Sole Survivor

by Holly Dunn

  Next was Josephine Konvicka in Schulenburg, Texas. One of Josephine’s daughters had come by with her husband to feed the cattle. Her daughter went to check on her mother and noticed a screen was off one window and the front door was open. When she walked in, she saw the house torn apart, but the worst, the most horrifying, was how she pulled back blankets on her mother’s bed and found her mom dead, the pick side of a grub hoe lodged deeply in her forehead. It turned out to be the same tool used to kill Noemi earlier that same day.

  More testimony described the ransacked parsonage where Pastor Skip Sirnic and his wife, Karen, lived in Weimar, Texas, and how, after smashing their heads and faces with a sledgehammer, Resendiz pulled Karen toward the foot of the bed and raped and sodomized her. Pastor Skip’s brother, Mark Sirnic, and Karen’s sister, Kim, each took the stand to describe their loved ones. Throughout each of their heartrending accounts, Resendiz sat motionless and stone-faced next to his attorney. Mark identified Skip’s silver cross necklace and Karen’s silver heart earrings among the jewelry that had been confiscated from Resendiz’s residence back in Mexico. Kim pointed out Karen’s engagement ring, earrings her stepson had made for her, and her grandmother’s brooch among the stolen items.

  The last story on Friday was about elderly Leafie Mason, who was killed just a few months before Claudia Benton. Leafie had spent her life taking care of a mentally disabled sister who, in later years, was sent to live in a nearby nursing home. Leafie visited her sister, Birdie, every single day, and called the nursing home to check on her every single evening. The one day she failed to do so, nursing home staff called the sheriff to send someone to her house, where she too was found beaten to death. This story especially gets to me. I think about Birdie, who probably never understood why her sister stopped coming to visit.

  • • •

  At last, my time arrived. Heather left her sixteen-month-old daughter, Madison, back home with Fred so she could be with me during the trial. Dad flew us into Houston on the Sunday evening before I was due to testify. From the airport, we drove a rental car to a hotel not far from the courthouse, where we met up with Detective Sorrell—who was now promoted to sergeant—and Texas Ranger Drew Carter for dinner. I didn’t get a lot of time to talk to Drew Carter or to charm him like I’m used to doing, but I did get to give him a hug of gratitude for apprehending my attacker.

  That night Heather and I went to bed in one room and our parents retired to an adjoining room. We left the suite door open, so when I woke up in the middle of the night in a full-blown panic, everyone else woke up too.

  “I can’t do this!” I said to Heather. I was crying hysterically. “I’m not going to make it. I can’t face him again. I just can’t do it.”

  Mom and Dad came into our room to help calm me down. I was sobbing to the point of hyperventilation, convinced there was no way I could set foot in that courtroom.

  “You’re going to be okay,” they kept repeating. “You’re going to be okay.”

  They encouraged me to get some rest, but I don’t remember ever falling back asleep. I was terrified of what I had to do, but I knew I couldn’t back out now.

  That next morning, Monday, May 22, I put on my specially chosen outfit for the trial—a black skirt and suit jacket. My family and I barely spoke as we got ready; everyone was on edge, and no one wanted to say anything that would make me any more nervous than I already was.

  The Harris County Criminal Justice Center is a twenty-one-story high-rise in downtown Houston, but I never got a good look at the building given our route from the hotel. A couple of Texas Rangers picked us up in a big, armored SUV with dark-tinted windows. Our protective escort took a route that would circumvent the throng of reporters, but as we got closer to the building, they advised us to slink down in our seats just in case. I couldn’t see much from that covert position, until I noticed we were in an underground garage.

  I don’t remember much about entering the building or what floor we were on once we stepped off the elevator. I wasn’t able to focus, and I’d have gotten entirely lost if I didn’t have people guiding me. The only thing on my mind was that I was about to see him again.

  We were taken to wait in a conference room that had a long table with ten chairs around it. The chairs leaned really far back and swiveled in full circles.

