by Robert Scott
Lydia Young was sitting down to dinner in Lake Tahoe, where she lived, when she got a call from David. He said, “Jenny’s been shot.”
In stunned disbelief, all Lydia could think to say was “Why?”
David answered, “I don’t know.”
Lydia was also concerned that Selina would hear about this from strangers.
When niece Jill got the news about her aunt being shot, she asked, “Is she going to be okay?”
David only had a one-word answer: “No.”
Niece Jill said later, “I never expected that for someone who had been through so much. My first question was ‘Where was Selina?’ Nobody knew. I didn’t want Selina to be alone and find out about Jenny.”
Olga went to Marin County after being given a sedative. All the way there, she thought, It can’t be real. They have to be wrong.
She recalled, “Lydia came over and we went to Gloria’s house. We were all in a haze. For some reason, we went to a Target store to shop. To chill. We were all standing in the middle of Target, crying.
“We all stayed at Gloria’s house. We couldn’t go anywhere to get away from it. We went through everything to find Selina. I didn’t want her to go back to her house, because her mom had been killed in her bed. We knew that Selina would want to curl up in her mommy’s bed, but she never came home.”
Lucia Villarin helped look for Selina that week. She looked all over Marin County, in places she knew that Selina visited. She looked in the towns, in the forest, everywhere. There was not a trace of Selina to be found.
Jenny Villarin’s family wasn’t the only one devastated by the news of the double murder. Jim Gamble’s mom, Frances, recalled, “About midnight, August fourth, the light went on. I said, ‘Jim?’
“It was Larry. He’d driven two hours to tell me. It was a terrible shock. From that point on, I didn’t know what happened. I never got to say good-bye to my son.”
CHAPTER 8
Murky Waters
Taylor wanted all the teeth removed from the heads of Ivan, Annette and Selina. This would make their remains harder to identify, if ever found. Dawn recalled, “Justin reached into the bag and got the three heads out and put them on a towel. I had to hold the people’s heads while he tried to knock the teeth out of the upper and lower jaws with a chisel and hammer. I didn’t think about anything while this was going on. It took at least thirty minutes for the whole process to take place.”
They put the teeth and jawbones in plastic bags and the battered heads were packaged separately. In fact, Ivan’s, Annette’s and Selina’s remains were intermixed to further confuse identification, or at least that was Taylor’s thoughts on the matter.
On Thursday, August 3, the Children of Thunder drove toward the Delta with a personal watercraft in tow and nine duffel bags full of body parts. The bags also contained stepping-stones from the yard at Saddlewood to add weight to the contents. Dawn said they just hauled the duffel bags out of the garage in full daylight and placed them in back of Justin’s pickup. To anyone on Saddlewood Court who saw them, it would look as if they were going camping. The craft they were towing added to that illusion.
The three of them rode in Justin’s pickup truck, eastward to Highway 4, northeast on 160, and to the approaches of the Antioch Bridge over the wide San Joaquin River. They paid the toll taker $2 and proceeded across the bridge. Far below them the meandering waterways spread out like a three-dimensional map.
They drove up Highway 160 on the levee road paralleling the Sacramento River. Chinese workers had built the levees as far back as the 1870s. Before commercial fishing was outlawed in the 1950s, local residents known as “river rats” could make up to $1,000 a week netting catfish. Now it was the haunt of sports fishermen.
The Helzer brothers and Dawn turned east on Highway 12 and crossed the rich farmland of Andrus Island, to the North Fork of the Mokelumne River. They didn’t know it at the time, but they were in the heartland of the great epidemic of the 1830s, where entire villages of Native Americans died. Then it had been a grisly scene of death and decay. It was about to become such a place once again.
The trio turned south on a small levee road that led to the marina of Korth’s Pirate’s Lair. Korth’s Pirate’s Lair was an oasis of tall trees and green water in the midst of the rich farmland. The Children of Thunder scouted a section of road nearby on a levee, where it came down to the water’s edge. It seemed like a good spot to transfer the body bags to the personal watercraft, so they drove back to launch the rental.
