Restless Souls

by Alisa Statman

  At Atascadero, Frank equally fooled the psychiatrists with claims of remorse and rehabilitation.

  Behind the scenes, the men in his ward knew him as a braggart for sharing explicit tales.

  In the privacy of his cell during his two-year stay, Frank relished his attacks by composing a journal detailing the sexual torments he committed against one hundred children.

  The recidivism rate for an MDSO is 99 percent. Frank was no exception. Six weeks to the day of his release from Atascadero, he killed Amy.

  While Frank eluded the detectives, a terrified neighbor held the key to unlocking the case. The police had tried to talk to her within hours of Amy’s disappearance. At the time, the Mexican mother of two toddlers claimed ignorance and slammed the door on the officers.

  Winter rains threatened to come early when the detectives decided they had nowhere left to go in their investigation but back to the beginning to reinterview the neighbors. In a repeat performance, the woman said, “No hablo Ingles,” and closed the door on the inquiring policemen. But then, the door opened again. This time it was a man. “My wife has something to say. The day before that little girl disappeared, I think she saw the man you are looking for. He tried to take my daughter for ice cream.”

  Out of three hundred and fifty mug shots of convicted molesters, the woman identified Frank as the man with her daughter.

  The Camarillo detectives caught up with Frank at the Los Angeles County Jail, where authorities held him on charges for assaulting two other children.

  Boastful as ever, Frank confessed Amy’s murder to a fellow inmate in the Los Angeles jail. “I’ve done this before, over and over. It’s like, you get going, doing it, your adrenaline builds, the excitement is there. With this kid, I let things get out of hand, that’s all.”

  The investigators obtained a meticulously itemized warrant for the evidence they were looking for in Frank’s apartment. Number eight on the list specified: “Scrapbooks, newspapers, photos, tape recordings, or writings which could relate to the death of Amy Sue Seitz.”

  The detectives found incriminating evidence hidden throughout Frank’s apartment. They cataloged pliers, newspaper articles of his crime, a gas receipt that placed Frank in Amy’s neighborhood on the day of the abduction, and finally the journal from Atascadero.

  The items seized during the search were just a sampling of the powerful evidence presented during Frank’s monthlong trial.

  On December 15, 1979, following the jury’s guilty verdict, Judge Byron McMillan sentenced Frank to death. When he set the penalty, McMillan commented, “Mr. Frank, I wouldn’t sweat it. Unfortunately you will probably die of old age—out on the streets, still molesting children.”

  After an inmate is sentenced to die in California, their case is automatically sent to an appellate court. McMillan based his prophecy on the infinitely slow process of appeals to the State Supreme Court that often take more than twenty years. In Frank’s case, his death sentence was overturned within five years.

  Based on the Fourth Amendment, Chief Justice Rose Elizabeth Bird led the State Supreme Court’s decision in Frank’s penalty reversal, stating that the police violated Frank’s rights to privacy by seizing his personal journal without justification.

  Bird drafted their official decision: “This warrant was too overbroad a description. Although the officer went through the motions of obtaining a warrant, his actions prove he used it as a license to get inside the defendant’s house. Ignored the list of property specified. And had no more interest in the warrant than a theatergoer with his ticket, once he’s been seated.”

  With the journal considered an illegally seized document, the high court ruled that Frank’s jury had been improperly influenced by Frank’s writings. In accordance with their decision, Bird said, “The Supreme Court has not gone far enough to protect the criminal’s rights. If it was solely up to me, I would reverse Mr. Frank’s conviction as well—the diary was unfairly used in the trial.”

  Doris 1982

  That same day of Frank’s reversal, the high court vetoed three additional cases, two death penalties, and one murder conviction.

  I cut out the newspaper photo of Amy and put it in my billfold. It was an election year for the justices of the supreme court, and that little girl became my impetus to unseat those I believed to be exceedingly biased jurists.

