Killer Triggers

by Joe Kenda

  You get the search warrants and follow all the rules. Defense attorneys either try to prove that we are incompetent, which doesn’t usually sit well with juries, or try to convince the jury that we are evil and do bad-cop things like planting evidence and framing suspects.

  If neither of those tactics looks feasible, they’ll go with, “My guy did it, but he didn’t mean to. He was crazy, provoked, drunk, drugged, and incompetent to stand trial.”

  Murder trials are a sophisticated high-stakes game. That is why I never charged someone until I had proved everything beyond a reasonable doubt. I wanted my cases nailed down so tight, they couldn’t be torn up with a jackhammer.

  Defense attorneys draw a line down a yellow legal pad. On the left, they write down facts the jury will believe. On the right is a list of facts that the jury might doubt. If the list of facts in doubt exceeds the list of believable facts, the defense will take the case to trial. If the believable facts outnumber those in doubt, the defense will likely try to make a deal for their client.

  The lawyer’s game has nothing to do with true guilt or true innocence. It’s all about getting the client off by any means possible. My job was to keep that list of possibilities very short.

  In Ray’s case, we went to trial and the jury swiftly rendered a decision, finding him guilty on two counts of first-degree murder. He was sentenced to two consecutive life sentences.

  I left the courtroom feeling that justice was served. My team and I had done our jobs and served the public interest. Even so, I took no joy in the destruction of this family and all its hopes and dreams. I felt sadness for them, especially the daughter who had lost both her mother and her father.

  That sadness came over me when I saw little Tara with her grandparents outside the courtroom, after Ray was sentenced to prison for the rest of his life. My sadness deepened when she walked up to me and said sweetly, “Did you put my daddy in jail?”

  I don’t lie to children.

  “Yes, I did.”

  Little Tara then reared back and delivered a swift kick to my shin.

  And that is how I came to know just how hard the toe on a little girl’s patent leather shoe can be.

  Chapter Nine:

  Lowlifes Deserve Justice, Too

  the trigger: money

  On Sunday, November 9, 1986, my homicide team received a report that a maintenance guy at the Armadillo Motel in Colorado Springs had discovered a body after finding the door to a guest room cracked open.

  When he looked inside, he saw a male on the floor who appeared to be “cold,” as in dead cold.

  “There is a lot of blood around him,” the motel manager said.

  Well, that doesn’t sound good for him, now, does it?

  I was heading out for a morning jog before work when our dispatcher called me. At the time, I was the detective sergeant in charge of homicide investigations for the Colorado Springs Police Department.

  The dispatcher said the fire department rescue had responded already. They called it in as a DOA, possible homicide.

  Highly possible, I thought.

  I wasn’t all that excited about jogging anyway.

  I knew the Armadillo Motel. Crime checked in on a regular basis there.

  It was in the oldest part of town, the west side. The area had a certain rugged-trending-to-rancid 1950s charm. If you owned a house there, chances were that you’d been born in it and you would die in it.

  The residential areas of the west side weren’t particularly high in crime. A lot of low-functioning lowlifes were scattered around in rental properties and fly-by-night hotels. Most weren’t violent. They were more likely to be prey than predator.

  In this part of town, high school graduates were overachievers. The typical rap sheet in this neighborhood included auto theft, burglary, minor battery, driving while intoxicated, walking while intoxicated, being stupid while intoxicated, being drugged into stupefaction, and other numbskullduggery.

  And yes, as you may have surmised, the Armadillo Motel was not the Ritz Carlton. It was more of a no-tell motel dump. Rumor had it that to get a reservation for the Armadillo, you needed to show proof of a criminal record.

  (I’m told that recently the hotel in that location used a monster bedbug as its Facebook page profile photo.)

  When I went to room 22 there back in 1986, the crime scene featured a dead Black male in blood-soaked clothing, as advertised. He was upright, with his back against the ratty couch, sitting in a pool of blood.

