A Fever in the Heart: And Other True Cases (30 page)

Adam Moore hit on the trio's drinking that evening, on Sam and Sally's failure to absolutely identify Turfy, and he even managed to confuse Melodie. "And there's no doubt in your mind that our man is Angelo Pleasant, the guy you met nine months ago?"

"I really don't know, but I'm saying it's him," Melodie vacillated suddenly. "I wouldn't know him, you know"

"Does he look like the same man?"

"He don't to me. He had a little more hair."

"He had more hair then?"

"Yeah."

"Any other differences?"

"He looked like he gained a little weight that's about. .. .

"Could this be the man? Is it possible?"

"Yes."

"You said he was the man when Mr. Sullivan was asking you."

I "Yeah," Melodie, a nightmare of a witness, equivocated. "I'm sure it's him now since I seen him again." Melodie was certain, however, that they had dropped her date off that night at two a.m. at his car at the Chinook. Joey Watkins, Turfy's former housemate and wrestling buddy, was the next witness. Joey might knit up the raveled mess of uncertainties the previous witnesses had left. That is the excitement of a trial.

Players leave gaps, misinterpretations, outright lies, and prejudiced statements in the fabric of the case, and the attorneys must rush to present other players who will undo the damage, and maybe even push their side a few lengths ahead. Nothing is ever a given nor should it be. Smug, overconfident trial lawyers can be humbled in an instant. Joey Watkins, an extremely tall young man, took the stand. He recalled knowing Turfy since grade school and living with him for six weeks in the fall of 1975. Turfy, he said, was back and forth from college classes in Ellensburg, helping coach Gabby Moore's high school wrestlers. "Did you know Morris Blankenbaker?"

"Yes. I knew of him when I was in school because he was like assistant coach to us."

"So you knew both Morris Blankenbaker and Gabby Moore, is that right?" Sullivan asked. "Yes."

"Were you going up and assisting at the wrestling practices?"

"Angelo asked me to go up to get ahold of the heavyweights and teach them, because they were kind of slow in learning things.... I was helping him out."

"Angelo was up [at wrestling practice] all the time.

Is that right?"

"Yeah, I believe he was."

Joey recalled going up to Morris's house the night Gabby broke in.

Gabby was outside when they got there and he was "hamming" on the windows. "What happened? Was there any kind of a fight or anything?"

"No." Joey shook his head. "Morris got out of the car and went over there. He says, Man, Watkins, you know what? I would hit him' but he says it was his coach.... They just started talking and I guess Morris told him something and he just left." Joey was the friend who had been with Turfy in the Red Lion in the Chinook Hotel on the night Morris was murdered. He remembered it extremely well. "Me and Angelo were at the Lion's Share messing around. We went to the Red Lion. That's where he met these three people. We were sitting down drinking. .. Angelo looked over and saw these people sitting over there, so he went over and talked to them. So Angelo came back over to the table and told me that he was going to be with these people tonight and so he took me home."

"Now, once you got home, do you remember what you did?"

"Well, I just stayed at the house and laid back on the couch.

Then my woman came by and we just sat and talked."

"Did you ever leave home again that night?"

"No."

"How did you find out Morris Blankenbaker had been killed?"

"Well, Angelo's mother and father were going fishing to Moses Lake....

Me, Anthony, and Angelo were all out at his parents' house cleaning up the yard, and I just happened to see the newspaper and saw his picture in there."

"What day was that?"

Joey wasn't sure. He knew it was on the weekend, and thought it was probably on the Sunday november 22. Back to the Friday night/Saturday morning when Morris died the witness said he had gone to sleep between twelve or one a.m. and he hadn't seen Turfy-Angelo at all that night.

"Now, Joey." Sullivan's voice was strong. "Did you have anything to do with the death of Morris Blankenbaker? Were you there when he was shot?"

"No."

"Did you drive the car for Angelo?"

"No."

"You had nothing to do with it? You were nowhere near the scene?"

"No."

"Did you ever see Gabby Moore give Angelo money?"

