by Edward Humes
She did not know—as no one on the defense team could know—that Jerry Lee Coble had actually gotten off easy. He was damaged, certainly, but not destroyed, though he could have been. For there was a great deal of additional information available on his crimes and his lack of credibility, much of it known to the district attorney’s office. Had it been presented to the jury, it could have severely eroded whatever remained of Coble’s viability as a witness, and it could have dealt a serious blow to the credibility of the sheriff and district attorney as well. But that information was not used in the trial, and for one reason: The defense never saw it.
As in so many other cases in Kern County, and despite laws requiring full disclosure, key information about Coble was never given to Pat Dunn’s lawyers. And, as a result, Gary Pohlson’s victory over Jerry Coble remained a hollow one—for it would not last.
• • •
Whatever success Pat Dunn’s defense team enjoyed with Jerry Coble, was soon upstaged by the painful appearance on the witness stand of someone close to Pat. The real estate attorney Teri Bjorn would be the prosecution’s last witness, and its most devastating.
A month before trial, Kate Rosenlieb had told Somers about a supposed conversation between Bjorn and Pat within hours of Sandy’s disappearance, and the prosecutor was anxious for the jury to hear about it—just as the defense badly wanted it kept out of court. Teri Bjorn certainly did not want to testify, and both she and Pat asserted that their conversation was protected by the rigid rules of attorney-client privilege, rendering it confidential and out of bounds to the prosecution. Somers, however, argued there was no right of confidentiality. Basing his argument on Kate Rosenlieb’s secondhand recollections, he asserted Pat had sought Bjorn’s help in gaining an illegal power of attorney over Sandy’s money, a criminal act that would not be protected by the privilege.
With the two sides unable to agree on this crucial issue, the judge presiding over the case, Robert Baca, had reserved judgment on what role, if any, Bjorn would play in the trial until he had heard the rest of the prosecution’s case. Pat’s defense team had been pleased. They had wanted Baca on the case from the outset, for he was known to be prickly and independent, with a history of taking on the district attorney’s office. Because Baca had been a public defender early in his career, Pohlson figured he would be particularly protective of attorney-client communications. Pohlson’s enthusiasm for the judge faded quickly—the out-of-town lawyers simply did not get along with Baca—but even so, when the judge accepted Somers’ suggestion that the court hold an in camera session on the Bjorn matter, the defense team was aghast. They had expected to prevail on argument alone.
Instead, Baca decided he should meet in chambers alone with Bjorn and a court reporter to determine if Somers was right. If there was at least some evidence that Pat had sought Bjorn’s help in committing a crime, Baca said, the privilege would evaporate and conversation would be admitted as evidence in the trial.
In chambers, Teri Bjorn explained to the judge that she was not just a lawyer to the Dunns, but their friend as well. She said Pat had called her one morning to say Sandy was missing, describing to her how he had awakened to find his wife gone and how he had searched for her through the night. Bjorn couldn’t remember all the details of this long-ago conversation or the exact words used, but what she did recall jibed with what Pat had said on other occasions to other people.
From Sandy’s disappearance, the conversation next turned to the Morning Star housing project. Bjorn could not remember if she had brought the subject up, or if Pat had; she did recall she had been trying to reach the Dunns for about a week in order to talk to them about the project, so she may well have instigated the discussion. Both she and Pat were concerned that bills were coming due on Morning Star, and that the money Sandy had lined up for that purpose through sales of some municipal bonds had not been released yet. Pat, according to Bjorn, then said if Sandy came back and found the project shut down because the bills had not been paid, she would be very concerned. It was at this point that Pat asked whether some mechanism might be put into place to get the bills paid. “Could I use a power of attorney?” Bjorn recounted him asking.
As she explained to Judge Baca, she then responded no, because Sandy would have to sign such an authorization in advance, and as far as Bjorn knew, Sandy had not done so. It seemed clear to Bjorn that Pat did not know what a power of attorney was, she told Baca. Bjorn then recalled suggesting to Pat that she would talk to another lawyer in her firm about what else might be done to pay the bills until Sandy came home. And that was the end of any discussion about money or power of attorney, Bjorn said.
She added one more detail: “I believe he told me he had either filed or was going to file a missing-persons report.”
