Further, he suggested that James Beede was responsible for the Dalmane that registered in the DOJ's high-tech analyses. "We're not talking false reading," Clymo said ominously. "We're talking contamination. Proven, known contamination. Somehow, cocaine ends up in Ben Fink's tissue sample. Bill Phillips [of the DOJ] proved for me that the samples that were prepared by James Beede were contaminated.” He paused. "What do you do with it? I don't know. You consider it.”
Pacing, Clymo continued, "I cannot prove to you that all of these samples got contaminated with Dalmane, but I know that it has been proved to you that they possibly could have been. And bingo," he said sarcastically, "we got a cause of death."
He pitted Dr. Baselt against Dr. Anthony, stating that his expert had broader experience and greater credibility. But, even granting that Dr. Anthony was an expert in his field, Clymo asked, "How many times did you hear him tell you, when you are talking about decomposed tissue, everything goes out the window?"
And that was the sticking point. Through all the hours of toxicological debate, no one could ever make an informed statement about how the process of decomposition affected Dalmane. This was the Achilles' heel of the prosecution's case, and Clymo meant to cripple O'Mara with it.
"When decomposition occurs, dehydration follows. Dehydration is like that glass of water with the salt in it. When the water evaporates, the salt is still there."
Then, snatching up a copy of the court transcript, Clymo read his exchange with Dr. Anthony about the amount of Dalmane that it might take to kill someone. Striding and gesturing, he emphasized his personal favorite, the softball analogy—"When you took a hundred or two hundred Dalmane and opened them all up, you would end up with a softball-size mass of powder"—but he carefully omitted Dr. Anthony's clarification that, in combination with other drugs, a much smaller dose could prove fatal.
Did the jurors notice this? Clymo hoped not.
Again and again, he returned to the issue of reasonable doubt. "It's not my job to prove to you that Dorothea Montalvo Puente is not guilty," he declared. Rather, it was the prosecutor's job to prove beyond a reasonable doubt and to a moral certainty that she was.
Clymo explained away the fact that Ben Fink and others had no prescriptions for the drugs found in their systems, citing testimony that alcoholics, when deprived of alcohol, will resort to pills.
Recounting the many ailments that afflicted these people, Clymo suggested that the only pattern to emerge in this case came from the checked box on the autopsy forms: "Cause of death? Undetermined. Undetermined. Undetermined. Undetermined. Undetermined. Undetermined. Undetermined."
Clymo waved multiple charts to argue his case, charts about "moral certainty," homicide, jury instructions, and the law. "If you follow the law," he argued, "you can’t convict Dorothea Puente of murdering eight people unless you can prove that they did not die of natural causes!”
And the ninth, he insisted, was suicide. Citing all the troubles in Ruth Munroe's life—her husband's diagnosis of cancer, mounting medical bills, and the failure of the restaurant business on top of her divorce—Clymo made it seem likely that Munroe had been terminally depressed. Reminding the jury that O'Mara had called this the most troublesome of all the counts, Clymo declared, "I'm not supposed to have to stand up here and convince you that she's not guilty. This is America! If there is doubt, if it is troublesome, it's not supposed to be prosecuted!"
Finally, after two and a half days, Clymo was about to conclude. He picked up some papers that co-counsel Vlautin had prepared for him and started to read.
It was a tale about following fox tracks in the snow, leading to rabbit tracks, leading to where a rabbit "has been killed and apparently devoured." The writer, seeing the bloody, trampled snow and tufts of fur, is convinced the fox killed the rabbit.
Farther on, the writer spies the remains of the rabbit, "but here there is no distinct track of any creature, only a few scratches and marks where some great bird of prey—-a hawk or owl—has struck the snow...."
It was easy to guess the author as Clymo continued reading: "The circumstantial evidence against that fox was very strong, for the deed was done since the snow fell, and I saw no other tracks but his at the first places. Any jury would have convicted him, and he would have been hung, if he could have been caught."
Clymo looked up at the jury. This story, he told them, was entitled "Murder Mystery: Rabbit, Fox, Owl" and was written by Henry David Thoreau the year before he died, "ten years after he told us about the trout."
