Love Me or I'll Kill You

by Lee Butcher

  A blue-and-gray sports slipper belonging to Isaac Davis was found on the landing.

  Adan, armed with a search warrant, entered Isaac Davis’s apartment, where Paula and Chino had held Davis hostage and kept police at bay. Adan found a handwritten note that had been torn up and tossed into a kitchen garbage can with miscellaneous trash. Athan pieced the note together on the floor and read it: “Mamacita, I love you so much! Please forgive us for messing up! Mami, I will miss you.”

  This was the note that Paula had written for her mother when she thought she was going to commit suicide or be killed by Chino.

  There was a black Panasonic telephone in the apartment with four messages asking Chino to call back. At least two of them were from his mother. The other callers weren’t identified. Athan entered the bedroom and found the Glock lying on the bed. He noted the serial number. “I unloaded this firearm at approximately 2015 hours and observed that a round was inside of the chamber,” Adan wrote in his report. “The magazine was fully loaded with seventeen Winchester 9mm Luger rounds with silver shells and jacketed hollow point projectiles.”

  A fragment of a human skull was found a few feet from Chino’s body, which was slumped to the right against a wall outside the bedroom. The MAC-11 was removed from Chino’s body. There was a live round in the chamber and twelve rounds in the magazine. Adan’s team bagged and marked everything for evidence.

  Detective J. D. Tindall, of homicide, took a statement from Laura Kent, who had made a 911 call reporting Lois’s shooting. The detective wanted to gather information while everything was still fresh in Kent’s memory. They reviewed the information she had reported to 911 and Tindall probed for additional details.

  Kent told how she had seen them run into the cemetery, then head back. She added details that she had not given to the emergency operator. Chino ran underneath her second-floor balcony, Kent said, followed by Lois. Lois stopped and looked up at Kent.

  “Which way did he go?” Lois asked.

  “‘That way,’” Kent had said, pointing to the building next to her. “It seemed to happen so fast. Before I knew anything, he had a gun pulled out and he was shooting at her and she had fallen.”

  Kent described the cars they were near in the parking lot. She said that Chino walked rapidly toward Lois, then stopped and shot her. Tindall asked her to describe the gun.

  “I never expected to ever in my whole life, ever see anybody get shot,” she said. “And on TV you see it like machine guns, but it looked like a fake gun. It looked real short and small, but it looked like a machine gun pretty much.”

  Tindall asked Kent to give a detailed description of Chino. The description given by all of the eyewitnesses was the same, and would be important at trial in proving that Chino was the killer. Tindall asked Kent to describe the woman coming down the stairs after Chino took Kokojan’s car keys.

  Kent told the detective that she was either white or Hispanic, eighteen to nineteen years old, about five feet six inches tall and weighed around 115 pounds, with long brown hair. She was wearing a camouflage shirt. She described the shooting and how she ran back inside her apartment and called 911.

  “I grabbed the phone and called nine-one-one,” Kent said. “I sat right there, crouched down, and looked out the window to see what was going on.

  “I was pretty much freaking out at the time because I was crying and upset,” Kent continued. “Like, my kid and my brother was there and they wanted to watch. But I didn’t want them to. The operator on the phone was trying to get me to calm down and I was trying to explain what was going on.”

  “Did you see any other police officers fire at this individual who had the gun?” Tindall asked. “Or any of those people?”

  “I never saw anyone.... After I had seen her lying there, and the operator had asked me if she was alive, I told her that I didn’t think so because she . . . looked lifeless.... I told her that I saw another officer over her crying hysterically. She told me to stay away from the window.”

  Tindall asked her if it appeared that Paula and Chino were together.

  “Yes. It . . . I mean, if I were to walk out and see that (shooting), I wouldn’t just stand there. I would have ran or had some shock in my face, where they just kind of looked like it was expected.”