  Like Frank, I kept a journal of my own. By 1985 I’d reached into the jar of every victims’ rights issue and advocacy group I could find, becoming a board member for Citizens for Truth, Justice for Homicide Victims, the California Justice Committee, Believe the Children, and took over the position of president at POMC.

  I divided my days counseling victims, lobbying legislators, giving speeches, and appearing on talk shows and news programs. The few moments left open, I put into the hair salons.

  If we lived on a ranch, I would have already put in an hour of work and three cups of coffee before hearing the rooster’s warning of sunrise. During that time, I made the day’s to-do list. With the morning headline of the supreme court’s ruling on Theodore Frank’s case, I made only one notation in the journal: “Concurrent sentencing is farcical—ten counts of child molestation with a sixty-year sentence equals two years. Who is Chief Justice Rose Bird?”

  Born in 1936, Rose Elizabeth Bird was raised by her widowed mother in an underprivileged environment. In spite of the odds, Bird developed into a woman of groundbreaking achievements.

  Upon completing her law degree, Bird was the first female clerk to serve the Nevada Supreme Court. In Santa Clara, California, she became the first female cabinet officer. And on March 26, 1977, she became the first woman appointed chief justice in the California Supreme Court. Bird was also the first and only chief justice to overturn every lower-court death sentence that came to her appeal.

  Bold, articulate, and unwavering in her opposition to the death penalty, Bird had vetoed fifty-nine cases. “What looks like a technicality to some people is a right to others,” she noted of her decisions. “My role is to do what’s right under the Constitution. We are the guardian of rights, and we often have to tell people things they do not like to hear, and if that’s politically unpopular, so be it.”

  Somewhere along the line, Rose Bird forgot about the victims’ rights and decided that “We the People” encompassed a small group of jurists.

  We may roost on opposite sides of the fence, but Bird and I were alike, each deep-seated in our convictions, each influencing our perceptions on the public.

  A year earlier, I ran for the state assembly in the Fifty-first district, Palos Verdes. Touted as the “Law and Order Candidate” and criticized for my campaign’s focus on victims’ rights, I lost the race by thirty-five percent.

  Following the defeat, I reflected that I didn’t care about being a politician; rather I had pursued political power’s ability to protect victims and potential victims from what I perceived as the leniency of the judicial system.

  The experience left me with a valuable lesson—personal agendas don’t belong in the political arena.

  The supreme court’s four overturned convictions happened on June 6, 1985. By the following Monday, embers sputtered wildly from the political fire of opposing forces, and with a gust, I fanned the flames.

  Proponents of Rose Bird claimed the campaign to unseat her was a right-wing effort to politicize the court, reduce its independence, and subject its decisions more to the public’s whim than to the law.

  Bill Roberts, the leader of a statewide organization that campaigned to relieve Bird of her duties, noted, “The chief justice has blatantly and systematically exceeded her lawful authority, and has been imposing her own radical political philosophy on every resident in this state; using her judicial position to legislate rather than to interpret state law.”

  My reasoning was a bit more colloquial. Shit rolls downhill; if the supreme court won’t uphold the lower court’s decisions, there’s nowhere left to go. Until we get the right players on th
e field, why enter the game?

  It was an ambitious plan: 1934 was the last time the state of California unseated a member of its supreme court; a chief justice had never been ousted.

  Election Day closed in. Together with Roberts and a multitude of others, I organized a press conference at the State Capitol. The first to address the gathered media, I picked up the microphone. “I’m here this morning to add my voice and energy to defeat Chief Justice Rose Elizabeth Bird at the polls next week. Her record of interpreting the law to favor the defense, and the rights of violent felons over the safety of the public is a matter of record since the time of her unfortunate appointment.

  “Bird’s comments that we, her opposition, consist of only right-wing extremists is simply fantasy. For as it has been said, we the victims are Democrats, Republicans, and Independents who recognize the need for change. Change that will again bring sanity to a system that has failed to control violent crime. A system that makes excuses for continually releasing violent felons. The defeat of Rose Bird is an essential start toward safeguarding society from the criminally violent.”

