Fatal Beauty

by Burl Barer

  When Rhonda Glover took off from Austin, Texas, she made it as far as Kansas before the authorities caught up with her. She was wearing the same floral-print sundress she had on the day she shot Jimmy Joste.

  “When I was arrested in Kansas,” recalled Glover in 2009, “I was pulled over on the side of the road for relief from the wind on the RV, and to get some water and a map. I was going to head back to Texas. Suddenly law enforcement was all around the RV and it was just like the movies. ‘Come out with your hands up.’ I was supposed to be armed and dangerous. Go figure. Anyway, they were very nice to me. In fact, they were exceptionally polite and friendly to me. When I was taken into their office, I was not even handcuffed in front of my son.”

  Rhonda had the family dog in the RV, and an officer asked her son the dog’s name. “Well,” replied the youngster, “his name was Snoopy, but since we are in Kansas, and need to get home, I guess his name is Toto.”

  “They laughed and laughed,” said Rhonda, “I, of course, just sat there looking at him, knowing that I was in big trouble for running. Like Moses did in Exodus 2:11 to 15, I told my lawyer he should use that in the trial—'Well, ladies and gentlemen of the jury, even a man of God killed an Egyptian in self-defense, and then hid the body, which is something my client did not do. She didn’t even get rid of the gun. She had full intentions of turning herself in. It just got scary for her in light of the people connected to the victim.'”

  Arrangements for travel to Kansas were made by Sergeant Jessica Robledo. “I was informed by Detective Walker that the federal weapons charge had been filed, and that Rhonda Glover had been stopped in Kansas. Walker was coordinating efforts with authorities in Kansas verifying that the child was found safe. I made travel arrangements for Detectives Walker and Fortune to fly to Wichita, Kansas, to follow up with this investigation.”

  She contacted Assistant District Attorney Dayna Blazey to brief her on the situation involving the child. Blazey advised that she would get Child Protective Services on board, and would coordinate efforts with Kansas.

  “I then contacted Assistant District Attorney Allison Wetzel and briefed her on the case,” recalled Robledo. “I also instructed Detective De Los Santos to coordinate with Wetzel on the arrest warrant for Glover. ”

  Working with exemplary precision, Robledo made contact with Grace Saragusa, owner of Top Gun in Houston. “I asked her to fax me the receipts of items purchased by Glover. At approximately twelve-thirty P.M., July 28, 2004, I received a faxed copy from Top Gun of all releases, waivers and receipts for purchases.”

  That was the same day that Rhonda Glover arrived in Wichita, Kansas, in leg irons. It was time to get Rhonda Glover’s side of the story.

  7

  Rhonda Glover was brought into the room where Detectives Walker and Fortune initiated an “informal chat” about travels and other recent events of interest. In truth, Walker and Fortune used established interrogation techniques, and the entire conversation was recorded on video and digital audio.

  “Cops can lie to you all they want when they interrogate you,” explained Fred Wolfson. “Yes, the police are allowed to lie to a suspect to get him to confess. They believe that an innocent person won’t confess. That, of course, isn’t true, but it’s a big part of the reason why police are allowed to use deception, half-truths or outright lies during an interrogation. The psychological manipulation begins before the conversation even begins. The physical layout of most interrogation rooms is set up to make you uncomfortable, and make you feel powerless. While police may not explicitly offer leniency for a confession or threaten punishment if someone won’t confess, they may imply promises or threats in their language and tone.”

  The interrogation process begins with you being presumed guilty, and the goal is to get you to confess. Once the interrogation begins, a detective may very possibly ignore any evidence of innocence because it doesn’t fit the preconceived idea that you are guilty.

  “The whole thing is designed to make you nervous,” confirmed Wolfson. “And any sign of stress is taken as an indication of guilt. Of course you could be stressed because you are being accused of a crime you didn’t commit.”

  The classic interrogation manual, Criminal Interrogation and Confessions, recommends a small, sound-proof room with only three chairs—two for detectives, one for the suspect—and a desk, with nothing on the walls. This creates a sense of exposure, unfamiliarity and isolation, heightening the suspect’s “get me out of here” sensation throughout the interrogation.

