by Ann Rule
“There was a divorce in this case,” the prosecutor pointed out. “It was filed. The paperwork was filed by the defendant. She filled it out. There are various boxes that you can check off to indicate whether there are any particular problems. And one box of interest is whether there are any child abuse–type problems. That was not checked off. One box is whether there were physical abuse–type problems [against Teresa]. That box was not checked off.”
But these were allegedly the two issues that had motivated Teresa to kill Chuck. And she hadn’t even mentioned them when she filed for divorce!
Downes promised to call to the witness stand two men from Teresa’s apartment building who would testify that she was looking for a .45-caliber handgun in early 1997.
He told the jurors about Teresa’s Hawaiian lover, and the $500,000 bail money Nick Callas had wired to the Snohomish County Clerk’s Office. “Part of the bail order says, ‘Look, if you get released, you got to come back here for the hearings.’ And the defendant was advised of that when the hearings were set—pretrial hearing, trial hearings, things like that. In September, she was advised that she had to be present at a pretrial hearing on December 4, 1997. And on December 4, everybody showed up for the hearing—except for the defendant. She had left the continental United States on an American Airlines flight, under a false name, having paid cash for the ticket, and flew to Puerto Rico.”
Michael Downes told the jury about Teresa’s second drug overdose in four months, and how Snohomish County detectives had gone to Puerto Rico to bring her back.
Downes said he was prepared to present physical evidence that would prove the bullets that killed Chuck Leonard had been fired by the gun that Teresa gave to her friend, Joyce Lilly, to hide a few hours after his murder. Teresa’s sweatpants, also hidden by Joyce, had a splotch of blood that tested as being consistent with Chuck’s blood, and, in the crotch, body fluids that matched Teresa’s.
“You may, during the course of this case, hear evidence about a mental defense phrased two different ways. One is referred to as ‘diminished capacity,’ and the other is referred to as ‘insanity.’ ”
Diminished capacity is often the defendant’s personal choice—in taking drugs, drinking alcohol, or participating in other activities that render them temporarily incapable of employing their usual decision making. On occasion, it can be used when a defendant is developmentally disabled. Legal insanity can render them unable to tell the difference between right and wrong. But Teresa had planned Chuck’s murder, and she had also planned her alibi and hidden any evidence that might tie her to the homicide.
She had to have known the difference between right and wrong, or she wouldn’t have tried so hard to disassociate herself from Chuck’s death.
Downes said that Joyce Lilly would testify that, on two occasions, Morgan had commented to her that she didn’t “like the way Daddy touched me.” But he also pointed out that both times were after Chuck had refused to let Morgan call her mother.
“Joyce Lilly did relate that to the defendant, and the defendant didn’t have any particular reaction to it at the time; she didn’t have any questions to ask Ms. Lilly.”
If Teresa was so horrified at the possibility that her daughter had been molested by her ex-husband at that time, why hadn’t she shown some emotion? Why didn’t she pursue the subject and ask her friend Joyce exactly what Morgan had said? Why didn’t she file for sole custody?
John Henry Browne spoke next, laying out the Defense approach. He unfolded his tall frame from his chair at the Defense table, and he smiled at the jurors. His approach to them was folksy, akin to “We’re all in this together.”
“This is not an argument,” he began. “If anything I say sounds like an argument, I’m sure I’ll get objected to.”
Browne is very good with jurors, and occasionally an irritant to judges and opposing attorneys. He can be sentimental or a fierce fighter for his clients. He now began with the part of this tragic case that had affected him the most. He hoped that he wouldn’t have to call Morgan Leonard as a witness.
So did deputy prosecutor Michael Downes. Everyone involved with this case felt the same way.
“This case is about ‘Punky,’ ” Browne told the jury. “Punky is Morgan Leonard. She’s almost seven years old. Shortly before Mr. Leonard’s death, these two teddy bears [he held them up] were given to Punky by Joyce Lilly and Teresa Leonard, and inside each teddy bear was a telephone number—one for Teresa and one for Joyce.”
