver had worked together before on a first-degree murder trial, defending Thomas Luther, who had been charged with killing twenty-one- year-old Cher Elder in 1993 and burying her body in a clandestine grave in the mountains. Through tenacious work, a detective named Scott Richardson found Elder’s body in 1995 and arrested Luther in West Virginia, where he was serving time for sexual assault.
In her mid-forties with long brown hair pulled back, Cleaver had angered Elder’s family the way she had fawned over Luther during the trial, touching him, leaning against him, tilting her head so that they could talk in conspiratorial whispers, and laughing at their private jokes. The victim’s family saw it as cheap theatrics meant to demonstrate to the jury that Luther was a nice guy, harmless to women. Of course, the jurors didn’t know (because it wasn’t allowed into the testimony) that Luther had already been convicted of the violent rapes of two women and was a suspect in the murder of several others. Elder’s family didn’t understand why Cleaver, who did know Luther’s past, felt it necessary to act as if he were some sort of wrongfully accused Boy Scout. It was one thing to represent him as a professional, as they felt Enwall had done in his role, but this game of pretend was sickening.
It didn’t work either: eleven jurors voted to convict Luther of first-degree murder, which would have subjected him to a death-penalty hearing, except for one holdout juror who insisted on a lesser, second-degree charge. In the end, the rest of the jury had to go along with her or risk a mistrial. As a result, Luther received a forty-eight-year sentence for second-degree murder and didn’t have to face a death-penalty hearing.
Cleaver behaved the same way around Salmon. The Luiszers had early on been taken aback by the way she touched and joked with him, as if he were a kid brother who had gotten himself into a little bit of trouble, rather than a man who had raped, then hacked, stabbed, and smothered a young woman to death. She wasn’t the only female at the defense table who carried on the sham, either. One of the defense’s investigators was an attractive blonde who also sat as close as she could to the defendant, placing a hand on his shoulder, giggling at things he said, and taking an extraordinary interest in his drawings.
The defense attorney’s comment angered Zook, who rose quickly and said, “Attorneys are supposed to keep their emotions in control. She’s been on this case for two years and she’s never cried… . Just because jurors get upset doesn’t mean it’s unfair.”
Parrish agreed that the videotape had a stronger “emotional tenor” than the still photographs. So he compromised. The prosecutors could show only a portion of the video, including one pan of Jacine’s body. Even at that, the jurors, when they returned and the videotape was played, were visibly shaken as they left the courthouse for the day.
The horror show didn’t get any better when the trial resumed the following morning. This time the Luiszers didn’t bother even going into the courtroom, but sat in the hallways as the coroner, Bowerman, discussed the autopsy, and the jury once again had to view disturbing photographs. Several of them had to turn away quickly and avert their eyes.
Finally, there was relief from the barrage of photographs. But Amber Gonzales’s testimony sent a whole new chill through the courtroom as she described being struck by a car while jogging. “I felt like it was intentional for some reason,” she said. “I was very scared. I just had an instinct … everything just didn’t seem right.”
The prosecution wrapped its case on the fourth day of the trial by calling forensic experts to testify about the blood and hair samples found at the scene or in the car, and about the stains found in Salmon’s underwear that matched Jacine’s DNA.
The prosecutors had expected their case to go on for several more weeks. But the defense attorneys did not challenge the DNA evidence or the police investigation. Nor did they engage in much cross-examination of their witnesses.
The public’s interest seemed to have dropped off as well. While the courtroom had been packed for the first day, most of the rest of the time spectator seating in the gallery was only about a third full.
The final prosecution witness was Laura Shugart, the waitress who served Salmon his beer at the Comer Pocket pool hall the night of the murder and recalled the way the defendant kept watching her. “It was a spooky stare,” said Shugart, who’d recognized Salmon and his friend on a television newscast a couple of days after the murder. “His head followed me. He made me uncomfortable.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
“It’s not right to question God.”
February 13, 1999
As he raped Jacine Gielinski, Lucas Salmon imagined that he was on a date and that the sex was consensual. This “extraordinary distortion,” defense psychologist J. Reid Meloy testified, came out in one of three interviews he conducted with the defendant prior to the trial.
Tanned, gold chains hanging around his neck, his long silver hair swept back and held in place by plenty of hair oil, Meloy looked something like old-time movie star Fernando Lamas. But he was a past president of the American Academy of Forensic Psychology and would be the main defense witness to assert that Salmon was a mere pawn for Woldt’s sexual depravity and that he was “incapable” of making decisions for himself the night of Jacine’s murder.
After the prosecution rested its case the day before, the jury was excused for the day. When they had left the courtroom, Cleaver announced that she planned to call as many as sixty witnesses, most of them to testify that Salmon was a good person, raised in a devoutly Christian home, but had become a different person under the influence of Woldt.
The prosecutors objected that the defense was trying to sway the jury by sheer numbers when most of those the defense intended to call would be “character witnesses,” whose testimony would have little bearing on the actual charges against Salmon. Their testimony—and even that should be limited to avoid repetition—would be more appropriate at a sentencing hearing.