  Not long after we arrived, Devon Anderson stopped in to check on me.

  “You doing okay?” she asked. “You ready?”

  I took a deep breath and nodded my head. She could tell how racked my nerves were.

  “Listen,” she said, “just stay calm. He’s gonna be in there to your left, looking at you—but don’t look at him. Look at me. Your parents and sister will be behind me too. Don’t look at him until I ask you to.”

  I nodded again. “Okay.”

  She gave me a hug and then headed for the courtroom where she would first interrogate Detective Sorrell on the stand ahead of me.

  After Devon left, I was swiveling back and forth in my seat looking toward the ceiling when I had an idea.

  My favorite sandals, the Birkenstock clogs I’d worn when I was attacked, had been sequestered in evidence since the night of the crime. I bugged Detective Sorrell nearly every time I spoke to him to please dig them out for me. About a year after the attack, he finally got clearance to release my shoes. I still have them. I still wear them from time to time. They were more than just a favorite piece of clothing—they reminded me of Chris in many ways.

  After he died, Chris was cremated wearing his own Birkenstocks, but the metal buckles didn’t burn and were left over with his ashes. His parents sent them to me and asked me to take them with me to the Harris County Criminal Court. They were a memento of Chris to give me strength, but our plan was to leave them somewhere in the building. I wanted to do something special with them, but I wasn’t sure what.

  Until that moment I was gazing at the ceiling.

  “Hey, Dad,” I said, “Can you help me with something?”

  Mom held a chair steady while Dad stepped up and reached toward the ceiling. He lifted one of the drop tiles just high enough so I could throw Chris’s Birkenstock buckles deep into the ceiling. Dad put the tile back in place and climbed down.

  We had just finished our clandestine ritual when a court official stuck his head in the door to tell us it was time to go. My mom and sister laughed. We had almost gotten caught! It was such a funny, unexpected feeling to have right before giving my testimony.

  My parents, Heather, and I were escorted through back hallways to the rear of the courtroom where we waited outside the doors until I was officially called in.

  Detective Sorrell had given the court an official account of the events surrounding the night of our attack, including details of the crime scene and the resulting investigation.

  Once Detective Sorrell stepped down from the witness stand, Judge Harmon said, “Call your next witness.”

  “The State calls Holly Dunn.”

  We walked through the same secured door the jury used to enter and exit the courtroom, and I was guided toward the raised platform to take my place at the witness stand. My family sat down in the front row across from me. Dad later told me how much he wanted to jump over the rail and pummel my attacker. But at that moment, I couldn’t even think of looking in his direction. It took all my focus to remain upright, to hold my hand up, to repeat the oath that I would tell the whole truth. Every part of my being was shaking. I was trying to stay strong, to not fall apart or pass out before I had done what I came to do. I needed to be believable, to tell things authentically, to provide the necessary details. I knew that the decision on his sentence—life imprisonment or death—would immediately follow my testimony.

  I sat down in the seat, clasping my shaking hands, my gaze fixed on Devon Anderson. From the beginning, she treated me like her own daughter or sister—this was personal. She knew just how difficult this testimony was about to be, and I took strength from the affectionate look she gave me as
I settled in.

  “Please state your name for the record?”

  “My name is Holly Dunn.”

  “How old are you?”

  “I’m twenty-three.”

  Devon asked me about my family, where I’d grown up, and where I went to college.

  “And have you graduated?” she asked. “Didn’t you just graduate about two weeks ago?”

  “I did, yes.”

  Only minutes into my testimony, I had my first victorious moment. I got to point out to my attacker, who sat just a few feet away, that I was alive and well and pursuing a future—something he had denied so many other people. He hadn’t destroyed me. I just graduated from college. I had a job lined up. I was headed for an MBA.

  Devon went on to ask me the details of where I was living in 1997 and about the young man I had been dating.