This ambiguous point would be pivotal, because it could help determine an important point: when this call took place. If Pat had already filed the report, the conversation with Bjorn must have occurred on July 2, the morning after Sandy was reported missing. If so, there was nothing really strange going on. But if he hadn’t yet reported Sandy missing, the conversation must have occurred on July 1, well before the missing-persons call. That would make Pat look very, very bad. He would have put Sandy’s money before Sandy herself.
From his in camera session, Judge Baca ruled there was sufficient evidence to believe that Pat had sought Bjorn’s services to commit a crime or fraud, which meant the attorney-client privilege didn’t apply, and Bjorn would have to testify before the jury. The judge decided that Pat had been trying to gain control of all of Sandy’s assets, even though Bjorn had testified that Pat’s inquiry was strictly limited to paying bills that Sandy had previously expressed her intention to pay. In coming to this conclusion, it seemed the judge had listened less to Bjorn’s actual testimony than to Somers’ argument, which was based on Kate Rosenlieb’s version of what Teri Bjorn had said (Somers had handed Baca a copy of Rosenlieb’s notes to use as a guide). Indeed, Bjorn told Baca that Pat had only asked if a power of attorney were possible; he hadn’t told Bjorn he wanted one put in place, as Somers and Rosenlieb had stated. The difference here is small but crucial: The former could be likened to asking an accountant if a certain tax deduction is legal; the latter would be akin to ordering the accountant to take the deduction whether it’s legal or not. The defense might have objected to this leap in logic by the judge, but they were not allowed to be present for the in camera hearing and no transcript of the secret proceeding was made available until later.
So Teri Bjorn returned to the courtroom, where she was ordered to repeat her story. Her testimony before the jury mirrored what she had told Baca in chambers in most respects. Despite Somers’ best efforts, she never actually testified that Pat had asked her for power of attorney over Sandy’s funds. The DA twice asked if Pat requested a power of attorney, but Bjorn never gave him a yes or no answer. All she would say was what she had told the judge: that Pat was searching for a mechanism to pay the Morning Star bills, and that he didn’t actually know what a power of attorney was—hardly the evidence Somers was looking for. Yet, from that, the prosecutor would later argue that Pat Dunn asked for power of attorney, and Judge Baca never corrected him. Neither did the defense: It seems everyone else in the courtroom remembered Teri Bjorn saying something she never actually said on the witness stand.
There was one crucial point on which Bjorn’s courtroom testimony differed from her in camera version. The second time around, in front of the lawyers and jurors, Bjorn did not mention being unsure about whether she had spoken to Pat before or after he reported Sandy missing. Instead, she simply said, to the best of her recollection, the conversation occurred during the morning of July 1—which everyone in the courtroom knew would have been before Pat reported Sandy missing. Baca did not say anything about this discrepancy, and neither did Bjorn, so the defense remained in the dark. John Somers had hit the jackpot. In the end, the most devastating part of Teri Bjorn’s testimony was not that Pat had
sought her advice, but when he sought it.
The defense had witnesses and evidence available to suggest that the call described by Bjorn had been made later in the week than she recalled,7 but their proof would have been complicated and hard for the jury to follow. Gary Pohlson decided not to make an issue out of it, instead arguing that it didn’t matter what day the call was made because Pat’s question to Bjorn was an innocent one. Pat had called to tell a friend about his missing wife, and that friend—who happened also to be a real estate attorney—brought up the subject of the Morning Star project and the outstanding bills. And in response, Pohlson said, Pat had simply expressed a desire to carry out Sandy’s wishes in her absence, the actions of a man just trying to go on with life. If Pat’s friends were unanimous about anything, it was that he was the type of person who would try to go on with his normal routines, no matter what—and that Sandy would have wanted it that way.
Pohlson’s argument sounded reasonable as he delivered it, but it gave Somers an opening as well. With the July 1 date unchallenged and Bjorn’s uncertainty in chambers never passed on to the jury, the prosecutor countered with a powerful and damning argument: The only person Pat Dunn called that morning, the prosecutor said, was his lawyer. He wanted to get hold of Sandy’s money, he wanted to get power of attorney, he wanted to probate his wife’s will right away. “I’m sorry, but that is not the first thing on your mind when your wife has disappeared. . . . But if you know that your wife is dead, ladies and gentlemen, then it’s very important.”
