Such Good Boys: The True Story of a Mother, Two Sons and a Horrifying Murder
Page 11
(Photo by Eliza Gano)
Doorway into the Riverside apartment where Jane last lived with her sons.
(Courtesy Orange County Sheriff’s Department)
Booking mug shot of Matthew Montejo.
(Courtesy Orange County Sheriff’s Department)
Booking mug shot of Jason Bautista.
(Courtesy Orange County Sheriff’s Department)
Senior Deputy District Attorney Michael Murray.
(Photo by Tina Dirmann)
Matthew Montejo’s room at the Riverside apartment. It was the room he shared with Jason before Jane’s death. After her murder, the boys replaced the sleeping bags they used to sleep in with mattresses.
(Courtesy Orange County Sheriff’s Department)
The site off Ortega Highway where Jason dumped his mother.
(Courtesy Orange County Sheriff’s Department)
The kitchen knife Jason used to cut off his mom’s head and hands. He used the scissors to chop off her hair, making her neck more visible before he began slicing.
(Courtesy Orange County Sheriff’s Department)
Homicide investigator Craig Johnson at his desk within the offices of the Orange County Sheriff Department’s Homicide Unit.
(Photo by Tina Dirmann)
Investigator Andre Spencer reviews one of the dozen thick case files collected in the Bautista homicide.
(Photo by Tina Dirmann)
Investigators discover the bag carrying Jane’s head and hands in her Riverside apartment. The remains were double wrapped inside grocery bags before they were stuffed into the carrying case.
(Courtes Orange County Sheriff’s Department)
A few splashes of blood stained the living room carpet where Jason beat his mother before strangling her to death. Jason later admitted he tried to scrub the stains out of the carpet before giving up and covering them with a white throw rug.
(Courtesy Orange County Sheriff’s Department)
The Dumpster at the Oceanside housing complex where Jason and Matthew tried to discard their mother’s remains.
(Courtesy Orange County Sheriff’s Department)
“He wasn’t exactly a brilliant computer student, but he was better than average,” said California State University Professor Ken Mantei, who helped oversee the computer lab. So Jason was hired, earning $6.70 an hour. With his new job came keys to the lab, where he could come and go as he pleased at all hours of the day and night, according to Mantei. Occasionally he brought along Matt, who sometimes did homework, but mostly played video games and watched downloaded TV shows. No one ever said anything to Jason about it.
“He certainly didn’t have any faculty members looking over his shoulder or anything,” Mantei said. “He could have come in at night and downloaded porn all night long if he wanted to and we’d never know.”
As it turns out, Jason used the extra computer time to download music and computer games. He knew ways to download copies of television shows, too, including That ’70s Show, Alias, King of the Hill, and The X-Files. Then he simply burned them to discs and took them all home to watch with Matthew.
His favorite download was the HBO mega-hit The Sopranos, a show that chronicled the ups and downs of modern-day mob life in New Jersey. At the time, the show was lauded by critics for its involving, realistic story lines, but slammed for its powerfully graphic violence. Episodes included scenes of a mobster dragging his pregnant stripper girlfriend into an alleyway and brutally kicking and beating the life out of her. One showed the vicious rape of another character. Every season fans watched as favorite characters got “whacked” (killed) for grievances big and small.
Friends stopped short of saying that Jason was obsessed with the show, but he certainly loved it. And he never missed an episode, including one called “Whoever Did This.”
In what would become one of the most infamous Sopranos episodes ever shot, lead character Tony Soprano gets into a verbal argument with fellow henchman Ralphie Cifaretto over a racehorse. The fight escalates until Tony pummels his pal to death. In a supposedly classic mob move, Tony and his cousin drag their dead associate to a nearby bathtub where they cut off his head, then saw off the hands, before dumping the body. The move is supposed to make it nearly impossible for cops to identify the corpse, should it ever accidentally be discovered.
Jason recorded the episode at school, then watched it on his home computer with Matt. According to Matt, the two watched the episode multiple times. But that wasn’t particularly unusual—they often re-watched their favorite shows. In fact, they never talked about the episode at all. Matt could never have known then what kind of impact that show would later have on his brother and on their lives together.
With the extra income at the computer lab, Jason was now making pretty good money. He brought in about $1,000 a month at the Holiday Inn, and another $500 for the twenty hours a month he put in at the lab. With financial aid, he made about $24,000 a year. But he didn’t think about leaving home now, mainly because Jane was actually doing all right.
She washed laundry, went to the grocery store, cooked dinner at night, and rarely talked about entertainment industry bad guys, Mexicans on the roof, Jews around the house, child molesters, Internet spies…Life was more normal than it had ever been in the Bautista household.
“I had no reason to leave,” Jason said.
There were minor discomforts. After all, life with Jane was never entirely normal. She still refused to get any furniture out of storage. There were no mattresses in the two bedrooms. Instead, they slept in sleeping bags on the floor. They had a computer, but no Internet. A television, but no cable. No phones. No couches. Not even a refrigerator. Still, to Matt and Jason, these were good times, and not even a bare house could change that.
