Manifest Injustice

by Barry Siegel

  Within half an hour, Sergeant Ford had compared Bill’s palm print with the latent prints lifted from the Chevy Impala. Bill’s right palm print, he reported, matched Latent Lift 1, taken from the chrome strip by the window, above the handle, on the driver’s door. At 5:00 P.M., Sheriff Blubaum called Robert Stiteler, superintendent of the sheriff department’s Support Services Division, asking him to come down and confirm Sergeant Ford’s match. As an adjunct faculty member at Glendale Community College, Stiteler had been Carol’s teacher in her two courses—Evidence Technology I and II—that involved advanced instruction on how to take, lift, classify, develop, photograph, file and prepare fingerprints. He arrived at the sheriff’s department within twenty minutes. Diehl joined him in the lab, leaving Macumber with the other deputies in the internal investigations office. Fifteen minutes later, Diehl returned. “Bill,” he said, “I want to read your rights to you again.” Then Diehl informed Macumber that one of his palm prints matched a latent palm print from the victims’ car. At 5:35 P.M., Diehl snapped handcuffs on Macumber and placed him under arrest on two counts of homicide. As they led him away, Macumber turned to one of the deputies, Jack Barnby, who’d worked with him as liaison to the Desert Survival Unit, and said, “Jack, I have never killed anybody in my life.” Barnby’s response, as Carl Pace would recall it: “I know Bill, I know.”

  To Macumber, it would forever remain unclear how Sheriff Blubaum could call the newspapers and dispatch Carol around noon if the palm print didn’t match until 5:00 P.M. In his jail cell thirty-eight days after his arrest, writing in his journal well past midnight, Macumber asked, “How did Carol know five hours in advance of my being arrested?”

  * * *

  Macumber’s interrogation on August 28 did not end with his arrest at 5:35 P.M. In Room 10 of the Maricopa County sheriff’s department shortly before 7:00 P.M., Sergeant Ed Calles, too, read him his rights. The two men would spend the next five hours alone together, Calles interrogating Macumber until midnight about Carol’s statement, the palm print match, his .45-caliber gun and his bloody fight with three boys beside the freeway. Bill still ate nothing, instead drinking cup after cup of coffee. His head was swimming, but he kept talking. Even now he thought they’d resolve this matter. He saw no need for a lawyer.

  At some point late in the evening, rather than flatly deny the entire document, Macumber began to scribble corrections on a copy of Carol’s statement, what he saw as mistakes and discrepancies in her account. According to the brief, three-page report Calles wrote the next day, Macumber also again allowed that he “had made a statement to her reference the ‘kids on Scottsdale Road,’” but “only to keep her from leaving.” Once more, though, anyone poring through the documents later could only speculate, for Ed Calles—like his colleagues during the day—made no record of the five-hour interrogation: No shorthand transcriber, no tape recorder, no notes.

  * * *

  On August 30, two days after the marathon interrogation, Calles signed a murder complaint against Macumber. News that the sheriff’s department had finally cracked the haunting twelve-year-old Scottsdale murder case—“one of Arizona’s most inexplicable ever”—dominated banner headlines in the local newspapers and prime time on the local TV stations. Quotes from Sheriff Blubaum filled the stories, his comments about the “baffling lack of motive” and the “thousands of hours of investigative work.” So did shots of Macumber being led down hallways in handcuffs, his eyes blank and downcast, cameras whirring and clicking, the TV reporters shouting “Did you kill those two kids?… How come your fingerprints were all over the car?” A newswire story had Carol explaining that she’d turned in her husband because she “feared for her life,” given the divorce proceedings. Another story quoted Tim McKillop’s mother crying, “May God have mercy on his soul.… I just feel sorry for him,” and Joyce Sterrenberg’s father saying, “I’d like to know what his state of mind was, why it was so important that he kill two people for nothing?”

