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Authors: Corey Mitchell

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FORTY-EIGHT
March 19, 2001
Superior Court of California, Monterey, California
3:00
P.M.
 
Finally, after two years of delays, the Rex Krebs murder trial was about to begin. Despite all of the distractions in the courtroom—excessive heat, obnoxious noises emanating from the court reporter’s stenotype, and a juror who had a previouslybooked nonrefundable flight on this day—Deputy District Attorney John Trice was ready to begin the ordeal. The opening argument rested squarely on his thin shoulders, but his appearance was deceiving. He was no lightweight. He needed to outline what the state of California intended to prove. Though he felt a gnawing uneasiness in the pit of his stomach, he displayed a modicum of confidence on the outside.He stood from his black leather chair and casually sauntered over to the jury box.
“I’m John Trice. I’m a deputy district attorney from San Luis Obispo who has been assigned to prosecute this case. With me today is Deputy District Attorney Tim Covello.” He also introduced two more members from his team: Larry Hobson,lead investigator, and Gil Rendon, evidence technician.
After the introductions Trice pushed right into the charges against Rex Krebs. “There are two special circumstances that we have to prove in the connection with the murder of Rachel Lindsay Newhouse. The first is that the murder was committed while the defendant was engaged in a kidnapping for sexual purposes. Special circumstance number two is that the murder was committed while the defendant was engaged in a forcible rape.
“There are three special circumstances that pertain to the murder of Aundria Crawford: that the murder was committed while the defendant engaged in a crime of kidnapping for sexual purposes, that the murder was committed while the defendantwas involved in the crime of forcible rape, and that the murder was committed while the defendant was involved in a crime of forcible sodomy.”
Trice also listed all of the charges against Krebs. In additionto murder, there were charges for multiple rapes, multiple kidnappings, sodomy, and burglary.
After he listed the charges, Trice painted a picture of the town of San Luis Obispo for the Monterey courtroom jury. He described the beautiful beaches of Avila, the peaceful stretch of Highway 1 from Morro Bay to San Simeon. He described Cal Poly and Cuesta College. He even quoted a 1994 issue of
National Geographic
that said of the Central Coast of California:“ ‘North of Los Angeles, south of San Francisco and east of Eden lies a once in a future land called the Middle Kingdom. A tucked away preserve of the good life where Californiahas been lovingly resurrected.’ San Luis Obispo, for those of us who live there, is a little corner of paradise.”
In a more somber tone, he mentioned Tortilla Flats and the Jennifer Street Bridge. He spoke of the homes where Rachel Newhouse and Aundria Crawford lived.
“I don’t know if any of you were fortunate to go to college down there,” he addressed the jury personally, “but what an experience it must be to go to such schools and live in such a small-town atmosphere. That’s what our two young women must have thought.
“Rachel Lindsay Newhouse from Irvine, California, born on June 16, 1978. She was twenty years old when the defendantkilled her. And Aundria Lynn Crawford from Clovis, California, in the valley near Fresno, born July 10, 1978. She was twenty years old when the defendant killed her,” he stated as he looked at Krebs.
“Two beautiful young women who came to our little corner of paradise in San Luis Obispo County to begin their adult lives and get a great education. To just enjoy being young.
“As far as we know, they didn’t know each other. And yet their two names, Rachel Newhouse and Aundria Crawford, will be forever linked in time in what must be considered one of the more horrific chapters in the history of San Luis Obispo.” Trice paused, then stridently looked back at Krebs. “Because of him,” he spat out. “Rex Allan Krebs is the personwho caused this.”
Trice looked back at the jurors. He had their rapt attention. “The evidence will show that that man is evil personified. Rex Allan Krebs brutally kidnapped these two twenty-year-oldgirls. He brutally raped them. He strangled them to death, and then he dumped them in a dirt hole and buried them like garbage. And that’s what we will prove to you in the next few weeks.”
