Unholy Sacrifice

by Robert Scott

  While Justin was making all the appointments with carpet cleaners, Dawn had been busy as well. She visited Debra McClanahan again and they went to Applebee’s for lunch. Then on Saturday night, she called McClanahan and lied, saying that some people had found out about drugs being at Saddlewood Court. She wanted to store them at Debra’s place.

  Concerned about illegal drugs being in her apartment, but still loyal because Taylor was involved, Debra agreed that Dawn could bring them over for safekeeping. When Dawn arrived, she carried in a box containing water pipes. She also had a suitcase that rolled on wheels. Dawn didn’t show Debra the contents of the suitcase. Instead, she went into Debra’s bedroom and locked the door behind her. From what Debra recalled, “I heard the safe being moved off the shelf.”

  The safe was indeed moved and being stuffed with illegal items from Saddlewood. In the safe, Dawn had placed various drugs, drug paraphernalia, victims’ identification, rings from the victims, knives and a pistol. When she came out of the room, she told McClanahan, “Now the safe is full. If the authorities ever ask you any questions about us, get rid of the safe.”

  Debra later said, “At that moment, I thought, ‘Oh, shit!’”

  Dawn also told Debra she had a wheelchair that needed to be stored at the apartment. She didn’t say why she had a wheelchair, and McClanahan didn’t ask. They initially placed the wheelchair in the living room, but then they stored it in Debra’s daughter’s room.

  Dawn did not immediately go back to Saddlewood after the items were at McClanahan’s. She said later, “I spent every moment I could away from the house. I just wanted to get away from it because three people had been killed there.”

  On Sunday, August 6, Dawn picked up a copy of the Contra Costa Times newspaper. Debra was with her and curious about this because Dawn had never shown any interest in newspapers, local or otherwise. A short while later, Dawn videotaped a segment of the news on television. The segment was about the murder of Jennifer Villarin and James Gamble. There was also news about the disappearance of Selina Bishop.

  After this newscast, Dawn said she prayed. She later recalled, “I prayed to be guided by God. I thought maybe I didn’t understand what Taylor was saying. That’s why the plan wasn’t working out.”

  On Sunday afternoon, Justin phoned Dawn at Debra’s and told her to come home to Saddlewood. He said that the carpets were being cleaned. When Dawn arrived at Saddlewood, Balal and his wife had already spread an agent called Natural 2 on the carpets. The agent’s bubbles pushed dirt out of the carpet, and when it dried, all of it could be vacuumed up later. The process went on for awhile, and Dawn and Justin ate in the kitchen while the solution worked.

  One stain in the hallway was particularly problematic. To Balal’s eyes, it looked like a red Kool-Aid stain. “Did you spill Kool-Aid there?” he asked Justin.

  “Yeah,” Justin replied. “We spilled Kool-Aid.”

  A short time later, Dawn and Justin went to the movies. When they returned, Justin paid Balal $500 for the cleaning and gave him a $20 tip. Since the carpets were still wet, two industrial blowers were hooked up and kept running to dry out the carpets.

  Dawn said later of Justin’s demeanor that weekend while Taylor was gone, “Justin changed to be more outgoing. He spent more time with me. He was involved.”

  In the late afternoon, Taylor returned from “Reggae on the River.” All that was needed now was for the two checks totaling $100,000 to clear. Then they could collect the money and make their escape from the area.

  Around this time, next-door neighbor Kaye Shaman discovered something very odd in her yard. She was on the side of her house near the garden hose that Justin had used when she saw what looked like a bit of bloody flesh. “It looked like a bloody blob,” she said later. She wondered how it had gotten there, but then surmised that a bird of prey may have dropped it. There were a lot of hawks and even eagles in the area.

  Ivan and Annette Stineman’s daughter Nancy Hall had tried calling her parents on August 1 and 2, to no avail. Normally they would tell her if they were planning to go out of town. Even worse, there was no tape in the answering machine to let her leave a message, and the phone rang continuously.

