by Philip Jett
But the lawyers, like many in town, knew the sheriff had the propensity to stretch the truth, and a statement that Corbett was being treated the same as any other prisoner wasn’t saying a whole lot. But in this case, Brega, years later, confirmed part of the sheriff’s denials, saying, “There was no physical abuse I was aware of, just interfering with defense lawyers speaking with Corbett and giving them privacy, and interrogating for long hours.”
In response to Erickson’s motion, Judge Stoner issued a protective order precluding Wermuth and his deputies from mistreating or questioning Corbett. The judge found nothing to substantiate charges of physical abuse.
Despite the protective order, the sheriff’s star was on the rise. Hosting the alleged murderer of the former Coors brewery chairman in his jail garnered nationwide news coverage. Wermuth was asked to endorse products as if he were Mickey Mantle or Arnold Palmer. Even as far away as Garland, Texas, the Resistol Hat Company promoted its new “County Sheriff” hat in the newspapers and magazines, with an inset photo of Wermuth wearing the hat: “Designed for the Western Man-of-Influence … the County Sheriff combines dignified good looks and top quality with comfortable fit.”
But every rising star must fall … and Wermuth’s star was about to do just that.
* * *
The Denver Club Gala Ball was the first in years not attended by Mr. and Mrs. Adolph Coors III. Like all socials at the Denver Club, the night of Friday, December 16, 1960, brought out the wealth and pageantry to open Denver’s winter social season atop the newly constructed Denver Club Building that replaced the old red-stone clubhouse on the same site. Red carnations spelled out the year 1880 in honor of the eightieth anniversary of the founding of the Denver Club, one of the country’s oldest and most prestigious. Photos of the grand party would gild the Sunday edition’s society sections of The Denver Post and Rocky Mountain News the following day.
Everyone regaled that evening wore fine tuxedos and luxurious gowns, except Mary. She was home in her nightgown. She believed if she attended the gala, she’d be sitting at a table like the latest exhibit at Denver Zoo, on display for all the curious.
No, that’s the last place on earth I want to be tonight, thought Mary. I’m right where I want to be. Home with my family.
Brooke was home from college for winter break, and Cecily was on the phone with her latest boyfriend. Jim was asleep. Spike was in the living room with Mary, watching television. The Christmas tree was up. The girls decorated it with help from Jim. Bing Crosby, Nat King Cole, Perry Como, and Brenda Lee still sang in their home, but their music no longer brought Mary joy. She could only think of the years of Christmas with Ad in the living room, listening to Christmas music, and looking at the lights of the Christmas tree beside the fire. Ad had driven the family around their previous Denver neighborhood at night, looking at the multicolored Christmas lights on houses and the wreaths hanging on lampposts along the city streets.
But Ad’s death had tarnished Christmas for everyone. The kids lamented their father, and Mary’s state of mind made it even worse. The loss of the love of her life had left a chasm in her heart and mind that even her children couldn’t fill.
On the night of the ball, Mary was drinking gin, her defense against the pain. She was drinking, missing Ad, and hating his killer.
* * *
Corbett wasn’t having a ball either. His defense attorneys had filed a variety of motions addressed during a ninety-minute hearing on Monday after the weekend’s gala ball. Some observers called it throwing motions against the wall to see if anything stuck.
• A motion for a copy of the voluminous FBI investigation report in the district attorney’s possession—DENIED.
• A motion for a list of FBI agents the prosecution intended to call as witnesses during the trial—DENIED.
• A motion to set bail for Corbett predicated on the dearth of evidence—DENIED.
• A motion to move Corbett from the Jefferson County jail in Golden to another place of incarceration—DENIED.
• A motion to dismiss the case charging Corbett with murder because his constitutional rights had been violated and he had been denied due process of law—DENIED.
• A motion for a delay of trial to interview newly named prosecution witnesses and court approval of expenses for travel—DENIED.
• A motion for a continuance—DENIED.
• A motion for discovery—DENIED.
• A motion for the appointment of an expert—DENIED.
• A motion for a change in venue. Defense counsel argued that it would be impossible to have a trial by an impartial jury based on the local prominence of the name Coors and the almost daily news coverage since Ad Coors’s disappearance. Counsel offered affidavits of twenty-nine persons from various walks of life in the county to support the motion—DENIED.
Not all of the legal maneuvering had negative results. A motion to have a court-appointed psychiatrist, Dr. John P. Hilton, was approved, and a motion was granted that prohibited photographers, television cameras, and live radio from the courtroom and from the second-floor hallway outside it. However, ten newspapermen, with their tablets, pens, and pencils, were permitted to sit at a single table inside the bar of the court where typically only lawyers and witnesses are allowed. The judge also ruled that the sheriff’s office could no longer place Corbett in handcuffs while escorting him to and from the courthouse in order to avoid potentially prejudicing jurors.
As the legal lines of battle were being drawn, Corbett rested in his county-provided cell, isolated from the other prisoners, and waited. The sheriff and a deputy would take him out to attend a hearing about this or that legal point, when he would dress in a suit for the trip across the snowy, blustery street to the courthouse, escorted tightly by each arm. Reporters waiting in the jail lobby were notified before each march from confinement to judicial wrangling. County police officials also provided reporters with the particulars of what Corbett ate, how he slept, and what he read.