Not many people were there at the boat ramp that time of day. Most had left early to go boating, and wouldn’t be back until later. The trio drove the trailer down the ramp into the water, unhooked the watercraft and then drove the trailer back up to dry land. No bags were placed on the rental at this time.
Dawn drove Justin’s pickup to the designated spot on the levee road as Justin and Taylor rode there on the watercraft. They pulled the rental up close to the bank and Taylor got off. He transferred two duffel bags with body parts onto it. The bags were placed on either side on the running boards. Then Taylor and Justin took off north, up the Mokelumne River as Dawn waited on the bank with the rest of the body parts.
She didn’t see exactly where the Helzer brothers took the duffel bags to be deposited in the water. All she knew was that they were gone for about thirty minutes before they came back for the next load of bags. This routine went on through bag number eight, as Dawn sat in the pickup and read the book The Four Agreements, which Taylor had told her to read.
Before each trip, Justin plunged a knife several times into the bags. Dawn had come up with this idea. She said later, “There needed to be holes in the bags because gases would build up inside of them. If they weren’t slashed, they might not sink.”
It took almost all afternoon out on the Delta to get rid of the bags. While houseboats slowly glided by with vacationers, and water-skiers churned up wakes, Taylor and Justin went about their grisly business. Apparently no one was around when they deposited the bags into the murky waters of the Mokelumne River.
Taylor said he was tired and ordered Dawn to go with Justin to release the ninth bag. Taylor got off the personal watercraft and Dawn climbed on with Justin. Since Justin was tired from running the craft all afternoon, he let Dawn drive it. As they went up the river, to a secluded spot, Justin dropped the last bag into the water. Dawn noticed that it took about a minute to sink. The water here was fairly opaque and nothing could be seen a few inches below its surface. The current, though not swift, was constantly moving, and undoubtedly moved the bag along as it sank.
After they had deposited all the bags, the Children of Thunder drove the watercraft and the pickup back to Korth’s Pirate’s Lair, and hooked it up to Justin’s pickup. Taylor drove down the road and stopped at a bar because he had to use the rest room. After using the rest room, he and Dawn had a shot of tequila at the bar. They drove down the road a few more miles and stopped at a restaurant, where all three had dinner. Later, they all washed out the bed of the pickup truck.
Clear back in April 2000, Jessyka Chompff had invited Taylor to “Reggae on the River.” It was a festival of reggae bands and alternative bands, up in the coastal redwoods along the Eel River. Taylor looked forward to going. He not only liked the music, he planned to sell a lot of ecstasy there. Since the Stinemans’ checks had not yet been deposited into Selina Bishop’s Cal Fed account, he felt that he could get away for a few days.
In the back of Chompff’s mind, she was always worried that Taylor would “flake out.” As she said later, “The tickets were pretty expensive and we had four of them—one for me, one for Alex, one for Taylor and one for a guy named Jamie. In late June, Taylor had called me and said he was involved in something that was taking all of his time. He said he saw circumstances that might make him unable to go. Then he said, ‘I’m working on something big.’”
As Chompff said later, “I assumed it was something that had to do with drugs.”
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br /> In late July, her concern that Taylor would just flake out became more prevalent. He was irritable and vacillating in conversations with her on the phone about whether he would make it or not. She knew that even under the best of circumstances Taylor was not someone you could count on. August arrived and Taylor was still telling her he wasn’t sure if he could make it to “Reggae on the River.” He didn’t tell her the reason he wasn’t sure that he could make it was because he was involved in murder and financial fraud.
Taylor and Chompff made tentative plans to leave on the morning of Thursday, August 3, but that fell through. The time was pushed ahead to noon on the August 3, but even that was too optimistic. Taylor, Justin and Dawn had barely left Saddlewood Court with the rental watercraft by that hour, heading for the Delta.
Jessyka borrowed a tent from Taylor’s parents, because he said he was too busy to pick it up. What was even more frustrating for Chompff was the fact that Taylor said he didn’t want her or anyone else to visit him at the Saddlewood residence. She assumed it was because of a big drug deal he was planning, but still it made the coordination for “Reggae on the River” difficult.
