Hollywood phoned another dealer, Eddy Bachman. He was considered a friend and was never seen as a rival in Hollywood’s eyes. Eddy kept pounds of drugs in his car, ready at all times, because there was always someone who wanted to buy. Because there was so much business, the two groups of dealers never messed with each other.
Eddy knew the Markowitz family. He also knew Hollywood’s group of friends. They all partied together. Eddy knew Jack Hollywood “had gotten the good stuff for Jesse and his friends to sell.” He also knew that Ben didn’t owe Hollywood a mere twelve hundred dollars. It was way more. In Eddy’s eyes, you didn’t kill someone over twelve hundred dollars. You could, however, kill someone if it was thirty-six thousand.
Hollywood had confided in Eddy how Ben owed him money. Hollywood was always trying to play like he was the kingpin. This time he had had enough. I’m gonna send them a message You can’t just not pay me over and over again and expect me to sit back and let it happen.
Sometime after Nick’s kidnapping, Eddy had encountered Ben Markowitz at TGI Fridays. Ben, who had returned from Arizona, had come in “all jacked up,” and blamed it on Eddy and his crew. He thought maybe it was Eddy who had done something to his brother. However, Ben owed everybody money, so he didn’t know who might have been behind Nick disappearing.
Eddy had told Ben, “I don’t even know your brother. I haven’t seen him.” Then Ben left. Eddy knew one absolute—everybody knew Hollywood had him. Hollywood had told everybody, I have to send a message. He kept repeating that to Eddy on the phone. I’m gonna kill that kid. You don’t pay me my money, see what happens. Eddy didn’t believe him. He knew Jesse liked to talk like he was tougher than he was.
Whether Ben’s debt was twelve hundred, twenty-four thousand, or thirty-six thousand dollars, as others claimed, Hollywood’s “bookkeeping” wasn’t something you could exactly audit.
One thing that could be kept track of: Hollywood’s TEC-9, which would soon be put to use.
Chapter 14
Where Is Hollywood?
THE LEMON TREE INN WAS randomly chosen. Someplace to go—like a way station for the abducted—until someone showed up at last and took Nick home. At least that was everyone’s belief.
It was Pressley’s mother, Christina, who had given Nick, Kelly, Jesse Rugge, and her son a ride to the inn. Christina was uneasy, preoccupied, but it wasn’t with the new face she’d never seen. It was with Jesse Rugge, who she viewed with suspicion because of his tattoos and influence over her son. She said a quick hello to Nick, thought he was nice, and that was it.
Natasha would pick up her father from work on Tuesday, never mentioning Nick or anything about a kidnapping. By the time she arrived at the Lemon Tree, Jesse Rugge had booked a room.
* * *
It was six thirty p.m. in room 341. Everyone drank or smoked. It was Rum and Coke, weed and cigarettes. Nick and Pressley went swimming. Nick ate his final meal—a cheeseburger and fries—though Jesse Hollywood and Ryan Hoyt were the only ones who knew it at the time.
All indications led Natasha to believe that Nick was headed home. Nick appeared to welcome the news. “He seemed happy,” Natasha thought. Nick spoke of the music he liked but was more eager to address another topic. When Natasha spoke to him about it, he said when he got home he was going to call his ex-girlfriend. The ex he was referring to was a girl named Jeannie.
Nick had taken Jeannie to the Italian restaurant Alessio’s on their first date.
He was thirteen; Jeannie, a year older. Susan, who drove them, had playfully teased her, calling her a “cougar” because of the one-year age difference.
Nick had liked Jeannie for four years. And even though he was almost an hour and a half drive from home, he couldn’t wait to express his feelings in the hopes of getting back together with her. Susan believed that Jeannie could very well have been her future daughter-in-law. But Nick wasn’t back home yet, and he was what seemed like light-years away from that first date. He wanted to get back and do whatever it took to make things right.
His current situation, though, required him to stay put. That was why he never made a move to leave. Kelly had even asked him why didn’t he just get up and walk out of there. Nick, again, said he didn’t want to complicate things. “I’ve taken self-defense and stuff, it’s not like I couldn’t do anything right now, I just don’t want to. I don’t see a reason to [stir things up], I’m going home.”
