by Joe Kenda
Maybe that’s unfair. He might have been dreaming of becoming a reality TV show star. Assholes Who Go AWOL is one possible series title. (I came up with that on my own, by the way.)
At any rate, Lawrence and Vicki devised their own GoFundMe plan for raising the loot they needed to hotfoot it out of Colorado Springs. Once they moved into the Melenas’ neighborhood, they began preying on everyone around them. Just five hours before the grocery store attack was reported, the woman who lived in an apartment above the couple reported that sixty-five dollars in food stamps had been stolen.
Vicki had tried to cash in the neighbor’s food stamps at Melena’s store earlier. When the neighbor confronted her, she gave back eleven dollars’ worth of the stamps. Others in the neighborhood said the predatory couple often went door-to-door in their bare feet, begging for food, cigarettes, or money.
When mooching didn’t work, Lawrence and his gal pal turned to what they knew best: bloodthirsty crime. They decided to rob the very family who had shown them nothing but kindness and compassion.
If you’ve ever wondered why I tend to prefer the company of slobbering dogs and probably even rabid wolves over my fellow humans, I offer up this predatory pair as evidence in aggravation and mitigation.
Our simpleton couple devised a simpleton’s plan to steal whatever meager funds were in the Melenas’ cash register and then run off to California to live happily ever after, like the Kardashians . . . or the Manson family.
After trolling the neighborhood, begging money from strangers for a couple of days without success, Lawrence and Vicki entered the grocery store and asked Sam if they could use his telephone.
This was back when dinosaurs roamed the earth and there were no smartphones. Not that these two dunces could have qualified to own one anyway.
Everyone in the neighborhood knew that Sam would let them use his telephone for local calls. He charged only a quarter for this service. They also knew that Sam had to go back into his apartment and bring out the phone, which had an extra-long cord so they could use it in both the store and their home.
Lawrence’s feeble plan was to have Vicki raid the cash register while he followed Sam to the back. But he didn’t stick with the plan. Instead, he followed the old guy and savagely attacked him and his wife while Vicki cleared out the cash register.
They then ran out the back of the store and down the alley, where Rudy spotted them from his kitchen window. He ran to check on his parents and found them near death.
As I said, this case bothered the hell out of me, and it still does. It was a horrible, senseless, brutal crime. The local media didn’t pay much attention to the Melena murder-and-beating case, because it was a poor neighborhood. That pissed me off, too.
And it made me all the more determined to bring this monstrous couple to justice.
working the case
We put out a blast broadcast to all law enforcement in the country that Lawrence and Vicki were wanted for the Melena murder. In the meantime, we searched for witnesses and any information we could gather on the suspects.
We had to wait a couple of days before her doctors would let us talk to Mrs. Melena, who surprised everyone by hanging on to life. I always tried to put on my emotional body armor when interviewing victims, especially those who had lost loved ones. I hoped wrapping Kevlar panels around my heart would keep me from losing it.
Every now and then, though, a dagger slipped through.
Rosa hit me hard.
We talked to her doctor first, in the hallway outside her room. I could see Rosa, a tiny, frail woman bruised and bandaged from head to toe, as he filled us in on her condition.
“Mrs. Melena has several broken bones, and a knife laceration in her chest,” her doctor said. “But the blade hit a bone, so it didn’t do as much damage as we feared at first. She will likely survive this because she’s in such good health otherwise. You can talk to her, but keep it brief, please.”
“One more thing,” the doctor said quietly. “We haven’t told her that her husband died. She’s not ready for that yet.”
Oh, man, that made our talk more difficult because it was a big secret to guard.
We walked into her room. Rosa had her head on the pillow, and the right side of her face was unmarked. She was sleeping. The nurse gently touched her shoulder to awaken her.
“These detectives would like to talk with you, Rosa. They are trying to find the person who hurt you.”
Rosa was more comfortable speaking Spanish. My young partner, Manny, was Puerto Rican and bilingual, so he spoke to her softly.
She turned to look at him, changing position, and for the first time we saw the extent of the damage to the left side of her face.
I had to stifle my anger. You could clearly make out the imprint of a sneaker sole where Lawrence Todd had stomped on her cheek.
Manny and I were shocked at the sight of that. He must have been trying to crush her face. We photographed the injury as Rosa described the attack.
She knew the couple by name. They had asked to use the phone. Sam went back to the apartment to get it. Lawrence followed him. He attacked them with a five-inch Buck knife, stabbing them, knocking them to the floor, and then stomping on them.
He kept kicking them even after they couldn’t move, as Vicki grabbed what little there was in the store’s cash register.
After giving her account in halting Spanish, Rosa looked up at us and said, “What about my Sam?”
Oh, damn, I can’t answer that, I thought.
I said, “Mrs. Melena, we will find the people who hurt your Sam, and we will make sure they pay for it.”
Then Manny and I got out of there before we both lost it.
fiends in flight
Lawrence and Vicki had managed to hitch a ride to Denver with a trucker. The trucker told us later that he’d picked them up even though the idiot noticed blood on Todd’s jacket.
“Not very smart,” I said. “You were lucky he didn’t slice and dice you and steal your semi and all its contents.”