  But one article on August 30, in a small newspaper serving Macumber’s local Deer Valley community, offered a different perspective. “DV Residents Upset with Macumber’s Treatment,” the headline reported. The story continued: “Deer Valley residents are talking about nothing else since William Wayne Macumber has been charged with the shooting deaths 12 years ago of a young couple north of Scottsdale. The general consensus of Macumber’s neighbors is he was a model citizen.… The residents of the area in which Macumber lived are concerned about the way Macumber is being treated, both by the police and the media. And they’re upset because Mrs. Macumber is familiar with police operations due to her work at the sheriff’s department, and she may have access to privileged information. Residents feel she may be using that knowledge in the divorce proceedings the Macumbers are going through.” Already, a hint of certain suspicions: “When asked if he felt Macumber was being set up by his wife, a member of the desert survival unit replied, ‘No comment.’”

  * * *

  Yet another perspective emerged that same day. An elderly woman named Mildred Lunsford called the sheriff’s department to say that she, in effect, had an alibi for Bill Macumber on the night of the Scottsdale murders. Two detectives came to take her statement. The story she told them: That day, May 23, 1962, she’d been headed for Veterans Hospital to visit her very sick husband. Her “little Rambler” started giving her trouble. It would go, it would stop, not moving until she shifted. She called the Macumbers at their gas station. “Mac”—Harold Macumber—gave her a ride to the hospital, then took her car to their station. She called over there at 7:30 P.M. and talked to Bill, who was still working on the Rambler. She called and talked to Bill again at 8:00 P.M. When she called at 9:30, Harold answered the phone, and Mildred could hear Bill in the background, “yowling because he couldn’t figure what was wrong.” At 11:00 P.M., she called again and talked to Bill. They were still working. “That’s all I know is that they were there, Bill was working on my car the 23rd of May,” Mildred told the two deputies. “I talked to Bill at 9:30, then again at 11.” She recalled the date clearly because her husband (“Harry J. Grimston, veteran of World War I”) moved to the hospital’s “dying room” that day and passed away five days later, on May 28. Also, she kept a journal in her glove compartment of all her car repairs, listed by date. She was absolutely certain. She’d talked to Bill that night, right up to 11:00 P.M.

  Millie Lunsford’s account, of course, didn’t fit with the murder complaint signed that day by Ed Calles—or with what the detectives questioning her apparently believed to be Macumber’s statements during his August 28 interrogation. So one of the officers now attempted to dissuade Millie.

  Detective Heberling: “Mrs. Lunsford, we have explained to you that William Macumber has given a statement and it does not corroborate what you have told us. With this knowledge, do you still claim that William Wayne Macumber was working on your vehicle on the night of the 23rd, May the 23rd, 1962?”

  Lunsford: “Well all I know, to my knowledge I know they were working on my car. I mean they were there, both of them. Now, how can he be in two places at once?”

  The detectives’ conclusion, offered in their written report: “It should be noted that at no time on May 23 did Mrs. Lunsford actually see suspect William Macumber. She only heard someone’s voice in the background during a telephone conversation with the suspect’s father. Mrs. Lunsford’s statement cannot be corroborated.… It is the opinion of these officers that no further action should be taken in reference to Mrs. Lunsford’s statement.” Their closing words, in all caps: “PREVIOUSLY CLEARED BY ARREST.”

  CHAPTER 4

  Maricopa County Jail

  AUGUST–OCTOBER 1974

  In his cell at the Maricopa County Jail, Bill Macumber began to keep a journal, writing in tablets he bought at the jail commissary. As he told it, he first put pen to paper a week after his arrest, so he reconstructed the first few days and later revised other portions “to convey in better words what took place
.”

  1st Day, Wednesday August 28, 1974.

  I have been arrested for murder. I have not killed anyone but no one here will believe me.… When I first entered the jail everything seemed unreal but now the reality of it all is setting in and I am afraid. I am also depressed beyond words but thus far my pride will not allow me to show any outward emotion. What about my three small boys? What will they be thinking and where are they?… Finally the last door shuts and I am in a cell. There are four bunks in the cell but I am the only occupant. I have not been given a mattress cover or a blanket but at this point I am just too tired to care.… Without question this has been the very worst day of my life.…

  2nd Day, Thursday August 29, 1974.

