The Kitchen Readings

by Michael Cleverly

  —EDMUND BURKE

  The first phone call I remember getting from Hunter went something like this: “Michael, this is Hunter Thompson. I hear there’s a conspiracy. If there’s a conspiracy, I want in.” That happened so long ago I don’t really remember what the conspiracy was—or if there really was a conspiracy at all. It might have had something to do with a gag political campaign my friend cartoonist Chris Cassatt was mounting. Perhaps by the time the news reached Hunter’s ears it had morphed into something larger and more serious than it actually was. It was cool to get a call from Doc, and it was my first experience with how deep his political passions ran.

  Hunter was a crusader, a gonzo Knight Templar; a cause was mother’s milk to him. During an election year his hunger was easy to feed. Drive the hated Republicans and right-wingers from office. Success meant elation; failure was darkness. George W. Bush’s election to a second term was very, very bad; total darkness. As passionate and as close as he was to national politics, it couldn’t match the intimacy of his crusade to save Lisl Auman. Lisl brought politics to the most personal level. Lisl’s situation was emblematic of everything Hunter despised about the “system.” It was a huge power structure versus one young woman, revenge rather than justice. On the face of it, the simple facts of the case seemed so obvious that any low-grade moron could see the horrible injustice that was being perpetrated. It was difficult to understand how it could have happened; it was a fight worthy of Hunter S. Thompson. Hunter was up against every cop and prosecutor in Denver. He had them outnumbered.

  In the early seventies, a judge lay in bed in Aspen Valley Hospital. He was in crummy shape. Most of his medical problems were self-inflicted and serious. It was the booze. Someone had brought him a copy of Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, by Hunter S. Thompson, an author he wasn’t particularly familiar with. The judge recovered, kicked the booze, and returned to the bench. He said that he laughed himself well. He gave Hunter credit for saving his life.

  Decades later, a young girl in the Denver County Jail was given a copy of the same book. By the time she wrote to Hunter in January 2001, she was in the Colorado Women’s Correctional Facility in Canon City, serving a sentence of life without possibility of parole. She was told that Hunter’s books were banned from the Colorado Department of Corrections libraries. If that was true, she had read her last book by HST. The girl, Lisl Auman, wrote:

  Mr. Hunter S. Thompson:

  I laughed out loud while reading “Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas,” during my stay (13 months) at the Denver County Jail. Thank you for helping to bring a smile to my face.

  I am now a hostage…

  Hunter was moved by the letter and responded. It was the beginning of an odyssey that he and Lisl shared until the day Hunter died.

  Lisl Auman had been convicted of felony murder. The murder in question had been committed by someone else while Lisl was handcuffed and locked in the backseat of a Denver police cruiser. Those were facts that nobody disputed.

  I first heard about Lisl’s letter a few nights after Hunter wrote her back. I was over at Owl Farm for a few pops, and Doc had me read aloud both Lisl’s letter and his response. I remembered seeing TV coverage of the incident at the time, but not the sad details.

  Denver police officer Bruce VanderJagt had been gunned down. He was a handsome guy with a beautiful young family. Forty-seven years old, an ex-Marine, he had his master’s degree and was working on a Ph.D. The city of Denver was, rightfully, outraged at his murder, and the Denver law enforcement community was so pissed off they couldn’t see straight. The shooter was an asshole skinhead named Matthaus Jachnig. After killing VanderJagt, the kid turned the gun on himself. The cops still demanded their pound of flesh, and with the actual murderer dead, Lisl Auman was the only available donor.

  It happened in November 1997. Lisl Auman was twenty-one years old. She was trying to escape an ugly living situation in Buffalo Creek, a small mountain town outside Denver. Lisl needed help getting her stuff out of a rooming house that was also home to her jerk boyfriend. The registration on her car had expired, so she needed transportation. Her dad offered to help, but not until the weekend; he had to work. She sought out her old friend Deme. Deme’s skinhead boyfriend, Dion, and his buddy Matthaus said they’d be glad to help. Matthaus was sure that the road to Buffalo Creek and back would end between the sheets with Lisl. Both these guys had long criminal records. Lisl was virtually surrounded by losers.