Ending the longest closing argument of his career, Kevin Clymo implored the jury, "Keep in mind that things are not always what they seem. Thank you."
Because of the burden of proof, the prosecution gets a second shot at summation: rebuttal. And O'Mara was itching to argue. He'd filled pages and pages with notes. Clymo had presented the side of Dorothea Puente that was all sweetness and light; he was ready to counter with the side that was sinister and dark.
He rose. Urging the jurors to "step back and see the big picture," he derided Clymo's argument as absurd. The defense suggested that Puente had quietly buried the bodies because she couldn't risk shutting off "the big computer in the sky." But, he demanded, "What risk did she run with Everson Gillmouth? None at all!"
She could have easily reported his death to authorities. After all, her "fiance" only received a small pension of $42.50 a month. But instead, after Gill picked her up from prison, she'd looted his bank accounts and dumped him beside the river. "She's been out of the joint less than a month!" O'Mara exclaimed. "The ink hasn't even dried on her discharge papers, and she's back to her old tricks!"
Just minutes into his rebuttal, O'Mara was already erasing the traces of reasonable doubt that Clymo had so carefully written across this case.
He went on, "Kevin Clymo says it wouldn't surprise anyone if a seventy-seven-year-old man died of natural causes." He shook his head. "What is surprising is that a man who died of natural causes would be disposed of in this way."
O'Mara cast contempt on Ricardo Ordorica's claim that he'd seen Gillmouth in mid-December 1985, and mocked his pantomime of Everson Gillmouth's heart attack. "It's not that he's wrong, it's that he's lying to you!"
Ismael Florez was also lying about building the box sometime in December, O'Mara said, because of "the same kind of mindless loyalty" to Dorothea that they'd seen in McCauley and Ordorica.
O'Mara sped on. "Mr. Clymo didn't say much about Betty Palmer because there isn't a lot to say. What would be an explanation for why someone would cut her head off, cut her hands off, and cut her legs off? The only reason that makes any sense at all is to hide her identity. If she died of natural causes, why the heck would you cut those parts off? Why? There's no reason! Clymo had also suggested that someone else may have dismembered Palmer's corpse, but O'Mara derided this with heavy sarcasm: "Is she gonna ask someone else to do that? It's pretty hard to bring up at Joe's Corner."
Switching quickly to the Munroe case, O'Mara said again that "the problem is that it was never investigated properly, that's the problem." But he attributed this sloppy investigation to the manipulations of Dorothea Puente, who told the police that Munroe had been complaining of chest pains, leading them to believe she'd had a heart attack. Consequently, the police hadn't recognized this as a potential murder, and lost the opportunity to inspect the scene.
O'Mara reminded the jurors what Munroe had said at the hairdressers just three days before her death. "She doesn't say, I'm so depressed. She says, I'm so sick, I feel like I'm gonna die!”
His words came down like a sledgehammer.
Deriding Clymo's list of the many tenants who were still alive and well, who had come to court and testified, O'Mara said, "She didn't kill all of them, so she didn't kill any of them? Does that make sense to you?"
Consciously letting someone die is first-degree murder, and now he attacked Puente for not having called for help for any of these nine victims. "Why didn't she call the ambulance for Leona
, if she had a friendship with her for twenty-seven years? Did she do anything for Jim Gallop, does she call for Mr. Gallop to save his life? No! The only phone call she makes is to say he can't make his doctor's appointment because he went to L.A. This is the same person that says Ben went to Marysville, that Dorothy Miller went to the VA hospital, that Bert goes to Mexico. This is the same person that sent the letter to Reba. It's sophomoric, admittedly, but that's her way to stop the trail.
"More important," he went on, "if you cared at all about these people, wouldn't you have called before they needed a coroner?"
(A voice in the gallery whispered, "He's good.")
O'Mara knew he had to confront the damage wrought by the videotaped image of frail and dying Mr. Kelley. Clymo had suggested that Julius "Pat" Kelley could have easily ended up being count ten against Dorothea Puente. But, he pointed out, "Mr. Kelley told you himself why he wouldn't be a victim."