Noon of August 3 came and went, and there was still no Taylor. Finally, at one o’clock, he called her on a cell phone and said that he would not meet them until 3:30
P.M. That target time passed and there was no Taylor. Now Chompff was very worried that Taylor would not show up at all.
Late that afternoon, a very frazzled-sounding Taylor phoned Chompff and said he would be at her house at 7:00 P.M. By now, Chompff was sure that Taylor would flake out. She and her husband had already spent $1,500 for tickets and camping preparations for the event, and she was not happy with Taylor.
More cell phone calls went back and forth between her and Taylor all evening long on August 3. She knew ahead of time if he was calling because she had caller ID on her phone that displayed his cell phone number.
Chompff recalled, “He said he was going to make it. He definitely wanted to go. It was nearly midnight when he finally showed up at our house.”
While Alex and Jessyka sat around drinking coffee, Taylor was totally wound up and couldn’t sit still or shut up. “He was agitated,” she said. “Agitated and extremely tired.”
Chompff admitted later that she didn’t pay much attention to Taylor when he arrived after midnight. She said, “I was frustrated with him. He was wound up like he’d been to a nightclub. Like he’d been up, all day and night. Flighty and edgy, like he’d been to a rave. He looked hot and tired.”
Finally, around 1:00 A.M., Friday, August 4, Taylor crashed and fell asleep in their home. It was about 7:30 A.M. when everyone was finally packed up and ready to go. It was about a two-hundred-mile drive up to “Reggae on the River.” Alex and Jessyka drove in their truck, while Taylor and Jamie went in Taylor’s Saturn. Even though the Chompffs were supposed to lead the way—because they had been to “Reggae on the River” before, and Taylor hadn’t—Taylor would often zoom in front of them to take the lead. It only added to their frustrations.
Their trek took them up through Santa Rosa, Hopland, Ukiah and eventually through the small town of Laytonville. It was indeed ironic that Taylor was traveling through the same town of his victim James Gamble. Highway 101 was not all freeway, and in many places it curved and twisted over the hills and through the forests. Chompff said, “Taylor was driving badly and dangerously. There were lots of logging trucks on the road. At times it looked like he would run off the road. He was supposed to be following us, but he would pull ahead and then fall back. It was disturbing to watch him drive.”
When they finally arrived at “Reggae on the River,” near Piercy, everyone was frazzled. Since the Chompffs had been there before, Jessyka went with Alex to stake out a campsite. Despite the Chompffs’ knowledge of the area, and camping in general, Taylor once again had to be in control. He found one excuse after another why the Chompffs’ designated sites were not adequate. He kept wanting to move the tent to another location. To Jessyka’s eyes, the areas he was trying to pick were worse. By now, she had had enough of Taylor. She snapped at him and he blew up.
“You’re a manipulative bitch!” he yelled back, and continued to berate her in a loud voice.
“Taylor, we’re all the same!” she countered.
And Alex said, “Hey, calm down, man.”
Jessyka said later, “It was really embarrassing. There were all these other people around and he was making a scene.”
Taylor stalked off, but came back later and apologized. For him, this gesture was a big deal. Normally, he thought of himself of incapable of doing wrong. Why apologize when he was already perfect?
Even though he apologized, it soon became apparent that Taylor was not part of the group. He listened to music with Alex and Jamie for only about ten minutes on Friday night, and then in Jessyka’s words, he “went to do his own thing.” She supposed his “own thing” was selling drugs.
Alex and Jessyka and Jamie saw Taylor in camp for a while on Saturday morning, but he slept all of Saturday afternoon while they hiked around the area. Even on Saturday night, Taylor kept to himself, and Jessyka once again assumed he was selling drugs at the event.
By Sunday morning, August 6, Taylor wanted to leave. Alex and Jessyka were determined to stay until Monday, having already invested so much money and time in preparation for the event. Even Jamie wanted to stay, but somehow Taylor convinced him to leave on Sunday. They packed up their belongings and were gone by 11:00 A.M. on Sunday, August 6.
