by Fred Rosen
Claar subsequently found Mary to be “… honest and straightforward.” Like many before and since, he also found her to be likable and personable. “She also knows how to play the system and make it work for her,” he added.
In return for working with Claar, the detective paid for the relocation of Mary, Beau and her new boyfriend and future husband John Thompson to the Eugene area. “I got letters [from Mary] thanking me for saving her life,” Claar says.
Mary was appreciative of the break Claar had given her, an opportunity to start life anew. Not wishing to blow it this time, she married John Thompson in 1992 and took a job as a secretary at a sign-making company outside Eugene. She also took his last name, and thereafter, on all official documents, she used her married name. But people still called her “Mary.”
A few months after Mary went to work at the sign maker’s, Bryan Alper, the owner, discovered that he was mysteriously losing money. A comparison between debits and accounts receivable showed that things didn’t match. Cash was finding its way out of the business. Alper had never had any experience with employee embezzlement but, as much as he hated to admit it, that’s what seemed to be happening. Any number of people had access to the cash that came in. He knew that he didn’t have the expertise to figure out who was taking it, but he had a good buddy who did.
“Hi, Jim, it’s Bryan.”
“Hey, Bryan, how’s it going?”
“Pretty good. Listen, I think I have an employee embezzlement problem going on.”
“You sure? Sure it’s not something else?”
Alper gripped the phone harder and thought for a second.
“Nope. I’m sure. You know how meticulous I am.”
Jim Michaud sighed.
“Look, would you—”
“Sure, no problem,” and Michaud drove out to see his old friend.
After examining the books, Michaud realized that Alper had cause for concern. Someone was ripping him off. The totals just didn’t tally.
Systematically, Michaud began looking over employee records, searching for anyone who might be an ex-convict, anyone who might have had a grudge against Alper. He looked through a back file of résumés of present employees. While examining Mary Thompson’s, a few things began to call attention to themselves.
It said that she had a BA in biology with a math minor from Kent State University in Ohio. It also said that she had subsequently attended Trent College, a local business school, and completed a six-month course in bookkeeping.
That made absolutely no sense. Why would an educated woman with a math minor need a six-month course in bookkeeping? Then there was the matter of her experience as a police officer. Thompson listed a stint as “Field Investigator” for the Josephine County Police Department. Josephine County was near Eugene. Michaud made some calls and then had a little talk with Mary.
When Mary Thompson came into a private office at Alper’s sign business to talk to Michaud, what the detective saw was a stout woman, five-foot-eight, over 160 pounds.
“I talked to a Detective Claar in Josephine County. He says you weren’t a field investigator. What you were was a paid drug informant, and you were heavily involved in the drug trade. You also went by the name of ‘Fockler,’” said Michaud.
“He’s lying,” Mary assured him.
“No doubt, no doubt.”
“You’re just putting me on.”
“No I’m not. I’m sure there’s no doubt in your mind that what you did qualified as field investigation.”
Mary wasn’t sure how to take that, which was exactly the way the comment was designed, to get her off-balance.
“And what about Kent State?”
“What about it?”
“Great school?”
She nodded. Michaud looked down at the résumé.
“It says here that you matriculated there.”
“Yes I did,” she answered assertively.
“Problem is, Mary, I called Kent State. There’s no record of your having attended the school.”
“Kent State’s lying.”
“So let’s see if I get it. Kent State’s lying and Detective Claar’s lying.”
“Right,” said Mary, nodding her head.
“Put yourself in my shoes, Mary,” said Michaud gently. “Why should I believe you didn’t embezzle the money when you’ve lied about everything else?”
“Well …” and Mary went off into repeated denials, until finally, she admitted that she might have been responsible for some of the money disappearing.
“Well, what do you want to do, Bryan?” Michaud asked Alper after Mary had gone back to her desk.
“If I press charges, there’ll be a trial and the whole deal?”
Michaud nodded.
“Well, it might be a little easier just to fire her.”