"When we were wrestling, he probably gave him, say, about thirty-five, forty, fifty dollars." Joey didn't know what the money was for, or exactly when Gabby gave it to Turfy. "I imagine he gave it to Angelo for helping him out with the wrestling practice." As for the Christmas Eve when Gabby was shot, Joey testified he was down at the home for handicapped children with his girlfriend down in Harrah. "Had you been down there before?"

"Yes."

"You worked for a while at another place that took care of mentally retarded children, didn't you?"

"Yes, the Yakima Valley School."

"Last year... and what did you do with these small kids?"

"I was a rec leader and what we did with the kids was have recreation planned like carnivals and games with them."

"And you worked in that capacity for six or eight months?"

Joey Watkins came across as a gentle giant and the least likely of the wrestling squad alumni to have committed two murders. On cross, Chris Tait elicited answers from Joey Watkins that showed the last time he had seen Gabby Moore on Christmas Eve was in Kenny Marino's apartment. Tait wanted to hear more about the change that had come over Gabby Moore in the months before he was killed. "How long had you known him?"

"Since I was a sophomore in high school."

"You had known him for five years or so?"

"Yeah."

"Did you ever experience any change in Mr. Moore?"

"Well, the only time I really saw Mr. Moore was the first time when I was in the Lion's Share and he was wild"

"Can you tell us what you mean by that?"

"He was i mean like he was just changed from the coach that I used to see because he was strict on us."

"Are you saying he wasn't the same coach you mean he wasn't the same kind of person?"

"He wasn't the same person."

"How was he different?"

"Well, for one thing his hair was longer and he just didn't dress like he used to." Joey recalled a coach who had demanded strict adherence to training rules from his athletes. "Do you know if Mr. Moore was the sort of person who drank quite a bit?"

"No. I never knew him to drink that much until I saw him in the Lion's Share." Joey had been baffled by a long-haired, intoxicated coach who kept trying to grab his beer. He had been horrified to see Moore trying to break into Morris's wife's window, so drunk that he couldn't walk a straight line. With one more witness denigrating Gabby Moore, Chris Tait moved on to show that Turfy and Joey had known Morris too as a coach. "How close were you to Morris Blankenbaker?"

"Not really close. I didn't really know him because he was like an assistant coach when I was a sophomore and he taught me little things moves and stuff in wrestling."

"Was Morris older than you?"

"He was thirty-two."

"And you are twenty-two. So he was ten years older?"

"Yeah."

"You said that Morris was the assistant coach9"

"He just came in there to show us things."

"He wasn't formally the coach?"

"No."

"He just showed up at the practices and kind of taught you things?

Was that when you were playing football or wrestling or both?"

"Wrestling."

"Tell us, if you can, a little bit about the wrestling experiences that you had with Angelo."

"Well, Angelo was to me the best on the team."

"Did he win most of his matches?"

"Yeah."

"Do you remember going to tournaments together?"

"No, because I never made it to the tournaments."

Joey said that Angelo-Turfy had, and that he usually took firsts.

Turfy Pleasant had been the best there was, Gabby Moore had coached him to be a champion. Tait asked Joey about playing football. He said he had had bad experiences, losing experiences in that sport. He and Angelo had been the best players on the Davis squad. "Were you the biggest?"

"Well, I was the biggest," Joey said, "but Angelo was the tough man for scrape lineback."

"No further questions."

Jeff Sullivan rose to ask some questions on redirect.

"When you say Angelo was tough, was he a good linebacker?"

"Yeah."

"He liked to hit people?"

"Yeah, he stuck people."

Sullivan half smiled. "If he's going to be a good linebacker, you have to stick people, don't you?"

"That's right."

There was a sense of regret in the courtroom as the afternoon lengthened. Turfy had lived years of sports glory. He had almost always been first, and now he sat hunched over the defense table, his huge shoulders at their muscular peak. Like Morris before him, Turfy was a perfect physical specimen. One could imagine him and Joey in the arena the huge gentle witness and the scrappy defendant. No more.