Corbett, an avid reader, accepted whatever magazines or books lay in the jail’s waiting area and offices—Field & Stream, Sports Illustrated, TV Week, and a bawdy magazine like Plush. Wermuth also offered Corbett his personal influx of magazines. Despite his recent business reversal, Corbett’s favorite magazine turned out to be Fortune.
Corbett received three meals a day. Breakfast at 7:30, lunch at noon, and then an early dinner at 3:30 so the cook and dishwashers could leave for home by five o’clock. The county menu included oatmeal, fresh eggs, biscuits, fried potatoes, fruit preserves with butter for breakfast, and pork chops, meat loaf, mashed potatoes, gravy, spinach, buttered bread, tea, coffee, cake, and Jell-O for lunch or dinner.
The murder trial was set for March 13, giving Corbett a respite of three months in the county jail to relax, eat good meals, and read the sheriff’s magazines. Aside from Sheriff Wermuth’s initial barrage of questioning, the sheriff had been forthright when he took the stand in defense of his interrogation protocol. There was no longer any mistreatment of Corbett in his jail.
* * *
District Attorney Ron Hardesty wasn’t pleased he’d been summoned to leave his Golden office and drive to Denver to meet with a corporate attorney. In one of Denver’s finest buildings, with marble floors and brass elevator, the office boasted a pair of heavy wooden doors and a brass plate carrying the law firm’s prestigious title.
The corporate lawyer had requested the list of questions Hardesty sought to ask Mary before he’d permit her to take the stand. A district attorney always has the option of issuing a subpoena to force a witness to appear in court, and continued refusal could be met with fine and imprisonment in the county jail, but Hardesty couldn’t jail the widow of Ad Coors. If he did, he would be the shortest-serving district attorney in history.
On the other side of a large, ornate mahogany door, Mary was reading the district attorney’s intended questions. Other than her name and address, each question seemed to ask more than she felt she
could give.
Why do they need me at all? she thought. She didn’t know anything about the crime. She was at home when it happened. They had all the evidence: the bloody clothes, the pictures of bones, the FBI’s massive investigation report.
She blanched at the question: “Can you tell us about the morning of your husband’s disappearance?”
“I can’t answer this question. I really can’t. It’s too painful,” Mary told the attorney.
“I understand, Mrs. Coors, truly I do, but we’ve been through this. Keep your answers short like they’re written and follow them like a script—without taking the papers into court, of course.”
“How did you feel when you didn’t hear back from the kidnapper?” was another question.
“How do they think I felt?” Mary shot up from her seat and paced across the room. “How would they feel if it had been their husband or wife?” she asked, raising the papers and pointing them at the lawyer. “How would they explain it to their children who were crying themselves to sleep every night?”
“I know,” said the attorney softly, his tone emanating from genuine sympathy or perhaps from fatigue dealing with the grieving widow. Not the typical corporate transaction to which he was accustomed. “But the DA has to show the jury the cruelty not only of the act itself but its effects on you, his widow, and your children. It makes a case that otherwise may seem like just another story out of a newspaper come alive, become something real, affecting real people, even—”
“Even me? Someone it’s not supposed to happen to? Is that what you mean? After all, no one thinks anything bad ever happens to people of wealth.”
“These people are your friends, Mrs. Coors. They feel badly. Who wouldn’t? They want to help send the man who did this terrible thing to prison.”
“Most of them just want to come and watch the circus,” said Mary, glaring at the attorney. “Get a seat up front. The grislier, the better. They should sell tickets. People crowding into the courtroom, pushing and shoving for a chance to see some bloody clothes and Ad’s bones, all hoping to see me cry on the witness stand.”
The attorney stood and walked around his desk to hand Mary a handkerchief. She accepted it and wiped her eyes. A minute passed before she finally said, “Okay, I’m ready.”
“You sure?”
“Yes.”
The attorney returned to his desk and pushed a button on the intercom.
“Tell Mr. Hardesty to come in.”
* * *
“Hey, what is this?” asked Corbett. A Jefferson County deputy cuffed Corbett and led him from his cell down a corridor and out a side door, where three men waited near a dark sedan on the night of February 28.
“Just shut up and come along,” said James Buckley, a former sheriff’s deputy, now an investigator for the district attorney’s office. Bray and Kechter were with Buckley as they shoved Corbett into the back seat of Buckley’s sedan and sped off into the darkness.
“Where you taking me?”
“You’ll find out soon enough. Relax.”
Corbett couldn’t relax. He’d heard about these kinds of things. Being stuffed into a car by vigilantes and taken to a remote spot to be beaten and hanged like the days of the Old West. That or tossed into a river wearing cinder blocks for shoes. It was happening all over the South. Beatings, lynchings, shootings, with the law turning their heads or, worse, participating. And here he was stuffed in an unmarked car heading to God knows where late at night.
“I want to call my lawyer,” said Corbett.
“Get a load of this guy. Hey, Ray, you got a dime for our passenger?” Buckley laughed. “Says he needs to make a call.”