  On August 3, she went to her parents’ house on Frayne Lane because she wanted to have lunch with them, but also just to check up to see how they were doing. One of her main thoughts was to get their answering machine working properly again. Nancy arrived at their house at 11:15 A.M. as she went up the walk, she noticed that their Lumina van was gone, but a license plate was lying in the driveway. That seemed odd—so did the fact that there were several newspapers piled up around the front door. Nancy looked at the dates on the Contra Costa Times newspapers and they were dated from July 30 to August 3. There was also a Terminix receipt halfway under the doormat and it was dated August 1.

  Once Nancy entered the house, she noticed a pan of moldy food on the counter. That was not like her mother at all, who always kept a spotless house. After seeing this, Nancy’s thoughts turned to the two cats that her parents owned. Usually they stayed in the garage if her parents were gone for a few days. Food and water was left in there for them. Nancy searched the garage and couldn’t find the cats anywhere. She went upstairs, opened the bathroom door and discovered a horrible surprise. One of the cats, Tooey, was frantic. It had no food or water, and had messed all over the bathroom.

  “It was so pathetic!” she cried later. “I couldn’t even tell it was Tooey at first.”

  Scared by what she discovered, because she knew her parents would never treat their cats this way, she went out and talked to one of the neighbors about where her parents might have gone. The neighbor had no idea.

  This was so unlike her parents. Nancy recalled that “when my parents went on vacation, they would leave me a list of things. Mom would say, ‘Now you remember this.’”

  Very worried by now, Nancy phoned the Concord Police Department (CPD) and reported her elderly parents as missing.

  Patrol Officer Mark Evans responded to a missing persons call on August 3 to Frayne Lane. He spoke with Nancy Hall outside of her parents’ home and he also noticed several newspapers stacked at the front door and a license plate in the driveway.

  As he went into the kitchen, she showed him the pan of moldy food and said her mother wouldn’t allow something like that in the kitchen. As he and Nancy walked through the living room, she found a broken watchband in between the cushions of the recliner that her father often used. Nancy knew that the watchband belonged to her father. He always wore that watch.

  Looking elsewhere, Patrol Officer Evans discounted robbery, since several expensive items in plain sight had not been disturbed. Evans went down the street a ways and talked with neighbor Clint Carter.

  Nancy called her sister, Judy, in southern California and said, “I think we have missing parents.” Then she spoke about the cats, the moldy food in the pan and a book with the quilted covers. The book with quilted covers was always taken along by her parents when they went on trips.

  Judy recalled, “I tried to come up with answers. I couldn’t think of any. I must have called my parents’ house a hundred times that week. There was no answering machine. The phone just rang and rang.”

  Not far away on Saddlewood Court, a resident on the court named Steven Swantkoski had noticed something odd back on August 4. He had been awakened very early by his daughter who lived in Antioch. Her apartment complex had caught fire and she wanted him to come over there. He threw on his clothes, and as he pulled out into the roadway, he was surprised to see a man and woman in a white pickup truck talking. He looked at his watch and it was four-twenty in the morning. The people were most likely Justin and Dawn.

  Swantkoski spent nearly two hours in Antioch before returning to Concord with his daughter and some of her belongings. He and his daughter arrived back at Saddlewood Court a little after 8:00 A.M. He didn’t pay any more attention to the pickup truck, but his daughter spotted it. She noticed that on the ba
ck of it was a trailer that held a personal watercraft. The craft had bright colors and the words “Rent me” on the side.

  Later that day, Detective Inskip interviewed Julia Bernbaum about Selina Bishop. Bernbaum told Inskip that Selina’s boyfriend, Jordan, was from Concord. She also told Inskip that Selina had provided Jordan with a key to her apartment. Bernbaum said that Jordan was “secretive.”

  The lead investigator in the Marin County case was Detective Steve Nash. He had been with the Marin County Sheriff’s Office since 1979 and investigated over two thousand violent crimes. He’d taken a post-identification technician course, blood spatter course and attended FBI-conducted fingerprint courses. He also received training from the Los Angeles Police Department Threat/Stalking Unit and was an instructor for the Marin County Sheriff’s Office.

  Detective Nash was trying to piece together not only clues from Selina’s apartment, but information that other detectives were giving him as well. He learned from employees at the Two Bird Café that Selina’s boyfriend was “concerned about revealing his true identity.” Even they knew that Jordan was not his real name. One of them said that recently Selina had tried to take his photograph, and he had destroyed the film.