Fifteen-year-old John Klingele and and his father, Wayne, were the last witnesses of the day. John told the jury how he had found the Colt Woodsman. 22 in the Naches River under the Twin Bridges. His father testified that he had put it up on a shelf and told the Yakima Police Chief about it the next day. Judge Lay dismissed the jury at 4:30 and reminded them not to watch television, read the papers, or discuss the case. The Seattle media had begun to report this murder trial in more depth with every day that passed. It had transcended a hometown story in Yakima, Washington. the next morning, Judge Lay said he was prepared to rule on Jeff Sullivan's motion to grant immunity to Loretta Scott and her brother, Charles "Chucky" Pleasant, for their involvement with the murder gun. "The state's motion to grant immunity from prosecution to Loretta Scott and Charles Pleasant in return for their testimony in this case is granted." It was a big boost for the state's case.

Loretta Scott, a beautiful woman, wore a white tunic dress, a wide-brimmed dark hat, and giant gold hoops in her ears for her day in court. She did not mind the cameras in the hallway and smiled for James Wallace, the Herald tribune reporter who was covering the trial and doubling as a news photographer. Loretta's memory was excellent, and she was a compelling storyteller as she recalled her cousin Turfy's two visits to her home to borrow the gun and her horror when she realized what it had been used for. Her recall of the hysteria she and her brother, Chucky, had felt as they tried to throw away a gun that kept bouncing back off the bridge made the Christmas Day event sound like a Keystone Kops episode. Chris Tait asked her if Turfy had ever told her what had happened, and she said he had told her about the death of Gabby Moore. "Well, he told me a white boy did the shooting."

"Okay. What did he tell you happened?"

"I'm just trying to gather my thoughts. He told me that Mr. Moore and he had a plan that he was supposed to have been shot, but he wasn't supposed to be killed. He said that he was supposed to get five thousand dollars out of this that he was just supposed to wound Mr. Moore, but he wasn't supposed to die and that the white boy did the shooting."

"Did he tell you where it happened at Mr. Moore's?"

"They were in the kitchen."

"Did he tell you about anybody else being involved in these two killings?"

"He mentioned a Joey Watkins and Kenny Marino."

"And what did he tell you about how they were involved?"

"He didn't actually say. He just said Blankenbaker, Moore, [somebody was] driving a car, and Joey Watkins and Marino.... He told me that Joey Watkins was on the list of suspicion for murder."

"Now, who was going to get this five thousand dollars? Was Angelo to get it or was Mr. Moore going to get it?"

"I don't know who all was supposed to get this money.

He said they were supposed to receive five thousand after he was supposed to have been shot. He was supposed to sign a piece of paper and supposed to get five thousand dollars. .. When he died, everything went." Tait sounded as mystified and confused as the gallery. "But when Mr. Moore died, it all went down the drain?"

"Right. " Loretta had a few skeletons in her own closet, facts that Chris Tait dragged out of her over her extended time on the stand. He wondered why Turfy would think to go to her for a gun.

"Well, if you want to know the truth about it, when I lived in Seattle a long time ago, he used to come over and we were always having revolvers around the house."

"I'm sorry," Tait said, "I can't hear you."

"When I lived in Seattle, we always had revolvers around the house."

"Loretta, isn't it a fact that you used to live with a man who dealt in stolen guns?"

"Yes, I did."

Tait homed in on her drinking habits. "Do you drink often?"

"When I feel like I want to indulge, I will."

"How many drinks does it take before you start to feel the effects?"

"About three."

"Isn't it a fact that you had four drinks on Christmas Eve?"

"That was the beginning."

"How many was it in the end?"

"I wasn't counting."

"Were you intoxicated?"

"I was feeling nice."

Loretta said she had made a Christmas punch of Mcnaughtons and vodka.

"It must have been quite a punch," Tait said with a smile.

Loretta Scott was on the witness stand for a very long time, much of it while the defense attorneys and the prosecutors wrangled over what areas the defense could cover. Loretta had had a gun because she was afraid of an old boyfriend, but that had nothing to do with this murder trial. She was a colorful, often humorous, witness, but she was not swayed from the central testimony about her cousin Turfy and the borrowed gun, or about throwing it in the Naches River when she learned it might well be a murder weapon. On redirect, Sullivan asked Loretta once again the specific questions that mattered and only those. She was positive that: