Such Good Boys: The True Story of a Mother, Two Sons and a Horrifying Murder

by Dirmann, Tina

  “No, you’re not,” Jason shot back. “I told the detectives you did nothing. They believe me. They know Mom is crazy. They know she came at me with a knife.”

  Andre couldn’t help but get the feeling that Jason was carefully choosing his words for the audiotape.

  “I’ll probably die in prison, man,” Jason said. “But I told them how Mom came at me with that knife.”

  “Dude, our lives are ruined,” Matt said.

  “No,” Jason answered. “Not your life. Just mine.”

  They hugged for a moment. Then big brother offered more advice.

  “Listen, when you’re in there, in juvenile hall, you take care of yourself,” Jason said. “You can’t be a punk. And don’t tell them what you’re in here for. Got it?”

  Matthew nodded, soaking up Jason’s words. At that moment, he had never loved, and hated, his brother more.

  “I just don’t believe it,” Andre told Craig as they stood outside the interview room. “I don’t believe this whole self-defense story or that Matt was gone and knew nothing about what was happening, what he was dumping. They both knew this was going to happen and the whole thing was planned out. That’s what I think.”

  Then he sighed. Despite the confession, despite the body and the discovery of the murder weapon, he still had a lot of work to do.

  Nearly twenty-five minutes passed before the detectives put an end to the reunion. Jason, then Matthew, stood for mug shots. Then both were photographed again, naked, for evidence purposes. All was quiet as Matthew rode to Orange County Juvenile Hall, Jason to Santa Ana Jail, both held on suspicion of violating penal code 187—homicide.

  It was the morning of January 27, 2003, when Orange County Sheriff Michael S. Carona organized a press conference announcing the arrest. For a top cop, there are few prouder moments than announcing an arrest in a blockbuster case. The headless torso discovery had been broadcast all over the news for days. Now, the sheriff was not only announcing the body’s identity, but he could also tell the small army of print, television, and radio reporters that his investigators had done their job. The murderers, Jane’s 15- and 20-year-old sons, were in custody, held in lieu of $1 million bail. After a lot of good old-fashioned detective work, the boys had been arrested and interviewed, and had ultimately confessed.

  “Jason told investigators he and his brother were involved in the killing and dismemberment of their mother,” Sheriff Carona announced.

  Shocked reporters clamored for more. They wanted details. They wanted a motive.

  “I don’t know what motive you could possibly give for killing your mother, cutting off her head, and cutting off her hands,” answered Carona simply.

  Sons collaborating to kill Mom—that alone made for a sensational story. Matricide cases didn’t happen very often. But the real selling point, as far as reporters were concerned, came next.

  “Jason told investigators he had seen an episode of The Sopranos,” Sheriff Carona explained, “and that’s where he saw the same type of dismemberment done before dumping a body.”

  The story made instant headlines: ” ‘Sopranos’ Scenario in Slaying?” declared the Los Angeles Times. “Sheriff: Sons say they dismembered mom after watching ‘The Sopranos,’ ” read an Associated Press story. ” ‘Sopranos’ called sons’ inspiration,” proclaimed Riverside County’s Press-Enterprise. Even the National Italian American Foundation issued a press release that claimed, “By promoting violence and worshipping at the altar of gangsterism, ‘The Sopranos’ has produced an ugly scene. The time has long passed for HBO to put the public interest before concern for profit. The blood of Jane Bautista’s family in Orange County, California is on their hands. The public has a right to know what HBO is going to do about it.”

  Reporters flooded HBO studios for a comment. But the cable network’s executives had little to say. The highly rated show had already come under considerable fire for its use of excessive violence in story lines. This kind of publicity was the last thing they needed.

  Meanwhile, those who’d known Jane and the boys over the years were shocked at the news.

  Stacie Eldrige stood dressing for morning classes in front of the television when she caught the news report announcing an arrest in connection with the headless corpse found off the Ortega Highway. Jason Bautista, the report said, was the main suspect in the slaying of his mother, along with little brother Matthew Montejo. Stacie paused.

