Killer Triggers

by Joe Kenda

  We had several sources say that Howard had told them this was his concern. He said that he’d set up a robbery in which he talked Eric into stealing a stereo and cash from the men while Howard and others distracted them.

  At one point, we also had some information on a suspect nicknamed Andre the Giant, after the professional wrestler. Our Andre, a big, nasty fellow, carried a knife and was known to be very protective of family members, including his sister’s boyfriend, Blackie Booker, whom Eric and Howard had reportedly robbed.

  Just as an aside, we also looked at a guy with the nickname “Big Head,” who truly did have an oversize cranium under a very short haircut. Street nicknames can add a bit of color to a criminal investigation, no doubt about it.

  There was another west-sider who weighed in at more than five hundred pounds and carried the moniker “Starvin’ Marvin,” even though he couldn’t get through a doorway without a barrel of grease and a couple of crowbars.

  After Eric’s death, Howard told friends that he was upset because he thought the same white males who killed Eric would be after him, too. Howard told a friend that he was buying a gun so he could kill these guys before they killed him.

  More than two years after that unsolved murder, our detectives took another run at Cleveland McIntosh, who had driven Eric and his pal Howard to a couple of stops on the night of the murder.

  In this interview, McIntosh told us for the first time that Howard had actually threatened Houston at the Randolphs’ home earlier in the night. He had pulled out his pocketknife and said, “I’ll hurt you, Eric.”

  Or so Cleveland McIntosh claimed more than two years later.

  He also recalled that Eric said, “Put the knife away, Howard.” And Thompson complied.

  Howard Thompson was everyone’s favorite suspect, including most of those who ran in his antisocial circles. We had Howard in our sights, too, but at that point, we couldn’t nail down any strong evidence beyond threats he’d made and his well-documented tendency to be violent when drunk.

  In December 1988, our detectives dug up a psychological report on Howard, done after a 1976 parole violation arrest. He was twenty-eight at the time and had already racked up an impressively vile record of criminal behavior. He’d been slapped with a parole violation after an argument with his girlfriend.

  Apparently, she had pointed a loaded gun at him and threatened to shoot. Howard took the gun from her and then sold it on the street, which didn’t please his parole officer.

  A psychological evaluation was ordered up as a result. Howard’s file was not boring. A native of Texas, he had made it all the way to the tenth grade before dropping out and pursuing a career as a dishwasher and petty criminal.

  Then, in 1967, he enlisted in the Marines, but two years later he was discharged without honor because, the report said, he had become addicted to heroin while serving in Vietnam.

  The report said Howard had been arrested in Colorado for armed robbery in 1971. He was sentenced to six to ten years in prison, beginning in 1973. He was released after only three years, getting paroled in 1976.

  The psychological report said that our man Howie had severe emotional disturbances, which any of his nonpsychologist friends could have told us. According to the report, he was also self-centered, demanding, touchy, and given to asocial impulses. No surprises there. Nor were we shocked to read that he had average to above-average potential for violence, not to mention a history of alcohol and drug abuse. Yes, Howard was a problem child by anyone’s analysis, but we still had no solid proof that he had murdered his drinking pal and frenemy Eric Houston.

  a cross-dressing killer,

  or a double-crosser?

  Cleveland McIntosh kept trying to point us to Howard Thompson, and maybe for good reason, but in March 1989, another source came forward and fingered ol’ Cleve himself. He was already on our list, but not very high on it.

  This source was Jessi Capperello, a popular west-sider for nefarious reasons, who had just returned to Colorado Springs from Texas. She said a Black male by the name of Dave had told her of a conversation in which Cleveland said he’d killed Eric for his drugs, cash, and boom box. I wasn’t sure Cleveland was the killer type.

  Jessi also gave up another bit of information that seemed highly unlikely, given Cleveland’s interest in women’s clothing and gay bars. She said Cleveland was dating a fourteen-year-old girl named Ashley Spawn.

