Gang Mom

by Fred Rosen

  “The gun was involved in the homicide?”

  “True.”

  “You insisted he throw out the gun?”

  “Yes.”

  “How often did Jim and Joe come to your house and admit they did the shooting?”

  “Once.”

  “How often after you said to shoot Aaron Iturra?”

  “Once.”

  Mary had goofed and didn’t realize it, just as she had when she admitted to setting the whole thing up to Janyce.

  “You expect this jury to believe you didn’t believe them?”

  “Yes.”

  “Were you afraid for your own life, of Jim and Joe?”

  “Yes.”

  “Were you in fear at the river?”

  “Not at that time, after EPD was at the house and I had a chance to think about it.”

  “How come Joe called you ‘Moms’?”

  “I knew him a lot of years, he just did it on his own.”

  “The others?”

  “They picked it up from Joe.”

  “Out of affection for you?” voice dripping sarcasm.

  “Yes.”

  “Did Jim and Joe say they did it for you?”

  “No!”

  “So you didn’t have to worry anymore?”

  “I don’t remember it.”

  “What did they say?”

  “‘We shot Aaron Iturra.’ I said, ‘Who?’ They said, ‘Jim did it.’ I said, ‘Did you really do this?’ They said, ‘Yeah.’ I didn’t believe them.”

  “What techniques did you use of power and control?”

  It was a rather sophisticated question. Skelton was getting to the heart of gang violence: the ability of the leader to control and manipulate those around her to do her bidding.

  Mary answered, “I talked to them, I didn’t control. They did what they wanted to do. I tried to discourage them.”

  “You didn’t do anything to control them?”

  “I lied about the gun store alarm,” she said, referring to their plan to steal guns, and how she allegedly stopped them with her cock-and-bull story about the federal mandate that all gun stores have alarms hooked into the police department.

  “You would lie to them?”

  “Yes. I would tell them the truth too.”

  “The kids would confide in you, and EPD would ask your opinion, just because you talked to them?”

  “Yes.”

  Skelton changed the subject. Mary was getting comfortable. He had to get her dancing again.

  “How did Lisa become a Seventy-four? What would cause her to become a Seventy-four?”

  “Involvement with people associated with the Seventy-four.”

  “She was your friend?”

  “Yes.”

  “She was a fourteen-year-old female, all the rest were males?”

  Mary nodded.

  “If Lisa was your friend, how was she acquainted with the others?”

  “Through Aaron Iturra.”

  “You had no role in her Seventy-four membership?”

  “No.”

  “You have a history of drug use?”

  “Yes.”

  “Going back to the gun, you sent Beau to get it, right?”

  “I did not send him.”

  “You sent him to get a gun from Lisa.”

  “It was Beau’s plan and I agreed.”

  “You knew Beau wanted the gun to do a burglary?”

  “No, I thought that once Beau got the gun it could be disposed of.”

  “You thought the gun was safer with Larry than Joe?”

  “Yes.”

  “Under your direction,” Skelton’s voice rose, “you thought it was safe to put a gun into the hands of a seventeen-year-old drug user?” Skelton marshaled the most incredulous expression he could muster.

  “Yes.”

  “Instead of taking it or calling the police?”

  “Lots went through my mind.”

  “Do you feel it is proper for gang members to have a gun in your house?”

  “Not normally, there was a lot going on.”

  “On the reenactment tape, Joe said, ‘Mary wanted Aaron Iturra dead.’”

  “I said leave him alone.”

  Is that sweat I see on your forehead, Mary?

  “Part of the plan was to tell you after it was done. What part of the plan were you involved with?”

  “No part of the plan.”

  It was a weak rejoinder, and a denial that appeared to be much, much too late. But then again, you could never tell with juries. Look what happened with O.J. in L.A. Slam dunk case and Bam! the guy walks.

  Skelton had finished. After a perfunctory redirect by the defense that went absolutely nowhere, the defense rested. Closing statements followed, then the judge charged the jury. After eight hours of deliberation, they came back with their verdict.

  SIXTEEN

  WEDNESDAY, JULY 17, 1996

  8:58 p.m.

  For a while, social scientists and others were looking to explain away the aberrant behavior of criminals by saying that they had lousy backgrounds. It worked for awhile, until the apologists started getting mugged themselves and suddenly, they weren’t apologists anymore.

  The jury knew nothing of Mary Fockler’s background, that she had been the apple of her father’s eye, that she had had a mother who’d stroked out, another brother who tried to commit suicide and crippled himself, and that she herself had served in the military, albeit briefly. If they had, would they have considered that information in their verdict?

  Even had the facts of her earlier gang life with the Hells Angels been known at the time, which they weren’t, they could not have been presented to the jury. Never mind that it established a pattern of gang activity going back twenty years. Jurors may only consider the evidence in front of them. What Mary Thompson or Fockler or whatever she wanted to call herself had done during her earlier life was totally irrelevant. Whatever problems she had that led to her criminal behavior were also irrelevant. At least legally.

