Killer Triggers

by Joe Kenda

  Those were my parting words before we brought them before the grand jury. In this case, the hearing ran about a month and a half. We caught lies right and left. We charged five people with perjury and told them they wouldn’t see their families for ten years if they didn’t cooperate with our investigation.

  The teenager Mike Wood, who befriended Khaki, was one of those charged with perjury. Several of the ladies from the apartment complex had fled to his parents’ house after the shooting.

  In his grand jury testimony, Wood confirmed that Khaki had claimed to be the shooter, but we caught him in a couple of other lies. He initially claimed that he hadn’t seen Khaki since the night of the shooting, but we’d heard a different story from others, so we charged him with perjury.

  That hammer and vise would prove very helpful a few months later.

  At that point, we had Khaki identified by his real name and aliases. We had his fingerprints. We also had an October 16, 1991, grand jury indictment charging Jude Hood (and all his aliases) with murder. The charge was based on an element in the statute saying that if a person engages in conduct that “manifests an extreme indifference to the value of human life,” and a death results, that person will be charged with murder in the first degree.

  The spraying of bullets into an occupied building and a parking lot full of cars certainly qualifies.

  We had Khaki and all his names listed with law enforcement agencies across the country and beyond, knowing that he was a very smart operator with a history of eluding arrest. But then, eighteen days after the murder indictments came down, Khaki made a mistake.

  Or maybe he’d prefer to blame it on Kevin Dandre Freeman.

  On November 4, Louisiana State Police contacted us and said they had arrested a Colorado man of that name with two other individuals, in a traffic stop near Lake Charles. They had locked them up after finding three pounds of cocaine and about four ounces of marijuana in the vehicle, along with several guns.

  They called us because that vehicle, a 1990 Chevy with Colorado plates, was registered to our ghostly friend Anthony C. Blevells, who was not in the vehicle when it was pulled over, according to all the driver’s licenses confiscated by the Louisiana troopers.

  Very interesting. We had our guys check the Colorado Department of Motor Vehicles to see if they had a driver’s license photo of Kevin Dandre Freeman. They did.

  “Kevin” had obtained that license just one month and a day after Sharon Coleman’s murder. And, lo and behold, when we compared it to the photograph we had of Khaki, a.k.a. Jude Hood, a.k.a. Anthony C. Blevells, well, you can probably guess that they were either identical twins or one and the same person.

  We confirmed that they were the same guy, by comparing fingerprints from “Kevin” taken in Louisiana to those of “Anthony” on file in our own records. We then asked our partners in crime-stopping in Louisiana to please ship Jude Hood and all his aliases back to Colorado Springs. They agreed to do so, no doubt glad to be rid of him.

  Once we had him back in our loving arms, we sat down with ol’ Khaki. I try to be congenial in these chats, so I started by introducing myself, but I barely got out my rank before Khaki suggested I shove something unpleasant where the sun doesn’t shine.

  He then refused to answer any questions and demanded that his lawyer be summoned. I tried to charm him, but he seemed oblivious to my charms. He lawyered up and shut up.

  Our strongest evidence against him was the statement he allegedly made to our informant in LA about the shooting. A good defense attorney can make hash of statements by someone trying to trade information to lighten his own sentence.

  Juries tend to be skeptical about informants like that, as well.

  searching for the weapon

  We needed physical evidence linking Khaki to the shooting. I had our guys go back to Khaki’s conversation with Mike Wood and the ladies at his parents’ house on the night of the murder.

  We have always wondered why someone as careful and crafty as Khaki even bothered to show up at the home of a sixteen-year-old kid whose gang connections were not all that strong.

  During the grand jury hearings, we caught Wood in a couple of lies, so we charged him with perjury. We called his parents and had them bring him in, hoping we could get more out of him under threat of a prison term.

  The teenager admitted that he’d been scared to tell us the entire story. Khaki had actually called him two days after the shooting and asked him for “a favor” in exchange for a small amount of dope.