  We sent a couple of detectives to Jessi’s house to follow up, and there they found Duane Tyler, the guy she was living with. This “Dave” was the source of her information on Cleveland McIntosh. Dave described Cleveland as “very unstable and violent.”

  Under questioning, Duane said he’d known Eric Houston and had partied with him over the years. Duane claimed that he’d seen Cleveland crying a couple times over Eric’s death and the fact that police had questioned him about it repeatedly. Duane said that in January 1989, he and Cleveland drank a half gallon of wine and some beers together.

  Duane Tyler claimed that while intoxicated, Cleveland had said, “I didn’t mean to kill him,” and started crying.

  Cleveland had ordered Duane to leave at that point. Duane left but then came back a short time later. Cleveland then confronted him with a knife and ordered him to leave. Duane also said that Cleveland had once had a boom box similar to the one missing from Eric’s motel room.

  When you are dealing with this level of society during an investigation, you learn to watch out for accusers working their own game. They can be skilled at using cops to set up, smear, or scare the hell out of enemies who have nothing to do with the actual crime under investigation.

  That may well have been what was going on with Cleveland McIntosh. His enemies sent us chasing after him with lies because they wanted us to fuck with him. We were their instruments of revenge.

  Experienced cops are always aware of that possibility, but we can’t ignore any leads. We checked out the claims against Cleveland Mac as much as we could, but then along came a big distraction: a guy who showed up out of the blue and confessed to killing Eric Houston.

  a walk-in confession

  Nearly four years into the never-ending investigation of Eric Houston’s murder, I was bordering on obsession. The case was driving us all nuts. I found myself talking to the guy in my sleep, begging for clues.

  Eric Houston was no saint, but I didn’t run into a lot of saints during my career as a cop. His head injury as a kid made him an innocent, even though he was a hard-drinking one. He tended to trust everyone, and that likely got him killed.

  I took that personally, and I also took it personally when one of the newer detectives under my guidance balked at working Eric’s murder case.

  “Is that the guy from the west-side motel?” he said. “Who cares about him?”

  He should have known better. The other detectives in the room suddenly had to use the restroom or grab a coffee down the street. They didn’t want to be injured by the guy’s bloody head when I ripped it off and threw it across the room.

  I tried to count to ten but decided, fuck that.

  “You fucking idiot!” I said. “Don’t you ever say that to me about any human death on our watch. If you ever do, I swear you will be writing parking tickets at the airport from midnight to eight, with Tuesdays and Thursdays off, for the rest of your career! Is that clear?”

  When his ears stopped ringing and the blood returned to his brain, he apologized, and he never made that mistake again, which was lucky for him. (He actually turned out to be a good detective once he matured a little.)

  I always told my guys that we are every victim’s last hope. Nobody else can give them justice. I wanted my detectives to stand in the victim’s shoes, and if they couldn’t do that, I told them to go find another division. They could ride a motorcycle or chase drug dealers if that was their attitude.

  We didn’t write of
f any victims or any case. Our job wasn’t to make value judgments about the victim. We were paid to get killers off the street.

  We had to find them because they don’t often just walk in and give themselves up.

  Except in this case.

  We’d been busting our asses, interviewing and reinterviewing every knucklehead and lamebrain on the west side year after year after year, and then in late September 1990, a Colorado State Patrol officer called us and said he had a hitchhiker who just might be our man.

  The state patrolman said the guy just up and volunteered to confess to a homicide—our homicide. Mark Spenser, bearded, light-skinned Black male, twenty-five, said he lived on the streets in Colorado Springs. He declined to provide the name of family members, but when our detectives sat down with him, he said, “I’m the murderer. I want to confess.”

  He didn’t want an attorney, and he had a few other crimes to get off his chest, he said.