With that, Somers’ portrait of Pat Dunn as coldblooded killer was complete. He had already played that awful tape recording of Pat reporting Sandy missing, the jokes and laughter sounding loud and tinny in the hushed courtroom. The jury had already heard Kate Rosenlieb tell of how Pat had showed no emotion over his wife’s disappearance—other than seeming happy at times. First his own words were used against him, then his best friend’s and now his own lawyer’s. As hard proof, Bjorn’s testimony had little weight. But its emotional impact on the case seemed incalculable: It just didn’t sound right. The mere fact that Pat’s own lawyer was testifying against him was devastating. If the jury had known their conversation might have taken place a day after Pat reported Sandy missing, Bjorn’s testimony might have had little force. As it was, when Teri Bjorn left the courtroom, the prosecutor rested his case, certain he had convinced the jury that Pat Dunn was guilty beyond a reasonable doubt.
5
BY THE TIME THE TRIAL REACHED THIS POINT, PAT Dunn sat numb and barely able to follow the proceedings. He had been active and participating fully at the start, writing notes, whispering to his lawyers, savoring early victories and any look of chagrin on the prosecutor’s face. But his enthusiasm had faded with time and, even now, with his moment finally arrived—the start of the defense case—he had become so intimidated and fearful of being on trial for his life that he found it hard to concentrate. He would later say he could remember little of what was said or done. He stopped expressing a desire to take the witness stand and instead kept saying to Laura, “I just wish it was over.” She bit her lip and stopped herself from replying, “Be careful what you wish for.” Because if it ended then and there, she feared, he’d lose.
The defense had been wounded by Judge Baca’s decision to compel Teri Bjorn to testify, but though Laura was uneasy, the team by no means considered it a fatal blow. Gary Pohlson mounted Pat’s defense as planned, presenting witnesses to speak of the good relations between the Dunns, to deny there were any serious fights, money problems or plans for divorce, and to confirm that Pat had confided in a select few early on about Sandy’s disappearance. In addition to these, there was Jim Marino, who could testify about his own experiences with Sandy’s memory problems, bolstering Pat’s statements to police. Together, these witnesses provided a different mosaic than the prosecution’s, a portrait of a man who had no reason to want his wife dead and who acted reasonably after her disappearance, and of a woman whose mental state left her at risk to wander off—making her easy prey for street criminals or worse.
The financial planner, Kevin Knutson, returned to the stand a second time, now a defense witness key to building this alternate assemblage of the puzzle pieces—Laura Lawhon’s version. Knutson all but destroyed the prosecution’s theory that a desire to get Sandy’s money provided Pat’s motive for murder. Knutson swore that during their June 30 meeting, one of the things Sandy said that she wanted was a living trust to allow all of her money to go to Pat without a will, without inheritance taxes, and without the ability of relatives such as her sister to interfere. There was no way Sandy wanted a divorce, Knutson added. The Dunns were getting along well, loving and at ease with one another when he left them on Sandy’s last day alive.
Knutson went on to say that he would have had the papers drawn up in a week or two, and that Pat’s financial position would have been infinitely better once Sandy signed them. Citing Knutson’s testimony, Tom Goethals, one of Pat’s lawyers, would argue, “There is no evidence Pat Dunn killed his wife to get her money. He didn’t need to. . . . On June 30, he had every reason to let her live.”
As important as the defense regarded this meeting on the day before Sandy disappeared, something that happened on the day after she vanished was equally critical. Somers had tried to portray Pat’s behavior that day as inappropriate for a worried husband with a missing wife, wanting jurors to see Pat as greedy, insensitive and, ultimately, very aware that the wife he claimed as missing was actually dead. But the defense wanted jurors to hear about Sandy’s activities on the day after she disappeared—as told by Rick Williams’ secretary, Ann Kidder.
Kidder reiterated the story she had told the sheriff’s department, recounting how Sandy had called the accountant’s office that morning of July 1, canceling her appointment for later that day with Williams. Kidder knew Sandy’s distinctive voice from a dozen phone conversations, and had no doubt it was her calling.