  Kent said she could identify Chino but wasn’t sure about Paula because she didn’t get a good look at her. Earlier, Kent had given a description of Paula to the police. Perhaps, after all of the stress and danger, she was less certain. “There was tons of cop cars out there,” she said. “There was fire trucks. There was ambulances, helicopters, SWAT teams.”

  Kent said, “This is just something you don’t expect, you know. Especially in your own front yard.”

  Chapter 15

  Lissette Santiago, Chino’s mother, told a reporter a day after her son’s suicide that she was “shocked” at Paula’s involvement in an armed robbery and the shooting of a police officer.

  “I would expect that from my son because he was angry at the world,” Santiago said. “But her? No way. She was very delicate. Shy. Like a piece of glass.”

  Mark Ober, state attorney for the Thirteenth Judicial Circuit—usually referred to as the Hillsborough County state attorney (SA)—was getting a much different picture. Ober’s investigation led him to think that far from being a shrinking violet, Paula was manipulative, greedy, and was an equal partner in both robberies.

  “Paula is all about money,” Raymond Caraballo, a former friend of Santiago’s told Ober. “She was constantly nagging him for things.” As for Chino, Caraballo said, “He wanted everything yesterday.”

  The state charged Paula with two counts of armed robbery and one count of first-degree murder. Although Paula didn’t fire a weapon, Ober said the law was clear on the murder charge: “The statutes say that anyone who commits a felony where someone is killed is guilty of murder, whether they pull the trigger or not.”

  The state attorney didn’t buy into the scenario of Paula being brainwashed, or under so much duress that she couldn’t resist Chino. Quite the opposite. He believed she goaded Chino into robbery because she wanted more than his paycheck could provide. Neither did Ober believe Paula’s claim that Chino beat her.

  “Detective Gene Black interviewed Paula right after her arrest,” he said. “Chino was dead. If she had been abused, that would have been the time for her to say, ‘He beat the hell out of me.’ She didn’t say anything like that. Everything she said was for her own self-interests.”

  Ober thought that Paula’s behavior before Chino’s suicide belied her claim of being terrorized by him. Ober had watched it on the police television-telephone. “Before he committed suicide, she kissed him on the lips and called him ‘Sweetie,’ her pet name for him,” he said. “There was no indication that she was afraid of him.”

  Ober hired a detective to find out what problems Chino had at the last job he held. The former employer was kinder to Chino than Paula, who said he didn’t want to work. The man who fired him said different. Raymond Suitt, owner of Building Services Network, said that Chino was a good worker until the time he quit without notice. Suitt said he was aware of “marital problems” Chino was having with Paula, whom Chino referred to as his wife.

  Chino told Suitt that “Paula always wanted something he couldn’t afford on his salary.” Paula also wanted to live in New York, Chino said, and would take all of his money and go there. Suitt loaned Chino money when Paula did this, he said, and noted that Chino always paid him back promptly.

  This was a much different perspective on Chino’s character than Paula described. Ober tended to believe the former employer’s version.

  The state attorney was not easily swayed by appearances. During his career he had tried more than three hundred capital crimes as both a prosecutor and defense attorney. Even so, he believed it might be difficult to find a jury that would look at Paula without being influenced by her appearance.

  “She’s this tiny, sweet-looking woman
,” he said. “She looks more like an elementary-school kid than an adult. It’s hard to reconcile what she did with how she looks.”

  Pruner’s concern was not without cause. Although Paula was five feet six inches, her thin, well proportioned body gave her an appealing, waiflike appearance. Paula’s curly dark hair, soft brown eyes and sweet expression made her seem innocent and vulnerable.

  Ober chose Jay Pruner, assistant state attorney (ASA), who prosecuted only first-degree murder cases. In 2001, Pruner won twelve convictions in just four months. Known as “the prosecutor who sends killers to prison,” Pruner was given the Outstanding Advocacy Award in capital cases by the Florida Prosecuting Attorneys Association. The defense would be up against the best prosecutorial team that Tampa had to offer.