Rugge had left for a short period to call Hollywood. At around eleven p.m., he told everyone, except Pressley and Nick, that it was time to go: someone was coming to take Nick home. Natasha left Nick with the parting words, “Have fun. I’m glad you’re going home.”
Was Rugge now aware of Hollywood and Hoyt’s plan? Why would he have Pressley also stay?
Natasha arrived home and slept, confident everything was going to be okay. The same couldn’t be said for Rugge. That was because he was anticipating the next knock on room 341 to be from Hollywood. However, Hollywood had other plans that night. He headed over to his girlfriend’s place.
Nick fell asleep for some time. Everything seemed normal. That would all change. One more person would be heading up to the Lemon Tree to deal with Nick. It was none other than the twenty-year-old who crushed Hollywood’s beer cans and cleaned his ashtrays: Ryan Hoyt. Hoyt wouldn’t come empty-handed. He would have Hollywood’s TEC-9 in his possession.
Chapter 15
The Order
THE TEC-9 WAS BANNED IN 1994 by the Clinton administration under the Assault Weapons Ban.
The top half of the gun was composed of tube steel. It was parkerized, meaning a chemical coating had been applied to protect against rusting. Its crude sights were stamped sheet metal with a polymer lower receiver. The receiver was a part of the firearm and contained the serial number.
If the user fired from the hip, he would most likely walk it up the target due to the gun’s recoil or kickback. “Walk it up” means the gun’s user doesn’t have complete control of the weapon and that the force from firing it causes the gun to jerk in an upward motion. The holes at the end of the gun, called a barrel shroud, protected the operator from burning his hand. A threaded barrel was another accessory. The one Hoyt was carrying had tape around the handle to make it harder for fingerprints to be lifted. The trigger was also illegally shaved down.
Hollywood had once taken this TEC-9 to a firing range. An employee had noticed it and mentioned he could be hit with jail time for being in possession. The employee never reported it.
Hollywood considered the gun a “throwaway weapon,” something to use in case he needed it, a gun that could quickly be discarded. Maybe this was on Ryan Hoyt’s mind while he was driving to the Lemon Tree.
And the vehicle Hoyt was driving? Hollywood had turned to Casey Sheehan, a friend he grew up playing baseball with and had known since they were seven years old. Hollywood had inquired whether he could borrow Sheehan’s maroon Honda Civic. Sheehan assumed it was for moving. Instead it was Hoyt’s transportation to the Lemon Tree.
Hoyt had been sent to the location by Jesse Hollywood as a way to “erase” his debt. Hollywood told him he needed to take care of somebody. But Hollywood didn’t refer to Nick by name. No, he depersonalized him, considering Nick a mere nuisance. “There’s a mess that needs to be cleaned up.”
* * *
During the last four hours, Hollywood’s father, Jack, serendipitously contacted Stephen Hogg regarding a separate issue involving a DUI case in Ventura North.
Jack Hollywood was with his wife, Laurie, close to six hours away up north at a spa, the Ventana, in Big Sur. Stephen Hogg told Jack that Jesse had come to see him earlier in the day. Hogg then got in touch with John Roberts. It was Roberts’s white paneled van without windows that Hollywood had used to first kidnap Nick.
John Roberts, who was informed of the kidnapping by Hogg, wanted to find “the boy” and pay him not to say anything about being kidnapped. But then he asked his own rhetorical question: What fifteen-ye
ar-old doesn’t talk? So instead of calling police, John Roberts had his vehicle scrubbed with solvent to rid it of all evidence.
* * *
Back at the Lemon Tree, Nick Markowitz was already asleep when there was a knock on the door. However, when Rugge opened it, it wasn’t Hollywood. Instead it was Hoyt. Rugge was annoyed and deflated.
Pressley had never met Hoyt, who quickly made his way to the bathroom with the blue duffel bag. Pressley peered inside and saw Hoyt cleaning a twelve-inch bullet clip that belonged to Hollywood’s TEC-9.
The weapon was already considered “dirty,” having been used in other crimes. It explained why the gun’s origin went all the way to Mesa, Arizona. And now it had found its way to a bathroom at the Lemon Tree Inn, being cleaned by Ryan James Hoyt at 11:20 p.m. on a Tuesday night.
