Chapter 26
The “Red Condor” Returns
IT TOOK EIGHT MONTHS ON the case, but in March 2005, Valencia finally escorted the fugitive home. As they spoke on the flight, Valencia arrived at one frightening conclusion about Hollywood. “He’s a sociopath. He was going to survive any way he could. And it’s too bad, he was just a kid. I wasn’t worried. I wasn’t afraid. And if you didn’t know [who he was] and you were sitting in first class two seats down? It would have been just like two old chums yukking it up all the way back.” But over the course of that sixteen-hour flight, when it was announced over the intercom how close they were to the States, Hollywood’s demeanor slowly morphed. “I know that he loved his dad and that he feared his dad. And you can’t change that in a person.”
At the beginning of the flight, Hollywood was pretty much “tears and fear—and his whole worry, what was his dad going to think? What was his dad going to do? He got tougher because he had to put on a brave face.”
When they finally landed, “reality was setting in.” Hollywood “was actually somewhat relieved that it was over. I mean, imagine running at that age without a support system.”
Hollywood remembered the cell phone call he’d inadvertently received from Valencia’s colleague. He was kicking himself. It was in English. Even though that made his suspicion grow, he hadn’t reacted. Now all he thought was, how he should have gone on the run again.
Valencia stopped the plane prior to taxiing. “It was a deportation, so we didn’t want to release him to ICE [Immigration and Customs Enforcement]. He would have had the hearing and it would have been forever.” With a warrant, they had to book him at the point of entry of Los Angeles. So on the tarmac, Valencia “dropped him out of the food door” and “had the state guys pick him up.”
As for Valencia? “When we got out of the plane, all the cameras were there.” Valencia could have turned opportunist, posing for pictures and interviews. After all, he had just apprehended the youngest fugitive ever to appear on the FBI’s Most Wanted list. No, the Red Condor simply changed his shirt, got off with his luggage, and blended in. There was no hero’s welcome. No town car waiting. In fact, Valencia didn’t even have a ride home. “Nobody even knew.” This was a man simply doing his job. The only thing left to do besides finding a ride home from the airport was to retire from his “special enforcement bureau,” which also called for him to “relinquish the responsibilities” that came with it.
Valencia ended up gifting Hollywood’s handcuffs to the retired Kevin Kelly, who’d been the FBI case agent before Dave Cloney.
Valencia hadn’t slept in three days. Officially, he was done with the case. Unofficially, the case wasn’t done with him.
* * *
Valencia knew he couldn’t attend the trial. “I didn’t exist. I was a tourist.”
The district attorney’s office “wanted to subpoena everything” that Hollywood had confessed to on the plane.
The original prosecuting attorney, Ron Zonen, had been taken off the case because he had spoken with the filmmakers on the movie. They didn’t want any appearance of a conflict. Valencia had to now deal with Joshua Lynn, the district attorney assigned to prosecute Hollywood.
When Lynn approached Valencia for information, Valencia answered him with one word—no. “That was a big deal, because what he [Hollywood] talked about was as good as a statement can ever be, but I couldn’t use it. He had given it up. They wanted to force me to say that.” The DA then went after his sources. Valencia stated, “I will never turn in an informant, which is one of the reasons I was effective with informants. I’ll throw a case before I give them up. All I had to do was bring him back. I don’t care what you do with him after.” Remember, Detective Valencia was never in Brazil.
Chapter 27
Nine Years
IN THE TIME BETWEEN NICK’S murder in 2000 and Hollywood’s trial in 2009, the four other defendants had either had their trials and had been sentenced or had taken a plea deal.
Ryan Hoyt would be charged with first-degree murder and receive the death penalty. His trial began in October 2001 and ended in November of that year. He was convicted on November 20. He was sentenced to death on November 29, 2001. During his questioning with police, he downplayed his role in Nick’s kidnapping and murder, stating, “All I did was kill him.”
Jesse Rugge was charged with aiding in the kidnap and execution of Nick. He was convicted in 2002 and was sentenced to seven years to life in prison with the possibility of parole. After serving eleven years in state prison (and being incarcerated for a total of thirteen years), he was found suitable for parole.
