by Burl Barer
“What truthfully amazed me the most,” admitted Rocky Navarro, “was that no matter how Rhonda acted, or what sort of nonsense was going on in her head, Jimmy loved her unconditionally. She may have been crazy, but Jimmy was crazy about her.”
So dedicated was Jimmy Joste to preserving their tenuous family bond, he was ready, willing and fully prepared to take both Rhonda Glover and Ronnie and leave the country. Based on information shared with Detectives Walker and Faithful, Jimmy was fully anticipating the arrival in Austin of Rhonda and their little boy. He wasn’t waiting to hurt them, but for all three of them to run away from home.
“That certainly seems to be the truth,” agreed Danny Davis. “When you look at the stuff Jimmy did just before Rhonda killed him, it sure seems as if he was in the process of getting everything sort of in order for the three of them—Jimmy, Rhonda and Ronnie—to take off together. Hell, ask Joyce Imparato, she’ll tell you what Jimmy was doing.”
“I’ve known Jimmy Joste for about twenty years,” said Imparato. “I have known Rhonda Glover for about fifteen years. Their relationship was very on and off. She was always taking his child and leaving, and he was always trying to keep her happy with money so she wouldn’t leave. It was that way until he ran out of money. That was the pattern that had been going on for many years.
“I saw Jimmy a week before he died,” she told Austin detectives. “He came to my door and rang the doorbell. He handed me a bag with a couple of items in it. These were gifts that I had given him over the last ten years. He said that he wanted me to have them, because he didn’t want anyone else to get them.”
“I’m going away,” said Jimmy. “I don’t know what is going to happen to my stuff, and I want you to have back this stuff that means a lot to me, so that I know that it’s safe. I am worried about the disposition of my items after I leave, and if I give this to you, I know what you gave me is safe.”
Imparato looked at the items, and felt a bit confused. “It was a couple of blankets that I had given him as a housewarming gift a number of years ago. Maybe one cost four hundred dollars, but it was an old blanket, for the most part, so I was confused on what he was talking about and why he would bother to bring it back to me. He said that he was leaving with Rhonda, and that he wanted to make sure that he got this stuff back to me, and it was important to him.”
Joste began sharing some of his new business ideas. “He gave me a long laundry list of his business ideas,” she confirmed, “and half the time I didn’t pay much attention to his ideas, because they were all so grandiose most of the time, but he said he was leaving with Rhonda, and that he didn’t know what was going to happen to the items in his home once he and Rhonda left.
“He said he was leaving, and that he was going to France to start a water company. Well, I knew Jimmy real well. And he knew that I knew that he tended to exaggerate some things. He started to laugh about it, and I didn’t confirm with him if he was telling me the complete truth or not.”
Joste left, but she saw him again about a half hour later coming out of the bank. “I was making a deposit late on a Friday afternoon, before four because that bank closes at four. We hugged, and I said that I would see him at dinner. He was acting as if everything was fine, but I sensed trouble. I tried to get him to have dinner with me,” she recalled, “because I felt that something was wrong. Oh, he acted like everything was great. He was supposed to go to dinner with two other friends, but he didn’t go. Instead, he returned to Austin. When he got there, he went around and gave other friends some things he wanted them to have, because he was definitely planning on leaving with Rhonda.”
Alberto Hernandez, a carpenter who worked for Imparato and several of Joste’s friends, also received an unexpected visit immediately prior to Joste’s murder.
“Jimmy told him that he needed Alberto to come get everything in the Austin house, and that Alberto could have it all,” related Joyce Imparato. “Well, Alberto said he would gladly store it for Jimmy, but Jimmy insisted that he wanted Alberto to have it. That is exactly like Jimmy. Jimmy’s been like that for the twenty years I’ve known him. He was always incredibly generous to everyone. Jimmy also told Alberto that he was moving away.
