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

by Dirmann, Tina

  “If not for Peter Martinez. And if not for you,” Clemons said, calling out to Mike as he stood in the courtroom hallway. “Because of you. You didn’t let her death go ignored. You told us, ‘Everybody threw Jane away. Don’t you do it, too.’ “

  Mike grinned, slightly embarrassed, slightly basking under the effusive compliment, and acknowledged Andre and Craig. “They prepared the case, I just got to present it. But none of this would have happened without Pete Martinez. He’s the hero here. This was a woman with no face to put on TV, no fingerprints. It so easily could have fallen through the cracks.”

  Interestingly, several jurors told Mike they didn’t believe Matt’s testimony. “I thought it was all a bunch of lies,” Lauri said. “I don’t believe he sat in that room watching TV while his mom was dying. Then he just finds out the next day, watching TV, her head was cut off? Come on.”

  But in the end, Mike said it didn’t matter. “There was already so much evidence. Matthew Montejo was just icing on the cake.”

  As Mike fielded interviews with reporters, Andre stood casually to the side, grinning with relief.

  “I just didn’t want to see him released,” Andre said. “I know the person he is, because I’ve talked to him. He’s a manipulator and he’s a liar.”

  Yes, Jason had grown up in a terrible home, Andre acknowledged. “I feel for him in that sense,” he said. “But thousands of kids grow up in abused households and they don’t kill their parents. So I never forgot who the real victim was here—Jane.”

  Less than a week later, on February 11, 2005, Matthew sat before Juvenile Court Judge Robert B. Hutson. “I hope you have had a chance to reflect on what may have occurred,” he said before pleading with him to lead a good life. “Good luck.”

  With that, Matt was sentenced to 749 days in jail, the time he’d already served behind bars, for accessory to murder after the fact, and then told to go home.

  Mike sat across the table from Matt, collecting his things, as Dave handed the prosecutor an envelope from his client. Inside was a card that read simply, “Thank you for giving me a second chance at life.”

  Wow, Mike thought, there’s something in this kid after all.

  “He didn’t have to do that,” Mike said later. “The deal was done. But in that gesture, I saw a small glimmer of hope for Matthew. Who knows? At seventeen, I was prepared to screw up my whole life, just because I was seventeen. And Matthew had a lot more pushing against him to succeed than just being seventeen. He needs counseling, a structured family, and someone there to help him make a future.”

  Dave Dziejowski promised Matt he’d be that someone. Although Matthew was free to go, he didn’t have many places to go to. His family in Illinois had long gone. He could probably live with them if he asked, Dave thought, but Matt still considered them strangers. And there were signs, too, that they were angry with him for testifying against Jason. Throughout the trial, they visited Matt only once, Dave said. But they regularly checked in with Jason.

  “They just said, ‘We don’t want to go over there and make things awkward. We don’t want to interfere,’ ” Dave said. “They were just looking for excuses not to see him.”

  Instead, Dave drove Matt to San Diego, to his dad’s house.

  For the past two years, Jose had paid regular visits to both boys in jail. And as it became clearer that Matt would be released, he offered his son a place to stay. It would still be a tough situation. Jose had a temper, too, and the twosome had already had an argument before Matt even made it home.

  “I told Matt he couldn’t live like Free Willy,” Jose said. “He’d have to take responsibility: ‘Clean your room, go to school or get a job. Can you handle that?’ “

  The orders offended Matt, who resented taking them from a man who had been out of his life for so long. He stopped talking to Jose for a few weeks. Then he called.

  “Dad,” he said. “I may get out of here soon, and I want to come live with you. I understand, I’ll live by your rules.”

  Jose owns his own DJ business, working birthdays, weddings, and baptisms. Matt, who earned his GED in jail, will help Jose run the business now.

  As he left court that day, Matt paused in front of Dave’s car and just looked up at the sky. He gulped in several deep breaths, then began to laugh.

  “Welcome back to the world, my friend,” Dave said.

  Dave and Matt stopped off for steak before Dave dropped Matt off to his dad. Dave had promised him a steak the day he was freed. And he wanted a man-to-man chat with his newly sprung client.

  “You’ve been in custody for two years,” Dave told him. “Those are years you missed out socializing. But your focus needs to be on getting into school, finding some work if you can. Don’t be in such a hurry to party and hang out. That stuff will come. But stay focused on what’s important—planning a future for yourself.”

  As he shoved bites of a top sirloin into his mouth, Matt nodded in agreement. “And I’m going to save money, too,” he said. “That’s the one thing my mom taught me, not to waste money.”

  “Funny,” Dave thought. “He still misses her. He wouldn’t talk about her if he didn’t.”

  “Listen, you have demons in your closet,” Dave said. “And they’ll be there until you address them. You need to address them.”

  Dave had a psychologist friend in San Diego who agreed to counsel Matt for a greatly reduced rate. Matt agreed to go, but it would be hard to tell if Jose was the kind of dad who would actually make him do it.

  “I’m not worried about that,” Dave said days after dropping Matt off. “Believe me, he’s got people looking out for him, making sure he does what he needs to do. He has me.”

  29

  Jason returned to court one more time on April 8, 2005. It was sentencing day, but even then, he wasn’t ready to go down without a fight. He filed a motion in court to fire his attorney and get a new trial.

  “I’m not surprised,” Mike said when he got the paperwork. “He never got along with his attorney. Right from the starting bell, he was sitting there making faces, gesturing, grumbling at the table.”