Trice proceeded to lay out a skeletal outline of the days that Rachel and Aundria went missing. He discussed Parole OfficerDavid Zaragoza’s intuition that Krebs was somehow involved in Aundria’s disappearance. He turned around behind his desk and pointed at Detective Larry Hobson. “This man sat down over a period of weeks with Rex Krebs and he began to talk to him about the disappearances of Rachel and Aundria. At the beginning he denied he knew anything about this. He wanted to help the police find the real killer. He wanted to be a detective. He denied any involvement whatsoever.”
Trice turned his attention back toward Krebs. “But then, only after being confronted with undeniable physical evidencedid he begin to tell investigator Hobson what he had done to these girls. And what Rex Allan Krebs told investigatorHobson about what he did to these girls will stagger you and make you question your basic belief in humanity.”
Trice ended his opening statement. The courtroom was completely silent. Judge LaBarbera looked at his watch, 3:00
P.M.
He ordered a twenty-minute break. Defense attorney James Maguire III would be next.
After the break the professorial Maguire took his place in front of the jury.
“Thank you, Your Honor. Counsel, ladies and gentlemen, I’d like to begin by reading a quote to you: ‘As there is much beast and some devil in man, so there is some angel and some good in him. The beast and the devil may be conquered, but in this life never wholly destroyed.’ This is a quote written by Samuel Taylor Coleridge from ‘Rime of the Ancient Mariner.’
“That statement is about the struggle in all of us between good and evil. It talks about what goes on inside us.
“What I’d like to talk about for a few minutes is what goes on inside this case. You’ve heard a presentation by Mr. Trice from the prosecution. You’ve heard their story. I’d like to ask you as you listen to this trial, that you listen for the story insidethe story.”
Maguire patiently strode closer to the jury box. “There’s going to be two questions that you’re going to need to deal with in this trial. First question is ‘what happened?’ You’re also going to have to concern yourself with the ‘why’ part. Why did these things happen ultimately?”
Maguire forged onward. “There are a couple of things you need to know as part of this story within a story. The first and most important thing is that Rex Krebs confessed. He confessedtotally, completely, and in great detail.” Maguire laid out how Krebs confessed to the murders of Rachel Newhouse and Aundria Crawford.
“He told investigator Hobson in detail what he did and how he did it. He confessed to his girlfriend. He confessed to his boss. He confessed to a newspaper reporter. He told the reporter,‘I’m a monster.’ In these same discussions there is the story within the story that I’ve been referring to. There’s information that when he was a very small boy, his parents separated. She married a man who was cruel to him. He was sent to live with his father, who beat him with his fists, with his feet.
“You’ll hear he developed a tremendous amount of anger. What’s surprising is that the anger was not focused on his father, but on his mother, because she had abandoned him, because she would not protect him. And still at a very young age, thirteen or fourteen, he starts having sexual fantasies and not just about sexual pleasure, but sexual pleasure, plus dominance,rape. And, again, what’s surprising is the victim in this fantasy is his mother.
“These same fantasies never left. They never went away. They dominated his life.”
Maguire talked about Krebs’s “Jekyll and Hyde” personality.“Rex Krebs is actually two people. He’s a good person and he’s a bad person. He’s a good person and he’s a devil.” Maguire blamed the transformation on the old wicked moonshine.“For Rex Krebs that lethal chemical combination was alcohol. He started drinking again while he was on parole. Because of the drinking, the fantasies returned and they were worse.”
Maguire wrapped up his opening argument with a plea for the jurors to dig deeper into this case. “The number one witness in the prosecution’s case is Rex Allan Krebs. They’re going to be asking you to believe what he says when he tells you that he did these things.
“I’m also going to be asking you to believe Rex Krebs when he says the other things, the story within the story. When he talks about what happened to him when he was growing up. You’ll see a man in misery telling his story.