Judge Parrish agreed with the prosecutors, saying the defense could not call witnesses simply to testify about Salmon’s character. Cleaver shrugged and said she would then call her five expert witnesses first and determine how to proceed from there.
She then opened her case the next day by calling Meloy. Appearing for the defense in high-profile cases was nothing new for the psychologist. He’d been a defense consultant at such trials as that of Susan Smith, the South Carolina mother accused of murdering her two sons by rolling her car with them in it into a pond, and Oklahoma City bombers Timothy McVeigh and Terry Nichols.
On the witness stand, Meloy said he was basing his opinion on seventeen hours of interviews with Salmon, his family, and acquaintances; as well as reviewing 6,000 pages of documents and three psychological exams. He’d been paid handsomely for his work, having billed taxpayers $60,000, at $300 an hour.
In December 1997, he’d written a report largely placing the blame for the rape and murder of Jacine Gielinski on George Woldt, whom he described as a “budding sexual sadist,” and a “psychopath.” At the time of the interview, Salmon was not so kindly dispos
ed toward his former best friend anymore.
Meloy noted in his report that when Salmon’s brother, Micah, had visited him at the jail in July 1997, Lucas told him that at the time of the murder he’d felt that his bond of friendship with Woldt was stronger than the difference between right and wrong. But two months after the crime, he was angry with Woldt for trying to place the blame on him.
Salmon told his brother that he’d heard that his “friend” had told the police and his lawyers that the crime occurred because Lucas kept whining about needing a sexual partner, that it was Lucas’s idea to follow the blonde in the car, and Lucas who had insisted on killing her.
Salmon told the psychologist that he didn’t want to have sex with Jacine when he realized that she was “unwilling,” and only did so when George insisted. Then he’d fantasized that he was on a date with Jacine and the sex was consensual. “I was trying to fool myself,” he told the psychologist, even though Woldt was telling the girl to shut up and not look at them.
Then Woldt, who had fetched the knife from the glove box, said that because he was the first to rape the victim, Salmon had to be the first to cut her.
Meloy’s testimony at the trial lasted two days, in which he described the defendant as “a seriously disturbed young man.” His diagnosis was that Salmon suffered from “dependent personality disorder,” one of ten personality disorders formally recognized by mental health experts. Salmon met seven of the eight criteria for the disorder, including: has difficulty making everyday decisions; needs others to assume responsibility for major areas of his life; has difficult expressing disagreement with others because he fears loss of support or approval; and goes to excessive lengths to obtain nurturance and support to the point of volunteering to do things that are unpleasant.
It was difficult to say how the personality disorder developed, Meloy said. It was probably a mix of inherited traits and early behavior used to get attention.
For instance, Salmon’s mother told him that it was apparent that Lucas was different than siblings, and she felt that he had been depressed all his life. As Lucas aged, the disorder became more apparent until he was a “shadow figure” following the rest of his family members from one state to another.
Meloy said he asked Salmon how it felt when Woldt called him his best friend in May 1993. Salmon replied, “I finally have a friend. It felt good.” The defendant saw Woldt as more worldly and was concerned that Woldt would abandon him.
By the time he moved in with the Woldts, Salmon was a “cipher” willing to do whatever his friend wanted, Meloy said. He was “willing to suffer any humiliation just to keep his friendship,” including constant taunts about his virginity, his sexuality, and the size of his penis.
Meloy noted that Woldt’s defense team had not allowed him to interview their client. But, he claimed, he’d seen enough evidence to know that the events of the night of April 29, 1997, were Woldt’s fantasy, not Salmon’s. He pointed out that two other acquaintances of Woldt reported that he tried to “recruit them as partners” to rape and kill women.
Unable to persuade those two to help him fulfill his fantasy, Woldt targeted Salmon. Meloy said the first attempt to lure Salmon into his web was at Woldt’s wedding in Delaware, where he suggested that they “go in and rape” the neighbor having car troubles. Although Salmon resisted the suggestion that time, he said, he wouldn’t remain strong in the face of constant suggestions by his friend.
Salmon told him that he knew Woldt could be dangerous. Asked why then he moved back to Colorado Springs in February 1997, Meloy said the defendant replied, “George was here. He asked me to be the godfather of their baby.”
Watching A Clockwork Orange was the spark that ignited the fire, Meloy said. From that point on, the pair talked constantly about how to go about abducting, raping, and killing a woman. Although it started as a fantasy, Salmon gradually began to believe that he actually should participate in such a heinous act.
Salmon started drinking heavily to silence the voice of his conscience. Meloy quoted him as saying, “I knew God was not pleased. I didn’t care what God wanted—it was me me me. I didn’t want George Woldt to think I was a wuss. I started considering sex outside of marriage.”
At first, Salmon didn’t think they’d go through with the rape and murder; then when he realized that they might, he didn’t believe that they would get caught. It wouldn’t have mattered; what mattered was Woldt’s opinion. “I wanted him to stop teasing me. If I went along with this, he’d accept me.”