During his police interrogation, he initially confessed to duct-taping Nick’s mouth and nose and helping with burying Nick. He could have possibly been charged with felony murder. The felony murder rule states that “any death which occurs during the commission of a felony is first-degree murder, and all participants in that felony or attempted felony can be charged with and found guilty of murder.” If Rugge was found guilty, this could have potentially carried a conviction of life without the possibility of parole.
However, Rugge’s police interview was ruled inadmissible in court due to police coercion. Rugge was threatened with getting the “needle”—the death penalty—if he didn’t come clean. During his trial, Rugge testified that he decided to go his own way once the group reached Lizard’s Mouth, stating he had no idea a murder was going to take place.
William Skidmore was charged with kidnapping and strong-armed robbery. He took a deal for nine years in September 2002 (including two years of time served after his arrest in 2000). He was released in April 2009. The print of his left ring finger was also found on a roll of duct tape on top of Richard Hoeflinger’s nightstand in his bedroom. That placed him at the scene where he last saw Nick.
Graham Pressley was charged twice. In July 2002 he was acquitted of kidnapping. The jury was hung on the murder charge. In November 2002 he was convicted of second-degree murder. Because he was only seventeen at the time of the crime, he was incarcerated at a California Youth Authority facility until he turned twenty-five years of age in 2007.
When discussing those involved in Nick’s murder, Detective Valencia drew a comparison from his extensive knowledge with members of the Mexican Mafia and motorcycle gangs. “Those guys are hardened criminals. They grew up in a lifestyle where their dad was a Hell’s Angel or a Vago. Their whole life has been inundated with this lifestyle. Their life expectancy is only forty, because they chose that.” But Hollywood and his crew? “I refer to them as MTV gangsters; they weren’t impressive. They were wannabes. They weren’t hard. I had dealt with some real bad dudes and they earn every bit of it.”
Valencia’s personal views didn’t necessarily represent his department’s. But what they both probably agreed on? He doesn’t know what Hollywood and his crew were thinking and still couldn’t even “digest what happened to this day.” Valencia was certain of one thing: they flew too close to the sun. Unlike the sacred bird tattooed on his shoulder.
Chapter 28
Finally Here
3242 . . . THAT WAS THE NUMBER of days Susan and Jeff Markowitz had been waiting for Jesse Hollywood to testify. The day was Tuesday, June 23, 2009. Nearly nine years had passed.
In the time between Nick’s murder and Hollywood’s first day of testifying in Department 14, with Judge Brian Hill presiding, Susan Markowitz would escape to alcohol, prescription pills, and multiple suicide attempts. She would also spend countless nights sleeping in her only son’s bed.
Santa Barbara’s Spanish Colonial Revival courthouse was a historic site. But what it possessed in aesthetics, it lacked in functionality. It did not have an official “holding tank” to house Hollywood. No one wanted to risk escorting Hollywood through the main hall into the courtroom past media and the gallery. It was decided this hearing would be moved across the street to a quaint, nondescript building that didn’t come with an elderly docent at the front entrance
volunteering her time to set up free tours or answer questions about the historic site.
The trial had officially begun five weeks earlier, on May 15. District Attorney Joshua Lynn gave his opening statement to the jury: “Jesse James Hollywood murdered fifteen-year-old Nicholas Markowitz like he pulled the trigger himself.”
He stated that while Nick was “being gagged and tied and beaten over the head with a shovel . . . and then right after he was shot dead,” Jesse Hollywood was having dinner at the Outback Steakhouse. He declared that although the defendant had twenty-five thousand dollars on him, he instead paid with a credit card. The inference was that Hollywood was establishing an alibi.
