A Fever in the Heart: And Other True Cases (33 page)

"In what weight class, Angelo?"

"My sophomore year, it was one hundred thirty eight and two pounds on would be one hundred forty. As a senior, I wrestled at one hundred fifty eight pounds."

"Would you say that the height of your athletic career [was] going to Japan?"

"Japan and Hawaii, yes."

"And you fellows competed for the honor of being on that team to represent Washington?"

"Yes the best in the state."

After Turfy had established his commitment to sports, Moore asked him about Gabby. "Now, how did your relationship with Talmadge Glynn Moore develop during your high school years? You have said that he recruited you as a small boy from junior high school and he developed you into a wrestler good enough to go to Hawaii and Tokyo. How did your relationship with the man grow if it did grow during this time?"

"I feel that it was a tight relationship."

""Tight'? Was that the word? What do you mean by that?"

"By tight' I mean that it went a little further than just teacher and student or coach and student. I could visit him and we visited as friends." Turfy likened Gabby to a fat hera strict father figure who demanded that his athletes, including Turfy, stuck to spartan training rules. He said that Gabby had continued to oversee his wrestling progress even when he went off to Columbia Basin College. Moore asked about Turfy's children with Rene Sandon.

"We have two." Turfy smiled.

"Names and ages?"

"Reneshia Naomi Pleasant* is four years old... Melenae Tonyia Pleasant*

is two months old." The dark shadow of two murders lingered at the edge of the courtroom as Moore asked questions that were easy to answer.

Slowly, he moved into Turfy's relationship with his brother Anthony.

This too Turfy characterized as "tight." He could not say how his younger brother felt about him. The logic of Moore's question was emerging. Turfy was the older, self-sacrificing brother. Anthony was heedless and greedy.

"We went out together quite a few times. But whenever he needed a car, he would always come and ask for mine, or else my older brother but usually it would be mine. I would let him have it."

"You would let him use your car?"

"Yes, I would cancel my night just so he could have fun on his night because I felt there's always time for me to do my thing, so he can go on and do his thing."

"Did you ever talk to him the way Mr. Moore was talking to you about direction in life and motivation and that kind of stuff9"

"Yes. Yes. I always tried to steer him forward and I felt he could be better than me and his older brother and our cousins, you see, because I felt that he had a lot better potential."

"Did you ever talk to Mr. Moore about Anthony in this vein?"

"Yes, and we felt the same, that he could be the best of all of us if he just put his mind to it, and really strive for it and work for it."

"If he just put his mind to it?"

"If he just put his mind to it."

"But he didn't stay in the program, did he?"

"No, he didn't."

"He strayed from the path that you followed, didn't he?"

"Yes, he did."

"Did he keep the training rules?"

"No, he didn't.... l just tried to help him out. I said that's not really the way to do it, and I tried to give him explanations why not.... l never held nothing against him." Was it possible that Adam Moore had gone a bit too far? Some gallery watchers rolled their eyes, as if a chorus of Salvation Army singers were about to emerge and say "Amen, brother." Turfy was being painted with a very. very hroacl brush of Poodness. v _ _ _ _ _ _ O _, Kenny Marino, Turfy's longtime best friend, whom he had also fingered as a murderer, was the next subject discussed by the witness. Moore asked about how close Turfy and Kenny had been after they were in college. "Were you tight then? Were you close?"

"Yes, I would say we were very close. I took him in as another brother, I loved him just as much."

"You had accepted Mr. Moore as kind of a second father and Mr. Marino as a substitute brother?"

"As another brother," Turfy corrected.

But Moore elicited testimony that Kenny Marino had dropped out of school and seemed to Turfy to have no goals in life. Once Anthony's and Kenny's characters were found lacking by Turfy as he sat on the stand, Moore moved on to the disintegration of Gabby Moore's ethics and values. There was no question at all of the defense strategy. They were attempting to let all blame slide off Turfy Pleasant's broad shoulders. It was a plan, but was the defense underestimating the jurors'

intelligence? Jeff Sullivan had been mightily impressed with this jury.