Jane’s beloved dog was still around, too—even though the lease on the Riverside place specifically forbade pets. Jason was always nervous that the animal would get them evicted. Though Jane mainly kept it in her room, it still needed to be taken out for walks. And there were times, at night, when it barked uncontrollably. Jason convinced his mother that the dog should spend some time at a kennel, to reduce their chances of getting caught. He knew if the family ever got evicted, it could trigger another stretch of homelessness. He wouldn’t let that dog come between him and a home. Jane was reluctant. She still loved the dog deeply. But ultimately she drove the animal several nights a week to a boarding kennel in Moreno Valley.
It’s not clear what Jane did all day while her sons were at school. She had no friends, never spoke to her neighbors, didn’t work, and rarely went outside alone. But, to her sons, she seemed content for the moment. And they were grateful simply for that.
Meanwhile Matt settled into his new school. Despite the chaos of homelessness, he had earned a 3.2 overall GPA while home-schooled. But during his first semester back, his grades plummeted to a 1.7 average. Certainly, it couldn’t have been easy re-adjusting to the rigors of a structured schedule. But there was likely another reason for the sliding GPA. Fifteen-year-old Matt made fast friends at school. And soon, he wasn’t coming straight home after classes. Often, he lingered to hang out with his new buddies, sometimes to drink, sometimes to smoke pot. Smoking pot became a regular part of Matt’s routine—he acknowledged as much in interviews with investigators and in court. It helped him zone out from the problems at home. Gone were the days of playing sports, excelling at hockey and golf. It was easier to escape with friends through after-school parties. Though things were quieter now—especially since his brother was gone so much, working two jobs and going to school—home was never a pleasant place to be.
Though Matt seemed very well liked at school, one afternoon he ended up in a campus fistfight. School administrators broke it up and told him he’d have to call his parents to pick him up. With no home phone, he couldn’t call Jane, and he didn’t want to, anyway. No telling how she would react. Instead, he called his big brother. Jason was working one of his rare afternoon shifts at the hotel
and turned to Dan for permission to leave.
“That was Jason, always taking care of business,” Dan said. “He would have done anything for his little brother.”
Jason took off immediately to retrieve his sibling. Lately, Jason had taken on more of a fatherly role in Matt’s life. He made sure homework was done and that Matt got up for class every day. And when Matt got in trouble, Jason went to campus and dealt with school administrators.
“Don’t worry,” he told them. “My mom works all day and couldn’t come. But I’ll tell her everything. Matt won’t go unpunished.”
In truth, Jason told her nothing. That meant one more day of normalcy. Instead, he talked to Matt directly. “Don’t mess this up for us,” he said. “You want to set her off? You’ve got to straighten up.”
Matt’s slipping grades and pot use continued, but he never got into another fight.
Jason continued to excel at school. Though he still carried the “geek” reputation that had earned him so much grief in high school, as a biochemistry major in college, he saw a lot of students just like himself—too smart for their own good.
“He was just a chemistry dork like the rest of us,” said friend Sarah Reinelt, who met Jason in September 2002 in a biology class. She remembers first seeing him, clad in jeans, a plaid shirt, a pair of black-rimmed glasses, and bulky, silver Nike shoes (“I always told him they looked like moon shoes,” Sarah said). To the bubbly and outgoing college coed, he always seemed a little out of place—but Sarah found this endearing. She was drawn to the overgrown awkward guy and ended up spending a lot of time working in the computer lab, where Jason often helped her with class projects.
“He was kind of a computer dork, that’s for sure,” Sarah joked. “He’d always talk about computers. He’d say, ‘Oh, I got a new modem,’ or RAM or some bullshit like that. He loved computers and video games.”
Sarah was a year behind Jason and routinely turned to him for assistance. Sometimes, he even slipped her the answers to past tests, since some professors were in the habit of using the same exams year after year. The two became fast friends. In fact, Sarah always knew about the crush he developed toward her. But the pretty, petite blond coed had a boyfriend. Sarah didn’t “feel like that” about Jason, she admitted.
“But I liked him,” Sarah said. “I just thought he was a cool guy. We used to ditch class and go get lunch together and just laugh. I even had him over to my house. He’s had dinner with my family.”
Jason rarely talked about his home life. But Sarah suspected things were not good. He mentioned helping out with bills at home because his mom had trouble working. But more telling, Sarah said, was Jason’s mood one night after dining with her and her mom.
“Man, your family is so cool,” he kept telling Sarah. And in a way, the admission made her sad for him.
“Because you could just tell, the way he said it,” Sarah said. “You could tell he totally wanted that. He wanted a family.”
Sarah’s mom was clearly taken with Jason, too. He was polite, articulate, ambitious, and obviously adored her daughter.
“You ought to date that boy,” she told Sarah.
Mostly Sarah remembered being impressed with Jason because, though a young man just turned 20, he already had his entire future planned.
“He talked about the future all the time,” Sarah said. “He just couldn’t wait. I thought it was so cool to hear him talk like that. He was going to get his bachelor’s degree in biochemistry, then go on to law school and become a biochemistry lawyer. He talked about how, you know, big firms like Marlboro have to have lawyers with a scientific background so they can defend their lawsuits, that type of thing. That’s what he wanted to do. He had it all laid out. That’s why it’s such a shame what happened. He had so much he wanted to do with his life. I still can’t believe it.”