  “That ‘whole get me out of here’ sensation is one of the moral objections to interrogation because someone could make a false confession,” said Wolfson. “A process designed to cause someone so much stress that he’ll confess, just to escape the situation, is a process that leaves itself open to false confessions. There are plenty of those every year. In fact, there are up to three hundred false confessions per year in the USA. ”

  The more stress a suspect experiences, the less likely he is to think critically and independently, making him far more susceptible to suggestion. This is even truer when the suspect is a minor or is mentally ill, because he may be poorly equipped to recognize or fight off manipulative tactics.

  The interrogation manual also stipulates the ad- vantages of putting a suspect in an uncomfortable chair, where he can’t control any aspect of his environment, such as lighting, heat, air-conditioning or anything else. The interrogator will also sit in a higher chair than the suspect’s. “I used to saw off a small portion of one chair leg,” admitted Fred Wolfson, “so the chair would never be even on the floor, and always a bit off. ”

  A one-way mirror is an ideal addition to the room, because it increases anxiety, and other detectives can watch what’s going on and figure out what techniques are working, and which ones aren’t.

  “What you will notice in a classic interrogation, such as the one with Rhonda Glover,” commented Wolfson, “is that, right away, Walker and Fortune attempt to develop a rapport with Rhonda. They begin with casual conversation to make everything seem friendly and nonthreatening. Once someone—in this case Rhonda—starts talking about harmless things, it becomes harder to stop talking. Once they start, they usually keep going. ”

  Rhonda Glover was not placed in such a typical interrogation situation. In fact, she was taken into an office, where she sat at the most comfortable chair. She was afforded every courtesy.

  “Ms. Glover was brought in and asked to have a seat,” recalled Detective Walker. “I identified myself and Detective Fortune, and told her we were from the Austin Police Department. Fortune provided her some water. ”

  Walker told her that he was not there to talk to her about why she was in custody. “I told her she was in custody for a federal firearms violation. She asked what she did, and I told her it was handled through the ATF, and I didn’t really have anything to do with that. I told her I had not seen a report or affidavit, and all I knew was it had to do with a firearm, a handgun.”

  The Department of the Treasury ATF transaction record of Glover’s over-the-counter purchase of the Glock asked questions that could impact whether or not she could purchase the weapon. Two of the questions were as follow:

  Are you an unlawful user of, or addicted to, marijuana, or any depressant, stimulant, or narcotic drug, or any other controlled substance? Have you ever been adjudicated mentally defective or have you ever been committed to a mental institution?

  Rhonda Glover provided false answers and an incorrect address. Her ownership and possession of the Glock was illegal, as she falsified the information on the ATF form.

  Walker said that since she was in custody, and even though he wasn’t going to talk to her about that, he needed to go through some things. “I then read her the Miranda rights, as required,” Walker said. “I explained that if she did decide to talk to us, she could stop anytime.”

  “Well,” said Rhonda Glover, “I don’t know what any of this is all about. I’m just on vacation with my
son. Actually, I went to audition for a Nashville show. I had my guitar and piano with me, but I chickened out when I got there.

  “Then we went to Memphis,” Glover continued. “Then we were going to visit some friends in Aspen. It’s a long drive, and it’s hard driving that big huge motor home. All I know is that I pulled over, and Kansas police came with guns and got me out of the motor home.”

  Glover again mentioned having been in Nashville, and talked about recording herself. “I’m glad I didn’t audition in Nashville,” she said. “These leg irons are so darn tight when I walk.”

  The leg irons were actually loose, but Glover had pulled them up tight on her calves. “If you let them down,” Walker told her, “they will be more comfortable.”

  “No,” replied Glover, “if I do that, they hurt my ankles. ”

  The detectives asked nonthreatening questions that required memory (simple recall) and questions that required thinking (creativity). “When you are remembering something, your eyes will often move to the right,” explained Fred Wolfson. “When you are thinking about something, or making something up, your eyes might move upward or to the left, reflecting activation of the brain’s cognitive center. The detective makes a mental note about your eye movements.”