He had dropped them off at a truck stop near the intersection known as the Mousetrap, where the major interstates 70 and 25 intersect just north of downtown Denver.
I don’t know what it was about this couple. Even though they were vicious scum, they attracted do-gooders everywhere they went. They were panhandling outside the truck stop when a Christian couple with kids in the car offered to take the strangers to their nearby home, feed them, and let them stay the night.
Good Lord, Good Samaritans! You have to be more selective than that! Sure, be kind if you must, but be smart, too! Think about your kids! Do what’s right for them and their safety before picking up dirtbag strangers at truck stops.
Sure, you have faith and you believe in your Lord and Savior, but what if the Big Guy is busy that night protecting other souls in Ireland or Kosovo? You’ve got to watch out for your own.
I’m not being dramatic. We learned later that while in the Denver couple’s home, sleeping in their guest bedroom, Lawrence told Vicki that he wanted to kill their entire host family, steal whatever they could find, then take their car.
There was only one problem with his plan, Lawrence said.
“I only have a knife,” he told his girlfriend. “If I had a gun, I could probably do it.”
While the family slept, their killer guest searched the house for a suitable weapon but couldn’t find one, so he gave up on that plan.
Even a murdering son of a bitch has to know his limitations.
They all had a lovely breakfast the next morning. I’m sure they said grace, blessed their bagels, and exchanged pleasantries. Then the clueless Christians drove them back out to the truck stop and dropped them off.
Another trucker picked them up and headed West on I-70. They made it 350 miles and into the loneliest reaches of the state of Utah before the trucke
r had to fuel up at Crescent Junction, about four hundred miles due west of Colorado Springs.
It was his lucky day. Lawrence was probably sizing him up for a stabbing, too. But a woman at this truck stop was an avid fan of law enforcement. I’d wager she never missed an episode of Barney Miller, Kojak, The Rockford Files, Hawaii Five-O, or Police Woman.
Especially Police Woman.
Let’s call her Cagney Ann Lacey, just for fun. Her hobby was listening to police scanners and monitoring law enforcement bulletins.
Our cop groupie Cagney dreamed of one day spotting a bad guy and calling in the good guys. She desperately wanted to play the hero. Bless her little heart.
She was primed and ready, alert and sharp-eyed, with her fingers poised over the dial.
And on that particular day, her wildest Starsky & Hutch fantasies came true when into her truck stop walked two of the most wanted fugitives of the day: a short, stocky Black male with a flashy, trashy long-legged white girl sporting a red frizz ’fro.
She no doubt noted that they looked a little like the Mod Squad, minus the white guy. For our law enforcement fangirl, this was like a double-scoop sundae with a giant cherry on the top.
But our Cagney was cagey. She didn’t want to see the truck stop shot up, so she watched and waited as Lawrence and Vicki used the restrooms and bought some snacks, while their trucker filled up the fuel tanks.
As soon as they hopped back in the cab and drove off, Cagney ran to the phone and punched out 9-1-1 faster than Marshall Dillon could slap leather.
She gave an absolutely perfect description of the vehicle, its license plate number, the trucker, and his two passengers. The Utah Highway Patrol was promptly dispatched to make a felony stop on two fugitives wanted in a Colorado Springs homicide.
The Utah Highway Patrol officers made it look like a routine weight-check stop when they pulled over the eighteen-wheeler. Once they had him stopped, though, they produced a bullhorn and their firearms, ordering the trucker and his passengers out of the cab with their hands up.
There was no resistance and, this being eastern Utah, nowhere to run.
The highway patrol officers informed Lawrence and Vicki that they were under arrest for murder and aggravated assault, among other things.
They then uncuffed the trucker and informed him that he was one lucky son of a bitch because he was still alive and breathing.
“I ain’t never gonna pick up hitchhikers anymore,” he told local reporters.
Some people are slow learners, but they finally get it when they escape death. Or not.
extradition joyride
I got the call that the killers of Sam Melena were in custody in Utah out in the middle of nowhere.
“Manny, my friend, go home, pack your bags with enough clothing for five days, and meet me at the airport in an hour,” I said to my partner. “We’re bringing those two assholes back for trial.”
Manny had a wife who had just returned to work after having a baby six weeks earlier. He hesitated because he was supposed to finish his shift, go home, and relieve the babysitter while his wife continued her shift.
“But my wife isn’t home yet, Joe,” he said.
“But, Manny, she isn’t going with us,” I replied. “It’s just you and me. I’ll have my wife call Judy and work it out. You are a big-boy detective now, and duty calls us to the Beehive State, home of the Mormon Tabernacle Choir and all five hundred members of the Osmond Family.”
We flew into Salt Lake City that Friday night and then drove south two hours to the Carbon County Jail in Price, Utah, population just over seven thousand if you count all the dinosaur bones in their Prehistoric Museum.
We hit town too late to visit the jail, so we booked a room in a no-tell motel. No Ritz Carlton for us, even if there had been one within 150 miles. The Colorado Springs Police Department had a slim travel budget. We were lucky they didn’t make us spend the night under a viaduct.
“We’re getting up at four so we can get this show on the road,” I told Manny as I tucked him in for the night.