  As the jury filed back into the box, Mary looked over, trying to read the verdict on their faces. Good luck; she might just as well have been trying to read the faces on Mount Rushmore. The jury wasn’t giving it away by expression.

  “Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, have you reached a verdict?”

  “We have, Your Honor.”

  “Would the defendant please rise?”

  Mary Thompson rose to her feet with her attorney Steve Chez beside her.

  “What say you on the matter before this court?”

  “We, the jury, find the defendant, Mary Thompson, guilty of aggravated murder.”

  They don’t believe me!

  Stunned, Mary dropped her head.

  In the front row, Janyce Iturra breathed a heavy sigh of relief. Then her thoughts turned heavenward. “Rest easy, my son.”

  “Take the defendant into custody,” said the judge. “Sentencing on July twenty-third.”

  Big, beefy bailiffs surrounded Mary and snapped on handcuffs and leg irons. Shuffling off, she looked back and saw Michaud. For a moment, their eyes locked. He nodded, the most emphatic, self-satisfied nod in the history of law enforcement.

  Six days later, on July 23, 1996, Judge Lyle Velure was ready to pronounce sentence on Mary Thompson. Mary came shuffling back into the courtroom. One more time, it remained for Janyce Iturra to get in the next-to-last word in her victim’s impact statement to a hushed courtroom.

  Relating for the last time the drama of her son’s death, the tragedy of the situation was lost for some in the repetition of events. But when Janyce looked at Mary and said quietly, “Who could hurt a child like this?” everyone, including the hardened court personnel, listened.

  “We asked God, Why have you done this to us?” Janyce continued, “We’ve always done the right thing. Why us?” But the Almighty didn’t answer. His answer, she said, was Aaron’s death.

  Mary looked down and shook her head.

&nbs
p; Since their home was still a crime scene, returning there was not an option. Instead, “We went to a friend’s house and the first thing I did was call Mary Thompson to let her hear from me what had happened. I didn’t want her to hear of Aaron’s death on the TV or radio. She was Aaron’s friend. I needed to let her know. I must have tried ten times that day. She never called me back. By the next day I gave up, knowing by this time she already knew. I kept saying, ‘I’ll see her at Aaron’s funeral, she’ll be there, she’s our friend. She cared for Aaron.’ The defendant always talked about how Aaron was such a good kid and was going to make it.”

  Now she knew that was all a con. Now she knew why Mary had distanced herself: she had ordered Aaron’s death.

  As for Mary’s so-called anti-gang activities, “The defendant is evil personified. Why? Because she took in children, purporting to love and protect them. She gave them a place to just be themselves and then, when they were the most vulnerable, used them for her own gain.”

  The idea that the kids called Mary ‘Moms’ “makes my skin crawl. From where I am sitting, a mom is someone who takes responsibility for her actions and her children’s.” Mary, clearly, did not.

  “All the Defendant did as a mother was try to cover up her son’s actions by lying and, beyond belief, even murdering my son, my children’s brother. The main difference between you and me, Mary, is, somewhere along the line you forgot the entire idea of parenting.”

  Throughout the trial, one question never seemed to be answered: was Mary a con woman from the beginning, as Michaud believed, or did she gradually succumb to the power of gangs, as Raynor believed? To Janyce, the answer was now obvious.

  “You had no real intention to prevent gang activities. You were active in manipulating the system so Beau wouldn’t get caught. All a very big cover-up. First at Aaron’s expense, but also Beau’s other friends’: Joe, Jim, Lisa, Cameron, Larry, Linda, and all the rest.”

  Had Mary not been caught, she never would have been stopped. The reason, Janyce said, was, “You enjoy the rush it gives you to be the mastermind and still be able to undermine the system. You played the game too well, thinking in your distorted mind that you would never get caught.” But, of course, she had. “The defendant has no feelings or true connections with other people, especially her so-called friends. The defendant is a manipulator and controlling person.”

  In her grief Janyce might actually have settled on the truth about Mary. There’s one school of sociological thought that says the endorphin rush from pulling a job is what keeps criminals in the game. They are more addicted to that “high” than they are to the actual criminal behavior. In fact, being psychopaths, not feeling the way normal people do, that high is the only way they can feel at all.

  “But these young adults, through this entire process, are now beginning to realize they are somebody and they are worth more than you ever gave them credit for. They should be applauded for taking the courage to step back to look, and to own their own part in this. The willingness to turn their lives around, to be productive, respected people in this community.”

  Then Janyce turned to the physical and emotional toll the death had on her and her family.

  “At one point in time, I was taking stomach medicine, sleeping pills, anxiety pills and depression medication and pain pills. All I take now is anti-depression medication, just to keep me on an even level to make it through each day, and medication to help allow me to get some sleep. You must know it’s not a given anymore. Just until recently I couldn’t even think of sleeping without going through all the elements of that night and how it affected me and my family.”

  She related how she, her daughters and her son were all in therapy to cope with Aaron’s loss. Maya, in particular, was having problems.