  They took two cars, Deme and Dion in one and Matthaus and Lisl in the other. In Buffalo Creek, the guys loaded up Lisl’s stuff from her place, then used bolt cutters to pop the lock on the boyfriend’s room to get some things that she had left in there. They also helped themselves to anything belonging to the boyfriend that they took a fancy to. The neighbors called the police; to them, it looked an awful lot like breaking and entering.

  The cops caught up to Matthaus and Lisl on their way back to the city. A high-speed chase and running gun battle ensued. It terminated at Deme’s apartment building in Denver. Lisl was immediately taken into custody and a hundred city cops, including riot and SWAT teams, cornered Jachnig in an exterior stairwell. When the smoke cleared, both Officer VanderJagt and Jachnig were dead. VanderJagt had been hit by ten rounds fired by three different weapons. Three rounds in the back. Jachnig had taken his own life with VanderJagt’s gun.

  If Matthaus Jachnig hadn’t killed himself, Lisl would have been a witness for the prosecution and probably considered another victim. That wasn’t the case. Instead, she was immediately charged with crimes associated with the break-in and the car chase. After a couple of days, some of the officers involved modified their statements and Lisl was charged with “felony murder.” The “felony murder” statute allows for everyone involved in a felony to be charged with murder if a death results from the commission of the felony. The felony was the skinheads breaking into the boyfriend’s apartment. I guess Deme and Dion weren’t charged because they weren’t part of the car chase, and one bullshit prosecution was enough.

  Denver district attorney Bill Ritter offered a plea bargain. Auman would plead guilty to a reduced charge and would get thirty years, out in eighteen. Lisle’s court-appointed attorney didn’t bite. Lisl was innocent, and the attorney couldn’t imagine that any jury would convict her. Everyone misjudged the depth of emotion running through the community. Lisl was convicted, and that was that. She sat in the state pen, without hope, until the day she wrote Hunter.

  After her conviction, Lisl’s mother and stepfather set up a website, www.lisl.com. It was all they could do. There was no way they could afford the kind of retainer that was demanded by the high-profile lawyers that they considered to be their only hope. Building a website and waiting for a miracle were all that their budget allowed.

  They got their miracle.

  About a month after Hunter and Lisl’s exchange of letters, I was sitting in the kitchen with Doc while he worked on his ESPN column. He was somehow working Lisl Auman into a sports piece. It seemed pretty powerful to me, but I left well before it was finished, as Doc worked deep into the night. Once the article appeared on ESPN.com, the hits on the Lisl website began to swell to a thousand at a time. Lisl’s parents thought there was a malfunction somewhere. Meanwhile, back in the Owl Farm kitchen, mixed reviews were coming in. The wacky crowd at ESPN were under the impression that they were in the sports business, not the girl-unjustly-jailed business. Ticked off is what they were. They didn’t hesitate to read Hunter the riot act, something about using his column for his own personal agenda. Hunter was a bit sheepish about it, but he was used to pissing off his bosses.

  In his response to Lisl, Hunter had promised he would look into her situation. The more he looked into it, the more he hated it. As it happened, the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers was meeting in Aspen that February. Their time in town coincided with Super Bowl Sunday. Hunter already knew a lot of the top defense lawyers in the country and he invited a bunch of them over for the
game. I’m pretty sure that it was the weirdest Super Bowl I ever attended at Owl Farm. When the lawyers outnumber the dirtbags, the dirtbags get a bit uncomfortable. At half time, Hunter herded the lawyers into the living room and buried them with a pile of paperwork and documents. He assaulted them with their moral obligations. He bullied them with injustice. By the end of the game a lot of very important mouthpieces had signed on to Lisl’s cause. Hunter was rallying the troops.

  Next came a huge piece by Jeff Kass in the Sunday Rocky Mountain News. Jeff was a good friend, a good reporter, and a good soldier for the cause. His article seemed to take up most of the paper that day, and it couldn’t help but get people’s attention. One of those people was Matt Moseley. Matt was (and is) a senior associate at a public affairs firm GBSM, in Denver. He’d also done communications strategy for Rock the Vote, President Bill Clinton, the Olympics, and the Democrats at the Colorado State Capitol, among others. Matt had never met Hunter, but faxed him a memo outlining a public-information campaign about Lisl. Hunter called him back the same day. “Matt, this is Hunter Thompson. Yeah. Uh, thanks for your memo.” The two men, heretofore strangers, spoke for twenty-five minutes. The conversation concluded with “Hot damn, let’s pull the trigger. Let’s do a rally.”