The TEC-9 in general had been involved in close to four thousand cases between 1995 and 1999. This one was about to physically appear at the crime scene. Its clip was factory designed to hold up to thirty-five cartridges, but because of weakened springs, the operator could shove an extra two nine-millimeter cartridges into it.
Hoyt was surprised that Graham Pressley was there. He wasn’t supposed to be a part of the plan. Hoyt then asked Jesse Rugge why Nick wasn’t tied up.
Hoyt told Rugge they were going to his house to pick up shovels. Rugge was scared. He didn’t think this was real. He thought Hoyt had lost his mind.
They drove off in Sheehan’s car, leaving Pressley alone with Nick. Rugge noticed the TEC-9 tucked into Hoyt’s belt. He knew there was no talking Hoyt out of it at this point.
Rugge refused to get the shovels from his house, so Hoyt left him in the car and retrieved them himself.
They returned to the Lemon Tree. Hoyt wanted Rugge to show him a spot to dig a grave. Rugge didn’t know the area, so Hoyt had Pressley accompany him, the TEC-9 in plain sight. Rugge stayed behind with Nick.
Hoyt drove thirty minutes north in Casey Sheehan’s borrowed car to Lizard’s Mouth. After a twenty-minute hike with those shovels in their possession, they decided on what appeared to be an isolated spot.
Hoyt threatened him, “You better start digging if you know what’s good for you.” Pressley thought he was digging his own grave. He said Hoyt was pointing the now fully loaded automatic right at him.
Pressley dug for about twenty minutes into the sandy ground, a “grave seven foot by . . . two or three feet, and not very deep.”
They then drove back to the Lemon Tree.
* * *
At this point on August 8, Susan Markowitz was no longer sleeping on the side of the bed closest to the window so she could hear when Nick walked up and opened their front door. Now she was downstairs on the couch, his pillow clutched between her arms.
Chapter 16
No Going Back
NICK WAS SHAKEN AWAKE. HE was led to the car and—along with Rugge, Ryan Hoyt, and Graham Pressley—headed to Lizard’s Mouth.
Pressley walked with them, approximately twenty feet into the trailhead, showing them which direction to go. He then decided he wanted nothing more to do with what was about to happen. He knew that grave wasn’t for him. It was for Nick. He walked back to the car.
Rugge and Hoyt continued on with Nick. Surprisingly at this late hour, hikers passed them on their way down the trail. No conversation took place. The terrain was uneven. One wrong step could end in a sprained ankle. At this time of night, the forlorn landscape appeared ominous and less inviting than it did during the day. As they wound around the trailhead, it became apparent that there was no place to run. Even if Nick decided to flee, he would easily become lost in a labyrinth of boulders, trails, and manzanita trees. He would also have to navigate his way in total darkness. For someone in a disoriented state, it could have become a guessing game. Am I heading toward the ocean or the road?
Little boy blue,
Come blow your horn.
The sheep’s in the meadow.
The cow’s in the corn.
What was going through their minds?
The brain tries to process complex movements and ideas under extreme stress. During elevated stress, there is an uneasy connection between its two main areas, the prefrontal cortex and the limbic system.
The prefrontal cortex, which is the most evolved brain region after the age of twenty-five, serves our highest-order cognitive abilities (like decision making). But it is the most sensitive to the detrimental effects of stress exposure. Uncontrollable stress can cause a rapid and dramatic loss of prefrontal cognitive abilities, which also include differentiating among conflicting thoughts, determining good from bad, future consequences of current activities, and social “control” (the ability to suppress urges that, if not suppressed, could lead to socially unacceptable outcomes).
Was there any foresight into the choices made on that twenty-minute hike up to Nick’s grave? Or did the cognitive abilities of these twenty-year-olds completely shut down? Were they simply unable to identify the future consequences of their current activities?
The second part of the brain that is affected during elevated bouts of stress is the limbic system. The limbic system has an ultrapowerful reaction to our sense of being threatened. If we feel we’re in danger, the limbic system puts us on high alert. Our body physically prepares for fight or flight, and we instantaneously have an enormous amount of adrenaline to freeze, run away, or attack the danger head-on. This was what Nick was experiencing but couldn’t act on—his hands were bound behind his back and his mouth and part of his nose were duct-taped.