  Maya still felt responsible for Aaron’s death. She was the one who took the set-up call from Lisa. No longer able to cope with that guilt, Maya took what she hoped would be a fatal mixture of drugs and alcohol in January 1996. She survived, but, “This brought more overwhelming expenses: ambulance, emergency room and drug treatment—the effects of murder just are never-ending. The counseling does not come free. We exhausted all benefits through my insurance for the next two years. What is left over after bills are paid, I try to pay what I can on these expenses.”

  Even Aaron’s death cost the family financially.

  “The cost of Aaron being in the hospital on October third, from two a.m. until he died at ten forty-five was over twenty-two thousand dollars, not including ambulance and doctor fees. The bill from the hospital was waiting at my home after I and my family returned from staying at a friend’s home.” The bill for Aaron’s funeral alone was six thousand dollars.

  As the money was depleted, so were the friendships. “Friends abandoned us because of their own fears. We felt diseased, like there was something wrong with us. Yet we were the homicide survivors.”

  Mary shook her head.

  “Considering all of this there is only one appropriate sentence for Mary Thompson: death. I understand that this is not possible under the law, but she has taken so much from us all. If she gets life in prison, at least that will guarantee that she will not hurt anyone else.”

  Janyce sat down. No one said a word for a moment and then the judge broke the silence.

  “Mary Thompson, please stand,” he intoned.

  Mary stood. Judge Lyle Velure sentenced Mary Louise Thompson to spend the rest of her life in prison with no chance of parole.

  After the sentence was rendered, the bailiffs snapped the leg irons and handcuffs on. It was “Gang Mom” who had come into the courtroom to hear the sentence; it was just another two-bit convicted murderer who was led shuffling away.

  Outside the courtroom, Lisa Fentress was waiting. She went up to Janyce, looked into her eyes for forgiveness and collapsed crying in her arms.

  “Oh, what can I do, what can I do?”

  “Just live a good life.” And Janyce too began crying.

  That evening, Jim Michaud stood on the porch of his home. It was an unusually clear night and there wasn’t a cloud in the sky, just stars as far as the eye could see. He looked up and felt good. He’d done a good job. That was the intrinsic. As for the tangible, in one hand he had a perfect martini that he sipped, in the other, Paula, whom he had since married. They began to kiss and soon, they walked arm in arm into the back bedroom.

  And then the phone rang.

  AFTERWORD

  Oregon’s prisons have begun to burst at the seams. To alleviate the problem, the state has arranged with Arizona to take some of their inmates. Mary Thompson is one of those. She currently resides in a prison someplace outside Phoenix, Arizona.

  Beau Flynn has a scheduled parole hearing during 1998. It is not expected that he will get out, but Janyce Iturra is concerned.

  Janyce and her kids are doing all right. Some still go to therapy and every year around the time of Aaron’s death, they get sad. But they carry on as best they can.

  Under a new plan by Eugene’s chief of police, all detectives are supposed to be rotated back to uniform. Les Rainey was one of the first to go. Jim Michaud, though, appears to be safe for a while.

  While the 74 Hoover Crips are no longer active in Eugene, gang crime in the town continues to be a problem, with no solution in the foreseeable future.

  Image Gallery

  Note: All photos courtesy of the Eugene Department of Public Safety unless otherwise indicated.

  The view of the garage as the killers approached the house.

  The bloodstained mattress on which Aaron Iturra was found mortally wounded.

  Aaron Iturra posing in his bedroom where he would later be shot.

  Janyce Iturra

  Another view of the makeshift bedroom at the back of the garage—a typical teenager’s cluttered room where a murder would soon be committed.

  Blood spattered on the beer bottle upon impact of the shot that eventually killed Aaron Iturra.

  The living roo
m window on the right was the one Joe Brown tapped on to make sure everyone was asleep before the killers entered the house.

  The garage entrance through which the killers skulked on their way to Aaron’s bedroom.

  Inspection of the murder scene by forensic specialists.

  A mug shot of convicted murderer Mary Louise Thompson.

  Joe Brown, the point man, who re-enacted Aaron’s murder for Michaud and the police.

  Preppy-looking Jim Elstad, the man who pulled the trigger and killed Aaron Iturra.

  Police recorded Jim Elstad’s pristine appearance so that he would not be able to claim later that the police abused him during questioning.

  An unidentified man stands at the spot in the river where Joe Brown threw the murder weapon and bullets.

  Beau Flynn, Mary Thompson’s son, who led police on a wild chase across the city of Eugene until he was finally captured.

  Jim Michaud, the detective who broke the case and brought Mary Thompson to the bar of justice.

  Carrie, Aaron’s girlfriend, was next to him in the bed when he was shot.

  Janyce Iturra

  Janyce always felt that Aaron was the family’s protector, as reflected by the epitaph on his gravestone.

  Janyce Iturra

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  Many people helped in the writing of this book. In particular, I’d like to express my appreciation to my editor Charles Spicer who allowed me to develop my voice; Gary Sledge, my editor at Reader’s Digest who first saw the potential in this story; Jim Michaud, who gave everything and expected nothing; Janyce Iturra who allowed me a privileged glimpse into the lives of her and her family; and Sara, who helped me with structure many mornings during 2 a.m. feedings.