“The important job that I ask of you is to look in the corners,look behind, look around what’s being handed to you during this first phase of the trial. Listen for the other information.Listen for the story within the story. Listen to what Rex Krebs tells you and what other people may tell you eventuallyabout what happened in his life that has resulted in him sitting in this courtroom in front of you, accused of these crimes. Thank you.”
Opening arguments had ceased.
The first witness would testify the following morning.
Her name? Shelly Crosby.
The prosecution laid out their case beginning with Krebs’s first 1987 rape. From there, they painted a picture of the disappearanceof Rachel Newhouse. Andrea West testified to the fight that she and Rachel had in the Flats. Witness Theresa Audino described the blood she saw on the Jennifer Street Bridge. Police officers at the scene of Aundria Crawford’s residence testified to what they saw there. Muriel and Debbie Wright spoke of Krebs and his tenancy on their property. Parole Officer David Zaragoza detailed his suspicions of Krebs after reading the paper. FBI Agent David Kice and other crime scene investigators spoke of the discovery of the bodies in Davis Canyon.
After three-and-a-half days of laying the groundwork for the two murders, the prosecution was ready to play its trump card.
FORTY-NINE
On the afternoon of March 26, 2001, Prosecutor John Trice knew he had the ace in the hole with his next witness, lead investigatorfor the district attorney’s office, Detective Larry Hobson. It became apparent to everyone in the courtroom why he was the star witness for the prosecution.
Detective Hobson confidently strolled up to the witness stand, his physical appearance reminiscent of an ex-pro footballoffensive lineman. He was a little on the heavy side, but in an intimidating way. Hefty, yet nimble. Fierce, yet polished.His overall neat demeanor did not betray a hint of the intensity inside this man.
After swearing in Hobson, Trice asked for his credentials. “It’s Assistant Chief Investigator Hobson, is that correct, sir?”
“Yes, sir,” he replied in a quiet manner.
“By whom are you currently employed?”
“The District Attorney’s Office, County of San Luis Obispo.”
“And the assistant chief investigator, what does that person do?”
“Well, I’m assigned to the major crimes unit. It’s a supervisoryposition where we carry a caseload. And I also supervise eight other deputy DA investigators.”
Trice proceeded to inquire about Hobson’s background. Hobson informed the court that he had been in law enforcement in one capacity or another for more than thirty years. He graduatedfrom Cal Poly in the late 1960s, where he garnered a bachelor of arts degree in criminal justice. After graduation he worked the patrol division for two-and-a-half years in San Luis Obispo County. He received a promotion to narcotics and worked in numerous surrounding counties, including Kern, Fresno, Santa Barbara, and Monterey, as an undercover agent. He then received a promotion to the detective division, where he worked crimes against persons (CAP). This division oversawcrimes such as sexual assault, robbery, kidnapping, and homicides. While working in the CAP department, Hobson wanted to broaden his experiences and sought out additional education in the realm of interrogation and interviewing. In 1984 he enrolled himself, on his own nickel, in Baxter’s School of Lie Detection in San Diego. The intense eight-week course covered all of the necessary polygraph techniques, including physiology, psychology, and interviewing strategies.
In September 1984 he received a job offer from the district attorney’s office to be an investigator. He conducted polygraphexaminations on the side.
In 1989 he attended a six-week polygraph course at the FBI National Academy in Quantico, Virginia. He traveled to several states to learn about polygraph and interrogation techniques over the years. He was so well versed in interrogation methods that he became a favorite on the lecture circuit, even traveling to Beijing, China, in 1996 to lecture their local police academy. Furthermore, he also taught interviews and interrogations at the Allan Hancock College for the Police Academy.
In 1994 Detective Hobson received another promotion: assistantchief investigator for the district attorney’s office.
After laying out Hobson’s credentials, Trice brought him around to the matter at hand. “You were the lead investigator for the district attorney’s office in the investigation of the disappearanceof Rachel and Aundria, is that correct?”