  “What’s the favor?” Wood asked.

  Khaki then asked Wood to dump several parts of a disassembled AK-47 that he would give him. At the time, Wood didn’t know that it was the same type of weapon used in the fatal shooting of Sharon Coleman.

  At first, Wood wasn’t sure how to get rid of the parts, which included the rifle barrel with the serial number on it. Khaki told him to try to file down the serial number, but he couldn’t manage that.

  As it turned out, Wood’s parents, who had been trying to steer him out of the gang’s reach, asked him to go fishing with his younger brother the following weekend. He had always refused, but after getting the gun parts from Khaki, he went along with them to the Rampart Range Reservoir, a beautiful spot up in Pike National Forest, about twenty-five miles northwest of Colorado Springs.

  He put the gun parts in his fishing-pole case. It was pretty sad. The kid’s father felt bad that they were always butting heads over the gang. He thought maybe the son had finally come around when he went fishing with the family that day.

  But Wood went only so he could toss Khaki’s gun parts into the lake while pretending to toss stones into the water. His parents thought it was a glorious day of fishing until we showed up at the front door and said, “Your son is under arrest for being an accessory to first-degree murder.”

  A few days later, we took Wood and his parents to the reservoir, which is a main water source for the city of Colorado Springs, and a favorite place for hiking, canoeing, and fishing. We had our doubts that we would find what we were looking for.

  The lake is thirteen miles around and a hundred feet deep in some areas. Unlike on the teen’s visit months earlier, there was snow on the ground. We feared he would have no idea where he had tossed the parts.

  Wood, who was all about cooperation by then, surprised us. He had no trouble identifying at least three spots where he’d thrown the gun parts. We were primarily interested in the rifle barrel with the serial numbers on it. The teen said he remembered throwing it in the water near a large rock, which he easily located that day.

  “It’s in that little inlet area,” he said, pointing to a shallow spot near the shore.

  There was a hole in the ice in that particular area. The next day, our team of divers went down. It took them only twenty minutes to find the barrel of an AK-47. It was cold, but it was worth it.

  We finally had the physical evidence we needed to convict Khaki: a murder weapon, or at least a big part of it. This was evidence that would be hard for a defense attorney to dispute.

  Not that they didn’t try, of course.

  The legal wrangling and deal making went on for a couple of years, but in the end, Khaki gave up and pleaded guilty to second-degree murder in February 1993, in the July 1991 killing of Sharon Coleman.

  He was sentenced to twenty years in prison.

  It was one of the tougher cases we had in a very tough year or two or three. I wish I could say it was satisfying for everyone to see Khaki locked up, but the victim’s family was very bitter, and I can’t say that I blame them.

  As they said at the sentencing hearing, her life was priceless to them, and she was killed for no reason at all, other than being in the wrong place at the wrong time when a violent scumbag decided to light up an entire complex with a deadly weapon.

  Evil prevailed.

  We secured some ju
stice, but I fully understood the Coleman family’s anger when one of them told the media that she would have preferred to see Khaki shot in the stomach and chest and left to bleed out.

  Chapter Eight:

  Twisted Sisters

  the trigger: jealousy, revenge, and rage

  If you become a murder victim—and I certainly hope that never happens (for your sake, not mine)—odds are that your killer will be someone you know, especially if you are a woman.

  We’ve all heard that absence makes the heart grow fonder. Does that mean that closeness makes the heart grow colder?

  The FBI reports that in 2017, 28 percent of homicide victims were killed by someone they knew other than family members. Another 12.3 percent were slain by family members, and 9.7 percent were killed by strangers. In the other 50 percent of cases, the killer’s relationship to the victim was not known.

  If that doesn’t make you become a recluse, how about this? A 2018 Global Report from the United Nations found that of the 87,000 females who were murdered around the world in the previous year, the majority were killed by their “intimate partners” or family members.