Which he did. And Michaud went back to Eugene and forgot about the case. A few years later, Mary showed up in Eugene as an anti-gang activist. And the legend of “Gang Mom” was born.
As the detective in charge of the case, it was Michaud’s job to supervise the detectives in his squad in order to put the case together.
Over the next couple of days, Mary began to have second thoughts about her conversation with Raynor. Michaud, meanwhile, was sending out detectives to interview Angel Elstad, Wayde Hudson, Lisa Fentress, Larry Martin and all the other members of the 74 Hoover Crips. Maybe it was just self-serving bull, or maybe it was just a minor act of conscience, but two names that kept coming up in almost every interview were “Crazy” Joe Brown and Jim Elstad. The gang members felt that they were involved in the shootings.
On Thursday, October 6, 1994, before Michaud had a chance to act, Ric Raynor came out of a meeting at City Hall. In the square, waiting to meet him, was Mary Thompson.
“I’ve got information on Aaron,” she said, sounding more than a little emotional.
“Like what?”
“Angel told me that Jim and Joe were involved.”
Silence. Raynor stared at her.
“You know more about this. Did Jim tell you?”
“You know I can’t tell you. You know what I mean.”
Raynor knew that was “gangspeak” for “Yes.”
Figuring it was time to get Michaud and Rainey involved, he took Mary to an upstairs interrogation room and, while a detective stayed with her, he went into the Violent Crime Unit to tell the detectives she was there.
“She knows me,” Michaud said simply.
“How—” Raynor began, but was interrupted by Michaud’s raised hand.
“That’s not important now. What is important is for Les and you to do the interview. I’d just antagonize her.”
Raynor nodded.
“Okay,” said Rainey, “let’s do it.”
Mary was shown to the “hard” interrogation room. Unlike the soft one, which was painted in soft colors, with comfortable chairs and muted lighting, the room Mary Thompson found herself in looked more like a stockroom. There were boxes piled high on shelves and a big, scarred wooden desk in the center of the room with straight-backed chairs arrayed around it.
“Why don’t you sit over there, Mary?” Rainey said politely, offering her a chair that backed up against the wall. Rainey sat down opposite her, and Raynor next to him. On the desk were a pad, pencils and pens and a tape recorder. Rainey reached forward and depressed the “record” button.
SIX
Anybody who has ever watched “NYPD Blue” knows the routine: get the suspect in an interrogation room, advise them of their Constitutional rights to an attorney during questioning, convince them they don’t need one, and then, if they don’t confess voluntarily, intimidate them physically to confess. If that doesn’t work, beat it out of them.
Uh-uh. Nope. Nada. Hands off.
If every cop working today did it the way “Sipowicz” and “Simone” did it, they’d not only lose their badges immediately, their cases would always be overturned on appeal.
Since the Miranda/
Escobedo Supreme Court rulings of the 1960s, suspects are advised of their rights to remain silent and to have a lawyer present both when they are arrested and when they are interrogated.
In Mary’s case, she had come in voluntarily to speak with Raynor. She was giving a “statement,” not a confession. But the cops couldn’t take a chance that she might actually save them time and money and confess, so, on the off-chance that she slipped, which both cops knew was the same chance of say, the Chicago Cubs winning the World Series next year, they had to read her her rights anyway. They did it nice and easy, like reciting poetry. No reason to spook her. Then Rainey began with this gambit:
“Now I know a primary concern for you was that you were not gonna be arrested today and that, in fact, you were going to be allowed to leave. Is that correct?”
“That is a concern, but my first primary concern was safety for my son Beau,” Mary answered like any concerned parent.
“Now, you’ve assured us, Mary, that you did not commit the killing yourself, nor did you do anything with the intent of having someone commit the killing. That correct?”
Rainey didn’t believe or disbelieve. He was just repeating what she had said when she denied having participated in Aaron’s death.
“Yes, absolutely.”
