A Fever in the Heart: And Other True Cases (24 page)

"Yeah. .. Iike a trot."

"Okay, just a jog or whatever. And did you approach him from behind the garage?"

"No."

"You came right up behind his car?"

Vern could see it. He could see it in his mind, but he didn't dare look away. Maybe he could forget it... sometime. "Yes." Turfy nodded. "He was almost all the way up to the front of his house, and I called him back.

I said, Morris! Morris!" you know."

"He walked back?"

Too late now to shout out a warning, but the impulse was there.

Morris, Morris, keep going up the front steps. Shut the door behind you.

Don't turn around. Don't go back.... Turfy Pleasant shifted uncomfortably. "Yes, he walked back, and he had a bottle of beer in his hand, and the gate was open. And he walked back, and had just, you know, kind of closed the gate. And I said, My car stopped on me down the street,' you know. And he says, I can't hear you." I says, My car stopped on me down the street." Just to wait until I got close enough.

Then I got close enough and I unloaded on him." Amazingly, impossibly, Vern heard his own voice speaking in a calm, professional manner. "Okay, so actually when you shot him, it was at most a matter of like you and I are sitting here across the table, just a matter of inches really?"

"Yes."

"And then he fell to the ground. Did you shoot him after he went down on the ground?"

"No." Turfy said that he had just aimed at the big part of Morris's head. He was lying. Vern knew that Morris had been shot once in the mouth to knock him down, and twice more behind the ear as he lay helpless on his stomach, dying. Vern didn't call Turfy on the inaccuracies not then.

"... When he was standing up. Okay, now then, you ran back down the alley and got in your car, and then where did you go?"

"I went back to Ellensburg."

"What did you do with the gun?"

"I kept it."

"What happened to the clip?"

"I don't know. I lost it somewhere."

"And then you returned the gun to your cousin's place some days later?"

"Yes."

"The reason you did this, Angelo, is you talked to Gabby for a long time and you had these plans to shoot Morris. Is that right? You used one of his plans? Or did you think of this by yourself?"

"It was his. It was all his idea."

Turfy said he had received no money at all. None of it had been about money. "You did it for him as a favor because you liked him?"

"Yeah."

"You were going to help him out? Ease some of the pain he was going through about losing his wife?"

"Yeah."

Even knowing how close Gabby Moore had always been with his athletes, even having once been one of Gabby's athletes, it was almost impossible for Vern Henderson to imagine the control Gabby had obviously had over Turfy "In other words," Vern asked again, "you felt he would have done you a favor in the years gone, and that you would do him this favor."'

"Well, it really wasn't a favor. I don't look at it as a favor."

"How do you feel?"

,'l don't," Turfy said stoically. "Because I really just did it "What else?"

"I was under the influence of him all the time, you know," Turfy said wearily. "I was on his mind track. I wasn't on mine." The confession was over. Two confessions really, one on Saturday and one on Sunday. This was the most unlikely killer either Sergeant Brimmer or Detective Henderson could have imagined. My God, Turfy had been welcome in Morris's home. He had been over there only a week or so before he shot Morris. Morris had been a mentor to him too, showing him wrestling moves. Morris would have walked toward Turfy with as much trust as he would have walked toward Vern himself. Turfy Pleasant would have been the last person in the world that Morris would have expected to point a gun at him. But it didn't matter. Morris was just as dead as if he had been shot by a complete stranger. Angelo Pleasant's arrest was headlined in the Yakima Herald-Republic. It was the end of the dreams Coydell and Andrew Pleasant had held so long for their children. All of their years of work seemed in vain now. Andrew had asked Vern to find out the truth, but when the truth rose to the surface just as Vern had feared he didn't want to know it. "Angelo and I always got along," Vern remembered, "but the family felt that I had tricked their son into a confession. It brought such shame and hurt to them that I think they needed to blame me to feel I had used trickery. That was the end of our friendship. I had always known that it would be." The Pleasants' shame was so unbearable they could not believe that it could possibly get worse. The article announcing that an arrest had been made in the murders of Morris Blankenbaker and T. Glynn (Gabby) Moore was maddening in its lack of details. It wasn't reporter Duane Dozier's fault, the Prosecutor's Office and the Yakima police were releasing very little information.

Pleasant is charged in a Yakima County Superior Court warrant with aiding and abetting an unnamed person in first-degree murder. What did that mean? And who was the unnamed person? The article said that Angelo was being held under fifty thousand dollars bail. In reality, that meant it would take five thousand dollars and a promise of forty-five thousand dollars more if he should not show up for hearings. That was an awful lot of money to raise, and nobody close to Turfy came up with it. He remained behind bars.

His arraignment was set for March 1.

