by Ann Rule
Regimbal believed the kid when he said he didn’t know anything about his mom taking a trip to Alabama. Buddy was given a polygraph test, and he passed. That was the one and only time that Luke allowed Regimbal to interview the boy.
The Chevy Malibu was another key factor in the case, but Regimbal could not find the car. Harold Lee Schut had described driving the Malibu in his hypothetical journey to kidnap a baby, and Dana Rose had remembered riding in it on the long trip she had taken with her mother and Lee that January.
Luke scoffed when he heard about the Malibu. It was just one more hole in the investigators’ ridiculous case against his sister—one more thing that proved Dana Rose was lying.
“The Malibu didn’t even run!” he said, pounding his fist on the detective’s desk for emphasis. “It didn’t run, and it was stuck in a snowbank that time of year. She’s not guilty!”
The question of the Malibu worried Regimbal. He tried to keep an open mind, and he checked himself to be sure he was not forcing pieces to fit into a puzzle where they did not belong.
A lot of time, energy, and money—not to mention emotion—was being poured into the case, and it had all begun with Regimbal. What if he were wrong? In the beginning, he worried that maybe he was wrong, that he was accusing the wrong person of murder.
Jackie Sue Schut was certainly not going to win the award for mother of the year, but did that make her a killer?
Athens detectives had found no physical evidence at the scene of the crime—no hairs or fingerprints that could be matched to Jackie. And no murder weapon had been located. If they had found a gun, or even spent bullets and cartridges in Jackie’s possession, comparisons could have been made to the spent bullets extracted from the victim’s body.
Investigators had eyewitness accounts from Geneva’s sister and brother-in-law who had briefly seen the suspect at the house shortly before the murder. And they had Tracy, an actual eyewitness to the murder, but she was only five when she saw her mother shot. After six years would she remember? And if she did, would a jury believe her? They would certainly feel sorry for a child who had seen her mother gunned down, but that did not mean they would find her to be a reliable witness.
There was Lee’s hypothetical account, and Dana Rose’s statements. But Dana Rose was an abused child, and she’d been treated at a psychiatric ward. The girl had—understandably—suffered a mental breakdown after all she had been through, but the defense would likely use that against them and question her credibility.
Regimbal had his work cut out for him, and the responsibility weighed on him heavily. The biggest question was Jackie’s whereabouts on January 21, 1980. If the defense could prove that she was in Washington on the day of the murder, then a jury could not possibly find her guilty.
Jackie’s attorneys had a pile of documents that they said would prove that she was in Yakima on January 21, 1980. These were the same alibis that the defense had tried to foist upon Governor Booth Gardner, who had wisely decided it was not up to him to make a judgment about her guilt.
Regimbal worked to shred Jackie Schut’s so-called alibis. The question of the Malibu was one of the first obstacles. If the car were dead in a snowbank in January 1980, as Luke claimed, that would not be good for the prosecution.
The Schut story was big news in Yakima, and the local newspaper published an article informing the public that detectives were trying to prove that the now missing Malibu was running in January 1980.
Shortly after the article appeared, Regimbal heard from a surprising source—a temporary resident at the Department of Corrections. Hank Rhoades* was in jail in Yakima when he phoned the detective to set up a meeting.
As Rhoades sat across from Regimbal, he said, “I just want to share this information I have about the Malibu.”
He told Regimbal that he knew that the Schuts’s Malibu was running in January 1980. “I know that that car ran because I’m the one who fixed it for them so they could go on a trip,” he said. He explained that when he had done mechanical work on the blue Malibu, he had been impressed with it, and that was why he remembered it so well. “I told them I wanted that car,” said Rhoades. “It was a hot car.”
Regimbal wondered if the inmate wanted a favor in return for the information, but he asked for nothing.
“Crooks are people, too,” says Regimbal. “People in prison have kids, and they don’t like to see children abused.”
Regimbal’s point is well taken. The news that children were sexually abused at the hands of Bernard Oldham and the Schuts sickened most Yakima residents—even those behind bars. Convicted pedophiles are considered the lowest form of life in prison, and are, not surprisingly, targeted by child avengers.
And now that the Schuts had been accused of murdering mothers to steal their infants, their status sunk even lower.
When Detective Regimbal finally tracked down the Malibu, it was crunched up in a wrecking yard, disposed of years earlier.
On another occasion, Luke pointed out to the detective that the investigators had made a big mistake when they calculated the time it would take to travel by car from Yakima to Athens. He claimed it would have been impossible for the Schuts to drive that distance in the time allotted.
Regimbal did the math, and it was obvious to him that Luke was wrong. If two drivers took turns behind the wheel, chose the most direct route, and drove day and night, they could make a round-trip between Yakima and Athens in a week.
“To prove it couldn’t be done, Brother Luke and his entourage drove from Yakima to Alabama to attend the trial,” Regimbal says. “He never mentioned it again. I think they realized that it can be done.”
* * *
When the Houston detectives got a call from Athens police chief Richard Faulk, they were elated to hear that there had been an arrest in the murder of Geneva Clemons.