  The report noted that about 137 women are killed by a loved one every single day. And a stunning 58 percent of all female homicide victims were killed by their nearest and dearest.

  You won’t see that on a Valentine’s Day card anytime soon.

  So there is a very good reason why those of us in the homicide-detective trade always look carefully at spouses and lovers, especially when working a case with a female victim like the late Mona King, featured in this case.

  home sweet home, unsweetened

  Raymond Lee King was a hardworking electrician who advanced to the position of supervisor in his company because his bosses really liked him. At the age of thirty-five, he was on a good track with a solid job, earning a comfortable salary, with big plans for his later years.

  Things were going well at home, too. Ray had an attractive, churchgoing wife. Mona, thirty-six, was a former high school homecoming queen who worked in a savings and loan and was known for being prim and proper.

  In fact, she belonged to a very conservative fundamentalist Christian group called the Way International, which claimed forty thousand members worldwide. A fiery bunch, they supposedly spoke in tongues and trained with firearms. (I’m not all that religious, but I’ve been known to do both myself, though rarely at the same time.)

  Married six years, Ray and Mona had a five-year-old daughter, Tara, who could have been on the cover of Toddler Life Magazine if there were such a thing. She was a beautiful child with golden hair like lemon meringue.

  This future homecoming queen was always dressed like a princess, with frilly dresses and patent leather shoes. Those shiny little-girl shoes were harder than a steel-toed work boot, by the way. I say that from painful experience.

  By late 1984, life was pretty darn good for the King family, and they probably would have lived happily ever after if not for the less-happy marriage of someone else in Mona’s family.

  Mona’s older sister, Carla Cannon, thirty-eight, had married a chiropractor and lived about 280 miles west of Colorado Springs, in the Western Slope hiking, biking, and wine-drinking town of Grand Junction, Colorado.

  Then, suddenly, Carla didn’t live there anymore.

  She showed up at the front door of Ray and Mona’s happy home in an unhappy state. With luggage. A lot of luggage. Most of it packed with shoes. Carla had more high heels than the Rockettes. She was all about the kicks, too.

  Carla was a piece of work. She had left her husband and Grand Junction after some not-so-grand dysfunction.

  Let’s call it a “social disconnect.”

  She was social. He wasn’t.

  She was a party girl. He was a chiropractor.

  They rubbed each other the wrong way. Theirs was the age-old story of marriages torn asunder.

  Some people change. Others don’t. So they change partners.

  Carla wanted more fun out of life. Don might have wanted the same. But hanging out in bars, drinking, dancing, and flirting with strangers wasn’t his idea of fun.

  So they split. Their two teenagers opted to stay home with Don after the divorce.

  Maybe Carla just wasn’t into motherhood. Maybe she still felt like a teenager herself. She certainly acted like one.

  swinging in the springs

  After moving into the Kings’ house in Colorado Springs, Carla hit the swinging-singles bars all over town. She was not subtle. Carla was a looker who dressed to display her assets. She was a magnet for men on the make. She loved ’em and left ’em.

  Lounge lizards were soon circling and panting in packs. Still, she didn’t like trolling the meat markets on her own. She needed a wing woman, or at least a designated driver, and Mona was Carla’s first choice for a running mate.

  Churchgoing Mona begged off at first. She had grown content playing it straight as a working wife and mother. But her older sister badgered her. She worked on Mona, saying her life was boring and that she needed to get out and enjoy herself more.

  Unfortunately for his marriage, Mona’s husband, Ray, was too busy working to counter Carla’s relentless recruitment of his Bible-loving, straitlaced wife.

  Relentless, Carla managed to plant a bug in Mona’s ear, or somewhere. She would share her party-girl stories with Mona while Ray was working, telling her about all the good-lookin’ good ol’ boys lined up to buy her drinks and dance her pants off in the local dens of sin.

