A Fever in the Heart: And Other True Cases (15 page)

Twice.

Two coaches. Two murders. One at Thanksgiving. One at Christmas. There was no way that anyone was going to write this off as coincidence. What on earth did it mean? Who would have a reason to hate both of the dead men enough to kill them? A disgruntled former athlete? Some other man who was fixated on Jerileefrom a distance, perhaps and seethed to see her with Morris and Gabby? No, that was fictional plotting. It didn't fit in Yakima, and it didn't fit with Morris Blankenbaker and Gabby Moore. That didn't stop the rumor mills from churning out motives both plausible and utterly ridiculous. One tale that circulated around Yakima County was that there was a "drug connection," that both of the victims had known too much about illegal narcotics operations in the area.

Another strong rumor was that "organized crime was involved.

It. Bernie Kline told the press that the Yakima police had found nothing that suggested either motive. Nor had they found any connection at all between Morris and Gabby's murders and the shooting death of Everett "Fritz" Fretland, a restaurant owner in nearby Selah, Washington, who had been found shot to death on September 6. Aside from the parallels in time and place, Fretland's murder had nothing at all to do with those of the two coaches. Kline would say only that Prosecutor Jeff Sullivan and the police were making progress on Blankenbaker's and Moore's murders, although neither would give any details. "I have every confidence that both killings will be solved," Sullivan said. "The investigation is proceeding and progress IS being made. We are looking into a number of possibilities. It IS just a process of putting them together." In truth, Sullivan and the others were baffled but only for a short time. Then they dug in hard to solve this seemingly insoluble double-murder case.

In the years ahead, Sullivan would prosecute dozens of felonies and supervise many times that number, but he would never forget this case, a baptism of fire. Prosecuting Attorney Jeff Sullivan was thirty-two years old, the same age as Morris Blankenbaker. Indeed, they both graduated from high school in Yakima in 1961, but Morris had gone to public school at Davis and Sullivan had attended parochial school: Marquette.

Basketball was Sullivan's sport, football was Blankenbaker's.

Sullivan would come to know Morris Blankenbaker and Gabby Moore better in death than he had ever known them in life. Jeff Sullivan was very handsome, a tall man with a thick shock of blond hair, who bore more than a passing resemblance to John F. Kennedy. After winning the election in November 1974, Sullivan was just embarking on the first of six terms as the elected prosecutor of Yakima County. He was a native Yakiman, the son of a family who had run a dry cleaning business in the area for many years. Sullivan had worked long and hard to achieve the responsible position he held at such a young age. His BA degree was from Gonzaga University in Spokane, he had a Bronze Star from his service as a first lieutenant in Vietnam where he was platoon leader and executive officer. Returning from Vietnam, Sullivan, who had a wife and two children by then (a family that would swell to four children), worked a full-time job as a trust officer of a Spokane bank during the day and attended law school at Gonzaga at night. Despite his punishing schedule, he graduated third in his class in the spring of 1971. Two months later, he was a deputy prosecutor in Yakima. The next year, he changed hats and worked as a public defender. The first case that Sullivan won was against J. Adam Moore (no relation to Gabby). He managed to get the second-degree murder charges against his client reduced to manslaughter.

"Well, I think I won." Sullivan laughs. "Adam Moore claims he won." Adam Moore and Jeff Sullivan would continue to meet on the legal battlegrounds of Yakima County over the next three decades. During trials, their friendship was always the rebut on hold.

Sullivan considers Moore "the premier defense attorney in Yakima County probably in the whole state of Washington." The two attorneys had IYO way of knowing in December of 1975 how challenged both of them would be by the Morris Blankenbaker-Gabby Moore homicide case. Gabby Moore's death left a huge void in the lives of his current and former athletes.

His connection to them had been so much more than that of a teacher to his students. Coaches good coaches shape the lives of their athletes forever after. They are often the father figures that some boys and girls never had. They can instill a sense of self worth and an inner confidence that lasts a lifetime. Teenagers may be cocky on the outside, but most of them are unsure of their own capabilities, tough or sullen because they are scared inside. Sports bring discipline and the courage to keep going when it looks as though the athlete has no more heart, muscle, or breath left. For most of his life, Gabby had been a superlative coach, only the last few years had sullied that image. Gabby had coached both football and wrestling, but, like most coaches, he excelled in one and that was, of course, wrestling. Wrestlers have to practice more self-denial than participants in almost any other sport.

