A Fever in the Heart and Other True Cases

by Ann Rule

  “Five-oh-six East Lincoln,” she said, drawing in the location of her duplex. “That’s Lincoln Avenue there and the alley runs north and south down here like this. (She drew a line south from her home to the other end of the alley, marking Lincoln Avenue where it ran east and west.) This would be ‘B’ Street here.”

  “Okay,” the prosecutor nodded. “Would you draw the duplex in?”

  “Right there on the corner … right on the alley.” (She drew a rectangle where the alley connected with Lincoln Avenue.)

  Gerda had heard the footsteps and the “firecrackers” between “five, six, seven minutes after two.”

  She had heard only one person running. She was sure of that.

  Adam Moore rose to cross-examine, and the tone of the defense soon became evident. Tuffy Pleasant’s attorneys would attempt to convince the jury that the police and prosecutors had unduly influenced witnesses. It is a standard and often effective technique. Any prosecutor, or defense attorney, will talk to his witnesses before trial, but nervous witnesses can be made to feel that they should not have spoken to anyone.

  “In your statement,” Moore asked, “on March 2 … you don’t say how many people were making footsteps, do you? Since then have you talked to Mr. Sullivan or any policeman about this?”

  Mrs. Lenberg gave an odd non sequitur answer: “Just when I shut my eyes and looked back on the night, and I can hear the echo because of the close proximity of the buildings … and I just heard one echo.”

  “My question was: Did you talk to Mr. Sullivan or any of the policemen before getting on the stand about how many footsteps you thought there were?”

  Gerda knew what she knew, and she said she had told that to one detective. Moore cut her off asking about gravel and the interval between one foot and then the other hitting. It was not gravel, she said, but blacktop.

  She was a good prosecution witness.

  So was Dale Soost. He had heard three shots sometime between midnight and 4:15 A.M. He had not looked at the clock. He had heard the woman scream as he waited on the sidewalk around 5:00. He had not spoken to her or looked at the victim’s body.

  “No questions,” Moore said.

  Rowland Seal spoke rapidly but with infinite precision. “I’m an auto body and fender mechanic,” he said in answer to Sullivan’s initial question. “With a great many very busy hobbies…I manage a couple of duck clubs, I am a professional roller skating instructor, I teach trapshooting, shotgun shooting … I have friends in the Game Department and I do photography work for them, and keep track of wildlife counts, big game, birds and such as that.”

  Sullivan had Seal draw the apartment house at 208 North Sixth on “State’s Identification-2.” (His and Soost’s apartment house was on the opposite end of the alley from Gerda Lenberg’s.)

  “Were you awakened sometime during the night?”

  Where Soost had been vague, Seal was right on the mark. “A few seconds before two-oh-five in the morning—“

  “How did you know it was a few seconds before two-oh-five?”

  “Well, I have a digital watch and digital clock next to my bed that I cross-checked the next morning … and I heard three shots—bang, bang-bang, and I and my wife both looked at the clock immediately, so I would say I was awakened a few seconds before— the length of time it takes you to come back down on the bed and turn over and look at the clock.”

  Seal had peered from his window, but he said he could not have seen Morris Blankenbaker lying dead in his side yard. The cones of lights from the porches and the alley all ended before they came to that part of the yard.

  Rowland Seal had walked along the apartment house side of the wire fence and seen the dead man, and he had tried to talk with the screaming woman, who could not be comforted.

  “She was very hysterical,” he testified. “That’s why I was rather blunt with her to kind of get her to do something and get her settled down … She was in front of the house and I said, ‘Get in there and call the police or I will.’ And I said, ‘Well, if you aren’t going to do it, I will.’ So I started into the house— started toward the steps—and the dog wouldn’t let me in.”

  Rowland Seal was an excellent witness. His recall was obviously as set as Jell-O, and Chris Tait said quietly, “No questions.”