  The California debates aired nationally, where the issue narrowed to focus on the death penalty. Those resistant to California’s gas chamber called it barbarically inhumane murder that is applied unfairly, arbitrarily, and discriminatorily to its victims. Those with that frame of mind also argue that it’s biblically unethical, since it breaks one of the Ten Commandments: Thou shall not kill.

  To paraphrase prosecutor Logan Green, I saw nothing to be gained by arguing the Bible or any other interpretable issue. Our state provides that murder is punishable by death and our judges and juries are there to enforce it. Nevertheless, since Rose Bird did the talk-show circuit seeking support at the polls, I followed suit to contradict her efforts.

  Phil Donahue asked, “Mrs. Tate, why is the death penalty important?”

  “Too often death sentences are modified, then shortened, and before we know it, these murderers are back on the streets to kill again. If our courts aren’t willing to apply truth in sentencing, and if we don’t have the means to keep these repeat offenders incarcerated, then we must carry out their sentence of death. We must have deterrents.”

  “Many would disagree with you; statistically, the death penalty has not been shown to be a deterrent to crime,” Phil noted.

  “Of course it hasn’t, because we don’t enforce the death penalty. Californians have sent three hundred and forty-six killers to death row in the last twenty years, but only one inmate has been executed. In California, each week, one prisoner sentenced to life behind bars is released. Listen, Phil, we could debate the deterrent question to our graves, but one thing is certain, it will cut down on recidivism, because the guy that goes to the gas chamber, well, my dear, he’s one less we have to worry about.”

  “Is the death penalty cruel and unusual punishment, Mrs. Tate?” Merv Griffin asked.

  “Honey, I want you to walk a mile in my shoes and then ask me that. Wasn’t it cruel and unusual when they killed their victim?”

  In November 1986, the people of California voiced their insistence for impartial honor as they never had before. Chief Justice Bird was defeated at the polls along with two other pro-defense judges, Cruz Reynoso and Joseph Grodin.

  Although there were celebration parties to attend all over Sacramento, I opted to watch Bird’s concession speech.

  I stood at the front of the somber crowd as Rose Bird took her position in front of the cluster of microphones broadcasting throughout the nation. Her blond hair fell to an elegantly draped scarf that adorned her perfectly tailored black suit. The former chief justice brushed a wisp of her fallen bangs; uncovering her sad, yet dignified, glances to her supporters.

  For a moment, I thought Bird might break down. I almost felt sorry for her. Almost. Studying my long-term foe, I didn’t relish the idea that I’d participated in the destruction of her career; however, there are always casualties of war, and she’d been enemy number one. With that thought, Bird and I locked eyes for the first time. We each knew the other, yet didn’t at all.

  As if in defiance, she focused on me until the completion of her first sentence. “I appreciate that some people within our state are impatient, impatient to see executions. But I say to those who voted for us today, that although my voice will go silent, yours will not. You still can fight to ensure that we retain this house of justice. I don’t think anybody in this state will sit easy if in fact this becomes a court that ensures nothing but executions.”

  I ambled through the crowd contemplating Bird’s final speech. I cringed at the idea of a chief justice who executed with the enthusiasm that Bird overturned convictions. It was not the solution. I glanced up at the cheerfully blue sky, my face reaching for some of it to rub off on me. Six months ago I’d joined Believe the Children, an organization for abused and molested children. These same children needed to be able to believe in grown-ups as well, grown-ups who will protect them from the Theodore Franks of this sometimes-nasty world. Today was a victory for Amy Sue Seitz. I blew a kiss toward the sky, hoping she was close enough to catch it.

  In February 1987 Theodore Frank received his second penalty trial, sans the journal. The evidence beyond Frank’s writings was so overwhelming that it took only four hours for the jury to deliberate a death verdict.