  He had multiple stab wounds in his face, neck, chest, back, and arm. The final tally by the coroner would be in the neighborhood of more than twenty-seven stab wounds.

  This was not a stranger-on-stranger murder. This was personal. Whoever killed this victim was very angry with him about something.

  The victim’s wallet was in his hip pocket. A Colorado identification card said he was Eric Stanley Houston, born October 1, 1954.

  One look around the room said he was a bottom feeder in the pool of life, just a paycheck away from sleeping under an overpass.

  I took a tour of the crime scene, which was brief given that this was a motel room impersonating an apartment. The room looked as though it had been decorated with a live grenade. Hard to tell what had been disturbed in the life-and-death battle versus what was just part of the preexisting squalor.

  We could rule out death by tidiness. Clothing, socks, and shoes were scattered everywhere. It looked as if a Goodwill drop box had been dumped in the room or else exploded.

  Usually, when you find a broken glass pane on the front door of a murder scene, you can assume it was broken during the commission of the crime. Not here. Glass from the door pane was found scattered outside the door and on the floor just inside the hotel room. It looked as if it had been there a long time, so maybe breaking and entering wasn’t how the killer got in.

  A couple of wayward stereo speaker cables were lying about—one on the sidewalk outside the door, and the other on a table inside—raising the prospect of a burglary along with the murder.

  There were blood spatters on the concrete walkway outside the apartment and on the threshold, indicating that maybe the killer was bleeding, too. There were also round blood droplets scattered all over the room. These indicated that maybe whoever stabbed Mr. Houston was also cut in the process.

  Not to give away too much from my personal CSI toolkit, but injuries to the hand of the attacker are quite common when there is a lot of blood being sprayed during a multiple stabbing. The blood lubricates the knife handle, and often the stabber’s hand will slide down onto the blade and cause a gash while the attacker is wielding the knife with great force.

  The round droplets scattered all over were typical of gravity bleeding, or blood dripping from a wound. We found blood all over the bed, in the bathroom, and in the kitchen sink. There was a long white sock in the kitchen sink, along with bloodstains in the sink, indicating that the stabber may have washed a wound after killing Houston. Samples of that blood might help us identify the killer or at least narrow the list of suspects. Given that we were probably looking for someone with a nasty hand wound, I assigned one of our men to call area emergency rooms and clinics to see if anyone had come in with a serious gash on their dominant hand.

  Our evidence technicians took great interest in an open pint of vodka, mostly full. There were fingerprints on the bottle, which was rotgut hooch. The price tag was all of $2.40. There was also an open can of Budweiser beer, about three-quarters full. A can of Stroh’s beer was found near the victim, partially full. Two empty 7-Up cans were also found in the room.

  At least, no one went thirsty during the bloodbath.

  More than fifty-five other items were tagged and placed in evidence for later examination. The fingerprint guys were called in, and a homicide case file was opened.

  We are on your case, Eric Houston. We will do
our best to find whoever did this to you.

  a good guy in bad company

  We learned from the motel manager that Eric Houston had been an Armadillo Motel resident for only a couple of weeks, which probably made him one of the longer-term renters. The manager said he worked as a janitor for Goodwill Industries, which had a location just down the street.

  His files on Houston included the name of his mother, Doris Thomas. She lived in town, so we sent a detective to interview her. Eric’s mother said her son was a good person who came from a good family, but when he was drinking—and he drank a lot—he was often taken advantage of by not-so-good people.

  His social circle consisted mostly of other lost souls, drifters, and human tumbleweeds who had blown into town and would likely blow out before long. Cops know this crowd better than most. Ninety-five percent of them are ripe to become victims of crimes. The other 5 percent are perpetrators of crimes.

  They share a shadow world, apart from the world of work and family that most of us know. They rarely settle down. They don’t live anywhere. Instead, they “stay” here and there for short durations—usually just long enough to buy a bottle, go through a bag of weed, or shoot up.