“Yes, sir.”
“And you’ve worked on many, many homicides during your career?”
“More than one hundred.”
“Would it be safe to say one of the major contributions you made to the investigations was a series of interviews you conducted with the defendant between March 21, 1999, and May 6, 1999?”
“Yes.”
“What significant event took place on March 21, 1999?”
“I worked on Sunday, just like any other day since November13, 1998. Went out and interviewed people during the day, followed up leads. We came back for a briefing at four o’clock at the police department, and Detective Jerome Tushbant,the primary investigator for the disappearance of Aundria Crawford, briefed us on two people that had been arrestedover the weekend. And I was assigned to interview one of those two people.”
“And one of those two people was whom?”
“Rex Allan Krebs.”
“And did you interview him that day?”
“Yes, I did.”
“Where was this interview conducted?”
“It took place at the San Luis Obispo Police Department. We had to have Rex transported from the county jail.”
“How long did that interview take?”
“Approximately forty-five minutes to an hour.”
“What was the first thing you covered with him?”
“I asked him if he had any idea as to why we wanted to talk to him. He said he assumed it was over the disappearance of the two girls, since he was on parole for rape and had a prior sex offense.”
“How did you end this first interview you had with him?”
“I asked him if he would be willing to assist us with the investigation,since he had prior experience with sex offenses. Rex Krebs told me that he couldn’t even remember the crimes he committed before because he put that all behind him. He said he couldn’t help me. He said he would be willing to do anything he can to prove to us that he’s not responsible for the abduction of these two women.”
Hobson continued to testify that he contacted Krebs’s girlfriend,Roslynn Moore, and asked for her help. He wanted to tap her home phone and record a conversation with Krebs concerning the disappearances of Rachel and Aundria. Moore, stunned, agreed to do so, but only because she believedKrebs to be innocent and incapable of such malice. Hobson testified that on March 24 he set up the recording deviceon her phone. Moore received a call from Krebs at 11:00
A.M.
, which Hobson taped along with two more calls.
“And are there any admissions by the defendant on any of those tapes?” asked Trice.
“No, there’s not,” replied Detective Hobson.
“Is there anything that he said that you attached any evidentiarysignificance to?”
“What struck me as significant were the things he didn’t say, such as denying that he was responsible for the crimes to Roslynn Moore. And also, he wanted to know through her what we were doing, as far as the investigation.”
“You had another interview with the defendant on April 1, 1999, is that correct?” inquired Trice.
“Yes, sir.”
“How long did this interview take?”
“Forty-five minutes or less.”
“Did you tell him that as a result of your investigation you were going to have to be displaying pictures of him and his vehicles in public?”
“Yes, I did. He was cooperative.”
“He told you he was confident he would be cleared, didn’t he?”
“Yes, he did.”
“And on this interview on the first of April, did you go over the details again of March tenth and eleventh?”
“Yes.”
“And were there some differences this time?”
“Just one. One difference in the story that he told me the first time. The second time on the morning of March eleventh, after he got up and made coffee, instead of walking down to the woodpile to cut wood, he drove his truck down to the woodpile and cut wood.”
“And he told you he had never been on Branch Street.” Trice wanted to know if Krebs had ever traveled on Aundria Crawford’s street.
“That’s correct.”
“What did he tell you this time?”
“I asked him if there was any reason why someone would identify either his truck or him when we show the pictures in the neighborhood around Branch Street, anywhere near AundriaCrawford’s house.”
“What did he say to that?”
“After thinking about it, he said there probably was. For the first time he told me that he had driven down that street two or three times when he left the Gaslight to go see his friend that lived at the end of Branch Street.”
“Did you go over the story again about the eight ball and prison?”