  Spenser claimed he’d known Eric Houston casually for about three years before they met up in the late afternoon on the day of his murder. They had run into each other at the Colorado Plasma Center on the west side while selling blood for cash. Both were regulars there, Spenser said.

  On that day, they each had given blood, and then they’d gone to the Drive-Inn Liquor Store and bought two quarts of Miller beer. They took the beer to “the bridge,” where they sat and drank it. He could not recall what they talked about if anything.

  Spenser said that after they’d finished their beer, he went to a room at the Sunset Motel, and as far as he knew, Eric had gone back to his own place at the Armadillo Motel, about 4.5 miles due west.

  Our confessor said he walked to visit Eric after midnight at the motel. They were both drunk. They got into a fight and Spenser said he stabbed Eric numerous times. He claimed he’d used a knife he found in the house, but he could not describe it or say exactly where he found it.

  Our walk-in also could not remember what he’d done with it after the killing. Spenser changed his story on the weapon several times, saying he’d taken it with him, that he’d pitched it, and, finally, that he’d left it inside Eric’s room.

  He said that when he left, Eric was lying on the floor, bleeding.

  Spenser couldn’t remember much in the way of other details. He claimed he was in Eric’s room only fifteen to twenty minutes. He said he did not injure himself or try to clean up any of the blood. He couldn’t remember having any blood on his hands or clothing.

  When we asked Spenser why he was confessing to this crime nearly four years later, he said he’d just decided to give himself up. He also confessed to some property damage during a fight with his parents in 1989 or so, a break-in at a doctor’s office in 1988, and an arson and burglary at the Omelet Parlor in 1984.

  In a later conversation with detectives, Spenser said he’d gone to the Armadillo Motel around five a.m., broken out a pane of glass to unlock the door, and found Eric drunk and passed out. He said he’d taken a knife from a place where he was staying, and killed Houston with it, but he could not recall what he did with the knife afterward.

  He added in the later interview that he had taken some money from Eric’s pocket after stabbing him. He did not remember using the bathroom or leaving anything behind. He said Eric had invited him to come over and party after they drank under the bridge. Spenser did not recall taking any stereo equipment but said he might have.

  Yes, we had doubts about this guy right away, for many reasons, including the fact that his story didn’t match up with the evidence gathered at the crime scene or with what we knew about Eric Houston’s activities on the day before he was murdered.

  But like good little homicide detectives, we checked out Mr. Spenser and his entire story. We learned early on that he’d been the subject of two different emergency mental illness reports. The most recent had been four months earlier, and the other was a year before that. We had his fingerprints on file, and they did not match any of those taken from Eric Houston’s motel room. We also learned that Spenser had been in the Colorado State Hospital, a mental health facility, from May 10 to May 29, 1990.

  We checked the records at the Colorado Plasma Center. They indicated that the last time Spenser donated blood was July 9, 1986—four months and a day before Eric Houston was murdered. The blood center had rejected Spenser as a donor after that because he’d used foul language to personnel.

  There were more inconsistencies in his tale, but you get the picture. He didn’t kill Eric Houston. He was a freaking lunatic who was probably tired of living on the streets and foraging for meals. All that he knew about Eric’s murder was what he’d read in the newspapers or heard on the streets from other dirtbags.

  We turned Mark Spenser over to the mental health department and let them figure out what to do with him. Then we went back to work on the Eric Houston homicide, determined to get it solved or die trying.

  i found you!

  We continued to hit the streets and knock on doors for another four years without any breaks in the Eric Houston murder. Cold cases like this often reach a point where the silence is numbing. We’d drive through the west-side neighborhood where most of the victim’s friends lived, and we just knew that someone in one of the houses knew who killed Eric.

  Why won’t you tell us? How can you carry this secret so long? What are you afraid of?

  We chased down rumors picked up on the streets, in jail cells and prison yards. We went back and did second interviews with Houston’s friends and friends of his friends, as well as his enemies and enemies of his enemies. Of course, we did all this while also handling every other murder that came along, day in and day out.