As far as Ben’s debt, not even another check cut by Jeff Markowitz would settle it. But why not? Ben’s father had already paid off an earlier three-hundred-dollar debt, according to Lynn. So why wouldn’t Hollywood accept another check? Even though he never spoke to Eddy Bachman, Lynn would cite the same motive for the killing as Bachman. In regard to Ben’s drug debt and the consequences for it, “Hollywood felt disrespected.” You couldn’t put a price on your reputation. Lynn stated that Jesse Rugge was “trying in vain to get ahold of Jesse Hollywood. ‘What’s going on? Why do I still have this child at my house? What am I supposed to do with him?’ ”
Lynn would describe how despite having access to two of his girlfriend’s cars, a BMW and a Jeep Cherokee, Hollywood would instead ask his friend Casey Sheehan to borrow his “thrashed, faded red Honda Civic.” Hollywood left Sheehan’s house, picked up Hoyt back at his house on Cohasset Street, then had Hoyt drop him back off at Sheehan’s. “And nobody asks any questions.” Hoyt used the Honda to head to the Lemon Tree with Hollywood’s TEC-9.
After the murder, on August 10, Lynn described how Hollywood “goes to Van Nuys Motor Sales. He sells the Mercedes and rims. He’s cashing out, ladies and gentlemen. He’s leaving town. He’s leaving everybody else to deal with the situation. And everything he does is about planning his escape.”
At one point, Hollywood was no longer looking to collect Ben’s debt. According to Lynn, he was instead placing a bounty on Ben. While describing Ryan Hoyt’s birthday party over at Sheehan’s house, Lynn stated, “A man named Scott Dumas walks over to Casey Sheehan and tells Casey Sheehan something that causes Casey to walk over and ask Jesse James Hollywood point-blank why he was offering money still at this point in time to harm Ben Markowitz.” Lynn reminded the jury that Nick was dead at this point and had not yet been discovered, yet Hollywood was refocusing on the original target of his anger.
Lynn would close his opening statement by comparing Hollywood to an offensive coordinator in the NFL. “He’s up in the box, way off the field, on the telephone barking orders, ‘Call this play, call that play.’ ” To Lynn, he was a “ruthless coward.”
* * *
Hollywood had two defense attorneys, Alex Kessel and James Blatt. Blatt would also give an opening statement on May 15. He would paint Ben Markowitz as “the moving force of this accident.” He told the jury that despite Ben’s Jewish descent, “he has swastikas and other Nazi paraphernalia attached to his body.” He added that Ben “had the nickname of Bugsy after the famous Jewish gangster, Bugsy Siegel.”
Blatt would try and sell the jury on his client’s narrative that Nick’s kidnapping had ended once they arrived in Santa Barbara; that Nick was free to leave at any time. He would never refer to Nick “being kidnapped,” but rather as being “taken.”
Yet Blatt would leave out that no one, not even Hollywood, ever attempted to return Nick to his home. He would leave out the fact that Nick had told Kelly Carpenter and Natasha Adams that he didn’t want to make any extra trouble for his brother, Ben.
Blatt tried to utilize sympathy to sway the jury. He mentioned Jesse’s parents going through a divorce since Nick’s murder, and how Jesse’s younger brother suffered “from a congenital heart disease and had a bad heart from day one.” Blatt tried to lessen the severity of Hollywood’s role as a marijuana supplier, stating, “He was not this major player that controlled three million potential customers in the San Fernando Valley.” Blatt wielded Michelle Lasher’s Judaism to show that his “Christian” client was accepting of other beliefs and open-minded. He lastly accused Ben Markowitz of killing one of Hollywood’s dogs. He would leave out the fact that Hollywood had an arsenal of firearms, from that AR-15 to handguns, to a shotgun, to the AK-40 he slept with on his nightstand. He would bring up the TEC-9, but not in terms of his client’s ownership. No, he would lay the blame on someone else: Ryan Hoyt.
Blatt labeled Hoyt “a flake.” Someone who “desired recognition,” to the point that he would lie about joining the Navy SEALs and being a male model for Versace.
As far as Nick, Blatt stated to the jury that once he was in Santa Barbara, “he’s talking to Mr. Hollywood on the couch and they’re having a pleasant conversation.”
After Nick’s murder, he would say his client was livid with Ryan Hoyt, yelling, “How could you do that? You’re f-ing crazy. Are you out of your mind?” His strategy was to redirect the interpretation of those questions as the summation, How could you kill this kid? from the actual meaning: How could you leave the TEC-9 behind at the crime scene? He would tell the jury that Hollywood even blew a blood vessel in his eye. And lastly, he would tell the jury the reason Hollywood took flight as a fugitive. He even tried to personalize it, “Would many of you or your sons or daughters have run if they’re [the district attorney’s office] looking for the death penalty?” He never brought up the point that if his client was innocent, whatever the district attorney sought would have been an arbitrary point.