  In a closed court hearing, Jason said his attorney had failed to develop the child abuse angle enough in his case. The way Jason saw it, he suffered from a disease similar to Battered Women’s Syndrome, which left abused women so damaged, they feel murder is their only means of escape. True, Don did argue in a pre-trial hearing to allow expert testimony on battered child syndrome. And though it was Judge Fasel who barred the testimony, in part on the grounds that Jason was not a child, Jason blamed his attorney.

  Bolstering Jason’s claim was the appearance of juror Lauri Raine, the very same juror who’d spoken so passionately outside of court about Jane’s beating. Now, she said, she’d changed her mind. “During jury deliberations, I favored a manslaughter verdict up until the point of the coroner’s testimony,” she said in a brief filed with the court. “I now believe defense expert testimony explaining the impact on Jason being raised by a paranoid schizophrenic mother who physically abused him would have been instrumental in explaining what was in his mind when he killed his mother, and why Jason Bautista remained in the household in the years preceding the killing…The absence of this evidence contributed to the jury’s verdict.”

  But Judge Fasel rejected the entire argument and moved swiftly to sentencing. The court opened and reporters filed in, cameramen setting up in the jury box to get their best vantage point. Four deputies lined the small courtroom, just to ensure that nothing went awry. Notably absent this time were Jim Funderburk, his wife, Nellie and Don, and Deborah.

  Don, ordered to continue on as Jason’s attorney, took a moment to address the court. “This is a killing that stemmed from fear, fear that was instilled in Jason Bautista his entire life.” He praised Jason for his hard work, taking on two jobs, going to college, encouraging his brother in school, and avoiding typical college-kid traps like drugs and alcohol. “What he didn’t do was seek help. With all due respect
to the jury, they didn’t take into account his fear.”

  Judge Fasel listened carefully to Don before turning to look directly at Jason. His words were passionate, forceful. “I think the jury got it exactly right,” he said. “This case reeked of premeditation. And you have a total lack of remorse.” He chastised Jason for not even taking the time to address the court directly, expressing some sorrow—a typical move for defendants about to be sentenced.

  “Do you have anything to say now? Do you want to address the court?”

  “Yes, Your Honor,” Bautista stuttered, claiming that he had intended to say something all along, but his attorney just hadn’t given him the chance.

  “Your Honor, I’m very sorry for my actions. I know they were extremely wrong, and I’m very sorry for everything. I don’t agree with the first-degree verdict, but, um, I submit,” he said. The very brief speech came out in a rush. It sounded so insincere, especially coming after the lengthy pre-written letters of regret read by other defendants sentenced earlier that morning. If anything, the judge sounded more irritated than ever.

  “That’s it?”

  “Yes, I submit,” he said.

  “Well, I think the jury got it right. And I think the probation officer also got it right,” Fasel said. Prior to sentencing, a probation officer interviews each defendant and their families before making a recommendation regarding remorse and punishment. Jason’s probation officer had come down hard on him.

  In a way, it was Jason’s intellect that was his undoing. He spent so much time proving to everyone how smart he was. And he was smart. Way too bright, in fact, not to know how to reach out for help. The probation report echoed as much.

  According to the report, which the judge read aloud, “You sought no help from professionals. It’s inconceivable the defendant was unaware there were means for dealing with his mother’s illness other than resorting to violence. And rather than explore those options, he chose to dismember her body.”

  After Jane’s murder, the report focused on Matt and Jason’s playtime. “They invited friends over to the house to play video games. They planned a Super Bowl party. It’s hard to believe he felt any remorse. He is obviously a deeply troubled young man.”

  Fasel stopped reading and looked again at Jason. “I totally agree,” Fasel said. “Based on that, I sentence you to twenty-five years to life. That’s the court’s order. Do you understand?”

  “Yes, Your Honor.”

  Oddly, after the verdict, Jason leaned over to chat with Don, smiling and laughing as the deputies approached to put him back in cuffs and lead him away.

  Outside of court, Mike turned to Andre and had to chuckle. ” ‘I submit.’ Like he’s an attorney.”

  “This entire time,” Andre said, “he thought he was a better attorney than Don. But given a chance to have his say, he comes up with two sentences, that’s it.”

  “You know he had nothing planned to say to the judge until he saw how pissed he was at his total lack of remorse,” Mike said.

  Standing before a camera crew, Mike let his feelings fly. “The jury did get it right. The defendant has no remorse and hasn’t from day one. He tried to show some when the judge called him on it, at which point he did what he did since the beginning of this case: he started to dance. But he didn’t feel his words, and it showed. Today, he got the verdict he deserves.”

  Craig and Andre celebrated the conclusion of the case with a Southern-themed lunch of gumbo and corn bread at their favorite greasy spoon restaurant.

  As they rehashed it all, they considered how tragic the losses were on so many levels—a mother slain, a son in jail for years, another son scarred for life.

  “But you know what’s most tragic about the sentencing today?” Andre asked. “No one was there for Jane. She was the one who was sick, who was murdered, but there was no sympathy from her family, from her kids. There was no one to speak up for Jane, except us.”

  SUCH GOOD BOYS

  Copyright (c) 2005 by Tina Dirmann.

  All rights reserved.

  For information address St. Martin’s Press, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10010.

  ISBN: 978-0-312-99528-7

  St. Martin’s Paperbacks are published by St. Martin’s Press, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10010.