Brown explained that Punky had told Joyce that she “didn’t like the way her daddy touched her, didn’t like sleeping in bed with Daddy and his girlfriend, didn’t
like sleeping next to the floor, and didn’t like the fact that Daddy wouldn’t let her call Mommy.”
The foundation of the Defense case emerged early. Teresa Gaethe-Leonard was portrayed by her attorney as a woman who had survived a brutal childhood with sexual, physical, and emotional abuse. To deal with that, Browne suggested that Teresa had learned to compartmentalize her memories, feelings, and events.
“Your life is so difficult that you shut it off,” he said. “You put it into a little box, you put it on the wall, you close the door. And unless you get treatment, which Teresa did not, it stays in the boxes and it’s very hard for it to come out.”
Teresa had, Browne said, grown up to marry first to get out of her family home, was divorced from her first husband, and then met Chuck Leonard. Now, the dead victim in this case emerged looking like the villain—a cheating husband, wife abuser, child abuser, a man who had wanted his wife to abort her pregnancy, and as Teresa’s attorney described him, almost deserving of death.
Teresa had told John Henry Browne that when she confronted Chuck in the wee hours of February 20 Chuck was awake and sitting up in bed when she arrived. She had accused him of sexually touching his daughter. Teresa had decided that she wasn’t going to let what happened to her happen to her daughter. Although she couldn’t really recall what happened that night, she knew she had gone to Chuck’s house to confront him—to say: “I know what’s going on, and she [Morgan] was never coming back to his house.”
“That,” Browne said, “was the last thing she remembers.”
He had failed to add something important, and now he added it. Teresa had recalled something more. “By the way, Chuck Leonard said to Teresa, ‘I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry.’ ”
Browne assured the jurors in his opening remarks that he would produce psychiatrists and psychologists who would testify that Teresa met the criteria of both legal insanity and diminished capacity.
And he ended with a description of a woman who no longer wanted to live. “Teresa doesn’t want to be here.
Teresa wants to be dead. She’s tried that twice now. She doesn’t want to be here because she views, in her mind—the only thing that matters to her in her whole life is Morgan. And when Teresa talks to you and when she talks to me, it’s: ‘Morgan’s dead in my mind. She has to be dead. Therefore, I don’t want to be alive.’
“I have faith that the system will work. I have faith that you’ll—with everything you see and hear—come to the right result.”
The jurors filed out for a break. Brad Pince noticed how emotional and despondent Teresa seemed when they were present, but, when they left, she immediately sat up straight, and when she turned to smile at her sisters in the gallery, there were no tears in her eyes.
And so it began. Teresa Gaethe-Leonard might be cold-hearted, scheming, money-hungry, a duplicitous woman who really hated the men she had professed to love and used them only as stepping-stones on her way up. There would be witnesses to describe her intricate plans to kill Chuck Leonard, to obtain a high-caliber weapon and a disguise, and to draw in her best friend to help cover for her.
And there would be others who saw her as an ultimate victim who had done what she believed she had to do to save her child, and done so when she wasn’t in her right mind. They believed that Teresa had a mission in life,
and that was to protect Morgan.
Teresa Gaethe-Leonard was a highly emotional defendant, often breaking into sobs. She’d been found competent to participate in her own defense and to stand trial, but she had spent the weeks before trial at Western State Hospital, because the Defense team felt she’d had “a very tough time” in the Snohomish County Jail.
On the fifth day of testimony—September 15—she was more upset than usual. Considering the witnesses, that wasn’t surprising. On that morning, Michelle Conley—Chuck Leonard’s last serious lover—took the stand to describe the night in November 1996 when someone crept into his bedroom.
That part of Michelle’s testimony didn’t bother Teresa too much, but when John Henry Browne cross-examined her, Teresa’s whole body tensed.