  In early August 1994, one of our Latino patrol sergeants received an anonymous tip that he passed on to one of our detectives. The detective checked out the source and learned that he was a longtime resident of the west side, who hung out in the same places as Eric Houston, including the Armadillo Motel.

  We brought in the informant for an interview. He wouldn’t give a name but offered that he’d been partying with a bunch of lifelong friends just a few days after Eric Houston’s murder. One of his friends, who’d been drinking a lot, started talking about his criminal exploits and blurted out, “I’m Eric Houston’s killer.”

  We jumped on that statement, of course.

  “Who is this guy?”

  “His name is Arthur Anaya,” says our informant.

  Well, well, well, that familiar name certainly got our attention.

  We had interviewed Arthur Anaya about eight years earlier because of a similar report that he’d been bragging about killing someone at the Armadillo Motel. But he denied it, of course, and we had no proof, nor any way to pressure him, so we had to cut him loose.

  He was gone but not forgotten.

  Our new tipster said Arthur Anaya and Bobby Lee Chavez had gone to rob Houston late that night. Eric was drunk when they arrived, and he refused to give them any money. Then “things got out of hand,” according to our informant. Anaya stabbed Eric Houston with a kitchen knife and then stole a radio or cassette player. We had never revealed publicly that stereo equipment was missing, which made this tipster more credible in our eyes.

  But why had he waited so long?

  The tipster said he had not come forward earlier because he’d heard the story directly from Anaya, who had threatened to kill him and his family if he shared the information with anyone.

  The original conversation had taken place just a week or so after Eric Houston was murdered. The tipster had come forward because he felt that enough time had passed that Anaya wouldn’t immediately know he was the source of information.

  And, oh, yeah, this informant also had a few “legal problems” of his own that he hoped we could make go away if his information helped us catch Eric’s killer.

  The news that Bobby Chavez supposedly had been present for t
he murder with Anaya was interesting because Chavez and his family had lived next door to Eric and his family while the boys were growing up, and they had remained friends over the years.

  We had always assumed that only one scumbag was involved in the killing. A second scumbag in the room might give us another set of fingerprints and blood samples to try matching with those found at the scene.

  We had heard from Bobby Chavez’s girlfriend that he was trying to clean up his act after compiling a long rap sheet of arrests for assault with a deadly weapon, bar fights, thefts, and stabbings. If he was running around with Arthur Anaya, he was running with the wrong guy to help clean up his act.

  Anaya ranked right at the top of west-side bad guys. He was small in stature, with a criminal file that likely weighed more than he did. Arthur was like a mean-ass little junkyard dog that kept breaking its chain and attacking anything that crossed its path.

  After our earlier interview with him, we had done a fingerprint and blood comparison with crime scene evidence, but it was inconclusive. The prints weren’t his, but the blood was in the ballpark. At that point, blood wasn’t the most reliable forensic evidence, because the results weren’t all that specific.

  But here is the bad news for Arthur: In the eight years that had passed since our first dance with the little pit bull, forensic technology had improved dramatically thanks to a British geneticist named Alec Jeffreys, who in 1984 developed the first practical methods for DNA profiling. Two international biotech firms, Lifecodes Corporation and Cellmark Diagnostics, jumped on the technology and filed patents.

  Initially, the legal application for DNA profiling was for paternity tests, but law enforcement soon realized its value in forensics as a method to identify suspects from tissue, blood, and other body fluids gathered at crime scenes.

  Once criminal prosecutors figured out that this DNA-based science could stand up to any challenge thrown at it by defense attorneys, police departments around the world gladly adopted it.

  The use of DNA in US criminal cases really took off in the same year we used it—but not because of our humble little murder. Cellmark’s scientists presented DNA evidence in that year’s most sensational murder trial, featuring O. J. Simpson. (That wasn’t my case, but if it had been, you can believe there would have been a much different outcome.)