They had compared notes on their cases years earlier, and Faulk had agreed with them that Cheryl Jones had not committed suicide. Detective Gil Schultz, who was partnered with Detective Paul Motard for over a decade, says, “We knew somebody else had to be there in the room with Cheryl Jones, because that baby did not get back to New Orleans on its own.”
In 1980, when Schultz and Motard first began investigating Cheryl’s death, they were able to quickly clear Dennis Jones as a suspect. His alibi was solid. He had been working when Cheryl died.
“The toxicology report showed that Cheryl had a lethal amount of drugs in her system,” says Schultz. “We went to her husband and asked him if she ever used drugs. He told us she didn’t.”
The whole thing was hinky.
The baby did not walk out of the hotel room. A woman had given the child to a taxi driver. Who was that woman? And someone had ordered cocktails from room service. The room service charges were applied to the credit card of Dr. Taylor,* who lived in Orange, Texas. Who was he and what was he doing in that room?
There was another thing that the detectives found to be very odd. There were baby clothes left in the room, but all of the labels had been ripped out.
Despite the fact that the ME ruled the death a suicide, Motard and Schultz did not stop investigating it as a murder. Now, with the call from Chief Faulk, it looked like the case would finally be solved.
When the Houston detectives questioned Harold Lee Schut, he gave them the same kind of roundabout confession he had given to Bob Regimbal in the Athens case.
“I didn’t do it, but if I had, I would have done it this way . . .”
Lee described the murder to the detectives in detail. “He told us things that no one could have known unless they’d been there,” says Schultz.
To the great relief of Cheryl’s family, the ME changed the manner of death to homicide. They had known in their hearts that Cheryl was murdered, and now they hoped that her killers would be prosecuted.
Dr. Joseph Jachimcyk, the Harris County medical examiner, told reporters, “This case had all the earmarks of a textbook suicide. But after reviewing the new evidence
, it is apparent that it was a homicide.”
While Cheryl’s wrist had had only superficial cuts on it, it was still strange that it had not bled—an indication that the cuts were made after her heart stopped beating. She could not have made the cuts herself.
Though the cause of death was officially changed to homicide, public records still list Cheryl Ann Jones’s death as a suicide—a fact that troubles her sister. “I’ve tried to have it changed many times,” says Kathy. But she has always gotten the runaround.
Detectives eventually were told by Lee that Amanda Jones was supposed to be adopted on the black market, and that the Schuts had expected to earn two thousand dollars for kidnapping her.
Then why was the baby sent back to her father?
According to Lee, they had panicked when Cheryl died.
Detective Shultz said that the Schuts “were so dumb, they thought if they gave her these drugs that she wouldn’t remember anything.”
Lee told the detective he expected the drugs to “erase her memory.” He said he had not expected the young mother to die.
He was either dumb or playing dumb.
If they hadn’t expected Cheryl to die, then why was she forced to write a suicide note?
* * *
On May 4, 1987, the Limestone County courthouse was packed with media and spectators crammed into the long wooden benches. Circuit Judge Henry Blizzard presided, and a jury of five women and seven men had been chosen to decide the fate of Jackie Sue Schut.
Jackie’s family had hired Athens attorney Jerry Barksdale to defend her. Unbeknownst to the jury, some of the key players in the case were connected. Judge Blizzard and Jerry Barksdale had once been in private practice together.
In 1968, the then young attorneys had paid sixty bucks a month to rent two rooms in what had previously been Booth’s Pool Hall on North Marion Street in Athens. They hung out their shingle, and the old pool hall became the law firm of Barksdale & Blizzard.
The prosecutor, the defense attorney, and the victim’s husband had all gone to Athens High School, though Barksdale had graduated a few years earlier than the others.
While the attorneys and the judge often crossed paths and had chosen careers rife with drama, Larry Clemons hadn’t, but he was inextricably caught up in it—forever part of the tragic story he wished had never happened.
Detective Bob Regimbal had flown from Yakima to serve as a consultant for the prosecution. He knew the case so well, and he sat at the State’s table, prepared to offer his insights.
Fry, who had once been a high school football star, was an imposing figure, and Larry Clemons was glad he was on the side of the good guys. Husky, with a booming voice, Fry always got his point across, and in his opening statement, he pulled no punches. “This is a case of clear, cold-blooded murder!” he announced.
The defendant sat quietly by her attorney, betraying no emotion as Fry explained to the jury what he would prove. “The evidence, we believe, is strong,” he told them. “We’ll put two people on the stand who will tell you that less than an hour before the victim was killed, they saw a woman that we believe was Jackie Schut at the Clemons house, begging to take the baby’s picture to put in a beautiful baby contest.”
That baby was now seven years old, and he was perched beside his grandfather on one of the hard benches, appearing a little dazed.
Barksdale assured the jury that his client was no killer. She was the victim of shoddy police work. The real killer was still on the loose. The injustice of it angered Barksdale, and he explained, “The killer has not been arrested. The police, acting under pressure to make an arrest, took the words of scum and criminals to hatch up a false claim against Jackie Schut.”
Barksdale said he didn’t know who shot Geneva Clemons, but he was certain it wasn’t Jackie. She was in Yakima that day, and he would prove it. For one thing, he had evidence that Jackie had telephoned her mother from her apartment.