  “What?” she said to no one in particular. “I know a Jason Bautista, but it just can’t be the same one.” She scrambled out of the house to pick up a morning paper. And there it was, his picture on the front page. It looked just like Jason, but without glasses. Stacie picked up a black ink pen and drew a pair around the eyes. That was him, her gut knew it. Still, she didn’t want to believe it, not even when the accompanying story gave the details: a biochemistry major at California State University, a Riverside resident. Instead, she ran toward the school’s lunch room, where she routinely met him for coffee.

  “I was still hoping to see him sitting there, like I always do, flipping through the newspaper,” Stacie recalled. “But he wasn’t there. That’s when I knew for sure.”

  Sarah Reinelt got a call from a classmate instructing her to go find the nearest newspaper. She ran downstairs to find her father casually reading over the morning’s headlines.

  “Dad,” she said breathlessly, “my friend just called and said my lab partner is on the front page of the paper for murdering his mom.” Her dad simply set the paper down and pointed to the story he was reading, complete with a picture of Jason.

  Talk spread like wildfire across the campus, especially in the small computer lab where investigators ripped out and confiscated Jason’s personal locker for evidence. The science department invited counselors over to discuss the arrest with shocked students and even a few stunned members of the faculty. Some cried at the waste of it all, knowing Jason would likely never fulfill all the dreams he so fervently talked about.

  “At first, we all just wanted to defend him,” Stacie said. “Because it’s just so hard to believe. That is not the Jason that we knew at all.”

  Dan Huffer, the general manager at the hotel where Jason worked, saw the same news reports and was shocked into silence. He knew the police had been looking for Jason since they’d come to the hotel days before. But he never would have guessed this was the reason. He shook his head and instantly thought back to a call he’d gotten. Jason had phoned on what was, Huffer now realized, the day of his arrest, to say he wouldn’t be in to work for a few days. Family emergency, he’d said. Jason had been calling from the police station, though Dan didn’t know that at the time.

  “Unbelievable,” Huffer said as he made the connection. “Here’s this kid in a crapload of trouble, and his first call is to me saying he’s not coming to work.”

  Interestingly, Matt’s old soccer coach and team mom, Brad and Nancy Joplin, had a very different reaction to the news. They’d heard Jane’s frantic tales so many times, stories of running from bad men out to kill her, that they couldn’t help but think about it now.

  “I’ll tell you how believable she was with her stories,” Brad said. “When we found out what happened, our first thought was, ‘Oh God, she was telling the truth all along. They finally got her. And the kids are being framed for it.’ “

  Also watching the news reports that day was Jose Montejo’s brother, who lived in California. He recognized the names from so many years ago—Jane Bautista, her son Jason Bautista, son Matthew Montejo. He called Jose.

  “Hey,” he said, “have you seen the news? The police arrested your son Matt because he killed Jane.”

  Jose dropped the phone and ran to flip on the television. Channel 9 was running the report, complete with Jason’s booking mug shot flashing across the screen. He sank to his knees and began to cry. “What the hell happened?” he said to himself. Then he remembered how much Jane had hated Jason. And he knew that if Jason did kill her, he’d had re
ason. Jose got on the phone and called the sheriff’s department. He wanted them to know Matt couldn’t have been involved. Jane had loved Matthew, just as much as she’d hated Jason.

  22

  It fell to Andre and Craig to begin follow-up interviews with members of Jane’s family in Illinois. They may not have spoken to their daughter in years, but they had to be told the news. And they might be able to shed some light on Jason’s story.

  Jane’s frail grandmother took the call from the coroner’s office. She was still recovering from a major heart attack and felt weak as a bird. Now this news. It was almost more than she could stand. Jane, her beloved granddaughter, the one who used to clean her house for pocket money years ago, the one she still sent checks to every month, had been murdered? Charlie Mae was devastated.

  “That news really got the best of me,” she would say later.