  It’s hard to imagine two people more unlike than Ober and Deeann Athan. Ober is six feet four inches and built like a Bradley tank. Athan is petite, barely breaking the five-foot barrier, and she has a hummingbird-like energy. Athan wouldn’t want to be a prosecutor and Ober, having been a defense attorney, chose to be a prosecutor. Ober had been a university law professor while Athan taught junior high school.

  The one thing they had in common was love for the law. Although they were on opposite sides in the courtroom, they liked and respected one another.

  Athan graduated from law school in 1983 and went to work as a prosecutor “for the blink of an eye.” After being with the state attorney for six months, she went into private practice. She practiced general law, but concentrated on criminal defense and family law. She later worked in appellate law, but was burned out after nine years.

  Athan’s children were young and she was working long hours and couldn’t devote as much time to them as she wanted. Athan went on vacation following a six-month trial in federal court only to return and find that she was held in contempt of court for missing a hearing to show cause.

  Athan thought she had arranged for another lawyer to stand in for her. She said it was a nightmare. After that, she lost all desire to do appellate work. One day she had lunch with the public defender and asked for a job. She was immediately hired. She swore she would never try homicide cases. “I didn’t like the thought of dealing with someone’s death,” she said. “But, as it turns out, those are really the most interesting cases, plus your clients are the most in need of someone looking after their interests.”

  Dr. Maher, who ventured inside the Orient Road Jail again on July 16 to continue Paula’s psychological evaluation, discovered that she was still frightened of Chino and hearing his voice. She was still under a suicide watch, and in addition to the antipsychotic drug Trilafon, an antidepressant (Pamelor) and antianxiety medication (Visiril) had been prescribed.

  “She is very anxious,” he said. “I think [she] probably would have qualified for a diagnosis of adjustment disorder when she became pregnant with her daughter, Ashley.” There was no diagnosis or treatment at that time, he noted, but her condition still improved. Maher determined that the condition had returned and Paula suffered from adjustment disorder for at least a couple of months.

  In psychological terms an adjustment disorder occurs when a person develops emotional or behavioral symptoms in response to a stressful situation. Stressors can be anything that causes duress. Maher believed that in Paula’s case it was caused by abuse from Chino. A patient with adjustment disorder is depressed, and her ability both to think clearly and to concentrate are impaired. A person who has the symptoms for more than six months often has an anxiety or mood disorder.

  Maher believed that Paula suffered from post-traumatic stress disorder, a recognized psychiatric illness. Some of the symptoms Paula displayed were anxiety, difficulty sleeping, excessive worry, feelings of being trapped or being unable to escape her situation, nightmares, and depression. Under the right circumstances, he said, anyone can develop PTSD.

  A diagnosis for PTSD is reached by identifying anything in a patient’s life that causes enough stress or trauma to form the base for the disorder. If there is enough stress to cause anxiety and make a patient relive an event, and if there is a relationship between those and a mood disorder, the patient meets the criteria for a diagnosis of PTSD.

  Maher believed that Paula suffered from battered spouse syndrome, a psychological disorder that is a subset of PTSD. BSS is associated with the consistent abuse of one person by another, usually within a marriage or an exclusive relationship. The abuse has to be severe enough to cause psychological and emotional disorders. From the way Paula said Chino abused her, she easily fit into a diagnosis of BSS. Maher thought Paula suffered from PTSD and BSS at least as far back as the robbery at Flowers By Patricia.

  Paula was of average intelligence, Maher noted, but said she showed intellectual inconsistency. Maher believed Paula’s psychological problems began when she became pregnant with Ashley. Paula was anxious and depressed, Maher said, because she believed herself too immature to care for a child, and she had doubts as to whether or not Chino would help out.

  Up until then, he said, Paula seemed to adjust to the stresses of being sent back to Colombia and her first pregnancy and subsequent abortion. She went “a little overboard” in high school, experimenting with sex and drugs. Paula felt like she didn’t “fit in” when she returned from Colombia, and she was angry with her parents for sending her away.