Eyebrows arched curiously.
"The problem with Mr. Kelley," O'Mara exclaimed, "is that he had family. When Peggy Nickerson interviews him, he arrives with his niece.You couldn't get rid of Mr. Kelley without somebody asking questions!"
Abruptly shifting gears, O'Mara said, "Let's talk about drugs. We're not talking about a massive overdose, we're talking about a fatal mixture of drugs, but it's not massive. And we all know that when you add alcohol you have a time bomb."
Responding to Clymo's criticism of the inconsistent findings of the three toxicology labs, O'Mara's voice was again pitched with sarcasm. "They say this is so unusual—but you all know this isn't the usual case. When you go to the trouble to use the most sophisticated equipment available, you're doing something wrong?"
He turned again. "The salt analogy. It's not the levels that count, it's its presence that counts. It shouldn't be there at all."
Zipping from point to point, O'Mara gradually lost focus, going over material the jury had already heard. His delivery was coming in tones of harangue, and the jurors were looking restless.
At day's end, Vlautin remarked that the prosecutor's long-windedness was good for the defense. "Let him keep talking."
Meanwhile, Dorothea Puente seemed pleased, smiling at her attorneys and joking with the bailiff.
Noticing this, reporter Wayne Wilson asked Vlautin if Puente would like to make a statement about how she was feeling at this point.
Standing to leave with the bailiff, she laughed and told her attorney, "Tell Wayne he can kiss my ass! I'm not giving any interviews to those vultures of the media."
The next day, O'Mara knew he couldn't afford to talk much longer. The jury would revolt. He had a few points to make about Bert Montoya, and then he had to stop himself and let them start deliberations.
Standing before them again, he said, "I know there's an imaginary headline going through your heads: O’Mara Continues to Hold Jury Hostage.”
They laughed, and then he was racing through his closing points, speaking even faster than usual.
Turning to the subject of Bert Montoya, he said that Dorothea Puente's boardinghouse should have been the "best of all possible worlds" for Bert, and that Judy Moise and Beth Valentine were gleeful when they'd finally placed Bert in her home. The mother/son bond between the landlady and Bert "appears to be this perfect relationship," O'Mara said. And yet, on at least two occasions, Bert had fled back to Detox. "There's something going on that disturbs him," he said ominously.
Again waving one of Dorothea's famous calendars before them, O'Mara pointed out that, on September 8, the day Bert would have turned fifty-two, Mrs. Puente had written his name. "But we never hear anything about his birthday, because Bert isn't around to celebrate his birthday," he declared. "Bert is gone before his birthday ever arrives."
And there it was. With all her love of fanfare, of balloon bouquets and cards and presents, would Dorothea Puente have let Bert's birthday pass unnoticed?
No. Bert died before turning fifty-two.
Finally, O'Mara was ready to demonstrate the utter absurdity of Puente's defense. "Let's indulge this fantasy to the ultimate degree," he said dryly. "Let's assume they all died as suggested by Mr. Clymo. They all died of these various diseases, conditions they built up from abusing their bodies over time."
He started slowly, gathering speed. "Ruth Monroe overdoses, commits suicide right in front of her. Everson Gillmouth, the man that she was thinking about marrying, he goes and has a heart attack, and he dies. Then Betty Palmer, who arrives on her doorstep, she dies unexpectedly. Then Leona Carpenter, her friend of twenty-seven years, she dies unexpectedly. Then James Gallop, a man that she meets in a bar, he dies unexpectedly. Vera Martin arrives at her doorstep, she's only there five minutes, she has this occlusive condition of the heart, and she dies unexpectedly. Then Dorothy Miller, she's there for a short period of time, she dies unexpectedly. Ben Fink—the drunk—she tries to deal with Ben Fink, but because of his repeated alcohol abuse for all of these years, he dies unexpectedly. And now her son, the man that she treats like a son, that she buys a Spanish-language Bible for, gets a new pair of shoes, rubs medicine into his head to take care of his psoriasis, she does all of these things for him, and now her son is sick.