  The first three witnesses had described how it was in the wee hours of the Friday night/Saturday morning when Morris Blankenbaker died. Each had heard something slightly different, but their testimony meshed. Gerda Lenberg spoke of hearing the “firecrackers,” and the sound of running feet with hollow-sounding heels in the alley just outside her bedroom window.

  Dale Soost had heard shots and gone back to sleep. Rowland Seal, punctilious and precise, knew the number of shots, and the exact time he had heard them.

  Both men had seen the slender woman emerge from her home and run through the snow, only to run back, screaming, “Morris! Morris!”

  Despite the August heat, it had grown cold in the courtroom. Sullivan had been successful in turning back time and season.

  Shortly before nine the next morning, Wednesday, August 18, the word that the woman at the center of the triangle was going to testify buzzed through the tenth floor. “She’s here …” The murmuring passed along the oak benches outside the courtroom. Witnesses waited there. Family sometimes retreated to the benches when the testimony grew too graphic, while the reporters came and went. Today, they packed the press rows inside the courtroom and their cameramen waited outside for a glimpse of the woman who had bedazzled two men— one enough to forgive her for what many men would find unforgivable— and the other enough, allegedly, to both kill and die for her.

  She was beautiful. There had been no exaggeration about that. Jerilee had a wonderful figure, slender and full breasted. She wore a tight-fitting striped shirt over a black turtleneck top and black bell-bottom slacks. Her hair was dark brown, parted in the middle, and fell to her shoulders. She had huge eyes under carefully arched brows. Her eyes were lined with kohl, which made them appear even bigger. Despite everything that she had been through, she seemed younger than twenty-nine.

  Outside the courtroom, Jerilee posed willingly for the cameras and talked to reporters. Yes, she was nervous, but she was prepared to testify.

  Only when Jerilee moved toward the witness chair to be sworn in, did her real anxiety show. She would now have to relive the most horrendous three years of her life. There was a quaver in her voice as she answered Jeff Sullivan’s questions.

  “First, Jerilee,” he said, “I want you to sit up as close to the microphone as you can and speak loudly to all of the jurors, and so counsel can hear you. Would you please state your full name and spell it for the record?”

  “Jerilee Littleton. J-e-r-i-l-e-e … L-i-t-t-l-e-t-o-n.”

  Vern Henderson stared at her from his spot at the prosecution table. Later, he commented somewhat sardonically, “Everybody was looking to see Mrs. Blankenbaker or Mrs. Moore, and neither of them showed up. Mrs. Littleton came to court. Most people were surprised to find that out.”

  The witness gave her address in Yakima, and said she was a loan interviewer at the Pacific National Bank. “Since October …”

  “Jerilee, when were you married to Morris Blankenbaker?”

  “August twenty-eight, 1965.”

  “Did you and Morris have any children?”

  “Yes, we did— a boy, Rick— he’s now seven, and a girl, Amanda, and she’s five.”

  “Now, how long were you and Morris married?”

  “It would have been nine years in August of seventy-four; we were divorced in June.”

  “After you divorced Morris, did you remarry?”

  “Yes … Glynn Moore.”

  “Does Glynn Moore have a nickname?”

  “Yes, it was ‘Gabby.’”

  “Now, when were you and Gabby Moore married?”

  “September fourteenth, 1974.”

  “How long did you and Gabby Moore live together?”

/>   “Until July of 1975.”

  “Less than a year?”

  “Yes.”

  “From September to July, did you and he ever separate?”

  “Yes, about three times.”

  “What was the longest separation?”

  “I think about two weeks.”

  “Why did you and he separate during that period of time?”

  “Well, he was a very unpredictable person. He would— he loved you a lot one minute and the next minute he just kicked you out of the house, and I was getting a little bit scared of him.”

  “Did he actually throw you out of the house on occasion?”

  “Yes.”

  “What about his drinking habits during the time you were married to him?”

  “He drank very heavily.”