“You know,” added Joyce Imparato, “when I saw Jimmy later that same day that he came by my house, the Friday before the murder, he said that he had to get back to Austin because he and Rhonda were leaving together for Canada. ”
“Yeah, poor Jimmy thought he and Rhonda and Ronnie were all going to leave the country together,” said Danny Davis. According to Imparato, Joste was expecting Rhonda and Ronnie to arrive precisely when they did. “He had withdrawn the last of his money, perhaps fifty thousand dollars out of the bank, and would use it to get them into Canada, out of the country, and establish residence.”
Jimmy Joste’s visit to Joyce Imparato explained many things, according to Bryan Case. “It sheds some light on the depletion of his assets. It sheds some light on why Rhonda would be coming to Austin, or he thinks that Rhonda would be coming to Austin in an RV—why he would think Rhonda would be coming over to the house. It explains any number of things as to what he was thinking was going to happen to their relationship. Jimmy was wanting or trying to get her to go away, and the three of them would have a family together. Jimmy believed it, but Rhonda knew it was never going to happen. Jimmy wanted to get back with Rhonda, and she let him continue in his belief. ”
This scenario is further validated by John Thrash, a wealthy retired Houston physician turned CEO of a thriving energy company, and executor of Joste’s estate. “I knew Jimmy because I met him in the Houston area through my father, who is also in the oil and gas business. He knew my father first, and that’s how I came to know him.
“He was a very dear friend,” Thrash explained. “We socialized together often, up until I got married, then not as frequently. I met Rhonda through Jimmy, and we saw and socialized sometimes, but not as often as with Jimmy.”
The very fact that Joste and Thrash were close friends further exemplified the personality and social circle of Jimmy Joste. “Philanthropy is an important and highly valued characteristic of their shared social circle,” stated Houston journalist and author Steven Long. “John Thrash and his wife, Becca, are an excellent example of the high-society philanthropy of petroleum millionaires. Some folks in that social strata fund hospitals, education, engineering and technology research, or social services. John is one of the most respected men in Houston, and Becca is a relentless fund-raiser for the arts, board member for the Houston Grand Opera, the Contemporary Arts Museum and American Friends of the Louvre. The long-standing friendship between Jimmy Joste and John Thrash bespeaks volumes of their shared values, interests and common concerns.”
Thrash, whose “cozy” home is a remarkably comfortable twenty-thousand-square-foot manse, sat in the Travis County Courthouse discussing the affairs of James Joste. “Jimmy and I discussed the idea of me serving as executor of his estate,” said Thrash. “I learned definitely that he had done that after his death.
“Jimmy made an investment of five hundred thousand dollars in 2000 or 2001, in one of our companies in New York State,” explained Thrash. “In 2004, that project was in intense multilateral litigation with AIG and the bank that was involved and a number of other partners, including us.
“This was not an asset that Jimmy could easily liquidate,” said Thrash. “It was a private limited-partnership ownership, and it was not liquid. Liquid would be stock, publicly traded stock that could be sold on an open market. These were private interests in private companies, and so establishing their value, particularly in an instance where there is litigation going on, would be virtually impossible.
“It might have been two to four months before his death that Jimmy came to me and told me that he wanted to sell about a hundred thousand dollars of his share in that investment because he was getting married.”
Thrash explained to Joste the difficulties involved in his request, and that
it wasn’t feasible at that time to anticipate being able to liquidate any of that investment. Jimmy Joste wasn’t the only person in the Joste/Glover relationship to approach Thrash about money.
“Some months before I saw Jimmy, I was on my way out of the office when I was told by one of our receptionists that Rhonda was in the lobby and wanted to talk to me. Since I was on my way out, I just walked to the lobby and we met in a conference room off to the side. I was surprised to see her. If we didn’t have an appointment or had talked, it would not be customary for her to just swing by.”
According to Thrash, Rhonda came by his office to request a favor. “She wanted to see if I would consider lending her some money. She was kind of vague as to the reason,” he explained, “but it had something to do with taking care of her son and some other expenses. She wanted about five or ten thousand dollars, but I told her that I really didn’t feel that I could do that and just kind of quickly excused myself.”