  Charlie Mae immediately called next door to her daughter, Nellie, Jane’s mom. Nellie immediately called her brother, Jim Funderburk, who was coincidentally driving through California by motor home on his way back from a Mexican vacation with his wife. Since their father’s retirement, and now death, Jim had been the real patriarch of the family, anyway. He had been running the business for years and took to calling most of the shots for the Funderburk clan. He agreed to drive into Orange County and told Nellie and her husband to get on a plane as soon as possible.

  The meeting between Craig and Andre and the family at sheriff’s headquarters was cordial enough, the investigators recall. The family confirmed some of what the boys had said—Jane was mentally ill—and made it clear that they were there to support the boys. Jim asked to see Matthew in juvenile hall.

  That’s when all signs of cordiality faded.

  “We can’t do that,” Andre said. “It’s not visiting hours right now.”

  Jim could care less about visiting hours. He wanted to see Matthew or Jason right now.

  “You guys could make this happen if you wanted to,” he shot at them.

  “No, we can’t,” Craig confirmed. “That’s not up to us.”

  “Then we have nothing more to say,” Jim told them before directing his family out the door.

  Afterward, Andre and Craig thought it very odd that during the entire conversation, they’d had very few questions about Jane.

  “In fact, they never asked about Jane’s death at all,” Craig said.

  During normal visiting hours, the boys’ extended family stopped by to see them. Because of their high-profile case, Matthew and Jason had become protective custody prisoners, meaning interaction with other inmates would be strictly limited. Fellow prisoners have a tendency to go after those with too much notoriety. On top of that, even criminals have a code of conduct. Those who commit crimes considered especially horrific, like the molestation of a child, are targets for attack behind bars. Slicing off your mother’s head would certainly fall into that category.

  Their protective custody status, however, didn’t prevent them from seeing outside visitors. Relatives saw Jason first, since he was the easiest to gain access to. Matthew, held in juvenile hall, required a court order for access. On January 28, 2003, Judge Ronald Kueber granted visiting rights to Jim Funderburk, Nellie Osborne, Deborah Cagle (Jane’s sister), and Rita Holland (Deborah’s 23-year-old daughter). Only now that Jane was dead, and her sons in custody for her murder, did the family rally around the boys. It’s hard to say whether anyone felt guilty for not doing more to intervene, like raising the boys in a safe home while Jane went into a hospital. But now, the boys learned that their relatives didn’t blame them for what had happened. The family would support them in any way possible—including letters, phone calls, the occasional visit, and, most important, money for a decent defense attorney.

  That same day, the boys were scheduled to make their first court appearance. Case jurisdiction was still being decided, but the prosecutor was pretty sure he’d stay with it. “We’ve put so much work into this one,” he told his bosses, “we can’t let it go now. The investigation will lose momentum and the entire case will suffer.” Ultimately, even the other side agreed, and Mike Murray got what he wanted—the okay to try the case.

  In court, Mike first laid eyes on the boys accused of doing the unthinkable. So many questions still hung in his mind: Why did they do it? Was there insurance money? Was there abuse? And if so, why didn’t the older son just move out? Or at least report the abuse?

  Both boys entered not guilty pleas to the murder charges, their defense attorneys, paid with Funderburk money, at their sides.

  Outside court, Matthew’s attorney raged about his juvenile client entering a plea in adult court alongside his adult brother. “He belongs in juvenile court where his name is not being published all over the world,” defense attorney Stephen Klarich told the group of reporters covering the story. He also demanded a hearing as soon as possible to seek Matthew’s immediate release. “My client was not involved in any crime.”

  Jason’s attorney had his own spin for the press. “This is a homicide that may very well have been justified,” John M. Kremer told reporters. “Something was very, very wrong in that household. Clearly, something triggered all of this.”