“And I’ve assured you that if, in fact, that’s truthful, although you may be responsible for some other crime, that I don’t, certainly, anticipate you being charged for the murder of Aaron Iturra. All right?”
“Right.”
A pleasant understanding. Of course, what was really being said was this:
Rainey: “If you lie to me, Mary, your number is up!”
Mary: “I understand that, you moron. You think I’m stupid enough to confess to anything?”
And every cop in his heart of hearts believes that the answer to that question is “Yes!” for one simple reason: I’m smarter than she is. If she was so smart, she’d be in my seat and I’d be in hers.
“So based on that, assuming that that’s a truthful statement by you, please go ahead and just start from the beginning. What do you know about Aaron’s murder?”
Mary took a deep breath.
“Starting from the beginning about what I know about Aaron’s death and murder. A lot of crap happened about three weeks ago on the sixteenth of September when my son, Beau Flynn, and Aaron Iturra were arrested at Willamette High School. I was very, very mad and very, very upset.”
Rainey raised his eyebrows quizzically. Hell, it worked for “Mr. Spock.”
“Aaron had told the police some things that didn’t happen,” Mary asserted. “And that was indicated to me by the police that were doing the questioning of both kids. And I went home and when all the kids started hearing about it of course they fled to my house because that’s what always happens.
“They saw how upset I was over Aaron, over Beau getting arrested and Aaron, you know, just not telling the truth about the incident at the Grocery Cart. And then Aaron was released from jail on the following Monday and he called me for a ride.”
Mary could hardly hide the incredulity in her voice. The nerve of the kid, Rainey thought, calling his best friend for a ride. But this whole thing about the Grocery Cart. What was she talking about?
Like most towns, Eugene had its own particular version of 7-Eleven. In Eugene, these convenience stores went under the name “Grocery Cart.” Scattered around the city, they provided two things: a convenient place to pick up stuff at inconvenient hours, and a place for kids to hang out. The 74 Hoover Crips had taken to hanging out at one. And unlike shows such as Hill Street Blues that advanced a logical reason for gang members to fight—e.g., over turf—in real life, gang members usually fought over nothing in particular, the victims of their own raging hormones.
What had happened, Rainey learned upon accessing a copy of Beau Flynn’s rap sheet, was that in early September Beau was hanging at the Grocery Cart with his “bros,” including Aaron Iturra. While Aaron was not a member of the gang, he was there to watch out for Beau. When Jack Blessing happened to come in to buy something, all hell broke loose.
“Heard you snitched on me, man,” Beau shouted at Jack.
“What?” Jack replied, not knowing what Beau was talking about.
“You told ‘the man’ I gave you that gun off the burglary.”
“I didn’t!” Jack retorted. His heart started to race.
“Yeah, man, and the cops busted me for it.”
“Look, Beau,” Jack continued, desperate now, “I never—”
Aaron came over and put his hand on Beau’s sleeve. “Hey, come on, Beau—” but Beau pushed Aaron away and pulled a knife. Quickly, he turned back to Blessing and slashed at his stomach, cutting through his jacket and scratching his skin with the blade.
The owner of the Grocery Cart had seen the assault in the making and had already called 911. Sirens screaming, cops arrived on the scene before Beau could do any further damage. Beau was arrested and when cops asked him if anyone else had participated in the assault against Blessing, he identified Aaron, who was also arrested. Aaron couldn’t believe it! He was there to protect the kid and he winds up getting charged!
“What am I supposed to do?” Aaron asked Janyce when he was finally released into her charge. “Beau needs help, Mom, but if I finger him, he’ll go back to jail. You know he has a record.”
“Frankly, Aaron, that’s not your problem. He got himself into this mess. You tried to stop it. Seems to me you did everything you could.”
After much soul-searching, Aaron got really practical. There’s no way I’m going to jail for a scuzbucket like Beau, he thought.
