The Education of a Coroner

by John Bateson

  Police might not have come across the remains of Richard Stowers and Cynthia Moreland if they hadn’t already been looking for the two women who were missing more recently. One woman, twenty-two-year-old Diane O’Connell, had been hiking with friends on Mount Tam when she slipped away, unnoticed. Meanwhile, twenty-three-year-old Shauna May was supposed to meet friends in nearby Point Reyes National Seashore the previous day, but never showed up. Their bodies were found on the same Sky Camp Trail on Mount Tam, in a heavily wooded area, within minutes after searchers discovered the skeletons of Richard and Cynthia. Both Diane and Shauna were nude, lying side by side, and, as their autopsies subsequently revealed, had been raped. Their clothing and backpacks were next to them, and there were no signs of a struggle. Diane had been shot once in the head and Shauna twice. Police speculated that the killer intercepted one of the women in her hike and the other woman happened to come along right afterward. Police also speculated that the recent killings were intended to draw attention to the area so that the earlier deaths, which occurred within a few days of Anne Alderson’s murder and only fifteen feet away, could be found. Holmes didn’t believe this, because if Diane’s and Shauna’s bodies had been discovered first, the search probably would have ended there.

  After learning that a man and a woman had been killed, and two women one right after the other, police began to rethink the notion that the murders were committed by a single person. The fact that at least one victim—Shauna May—supposedly had been hiking in Point Reyes, not Mount Tam, and was killed, along with Diane O’Connell, six weeks after the second set of deaths raised the horrifying possibility that there were two predators roaming the area. A ballistics test confirmed that the same gun used in Anne Alderson’s murder also was used to shoot Diane and Shauna, however, which reaffirmed the one-killer theory. It was a small measure of comfort, at best.

  THE END

  The discovery of four bodies in one day—two by happenstance—raised the possibility that there were more dead bodies on the mountain that hadn’t been found yet. An aerial search team was called in. Using infrared cameras that detected contrasts in temperature, the team photographed the mountain with special sensitized film that was capable of shooting through foliage and soil. Even dead deer registered on the film. To everyone’s relief, no other unexpected remains were detected.

  Hikers in both parks were warned not to hike alone, although being with another person hadn’t helped Richard Stowers and Cynthia Moreland. It also wouldn’t prove to help two people who were hiking in a state park near Santa Cruz, roughly eighty miles south of San Francisco, five months later.

  On March 29, 1981, Ellen Hansen and Stephen Haertle were accosted by a man brandishing a gun. The man told Ellen that he was going to rape her. Haertle begged him to let them go instead. When Ellen refused to cooperate, the killer shot her twice in the head and once in the shoulder. All three shots were at point-blank range. Then he turned the gun on Haertle and shot him in the neck before fleeing.

  Haertle survived and was able to crawl for help. In describing the killer, he said the man had crooked yellow teeth, was about fifty, under six feet, roughly 170 pounds, wore glasses, and was balding.

  Once this description was released, other hikers in the area told police that they had seen a man resembling the gunman get in or out of a red, late-model, foreign-made car. The car, his age, and the fact that he was alone attracted their attention.

  A month later, a San Jose man reported that his girlfriend, Heather Scaggs, twenty, was missing. He said that she was last seen en route to buy a car from a man named David Carpenter. He worked in the same print shop she did and, apparently, had told her specifically to come alone to pick up the car. When police questioned Carpenter, they noticed immediately his strong resemblance to the man Stephen Haertle had described. A small red Fiat with a bent tailpipe was in his driveway.

  Carpenter, fifty-one, lived with his elderly parents in San Francisco. He was a habitual sex offender but hadn’t shown up in a records check that police conducted of released inmates because of a technicality. When Haertle identified Carpenter in a lineup as the man who killed Ellen Hansen and almost killed him, officers made the arrest. In Carpenter’s car were books of Bay Area hiking trails and trail maps.