“Did you ever see photographs in the house of—naked photographs of Chuck and Morgan?”
“No.”
“Did you see some adult video tapes in the house?”
“Yes.”
“Approximately how many?”
“There were several.”
“And you,” Browne asked, “as I understand it, just saw snippets of one?”
“Correct.”
“There were times when Morgan spent the night at Chuck’s house and you were there, right? And you spent the night with them, and all three of you slept in the bed together?”
“Yes.”
“And you told us that you might have had just T-shirts on when that happened?”
“No, we had [all our] clothes on.”
Michelle could not say that she saw Teresa in the car she followed that creepy night in November—but she recognized the car.
“When’s the last time you saw Morgan?” Browne asked suddenly.
“Day before yesterday.”
Teresa’s tormented wail echoed off the courtroom walls. She hadn’t had any contact with her daughter for more than a year. She began crying softly.
Browne pushed ahead. “You remain close to Morgan, don’t you?”
“Yes.”
“In fact, Morgan refers to you as her other mommy, right?”
“Yes.”
Judge Knight called a recess. Teresa seemed too upset to continue. Her daughter had two mother figures, and neither one was her. But Teresa Gaethe-Leonard was an accomplished actress who was chameleonlike when she dealt with lovers, friends, and sometimes strangers.
The irony was apparent. Teresa still had a living child, and there was always the possibility that she would one day regain custody of her. If she were found insane at the time of Chuck’s murder, she wasn’t likely to go to prison; she would be sent to Western State Hospital for treatment, and it was possible she would be released when she was deemed to be in her right mind.
Michelle Conley had lost the man she loved. Forever. But Michelle had always cared about Morgan, and even though Chuck was gone, she never thought of abandoning his little girl.
Teresa’s life—the life she could have had—was passing before her eyes. She may well have been crying for herself and no one else.
That Tuesday in September was going to get harder. Nick Callas was scheduled to testify in the State’s case against his former mistress.
But it was obvious from the way he looked at Teresa that he still cared about her. Romantics might call them star-crossed lovers; realists would say their affair was built on deceit and lies and was bound to disintegrate into dust. Even though Nick’s marriage had ended, and Teresa had cost him tens of thousands of dollars while they were lovers, and, technically, $500,000 when she ran to Puerto Rico, she still seemed to have a hold over him.
Answering Michael Downes’s questions, the handsome Greek real estate entrepreneur said he’d first met Teresa eleven years earlier—in 1987—when she’d come to his office on Maui looking for a rental property with a girlfriend.
“Do you see her present?”
Callas looked at the Defense table, his eyes meeting Teresa’s.
“She’s sitting right there.”
They sat a dozen feet apart, but it was like a thousand miles. Callas said the relationship that began in a businesslike manner had soon become romantic, and, in 1987, they were together as lovers for a little less than six months.
“Was there something that caused it to end for that time?” Downes asked.
“Yes … Teresa left the island.”
That seemed to be the end of that, although Callas said they had occasionally talked on the phone, and Teresa had sent him cards. He could not recall writing to her. He had heard from her again after she moved from New Orleans to Washington State in 1989 or 1990.
“Did you and Teresa Leonard resume your romantic relationship at some point?”
“Yes—in March of 1995.”
Teresa had written to Callas even before she moved out of Chuck’s house; they were still married. She had obviously wanted another man to jump to before she cut her ties with Chuck.
Even though Callas was married in 1989 and had an adopted son, he could not resist seeing Teresa again. He sent tickets for both herself and Joyce Lilly, and Joyce had watched them kiss within moments after Nick came to the condo that first night. It had been eight years since they had seen each other.
Callas testified that after that first meeting, Teresa flew to Maui regularly every few months. By June 1995, he had begun to send her money—between $1,000 and $1,500 a month; he managed that by writing checks on his many different condo accounts, staggering them so that there were never too many checks from any particular account.
“Did you and she go other places together?” Downes asked.