  Later the foreman said, “The jurors were never close to voting for the only other choice before them: life without parole.”

  In September 2001 Theodore Frank died of a heart attack on death row.

  Doris

  “That old bitch needs to shut up and mind her own business. She doesn’t know what she’s talking about; I didn’t kill her daughter and she knows it.”

  The clip of Charles Manson faded to black while the lights in the studio brightened. “Doris, does Manson evoke a reaction in you when you see him doing these types of interviews?” Geraldo Rivera asked.

  “Uh-huh,” my eyebrows rose to match a playful smile. “I want to wring the little—well I can’t say it on TV, okay?”

  “It’s been a couple of years since we last talked,” Rivera commented. “Have you changed?”

  “Well, I have five years’ more experience in doing this.” I laughed and then turned to the audience. “Did you all hear Manson call me ‘that old bitch’? That’s his pet name for me; a name, I might add, that I wear with pride, because it means that I’m getting under the little bugger’s skin.”

  “And what about the other killers? Update us on that, if you will. They all look so cleaned up.”

  “Don’t they? I’ve been to two of Watson’s hearings and one for Atkins’s. Watson has two children now through conjugal visitations—this man who killed my pregnant daughter. Susan Atkins also had conjugal visitations when she was married to a man from Texas. She’s divorced now, but I think she has a new boyfriend.

  “They both have this wholesome image that they play because their ambition in life is to get out of prison; mine is to keep them in, and I’ll betcha two bits I win.”

  “I want to show you more of my interview with Manson, and then get your reaction. Roll the tape, please,” Rivera told the producer.

  The lights dimmed to spotlight Manson with a haircut a child might have given him, tattoos from elbow to wrist, and fingernails long enough to make Barbra Streisand jealous. I studied him, not with venom or fear, but to gauge. Though I’m grateful for Vince Bugliosi’s helter-skelter motive and the convictions it brought, I don’t buy into it for a second. There’s something more, some deeper motive for the killings. Even though Manson talks in riddles, he seldom lies. So I watch and wait for that morsel of truth that might slip from his lips, revealing the true motive. . . .

  “Help me understand something, Charlie. . . . Why did those girls murder for you? Why did Tex Watson murder for you?”

  “They didn’t murder for me.”

  “You told them to.”

  “No, no, no. Come back, DA. Come back. That’s not reality
.”

  “What is?”

  “Reality is, they did what they did. I didn’t tell them to do nothing. They took it upon themselves to do what they did. They’re responsible for their own actions. I’m responsible for my actions,” Manson said, tapping on his chest.

  “Let’s be straight. What are you guilty of, then?”

  “I’m guilty of thinking that I had rights in a courtroom. I thought I’d just stand in the courtroom and tell the judge the way it was and it’d be all over in fifteen minutes. . . .

  “Consider, I tell you it’s like this; yeah, I chopped up nine hogs, and I’m gonna chop up some more of you motherfuckers. I’m gonna kill as many of you as I can. I’m gonna pile you up to the sky. I figure about fifty million of you and I might be able to save my trees and my air and my water and my wildlife.”. . .

  “Why did you murder innocent people?”

  “First of all, there were no innocent people to start with.”. . .

  Rivera’s patience dwindled. “Why are you saying Sharon Tate wasn’t innocent?”

  “Wait a minute.”

  “No, I can’t let you get away with that shit, Charlie.”

  “Terry Melcher was supposed to do some things with music that he didn’t do. Terry Melcher lived in that house. Nobody knew Sharon Tate lived in that house. He broke his word, man.”

  “So you went looking for him?”

  “No. See, you don’t understand it. Let me lace it up your head again, man. When Melcher broke his word and didn’t do what he said he was going to do; when Leno LaBianca got stabbed all up, and all that gold and stuff was laying around, and the little black phone book from the New York hit list was gone. . . . There’s a lot more on this little road than you see. Dig?”