  Matt proceeded to organize an event using as many of Hunter’s connections as he could on short notice. Warren Zevon would be there; he’d sing “Lawyers, Guns and Money.” Former head of the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers Gerry Goldstein would attend. Dottie Lamm, wife of former Colorado governor Dick Lamm, would also be there, along with presidential historian Doug Brinkley and astrophysics writer Timothy Ferris. The rally took place on the steps of the Colorado State Capitol and drew throngs of cheering fans.

  At one point during the rally, Matt watched Hunter scribble, “Today’s pig is tomorrow’s bacon” on a notepad. Oh no, Matt thought, he can’t say that. They were surrounded by cops keeping a very close watch on the proceedings. Matt leaned over to Hunter and suggested that it might not be the best-advised comment at that time. Hunter snapped back with “Don’t tell me what to say.”

  Matt’s favorite Hunter line is “There is no such thing as paranoia. It’s always worse than you think.” After the rally, Matt was escorting Hunter through the capitol to a loosely configured motorcade waiting on the south steps. A whole slew of people were crowding them and shouting. Matt was getting nervous, and Hunter could sense it. A photographer snapped a picture just as Hunter pulled on Matt’s elbow and whispered into his ear, “Watch out for the assassins.”

  By 2003, when Hunter brought the Lisl Aumen case to the attention of Vanity Fair contributing editor Mark Seal, the machine had been grinding on for two years. We’re all entitled to a speedy trial, but once convicted, the only people in a hurry are the incarcerated and their allies. The system itself feels that the job is done. Good luck getting it to hurry up and reverse itself. Mark was immediately struck by the obvious injustice of the case, as pointed out by Hunter. So Mark Seal came aboard, and the process crawled forward. There was to be a major article in V.F. It would be the first and last time Hunter coauthored anything.

  Mark met Hunter in 2002 while doing a Vanity Fair piece on Aspen. He owned a home in town, and when they hooked up for the Lisl Auman article, Hunter’s kitchen became the command post. This was when Seal became acquainted with Hunter’s funny habit of calling at three or four in the morning: prime working hours for the Doctor, prime putting-up-with-Hunter hours for everyone else. To say they coauthored the article is being generous to Hunter. Hunter kept the drumbeat of activism rolling while Mark did the exhaustive research that was the meat of the piece. Ralph Steadman was commissioned to illustrate. His art struck to the heart of the revulsion that people felt about the case. Everyone was optimistic that the national spotlight of an article in Vanity Fair would create a breakthrough. Mark researched and wrote, fielding phone calls from Hunter in the wee hours. Ralph illustrated from England, fielding faxes from Woody Creek. Hunter coordinated, called, and faxed from his chair behind the counter in the kitchen.

  When the article was finished, it was Hunter’s turn. Mark had written the whole thing, and all Hunter had to do was write a lead, to get it started, and then wrap it up in the end. Seemed simple enough. Unfortunately Hunter was blocked. Really, really blocked. Considering how passionate he was about the subject, it was remarkable that he was having this problem. There were deadlines; everything was ready to go, everything but Hunter. I’d be over there night after night. Voices would come on the speakerphone, mostly Mark’s. “How’s it going?” How was it going? It wasn’t. “Oh, it’s coming,” would be the reply. This was important shit. The little girl in jail, the big-time magazine, all Mark Seal’s work sitting, waiting for a beginning and an end. I don’t know if Hunter would ask me over as a catalyst to try to get him working or as an excuse not to work. I’d always offer to leave if it was time for him to get down to it. On other projects he wouldn’t hesitate to send me away so he could get stuff done. Unfortunately, there wasn’t much of that going on at this point.

