“The first interview with Margo Schafer was short,” Kurlen said. “But she was reinterviewed several times by several investigators. Her observations on that day have not changed one iota. I believe she saw what she said she saw.”
“Good for you, Detective,” I said. “Let’s go back to the coffee cup. Did there come a time that you came to a conclusion as to whose coffee was spilled and left at the crime scene?”
“Yes. We found a Joe’s Joe receipt in the victim’s pocket for a large cup of coffee purchased that morning at eight twenty-one. Once we found that, we believed that the coffee cup at the crime scene was his. This was later confirmed by fingerprint analysis. He got out of the car with it and dropped it when he was attacked from behind.”
I nodded, making sure the jury understood that I was indeed getting the answers I wanted.
“What time was it when that receipt was found in the victim’s pocket?”
Kurlen checked his notes and didn’t find an answer.
“I am not sure because the receipt was found by the coroner’s investigator who was in charge of checking the victim’s pockets and securing all property that had been on the victim’s person. This would have been done before the body was transported to the coroner’s office.”
“But it was well after you and your partner took off in pursuit of Lisa Trammel, correct?”
“We didn’t take off in pursuit of Trammel, but the discovery of the receipt would have been after we left to talk to Trammel.”
“Did the coroner’s investigator call you and tell you about the receipt?”
“No.”
“Did you find out about the receipt before or after you arrested Lisa Trammel for murder?”
“After. But there was other evidence in support of—”
“Thank you, Detective. Just answer the question I ask, if you don’t mind.”
“I don’t mind telling the truth.”
“Good. That’s what we’re here for. Now, wouldn’t you agree that you arrested Lisa Trammel on the basis of inconsistent and contradictory statements that later turned out to be, in fact, consistent and not in contradiction with the evidence and the facts of the case?”
Kurlen answered as if by rote.
“We had the witness who placed her near the scene of the crime at the time of the crime.”
“And that’s all you had, correct?”
“There was other evidence tying her to the murder. We have her hammer and—”
“I’m talking about at the time of her arrest!” I yelled. “Please answer the question I ask you, Detective!”
“Hey!” the judge exclaimed. “There’s only one person who’s going to be allowed to raise their voice in my courtroom, and, Mr. Haller, you aren’t that person.”
“I’m sorry, Your Honor. Could you please instruct the witness to answer the questions he is asked and not those that are not asked?”
“Consider the witness so advised. Proceed, Mr. Haller.”
I paused for a moment to collect myself and swept my eyes across the jury. I was looking for sympathetic reactions but I didn’t see any. Not even from Furlong, who didn’t meet my eyes with his. I looked back at Kurlen.
“You just mentioned the hammer. The defendant’s hammer. This was evidence you didn’t have at the time of the arrest, correct?”
“That’s correct.”
“Isn’t it true that once you made the arrest and realized that the inconsistent statements you relied upon were not actually inconsistent, you began looking for evidence to fit your theory of the case?”
“Not true at all. We had the witness but we still kept a wide-open view of this thing. We weren’t wearing blinders. I would’ve been happy to drop the charges against the defendant. But the investigation was ongoing and the evidence that we started accumulating and evaluating did not cut her way.”
“Not only that but you had motive, too, didn’t you?”
“The victim was foreclosing on the defendant’s house. As far as motive went, that looked pretty strong to me.”
“But you were not privy to the details of that foreclosure, only that there was a foreclosure in process, correct?”
“Yes, and that there was a temporary restraining order against her, too.”
“You mean you are saying that the restraining order itself was a motive to kill Mitchell Bondurant?”
“No, that’s not what I’m saying and not what I mean. I’m just saying it was part of the whole picture.”
“The whole picture adding up at that point to a rush to judgment, correct, Detective?”
Freeman jumped up and objected and the judge sustained it. That was okay. I wasn’t interested in Kurlen’s answer to the question. I was only interested in putting the question in each juror’s mind.
I checked the rear wall of the courtroom and saw that it was three thirty. I told the judge that I was going to move in a new direction with my cross-examination and that it might be a good time to take the afternoon break. The judge agreed and dismissed the jury for fifteen minutes.
I sat back down at the defense table and my client reached over and squeezed my forearm with a powerful grip.
“You’re doing so good!” she whispered.
“We’ll see. There’s still a long way to go.”
She pushed her chair back to get up.
“Are you going for coffee?” she asked.
“No, I need to make a call. You go. Just remember, no talking to the media. Don’t talk to anybody.”
“I know, Mickey. Loose lips sink ships.”
“You got it.”
She left the table then and I watched her head out of the courtroom. I didn’t see her constant companion, Herb Dahl, anywhere.
I pulled my phone and called Cisco’s cell number. He answered right away.
“I’m out of time, Cisco. I need the letter.”
“You got it.”