  They have no options, no plans, and no clue. You would find it shocking to know that many of them have no idea how old they are or where their next meal is coming from.

  Eric Houston might not have fallen into their world if it hadn’t been for the speeding car that ran over his head when he was twelve years old. His mother said that after the accident, her son tended to think everyone was his friend.

  The head injury erased his ability to judge character. He lost his “stranger danger” alarms. Eric had a difficult time telling whether someone was sincere or lying. His mother said bad people often did things that they blamed on Eric. He’d been arrested for a number of minor crimes, but nothing had ever stuck, so that made sense.

  Eric’s shady associates sometimes robbed him, too. He didn’t have much to steal, except booze. He’d buy a bottle of vodka nearly every night and share it with anyone who came around.

  We concluded that on the night of his murder, Eric hadn’t shared enough. Our autopsy report put his blood alcohol level at more than 0.2, more than twice the legal measure of alcohol intoxication.

  profiling the case

  So, we began to get some focus on what we were dealing with in this case. Our victim, Eric Houston, had some mental disabilities and more than a few bad habits, but he wasn’t really a bad guy.

  We talked to a lot of coworkers, neighbors, and associates who described him as quiet and gentle. He carried groceries upstairs for a woman who lived in the motel. A female former roommate said Eric was a slob and often fell behind in rent, but she still liked him.

  Houston’s main problems seemed to be that he was too trusting and he drank heavily in bad company, which is a recipe for disaster, especially in his degenerate circle of friends. It didn’t help that he’d been living in a bedbug-infested den of the downtrodden with neighbors who were just a drunken stumble from a filthy mattress under a viaduct.

  Dreams come to die in dives like the Armadillo Motel. Most of the residents were on the lam, on the make, or on the skids, wanted only by the police, their parole officers, their bail bondsmen, or their ex-spouses chasing child support.

  They pay cash by the hour, by the night, or by the week for a room barely big enough for a bed and a shitter.

  You and I can look down on people like Eric, but we really should thank God we aren’t among them—at least not yet. Most of us are just a big medical bill, a lost job, or a pain-pill addiction away from the dark and dingy places where the underclass dwells. They aren’t all that different from you and me. They just aren’t as lucky.

  Some of them were born into decent families. Some did okay in school. Some had dreams and ambitions. But they lost those anchors somewhere along the line. They became roadside hazards, avoided by the rest of society.

  The cast-off caste live like creatures in the forest or the swamp, minute to minute, day to day, foraging for food and taking relief wherever they can find it. That’s not to say they are unworthy of our sympathy or respect. You shouldn’t write them off or look down on them—especially if you’re a cop, because you spend a lot of time in their world.

  Your oath doesn’t say “to serve and protect only the people you would want to hang out with.” The Eric Houstons need to be protected more than most. I tended to be more sympathetic and protective of the down-and-out because we were all they had. No one else gave a damn about them.

  And so I took offense when the local newspapers buried the story of Eric Houston’s murder. It ran way back in the “who cares?” section, just before the want ads. Call me softhearted, but I don’t think anyone deserves to be stabbed, choked, beaten, or shot to death.

  The press didn’t care about Eric Houston, but his mother cared about him. She asked me to find his killer, and I told her I would.

  I left her house thinking, I will find the son of a bitch who did this to you, Eric.

  Or drive myself and all my detectives insane in the process.

  sketch-ass suspects

  Given the dive motel Eric Houston lived in and the sketch-ass people in his social sphere, the list of potential suspects was a who’s who of near-west-side slimeballs, shiftless degenerates, and ne’er-do-wells.

  Eric’s mother suggested we begin our investigation by interviewing three of her son’s not-so-good friends. Their names were Howard Thompson, Cleveland McIntosh, and Tommy Hart.