  Ten days later, the remains of Heather Scaggs were found by hikers in Big Basin Redwood State Park in Santa Cruz County. She had been executed with the same .38-caliber gun that was used to shoot Ellen Hansen and Stephen Haertle. She had been raped as well, and the killer had tried to hide her body under a pile of brush. Her identity was confirmed through dental records.

  In investigating Carpenter, police linked him to another death. The partial remains of a seventeen-year-old high school student named Anna Menjivar were found June 4, 1980, in Castle Rock State Park in the Santa Cruz Mountains. Her murder had seemed like an isolated killing until police learned that she was a friend of David Carpenter and often let him drive her home from work.

  Once authorities in Marin heard about the Santa Cruz killings, they zeroed in on David Carpenter as the prime suspect for the Mount Tam murders. Ballistic tests from the two slayings in Santa Cruz tied Carpenter to five of the Marin County homicides, and he was charged with the deaths of Anne Alderson, Diane O’Connell, Shauna May, Cynthia Moreland, and Richard Stowers.

  To Holmes’s frustration and dismay, Barbara Schwartz wasn’t named as one of the Marin victims. He believed that the glasses he found with Barbara’s blood on them were Carpenter’s. Despite the unusual prescription, however, and the fact that Barbara and Carpenter reportedly had the same eye doctor, which may have been how he targeted her, police decided that there wasn’t enough evidence to charge Carpenter with her murder, or Edna Kane’s, either. The view of law enforcement and the district attorney’s office was that it didn’t matter whether Carpenter was convicted of additional murders. He would receive the death penalty regardless, so there wasn’t a compelling reason to spend time collecting or presenting evidence on other homicides he committed.

  In two separate trials, both held in Southern California because of the publicity that the cases attracted, Carpenter was charged with first-degree murder and rape. In 1984 he was convicted of murdering Ellen Hansen and Heather Scaggs in Santa Cruz, plus the attempted murder of Steve Haertle. In 1988 he was convicted of murdering Anne Alderson, Diane O’Connell, Shauna May, Cynthia Moreland, and Richard Stowers in Marin County. Throughout both trials Carpenter maintained his innocence.

  At the conclusion of the first trial, which took place in Los Angeles, Carpenter was sentenced to die in San Quentin’s gas chamber. Judge Dion Morrow told the court, “The defendant’s entire life has been a continuous expression of violence and force almost beyond exception. I must conclude with the prosecution that if ever there was a case appropriate for the death penalty, this is it.”

  The second trial, in San Diego, resulted in a similar verdict. Since then Carpenter has submitted multiple appeals, all denied.

  From time to time, Holmes has toyed with the idea of trying to talk to Carpenter to see if he might tell him anything different from what he told police when they arrested him, or the judges and juries when he was being tried, or the appeals board when he has sought a new trial. As one of the people who were intimately involved in the case and have been haunted by it, Holmes continues to seek answers that he knows, realistically, he’ll never find. Carpenter has never admitted guilt so it’s unlikely that he would agree to talk to Holmes or tell him something that he hasn’t told anyone else.

  Still, it’s tempting to think that a man might confess with the end of his life approaching. And it is approaching. Born in 1930, Carpenter is now in his mid-eighties. At last report, he was the oldest inmate at San Quentin.

  CHAPTER 09

  INSIDE SAN QUENTIN

  San Quentin Prison owes its existence, in large part, to the California Gold Rush. Many fortune seekers were rough and unsavory as well as greedy, and their frequent fights were a problem fo
r communities in northern portions of the state. County jails couldn’t hold them all, and the need for a state prison became increasingly clear.

  In 1852, a large wooden prison ship named the Waban anchored in San Francisco Bay. During the day, inmates were ferried from the ship to Point San Quentin, an impressive promontory in Marin County that was named after a Miwok Indian chief. The state of California had purchased twenty acres of land there several years earlier, and the convicts were put to work building a prison. Within a few months the first cell block was completed and San Quentin opened.