  Detective Inskip told Nash that a pager was located at the Two Bird Café and reputedly it had been given to her by Jordan. When Detective Nash obtained the pager, he noted the area code was 925 (Contra Costa County) and the prefix was 597 (Concord). Jordan was supposed to live somewhere in Concord.

  Nash had a theory at this point. He said later, “I personally viewed the photographs of Jennifer Villarin and Selina Bishop. I also personally viewed the body of Jennifer Villarin. I believe that there is a very strong resemblance between Jennifer Villarin and Selina Bishop. I believe this would be especially true during the time of darkness when the murders occurred.”

  An all points bulletin (APB) was spread nationwide for Selina Bishop as a missing person. Detective Nash obtained Selina’s journal and noted numerous references to Jordan and his drug dealing, his use of meth and his use of an alias.

  On August 5, Detective Nash was able to obtain from Verizon Wireless information concerning a cell phone with a 925 area code that supposedly belonged to a Denise Anderson on Mayfair Avenue in Concord. The account had been activated in June 2000.

  Detective Nash sent Detective Sergeant Barry Heying to Denise Anderson’s address. He discovered that Denise Anderson had a different cell phone and knew nothing about Selina Bishop, Jordan or anything else concerning the case. One name was of particular interest, though. A name “Sky Anderson” was somehow linked to the cell phone. People in Marin County had heard that Jordan had a female roommate named Star. It was not too far a leap from “Star” to “Sky.”

  On August 6, Nash received an approved search warrant to obtain telephone records for a particular number. Nash compiled a list of numbers that were connected to that cell phone number. He noted that the same last name of Helzer popped up twice. It was Helzer who had a 925 area code. Further search showed that the Helzer in question was one Justin Helzer of Saddlewood Court, Concord. There was no direct link to Selina Bishop or Jennifer Villarin, but this was interesting.

  Detective Nash requested a driver’s license record from the DMV on Justin Helzer. He learned that Justin Helzer owned a 1995 white Nissan pickup. The Soladays said that a white Nissan pickup had been used to help Selina Bishop move into her apartment.

  An automated firearms system check showed that Justin Helzer had purchased a 9mm Beretta semiautomatic pistol in May 2000. This was a real eye-opener. Detective Nash knew that both Jennifer Villarin and James Gamble had been killed by 9mm bullets that probably came from a Beretta pistol or one of its knockoffs.

  Detective Nash had Detective Lisa Lellis, of the Marin County Sheriff’s Office, contact Lieutenant Norvell, of the CPD, to see what information could be found on Justin Helzer. What turned up, instead, was some data on a Glenn Taylor Helzer—a man who owned a 1998 Saturn sedan.

  Odd bits and pieces of things kept surfacing now. Nothing to make a puzzle complete, but always intriguing. One of these incidents concerned Rodney Todd, who ran a computer business in Oakland, on Martin Luther King Way. He became aware of a Chevy Lumina van parked near his business on Friday, August 4. The windows of the van were down and the radio was playing. He said later, “It struck me as awkward. This was not a safe neighborhood to do something like that.” Todd didn’t phone it into the police, but he noted how long the van had been there.

  It wasn’t until a couple of days later that Officer Tim Shaffer, of the Oakland Police Department (OPD), noticed the same van on the 400 block of Martin Luther King Way at around 8:49 A.M. on August 6. There was just something about the van that looked wrong to him. It was nosed out from the curb a little too far and at an odd angle. He decided to investigate.

  Once he approached the vehicle, he noticed a seat belt dangling out one of the doors. The windows were rolled down as well. The strangest facts of all were that there was a key in the ignition turned to ACC, the radio was playing and there was another set of keys lying on the dashboard in plain sight.

  With all of these strange occurrences, Shaffer thought, This is a stolen vehicle.

  He ran the plates and a missing persons report came up. The report concerned an elderly couple from Concord named the Stinemans. Officer Shaffer notified the CPD about what he had just discovered.