Every article about Turfy's arrest reprised his glory days as a champion wrestler, just as Jerilee was mentioned in each retelling as having been married to both murdered coaches. The scandal burned brightly in Yakima.

At Turfy's arraignment, Yakima County Superior Court Judge Howard Hettinger revised the charges against him, he was now charged with two counts: first-degree murder in the shooting of Morris Blankenbaker and second-degree murder in T. Glynn "Gabby" Moore's death. The first-degree murder charge stemmed from the "premeditated" aspect of Morris's death, whereas Gabby Moore was deemed to have died while his killer was engaged in a felony, to wit: second degree assault. Hettinger also revoked Turfy's bail and appointed two attorneys to defend him: Wade Gano and Chris Tait. Angelo Pleasant's trial date was set for April 19, less than two months away. Court watchers predicted that there would be delays.

There were those who murmured that the man who was ultimately to blame for the double murder was not the man locked up in the Yakima County Jail. But that man could no longer be made to answer for any misdeeds:

Gabby Moore was dead, and the kid who had listened to his every thought and his every word so avidly now stared out through bars at a world that no longer held any promise at all for him. Angelo "Turfy" Pleasant soon had three attorneys. Adam Moore, arguably the best criminal defense attorney in Yakima County, was appointed by Judge Hettinger as chief defense counsel. He had more experience in murder trials than either Gano or Tait, and Turfy was going to need as much legal help as he could get. Adam Moore and Jeff Sullivan had once again switched places. Now Sullivan was the prosecutor and Moore was the defense attorney. As Jeff Sullivan explained, "Many of the players in our county's trials are the same over the years only the scripts change." Sullivan viewed Adam Moore as a worthy adversary, he always would, no matter how many times they met on the legal playing field. Loretta Scott had been granted immunity from prosecution on any charges stemming from her involvement with the suspect Colt. 22, which was still undergoing ballistics tests. It seemed that there would be no more surprises. Almost routinely, Turfy's attorneys asked that he be examined by a psychiatrist to see if he was mentally competent to stand trial. Dr. Frederick Montgomery asked Turfy the usual questions and gave him tests designed to point out any aberrance that would indicate that he did not know the difference between right and wrong at the time of the two shootings or currently.

After Montgomery's evaluation, there was no further mention of an insanity defense. It was possible that Turfy had been partially brainwashed, but he was not insane under the law or clinically. There was startling news about the Blankenbaker moore murders in the March 19

edition of the local papers After listening to additional statements purportedly made by Turfy Pleasant, Yakima detectives arrested his younger brother, Anthony Pleasant, nineteen. He too was booked into the Yakima County Jail, charged with first-degree murder in Morris Blankenbaker's death and held without bail. Dick Nesary, the Yakima police's polygrapher, had run a number of lie detector tests on the men awaiting trial. Nesary, who had administered over eighteen hundred polygraphs, had reported that Turfy Pleasant's first tests in January had been inconclusive. On March 18, Turfy was put on the polygraph again and had implicated his own brother in Morris's murder. Adam Moore and Chris Tait thought another polygraph might verify that accusation, this test was done at the request of the defense team With Vern Henderson, Chris Tait, and Jeff Sullivan observing out of eye range, Nesary administered a Backster Zone Comparison Test to Turfybasically asking one question in two different ways, with control questions in between.

Nesary had never talked with Turfy before the January 10

polygraphs, although he was aware of Turfy's athletic fame. In January he had found Turfy talkative and friendly. Now, two months later, he found himself talking to a different man. "When I first started to run him on March 18," Nesary said, "he was a rather quiet, subdued type of person, and I had to pull things out of him to get him to talk in the pretest part." Nesary listened as Turfy told him who had shot Morris, it was a different story than he had told Vern Henderson. "He stated he was there and so was Anthony and Anthony was the one that had actually shot Morris Blankenbaker," Sergeant Nesary said. Turfy had worked hard in his life, and his hands were callused, not the best mediums for the Galvanic Skin Response test because they would not produce the classic "sweaty palms" reaction. Nesary also noted that Turfy's breathing patterns were irregular. But he didn't think either condition would change the results of the polygraph significantly. The results of the March 18 lie detector on Turfy Pleasant surprised Nesary and caught the prosecution team off guard. Although Nesary was a Yakima police sergeant, he read the three charts he had taken on their own merit. Turfy had told him that his brother Anthony shot Morris Blankenbaker, and Nesary said that his responses seemed to support that. "In my opinion, he was truthful to the questions asked pertaining to the shooting situation...." Jeff Sullivan had had no choice but to order an arrest warrant for Anthony Pleasant, and on Thursday, March 18, Anthony was arrested. Later that day, Nesary got a call from Vern Henderson. "Come on down here," Vern said. "We want you to run Anthony." Wanting to be absolutely certain that his reading was as accurate as it could be, Nesary ran six charts on Anthony Pleasant. Anthony too had "breathing problems," irregular respirations brought on perhaps by nervousness and the shock of having just been arrested. In the end, Nesary's findings provided more shockers. "On the question, Did you shoot Morris Blankenbaker?" when the subject answered No,' it's my opinion that he was untruthful." Vern Henderson, Bob Brimmer, and Jeff Sullivan were set back on their heels. All of their investigation thus far had indicated that Turfyand not Anthony was the shooter in both murder cases. Now one of the city police department's own sworn officers was telling them that his read of the polygraph tests indicated the reverse. Nesary himself was startled, he had made mistakes in his readings of lie detector results only rarely, and that was because he had worded control questions incorrectly or because he had been given the facts wrong. Usually, he said, mistakes tended to favor defendants rather than hurt them. Undoubtedly, the defense would attempt to enter the reversely weighted polygraphs into Turfy Pleasant's trial.