Aaron called Officer Richard Grimes of the Department of Public Safety and told him that Beau Flynn was responsible for assaulting Jack Blessing with a knife. Since Flynn was on parole from the MacLaren Juvenile Detention Center at the time of the assault, his parole was revoked and he was returned to MacLaren pending trial. In return, charges against Aaron were dropped. He was scheduled to testify against Beau in the assault case when he was murdered.
“I was very upset about this,” Mary continued, “because I believed that Beau didn’t do the scratching at the Grocery Cart. It took me a while to come to terms with that. See, emotionally, during the next two weeks before Beau went back to MacLaren, we got along better than ever. And, Beau thought that he was doing good. All I could think was, why is this happening? And then the kids would continue to come over. Then my dog got really sick and died.”
Again with the dog! Mary must have recalled how her dog back in Cleveland got her kicked out of town.
“In the course of this two weeks,” Mary continued, “I know I said that Aaron couldn’t testify against Beau. I know I said it in front of this group of kids.”
She didn’t like Aaron, and couldn’t believe his betrayal. How can he hurt me this way? Mary thought. “Cause I had asked Aaron to keep an eye out for Beau. I didn’t ask Aaron to baby-sit him twenty-four hours a day. I just asked that if he heard of anything, either to let me know or to tell Beau he was screwing up.”
“Try to keep him out of trouble?” Rainey nodded sympathetically.
“Try to keep him out of trouble,” she repeated. “And, part of my feelings about Aaron in the last couple weeks is that he stood right there, right there, and let all of this happen.” And she told Jim Elstad, Wayde Hudson and Joe Brown how angry she was at Aaron.
“And, one day last week I knew they had a thirty-eight handgun. I saw it. They had it at my house and I told them to get it out of my house.”
“They being who?” Raynor cut in.
“They being Joe Brown. All three of them were actually there. Brown, Wayde Hudson and Jim Elstad.”
“And, this is in the week just prior to the homicide?” asked Rainey, trying to get it straight in his mind.
“Yes. Yes,” Mary answered emphatically. “Joe and these kids would talk, you know …”
“Talking tough?” Rainey interrupted.
<
br /> Mary nodded. “Talking tough. Talking bad. They didn’t like Aaron because of what he did to Beau, or what they felt he did, what we all felt he did to Beau. They didn’t like him because of what he did to me. The hurt there. And they didn’t like him because they thought he set his demons on them.”
Demons? What was this, Rosemary’s Baby?
“You mean like some kind of satanic thing or something?”
“Yes.”
“So, there was a lot of stuff they were unhappy with Aaron about?”
“Yeah. But I never thought that any of this was serious. They would, you know, say, you know, that they were gonna go beat him up. They were gonna go cap [shoot] him. And, they had a plan where they were gonna cap him on his way to pick up his girlfriend at the market. And I said, ‘I don’t want to hear this, you know, you guys.’ And, they shut up about it. And then on Monday morning, early, early Monday morning—”
“Which Monday was that, Mary?” Raynor interrupted.
“The Monday Aaron was killed.”
“Go on,” said Raynor.
“In the middle of the night there’s a knock on my door. Joe Brown and Jim Elstad are standing there. They said they had just done it.”
“Done what?” Rainey asked, knowing the answer like a good interrogator should.
“And Jim said that they’ve killed Aaron,” Mary confirmed, and Rainey nodded.
“I just didn’t believe these guys could do it, you know?” Mary asked incredulously. “These are kids I had in my home. I just didn’t believe they had the guts to do it.”
“What happened after that?”
“I got my clothes on real quick, hopped in our pickup and took Joe home. On the way there, Joe wanted me to drive him by the river so he could get rid of the gun. So I took him over on River Avenue under the underpass, under the Beltline, and stopped and he went down. He was carrying a cigarette and I saw him go as far as the water’s edge, and then, it was too dark to see him any further. He was gone for maybe a minute, maybe two minutes. Then he came back up and got in the truck and I took him on to his house over off of Maxwell and dropped him off. And he give me a hug and said, ‘See you tomorrow, Mom.’ And I went home.”