by John Bateson
District attorneys and police from the three counties involved in the case—Contra Costa (where the Stinemans and Helzers lived), Sacramento (where the bodies of the Stinemans and Selina Bishop were found), and Marin (where Jennifer Villarin and James Gamble were killed)—agreed that Contra Costa was the appropriate site for the trial. That was fine with Holmes since the court proceedings were expected to be lengthy. He was happy to take a backseat. Gregory Reiber, a forensic pathologist at the UC Davis Medical Center whom Holmes had used on occasion, did the autopsies of all five decedents and was the person who testified regarding the cause and manner of each death. He was straightforward and matter-of-fact, but the details were so grisly that his testimony—particularly regarding the dismembered bodies—couldn’t help but be graphic.
During the trial, relatives of the Helzers alluded to a history of mental illness in the family. Another witness, a former girlfriend of Taylor Helzer named Keri Furman, whom he talked into getting breast implants that landed her a spread in Playboy magazine under the name Kerrisa Fare, said that she and Taylor drove to Mexico in 1999, the year before the murders, to buy Rohypnol. His plan, she said, was to “involve some girl, make her feel like he was the love of her life.”
In exchange for her testimony, Dawn Godman was spared the death penalty and sentenced to thirty-eight years in prison. Justin Helzer pled not guilty by reason of insanity, was convicted of three murders anyway (the Stinemans and Selina Bishop), and sentenced to death. While at San Quentin, he tied a sheet to his cell bars and hanged himself after surviving a previous suicide attempt in which he stabbed a pen in his eyes and was permanently blinded. As for Taylor Helzer, he surprised everyone by confessing to his crimes at the beginning of his trial and pleading guilty. He received five death sentences and remains one of California’s 750 male inmates on death row.
CHAPTER 19
THE MITCHELL BROTHERS
In 1964, a twenty-six-year-old waitress and dancer at the Condor Club in San Francisco was given a “monokini” by the club’s publicist. It was a new, topless swimsuit, and Carol Doda made international news when she performed wearing it. Five years later, with her natural size thirty-six breasts enlarged through silicone injections to size forty-four and her fame skyrocketing, Doda began dancing fully nude at the Condor, turning the city’s North Beach section into a world-famous center for striptease.
That same year, 1969, two brothers from the Central Valley leased and renovated a two-story building on O’Farrell Street in San Francisco’s Tenderloin District. It wasn’t North Beach, but the rent was cheaper. In addition, the area was home to prostitutes, drug dealers, and liquor stores, which made the brothers’ plans to open an adult theater there a fit, of sorts.
Jim Mitchell had been a part-time film student at San Francisco State University who aspired to make a name for himself as a movie director. In school he worked at a cinema that showed brief films with nude actors, and they were extremely popular. He teamed up with his brother, Artie, who was two years younger and had just been discharged from the army, to produce, direct, and show a number of pornographic films at their newly named Mitchell Brothers O’Farrell Theatre. Their first big success, in 1972, was the movie Behind the Green Door, starring Ivory Snow model Marilyn Chambers in her adult movie debut. It cost $60,000 to make and grossed more than $25 million. Subsequently, the Mitchell brothers opened ten other X-rated movie houses in California, amassing a fortune in the process. Along the way they were slapped with dozens of lawsuits on obscenity and related charges, many of them resulting from vice raids on their theaters. With the help of high-priced legal assistance, they successfully defeated each one.
Jim and Artie Mitchell rubbed elbows with many of San Francisco’s semi-elite, meaning people who were somewhat well known and didn’t mind being seen with the two pornography kings. Underground cartoonists, rock band members, and gonzo journalist Hunter S. Thompson were among their friends. Both brothers had multiple marriages, and between them fathered ten children. They also were into drugs and quarreled with each other frequently.