Whether it was done to provide a false sense of security or not, Rugge told Nick he wasn’t going to hurt him. Hoyt wouldn’t make that claim.
Where is the boy
Who looks after the sheep?
He’s under a haystack,
Fast asleep.
Hoyt struck Nick in the head with a shovel. Nick dropped to his knees. And twenty-five minutes after they ascended to Lizard’s Mouth rock, Hoyt squeezed the trigger on that TEC-9. Nine bullets riddled Nick from the waist all the way to his head. It would have been more if the gun hadn’t jammed.
Rugge vomited. Hoyt then tucked the gun under Nick’s leg and proceeded to do a haphazard job of burying the innocent teen.
After another twenty-five to thirty minutes, Rugge and Hoyt returned to the car. Hoyt reflected, “That’s the first time I ever did anybody. I didn’t know he would go that quick.”
And Little Boy Blue? Still wearing his father’s ring.
* * *
It wouldn’t matter that Jack Hollywood would hear about his son from Hogg, prompting the return drive home from up north. It wouldn’t matter that Jack and his son briefly spoke on a pay phone, or that he would arrive at one a.m. that night, on August 9, to meet his son at Lasher’s home. It wouldn’t matter that Hollywood was, according to Jack, “kind of evasive” and “seemed very scared and confused.” Or how Hollywood would tell his father that “some of his friends were holding a kid . . . and that they were worried that they were in some kind of trouble.”
It wouldn’t matter that when Jack pressed for more details, Hollywood tried to defuse the situation, telling his father that “the kid was just up there having ribs and drinking beers with some friends of his,” but never said with whom.
It didn’t matter that still no one contacted the authorities.
What did matter was how Hollywood failed to disclose the most important details. How he had earlier spoken around eight thirty p.m. to Rugge to find out the location of the Lemon Tree where Nick was indulging in more than just beer, being plied with Valium, weed, and Jack Daniels. How he was being narcotized in order for him to be as oblivious as possible to Hollywood’s plan and its outcome at Lizard’s Mouth. It didn’t matter what Jack Hollywood would find out about the kidnapped boy. Because up at Lizard’s Mouth? The murder was complete. Only Jesse Hollywood knew the details.
* * *
The Indian American philanthropist Manoj Bhargava has stated, “The
re’s an old story about a blind man heading towards a well, and there’s a guy who’s watching. If the blind man falls into the well, who gets the blame? If you’re watching something you can prevent, you’ve got to do something.”
How many witnesses stated, I don’t want to get involved, or I thought it would just blow over? What of the parents or enablers or an affluent culture that might have provided that false sense of being untouchable? There might have been a single grave that night, but there were countless “wells” along the way. When it came to the witnesses, where was their Kirk Miyashiro? Someone to provide the guidance to do the right thing?
Chapter 17
Escape Plans
ON AUGUST 9, THE DAY of the murder, Hollywood acted quickly to collect money people owed him. He contacted Brian Affronti—Skidmore’s friend who pretended he had a date when the van with Nick had reached Santa Barbara. Affronti’s debt was four thousand dollars. Because he was at work, Affronti told him “to go to my house and pick it up.” The majority was for a marijuana debt and money he had borrowed.
Hollywood had previously left a shotgun wrapped in a sleeping bag at Affronti’s because he didn’t want to drive around with it. Affronti told him to grab the sleeping bag along with the money. “That way it wouldn’t look odd to my parents.”
Hollywood also sold his Mercedes and bought a 2000 Lincoln LS. He withdrew twenty-five thousand dollars from a money market account. Hollywood was already thinking ahead, planning his getaway.
Ryan Hoyt suddenly had money. The guy who owed money now had it to burn. Hollywood, Hoyt, Skidmore, and Sheehan were all hanging in a parking lot. Everyone knew what had happened at Lizard’s Mouth, or at least suspected what had happened. But no one spoke up about it. It was a sore subject. What wasn’t a sore subject was how Hoyt promptly went to a surf shop and bought new clothes.
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