Eventually, after Jimmy Joste’s death, litigation was resolved, and his estate went from zero to $650,000, not counting the $350,000 diamond ring that was on consignment at Deutsch & Deutsch Jewelers in Houston.
On October 7, 2004, Austin police received a message from Susan Oswalt, an assistant district attorney in Travis County assigned to the 167th District Court. Ken Schaeffer, attorney for Deutsch & Deutsch, advised Oswalt that James Joste had purchased a ring on special order to give Rhonda Glover.
According to Schaeffer, the five-carat diamond ring was valued at $275,000, and Joste placed a deposit on the ring. This was consistent with pieces of a check found in the laundry room of Joste’s house. That check, written to Deutsch & Deutsch, was for $27,768.25. When Rhonda turned him down, Joste tried to resell the ring back to the jeweler. They declined, but they did agree to try and resell the ring. Schaeffer thought it was still at the store, and advised Austin police that the jeweler had a claim against Joste’s estate for the balance due on the ring.
Rhonda Glover did go to Deutsch & Deutsch and attempted to resell some other jewelry that Joste had given her. They refused, and she sold it to jeweler Hal Martin in May 2004. “Rhonda sold a TAG Heuer watch, a diamond bracelet and some junk jewelry,” said Martin. “She also sold us two 2-carat oval diamonds. This was on two different dates. We gave her a total of eight thousand seven hundred twenty-nine dollars for those items.”
If Rhonda was, as she claimed, a successful businesswoman in her own right, and Jimmy was kicking in $10,000 a month, it didn’t make sense that she needed to pawn her jewels. “I returned a ten-thousand-dollar watch that Jimmy got me, and while I was doing that, I asked for my old watch back, which I had pawned, but they had already sold it. There were times when, just like everybody else, I needed money.”
“Jimmy’s will made lifetime provisions for Rhonda,” said Thrash. “Rhonda Glover was to receive five thousand a month for life. Of course, she doesn’t get the money if she murdered him.”
11
It would make sense, at least in the mind of Jimmy Joste, for him to take the last of his available funds and head off to Canada with Rhonda and Ronnie. Canada protects people from being shipped off to face charges in countries that may not be as fair and just as Canada. Extradition law seeks to allow the surrender of an individual to criminal prosecution by another country for only the most serious crimes.
“The extradition process from Canada is designed to protect people from unfair and unjust prosecution,” explained Fred Wolfson. “Whatever they want you for in the other country has to also be a crime in Canada, and punishable by two or more years in prison, or five years if committed in Canada. For example, in 1910, when Dr. Hawley Harvey Crippen was arrested in Quebec City for the well-publicized murder of his wife in England, he waived his right to extradition proceedings in Canada and agreed to return right away to England to face trial. He was tried and ultimately executed before the year was out. ”
Canada would have been a safe haven for them, or at least one can see how Jimmy would think so. Rhonda Glover tried to cross the border in Canada herself, following her vanishing act from Houston. The only thing that kept her from getting into Canada was paper tags on her vehicle. If she had successfully crossed the border, her family may never have heard from her again.
“Perhaps she figured she could go to Canada, and then have Jimmy send her money,” offered one acquaintance. “Then again, if she were as nutty as she seems, she probably wasn’t making rational longrange plans any more than she was when she took off for Kansas.”
Arrested in Kansas, and transported back to Austin, Rhonda Glover’s stay in the Travis County Jail coincided with the memorial service at St. Martin’s Episcopal Church for James “Jimmy” Martin Joste. According to his published obituary, he was the perfect host who often cooked for up to twenty people at his mother’s home several nights a week. He was known for his great sense of humor, and his ability to tell vastly amusing jokes.
“Oh, those dinners were spectacular,” recalled Danny Davis. “Jimmy was really a fabulous cook. His mother was a wonderful, outgoing and charming woman. She was also feisty as hell. If you ever saw Auntie Mame, that’s exactly what she was like. Generosity was a hallmark of the Joste family. No one, friend or stranger, went hungry if they came in contact with the Jostes. They were incredibly kind, outgoing and giving.”