“It has to have been a case of mistaken identity, because the ‘witnesses’ fingered the wrong person. It was a shame that the real killer hadn’t been caught, but that wasn’t the fault of the defendant. She wasn’t even in Alabama in January 1980.
“We will present evidence of this!” Barksdale promised. “The very day that the State says Jackie Sue Schut was here in Athens, killing and kidnapping, she was in Yakima, Washington, filing a welfare claim.”
Barksdale didn’t realize it, but Detective Regimbal had already destroyed the welfare claim alibi. Admittedly, Regimbal had been concerned when he first heard about the existence of a signed and dated legal form that could positively place Jackie in Yakima on the day of the murder. “I thought, ‘Oh, well that throws a wrench in things,’ ” he remembers.
Regimbal had gone down to the welfare office in Yakima to check out the validity of the welfare form alibi. A rather rude clerk wasn’t eager to answer the detective’s questions. “She wasn’t a very friendly person,” he says with a grin. “She acted like I was putting her out. I was investigating a murder, but she didn’t want to be bothered!”
With a little persistence, Regimbal was able to pry loose the answers he needed. As it turned out, the form could be mailed to the welfare office, and the people who filed the forms were often not present when clerks stamped the time upon the documents. The stamped date in no way proved that Jackie was at the welfare office on that date.
Before Barksdale even got to the point of presenting his welfare claim “evidence,” Fry took the wind out of his sails, telling the jury that the alibi was useless. “We’ll show that the caseworker does not remember Jackie Schut being in the office that day,” he said, explaining that the claim was probably mailed, and then it wasn’t processed until the day of the murder.
As for the phone records that Barksdale said would prove Jackie had called her mother from her Yakima apartment, they did not carry much weight. The prosecution alleged it was Buddy who used the phone that day, and the eight-year-old had called his grandparents to come get him because his mother wasn’t there.
Fry was eager to demolish Barksdale’s opening-statement allegation that cops had “hatched up” the case against the Schuts. His voice booming, the prosecutor told the jury that Barksdale “is not telling you the truth when he says the police officers hatched all of this up.”
But Barksdale would not let it go. He went after everyone he could. He attacked investigators, and at one point during the trial Detective Regimbal became the target of his wrath. The Yakima Herald-Republic had done a story on Regimbal and his work on the case. Regimbal hadn’t asked for the publicity, but he did not turn away reporters when they questioned him.
The Yakima public was hungry for details about the Schut story. The article praised Regimbal for his work in cracking the case. The detective hadn’t sought out the limelight, but now, Jackie’s attorney used the article against him.
When Regimbal was on the stand, Barksdale waved the newspaper at him and loudly accused him of “grandstanding.”
Barksdale was trying to give the impression that Regimbal had implicated the Schuts to make himself look good—to get his picture in the paper. Poor Jackie Schut was being railroaded to feed a detective’s ego!
The best defense, they say, is offense. It’s a cliché, and it might not always be true, but it was the strategy used by Jackie Schut’s attorneys in their attempt to shred the State’s case. The defense’s best defense was clearly offense.
When Barksdale attacked him, Regimbal found it unsettling, and after nearly thirty years, the memory still disturbs him. If a seasoned detective was rattled by Barksdale’s accusations, imagine what it would do to two little girls.
Tracy Clemons was now twelve, and Dana Rose Simons was fourteen. The daughters of a killer and her victim were the State’s star witnesses.
They were children, and Jackie Schut had hurt them both tremendously. Seven years earlier, the two girls had met on a tragic night that neither one would ever forget.
Tracy could not fo
rget the night she was splattered with her mother’s blood. Dana Rose could not forget that night, either, nor could she forget the unbelievable cruelty she had suffered at the hands of the one person who was supposed to care for her.
Now, these two girls were expected to face the monster. The burden would have been too much for most adults. But each was determined to do what she must. And Barksdale was determined to break them.
It was, after all, his job to discredit the girls. “I don’t know what Dana Rose is going to tell you,” he said to the jury, “but we will prove by her school attendance records that she was in school that day.”
When Fry had first heard of the existence of that alleged evidence, he was a little concerned. The school secretary had, in fact, marked Dana Rose as present during the period of January 16 to 24.
But just as the welfare form alibi had turned out to be a dud, so did the attendance record “proof.”
The prosecution played a videotape of Yakima County school administrator Richard Sippola, who explained that the secretary could have easily made a mistake because the record of those particular days were on a separate page from the rest of the month.
“It is possible that she entered her record on the wrong line,” Sippola said, and then he pointed out that the name of the girl on the line below Dana’s was marked as absent on those days.
When investigators checked with the parents of the girl who was marked absent, they stated that their daughter was in school on those days. It looked as if the secretary had accidentally transposed the names.
Indignant, Fry told the jury, “Dana should know whether or not she was in school during that period, and she says she was not.”
Dana Rose was petrified when she was called to testify. She hadn’t seen Jackie in over a year, and she dreaded walking into the courtroom to face her. Though she knew that Jackie had done wrong, Dana Rose at times felt crippled by guilt for going against her.