  “Where did he grow up?”

  “He grew up in North Canton, Ohio, but he was born in South Africa.”

  Chris’s international beginnings weren’t, in fact, something I knew about when he was alive, but details I learned from his sister after he was gone.

  “Why was he born in South Africa?” Devon asked.

  “His father worked in South Africa when he was born.”

  “Does he have any brothers and sisters?”

  “Yes, he has a sister, Elizabeth.”

  The Maiers hadn’t come to the trial, but they told me ahead of time that they were praying for me and that they would be with me in spirit.

  Devon pulled up a picture of Chris when he was still alive to show the jury—one of him with a big, furry golden retriever in his arms. I started to tear up, and I wouldn’t stop crying until long after we finished.

  “Who’s that a picture of?” Devon asked.

  “That’s a picture of Christopher Maier and Paxton, Elizabeth’s dog,” I explained.

  From there, Devon asked me questions about the party on Suburban Court and our walk along the tracks.

  “So y’all were on the tracks about thirty minutes after the other two guys left?” Devon asked.

  “Uh huh.”

  “Just talking?”

  “Uh huh.”

  “You’re going to have to say yes or no—because she’s typing down your words.”

  “Oh, I’m sorry. I’m sorry.”

  This was an exchange my family and I would look back on and laugh about. But in the moment, I couldn’t keep from crying. I had told this story many times before—to investigators, to my family, to the teenagers at Chrysalis, to the America’s Most Wanted producer, to members of the media. I relived the horror each time, but always with safe people who hadn’t been on the tracks that night. Telling it again in a courtroom where the perpetrator himself was present was almost more than I could bear.

  I took a deep breath and focused on answering Devon’s questions as plainly as I could. The questions were only getting harder. She transitioned into asking about our walk back down the tracks past the GE plant, to the moment we encountered the defendant.

  “What do you remember about his face?” she asked.

  “He kept saying, ‘Stop looking at me,’ but I burned it into my mind,” I responded. “He was definitely Mexican. I knew that from his voice. He had a small mustache and messy hair.”

  “Do you remember if he had glasses or not?”

  “I don’t remember if he had glasses when he first came up to us, but later he did have his glasses on.”

  Devon asked about what kind of weapon he had brandished—was it the hacksaw blade found among the debris around the tracks?

  “It was more like a screwdriver or an ice pick, something along that nature, that you can hold by the handle like this,” I said, indicating a forward jabbing motion.

  From that point, I recounted how he made us get down on our knees and how he tied us both up. I described how we had offered money, ATM cards, our car—anything that might entice him to just let us go.

  “Did you say anything to him while this was happening?” Devon asked.

  “I think we were just saying, ‘Why are you doing this? Let us go. We won’t turn you in. Let us go. Why are you doing this?’ Over and over. But he didn’t answer.”

  “You saw him tie Chris’s hands behind him?”

  I was slipping at this point, unable to speak, only nodding my head up and down, despite her instructions to give clear answers. We were getting closer and closer to the parts I could scarcely think about, let alone describe in detail.

  “Did you see him tie his feet?” she asked.

  “Yes.”

  “Did you see him put anything on his mouth?”

  “He tied me up, and then he put gags on both of us.”

  When Devon asked about the gags, I described how I’d stuck out my tongue to prevent it from taking hold, and how I’d loosened Chris’s gag as well. I always considered this to be one of the moments of the attack where I felt I had some measure of control.

  “At some point did he start,” Devon paused, “to assault Chris?”

  She knew she was leading me into an emotional minefield. I struggled to answer her directly. I took a few mental steps backward and went into a running leap toward the truth, because it was simply too difficult a moment to look at head on.

  “Yes,” I said. “I don’t know how long we were there. I really had no concept of time, but after he had gagged us and tied us up—we were asking him if he wanted our credit cards still, and our car, and Chris was saying, ‘Don’t hurt her, leave her alone,’ and he came over and hit Chris.”