Regarding the assault on Amber Gonzales in Garden of the Gods, Salmon told him, “I saw it was wrong, but part of me was convinced by George to do it.” Besides, he was angry with his father for firing him for sexual harassment at work, but not firing the women he felt had led him on.
After hitting Gonzales, “I felt pretty bad,” Salmon told him. But he didn’t say anything because he didn’t want to “make George a liar in front of her.” He took her sunglasses, he said, simply because he wanted them.
Woldt had berated him after the incident. “Why did you just stand there? We almost had her.” Salmon gave his excuse of the bushes getting in the way, but admitted that he was excited to his friend, who then replied, “Now we have to go do the old in and out.”
Later, as Salmon, who would only refer to the sexual assault as “having sex,” watched Woldt raping Jacine, he said he felt “uncomfortable,” like he had when he could hear the Woldts having sex in the apartment. He thought, “We’re going to have sex. It became real. I knew what would come next.”
Salmon said he asked Woldt if they should knock her out, but his friend said no. “George was going to get what he wanted again,” Salmon said and admitted, “I wanted sex, too.”
After the rapes, Salmon told the psychologist that he argued with Woldt about killing her, but finally agreed that she had to die to keep them from being arrested. Woldt said that because he’d had sex first, Salmon had to be the first to stab her. “All right, whatever,” Salmon said he replied. When he cut her throat, “I felt sick,” then as he watched Woldt repeat the act, “I felt contempt for him.”
Salmon admitted that it was his idea to suffocate Jacine when nothing else seemed to be working. However, the act “disgusted me … but it didn’t seem to bother George. He was into it.”
In fact after Jacine died, Woldt had asked him if he wanted to have sex with her again. When Salmon declined, he said, Woldt then said something even more shocking, “Do you want to cut her pussy out?” The idea was to hide the evidence of the rape, but Salmon came up with the idea of using the mud instead.
As they drove away that night, Woldt had said, “Bet you’re dying for a cigarette now.” That’s when Salmon said, “At least I’m not a virgin anymore.” They’d then gone home to wait for whatever came next and “tried not to think about it.” He wanted George to protect him. “I was also afraid of him.”
Salmon seemed to have reached some sort of religious understanding about the rape and murder of Jacine and its impact on his soul, Meloy testified. While God was against crime, Salmon believed he would still be forgiven for what he’d done. He said he was praying for both George and Jacine and hoped that “some good can come of this.”
The death of Jacine was “predestined,” Salmon told him. While he believed that he should not have committed the acts against her, he also believed that there was nothing he could have done to change it from happening.
“It was God’s will for Jacine to die as bad as that sounds,” he told the psychologist. “It happened regardless of what I wanted. Everybody dies. It’s not right to question God.”
Still, Salmon also acknowledged that he had the “free will” to choose between God and the devil. Woldt, he said, “pulled me away from God and what I knew was right.”
Now, his future was up to God. “I learned Jacine was born again,” he said, “and she is with God.” And if he was put to death for killing her, he too would be with God and judged again “when Jesus re
turns.”
Meloy said that Bob Salmon had told him that he thought it would be best if Lucas accepted the death penalty, then repented so that he could be forgiven and go to heaven.
However, Meloy said, there was something else that troubled Salmon. He sometimes thought about his experience of “having sex” with Jacine. “I feel guilty about any pleasure I have at the memory of sex with her.” He admitted that he frequently masturbated while in jail, fantasizing about having sex with one of his former girlfriends. However, he denied having any rape fantasies. “I don’t think about sex with Jacine as rape. I fantasized that it wasn’t.”
Salmon also admitted that he had a shoe fetish, particularly red shoes, and had once fantasized about having sex with little girls.
Meloy noted that while each defendant tended to blame the other, Woldt had done so to a much greater degree. Both had minimized “the horror the victim must have felt,” but it was Woldt who in his confession indicated that he thought the victim had “some complicity” in what occurred.
The psychologist described Woldt as a “budding sexual sadist” who wanted an accomplice but needed to find someone who was dependent and had strong feelings of inadequacy. Meloy felt that Woldt might be a “lust killer,” someone who killed as part of sex and “got off” on killing. He hated his mother and took it out on other women.
Meloy noted that Woldt told Rayna Rogers, another forensic psychologist who worked for Woldt’s defense team, that it was Salmon who liked pornography that involved rape and sexual abuse. Meloy could scarcely conceal his contempt for his colleague’s opinion that
Salmon was the instigator. He said it was obvious that Rogers was “basing her data entirely on what Woldt told her. … I find that to be remarkably naive.”
Salmon’s personality disorder prevented Salmon from exercising deliberation in Gielinski’s murder, Meloy said. He also suffered a “thinking disorder” that affected his ability to differentiate between fantasy and reality. “Lucas Salmon told his attorney and then told me that he thought when he was arrested for this crime that he could be given a ticket and allowed to go home.
A CLOCKWORK MURDER: The Night A Twisted Fantasy Became A Demented Reality Page 17