  When the van was found in Oakland, Nancy Hall recalled, “I felt like the walls were coming down on me. My world was collapsing. It got worse each day. You didn’t think it could get worse. But it did get worse.”

  That same day, Officer Nancy Vedder, of the Concord Police Department, went to the Stinemans’ residence and found a notepad that mentioned the name Taylor Helzer on it. It also mentioned that Taylor had worked for Dean Witter. She found this on top of a desk in the master bedroom in plain sight. Written on the paper was “Check with Taylor.” (Some have speculated that when Taylor and Justin invaded the Stinemans’ home on July 30, Ivan was able to leave this one small note as a clue as to their whereabouts. Whether the note was meant to be discovered by the police or Nancy Hall is not known.)

  This bit of information possibly connecting the missing Stinemans and the Marin County murders was enticing. Detective Nash had Detectives Inskip and Heying drive by Saddlewood Court in Concord on a surveillance run. They noticed a dark Saturn and a white Nissan pickup in the driveway. Nash then had Detective Fred Marziano get photographs from the DMV of Glenn Taylor Helzer and Justin Alan Helzer. Taylor’s photograph was shown to Selina’s friend and coworker at the Two Bird Café, Karen. Karen said that she was 75 percent sure the man in the photo was Jordan. She had a hard time telling, because Taylor (aka Jordan) had stuck out his tongue when the photo was taken.

  Sergeant Birch, of the MCSO, contacted Rico LaFranchi and showed him a photograph. Rico positively identified the man in the photo as Selina’s boyfriend, Jordan.

  Detectives Nash and Lellis contacted Mike Small, of Red Hills Towing in San Rafael, about something that had occurred three weeks before. Selina had locked the keys inside her car at the Two Bird Café. When Mike Small showed up to help her, she was sitting in a dark-colored Saturn.

  The surveillance team that kept passing Saddlewood Court noticed a young man get into a white Nissan pickup and drive away on the night of August 6. He returned after fifteen minutes.

  Even later that night, the same man came out again and was gone for thirty minutes before returning. He must have been very distracted, however. He apparently did not put the pickup in park or set the parking brake. After he had gone back into the residence, the pickup rolled down the driveway and into the street.

  In the early-morning hours of August 7, 2000, Detective Nash requested a search warrant for the Helzer residence on Saddlewood Court in Concord. Nash wrote that it was approximately 1:00 A.M. on August 7, 2000, and that Selina Bishop was still a missing person. She had failed to report to work at the Two Bird Ca
fé on August 4, and no one had seen her since August 2. On that date, a person who knew her had seen Selina at the Red Hill Shopping Center in San Anselmo. Selina has been wearing a light-colored blouse and dark-colored pants.

  Detective Nash went on to write that he believed Jennifer Villarin and James Gamble had been killed by a gun firing 9 mm copper-jacketed ammunition. Nash believed that Justin Helzer owned a 9 mm Beretta that was capable of firing 9 mm copper-jacketed bullets.

  Nash noted that in Selina Bishop’s journal, she had written of having difficulties with her boyfriend Jordan who happened to live in Concord. At 10:00 A.M. on August 3, Selina’s fellow-employee at the Two Bird Café, Kabrina Feickert, had received a phone call from Jordan. He was extremely upset and agitated about Selina. Detective Nash wrote on the document that he believed Jordan was in fact Glenn Taylor Helzer. He also believed that Taylor Helzer would have access to his brother’s 9 mm Beretta semi-automatic.

  Nash drew out a request for the search and seizure of any clothing that might belong to Selina Bishop, any items that would account for her whereabouts, and the 9 mm Beretta and ammunition. His request stated that the search warrant was to help in finding the location and safety of Selina Bishop.

  CHAPTER 9

  Raid on Saddlewood

  At 11:30 P.M., August 6, 2000, Detectives Inskip, Baker, Hart and Heying drove around the Saddlewood area, particularly keeping an eye on the home rented by the Helzer brothers. They kept their observations secret enough so as not to draw attention.

  On August 7, at 3:30 A.M., Hynes attended a SWAT briefing at the Concord Police Department for an early-morning raid on the Saddlewood home. By 5:55 A.M., the SWAT team all got into position as the seconds ticked down toward zero hour.