Jimmy’s amazing love and devotion to his son, said the obituary, was evident to all his friends. His brother, Kelly, asked that donations be made to the educational fund established for Jimmy’s son.
In real life, “should” is often an unrealistic expectation based on flawed assumptions. “The criminal justice system is based on the premise that people understand there are rules, why they have to be obeyed, and if they aren’t obeyed, then society has the right to come up with any number of options,” said Legal Aid Commission lawyer Kearney Healy. “All of those things are irrelevant to [a certain segment of the population]. It’s got nothing to do with good or bad—they just don’t see it the same way. Planning, organizing and learning from past mistakes are not in their repertoire. They are egocentric, impulsive and very concrete in their thinking. Typically, they do not make connections between cause and effect, anticipate consequences or take the perspective of another person.”
Cheryl Meyer, professor of psychology at Wright State University in Dayton, Ohio, is well-versed in Texas laws regarding insanity. “The insanity defense in the state of Texas is pretty well-defined. Did she know right from wrong? But even the most psychotic individual knows right from wrong. It’s disappointing and points to the flaws in the insanity defense. It leads me to wonder, who is insane? What does that have to be for someone to actually be successful with this defense? Jeff Dahmer, for example, killed people and then ate his victims, and he was found sane, and he had no history of mental illness. But here’s a woman with an extensive history of mental illness and who does something that defies any motivation, but she’s not insane either.”
One of the ironies is that individuals such as Rhonda Glover often make model prisoners. In terms of the justice system handling individuals with treatable mental illness, one of the things they fail to understand is that these people do very well in structured environments. Often people are fooled in the early stages of treatment into thinking somebody is doing really well, not realizing that they’re doing really well because all the opportunities for them not to do well are taken care of in a structured program. There is a point where the individual with mental illness, if not monitored closely and correctly treated, falls apart again.
Being crazy isn’t against the law, but murder is a capital offense. When the one accused of murder is mentally ill, a variety of factors immediately come into play.
“Popular misconceptions about mental illness are partially responsible for the railroading of mentally ill persons through the criminal justice system,” stated Jeff Reynolds. “From arrest to the determination of competency to stand trial and beyond, a person’s mental illness affects
every stage of passage through the criminal justice system.”
“Behavior associated with mental illness is often perceived as bizarre and suspicious,” insisted private investigator Fred Wolfson, “thus drawing police attention, even if the person has not committed a crime. Untrained to recognize and handle mental illness, arresting officers and other staff inappropriately assume the arrestee understands such things as their Miranda rights. Mentally ill people are more likely to give a false confession, especially if they are delusional.”
The concept of culpability is an important aspect of criminal law. Culpability signifies qualities such as consciousness, reason and responsibility. It is precisely these qualities that are disabled and distorted by mental illness, and therefore a gap exists between a mentally ill offender’s behavior and his culpability.
“In cases such as Rhonda Glover’s,” said Wolfson, “the issue of mental illness can be raised in Texas as a mitigating factor. Mitigating factors are particular circumstances that are legally recognized to decrease a defendant’s culpability and result in a non-death penalty sentence. Since untreated brain disorders can cause individuals to act in inappropriate or criminal ways, certain aspects of mental illness, such as a defendant’s diminished capacity to appreciate the criminality of his conduct, and to conform his conduct to the requirements of the law, are codified as mitigating factors in capital cases.”
The way that the criminal codes in Texas defined legal responsibility had to do with whether or not Rhonda Glover knew what she did was “wrong.” This is a very difficult standard to meet, or explain. It grows out of a nineteenth-century understanding of the mind, and was crafted in an era in which doctors did not know even the vaguest things about the nature of mental illness.
The first famous legal test for insanity came in 1843, in the McNaughton, or M’Naghten, case. Scotsman Daniel McNaughton (often spelled M’Naghten) shot and killed the secretary of the British prime minister, believing that the prime minister was conspiring against him. The court acquitted McNaughton “by reason of insanity,” and he was placed in a mental institution for the rest of his life. However, the case caused a public uproar, and Queen Victoria ordered the court to develop a stricter test for insanity.