“Yes. I told him we had had the opportunity to do some testing on the eight ball that he said he found on the yard at Soledad in about 1996. I said based on the testing, we found out that the eight ball that we took from his house had not been manufactured until 1998. I asked him how it was possiblehe had possession of it then. His response was a period of silence as he scratched his chin and said, ‘That’s strange.’ ”
“The next time you interviewed the defendant was on April 21, 1999?”
“Yes.”
“That would have been right after results were received concerning blood on the jump seat?”
“Actually, the same morning we received it.”
“Why did you interview him then on the twenty-first?”
“Because at that time, for the first time in five months, we had our first viable suspect in the disappearance of Rachel Newhouse and Aundria Crawford.”
“How long did this interview take place?”
“It lasted approximately two hours.”
“You offered him a hypothetical question, is that right?”
“I asked him to think about it—if he decided to stalk and kidnap somebody, how would he go about doing it?”
“And what did he tell you?”
“He says, ‘I’m not even going to think like that, Larry. Thinking like that is dangerous.’ ”
“Did you talk to him about whether he had fantasized about abducting these two girls?”
“Yes. He admitted that he fantasized during the first part of his sentence at Soledad. He said he couldn’t deny that he had fantasies about that, but that he also worked those fantasiesout a little bit at a time.”
“Did he tell you whether he had an opinion about whether people made him do those things”—referring to his earlier sexual offenses—“or if he made himself do those things?”
“Yes, he did. He told me it was because he hated women.”
“Which women?”
“He said, ‘All women. I have no respect for them.’ ”
“And you said, ‘Why couldn’t you be the person that took these two girls,’ right?”
“Right.”
“And his response?”
“ ’Cause it’s not in my makeup.’ ”
Trice was ready to move in for the kill. The jurors sat at attentionas Hobson detailed his interviews with Krebs. “Eventually you got around to talking about the jump seat?”
“I told Rex when we went through his truck, we noticed something very significant. It was missing one of the jump seats.”
“And then you told him about the blood?”
“That’s correct. I told him when we found it, we found signs that someone had cleaned it, but there were still traces of blood underneath in the railing. I also told him that we sent that jump seat off to the lab in Fresno to have it analyzed as far as DNA evidence to link him to one of our two victims.”
“And what did he say to that?”
“He said he understood. I then told him that the blood that was found on that jump seat belonged to Rachel Newhouse. Then he went silent for a long period of time.
“I asked him to take me to the location where we could find the girls.”
“And did he say he would do that?” asked Trice.
“He asked me if I could give him a cigarette and a half an hour to think about it?”
“Did you ask him what he was thinking about?”
“Yes.”
“What did he say?”
“ ‘Dying.’ ”
“Eventually you took him back to the jail?” continued Trice.
Hobson responded, “Yes, I did.”
“How long of a drive?”
“Probably twenty minutes.”
“And he was in the backseat smoking?”
“Yes.”
“Did he say anything to you while you’re driving?”
“Not at first. At first I could hear him back there crying. I asked him what he was thinking about and he said, ‘A dead man walking.’ ”
“Did you ask him any questions as you got back to the jail?”
“I turned to him and asked if he was ready to take me where I could find Rachel and Aundria.”
Krebs rejected Hobson’s request. Hobson took Krebs back to jail and told him he would stop by tomorrow to continue their conversation.
The next morning, at 9:45, Hobson escorted Krebs into the employee break room at the San Luis Obispo County Jail. The two men sat down and Krebs looked up at the detective.
“What do you want me to tell you?” the haggard thirty-three-year-oldasked.
“I told him I wanted him to tell me the truth. He says, ‘I’ll talk to you, but let’s go someplace else.’ ”
Hobson removed Krebs from the jail, placed him in his car, and drove back over to the San Luis Obispo Police Department.
Trice continued to draw the information out of Hobson. “And before doing that, did you do anything in relation to him?”
“I wanted to make sure that Rex Krebs knew exactly where we were going and why we were going there.” Hobson then recounted how he read Krebs his Miranda rights and then asked the pivotal question.

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