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

by Dirmann, Tina

  But Mike mocked the idea that Matt was some scared little boy, too frightened to call for help.

  “He’s on top of the world,” Mike told the judge. “He’s driving the family car, making plans to go to the Winter Formal. He’s got friends over to hang out, all while his mom’s head and hands are in a bag on a shelf in the hallway closet! This is a boy who is quite capable of lying, quite capable of covering up facts, and quite capable of carrying on with life as usual.”

  Judge John D. Conley barely paused a moment before making his ruling.

  “I find many elements of this story hard to believe,” he said. “Jason says, ‘Go to your room,’ ‘Go watch TV,’ ‘Come out to the car with me,’ ‘Help me to the Dumpster,’ and Matt just goes along and never asks a question?”

  Matt looked at the floor as the judge spoke, his chances of walking away today rapidly dwindling.

  “Just think what happened to this poor woman,” Conley continued. “How she was carved up, and Matt knew nothing about it because he was sitting around watching TV?”

  He ordered Jason to stand trial, though that was never really in question. Then he turned to Matt and ordered him on to trial, too.

  After court, Stacie introduced herself to Nellie and Jim, letting them know how much she’d liked Jason when they went to school together. Stacie couldn’t help but wonder if the family had known Jane was sick.

  “Yes,” Nellie said. “We knew Jane had mental illness issues. We guessed it was hard for those kids. But what could we do? You don’t just step in and take someone else’s kids. It wasn’t our business.”

  Stacie was stunned. Jane’s mom was saying her child’s mental illness and her grandchildren’s well-being were none of her business? “But that was her attitude,” Stacie said later. “Just kind of neither here nor there. But they knew there was a problem. Everyone in the family knew it. It was no secret.”

  As the preliminary hearing wrapped, Mike decided to add another charge. Since the boys had told friends before the murder happened that Jane was planning a move to Chicago, clearly they had discussed the murder in advance. That was conspiracy, a charge that by itself carries a 25-year sentence.

  Bringing any felony case to trial can be expensive. But a murder trial? Not only are there countless billable hours from the attorney, but investigation costs to cover trips to interview witnesses. Fees for experts can be astronomical. An attorney of any worth would demand a $100,000 retainer just to get started. And the Funderburk family would have to cough that up times two. They balked at the estimate. They were well off, certainly. But they weren’t prepared to spend that kind of money. They’d hoped the preliminary hearing would end the matter. But that kind of thinking, especially in a high-profile case, was simply naive. Overwhelmed with the cost estimates, Jim advised his family to back out and let the public defender’s office take over. Since Matt and Jason had no income of their own, they were entitled to a county-funded defense.

  The decision was a blow to David and his partner Stephen Klarich. David, especially, had spent a lot of time with Matt. During visits to prepare for the trial, David and Matt spent about 20% their time talking about the case; then the talk always turned to sports, movies, music. “I always just had the feeling he was a lonely kid,” David said. “He needed a friend. So I was disappointed I wouldn’t represent him anymore. I became so attached to Matt. I felt for him. I didn’t want to see him go down for this.”

  David never saw Matt shed a tear over Jane’s death. But he knew the boy missed her. Even as crazy as she was, she was the only mother he had ever known. During one of their last visits together, it was clear Matt was thinking quite a bit about his mom. He was normally so reserved. But now, he told David, “She deserved something, but not what she got. She was a bitch, but she needed to be in an insane asylum.”

  It soon became clear that Jason was not happy to hear that a public defender would handle his case. A public defender, he assumed, would be overloaded with cases and undermotivated to help him. Anyway, weren’t all the genuinely talented defense attorneys in private practice, where the real money is? Not that John Kremer was turning out to be the Johnnie Cochran of Orange County anyway. But in Jason’s mind, a public defender defense carried a stigma he didn’t like.