He ended his opening statement with a comment aimed at District Attorney Lynn in regard to proving Hollywood’s guilt. “Johnny Unitas had one saying before the first play in the huddle of every game. . . . ‘Talk is cheap, now let him prove it.’ ”
Five weeks and some two dozen witnesses later, Day 3242 finally arrived. It began promptly at nine thirty a.m. The defense’s first witness—Jesse James Hollywood.
* * *
Susan Markowitz had a volatile reaction when she first laid eyes on the defendant. Finally, after all these years. Here he was. For the world to see. She heard he had actually been to her house at some point. She didn’t remember. Now all she could think was, “What a frickin’ measly coward to have to hire people to try and save you? From what?”
She also noticed how profusely the defendant was perspiring. “His palms were sweating, his face was sweating as if we were in a steam box. And he kept drinking Smartwater. And I kept thinking to myself, it’s a little late to be drinking Smartwater.”
Under direct examination from his attorney, James Blatt, Hollywood answered that he had lived in Colorado between the ages of thirteen and sixteen. This was when he began selling small quantities of weed.
His father owned a sports bar at the time, along with operating his own marijuana business. Hollywood testified, “I always had an idea that my father was in illicit activity, but my father was always professional and never—he was never the type of guy to do anything, any type of transactions or anything illegal in front of his family, nothing that I ever saw when I was a kid.”
When his family returned to Los Angeles, Hollywood stated, back and shoulder problems ended a promising baseball career. His pitching days over, he dove straight into the dope game.
Michelle Lasher had been his high school sweetheart. “She sat in front of me . . . and we were inseparable after that.” She would eventually have Jesse James, eight inches long and two inches high, tattooed on the small of her back.
Hollywood would tell the jury that his father was involved in “low- to mid-grade marijuana in very high volumes.” His father’s market was in New York, “bringing hundreds of pounds in California.” Hollywood would talk about his own territory: “My market was more a market that I created in the Valley—mostly high-grade.”
During the time he moved into his first home at eighte
en, he was pulling in eight thousand dollars a month.
Blatt would change course and question Hollywood about Ryan Hoyt, asking Hollywood to describe his relationship with Hoyt. “His mom had mental problems, and his dad was very abusive and alcoholic.”
Blatt would follow up with more questions about Hollywood’s seemingly positive attributes. Hollywood would explain how he was always on a diet, “didn’t party too frequently because I was . . . taking care of my business and my business was always first.” He would proudly state how he started building up his credit at a young age. His FICO score was “seven fifty to seven eighty.”
By the time he upgraded to his second home a year later, he was making ten thousand dollars a month.
He would state that he met Ben Markowitz through Ryan Hoyt, who brought him into the marijuana scene as a dealer on consignment.
During this period, Hoyt had accrued his own debt, “so we sanded the Jacuzzi down” and had Hoyt put in “new turf” in the backyard that had been destroyed by his dogs. He had Hoyt do any odd job to start chipping away at the money he owed.
Blatt didn’t refer to Nick’s abduction as a kidnapping, rather vaguely describing it as “this incident.” At the time, Hollywood said Hoyt owed him only a hundred dollars, maybe to distance himself from a motive to have Hoyt pay off a higher debt by killing Nick.
On day two of his testimony, Blatt had Hollywood explain the relationship he had with Ben Markowitz. Ben had lived with Hollywood for a period of two to three months, paying two hundred dollars a month in rent. Jeff Markowitz wrote the check. Hollywood would describe how he accepted a TEC-9 in exchange for a five-hundred-dollar drug debt from another friend who sold for him on consignment. He said that Ben was the one who suggested having its trigger shaved.
Blatt never directly asked Hollywood the identity of his marijuana supplier. Instead he tried to distance Hollywood from that TEC-9, asking Hollywood what happened to the gun after they had visited a shooting range. Hollywood replied that after finding out the gun was illegal, he went to Ryan Hoyt’s grandma’s house and “left the gun there in his garage.”
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