“In the morning?” he replied.
“Yeah, in the morning. We have to make a ten a.m. flight in Salt Lake City.”
About five hours later, I was up and at ’em as planned.
Manny was sleeping like a fucking stone.
I thought he was dead. He didn’t move when I told him to wake up. He didn’t move when I poked his shoulder or flicked his ear.
So I grabbed him and shook him.
Still nothing.
He left me no choice.
I reached down, gripped the steel legs of the bed, and turned it over with Detective Sleeping Beauty on board.
Manny came up out of his dead sleep with his nine-millimeter in his hand, ready to put a slug between my eyes.
Impressive autoresponse!
“Are you awake now, you SOB?” I said.
“Damn you, Kenda!” Then he laughed, a little.
We grabbed our suitcases and headed for the local hoosegow before the sun came up.
It was Saturday, and we hit a snag when we tried to check out the diabolical duo.
Frizzy-headed Vicki was all gung ho to go back to Colorado with us—even to face a first-degree murder charge—because, as she exclaimed, “I’ve never flown in no plane before!”
Lawrence, on the other hand, was playing hard to get. No stranger to the world of criminal law, he refused consent to go with us, forcing an extradition hearing.
Naturally, the county courthouse is closed on Saturdays, so we had to find a friendly judge, or at least one with a few minutes to spare before heading out to his favorite trout stream.
“We gotta make this fast because the judge wants to go fishin’,” said the bailiff.
“All rise, court is in session!”
In walked our judge, wearing the traditional black robe as well as a fishing hat with flies and lures sticking out of it.
Judge Trout Stalker looked at our noncompliant suspect and said, “Are you Lawrence Todd?”
Lawrence nodded in the affirmative.
“Extradition granted! Court closed!”
And then the judge headed for a babbling brook.
We didn’t want to haul both of them back at the same time, because Lawrence was a handful. So we put him on ice at the county jail, with plans for Manny to return a few days later and escort him with some assistance from federal marshals.
So it was just Manny, Vicki, and me who boarded on that trip. Vicki was like a kid in an amusement park at the airport. She was peeing herself about her first plane trip, despite the handcuffs and criminal charges. Actually, I’m not sure the ditzy kid had a clue to what was waiting for her in Colorado. She seemed incapable of thinking more than five minutes ahead.
When we perform extraditions on commercial flights, the protocol is to let us take our prisoners onto the plane before any other passengers. They don’t want to scare the law-abiding citizens on board.
I had a London Fog raincoat that I draped over Vicki’s handcuffs. Manny and I walked her down the ramp and into the plane. We put her in a seat between us.
We had just settled in for the ride when a flight attendant comes up, grabs the raincoat, and says, “Let me hang this up for you.”
She yanked it away, exposing the handcuffs on our Little Orphan Annie look-alike.
Manny looked up into the flight attendant’s startled face and delivered a deadpan line: “My partner here is into bondage.”
The flight attendant looked as if she might jump out of the plane.
“Can I have my coat back, please?” I said, showing her my badge.
Even as I covered up her handcuffs, Vicki was oblivious.
“Flying is so much fun!” she squealed.
kenda for the prosecution
I’m not a lawyer on T
V, but sometimes I play one in the courtroom. Actually, in this case, the prosecutor asked me to sit next to him as an advisory witness. They do this from time to time when it’s a complicated case. The district attorney figures the detective who ran the investigation knows it inside and out and can catch any lies that the defendants or their lawyers try to pass as truth.
Lawrence Todd was our only defendant because Vicki copped a plea after agreeing to testify against him. Love has its limits, you know. Especially when one of the lovers did the actual killing and the other doesn’t want to pay the price for the murder.
I was glad to have Vicki on our team, even though she was an idiot. Or maybe because she was our idiot by then. She smiled all the way on the flight home and during our interrogations and interviews, not to mention the trial.
While questioning her about meeting Lawrence in California in their early days, I asked her where she’d lived in LA.
“In a yellow house,” she said.
“Thanks for narrowing it down,” I replied.
She didn’t know her address. I’d be surprised if she knew her own birth date. I don’t know how she made it out to Colorado on her own. She said she took a bus, which probably stopped just a thousand times on its way to Colorado Springs.
Vicki had no brains and no filter. She may have been incapable of lying. She would just blurt out the truth. This is what we good guys like to call “damning testimony.”
I advised the prosecutor of Vicki’s childlike ways and fed him questions to throw at her, based on all that she had shared with me in our conversations at the county jail after her arrest.
I’m sure Lawrence Todd does not recall her testimony as fondly as I do, but fuck him.
With Vicki on the stand, blissfully sharing her account of the horrendous attack on the Melenas, I tugged on the prosecutor’s sports coat and said, “Ask her what Lawrence said when he stomped on Sam Melena’s legs after stabbing him.”
The prosecutor gladly put the question to Vicki, who chirped, “Oh, yeah, Larry said that he wanted to hear his bones break.”
The entire jury turned and glared knives and bullets at Lawrence. Talk about a group death stare. There was a split second of shocked silence, and then the courtroom went up for grabs. It was pandemonium.