“What do you mean, it’s confirmed?”
“Totally legit.”
“We’re lucky we’re talking on the phone.”
“Why’s that, Boss?”
“Because I might have to kiss you for this.”
“Uh, that won’t be necessary.”
Twenty-eight
I used the last few minutes of the break to prepare the second part of my cross-examination of Kurlen. Cisco’s news was going to send a wave through the whole trial. How I handled the new information with Kurlen would impact the rest of the trial. Soon everyone was back in the courtroom and I was at the lectern and ready to go. I had one last item on my list to hit before I got to the letter.
“Detective Kurlen, let’s go back to the crime scene photo you see on the screen. Did you identify the ownership of the briefcase that was found open next to the victim’s body?”
“Yes, it had the victim’s property in it and his initials engraved on the brass locking plate. It was his.”
“And when you arrived at the crime scene and saw the open briefcase next to the body, what were your initial impressions of it?”
“None. I try to keep an open mind about everything, especially when I first come into a case.”
“Did you think the open briefcase could mean that robbery was a motive for the murder?”
“Among many possibilities, yes.”
“Did you think, Here is a banker dead and an open briefcase next to him. I wonder what the killer was after?”
“I had to think of that as a possible scenario. But as I said it was—”
“Thank you, Detective.”
Freeman objected, saying I was not giving the witness time to fully answer the question. The judge agreed and let Kurlen finish.
“I was just saying that the possibility of this being a robbery was just one scenario. Leaving the briefcase open could just as easily have been a move to make it look like a robbery when it wasn’t.”
I pushed on without losing a beat.
“Did you determine what was taken from the briefcase?”
&
nbsp; “As far as we knew then and know now, nothing was taken from it. But there was no inventory as to what should have been in the briefcase. We had Mr. Bondurant’s secretary look at his files and work product to see if she could determine if anything was missing, like a file or something. She found nothing missing.”
“Then do you have any explanation for why it was left open?”
“As I said before, it could have been done as misdirection. But we also believe there is a good chance that the case sprung open when it was dropped on the concrete during the attack.”
I put my incredulous look on.
“And how did you come to that determination, sir?”
“The briefcase has a faulty locking mechanism. Any sort of jarring of the case could lead to its release. We conducted experiments with the case and found that when it was dropped to a hard surface from a height of three feet or more, it sprung open about one out of every three times.”
I nodded and acted like I was computing this information for the first time even though I already had it from one of the investigative reports received in discovery.
“So what you’re saying is that there was a one in three chance that the briefcase came open on its own when Mr. Bondurant dropped it.”
“That’s correct.”
“And you called that a good chance, correct?”
“A solid chance.”
“And of course there was a greater chance that that was not how the briefcase came open, right?”
“You can look at it that way.”
“There is a greater chance that someone opened the briefcase, correct?”
“Again, you can look at it that way. But we determined that nothing was missing from the briefcase so there was no apparent reason for it to have been opened except to create a misdirection of some kind. Our working theory was that it sprung open when it was dropped.”
“Do you notice in the crime scene photograph, Detective, that none of the contents of the case have fallen out and onto the pavement?”
“That’s correct.”
“Do you have an inventory of the briefcase in your binder there that you can read to us?”
Kurlen took his time finding it and then read it to the jury. The briefcase contained six files, five pens, an iPad, a calculator, an address book and two blank notebooks.
“When you conducted your tests in which you dropped the briefcase to the ground to see about the possibility of it popping open, did the case have the same contents?”
“It had similar contents, yes.”
“And on the times that the case popped open, how often did all the contents remain inside it?”
“Not every time but most of the time. It definitely could have happened.”
“Was that the scientific conclusion to your scientific experiment, Detective?”
“It was done in the lab. It wasn’t my experiment.”
With a pen and a noticeable wrist flourish, I made several check marks on my legal pad. I then moved on to the most important avenue of my cross-examination.
“Detective,” I said, “you told us earlier today that you received a threat-assessment file from WestLand National and that it contained information about the defendant. Did you ever check out any of the other names in the file?”
“We reviewed the file several times and did some limited follow-up. But as evidence came in against the defendant, we saw less and less of a need to.”
“You weren’t going to go chasing rainbows when you had your suspect already in hand, is that it?”
“I wouldn’t put it that way. Our investigation was thorough and exhaustive.”
“Did this thorough and exhaustive investigation include pursuing any other leads at any time that did not involve Lisa Trammel as a suspect?”
“Of course. That’s what the job involves.”
“Did you review Mr. Bondurant’s work product and look for any leads unrelated to Lisa Trammel?”
“Yes, we did.”
“You have testified about investigating threats made against the victim in this case. Did you investigate any threats he might have made against others?”
“Where the victim threatened someone else? Not that I recall.”