  Today San Quentin is twenty times its original size and one of the largest penitentiaries in the United States. One thousand correctional officers, four hundred medical and mental health staff, and several hundred administrators preside over nearly five thousand inmates while contending with facilities that have deteriorated considerably and are out of date. In fact, a court-ordered report in 2005 determined that San Quentin was “old, antiquated, dirty, poorly staffed, poorly maintained with inadequate medical space and equipment, and overcrowded,” and little has changed since the report came out.

  The prison consists primarily of four medium-security cell blocks, which are known by their cardinal coordinates: North, South, East, and West. In addition, there is a smaller medium-security block called the North Segregation unit (“North Seg”), as well as a medium-security dormitory facility called H unit and a maximum-security cell block called the Adjustment Center.

  Inmates at the Adjustment Center have the tightest security and the fewest privileges. It’s where every new inmate is placed initially and where the worst inmates remain indefinitely. By worst one might think that this refers to those individuals who have committed the worst crimes, the serial killers and murderer-rapists. In fact, though, being assigned to the Adjustment Center—as in attitude adjustment—is based on an inmate’s behavior while incarcerated. Inmates who can’t be managed elsewhere are placed there, as well as inmates who are being punished for an offense or an assault. One psychologist at the prison told me, “It’s for the baddest of the bad and the sickest of the sick.” Correctional officers—referred to as COs, not guards—don’t have the ability to let themselves out. They are locked in with California’s most dangerous criminals and can exit at the end of their shift only after several gates, manned by other COs behind bulletproof glass, are opened for them.

  COs must be alert at all times. The slightest distraction can result in death—and not just for a CO. An inmate who doesn’t take advantage of an opportunity to assault a CO can be punished by other inmates. COs in the Adjustment Center wear face shields and stab-proof vests, and inmates who have a penchant for kicking prison staff are shackled in leg restraints when they are being moved outside their cell for one hour per day of exercise in a solitary yard or for a solitary shower every other day.

  California’s only gas chamber is at San Quentin, and all of the state’s male death row inmates are housed at the prison. While the term “death row” conjures images of a specific area that is devoted to those who are awaiting execution, death row is a classification rather than a location. Death row inmates are housed in three separate sections—the Adjustment Center, North Seg, and East Block.

  North Seg was the original death row. It’s six stories high and has sixty-eight cells. The elevator goes to only two floors—one and six. The most compliant inmates are housed there now, and are let out of their cells for five hours a day. In contrast to the Adjustment Center, they can walk the tier freely and exercise together in a recreation yard, making North Seg highly desired.

  Death row inmates are classified as grade A or B. Grade A inmates tend to follow the rules, while grade B inmates don’t. East Block (“E Block”) has only grade A inmates, and the majority of condemned men—more than five hundred—are here. Just because they’re classified grade A doesn’t mean that they are in any way docile, however. Most of them have nothing to lose—and maybe something to gain—by hurting someone. Demonstrating toughness through violence is the way that inmates achieve respect among peers. It’s also the way that they survive in prison. Inherent is the message to fellow inmates: Don’t mess with me.

  E Block is five stories high, and each cell is four and a half feet wide, ten and a half feet long, and seven and a half feet high. At forty-eight square feet, it’s just big enough for a twin bed and a toilet. Like their counterparts in the Adjustment Center, correctional officers in E Block wear face guards and stab-proof vests. They’re not worried too much about being shot, because it’s difficult for inmates to get access to a gun, but weapons that cut, puncture, strangle, or bludgeon can be fashioned out of almost anything.

  One of the few areas of the prison open to the public is a small museum that includes a weapons room. On display are daggers, knives, chains, and garrotes fashioned from things like bolts and rulers. Heavy-gauge wire, filed to a point on the concrete floor of a cell and stuck in a whisk broom, makes a lethal weapon, and there are examples in the museum. Paper clips, copper wire from a TV antenna, and heavy-duty staples that have been pried from cardboard boxes can be made into darts, then slingshot with elastic bands that have been removed from socks or underwear. Alternatively, they can be launched from a makeshift blowgun in which tightly wound newspaper has been hardened with dried oatmeal. Word of an attack is shared with other inmates by attaching notes to dental floss and shooting them across cell block floors. It’s called “fishing.”