Just as surely, Prosecutor Sullivan would fight to keep them out. It would be impossible, however, for the results of lie detector tests to be admitted into evidence and presented to a jury, unless both sides stipulated to their admission. On March 30, Turfy Pleasant reneged on his confessions and pleaded not guilty to both charges during his pretrial hearing. Vern Henderson was nonplussed. He had heard Turfy's confessions, Vern knew that Turfy knew things that only the killer could have known. But it was more than that There had been a despair in Turfy's words as he told of shooting two men he had cared about, emotion that Vern didn't think could be manufactured. If Turfy was scared and having second thoughts, that was understandable, but Vern didn't believe they had arrested the wrong man. Among the defense motions entered that day was a request for a change of venue. Turfy's attorneys argued that there had already been so much publicity about the cases that it would be impossible for him to get a fair trial in Yakima County. Adam Moore said that radio, television, and newspaper reports had been "highly inflammatory" and that there was no way an impartial jury of twelve people could be picked. Mike Brown, an investigator for the public defender's office, said that he had taken an unofficial survey of community attitude toward the case, although Brown's techniques might not have been considered sophisticated in a large city He said he had checked the pulse of opinion in Yakima. He had been to "three barbershops and three beauty parlors" within the city limits. His survey of employees showed a unanimous response that they had all heard rumors about the double murders. Brown said he had also interviewed twenty-eight people in The Mall and fourteen people in Sunnysidetwenty miles southeast of Yakima. Of those forty-two, only nine said they had not heard of the cases. Of those who did know of it, however, just three had formed opinions as to Turfy's guilt or innocence. According to Brown, they all thought Turfy was guilty.

"This case stands like a Goliath over previous county murder cases," defense attorney Adam Moore told reporters as he explained his request for a change of venue. "Drugs, romance, and jealousy are the fabric upon which this motion is woven." Prosecutor Jeff Sullivan demurred, citing other cases just as sensational which had been tried within Yakima County. Judge Carl Lay ruled that he felt that Angelo Pleasant could get a fair trial in Yakima and that he would not move the trial to Seattle, Spokane, or some other city in Washington. The publicity has been factual rather than evidential," Lay commented succinctly. He said he had seen no signs of prejudicial reporting and that media versions of the cases' progression had, in his opinion, "met bench-bar-press guidelines." Although Lay agreed that there had been a great deal of publicity in the Blankenbaker-Moore case, he attributed that to who the victims were and to the bizarre circumstances of the killings. It was clearly not the kind of case that local reporters were going to bury on the back pages. However, given the gossip circulating through the Yakima Valley, the newspapers had been remarkably circumspect. Still, reading the papers, Vern Henderson shook his head. Romance and jealousy. .. and now drugs. The whole case, as it appeared in the headlines, was beginning to sound like a regular soap opera. The rumor mill ground on, fueled with no other ammunition than speculation, imagination, and half truths. On April 8, there were more headlines and yet another suspect under arrest. Kenny Marino, Turfy Pleasant's best friend and also a member of the 1972 championship wrestling team, was arraigned on charges of second-degree murder in Gabby Moore's death. While both Pleasant brothers were being held without bond, Marino's bail was set at fifty thousand dollars. Prosecutor Sullivan would give no details but said only that the investigation was continuing. If things went on as they had, it seemed as if the murder case were going to tarnish every wrestler close to Gabby Moore. Now two of Coydell and Andrew Pleasant's sons were charged with murder. Anthony was to go on trial May 3, two weeks after Angelo's trial was to begin. None of it made much sense to the public who could only speculate on their alleged motives for murder.