  12:15 a.m.: Thoughts concerning my children keep going through my mind. What is happening to them? Do they still love their father or has my wife Carol succeeded in making them believe their father is a murderer? I want to see my boys so bad and to tell them, to make them believe that everything will be alright.…

  4:45 a.m.: I am now very afraid, terribly tired and very depressed.

  8:45 a.m.: They have come to get me once again for questioning. I was told I would be able to see my boys but they are not here.… I am terribly disappointed and I tell the officers that I have nothing further to say to them. I am allowed to call my father and he has told me they are getting a lawyer for me. I know now I should have called Dad sooner but I honestly thought I could straighten this whole mess out without getting him or anyone else involved.… I am being held for murder and I won’t be going home to my children now and perhaps maybe never.… I miss Scott, Steve and Ronnie so much. Thankfully no one can see me cry right now.

  4:45 p.m.: There is an attorney here to talk to me and there is so very much to talk about if it’s not already too late. I have never met this man before but I have to trust him.…

  3rd Day, Friday August 30.

  3:15 p.m.: There is trouble in the cellblock. The other prisoners have found out … that I was a volunteer member of the Sheriff’s Department. They are making no effort to hide their hatred.… For the first time real fear is beginning to set in. My stomach is in knots and the pain is almost unbearable.…

  7:30 p.m.: I have asked that I be put in one of the solitary cells because of the present situation with the other prisoners.… It turns into a very long night filled with jeers, curses and threats.… A man in the next cell to the left of mine has just thrown a roll of burning toilet paper into my cell.

  Macumber’s fourth day in jail, Saturday, August 31, was his birthday. He wrote, “I would never have believed I would be spending my 39th birthday in a place like this. Never in my life have I ever known fear as I know it right now.”

  That evening, Bill’s father and brother, Harold and Robert, came to see him. Bob Macumber had first heard of his brother’s arrest on the radio. Then Carol had called, Carol whom Bob used to date. The news floored him. He broke down crying, right there in the office at Motorola where he worked as a manufacturing engineer. He could not believe this report. It all felt so surreal, so out of the blue, so not fitting. And so hard to understand: When he asked Carol why they’d arrested Bill, she said she had no idea, she didn’t know. Only later did Bob and Harold learn about Carol’s statement.

  Bob immediately called his father. Together they talked to a private defense lawyer, who offered to represent Bill—for $25,000 up front. Vainly, Bob and Harold tried to raise that kind of money from relatives. They would keep looking for someone who charged less, but for the time being, they arranged for a county public defender to handle the case. That’s who had visited Macumber on his second day in jail. Talking to Bill now, Bob and Harold assured him that they were doing everything possible on his behalf. They sat before him, separated by bars. They couldn’t touch him, couldn’t slap him on the back.

  Harold had a difficult question for his son: Are you responsible for this? Did you do this?

  “Absolutely no,” Bill said. “I did not.”

  That satisfied Harold and Bob. No way would Bill lie to his dad, Bob thought. No way. He’d always been an honest and trustworthy man. It made absolutely no sense that Bill would have killed those two young people in 1962. Newly married, awaiting the birth of his first child, working long hours—he had no reason to be out in the desert late at night following those two people.

  Four days later, on September 3, Bill received another visitor—Carol. Her arrival shocked him. “Actually,” he wrote in his journal, “she didn’t come to see me but rather to tell me she needed money to make the house payment and to pay other bills.” Bill asked if he could see the boys. Maybe, she replied, if I get the money. Bill looked at his wife. You misunderstood what I said, he told her. I didn’t say I killed those two.