I asked the court’s permission to approach the witness with Defense Exhibit 2. I handed copies to all parties. Freeman objected but she was simply going through the motions. The issue regarding Bondurant’s letter of complaint to Louis Opparizio had already been decided during pretrial arguments. Perry was allowing it, if only to even the score for allowing the state to enter the hammer and the DNA. He overruled Freeman’s objection and told me I could proceed.
“Detective Kurlen, you hold a letter sent by certified mail from Mitchell Bondurant, the victim, to Louis Opparizio, president of ALOFT, a contracted vendor to WestLand National. Could you please read the letter to the jury?”
Kurlen stared at the page I gave him for a long moment before reading.
“ ‘Dear Louis, Attached you will find correspondence from an attorney named Michael Haller who is representing the home owner in one of the foreclosure cases you are handling for WestLand. Her name is Lisa Trammel and the loan number is oh-four-oh-nine-seven-one-nine. The mortgage is jointly held by Jeffrey and Lisa Trammel. In his letter Mr. Haller makes allegations that the file is replete with fraudulent actions perpetrated in the case. You will note that he gives specific instances, all of which were carried out by ALOFT. As you know and we have discussed, there have been other complaints. These new allegations against ALOFT, if true, have put WestLand in a vulnerable position, especially considering the government’s recent interest in this aspect of the mortgage business. Unless we come to some sort of arrangement and understanding in regard to this I will be recommending to the board that WestLand withdraw from its contract with your company for cause and any ongoing business be terminated. This action would also require the bank to file an SAR with appropriate authorities. Please contact me at your earliest convenience to further discuss these matters.’ ”
Kurlen held the letter out to me as if he was finished with it. I ignored the gesture.
“Thank you, Detective. Now the letter mentions the filing of an SAR. Do you know what that is?”
“A suspicious activity report. All banks are required to file them with the Federal Trade Commission if such activity comes to their attention.”
“Have you ever before seen the letter you hold, Detective?”
“Yes, I have.”
“When?”
“While reviewing the victim’s work product. I noticed it then.”
“Can you give me a date when this happened?”
“Not an exact date. I would say I became aware of this letter about two weeks into the investigation.”
“And that would have been two weeks after Lisa Trammel was already arrested for the murder. Did you investigate further upon becoming aware of this letter, maybe talk to Louis Opparizio?”
“At some point I made inquiries and learned that Mr. Opparizio had a solid alibi for the time of the killing. I left it at that.”
“What about the people working for Opparizio? Did they all have alibis?”
“I don’t know.”
“You don’t know?”
“That’s right. I did not pursue this because it appeared to be a business dispute and not a legitimate motive for murder. I do not view this letter as a threat.”
“You did not consider it unusual that in this day of instant communication the victim chose to send a certified letter instead of an e-mail or a text or a fax?”
“Not really. There were several other copies of letters sent by certified mail. It seemed to be a way of doing business and keeping a record of it.”
I nodded. Fair enough.
“Do you know if Mr. Bondurant ever filed a suspicious activity report in regard to Louis Opparizio or his company?”
“I checked with the Federal Trade Commission. He did not.”
“Did you check with an
y other government agency to see if Louis Opparizio or his company were the subject of an investigation?”
“As best I could. There was nothing.”
“As best you could… and so this whole thing was a dead end to you, correct?”
“That’s correct.”
“You checked with the FTC and you ran down a man’s alibi, but then dropped it. You already had a suspect and the case against her was easy and just fell right into place for you, correct?”
“A murder case is never easy. You have to be thorough. You can leave no stone unturned.”
“What about the U.S. Secret Service? Did you leave that stone unturned?”
“The Secret Service? I’m not sure what you mean.”
“Did you have any interaction with the U.S. Secret Service during this investigation?”
“No, I didn’t.”
“How about the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Los Angeles?”
“I did not. I can’t speak for my partner or other colleagues who worked the case.”
It was a good answer but not good enough. In my peripheral vision I could see that Freeman had moved to the edge of her seat, ready for the right moment to object to my line of questioning.
“Detective Kurlen, do you know what a federal target letter is?”
Freeman leapt to her feet before Kurlen could respond. She objected and asked for a sidebar.
“I think we’d better step back into chambers for this,” the judge said. “I want the jury and court personnel to stay in place while I confer with counsel. Mr. Haller, Ms. Freeman, let’s go.”
I pulled a document and the attached envelope from one of my files and followed Freeman toward the door that led to the judge’s chambers. I was confident that I was about to tilt the case in the defense’s direction or I was headed to jail for contempt.
Twenty-nine
Judge Perry was not a happy jurist. He didn’t even bother to go behind his desk and sit down. We entered his chambers and he immediately turned on me and folded his arms across his chest. He stared hard at me and waited for his court reporter to take a seat and set up her machine before he spoke.
The Fifth Witness: A Novel Page 24