"Three people—Mark Anthony, Don Anthony, and Pat Kelley—had to carry him back to the house. He's unconscious. He's blowing bubbles. We can't rouse him. He's unresponsive.
"And who's the last person to be with Bert Montoya?
"Dorothea Puente!"
A chill seemed to pass through the courtroom.
"Now," O'Mara continued, his voice sharp, "if we assume all of that is true, did she make any attempt to get medical aid for Mr. Montoya? Did she call 911? Did she do anything? No!”
Eyes turned toward her, but Puente remained expressionless.
O'Mara resumed pacing, the jury watching him closely. "When Mr. Clymo closed yesterday, to use a little double entendre, he outfoxed me with his Thoreau tale—the fox and the rabbit, huh? The fox is falsely accused. The circumstantial evidence was strong. Any jury in the world would have convicted the fox if they could have caught him.
"Well, Ladies and Gentlemen, there is no fox. The tracks in the snow do not mislead you, do not trick you. Kevin Clymo misleads and tricks you!"
Clymo objected instantly, and the judge instructed the jurors to disregard O'Mara's comment.
But O'Mara returned to his analogy. "We have nine rabbits that are dead. The tracks in the snow are clear: an unassuming, seemingly innocent old lady—the visual and logical contradiction—in front of the old Victorian house with the lush landscape. It's almost inconceivable in anyone's mind that this could happen. And yet it did.
"Dorothea Puente murdered nine people."
CHAPTER47
For months, the jurors had talked about movies, politics, vacations, and family—anything and everything except this trial. Now, finally, they could open the floodgates. Filing out for deliberations on July 15, 1993, they gave no clue to what images had left the greatest impressions, which witnesses had swayed them.
Could it be John Sharp telling of the thumping, bumping down the stairs in the middle of the night? Brenda Trujillo's description of Dorothea "leaning over the table and breaking open capsules" into a drink? The angry, grief-stricken children of Ruth Munroe? The headless, truncated, blood-drained corpse of Betty Palmer?
Or would they, instead, recall the doctors testifying, again and again, to the lung, heart and liver diseases that plagued most of these people? Would they suspect that James Beede had somehow bungled the toxicology tests so that all the results were questionable? Would the toxicology experts cancel each other out? And would they remember, above all else, how Dorothea Puente had cleaned and cared for society's castoffs?
They had to sift through some 3,500 pieces of evidence, the testimonies of 153 witnesses, months and months of impressions, ultimately distilling the facts down to an essential question: Was Dorothea Puente a kindly but unbalanced woman caught in an unfortunate web of circumstance? Or was sh
e a cunning, manipulative, murderous old crone?
Even if they supposed she was somehow responsible for these deaths, did they feel they had enough evidence to convict? Could they find enough evidence in aging documents and faulty memories to find beyond a reasonable doubt that these people had been murdered with premeditation?
Or, might they decide this was a case of criminal negligence and opt for the lesser charge of involuntary manslaughter?
At this same time, Dr. Kevorkian was hitting the news with more "assisted suicides" in Michigan, and the Netherlands had just broken new ground by legalizing euthanasia. With these people so weak and ill, had Dorothea really done anything so terrible? They were already living on the edge; hadn't she just nudged them off?
By the end of the first afternoon, it seemed clear that the jury was working fast. Michael Esplin—the sole member to come to court each day in a necktie, who had listened with notably acute attention—was selected jury foreman. Their first request was to hear what Dorothea Puente had told the police about Ruth Munroe's death in 1982.
Next, they wanted to hear the testimony of John Sharp, which touched on a number of issues, especially the disappearances of Bert Montoya and Ben Fink.
After that, the only request from the jury room was for some labeling stickers, which, observers agreed, indicated that they were being methodical
While summer fog clung to the coast of Monterey, there was apparently no fog of confusion in the jury room. At breaks, they seemed just as cheery and good-natured as ever—a good sign.
Four news vans remained parked outside the courthouse, waiting for a verdict, and reporters and cameramen speculated on how long the jury might be out. A week? Two? More? A betting pool went up. But a week passed and the most impatient were quickly disappointed.
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