He studied them, wondering as always what they were thinking, and realizing as always that he would not have a definitive answer to that until they came back with a verdict. Turfy was telling them now about his shock at finding Gabby Moore "on the skids" in the autumn of 1975, of how he had tried to help him by putting in a driveway for him and helping to coach the high school wrestling team. This testimony sounded sincere. There seemed to be little question that Turfy Pleasant had cared about Gabby Moore, that he had been slowly drawn into Gabby's madness. "He was telling me that they the and Jerilee] had gotten a divorce. He started telling me about the good times they had, and that she had left him and went back to stay with her former husband that he had hoped she would make up her mind pretty soon. Maybe in a couple of weeks, she would make up her mind and she would be back with him."

"Was he optimistic that she might come back to him?"

"Yes."

"But he was planning to sell the house?"

"Yes."

"Because she left him?"

"Yes."

"Would it be a fair statement that he was unsure whether she was going to come back or not?"

"I don't know. I don't feel I could answer that."

"You don't know what was in the man's head at that time?"

"No, I don't."

"Did you notice a change in him between Labor Day and Thanksgiving?"

"Yes. He was changed. He wasn't like Mr. Moore, the one I used to know, and I could hardly ever talk to him unless he was drinking. Usually what was on his mind was Jerilee, and he always would talk about Jerilee...."

This jury of Seattlites had never heard of either Gabby Moore or Morris Blankenbaker before the trial. Skillfully, Adam Moore sketched in all the connections between Gabby and Morris and Turfy and Morris and Gabby.

Turfy said he had met Morris years before when Morris was the lifeguard at the Washington Pool. He had talked to him there and known him through the years at wrestling practice. Turfy acknowledged that relations between Morris and Gabby had not been good. "Mainly it was Moore toward him [Morris], wasn't it?"

"I felt it was, yes."

"Now, Moore started talking about Blankenbaker being in the way and that sort of thing. Did he talk about actually killing him?"

"Well, he talked about a problem, see, and that Morris was presenting a problem to him at the time. And so then he started talking about eliminating the problem."

Apparently, Turfy had forgotten that Jeff Sullivan had used that "eliminating the problem" quote from his taped confession the day before when the prosecutor was successful in keeping first-degree murder charges in force against Turfy. "Did you know what he meant by that?"

Adam Moore asked, unruffled. "No," Turfy answered. "Not until later. I was still trying to understand where he was coming from as a matter of speech."

"You didn't understand he meant having him killed?"

"Eventually, that's what he meant."

"What was your position on that?"

"Well, my position was I felt that he should forget about it because he was an older man.... Eventually he could forget about the situation and latch on to another lady, form another relationship with another party."

"Did you tell him that?"

"Yes, I did. He said all he wanted was Jerilee. That's all that was on his mind." Turfy described the impasse he and his former coach had come to in late October. Gabby drank and talked about Jerilee. "He had him a few glasses down and he started talking about Jerilee. And I told him he should just try to forget about the womanlike I was repeating myself also. And then he started getting down. He would break out his pictures"

"Pictures?"

"Yes."

"Was this the album Sergeant Brimmer was talking about? There were two albums found in the bedroom there. Is that what he meant by pictures?"

"Yes, and then he would play some music that he would say he and Jerilee had a good time to. It stood out in his memory and he played the music over and over."

"What else happened this particular night?"

"Then he started talking about Morris. Then he came out and he finally told me he was finally to that point to have Morris eliminated." The facts had not changed from the statement Turfy had given to Vern Henderson, the facts the jury had heard on the tape. It was up to Adam Moore now to work his rhetorical magic and turn his client, the defendant, into the hero of this American tragedy instead of the shooter. It would be a gargantuan task even for the best criminal defense lawyer in Yakima County. But that would wait until the morning.

It was five P.M and Judge Lay was strict about letting the jurors go home at a reasonable time. The trial was in high gear though, and he announced that he would begin court a half hour earlier in the morning.

Turfy Pleasant was back on the stand the next day. Adam Moore asked him to relate the events of one Sunday in the first part of November a few weeks before Morris Blankenbaker's murder. "How long were you at his [Moore's] house that day?"

"About a couple of hours two hours."

"Okay. Just tell the jury about everything that you remember about that two hours, will you?"

"I got there and Mr. Moore was drinking. He asked me when I stepped through the door, Why don't you go ahead and pour yourself a drink?" So I went ahead and poured myself a shot or two. Then he watched TV and he turned the TV down and then he started talking. "And he started talking about Jerilee again. And I was just listening, you know.