While Taylor was at “Reggae on the River,” Justin and Dawn had been busy in the Concord area. On Thursday, Dawn helped Taylor pack a suitcase with marijuana, ecstasy, meth and mushrooms for his trip to “Reggae on the River.” Taylor gave instructions to her and Justin to get rid of all evidence connected to Selina and the Stinemans.
On Taylor’s orders, Dawn and Justin were to dump the Stinemans’ van in a run-down neighborhood of Oakland. His thoughts were that it would be stolen if they left it there. Dawn drove the van, and as she did, she threw the Stinemans’ credit cards out the window, hoping that someone would find them and illegally use them. If this individual was later caught, it was assumed the incident would confuse the police.
The Stinemans’ van was driven to Martin Luther King Way in Oakland and parked. To make it even more appetizing, they rolled the windows down, left the radio playing and a key in the ignition. Justin drove Dawn back to Concord in his pickup.
After their foray to Oakland, Dawn picked up Selina’s vehicle at Park ’n Shop and drove it to Petaluma. Justin followed her in his pickup. Dawn parked Selina’s car in a metered parking lot in that town and left the keys in the vehicle. On Taylor’s instructions, she also left Ivan’s wedding ring in the car on the front passenger seat. This was supposed to confuse the police into wondering why Ivan’s wedding ring was in Selina’s car. It was hoped they might even conjecture that he’d run away with Selina.
On the way back from Petaluma, Justin and Dawn dropped by Debra McClanahan’s apartment to pick up a steam cleaner. To Debra’s eyes, Justin did not look stressed, but she gave him a back rub anyway. Dawn was a little more agitated, and with good reason. She admitted later, “I couldn’t get the smell of the Saddlewood house out of my nose. I didn’t want to go back there.” Even though she didn’t say it at the time, the smell she was referring to was the smell of death.
Dawn read some newspapers in front of McClanahan for about a half hour and ate some spaghetti before she and Justin left to go back to Saddlewood Court. This was unusual. Debra had never seen Dawn read a newspaper before.
There was still plenty to take care of at Saddlewood Court. Selina’s blood had stained the family room’s carpet and kitchen area. The carpet in particular was troublesome. Dawn tried cleaning it with the steam cleaner, but it wasn’t doing a very good job. Even though Dawn and Justin used household cleaners on the stains, they still wouldn’t come out of the carpet, leaving it with a pink stain. Dawn a
nd Justin finally decided they needed professional carpet cleaners to help.
Rebecca Clark worked for Bay Area Carpet Cleaning, and she received a phone call from someone named Justin in Concord. He said that he’d just moved into a house and had an accident. “I cut myself,” he told her, “and got blood on the rug.” He wanted to know if they could clean blood out of a carpet. Clark said that they could, but that she couldn’t guarantee that it would be as good as new after the cleaning. Justin talked to her for about six minutes and she remembered him being friendly on the phone. He even cracked a joke. Justin made an appointment with her for Tuesday, August 8.
Apparently, later on, Justin became concerned about the length of time until August 8. He phoned Prestige Cleaning, on Sunday, August 6, and said that he needed an emergency carpet cleaning. Ed McCulloch was in church that Sunday morning and received a page about the request. The page indicated that someone needed carpet cleaning immediately because a roommate had a bloody nose and it made a mess on the carpet. Since McCulloch had to teach Sunday school that day, he passed the message on to his son-in-law, Tyler Douglass.
Douglass was also at church, but he contacted Justin and said that an emergency carpet cleaning would be very expensive on a Sunday and that he wasn’t certain that he could find a technician to do the job.
Justin answered that the cost was no problem, and that Douglass should try and get a technician. Then Justin added that his roommate had left the carpet a mess.
Douglass couldn’t find a tech for Sunday, but scheduled one for Monday afternoon. Justin seemed to be okay with this at first, but then Douglass received a message later that Justin had found someone else to do the job on Sunday, and to cancel the Monday appointment.
In fact, Justin contacted Chem Way Cleaning, of Alameda, and spoke to Haji Balal. Justin said he wanted a carpet cleaned on Sunday, and since Balal had a tech in the area already, this was possible. Balal set it up with his tech to get two blowers and antimicrobial solution. The antimicrobial solution was to retard mildew and make the odor go away.