  We chose to talk first to Howard Thompson, thirty-eight, because of his impressive résumé. He had done two back-to-back stretches in prison over a ten-year period, for burglary and robbery, among other things.

  Howard had been on the streets for about five years, which was impressive given his arrest record. Maybe he had straightened out his life, but that seemed doubtful.

  We sent a detective to interview him, and Thompson said he’d known Eric for more than twenty years because he’d gone to school with his brothers. Howard also just happened to be with our murder victim on the night before he was found dead in his motel room.

  Thompson said he ran into Eric Houston on the day of the murder while walking home from a friend’s house around four p.m. Eric was riding his bicycle. Another friend who was there, Freeman Smithson (who had been drinking vodka with Howard since that morning), told us that Eric was so drunk, he nearly wrecked his bike when he stopped to talk to them.

  Even so, Eric was not as drunk as he wanted to be.

  “Eric wanted to party, but he would only party with certain people he trusted,” Howard explained.

  You may have a little trouble following along here, but try to keep up with me as we trace the drunken path of Eric and friends on the west-side bar crawl that preceded this homicide.

  They stumbled from one friend’s house to another, but these friends were not like those portrayed in the former television series about beautiful young people living in huge New York City apartments that none of them could possibly afford in real life. This Colorado Springs friends’ tour covered a much seedier landscape, and the cast was far less photogenic.

  Their first stop was at the home of Eddie Randolph, who lived with his wife and a male “roommate.” Our dynamic duo, Eric and Howard, left the Randolphs’ after a brief visit and strolled to the domicile of friend Johnny Oldsman.

  There, Eric asked Johnny to drive Howard and him to a drive-in liquor store, where Eric, who had just received his two-week paycheck of two hundred dollars, purchased a twelve-pack of Stroh’s beer.

  Around six p.m., Johnny dropped off Eric and Howard and the twelve-pack at the residence of yet another friend, Bob Davis, who lived with Roberto Fasano.

  Howard and Eric were packing a pint of vodka at that point, having made yet another stop at the liquor store along the way.
<
br />   The party-hearty crew shared and quickly disposed of the pint, so Eric left with Fasano for another liquor-store visit. This time, they purchased beer, returned to the Davis and Fasano home, and drank some more.

  Our best intel said Howard and Eric put down eight or nine cans there. Then, around seven thirty p.m., the dynamic and drunken duo left and stumbled back to the Randolph residence.

  For those of you keeping score at home, Howard said he and Eric each had two Stroh’s beers left as they walked back to the Randolphs’. There, they enjoyed the company of Mr. and Mrs. Randolph and the male roommate, as well as Cleveland McIntosh, Tommy Hart, and other west-side socialites.

  They finished off the beers, hung out, and played cards until nine p.m. At that time, according to Howard, future homicide victim Eric and friends Tommy and Cleveland left in Tommy’s car. Their mission was for Eric to buy yet another pint of vodka.

  If you feel intoxicated just reading about this, I don’t blame you.

  Cleveland McIntosh said that after Eric bought this pint of vodka, he and Mr. Howard went to Eric’s Armadillo Motel room and stayed there for about an hour, drinking and listening to music. He said they left after Eric passed out from drinking too much.

  No shit.

  Cleveland McIntosh said that when he last saw Eric, he was sitting in a chair next to the stereo with his head slumped over. He asked Eric if he was okay, and Eric nodded but didn’t say anything. Then Cleveland and Tommy left together, locking Eric’s room door on their way out.

  Howard claimed that he never saw Eric alive again after they left him at the Randolphs’. We asked why Howard stayed behind, and he explained, “I was playing cards.”

  I had a hunch that he was bluffing, and my hunch would prove correct.

  alibi confusion

  Based on what we’d learned at that point, we thought Howard was worth checking out further. We went back to his Spruce Street home and, with his permission, searched it. We were mostly looking for signs of blood on any of his clothing or shoes. And maybe any stolen items from Eric Houston’s pad.