In order to "make their weights," most wrestlers diet or fast the last few days before a match. They may also "sweat out" water weight in saunas. A football player can still play his position if he goes into a game weighing 195 instead of 190, a wrestler cannot. His sport is one-on-one, in a match, he is on his own: just the wrestler and his coach against another team's wrestler and his coach. And, of course, almost to the end of his life, Gabby Moore had been there with his boys all the way. Gabby had recruited his wrestlers when they were in junior high.

In Yakima, many of them had the choice of attending either Eisenhower or Davis High School, and Gabby had scouted for up-and-coming young athletes when they were way back in the seventh or eighth grade. With his chosen boys, he became a large part of their lives from that moment on. Little wonder, then, that his murder left dozens of young men shocked and grieving. Gabby Moore had been invincible to them, the strongest, toughest man they had ever known. If something could happen to Gabby, their own mortality suddenly stared back at them when they looked in their mirrors. Hurting the most were the handful of young men who had counted on Gabby for advice and inspiration and friendship, who had continued to see him on an almost daily basis, even when his life had blown all to hell over a woman who didn't love him anymore. Now they were left free floating with no anchor. All of the massive media coverage of Gabby's mysterious death and his obituaries had mentioned that his Davis wrestling team took the Washington State Championship in 1972. That was his dream team. The stars were Kenny Marino, Greg Williams, J. T. Culbertson, Mike Mcberb, and Angelo Pleasant. Angelo was probably the most outstanding athlete Gabby had ever coached. Together, that 1972 team had shown what small-town athletes with a superb coach could do. Those were glory days, days that none of them forgot. And now all the glory was ashes.

Angelo Pleasant was the shining star of the 1972 Davis wrestling squad.

His family was proud of him, just as he was proud of them. The Pleasant family had carved a place for themselves as one of the most respected families in Yakima. Coydell Pleasant and her husband, Andrew, ran the Pleasant Shopper Market on South Sixth Street. In order to make ends meet and see that his children all had a good education, Andrew also drove a garbage truck for the city of Yakima. In the summer, when Vern Henderson was between college terms, he and Andrew Pleasant had worked together on the garbage routes, and the two became good friends. The Pleasant Shopper Market was a typical neighborhood grocery store with a little bit of everything from canned goods to dairy products to produce, and even had a small line of clothing. The Pleasants' strength was that they gave a lot of personal attention that customers didn't find at chain supermarkets. They went out of their way to help customers find what they wanted, they were unfailingly friendly and they were just plain nice people. A black family in a small town populated mostly by Caucasians and a few Hispanics, the Pleasants worked long hours themselves and so did their three sons and three daughters. A close family, they were highly respected for what they had achieved. "We were always close," Coydell recalled of the good days. The two younger boys, Angelo and Anthony, who were two years apart in age, were especially tight. "They never really fought much.... They did things together," Coydell remembered. "They hunted, they fished, picnicked. .. bowling."

The boys were always tussling around and wrestling with each other. They were in Boy Scouts together in Pack 22 to start with. Later, they both wrestled for Gabby Moore.

One of the things the elder Pleasants preached over and over to their children was the value of education. "I have always taught the kids," Coydell emphasized, "to listen and do what their teacher tells them because the teachers that's teaching them have their education, and they lthe kids] are there to try and get theirs.... We were really wanting them to go and get an education and that was the only way to do it. They would have to listen to their teachers and learn." By 1975 the Pleasants had been in business for a decade and their children were just about grown, ranging in age from eighteen to twenty-nine. They had all either completed their higher education or were in the process. The boys all had "A" names: Andrew, Jr Angelo, and Anthony. The girls had pretty "S"

names: Santa, Sandra-, and Sella-.