  True to his training, Walker asked nonthreatening conversational questions about where Rhonda was, prior to Memphis. “Oh, we were in San Antonio at the Texas Ski Ranch. We were there for about a week. I got the motor home from American Dream Vacations on I-10. I’m paying three hundred sixty dollars a day for it, but it’s worth it.”

  “I asked where she went from San Antonio,” said Walker, and she replied that she went to Austin. “I went to Austin, because I had a home that I sold to my ex. He had given me one hundred thousand dollars in equity on it, and I tried to get all the paperwork switched into his name. He had been a cosigner on it too. I wanted to keep the house.”

  So far, so good. Rhonda was talking, and that meant she would continue to talk. Hopefully, the talk wouldn’t include invoking her right to silence and her right to an attorney. In the United States, as many as 80 percent of suspects waive their rights to silence and counsel, allowing police to conduct a full-scale interrogation. “My ex,” Rhonda suddenly announced, “was worshiping the Devil, and he told my mother that Lucifer was going to come into my son.”

  Things were now taking a very interesting turn in what began as a lackluster travel narrative. “Jimmy was smoking crack,” she said. “I called the police in Austin on him many times because of his behavior. I was with him for thirteen years, and his Devil worshiping scared me so bad that I left him about a year ago. I called my mom and told her that there was stuff in the refrigerator he was eating that was not tofu!”

  Remarkably straight-faced following her tofu remark, Walker encouraged Glover to continue. “Glover said she wanted to buy another house, but needed her tax returns,” recalled Walker. “She rented a car from American Auto Rental. She went to her CPA’s office, Mike Hogan, on Bee Caves Road. She said she went to the office of her friend, a realtor named Jeffrey Dochen. She said the house on Mission Oaks was bizarre. She said all the paperwork for the house was erroneous. She said the house was built on what’s called Cave X. ”

  “The survey company lied, and said it was on lowland,” stated Glover emphatically. “I had plumbing problems, and the plumber said that this was a crummy house. He told me to have it inspected. I called in an inspector, and he was terrified by what he found, but he wouldn’t tell me what it was.”

  Perhaps delighted to have such a willing and attentive audience, Glover told more of her adventures in home construction. “She said there was a bow in the walls. She said she took a flashlight, started crawling around and taking pictures. She said she had a picture in Houston. She said it was in her apartment, and she would give us written permission. She said it was in a bag. She said gnats crawled around this bag all the time. She said there was a shaver that Jimmy had shaved up red stuff from the carpet that smelled like blood. She said there were two shoes, a black shoe and a white tennis shoe, with blood. There was a shirt with blood, candy and candle wax. She said God told her to take the plumbing apart. She said she took the plumbing apart, and it looked like her ex had poured all kinds of crap down there.

  “Rhonda said that in the beginning she and her ex had been writing a book about water, and how important it was to have clean water,” recalled Walker.

  “That book was my idea, my book,” declared Rhonda Glover. “I wrote two thousand pages of a book based on my own experiences, and with characters based on Jimmy and me. I showed it to the lady from CPS. I was so mad at my mother about that. I was doing what I could to get Jimmy in rehab. I had my own strategy, but she messed with it, and Jimmy flat out refused to go into Betty Ford. You see I went to Betty Ford, and that’s when I got clean and sober. So I got hold of Betty Ford’s and talked to the top people there. I loved Jimmy, and I wanted to get him into rehab. Anyone who tells you that I was on cocaine, and all that, is wrong. I’ve been clean and sober since 1998. Now, people may have thought I was messed up on drugs, but the drugs I was messed up on were the ones they gave me to take—lithium, Topamax and Antabuse.”

  Lithium is used to treat the manic episodes of manic depression. Manic symptoms include hyperactivity, rushed speech, poor judgment, reduced need for sleep, aggression and anger. It also helps to prevent or lessen the intensity of manic episodes.