  Inmates are subject to frequent searches, and officers check inmate cells regularly for weapons. That leaves body cavities as the primary place where knives and razor blades are hidden.

  “Sticking a sharp object up your ass seems crazy,” Holmes says, “but inmates generally don’t care. It’s more important to them that they have a weapon they can pull out in the moment to attack somebody or defend themselves than that their insides get cut up from storing it.”

  During his time in the coroner’s office, Holmes accumulated his own collection of weapons that were found on San Quentin inmates during autopsies. One man used a candle to melt both ends of a toothbrush. At the end with bristles he inserted a pin, while at the other end he inserted a razor blade. After the plastic hardened, he had a dual weapon. He could poke someone in the eye with the pin to blind him, then cut his throat. The weapon was found in the inmate’s rectum after he died.

  INITIAL VISIT

  The first time Holmes was called to the prison was at night, when all of the inmates were in their cells. Many of the inmates don’t sleep, though, so it’s noisy. The fact that the prison is made of concrete and metal makes it worse because every sound reverberates off the walls.

  “If you’re on one tier, and anybody coughs or farts or sneezes on any other tier, above or below you, it echoes all over the place,” Holmes says. “It’s also cold, because it’s concrete, and a lot of the windows are broken out, so the wind rushes in off the bay. Even in summer, it’s cold.”

  A correctional officer walked with Holmes on the ground floor of one of the cell blocks. The tiers above them formed an overhang of eight to ten feet on each side, and the CO, who was on the inside, closest to inmate cells, told Holmes to stay on his shoulder and not drift out near the end of the overhang.

  “Why is that?” Holmes asked.

  The CO was matter-of-fact. “Because you’ll be hit with piss and shit.”

  He then explained that inmates use mirrors to detect the shadows of people passing below. Anytime they see a shadow, they hurl a container of stored, fermented urine or feces, trying to hit whoever is down there. With correctional officers, inmates aim for the face, knowing that if nothing else they are splattering the officer’s protective shield. It’s called “gassing.”

  Holmes had never been inside a prison before and didn’t know what to expect. Several times when he went to San Quentin and walked the tiers, he heard a splat behind him. He always managed to avoid being hit with thrown excrement, but it was unnerving. So were the catcalls.

&nbs
p; “You’re walking on the tiers, past inmate cells, and you’re fresh meat,” he says. “Inmates are saying, ‘Hey, baby, let me bend you over,’ or, ‘You want to suck on this?’ all the time. They can say anything they want because there’s nothing anybody can do about it. They’re already in jail. They may lose one of their privileges, but they don’t care.”

  One of his first cases at San Quentin concerned a twenty-six-year-old inmate named Concelio Carrasco. He had been stabbed multiple times earlier in the day in one of the prison’s exercise yards and taken by gurney to Neumiller Hospital, within the prison, where he was admitted without a pulse. Prison doctors were able to revive him, but his wounds proved to be fatal. At 12:35 A.M. he was pronounced dead and the coroner’s office was called.

  When Holmes examined Carrasco’s body, he noted six knife wounds. He measured the length and circumference of each wound, as he had been trained to do, and recorded them on a chart. He also noted various tattoos. One, on Carrasco’s left arm, consisted of the letters EME.

  In the course of his investigation, Holmes learned that two weeks before he was killed, Carrasco had requested an appointment with prison medical staff to have the “EME” tattoo removed. The information was relevant because among San Quentin’s many gang members are individuals affiliated with the Mexican Mafia, sometimes known as La Eme (Spanish for M). In this case, having the tattoo removed might have saved Carrasco’s life by making him less of a target to members of other gangs in San Quentin, including La Nuestra Familia, the chief rival of the Mexican Mafia. Then again, it might have contributed to his death if other incarcerated members of the Mexican Mafia heard about his request. That was for prison investigators to pursue, however. Holmes’s work ended after he confirmed a ruling of murder and issued the death certificate.