  “When you say ‘very heavily,’ can you give me some idea of the amount?”

  “Well, within a two-or three-hour period, he would drink a fifth of bourbon or whatever.”

  Jerilee testified that this level of drinking occurred three or four times a week, but she said she didn’t think Gabby had used drugs.

  “Not that you are aware of?”

  “No.”

  “Now, were you separated in July?”

  “Yes.”

  “When you left, where did you go?”

  “I went back to my first husband, Morris Blankenbaker.”

  There was a slight murmur in the courtroom. What had been well-chewed gossip in Yakima was news to most of the spectators in this Seattle trial.

  Jerilee kept her eyes on Jeff Sullivan. He was being gentle with her. She didn’t know what kind of questions Adam Moore and Chris Tait might ask.

  “When did you file for divorce from Glynn Moore?”

  “In July.”

  “So when you moved out of Gabby’s house, you moved back in with Morris? And where were you and Morris living in July of 1975?”

  “At two-ten North Sixth Street in Yakima”

  Jerilee answered questions about Gabby’s obsession to have her back.

  “Did you have any contact with Gabby Moore?”

  “He would call daily and he stopped by a couple of times. He would call me at work and he would call me at home … he came out to the bank … ”

  “When he called, what was the general nature of his conversation?”

  “He would just ask when I was coming back and wouldn’t I give him another chance. He wasn’t going to make it without me.”

  “Did he ever talk about Morris?”

  “Not really that I recall.”

  “Did he ever threaten to do bodily harm to Morris?”

  “No.”

  “Did he ever threaten to do bodily harm to himself?”

  “Yes … He would often say that he would like to commit suicide in front of me so that I would be on the fifth floor of Memorial— which is the psychiatric ward.”

  Jerilee testified that Gabby’s children had all spoken to her on their father’s behalf and begged her to give him another chance.

  “Did you tell Glynn Moore that if Morris wasn’t around that you would go back to him?”

  “No, I definitely didn’t.”

  “Did he ever ask you what you would do if Morris wasn’t there?”

  “I don’t believe he did.”

  At the prosecution table, Vern Henderson listened and watched. He knew that Jerilee had met with Gabby Moore— he had seen them. From the distance at which he had observed them, he had no way of knowing if Jerilee had given Gabby any mixed signals. He wished that he had talked to her. Talked to Gabby. Done something. But he had kept out of it: he had followed his own rule not to mess in anyone else’s relationship.

  Jerilee told the jury about the night Gabby came into her house, and of how Morris and Joey Watkins had arrived to send him away.

  “Do you remember where he [Morris] was teaching?”

  “He was teaching physical education at the intermediate school— in Wapato.”

  “And sometime later in the fall, he took on another job; is that right?”

  “Yes, he checked ID at the Lion’s Share, at the door.”

  “And what is the Lion’s Share?”

  “It’s a tavern, located on Second Street, I believe, in Yakima.”

  “How long had Morris been working at the Lion’s Share?”

  “He worked three days a week, and I believe this was his second week.”

  Jerilee’s voice trembled more as she recalled the last night of Morris’s life. They had had pizza with their children, and then he had gone off to work. She and a girlfriend had gone out to hear her friend’s husband’s band playing at the Country Cousin. They had stopped by to see Morris. The last time she had seen him alive was about a quarter to ten that night. Later, she had picked up Rick and Amanda from Olive’s mobile home and taken them home where they’d all gone to bed. At two A.M., she had wakened, realized Morris would be home soon and she had moved the children from her bed into their own.

  “Did you just wake up at two or did you have an alarm set?”

  “I just woke up at two o’clock.”

  ” … How did you know it was two?”

  “I have a clock by the bed. I took the children out of the bed and put them in their own beds. Then I went back to bed myself.”

  “Did Morris come in, come home?”

  “He came home— just a few minutes after I put the children in bed.”

  “Tell us what happened then,” Jeff Sullivan said.