16
“Things were good,” Jason told investigators after his arrest for murdering his mother. The first four months in the apartment in Riverside were some of the best times the family ever had together. Jane took them to the movies, cooked dinner almost every night, was concerned about Matthew’s grades. She even stopped fighting with Jason, though, in truth, he spent fewer and fewer hours at home because of his hectic work and school schedule. But when he was home, life was stable.
“I liked living there, it was great,” Jason said. “My mom was, like, nice again. And everything was cool. She wasn’t crazy. It was, like, well, things were going really well. And then she just…I don’t know. Something triggered it again.”
“The man next door is a pedophile,” Jane told Jason one October afternoon. The statement was like a punch in the stomach. Not because he believed her, but because he knew what was coming. Her sickness was raising its ugly head. He just couldn’t bear the thought of enduring any more.
“I saw him in the paper,” she continued. “The maintenance man is in on it, too. They’ve been trying to break into our house to get Matt.”
Jason tried to shut her out. He turned his attention to the TV and stared intently at the screen.
“I’ve seen the man upstairs sitting in his car, too. He sits there for hours at a time, just watching me. He’s going to come get me and get Matthew, too.”
Jason shook his head and told her, “No, no, you’re wrong, Mom. He doesn’t want to hurt you or Matthew.”
“Are you a molester, too?” she asked. “Do you molest your little brother when I’m gone?”
“No! No, of course not,” he said. He knew it was her illness talking now, and there would be no reasoning with her.
Over the weeks, her delusions continued. Now, she thought people were breaking into the house to hide cameras everywhere.
“We’re on videotape for the whole world to see!” she screamed one night. “Don’t you care? Don’t you even care at all? Or are they paying you again? Now you’re being paid and you’re against me and you’re going to get me, too!”
At first, Jason coped by staying gone even longer, picking up extra graveyard shifts at the hotel and spending more time with friends. He hoped she’d snap out of it. But after several weeks, it was the same thing.
“Listen to that,” Jane laughed to Matt one evening while watching late night TV. “Jay Leno is making fun of you!”
Sometime in late November, fearful of what was coming, Jason told Matt they needed to make a decision.
“I won’t be homeless again,” he said. He was certain his little brother understood what he was getting at. He waited for Matt’s reaction. There was none, so he continued.
“Can’t you see what’s coming? I can’t move again. It’ll mess everything up for me. I can’t study or go to work. It’s too much stress. Matt, we’ve got to stop her this time. I think I’m just going to do it. But I need your help.”
It’s still hard to understand why Jason thought of murder before he considered trying to move out again. He even had a second job this time. He could have spent a few weeks saving up, and then just walked away. But for some reason, known only to him, murder became the more attractive option. Obviously, the thought had to have occurred to him—if she were gone, who would miss her? She had no friends, rarely talked to her family. Only Matt would know. And if Jason could get him involved, Matt would be an accomplice, so why would he tell anyone? Plus, those monthly $1,500 checks from Grandma would keep on coming. Jason endorsed them most of the time anyway and deposited them to the joint account he shared with Jane. Life could just go on, but without the constant threat of her mental meltdowns.
Matt remained quiet, listening to his brother hint at murdering their mother. Matt still didn’t believe Jason would do it. Not really. This was probably just more of his talk.
“But the thing is,” Jason pushed on, “she’s really strong. So I’m going to need your help. I need you to hold her down.”
“No way,” said Matt, suddenly taking his brother more seriously. Matt was every bit as scared of returning to the streets as Jason. And he knew their m
om was spiraling downward again. He thought about the options for a moment, then told his brother, “Listen, holding her down and all that, that’s your thing, okay? I can’t do it.”
But if his brother could actually pull it off, Matt decided he would not stand in Jason’s way. That was good enough for Jason.
“Okay,” Jason said. “This is what’s going to happen. I’m going to bait her, get her mad and really heated. Then she’ll get real violent and I’ll just fight back this time. And Matt…”
“Yeah?”
“When that starts to happen, you walk away. Just leave or go into another room for a while or something. Okay?”
“Okay.”
Matt didn’t know when, exactly, it would happen. In fact, he still doubted that his brother had the guts to do it. But at school and at work, Jason clearly had Jane on his mind.
Biology classmate and lab partner Stephen Kavousy remembered Jason talking more and more about his mom. He complained about her a lot, which was odd because up until then, Jason had rarely mentioned her at all.
“She doesn’t even work,” Jason confided to Stephen. “And that makes it pretty damn hard for me because I end up working more and more to support her and my brother.”
Still, Stephen remembered thinking that Jason seemed pretty upbeat as the winter semester began in early January. Odd, he thought, considering the heavy course load his friend was carrying (math 120, biology, and, one of the most difficult courses a science major must master, physical chemistry). Maybe Jason only seemed in high spirits because, as he worked through lab assignments, Stephen noticed, his pal was constantly singing. Stephen could never place the tune sung over and over in class. He’d never heard it before. But Jason was certainly fond of the song.