  Topamax is a prescription medication used in the treatment of migraine headaches, but it is prescribed frequently by psychiatrists to treat bipolar disorder, alcoholism and cocaine addiction.

  Antabuse is a medication that causes vomiting, if taken with alcohol. This drug is given to alcoholics to keep them from drinking.

  Rhonda was long off any of the above medications when she sat chatting amiably with the Austin detectives. “She said,” recalled Walker, “that she found out that the city had given Morrison Homes permission to build this house despite failed plumbing, mechanical failures and the framing having failed on the house. Then she asked if we were Christians.

  “We replied yes,” recalled Walker, “and Rhonda said that in the Bible, in the book of Isaiah—God always told her about the Book of Isaiah. I asked her if God mentioned any particular chapter.”

  “Isaiah 54,” Glover said enthusiastically. “It’s about strengthening your stakes. ”

  Rhonda Glover wanted to clarify why she had stakes in her automobile. “Those stakes tied the dogs in the backyard with long chains. The dogs were always running away and squeezing out of the fence because they hated Jimmy. If he was home, they were let out the back and they ran off. I was always looking for them. I had those stakes in the car because I had hired a guy to mow the lawn out back and pulled them up. I put them on the car because I found them homes with a family that already had two other Pomeranians. Jimmy was hurting the male dog because he was peeing on the rug. Everything Jimmy had, the dogs either chewed it up or peed on. They hated him so much and I could not figure out why. He was abusing them. I am devastated to know these things.”

  Speaking to the Austin detectives, Rhonda Glover continued her explanation of Isaiah. “Isaiah 1:29 said you will be ashamed of the sacred oaks in which you have protected.”

  Rhonda became visibly more excited as she explained that the bank that financed the house was on Briar Oaks in Post Oak Park. She said the house was on Mission Oaks. She said the bank was the Heritage bank, and was now Prosperity.

  “Poor Rhonda,” mused Fred Wolfson, “she placed incredible significance on oaks. She linked the oaks mentioned in the Bible with her home. I wonder if it would have made any difference if she’d known that the actual tree mentioned in Isaiah isn’t oak. The original Hebrew clearly says terebinth, which is a Mediterranean tree from which we get turpentine. The King James Version of the Bible was created specifically for the Church of England. To make the Scripture more understandable to the British, the translators decided to change terebinth to oa
k, a tree familiar to people in England.”

  “Jimmy taught me this code,” continued Rhonda enthusiastically, “and even though he was high all the time, I listened because I was seeing miracles from God. In this code, nine is J. He is JJ. There is ninety-nine on my driver’s license. Listen, it’s important for you to know what’s going on, because he was the ringleader in all of this.

  “Jimmy was the one,” said Rhonda. “God kept telling me that he was the one. The Bible talks about how men will flee into caves in fear of the dread of the Lord, and ‘you sacrifice children in overhanging crags, and your hands are full of blood.’ If you read Isaiah, you’ll know about this house.”

  Glover had taken the most typical symptoms of mental illness to the deadly extreme. She took sacred texts revealed thousands of years ago to tribal people in another land, immersed in a cultural milieu as far removed from Texas as Glover was from reality, and personalized them to be all about her, her life, her son and the father of her child.

  “There is so much to tell,” Glover told detectives. “I’m just a lonely girl who people think is crazy. No one will believe me. They all know each other, and they are all Devil worshipers. They are murdering children in these caves because the house was built on Cave X and they lied about it.”

  Walker and Fortune listened compassionately as Rhonda Glover gave voice to her version of reality. “On Friday and Saturday nights,” she said, “homosexual men line up on Mission Oaks and crawl through those gates there. I have built my case against these people. I can tell you everything. Homosexuals are coming and going, in and out of there, all the time!”

  The homosexuals who were crawling into Cave X existed only in Rhonda Glover’s imagination. According to a representative of Regents School, location of the only entrances, it required a special key to unlock the concrete grate because the cave was sealed to protect endangered species. Trespassing was virtually impossible.