  She poured it on, trying to loosen up her little sis with a double shot of FOMO.

  “You’re missing out on all the fun,” she teased. “Life is too short.”

  She worked on Mona as if she were dry-sanding driftwood, wearing her down by making her feel like a boring old housewife with dishpan hands.

  Our siblings, like our parents, know how to push our buttons because, in many cases, they installed those buttons as we were growing up.

  After a few weeks of sis-dissing, Mona decided that Carla had a point. Ray worked all the time. She was often left at home all night with Tara while he went out on emergency calls for customers.

  Then he would come home exhausted and fall asleep, snoring like a banshee.

  Her church, the Way, wasn’t a lot of laughs, either. She and other women members complained that the men in charge felt it was their Way or the highway. Being a good and godly girl was hard enough without being bullied by righteous gasbags.

  time out

  Now, as you might imagine, Carla’s campaign to lure his wife from him and their golden child and into the taverns and dance halls, did not sit well with Raymond Lee King. But he had little power to stop the sisters from traipsing out to trip the light fantastic when he was called out for work at all hours.

  Ray felt helpless as he watched conniving Carla set the bait and lure Mona into her tawdry world. Before he knew it, his wife began coming home reeking of booze, cigarette smoke, and other men’s cologne.

  He blamed Carla for the growing divide between them. Mona blamed Raymond for caring only about his job and neglecting her.

  Tensions rose. Tempers flared.

  Ray’s hurt and confusion gave way to a simmering rage. Every dinner conversation blew up into a confrontation. Divorce was thrown onto the table.

  His life, their life, and their child’s life had turned toxic because of the evil sister’s manipulations and Mona’s lack of a moral spine, or so Raymond concluded.

  The warring couple held it together through the holidays, but by March 1985, Raymond couldn’t stand to be in the same house with the twisted sisters. He loaded up his truck and moved out.

  He took shelter forty-five miles south in a Pueblo, Colorado, McMansion where his younger brother was house-sitting for a wealthy friend of the family.

  Your friendly homicide detective narrator w
ould like to step in here and offer a helpful bit of unsolicited advice. I am not a board-certified psychiatrist or even a shade-tree shrink, but in a long career of finding one spouse aerated by lead and the other holding a smoking gun, I have learned a thing or two.

  If your marriage goes to shit, sure, take a time-out and give each other some space if you think it’s a good idea—or just necessary for your survival. But for the love of Zeus, do not take shelter in a home with wall-to-wall weaponry owned by an avid gun collector.

  Which is what Raymond Lee King did.

  Estrangement did not make his heart grow fonder. But it did give Raymond some free time to hone his sharpshooting skills with a variety of collectible firearms. Reading marital guidance books or even collecting beer cans might have been a wiser way to spend his idle hours.

  A pissed-off husband with easy access to an arsenal? Well, that can lead to all sorts of sad scenarios, and often does.

  neural hijacking

  Not to sound like an old Porter Wagoner country tune, but Raymond couldn’t live with his wife, and he couldn’t live without her.

  The thought of losing his wife and his daughter and all his dreams for their future together scrambled his brain. He was a certified electrician. He could fix blown circuits in an office tower or apartment complex, but he didn’t have the tools to handle his own emotional overload.

  Desperate for help, he decided to go to the source of his sister-sibling torment: Kansas City. Home of his in-laws, the parents of Mona and Carla.

  I know, asking your in-laws for help when your marriage is falling apart seems like a crazed man’s worst move to me, too, but maybe Raymond thought the parents shared his concerns about their girls forming a honky-tonk tag team.

  Maybe he thought they’d help him figure out how to win back his wife.

  Hard to say what he was thinking, but Ray took a rare week off from work and hit the road for KC on a weekend when he had little Tara with him.

  We don’t know what transpired with the in-laws. We don’t know what was said or whose side they took or didn’t take. We do know that the trip to Kansas City did nothing to relieve Raymond’s distress.