“We had three trips together. One was to Jackson Hole, Wyoming; one was to Whistler in Canada; and the third was to Campbell River, British Columbia.”
They had gone to ski, and their trips lasted six to nine days.
“Who paid for all these trips?”
“I did.”
Callas estimated his net worth as $2 million, and he testified that he had no annual income because everything he made was plowed back into his business.
“Okay,” Downes said. “Was it a struggle for you to pay for the defendant’s trip to Hawaii. … Was it a struggle for you to allow her to use a condominium rent-free?”
“No … no.”
`Beyond all the perks Teresa was already receiving from Nick, there was one he didn’t know about.
“Are you aware that the defendant had an American Express card for her consignment shop with the name ‘Nick Callas’ on it?”
“I wasn’t then; I am now.”
Painstakingly, Michael Downes went over a long list of checks sent to Teresa by the witness and a list of payments made to various American Express cards that Teresa was using. Callas estimated that he had talked to Teresa up to ten times a day during the two years their affair had burned most intensely. Asked by Downes to come up with the total number of phone calls the two of them had shared over two years, Callas guessed it would be seven thousand or more.
It was time for the noon break, and Nick Callas appeared relieved to step down from the stand. Still, he would have to continue in the afternoon.
Although his phone records indicated that there had been up to five phone calls from Teresa to Callas or from him to her on February 20, 1997, Nick Callas didn’t remember them. At some point that day or during the next few days, Teresa told him that Chuck had died of “profound trauma,” but she didn’t go into detail.
“I interpreted [that] as if there was a collision with a tree.” Callas testified. “That was my mental image.”
Teresa had told him that Chuck had died suddenly, but he had to look on the Internet to find out he had been murdered, shot three times. When he learned that Chuck had been murdered and Teresa had been arrested, Callas had begun to pay legal expenses for his mistress. He thought the initial costs were about $22,000.
The strain was beginning to show on Nick Callas’s face, and it was about to become more intense. State’s Exhibits No. 115 and No. 116 w
ere the two cards Teresa had given to him in midsummer 1997.
Although they weren’t dated, Callas thought Teresa had handed them to him in her apartment in Lynnwood, Washington. These were the cards his wife had found among his business papers. But Downes didn’t ask Callas about the cards—not yet.
“Would you say that you were the defendant’s best friend?” he asked instead.
“I was certainly one of her best friends, or I felt I was one of her best friends, yes.”
“Prior to the time of Chuck Leonard’s demise,” Michael Downes asked, “did the defendant ever tell you that he had been physically or sexually abusive to Morgan?”
“No.”
Odd. If Nick was Teresa’s lover and probably her “best friend,” and she was desperately worried about Morgan’s safety, why hadn’t she confided in him?
There were so many people she could have told—if it was true. But the subject of abuse to Morgan hadn’t really come up, except obliquely to Joyce Lilly, until Teresa needed a good defense.
Callas answered Downes’s queries about when and how he had learned that Teresa had fled in December 1997.
“I called her cell phone number and received a Spanish-speaking default message, and found a cell phone technological person who researched it for me. He told me that the cell phone had been turned on in Puerto Rico.”
“Had you had some concerns for some time prior to this Spanish-speaking message that you might have a problem on your hands as it related to your $500,000?” Downes asked.
“Yes. … It was the end of November—I don’t recall any specific day—when the communication between Teresa and me broke down, and I was no longer able to speak with her when I wanted to, nor was she calling me frequently. That wasn’t normal. It also wasn’t the arrangement or agreement [between us]. At that point, I became concerned.”
Nick Callas testified that he hired an attorney to represent his interests regarding the bail money after someone told him Teresa had had plastic surgery and her eyes were black postoperatively. Teresa’s younger sister, Macie, was visiting Teresa’s home in Everett that November. Nick Callas had called her to see how Teresa was, and she mentioned then that Teresa had cut her hair.