Corbett sank into his seat.
Twenty minutes passed, and Corbett could see the lights of Denver. Were they going to put him on a plane? This didn’t make sense, but at least they were heading into the city.
Buckley turned off the highway, and soon Corbett saw Denver Police Station on a brick building.
“What are we doing here? I’m supposed to be in the county jail, not the city,” protested Corbett, knowing the judge had not approved the switch.
The sedan pulled into the garage, and the men exited the car. One pulled Corbett out of the back seat. “Come on.”
Half an hour later, Corbett was standing alongside four other men of similar height, weight, and features facing a mirrored wall.
“Number one, step forward,” called the Denver police officer. “What is your age?… What is your occupation?… How long have you been in Denver?… That’s all. Step back.”
The man did as he was told.
“Turn to the right. Turn back facing forward. Step back. Number three. Step forward.”
The first three men did as they were told.
“Number four. Step forward.… Number four step forward.” A petulant Corbett didn’t move. State your name and age.” Corbett said nothing. “Number five.…”
Corbett knew a policeman stood with a witness behind the mirrored wall. That was the whole point of a lineup. He didn’t know fifteen potential witnesses were watching him: Denver store clerks, gas attendants, and Turkey Creek Canyon residents.
Buckley instructed the men to march off the elevated platform and assemble in the hallway. All were told they could go, except Corbett.
“Come with me,” said Buckley.
Corbett was taken into an interview room in handcuffs, where Buckley questioned him for forty-five minutes.
“I don’t have to answer any questions. You’re not even supposed to have me here,” Corbett protested. “The judge signed a protective order. Keeps you fellows from asking me questions.”
“That only applies to the sheriff’s office, not the district attorney’s office,” said Buckley, who’d resigned as a deputy only a few weeks earlier.
“Same thing,” said Corbett.
“No, I’d have to disagree with you there, Mr. High IQ. We’re all detectives for the DA’s office. Nobody here is from the sheriff’s office. Not anymore. So here, answer these questions,” instructed Buckley, who slid a sheet of paper with fifteen questions toward Corbett, all asking for an incriminating answer, a go-straight-to-the-gas-chamber type of answer. “You should give a full and complete confession. It’s the right thing to do. It would help the family. Wouldn’t you like to make them feel better after what you did to a husband with four kids? Just withdraw your denial and confess. I’m giving you good advice. The judge will give you a fair shake if you do.”
Corbett didn’t touch the paper. Instead, he leaned back in his chair and folded his arms in defiance. There’d be no mea culpa. He hadn’t bowed to the FBI in Vancouver or to Wermuth’s pressure to confess in Golden, and he wasn’t going to confess to the DA’s office in Denver or anywhere else for that matter. He knew it meant the death penalty. He’d have to sit out whatever was going on and call his lawyers when he had a chance. The following day, that’s exactly what he did.
Corbett’s defense lawyers were furious and immediately filed a motion for contempt against Wermuth, Buckley, and all others who were involved in the late-night questioning. Erickson demanded jail for the conspirators.
Instead, the judge scolded the district attorney and broadened the original protective order against the sheriff’s office to include the district attorney’s office.
“I don’t want this man interrogated by you or anyone else,” Judge Stoner angrily instructed the district attorney.
“But one witness positively identified him, Your Honor. I’d like to request another lineup,” asked an obstinate District Attorney Hardesty.
“You’ll not get it from this court,” the judge replied.
For Judge Stoner, two kidnappings were enough.
CHAPTER 20
“I will recommend that a special grand jury be called to investigate the office of Sheriff Art Wermuth,” the district attorney told reporters. “It’s necessary because some folks in the sheriff’s office won’t come forward without being brought bef
ore a grand jury.”
The newly installed district attorney, Ron Hardesty, had other cases to work besides the headline-grabbing Coors murder trial, but none was of great interest, except one: the Sheriff Wermuth expense probe.
For the first time in seven years, a Jefferson County grand jury was convened by the district attorney’s office. “You will be expected to probe the financial affairs of the Jefferson County Sheriff’s Office,” Hardesty instructed the grand jury.
Sheriff Wermuth countered by doing some probing of his own. According to Assistant District Attorney Edward Juhan, the married sheriff intimately discovered at least one female ally on the grand jury who might assist in thwarting the indictment. Yet as Wermuth drove his county vehicle to work, his days of savoring the limelight were swiftly coming to an end.
“No one has approached me,” Wermuth told a reporter accosting him in a parking lot. “I have no intention now or in the future of resigning.” The newsman was following a story that many members in the local Republican Party had asked Wermuth to resign over his inventive bookkeeping methods. “If there is anything illegal about mileage vouchers, expense accounts, or anything else, I have no knowledge of it.”
Shortly after Wermuth submitted an expense voucher to the county commission for his humiliating boondoggle to Vancouver in an attempt to retrieve Corbett, outgoing county commissioners George Osborne and Bob Schoech refused to reimburse the sheriff. Commissioner Osborne told reporters he requested more information that had not been forthcoming. When asked if the sheriff would cooperate soon, the commissioner said, “I’m not worried. The sheriff will be in when he doesn’t get paid.”