  Assistant Public Defender Don Ronaldson ended up with the case. Well into his fifties, Don had been a practicing attorney for nearly thirty years. His experience earned him a team leader position on his office’s felony panel (made up of attorneys assigned to handle major cases). Still, Don Ronaldson was not the smoothest attorney in the department. He often looked disheveled, like his hair needed an extra combing, his suit another pressing from the dry cleaner’s. He was a nice guy who cared a great deal about his cases. But to onlookers, he appeared to be in over his head. He spoke very little to the reporters who gathered at the various court hearings. “I just don’t have time right now” was the usual reply from Ronaldson. From the looks of him, it was true; he appeared overwhelmed.

  Matthew would fare better. The public defender’s office can’t represent more than one client on a case. It’s a conflict of interest, since, often, evidence that could clear one client just might convict the other. So attorney Dave Dziejowski, a private practice attorney paid by the county to handle conflict cases, would defend Matt. By his own admission, Dziejowski was not the most experienced trial attorney. But he had worked on plenty of homicide cases, two of them going before a jury. And he was no stranger to major felony cases, having defended gang crimes, rapes, attempted murders, and sexual assaults. He was not married. He had no kids. But he had a huge heart. And as he glanced over Matthew’s case, he knew what would help this kid. But there was going to be one major hurdle. He knew Matt and Jason must be very close brothers. Two kids couldn’t grow up in a house like that without learning to lean on each other. But as Dziejowski saw it, if Matt was going to escape a murder conviction, it meant testifying against Jason.

  Dave first met Matthew in the juvenile section of the Santa Ana Jail in July 2003. It’s where the county held their more serious child offenders, away from the misdemeanor violators in the county’s juvenile hall facility. It was only days after Matt’s sixteenth birthday. If he were on the outside, he’d be enrolling in driver’s education and angling to get his license. Instead, he sat solemnly in front of his new attorney. Dave thought he looked lost.

  “He was shell-shocked, I think,” said Dave. “I could tell he wanted to talk to me, but he didn’t know what to say or how to say it.”

  Dave wanted desperately to win his new client’s trust. He needed that before he could talk to him about turning on Jason. He recognized the psychological toll that losing his last attorney had probably taken on Matt. He hadn’t just lost his court ally, he’d lost a friend. Here was a kid who hadn’t had many reliable adults in his life, teaching him to trust again would take time.

  “I’m going to help you through this,” Dave told him. “That’s my job. Your brother has his own attorney. I’m sure you care about him. But I’m not here to represent your brother. I’m here to represent you. It’s not you alone against the world, okay?”

  Matt didn’t know what to say, really, but Dave thought he was making headway with the boy.

  “So,” Dave continued, “I’m going to read through the police reports and get caught up, then I’ll come back and we’ll talk about the case a little more. Today, I just want to introduce myself.”

  Jason and Matt lingered in jail for more than a year awaiting trial. Matt was set to go before a jury in October 2004, Jason a few months later, in January 2005.

  A few months before trial, Dave Dziejowski sent Mike Murray an email: “Would information about what Jason may or may not have said prior to the killing be helpful?”

  Mike read the email. Interesting, he thought. He responded: “Maybe. Let’s talk.”

  Mike would make no promises about cutting a deal with Matthew. He didn’t want Matt talking just because there was some offer on
the table. He’d listen first, then consider an offer, if Matt said anything worthwhile.

  Frankly, the case against Matt had problems, anyway. The most solid evidence Mike had that Matt had known the murder was going to happen came from a teenage friend, Robert Larrermore, who remembered Matt saying that his mom had gone to Chicago in early January. But Larrermore’s memory on the timing of that statement was shaky. Sure, there was Matt’s confession to dumping the corpse, but jurors could wind up feeling sorry for him and decide that wasn’t enough to send him to prison for life. Mike planned on gambling, forcing them to choose between a murder conviction and letting him walk. He didn’t file an accessory after the fact charge, knowing the jury might settle on that as a compromise verdict.

  Meanwhile, Dave had his own problems. He got his wish, in that Matt finally came to trust him. But with the trial just weeks away, Matt still was not ready to testify against Jason. In late July 2004, Dave sat with Matt again, hoping to get a commitment now that Mike had agreed to listen.

