However, Wilson asserted that the defendant and his lawyer had a constitutional right to attend, but it was not a requirement. The judge shrugged and said that if Wilson and his client had put it on record that they didn’t want to attend, then that was their choice.
So the defense table was empty when Gonzales took the stand and told her story. After the verdict, the now twenty-two-year-old Gonzales had told the press and now told the judge that only recently had she been able to jog with her mother past the place in the Garden of the Gods where she’d been struck by the car.
“It’s changed me a lot. I’ve never really trusted strangers, but now I’m a little more leery of everyone. It took me a long time to begin to have a relationship, as far as a boyfriend. Even though nothing happened, I felt, in a way, I was violated.”
Gonzales said she was haunted by what happened to Jacine. “When people talk about Jacine and what a wonderful person she was, I wish it didn’t have to be her. I wish it didn’t have to happen at all. It scares me to think that could have been me.”
This time, Woldt received the same sentence as Salmon for the remaining crimes—184 years, should he escape his date with the state’s execution chamber. And in the end, that’s what happened.
A few days after Christmas 2002, Bob and Peggy Luiszer made the hated drive back down to Colorado Springs to bring his holiday cookies to the staff at the El Paso County District Attorney’s Office. They had remained friends with the prosecutors, though mostly it was limited to holiday cards and the occasional telephone call.
There was another purpose to the visits as well, and that was to tell District Attorney Jeanne Smith “No more.” They were through—the system opposed to the death penalty had beaten them down, and it finally won.
Earlier in the year, the U.S. Supreme Court had handed down a decision in an Arizona case that essentially said that the jury that convicted a killer also had to make the decision on whether he would live or die. At the time, Arizona law left it up to a single judge, but even states like Colorado that placed the burden on a panel of judges were affected.
A hearing took place in the fall at the Colorado Supreme Court with attorneys for the state attorney general’s office arguing that the decision did not necessarily affect Colorado. The justices disagreed. They decided that the U.S. Supreme Court decision had also negated the death-penalty decisions for Francisco Martinez and George Woldt. William “Cody” Neal’s case would take further study as Neal had voluntarily waived his right to a jury trial and placed himself in the hands of the panel of judges.
Relatives for the victims attended the hearing. All they had been through—the countless hours sitting on hard wooden pews, listening to lawyers and witnesses talk about the brutal murders of their loved ones, testifying about the effects on their own lives—was all for naught.
A lawyer for the attorney general’s office told Peggy that “we’ll fight this all the way to the Supreme Court.” But Peggy shook her head. “Not with us, you won’t.”
A few days after Christmas, Peggy reiterated to District Attorney Smith that if her office decided to appeal and go after Woldt again, “You’ll have to do it without us.”
In February 2003, the Colorado Supreme Court ordered that the three men on death row sentenced by jury panels, including George Woldt, be resentenced to life in prison.
The Luiszers no longer cared. They simply wanted to find a place in the world again. They remained married, but their marriage was a fragile thing, held together by friendship and memories more than anything to do with being a man and a woman.
Peggy grew angry with all the platitudes, and she even lost some of her friends over it, especially when she hears people talk about “time healing all wounds” or that] “God must have had some plan.” The former simply isn’t true; time does not heal all wounds. The latter sounded too much like Lucas Salmon explaining to the defense psychologist Meloy that there was nothing he could have done to prevent what happened to Jacine.
“It was God’s will for Jacine to die as bad as that sounds. It happened regardless of what I wanted everybody dies … it’s not right to question God.”
Lucas Salmon and George Woldt stole more than Jacine’s dignity and life. They took more than her smile and love from her family and friends. They also ripped apart the future of Peggy and Bob Luiszer. There would be no wedding bells, no happy hours holding a grandchild of their own. Now, there would be no visiting with Jacine and her friends as their children played, as she had once played in the small house near the little elementary school.
Sometimes the hurts came from unexpected directions. The mother of one of Jacine’s best friends, who had gotten married and named her first child after Jacine, called Peggy and told her not to contact her daughter anymore. Peggy wasn’t going to be allowed to meet the baby.
“There is no going ‘back to normal,’ ” Bob Luiszer said during an interview for this book in 2003. He sighed as his wife wept, sitting at the kitchen table holding the photograph of Jacine she’d carried to court. “There is only a ‘new normal.’… We’re the parents of a murder victim, and they never let you forget it.”
EPILOGUE
A note from the author
March 24, 2017
It’s hard to believe that twenty years have passed since the murder of Jacine Gielinski and fourteen since I sat down with the Gielinskis to finish my work on the first edition of this book, which at the time was titled PARTNERS IN EVIL. With so much time passing, I thought as I prepared this manuscript for re-release, I would include an update, my reflections as a true crime author, and even a response to two criticisms of the original book.
I’ll begin by noting that George Woldt, now age 40, remains incarcerated in a Colorado prison. Lucas Salmon was moved out of Colorado for his safety.