  “Could you hear or see what he hit him with?”

  “Yes. It seemed like a big log, but it was a rock, I later found out.”

  “Do you know how many times he hit Chris?”

  “I thought he hit him around three times, but I was wrong. I think I just kept replaying it in my mind.”

  “Did Chris make any noise?”

  “No.”

  No matter how often I’ve told this story over the years, this point in the sequence of events breaks me every single time. As I tried to answer Devon’s questions, I was, in this moment, back on the ground next to Chris, hearing the sound his skull made as Resendiz crushed it, listening to the gurgling gasps of Chris’s last breaths. I doubt I will ever fully recover from the trauma of witnessing his brutal death.

  Devon recognized how terribly I was struggling.

  “You tell me if you want a break, okay?” she asked.

  I nodded, unable to speak for the tears that had overwhelmed me.

  “You want a break?”

  I took a deep breath. “No, I’m okay.”

  As painful as the process was, I was determined to win this fight.

  Devon resumed her questions.

  “After he hit Chris, what did he do?”

  “He put down what he hit him with, and he came over to me, and he got on top of me. I heard Chris gurgling, and I asked him to go make sure Chris’s head was turned to the side so he wouldn’t choke on his own blood. He went over to him, then came back, and said, ‘He’s gone—you don’t have to worry about him no more.’”

  At this point, I wasn’t the only one in the courtroom who was crying. The jurors were crying openly. Sobs came from people I couldn’t even locate in the room. Even Devon Anderson and Johnny Holmes were teary.

  “How did that make you feel?” Devon asked.

  “Scared. It was like a dream. I really couldn’t believe it was happening.”

  “After he told you that Chris was gone, what did he do?”

  “He came back over to me and climbed on top of me, and I started to kick and hit, and he stuck whatever that weapon was in my neck and said, ‘Look how easily I could kill you,’ so I just stopped.”

  “Did he undress you?”

  My face started to burn. It was excruciating to talk about being so intimately violated in front of a room packed with people, most of them strangers.

  “Yes, he took off my pants and my underwear.”
/>   “After he stuck you in the neck, what did you decide to do?”

  “Be cooperative—do anything to save my life.”

  “And did he rape you at that point?”

  “Yes.”

  “Did you say anything to him after he raped you?”

  “I asked him to put my pants back on, because if he killed me, I didn’t want to be found lying there naked.”

  “What did he do next?”

  “He took my ring and one of my earrings.”

  “What did he do next?”

  “I don’t remember being hit, but he hit me.”

  As her questions moved on to my arriving at Chad Goetz’s house, calling 9-1-1, and the injuries I’d sustained, I knew the end of the testimony was at hand. And the end of the testimony meant one last monumental act of courage.

  “You mentioned that during the robbery, he kept telling you and Chris not to look at him?”

  I nodded.

  “Did you look at him?”

  “Yes.”

  I started to shake, sensing what she was about to ask next. This was to be her final question—the moment in which she allowed me, his only surviving victim, to face him down and to call him out in a way no one else could.

  “Do you see him in the courtroom?”

  “Yes.”

  “Can you describe what he is wearing, for the record?”

  This was it. I was going to have to turn my head and look straight at the man who had raped me. I was petrified, but I steeled myself, pulling strength from the look on Devon’s face, my family sitting nearby, and the tears of the jurors themselves who had been moved by my story.

  I turned and looked at him. He’d gained a lot of weight in prison. His hair was long, his face pasty. The worst was how he just sat there with a smirk on his face, aloof and smug.

  I pointed at him. I was sobbing and struggling to catch my breath.

  “The, the, the white shirt!”

  As I spoke, I suddenly felt hot. The sound of my own voice started to fade, like my hearing was retreating into my head. I was about to faint.

  “May the record reflect that this witness identified the defendant, Angel Maturino Resendiz?” Devon said to the judge.