  “Look, I understand how you feel,” Dave told him. “I had brothers myself. I’m the youngest of seven, you know. And I loved my brothers very much.”

  “I just don’t know if I can do it,” Matt said.

  “You’ve got to think about what happened,” Dave said. “Think about the situation you’re in and who put you in that situation.”

  Matt knew it was true. If not for Jason, Matt would be nearing his senior year in high school, planning for college, and a life on his own. Now, he faced a potential 25-years-to-life sentence in adult prison. He didn’t have a lot of options.

  “Just because you testify against Jason doesn’t mean you don’t love him anymore,” Dave said gently. “And, Matt, the outcome could be the same anyway. Jason could very well get convicted with or without your testimony. So don’t waste this opportunity to get yourself out from under these charges.”

  “I want to think about it,” Matt said. “Just let me think.”

  “Okay, think,” Dave told him. “But our time is running out.”

  In August, Dave called Mike Murray.

  “Matt’s ready,” he said. “He wants to talk to you.”

  “Fine. But, Dave,” Mike said, “no promises. I’ll sit down with him and just listen. Even if it’s helpful to us, I can’t promise I’ll do anything. But I won’t use anything he says against him.”

  “Fair enough,” Dave said.

  Three weeks later, the group gathered inside an interview room at the Santa Ana Jail. Mike drew up an agreement granting Matt immunity for this discussion only.

  The prosecutor sat with Craig Johnson and Andre Spencer, who would do most of the questioning. Matt sat beside Dave Dziejowski.

  “You wanted to talk to us,” Andre said. “What about?”

  “Well, you know, just that Jason talked about killing Mom before,” Matt said. Nothing more.

  “And…?” Andre encouraged. “What else?”

  “No, I mean, that’s mostly it. I just knew it was going to go down, because Jason told me about it before.”

  “Uh-huh, I see,” Andre said.

  Mike broke in. Clearly Matt had details to share. But he was being overly vague. Mike didn’t know if that was because he didn’t want to talk, or because he was just a 15-year-old kid and didn’t know what to say. So Mike gave him some not-so-gentle encouragement. “Listen, that’s not going to cut it,” he said. “We need details. You need to go through this step by step and tell us what happened, got it?”

  “Like when did he first tell you he wanted to kill his mom? And how many times?” Andre said.

  Matt exhaled a deep breath, and then slouched back in his chair, his arm draped casually over the back. He settled in for the grilling. In the end, he told them everything he knew about Jason’s plan to kill their mother. Mike thought Matt’s demeanor was so odd—here he was, saying things that would seal his brother’s fate, but, just like when he talked about gripping the sleeping bag that had held his mom’s remains, he showed no emotion at all.

  The observation made Mike realize something. “This is a twisted kid,” he said later. “I used to think if your brother says he’s going to kill your mom, you do one of two things: you help him or you find a way to stop him. No way do you sit watching TV in the next room, turning up the volume while it all happened. Now, I can see that happening. He’s a twisted kid.”

  25

  On January 18, 2005, nearly three years exactly since Jane’s murder, Mike Murray stood before jurists. The eleven-woman, one-man jury had no idea what the case was all about. They waited anxiously to hear what this confident, poised prosecutor had to say about the young man seated at the defense table behind him. They had to have noticed Jason, looking sharp in a tan tweed jacket, his thick black-rimmed glasses sitting high on his nose. He looked geeky, as always, except for his haircut—nearly totally shaven from his ears down, and a closely cropped mop of black hair on top. The style was harsh, giving him a bit of a rebel appearance. But for the most part, he looked like a big nerd, not a killer.

  “We are here this morning because Jane Bautista was murdered,” Mike said. “And she was murdered by her own son, Jason Bautista.” At the mention of Jason’s name, Mike pointed at the young defendant, staring stoically straight ahead.

  “On January fourteenth, 2003, Jason murdered his mother and dumped her like trash. He wrapped his hands around her neck and manually strangled her. And she was beaten. She was beaten so badly, she had fractures to her eye orbits. After the beating, her first-born son decapitated her in the bathtub of her own apartment. Then he cut off her hands.”