There are three inmates on death row in Colorado. Two of them, Sir Mario Owens and Robert Ray, for the murders of a young couple were expected to be prosecution witnesses in a murder trial involving Owens. And Nathan Dunlap who was convicted and sentenced to death for killing four people at a Chuck E. Cheese restaurant. Dunlap was scheduled for execution in August 2013, but Governor John Hickenlooper, citing issues with how capital punishment is administered, issued an Executive Order granting an indefinite stay. The decision has been construed as a moratorium on executions in the state. There have been no executions since Gary Davis.
I also wanted to address a couple of critical “reviews” that were posted to the Amazon page for the original book. Normally I wouldn’t bother; readers have a right to criticize books. However, it was obvious that these two reviewers were not simply disappointed readers, but involved in the cases, and their comments were at best misleading and disingenuous. So I thought I would put the record straight.
First let me point out that both of these reviewers were anonymous. In other words, cowards. I put my name on my books, but these two decided to make their remarks from behind the curtain. My take is that although one claimed to be a “crime scene investigator,” intimating that he or she worked for law enforcement and was present at the crime scenes involving Jacine Gielinski, that isn’t true. In fact, if involved at all, I believe that the “investigator” would have been with the defense.
How do I know? Well, I can’t obviously be completely sure, but after I saw the review, I asked some of those involved with the case if they had noted any inaccuracies in the book. There were none. Nor had the reviewer provided any—just an unfounded accusation and a “warning” for readers “not to believe everything they read.” I did challenge the reviewer to provide a single inaccuracy but never received an answer. Those in law enforcement I asked about the book believe the critiques were posted by someone associated with the defense team whose nose was out of joint for the way some of the defense actions were portrayed.
The other anonymous reviewer complained that I was “stomping” my foot due to my supposed support of the death penalty and that included “stomping on the Constitution.”
This reviewer and the other commented that I had not explained anything about the justice system or how it works or for that matter mentioned the Constitution. The inference is that I know nothing about the justice system, and the roles both prosecutors and defense attorneys play, despite having sat through nearly two dozen capital murder trials, as well as many that did not involve the death penalty. I’m usually also fully acquainted with most, if not all, of the facts of those cases, including those withheld from juries for one reason or another.
As such, I have read more investigation reports, listened to more jury selections, and sat gavel to gavel through more murder trials than most criminal attorneys. If anything, my explanations of how the system works—from voir dire, to opening statements, to witness testimony, objections and judges’ rulings, to summations, verdict and sentencing is too comprehensive for some readers.
In this case, part of my reason for choosing to write about this story, in addition to the narrative of two seemingly unlikely killers and how they spiraled into evil, was the new method in Colorado (as well as some other states) of determining the death penalty. In fact, the original version of this book was a long dissertation on the history of the death penalty in Colorado and some of the important murder cases in its evolution. In this edition, I reduced those historical sections in order to concentrate the book on the Salmon and Woldt trials in relation to the three-judge death penalty panels. However, the original book made no comment on the efficacy of the death penalty, just its history.
While it’s neither here nor there in relationship to this book, I personally am not a fan of the death penalty in its present form. I have several reasons for that:
—Prosecutors who file death penalty papers in order to coerce a defendant into accepting a lesser plea. As noted in my colleague John Ferak’s wonderful book, Failure of Justice, five innocent people pleaded guilty and served more than twenty years in prison after being threatened with the death penalty;
—Too many innocent people have been convicted, including some who have been executed or are currently on death row. In my opinion, the bar needs to be higher. The death penalty should be an option ONLY when guilt of having committed the crime is beyond any and all doubt, not just reasonable doubt, and that the murder(s) was premeditated. The lawyers can argue over whether the defendant was insane and therefore criminally responsible for their actions, as well as the usual weighing of aggravators and mitigators. But there should be no doubt that the defendant killed the victim.
—The system takes too long and costs too much money. Most death penalty cases go on long after a jury has rendered its verdict and the sentence is handed down. Years and hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of dollars are spent on appeals. Victims’ families are put through the wringer time after time, in part under the defense theory of wearing them down and trying to coopt an agreement for a life sentence. There should be one appeal, before an appeals court, a trial of the trial after which the decision of the appeals court is final. And if execution is the sentence, it should be carried out quickly.
Other than that I have no qualms with a killer being executed. By taking a life, killers who have committed premediated murder with aggravating factors—such as being carried out in a particularly cruel and heinous manner—have forfeited their lives.
I’ve heard all the “life in prison is a worse punishment” arguments. Maybe for some, especially first-timers or those who had good lives on the outside. But the truth of the matter is that many people who are committed to prison become “institutionalized.” Prison is home. They get warm, clean accommodations, three meals, and color television. It’s where their friends are and other friends and family can visit them. One reason so many offenders get out of prison and commit other crimes right away is they are simply more comfortable and happy in prison than out.