On a rainy night in February 1991, Jim Mitchell drove to Artie’s house in Marin County, believing that he needed to do something about his younger brother. Jim had overcome his own drug addiction for the most part, but Artie’s alcoholism and cocaine habit had gotten worse, creating all kinds of business problems. What happened next became the focus of a front-page trial. Jim parked three blocks from Artie’s house, and when he got there he kicked in Artie’s door. Artie, age forty-five, was in the master bedroom, at the end of a hallway, and was dressed only in sweatpants. Jim brandished a .22-caliber rifle that he had inherited from their father and fired eight shots in Artie’s direction. Three of them struck Artie, including one in the head, killing him.
Artie’s live-in girlfriend wasn’t a witness to the shooting, but she was in the house at the time that the shots were fired and called 911. When police arrived, Jim Mitchell was arrested—he didn’t attempt to flee—and the coroner’s office was summoned.
Ken Holmes got there shortly after midnight and stayed nearly four hours. As soon as he arrived, he began videotaping. The purpose of the videotape was to capture the layout of the house from the front door, down the hallway, to the master bedroom, where Artie’s body lay. Investigators begin making mental notes as soon as they come on the scene but the camera captures things they might miss. Once they leave, they can never view the scene again the way it was when the person died. Even if the scene is sealed, meaning that no one other than the coroner can enter legally, it won’t be the same. For one thing, the body will be gone, delivered to a funeral home for autopsy. More important, the scene will have been disturbed by technicians dusting for fingerprints and people trampling through rooms. Photos are taken, but a videotape provides better visual evidence.
It was standard practice for investigators to carry two batteries for the video camera in case one battery died. Holmes was at the scene so long, though, with the camera running most of the time, that well before the end both batteries were used up. One of his best friends, named Andre, was the head investigator in the local police department and happened to be on duty and at Artie Mitchell’s house that night. Seeing Holmes’s predicament, Andre offered to drive him to the police station and loan him one of the department’s cameras. Andre didn’t want to do the filming but he was willing to help Holmes do it. The station was a few blocks away, so it would take only a few minutes. Holmes was grateful for the offer and accepted.
At the station, Andre got the camera, took it to his office, and set it up. While he did this, he and Holmes talked, not about the case but about life in general. At one point Holmes said offhandedly, “What’s up with the chief?”
It wasn’t something he would have said to anyone other than a really good friend who was in the same line of work, and he wouldn’t have said it if they were anywhere other than Andre’s office with the door closed. What he was referring to was a fact that was known to a few people, but not everyone. The police chief had separated recently from his wife of many years and was showing interest in a woman who was an administrative assistant in the mayor’s office.
Andre shrugged. “Some things are hard to figure,” he said.
They talked for several minutes about the chief’s situation. Neither one said anything derogatory, but it wasn’t the sort of gossip that they would have engaged in with others. After a few minutes they went back to the crime scene, finished their work, and forgot about it.
The following morning, Holmes got into the office later than usual because he hadn’t had much sleep due to being at Artie Mitchell’s house most of the night. Andre went into work later than usual as well, for the same reason. As soon as he was at his desk, though, he called Holmes.
“Sherlock,” Andre said, “we’re in trouble.”
Andre had called Holmes Sherlock practically from the moment they first met. “I had done some funky little thing,” Holmes says, “I don’t even remember what, a
nd said, ‘Well, that’s pretty obvious.’ Andre said, ‘You mean that was elementary?’ Both of us laughed, and from that point on I was Sherlock.”
When Andre told Holmes they were in trouble, Holmes’s immediate response was, “Why? What did we do wrong?”
“You know the conversation we had last night about the chief?” Andre said.
“Yeah?” Holmes said uncertainly. No one could have overheard it.
“Neither of us knew it,” Andre said, “but the audio on the camera was on while we were talking. There wasn’t any picture, but the audio was on, and—” He hesitated. “And we just played the tape for the entire department, and the chief was there.”
The bottom fell out of Holmes’s stomach. “Oh shit,” he said.
“You probably shouldn’t come down today,” Andre said. “The chief is mad as hell.”
Never one to avoid a problem, Holmes called the chief immediately. He knew him well; in fact, five years earlier the chief had tried to recruit Holmes to be a police investigator. “You won’t have to work the street,” the chief said. “You won’t have to work patrol or worry about drunks. I just want you as an investigator.”