Andrew, Sr and Coydell were proud of all their children, but it was Angelo who had truly excelled in sports. Andrew and Anthony were good, but Angelo was championship material. Gabby Moore had dropped by the store and told the elder Pleasants that he couldn't see that anything would keep Angelo down, in fact, he figured that Angelo might even make the Olympic Team. Angelo worked hard in the store. His parents loved to fish, and when they took short vacations, he took over the market and ran it for them. He was an energetic shelf stocker too, and good at getting his friends to help him. Angelo was the kid with the biggest smile and the broadest shoulders. But it was Angelo who had given his parents the most grief too. Every family with more than one child has its problem kidor kids.

If one of their children was going to be in trouble, the Pleasants knew it would be Angelo. He was tremendously strong and he was as quick to fight as he was to laugh. He did a lot of both. Schoolwork was harder for him than it was for his older brother, Andrew, or for his sisters.

And it was Angelo who chafed most at his father's strict guidelines for behavior. To his everlasting regret, it was Angelo who once raised his fists to his own father. Eventually, all three of the Pleasant sons went out for wrestling at Davis High School and wrestled under Gabby Moore's tutelage. Angelo and Anthony admired their older brother, Andrew, and they wanted to follow in his footsteps. In keeping with his pugnacity, Angelo had a nickname that made his complete name sound like an oxymoron, everyone called him "Turfy'turfy Pleasant. Only on formal occasions did anyone call Angelo anything but Turfy. Turfy was a good-looking kid with a wide smile. You had to like him when he grinned.

He was born on January 28, 1954, in Yakima and spent most his school years there. "I was in the sixth grade at Adams Elementary School," he remembered, "when my parents went into the grocery business." Turfy Pleasant went on to Washington Junior High, and that was where he first met the man who would become his hero. Turfy was in the ninth grade.

Everyone knew Gabby Moore, and when he showed up in the gymnasiums of middle schools, it was like a Broadway producer showing up at a college play. There was a buzz. "The season was about half over," Turfy remembered, "and I saw him at certain matches, but I still wasn't wrestling varsity until after Christmas. I finally made the first string and then a couple of people on the team told me that he was the coach at Davis High School and he was down looking for prospects for the years coming." Turfy had planned to go to Eisenhower High, but Gabby changed that. "He was down there to talk to me as a coach and asked me to, you know, wrestle for them that I had potential and to give him a chance as a coach." Actually, Gabby wasn't the first coach who had tried to recruit Turfy Pleasant. Even in the ninth grade, the kid had something extra. It wasn't that he was that big, he grew to be 5'7" and he only weighed 138 pounds in his sophomore and junior years in high school, but even way back then he just wouldn't quit. From the beginning, Turfy liked Coach Moore. Gabby seemed to take an interest in his wrestlers not just as athletes but as people. "You know, it kind of went beyond a coach and a student. It's kind of hard to explain," Turfy said many years later, half-smiling. "But [it gets so] you know you are pretty good. .. you are pretty good, and you just get pretty tight with that coach, especially if you're one of the main starters and he had a lot of interest in you.... You want to do good for your coach and your school."

Turfy did remarkably "good" for his school and his coach. He and Gabby had a truly symbiotic relation. Gabby could see that Turfy was the most outstanding wrestler on a squad of top-grade athletes and that Turfy would represent him well. A coach's "work product" is the athletes he brings along. Turfy Pleasant had one of the best wrestling coaches in the state, and a friend/father-figure who had been there for him for years and who would continue to be there. Turfy already had a wonderful father in Andrew Pleasant, but Gabby painted pictures of a future for Turfy that Andrew might never have imagined. Gabby promised Turfy the whole world. Gabby was Turfy's football coach too. "He was our head coach on defense." Turfy had the most challenging position on the football team. "I played monster back,' the toughest position on defense," Turfy remembered. "You can get trapped sometimes. They double-team you, they triple-team you and you got to be tough to handle the position.... I was mostly on the off-side of center either on one side or the other of our defensive tackle." Turfy played football two years at Davis High School, but wrestling was his real love, his avocation, the very center of his existence. He didn't mind the strict training rules Gabby Moore laid down. "No drinking," Turfy recited the forbidden activities. "No late hours whatsoever, and, if you can restrain yourself from it, no physical contact' with any type of lady."