Anti-death penalty advocates will argue that it isn’t a deterrent, and that life in prison without parole protects others and the community just as effectively. Well, that’s simply not true. Inside a prison, those who have nothing left to lose are more likely to take the life of other inmates or prison personnel. What are you going to do to a life? Add more years?
And life without parole does not always mean life without parole. In my book, SMOOTH TALKER, I wrote about how serial killer Roy Melanson was released from prison just twelve years after receiving a life without parole sentence. He then killed two, and probably more, other women.
Parole boards change. The definition of what “life in prison” changes. Mistakes happen and prisoners get released. Or dangerous individuals are place in situations—such as reduced security prisons, like the one Melanson is currently house in—and they escape. The death penalty is the only sure way of keeping a murderer from killing again.
As for the opposition argument that there’s no proof that the death penalty is a “deterrent,” the thought of which might cause someone to reconsider killing another. My answer to that we can’t know that if for all intents and purposes, the death penalty is not a “real” threat. In many states, inmates spend decades in prison as their cases wind through the appeals process. No one has been executed in Colorado since Gary Davis in 1997 and that took eleven years from crime to punishment. The only way to ascertain that would be if carrying out the death penalty was a quick and sure as the crime that was committed.
I do know that at least some killers fear the death penalty. In my book, BOGEYMAN, serial child killer David Penton, already serving a life sentence in Ohio, pleaded guilty to the murder of three more little girls in Texas on the condition that he not be transferred from Ohio to Texas, where the death penalty is carried out. In that case, the threat of the death penalty resolved three cases for the families involved. And George Woldt wept and begged for his life at his sentencing.
And lastly, there’s the argument that society should not be “punishing” criminals for their behavior and that prison should be all about rehabilitation. No eye for an eye, or life for a life. That’s a bunch of hooey. Of course society has the right to punish a criminal, particularly someone convicted of murder—the one crime that can’t be “taken back.”
As just about every society since the beginning of time has known, it can be cathartic to know that a monster has been cast from the circle of humanity. His or her name forgotten instead of a reminder every parole hearing and anniversary of a murder, and the money spent keeping a killer alive has ended. And that’s just the community.
Every Christmas, every birthday, families and friends of murder victims are reminded that killer of their loved ones gets to share the special occasion with their families and friends, even if it’s in a prison visiting room or over the telephone. The families of killers can hear their voice, talk to them about daily events, and even get a hug at the end of a visit. What do you think Peggy Luiszer would have given to be able to hold her child or tell her she loved her one more time? That’s a privilege killers get that their victims do not.
However, the previous edition of the book did not address my issues—pro or con—with the death penalty. I simply laid out the facts of the historical cases.
As a book writer, my role is not to tell readers only those facts that a jury will hear—that is for the lawyers to argue over and judges to decide—but to give as complete a picture of how the justice system does, and sometimes does not, work. In addition to providing a police and court procedural in my books, I also try to give readers a behind-the-scenes look, including the machinations, ploys and behavior of the various “characters” involved in these stories.
A curious complaint from both of the negative reviewers—after a perfunctory few words of saying they were sorry for what happened to Jacine—was that the book was written “for” the victim’s family, as opposed to apparently just sticking to the court case. I think anyone who reads my true crime books will see a great deal written about the impact of violent crime on the family, friends and even community of the victim, as well as about the victim. It’s my
belief that the system already does what it can to reduce victims to court case numbers, and nullify the feelings and impact on those who must live with the consequences of violent crime. The Salmon and Woldt trials were good examples of this: the defense attorney winning a motion to prohibit the prosecutors from showing a photograph of a happy, smiling Jacine to jurors for more than a minute; arguing that Peggy Luiszer not be allowed to speak at sentencing because her emotional testimony might sway the judges;
I make no apologies for talking to Jacine’s parents, the Luiszers, about what they went through as parents of a murder victim. It not only gave them a chance to express themselves, but it gives readers a more complete picture of how the actions of murderous individuals affect others.
What I really think bothered the two reviewers was the portrayal of some of the defense attorney and their witness behaviors and actions in the Salmon and Woldt cases.
First, I’d like to preface this with I have tremendous respect for defense attorneys. I also understand that they have different obligations than their counterparts across the aisle. The prosecution’s job is the search for the truth and to achieve justice, wherever that leads them. They also have an obligation to go forward with a case ONLY if they have the legally admissible evidence to convict the accused beyond a reasonable doubt. And even if they have sufficient evidence to convict, an ethical obligation to be absolutely convinced of the accused’s guilt. Both obligations don’t always go hand in hand.
Defense attorneys have different obligations. They are supposed to “zealously” protect their clients’ rights to due process and a fair trial. It is on them to make the state prove its case beyond a reasonable doubt; even when guilt is assumed, they must still put the prosecutors through their paces. “Better a hundred guilty men go free, than one innocent man lose his freedom” is not just a throwaway quote.
A CLOCKWORK MURDER: The Night A Twisted Fantasy Became A Demented Reality Page 25