It was a flattering offer, but Holmes liked where he was. Now he had just been caught talking about the chief’s personal life.
Holmes left a long message on the chief’s voice mail. Not surprisingly, he didn’t receive a call back. Two days later he went to the chief’s office. The chief didn’t want to see him, but he let him in anyway. Holmes stood before him and apologized profusely.
“It was wrong, I know it was wrong, and I deeply regret it,” Holmes said.
The chief wasn’t moved. “It was fucking embarrassing,” he said. “All of my investigators were there, some of whom had no idea what was going on. It’s none of your goddamn business talking about my private life.”
Holmes said, “You’re right, you’re absolutely right. From the bottom of my heart, I’m sorry.”
For the next several years, the chief barely acknowledged him. After a while he got over it, and eventually he married the second woman.
THE TRIAL
Both the coroner, Dr. Jindrich, and Holmes, the assistant coroner, were called as witnesses for the prosecution in Jim Mitchell’s trial. Jindrich was there to talk about the autopsy and Holmes was there to talk about the video he shot.
As a medical examiner and forensic pathologist, Jindrich was used to testifying in court, and his qualifications were undeniable. By his count, he had performed more than five thousand autopsies and testified in hundreds of cases. Over the course of several hours of questioning by the district attorney, Jindrich testified as to the number of bullets that struck Artie Mitchell (three), where they struck him (in the head, abdomen, and right arm), the caliber of weapon that they came from (a .22 rifle), the path or angle of each bullet, and the damage that each one caused. He also testified that the shooter had not been close enough to leave a residue of gunpowder—called tattooing—on the decedent. The order of shots couldn’t be determined, Jindrich said, although it was likely that the shot to the head was last since it would cause instant collapse, unconsciousness, and probable death.
When asked about the toxicology report that was done on Artie, Jindrich said that Artie’s blood alcohol content at the time of his death was .25. No drugs such as cocaine or marijuana were detected in his system.
Holmes was sworn in next, and the district attorney established that he was the assistant coroner of Marin County, had been in that position since 1984, had worked in the coroner’s office seventeen years altogether, and had filmed the residence.
“Would you briefly describe what is on the video that you did?” the district attorney said.
Holmes replied that it was a complete walk-through of the house starting from outside the front door and moving through it room by room. The video showed where everything was at the time Holmes arrived at the scene.
The lights in the room were turned low, the video played on a screen, and Holmes was asked to describe what everyone was seeing. He identified each room and where he was standing at the time, referring to a diagram of Artie Mitchell’s house that the district attorney had posted in the courtroom. At various times Holmes filmed empty casings from the murder weapon and a bag of marijuana that was found on Artie’s bed in the master bedroom. Then the camera focused on Artie’s body.
“That’s Mr. Mitchell just as he was,” Holmes said, “before he was moved. You can barely see, but right in the corner of that eye is where one of the bullet strikes was.”
The camera didn’t linger over Artie’s body. While the prosecution might have preferred it so that jurors developed a strong, visceral reaction to Artie’s death, the purpose of the video wasn’t to support one side or the other in the court case. It was to provide an accurate representation of the murder scene.
“I believe that’s the end,” Holmes concluded.
During his testimony, Holmes wasn’t asked about an incident that had taken place earlier in the coroner’s office. The file on Artie Mitchell’s death was nearly one hundred pages, and at one point one of Artie’s ex-wives came in and said she wanted to see it. She had that right, and while she was at the counter it was given to her to look at. When she thought no one was observing her, however, the woman slipped the file into an oversized purse.
Holmes’s medical transcriber, a woman named Barbara, noticed that the file had disappeared, and without saying a word she walked around behind the woman to the front door and locked it so that she couldn’t leave. Then she got Holmes and said that Artie Mitchell’s ex-wife was trying to steal the case file, which was one of a kind, with original copies of everything.