I wasn't going to tell him too much. I was already trying to talk to him. I was just waiting until he finished because he just continually kept talking and then you kind of interrupt him. I noticed at the time I interrupted him he would get mad and jump right back at me and say, Well, I'm talking. Just wait until I'm through talking and then you can give me your response." But then he kept carrying on and he finally said, Well, I can't find nobody to do it." And then he asked me if I would do it. I told him, No,' I wouldn't do it. I wouldn't even think about doing it. I felt that he was a grown man, and I said, You are a grown man and you are asking me to do this for you. Now, I would do a lot for you but shooting somebody that's something else."" Gabby had gotten angry, Turfy testified, and he had tried to calm him by giving him the name of someone who might do it, just to stall. "I felt I was trying to talk him out of it."

In this new recanted version of events, Turfy said that Gabby had said he would try to get in touch with this man another former wrestler of his, but a few years older than Turfy. Then he had suggested that Joey Watkins might do the shooting. "He was talking about having a professional hit man come in and do the job, and I says, No, you are really getting carried away with this."" Turfy testified he left, only to return a week later to find Gabby more obsessed with his plan to kill Morris. "I said Noand don't ask me again,' and he didn't ask me again."

"Okay. Up until which time?"

"Up until the night Morris got shot."

On that Friday night, Turfy's revisionist version was that he had come home from college, met Joey Watkins and agreed to a blind date with Joey's girlfriend's friend. He then went back to his fiancee's house.

(Turfy apparently saw nothing wrong with having a pregnant fiancee, and a daughter and a blind date with another woman.) While he was at Rene's house, he had received a call from Gabby who was in the hospital. "He wouldn't tell me what was wrong with him. I asked him three or four different times. le said, I'm in the hospital and tonight would be a good night to shoot Morris if you know what I mean."

"I says, Well, I have got other things planned for tonight. I'm going out tonight for myself and you are just going to have to take care of yourself, and I'll see you later." And I hung up on him." Turfy testified that he had asked his fiancee to find out which hospital Gabby was in so he could go up and visit him. Then he had kissed his fiancee and left for his blind date. But even though he had met Joey Watkins, he said they had only spent ten minutes talking to the two women. Later, after several trips to Watkins's house, the Red Lion, the Lion's Share, and around Yakima in general, Turfy testified he had met the trio from Pasco and joined their party. Joey Watkins had said, "Well, man, things are pretty slow tonight so you might have you a catch over there so why don't you just go on. I can take care of myself."

There were refinements to Turfy's recall of Friday, November 21.

Now, he testified that when he had gone home sometime in the evening to borrow some money from his mother, he had met up with his brother Anthony for the second time that night. He said that he told Anthony about Gabby's phone call instructing him to shoot Morris, and Anthony had agreed with him that it was "odd." Back with the Pasco group now, Turfy testified they had all gone to the Thunderbird to dance. "We were dancing and I met some people schoolteachers. Mr. Pryse and another schoolteacher mrs. Pryse. She used to be Mrs. Moore."

"Anything significant between you and Gay Pryse at this time?"

Adam Moore asked, trying to keep this peripatetic story in some kind of order. "Just some small talk, wasn't it?"

"Small talk, yes."

"You didn't communicate to her how her husband was acting or ex-husband, I mean?"

"No."

The quartet had returned to the Red Lion, Turfy said, and he had finally parted from them after looking for an after hours place. He had then gone back to Joey Watkins's house. He was packing his clothes to return to Ellensburg when his brother Anthony came to Joey's. "I saw he had about four cans of beer, and he asked me what I was doing and I told him I was figuring to leave and go up to Ellensburg to a party. And, well, he asked me, Why don't you let's go riding for a bit and let's go have a drink.". .. I said, Okay, I will go riding, I will drink a beer with you."" Adam Moore suddenly backed up. He had not asked Turfy Pleasant about the gun! Now, he did. Turfy nodded and agreed that he had gotten a gun from his cousin Loretta. But his version of that transaction was vastly different from her statement and from his taped confession. Turfy testified that he had gone to see Loretta, bought her some groceries, spent the night, and been awakened byironically "firecrackers going off in the back."