Her testimony mirrored her previous statements: “She seemed to be upset, mumbling, going on. . . . She said her husband had scheduled an appointment with some Indians, and the Indians were coming down out of the hills and he didn’t let her know about scheduling this appointment, and so she was real upset about that. . . . She said . . . ’my husband doesn’t like to wear any clothes.’ ”
Ann Kidder was a godsend for Pat Dunn, or so it seemed to Gary Pohlson and Laura Lawhon. Attractive, soft-spoken, competent and professional—and lacking any reason to lie either for or against Pat Dunn’s interests—Kidder seemed irreproachable. Which is exactly what the Kern County Sheriff and District Attorney thought when they considered her a prosecution witness, before they realized her story exonerated Pat rather than hanged him. For Ann Kidder had marked dates and times on her office calendars, providing her with documentary evidence to support her recollections about the exact time and date of this babbling phone call: Sandy Dunn talked to Ann Kidder eight hours after Jerry Coble swore her dead body had been hauled out of Pat Dunn’s house.
Kidder provided the added bonus of making Sandy sound addled and bizarre, consistent with a woman suffering an episode of mental impairment and out wandering, perhaps placing her call from a phone booth somewhere en route to her encounter with a killer.
It was powerful testimony for the defense, though there was more to it than anyone appeared to notice during the trial. No one attributed any particularly significance to the content of Sandy’s babbling—at the time, it seemed enough to the defense that she babbled at all.
Somers, like the detectives had before him, tried to confuse Kidder by throwing a passel of dates at her rapid-fire, hoping she would get some details wrong and give him some inconsistency with which to assail her credibility. He did find a few—for instance, Kidder recalled in her testimony that one earlier appointment made by Sandy was for 1:30, when the calendar said 2:00—but such minor niggling did not affect Kidder’s core story, which had been consistent from the start. Somers also suggested the call
er could have been someone imitating Sandy, but Kidder made it clear that this had not been the case. The prosecutor’s attempts to suggest Kidder might be wrong about the July 1 date were countered by her boss, Rick Williams, who remembered it exactly the same as Kidder.
“Ann Kidder alone gets us an acquittal,” Pohlson declared after she was through. And Laura had to admit that, in a swearing contest, she couldn’t imagine the jury choosing Jerry Coble over Ann Kidder. Yet, Laura knew, that’s exactly what happened at the sheriff’s department and the district attorney’s office when they chose to prosecute Pat.
• • •
As good a witness as Ann Kidder was, the heart of the defense lay in proving Jerry Lee Coble had actively plotted to frame Pat Dunn with lies. The groundwork had already been laid by Coble’s erroneous description of the cars in Pat’s driveway. The defense hoped to make the case against Coble overwhelming with the testimony of Rex Martin, who said that he saw Coble casing Pat’s house weeks after the murder—when the white Tempo Coble described was in the driveway.
To Laura, Rex Martin was everything in a witness that Jerry Coble was not. A respected real estate developer and builder, Rex Martin projected an outwardly appealing image on the witness stand, silver haired and square jawed, a plain-talking former military pilot, as outgoing and open as Pat Dunn could be closed and prickly. Martin had served on the Kern County Parole Board and was as anti-crime as any Bakersfield bedrock conservative. Though he had known Pat for fifty years, Martin avowed he would not lie for Pat or help him get away with murdering Sandy, whom he had liked and respected. Laura watched with satisfaction as Martin repeated his story just as he had told it to her months earlier—no inconsistencies, no changes, nothing that would let John Somers say, see, it must be a lie, because the truth never changes.
Martin explained to the jury how, nearly a month after Sandy disappeared, he had tailed a man in a green Pontiac Sunbird who had been lurking outside Pat’s house. He followed the man to a nearby photo shop, where he got a good look at the man’s face. Martin then identified Coble as that man, identified a photo of Coble’s mother’s green car as the one he had followed, and identified a piece of brown paper on which he had written the Pontiac’s license plate number. Martin could not give an exact date for when this occurred; he knew only that he had taken Pat to rent the white Ford Tempo on July 24, when Pat’s own cars were seized, and that his pursuit of Coble had occurred a few days later. He did recall returning to work after the encounter with Coble and mentioning the adventure to his secretary, so he could say with certainty that it had been a weekday. That would make it either Monday, July 27, or Tuesday, July 28, a few days after a major article on the Dunn case appeared in the local paper—an article that would have given Coble all the information he would have needed to begin constructing a frame. Even Martin’s ambiguity about the date was consistent, as he had expressed a similar uncertainty in earlier statements. Recalling precise dates was difficult, he explained: By the time Pat was arrested and he realized that the green Pontiac might be significant, many months had passed, dulling memories. At the time, following the stranger in the green car had been a lark, an attempt to make Pat feel better, something Martin never dreamed would have such a monumental bearing on the case.