Holmes bounded out of his office and confronted the woman. She mumbled an excuse about thinking she could take it home to read. He said that coroner’s files never left the office. Without apology, she handed it back to him.
“She was an issue,” Holmes says. “Some of the kids were, too.”
THE VERDICT AND A NEW MURDER
The same attorney who represented Jim and Artie Mitchell in the obscenity suits against them represented Jim Mitchell in his trial. The lawyer claimed that Artie’s death was a tragic mistake, “an intervention gone awry.” His argument wasn’t helped by a computer-generated video animation of the shooting that the judge ruled could be shown. In the video, an armless, robot-looking figure representing Artie Mitchell was shot three times, the last time in the head. The presumed path of every bullet fired by Jim Mitchell, including the five that missed, was illustrated as a red laser beam against a blue background.
Mitchell’s defense attorney objected to the video on the grounds that it was a fabricated account of an event that didn’t have any eyewitnesses. Moreover, it purported to show the sequence of Mitchell’s shots when this was unknown, according to Dr. Jindrich’s testimony. Nevertheless, the judge allowed jurors to see it, making the video one of the first animations to be introduced in a murder trial (similar animations had been introduced in other trials). The only stipulation made by the judge was that in its original form, the video showed Artie’s arms at his sides in a seemingly defenseless position when this couldn’t be confirmed, thus the figure had to be armless.
A number of prominent people advocated for clemency on Jim Mitchell’s behalf. It had an effect because the jury found him guilty of voluntary manslaughter rather than murder, and he was sentenced to six years in prison. In 1997, after serving three years, he was released and resumed running the O’Farrell Theatre, which family members and friends had managed in his absence. He also established the “Artie Fund” to raise money for a local drug rehabilitation center and the San Francisco Fire Department’s “Surf Rescue Squad.” The latter had intervened in 1990 when Artie was caught in a riptide off Ocean Beach in San Francisco.
The fund did nothing to appease the wrath of Artie Mitchell’s children, who denounced it as an attempt by their uncle to whitewash the murder of their father.
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�They may have been right,” Holmes says, “but there probably wasn’t much else Jim Mitchell could have done at that point to make the situation better other than volunteer to serve a longer prison term, which wasn’t going to happen.”
Artie was dead, Jim was free, and business continued as usual. It wasn’t an “only-in-Marin” story, but given the players, the circumstances, and the outcome, it didn’t seem that far from it, either. Moreover, it also wasn’t the last time that a family member would be in the news.
In 2008, a former stripper, writing under her stage name Simone Corday, self-published a memoir about her ten years at the Mitchell Brothers O’Farrell Theatre and her on-again, off-again romance with the man she called “Party Artie.” She claimed to capture his dual personality, the side that was into drugs and alcohol, who would “disappear on binges with a succession of young dancers,” and his “affectionate personal and domestic side,” which the public rarely saw.
“He was the quintessential bad boy, not the easiest person to figure out or be involved with,” Corday recalled. “But I had an unfortunate marriage when I was young, so I wasn’t looking for the most secure relationship myself.”
One of Artie’s daughters, Liberty Bradford Mitchell, forty-three, also wrote about him. In a one-person play titled The Pornographer’s Daughter, which premiered in San Francisco, she talked about being exposed to rough-cut porn movies as a child and about receiving her first safe-sex talk from her father’s girlfriend at the time, who was a porn star. She also talked about being more empathetic toward her own parents after she became a parent herself, and about the fact that when she came of age, AIDS was raging and attitudes about sex had changed considerably.
The same year that the play came out, another one of Artie’s daughters, Jasmine Mitchell, thirty-four, was convicted of credit card fraud and identity theft after she used counterfeit cards and a fake driver’s license to obtain two thousand dollars for gambling at a casino. When police tried to arrest her at her apartment, she raced off in her Mercedes, striking a deputy’s car and a parked car in the process. Six days later police found her outside a hotel in Tiburon. In her defense, an attorney said that her frequent use of methamphetamine the past ten years had “negatively influenced her decision-making,” that she had been participating in drug treatment and was “genuinely contrite.”