  As he spoke, Mike stood next to a large television. A crime-scene photo filled the screen, one that highlighted that steep, weed-covered ravine along the Ortega Highway. Jane’s headless, handless body lay visible at the bottom slope. He told jurors of the investigation that had led them to Jason’s school, where he had spun a set of lies for detectives.

  “Jason Bautista calmly and coolly tried to manipulate the officers,” Mike said. “He said Jane was at a boyfriend’s. He said she was out driving around in a Honda. But Jane Bautista was at the bottom of a hill. Then he tells police she has a different appearance—that she’s petite and has tattoos, and gives a detailed description of the sunburst on her back and Chinese characters on her body. A complete fabrication, all of it.”

  Jason had even lied about his relationship with his mom, Mike told them.

  “How does he get along with her? He loves his mother, he says. But evidence will show that couldn’t be farther from the truth. He hated her. He despised her.

  “By the way, as all of this is going on, as investigators are talking to him, Jane Bautista’s head and hands are in a closet in his apartment, where he continued to live there with his brother.”

  A gruesome picture of the black bag holding Jane’s head and hands lit up the court TV screen. An older female juror closed her eyes and bowed her head. Jason kept his gaze forward, watching nothing in particular.

  “Why does he do all of this? Why does he do something so incomprehensible to most of us? Because Jane Bautista was mentally ill. And Jason didn’t like his mother’s mental illness. She was difficult, she was volatile. And he hated her for it.”

  Mike laid out the witness list, including classmate William Shadrick and co-workers Crystal Cantu, Kenneth Poarch, and Sarah Reinelt. Then he made the announcement that had to hurt the most.

  “And you will hear from Matthew Montejo,” Mike said. Jason showed no reaction. He actually had already heard from his attorney that this was coming. But now, to hear it out loud, on the record in court, Jason had to feel the announcement like a punch in the gut. The little brother he’d thought of like a son, the one he’d sworn to protect, had cut a deal with prosecutors. Little Matt would deliver the testimony that would shatter his story of self-defense.

  “In short, there is no self-defense in this case,” Mike said. “You may hear evidence trying to suggest otherwise, but there i
s no truth to it. Jason is arrested without a scratch on him, while Jane Bautista was brutally beaten. Then Jason manually strangled the woman who brought him into this world. And he did it because she was mentally ill. And that upset the applecart of his life.”

  Finally, Mike flashed a picture of Jane’s mutilated corpse and pointed dramatically to the screen. “Hold this defendant responsible for what he did to this woman.”

  He spoke for over an hour before taking his seat next to Andre at the prosecution table and turning the floor to Don Ronaldson. It would be a tough act to follow. Jurors sat rapt as Mike had spoken, spinning the tale of a boy who’d hated his mentally ill mommy so much that he’d rather have chopped off her head than find her help.

  Mike exuded confidence in a way that easily earned him the respect and trust of jurors. And while it shouldn’t matter, it didn’t hurt that he cut a strikingly handsome picture, his young, rugged face easily lifting into a smile that was infectious, or twisting into dark sarcasm to make a point. He wore his black hair short and spiky and it was peppered with just enough gray to give him credibility. By the end of his opening statement, jurors liked Mike. And that always helps.

  Don Ronaldson’s approach was much softer. He was like an aging father standing there to defend his wayward child. He looked a little nervous. A strong cowlick made several strands of his graying hair stand partially erect.

  “I am humbled by this case,” Don said. “There is nothing in my background to help me understand the dynamics at work in this family. But if you look at all the investigation work here, things clearly don’t add up.”

  Next to the television screen Mike had used for his computerized PowerPoint opening, Don set up a large posterboard and pulled out a packet of stickers. The board laid out Jane’s family tree, and as Don mentioned each family member, he placed a sticker by their name. He kept interrupting himself to ask jurors, “Can you see okay? Can you hear okay?” Every time, jurors nodded that everything was fine. It had the effect of slowing his own momentum. It took some time before, eventually, he got to the point.