  Mike Murray was having a hard time watching the show. Jane may have been delusional, but it was difficult to believe she could have done anything to deserve such a brutal end. By all accounts, she was mentally unstable. But she was sick, not evil. “And as nutty as she may have been,” Mike would say after the court appearance, “her life was those two boys—feeding them, clothing them, getting them to and from school. This was not a woman who got money from family and spent it on weekends at the spa, who left her kids hungry, or didn’t value their education. You can say a lot of things about Jane, but she made sure her kids got what they needed. Even through her deepest delusions, she made sure of that.”

  For that reason, Mike made the call—15-year-old Matthew would stand trial as an adult. Tried as a juvenile, he’d be out by his twenty-fifth birthday. Mike couldn’t see a 10-year sentence for a boy who, at minimum, sat by while his mother was brutally murdered. He’d committed an adult crime, and would pay the price like an adult.

  After court, Jason sat in a sheriff’s department van surrounded by fellow inmates who’d also made court appearances that morning. During the ride back to jail, Jason struck up a conversation with April Valenzuela, a petite young single mom who had landed in jail, arrested for a series of misdemeanor violations, including bouncing checks, burglary, and theft. If not for her jail suit and cuffs, the raven-haired girl would have looked like a teenager who should be shuffling off to her next class. She told Jason her offenses and expected to hear a similar story from the young, well-mannered, articulate boy sitting next to her. Instead, she was stunned into silence.

  “I’m here because I killed my mother,” he told her, grinning wide as he said it.

  “Really?” was all April could think to say. She had a hard time believing it.

  “Really,” he answered. “I’m Bautista. Jason Bautista. I’m the one on the cover of People magazine last week!” The detail about the cover was a lie, but the magazine had written about the slaying.

  April just stared in disbelief—not only had he apparently killed his mom, he was bragging about it, even boasting of a magazine cover story like he was some superstar. A chill ran through her. If true, this guy was too creepy.

  23

  Andre and Craig had a lot of interviews ahead of them. They wanted to talk to as many people as possible to figure out how much of Jason’s story was true, and how much was made up by a scared and desperate young man to get out of trouble. They believed Jane had been mentally ill—but that didn’t justify killing her. They needed to know if Jane had really gone after her son with a knife that night. Or had Jason planned the entire murder because it was easier to get rid of Mom than move out, leave his great-grandmother’s monthly $1,500 stipends behind, and start over on his own?

  Since family members were
hostile toward them, the investigators decided to start chatting with friends of the boys.

  Casey Kritzer said she hadn’t known Jason very long. Just a few months, since she’d started working at the Hilton. She liked him a lot, she said, even though not everyone at the hotel did—including manager Crystal Cantu, who thought he was a smartass. Casey said he was always kind to her. They’d hung out after work a few times, she told them. But just as friends. “I’m married,” she emphasized.

  “Did Jason talk much about his mom?” Andre asked.

  “Not too much,” she said.

  “When did he last mention her?”

  “In December,” she said. “He told me she was moving to Chicago.”

  The detectives paused at the news. December? That was a month before Jane died. Could it be true that Jane really had been planning on going home to be with the relatives she’d supposedly hated and hadn’t talked to in years? Or had Jason been laying the groundwork to explain her upcoming disappearance?

  “Chicago,” Andre repeated. “Interesting. Did he say why she was moving?”

  “She had a sick grandmother back there, I guess, and she was going to go home to take care of her,” Casey told them. “He said she’d be leaving for good in a couple of weeks.”

  “Was Jason supposed to go with her?” Andre asked.

  “No, he was going to stay for school, and so was his little brother,” Casey said. “He said he’d just end up taking care of Matt so he wouldn’t have to change schools or anything. Plus, Jason said he already paid a lot of the rent and bills, so he didn’t think it was going to be a problem making it on his own.”

  Especially since he’d continue to cash Grandma Mae’s checks, Andre thought. Detectives had already discovered that her last check had been cashed, even though it was sent after Jane’s death.

  Later, detectives tracked down Sarah Reinelt, who described herself as a very good friend of Jason’s. She was still stunned by the news. There had to be something more to the story, she told them. Jason, the one she knew, was much too gentle to kill anyone.