  Finally, one evening, it seemed that things were approaching critical mass. Hunter and I were actually having a pretty good time, but there was a sense of urgency in the air of the kitchen. There was yet another phone call inquiring about progress. I excused myself; I said I had to run home for a second. When I returned, I brought a painting that I’d been working on for months. I was working from a vintage photograph of twenty-seven miners lined up in rows in front of a sawmill in Lenado, a ghost town a few miles up the road. The painting wasn’t finished. I suggested that if Hunter was having a problem getting to work on his writing, he might want to take a crack at this goddamn thing, because it was driving me crazy. Hunter got the point, and I think he was glad that someone understood what he was going through, at least on some level. When I left, Hunter asked me to leave the painting. I briefly thought, Who cares if he writes this thing? Maybe he’ll buy the painting. No such luck. That’s what I get for being a selfish prick. The good news was that when I returned a couple of nights later, the article was finished, the crisis over, as if it had never happened.

  I don’t for a second think that my painting analogy did the trick. I suspect that the grumbling, and putting off the work, eventually became more work than actually doing the work.

  “Prisoner of Denver,” by Hunter Thompson and Mark Seal, illustrated by Ralph Steadman, appeared in the June 2004 issue of Vanity Fair. Hunter’s introduction to the article was a vicious attack on the Denver law enforcement establishment, particularly District Attorney Bill Ritter and the Denver cops. They didn’t take kindly to the piece, and at that point I wouldn’t have taken a field trip to Denver with Hunter for love or money. At first they tried to be dismissive of the crackpot writer up in Woody Creek, but it was just about impossible to conceal their rage. Denver police chief Gerry Whitman described the piece as a “smear campaign” and said, “Thompson is not letting the facts stand in the way of a sensational attempt at journalism.” But Mark’s detailed research and extensive interviews laid bare the facts, and no amount of spin from the cops or the D.A. could change them.

  The article gave the Free Lisl campaign a much-needed shot of adrenaline. In 2002 the Colorado Court of Appeals had refused to overturn the conviction, and that had slowed momentum a bit. The article validated people’s involvement, particularly the high-profile Hollywood types like Sean Penn, Johnny Depp, and Benecio Del Toro. The next, and possibly last, step was the Colorado Supreme Court. Over the next few months the wheels kept turning at their own pace.

  Then Hunter was gone. A month after his death, in March 2005, the Colorado Supreme Court decided that the Auman jury had been improperly instructed on the related burglary charge and ordered a new trial. The district attorney’s office was dubious about its chances with another trial: “people’s memories fade.” They agreed to a bargain. On October 17, 2005, Lisl Auman was released to Community Corrections. She spent Christmas
with her family for the first time in eight years.

  Posted on the Web site www.lisl.com:

  Peace to Hunter S. Thompson.

  Our Thoughts are with you Anita, and Jennifer, Juan and Will.

  We would like to express our deepest sympathy to the Thompson family at the loss of Hunter.

  We are grateful for his empathy and willingness to join in the effort to free Lisl from prison. As our friend, mentor and ally, he sustained and encouraged our family and Lisl’s supporters. His energy, advice and knowledge were invaluable and seminal as we brought her case to the attention of our community and the world. He opened doors to opportunities which we would not have thought possible.

  We hope and trust that his efforts on Lisl’s behalf will be rewarded when the justice for which he strove will be served and she is set free.

  God Bless you Hunter. You will be greatly missed.

  —Don and Jeannette Auman and Rob and Colleen Auerbach

  The Sheriff Investigates the Shooting of Deb

  It was 7:00 A.M. I was in the shower when my wife, Louisa, announced that Hunter was on the phone and that he sounded upset. He wanted to talk to me immediately. I asked her to tell him that I would call him back post-shower. Seven in the morning was a very unusual time for a call from Hunter. Two, three, even four in the morning were normal—for Hunter. Most of the time these calls were answered by my voice-mail. Hunter’s messages could ramble from five to forty minutes. I wish I had saved them all.

  Three minutes later, Louisa came back to the shower and announced that Hunter had called back and was in a panic. He wanted to speak with me RIGHT NOW! While drying off, I took the portable phone. Our conversation was fast and furious: “Hunter, what’s going on?” “I just shot Deborah. Come to Owl Farm now.” “What? You just shot Deb?” “It was an accident. I was trying to scare away a bear. Get over here.” “Where is Deb now?” “She’s at the hospital.” “Hunter, I’m going over there first. I’ll call you later.”