  Paula told Maher how she met Chino, and how she liked it that he always had pot and money. During the interview Maher asked Paula if Chino was her first love.

  “I still love him,” she said, and then broke down and wept. “I know that doesn’t make any sense. He’s dead, and the terrible things that happened. It doesn’t make sense, but I still love him.”

  Paula told Maher how the relationship with Chino had started off well, but deteriorated into abuse and control. She said she tried to get away from him.

  “I told him I didn’t want to see him anymore and that I didn’t want him coming around,” she said. “He would say, ‘No, we’re not going to break up.’ Sometimes he grabbed me by the neck and said, ‘I’ll kill you if you leave me.’ Then he knocked me down and ran away from me.”

  Paula told Maher about Chino’s pattern of abusing her and then apologizing. But the apology always came with a condition: they would stay together.

  Paula said she was worried and angry about not being able to break up with Chino. “I felt, ‘Oh, my God, if I don’t act right, if I don’t do the right thing here, something really, really bad is going to happen,’” she said. “Maybe it’s going to happen to me or maybe it’s going to happen to him, or maybe it’s going to happen to somebody else, but we’re not playing games anymore.”

  Paula said she was relieved when Chino moved to Florida, but she missed him, too. “I was worried that he would show up at any moment,” she said.

  Maher noticed that Paula had trouble keeping the timeline straight. She jumped from one subject to the next, and thought it was because Chino was still trying to control and manipulate her.

  During her teenage years, Maher said, Paula was “very immature and impulsive” and wanted adult privileges. But, he noted, “she never established herself as an independent adult. She was never self-supporting.”

  Paula had limited social skills, but “she knew how to flirt as a woman, and how to make herself attractive and appealing to men.”

  When Paula went to Florida in 1998, she wanted to maintain a platonic relationship with a friend named Felix, who lived in New York. This caused a conflict with Chino, but they stayed together four months in Tampa, and then went back to New York to live with Paula’s parents. Luis, Paula’s father, saw her kissing Chino and angrily told her to do that in private because it disrespected him.

  “Who the hell are you to tell me what to do in relationships when you’re cheating on my mother?” Paula responded angrily.

  The argument represented a traumatic break with Paula’s family and left her feeling uncertain about being able to rely on them, stay with them, or depend on t
hem in the future.

  At the jail Paula was frightened. She continued to hear voices and wasn’t sure where they came from. Paula didn’t understand why the deputies watched her all the time.

  “They say that I killed a cop, that policewoman, that police lady,” she said. “I don’t understand. I didn’t want anybody to die. I didn’t kill anybody.”

  Paula wasn’t certain why she was in jail. “I don’t see how all this happened,” she said. “It happened so fast. I knew Chino could get out of hand, but I never imagined it could be like this. Who are you?”

  “I’m a doctor.”

  “Can you prescribe medicine for me?”

  Maher told her no, but she asked several times.

  The psychiatrist wanted to know about the bank robbery. He asked if she had shot anyone.

  “No, I didn’t shoot anybody,” she said.

  “Did Chino shoot her?”

  “Well, I guess he had to. I didn’t see him. Who else would have?”

  Paula was concerned about their hostage. “What about Isaac?” she asked. “He didn’t get hurt, did he?”

  Paula rambled incoherently sometimes. Maher “definitely” concluded that she was an abused spouse and suffered from BSS, and that she was deeply depressed because of it. He believed Paula suffered from BSS for at least “a couple of months” before the flower shop robbery. Her emotional and psychological problems probably went back much farther.

  Paula was sure she was going to die in the apartment before Chino killed himself.

  “I believe that she was terrified of him at the time they were in the apartment together, where he killed himself, and for several months leading up to that,” Maher said.

  She became so accustomed to Chino pushing her around. “After a while, I didn’t pay any attention to it,” she said. “I didn’t think it was abusive at the time.” When Paula started to think more clearly, she said, she realized that this behavior was violent and abusive.