  * * *

  Macumber’s preliminary hearing began the next day in Mesa, just outside Phoenix, and continued for one week. Bill entered the courtroom each morning through a phalanx of reporters and photographers. On Wednesday, September 11—after listening to Diehl, Calles and the fingerprint experts testify—Justice of the Peace Lawrence Mulleneaux ordered Macumber held for trial in superior court on two counts of murder. A day later, at a bond hearing, Ed Calles added a new piece of seemingly damning evidence: The sheriff’s department, he testified, had just received a telegram from FBI laboratories in Washington, D.C., stating that ejector marks on one of the shell casings found at the murder scene matched the ejector of Bill’s .45-caliber gun.

  Macumber’s defense could only counter with character witnesses. Half a dozen of them testified to Bill’s high character and reputation in the community. If released on bond, he would certainly appear for all court hearings, they said. They were convincing; despite it being a murder case, Superior Court Judge Williby E. Case Jr. ruled that Macumber should be bailable and set bond at $55,000.

  The Macumber family didn’t have that kind of money, though. Bob and Harold put up their homes as collateral and started searching for others willing to do the same. “That’s an awful lot of money,” Macumber wrote in his journal. “I see no possible way that I can ever raise that much. At the moment I feel so very empty.”

  For days now, the recurring themes in his journal entries had been his longing for visitors, his insomnia, his burning stomach pain, his missing medications, his mounting fears, and—most of all—his three sons. He hoped they were safe. He wondered if anyone had thought to take them dove hunting, as he would have at that time of year. He pictured them waking in the morning, getting ready for school. He wished he could be with them for just a few minutes. He prayed that they continued to believe in him, to believe him innocent.

  On September 7, midway through the preliminary hearing, he had the chance to visit with his sons briefly at the jail. He assured them of his innocence. “This has been the most beautiful day I’ve had since this whole thing started,” he wrote in his journal. “All my questions were answered when I felt their hugs and their kisses.… Knowing that they love me and believe in me is the most important thing in the world. I am crying as I write this but it is out of happiness.… Everything is going to be alright. I just know it will be after seeing them.”

  Things weren’t all right, though. Jail was like “a world until itself. No sunlight, no sounds other than those made by the doors or the prisoners.” He could not imagine how a man might exist over extended time under such conditions, without dying just a little or going partway insane.

  His dad and brother came to visit after the bond hearing. They promised they’d try to somehow raise the bail, and they urged him to hang in, to have faith, for God would not forget him. But after they left, Macumber was alone again, without solace. He loved to have people around, he loved the kidding and teasing and normal bantering in life. In jail, however, his interactions with others were few and rarely positive. Once he cadged a sandwich from a corrections officer, another time a piece of steak in exchange for cigarettes. Mostly, all he had were distant noises—a fight going on in 42 Block, a
nother prisoner shouting threats. That was it. Days went by without any visitors or mail. He read books, he played solitaire, he marked dates off on a calendar. He wished “with all his heart” he could say good night to his boys and tuck them into their beds.

  On his twenty-fourth day in jail, September 20, his dad and brother came again. They assured him that their efforts to raise bail were “going well.” Bill appreciated their report. He valued his brother’s support and regretted those times in the past when he’d treated Bob poorly. Always it had been over Carol, how he’d countenanced her hostility to his family. He hoped Bob understood. He hoped Bob would forgive him for being a fool.

  Several times, during visits with his lawyer, Bill learned of “some evidence pending” that could be of great benefit but for legal reasons had not yet been released to his attorney. Each day he waited for more word about this. Evidence that could clear a man must surely be given out. Surely. “I have to win,” Macumber wrote one day. “There is no other way if I wish to go on living.”

  On the twenty-sixth day, September 22, he received letters from each of his sons. They’d been written at a neighbor’s house. He wept, reading his boys’ words, the feeling so bittersweet. He hoped someone could find a way of getting him out of this place. Only that would settle his nerves and end his terrible depression.

  Two days later, he woke up shaking and crying and couldn’t stop. A nurse at the dispensary gave him a pill, but it didn’t help. “I’m afraid I’m not going to make it and I don’t know what to do,” he wrote. “Dear God help me please.”