  “I heard our car drive in and I heard our car door shut. And then I thought that I heard two more car doors shut— and Morris didn’t come in.”

  “What did you do when he didn’t come in?”

  “Well, at the time I didn’t do anything because I had thought some fellows had asked him if he would like to go for a couple of drinks after work. So I thought the car doors that I heard later were the fellows picking him up, so I didn’t do anything. I just remained in bed.”

  “Did you hear anything else, Jerilee, when the car doors closed?”

  “I heard some voices … from the back of the house … toward the alley … They sounded rather excited, kind of high-pitched.”

  “Did you recognize any of the voices?”

  “No, I didn’t.”

  “Could one of the voices have been Morris’s?”

  “Could have been, but I didn’t recognize it at the time.”

  “How long did this conversation or these voices last?”

  “Not long, maybe ten words.”

  Jerilee could not remember the sequence of the car doors slamming and the voices. She didn’t know which had come first.

  “Okay. How long did you stay in bed before you decided you better see what’s going on?”

  “About half an hour. Then I got up and went to the back window and looked out, and I saw that our car was there. So then I went outside and looked inside the car. Nobody was there so I went back in the house, went back to bed.”

  “How far was the car parked from where Morris’s body was found the next day?”

  “Maybe thirty feet, about.”

  “Is it dark out there?”

  “Where Morris’s body was … it was.”

  “Do you wear glasses?”

  “I wear contact lenses.”

  “If you take your contact lenses out, how far can you see?”

  “I can’t see hardly at all.”

  Jerilee had taken her contacts out when she went to bed, and she had gone out to look in the car without them. She was nearsighted and had difficulty seeing at a distance. She had been able to see that both their cars were parked in their usual places, but not much more than that. She had gone back to bed, read for a while, and then slept fitfully until five A.M.

  “You have a large dog, do you not, or did at that time?”

  “Yes, we did— a black Lab.”

  “Where was he?”

  “In my bedroom.”

  “Did he make any noise
at two o’clock?”

  “No, he didn’t.”

  “Did he usually bark when there were strangers outside the house?”

  “Oh, yes … he’s very, very protective.”

  “To the point where you didn’t have your mail delivered if he was outside? Is that right?”

  “That’s right.”

  “Did he bark when Morris came home— usually?”

  “No, he pretty much could recognize the footsteps, I believe, because he never barked at anybody familiar.”

  At five A.M., Jerilee had called her brother-in-law Mike, who had offered to come over. He knew that Morris had had no plans to go anywhere after work.

  “I said, ‘Well, I think it will be okay,’” Jerilee testified. “‘Rather than have you come down, I’ll take Hike and we’ll go around the house … so I left Mike on the phone and took the dog and went out the front door. Before I did that, though, I put my contacts in this time. The dog ran ahead of me and started growling and barking at something on the ground. I couldn’t tell right then what it was, but when I got there I saw that it was Morris.”

  Jerilee could no longer contain the tears that brimmed up in her eyes, trying, as she obviously was to blink them back. This was the worst part, but she kept answering Jeff Sullivan’s questions.

  “Was it dark?” he asked softly.

  “Yes.”

  “How was Morris lying when you first walked over to him?”

  “He was lying on his stomach, facedown— his feet pointing toward the alley— that would be west.”

  “And his head?”

  “East toward Sixth Street.”

  “Where was his body, Jerilee, in relationship to your fence and the gate?”

  “It was just inside the gate— just right inside the gate, and … ”

  Her voice shook, thick with tears.

  “What did you do then?”

  “I rolled him over and tried to pull him toward me. I felt his face and I thought I felt something on his face, which I thought was mud at that time. And he was really heavy. I mean he didn’t help me at all. And I think I tried to hear a heartbeat. I don’t remember exactly… I took ahold of his jacket on his right side and rolled him toward the house, which would be north, and then I pulled him into a sitting position toward me with his jacket.”