Manifest Injustice (48 page)

Hammond could see that Haag’s testimony obviously affected the board, particularly Ellen Kirschbaum—the way she listened, the direction of her questions, her focus on Bill’s known use of reloads similar to those found at the murder scene. With a board limited to only four members this day—a fact Hammond deeply regretted—they could not afford to lose another vote.

*   *   *

How, though, to neutralize testimony from the victims’ families? Their turn now. First, John McCluskey, Tim McKillop’s cousin. His father and Tim’s mother were siblings, he the last of the family on his aunt’s side. “I’m really here to speak for her,” he told the board: for Tim’s mother. “You can imagine what she must have gone through during this whole ordeal. Her only son taken away from her.” Based on what he’d read in the newspapers and heard from Vince Imbordino, he thought Macumber guilty. “But beyond that,” McCluskey said, “with respect to his being in jail for such a long time and his poor health, I’d like to talk about … the 34 years that my aunt lived without her only child.” She used to call Timmy “my youngster,” and “she did that throughout the whole course of those 34 years.” Imagine her shock “when she learned that her son at 20 was dead … executed in the desert for no apparent reason.” How to describe “the loneliness, the emptiness of a situation like hers?” She ended up in a nursing home and died in 1996, “16 years alone as a widow … 34 years childless … isolated from the outside world.” She was seventy-eight then—“that’s about the same age as Mr. Macumber now. I don’t think that I’m going too far to ask you to see that he continues the kind of life that she did, alone and isolated from those things that are important to her.”

Judy Michael, Joyce’s sister, spoke next. “We were, are, a very close family,” she told the board. “It was very devastating to have my sister and Tim taken from us. And I can totally relate to how much the Macumber family wants him back into their lives. However, we were denied that opportunity to have Joyce and Tim back into our lives.”

Then came Carol Sue McCluskey. Tim’s mother, she explained, was her aunt through marriage. She’d spent much time caring for her. She’d known Tim and Joyce. “I just would like to say that these two kids were just so pure. They were wonderful, wonderful kids.” The night of the murders was “the first time in his life Tim didn’t come home without calling.” The family thought the kids “had just decided to go and elope.” So the next morning when the doorbell rang, “they thought it would be ‘the youngsters’ there to announce they were husband and wife.” Instead, “it was the sheriff.” They’d been a “very, very close family,” but this “drove a wedge” between Tim’s parents, Ann and Jim. “She grieved in her way and he grieved in his and they were never ever able to grieve together.” After the murders, “Jim would eat his dinner in one room and she would eat her dinner in another room.” Jim died “before they had a chance to re-bond.” Ann said “that was two tragedies, the loss of her son and the loss of her husband.”

*   *   *

In her chair, Katie started to feel woozy, as if she couldn’t breathe. They weren’t nearly finished, though. “Mr. Imbordino,” Duane Belcher said, “maybe we should hear from some of the opposition that’s on the phone, as well.”

He turned to the speakerphone. “Ms. Kempfert,” Belcher asked, “are you there?”

“Yes, I am.”

“Okay,” Belcher continued. “We’re going to give you the opportunity to make some statements here.… What would you like to say today?”

Carol had sent Belcher a five-page letter ahead of this hearing, something the Justice Project knew nothing about and hadn’t seen. She began to read from it, her voice clear and strong and unfaltering. “I welcome this opportunity to tell the story of the events that led up to Bill’s arrest,” she told the board, “and to defend myself from the accusations against me.” This “may be a lengthy letter but I ask you to be patient. In order to understand what happened you must know the history.”

She’d started dating William Macumber when she was sixteen and married him four days after turning eighteen. “During our courtship he told me that when he was in the Army he worked for the CID. He told me that this was a secret intelligence unit and that even though he was out of the Army, he was still active in the unit. He told me stories about the ‘missions’ he and his men went on.… Needless to say, my parents tried desperately to stop the marriage but I was young, immature, naïve and oh so sure I knew better.”

At “about 10
P.M.
” one night in May 1962, less than a year after their marriage, Bill came home with “blood all over him.” Since then, “many people have asked me why I was not suspicious over the coincidence between the Sterrenberg/McKillop murders and the events I witnessed” that night. “First, let me reiterate, I was young, naïve and believed everything Bill told me. Second, the newspaper accounts alternately reported the murders were the result of a drug deal gone bad or the work of a crazed random killer.” Since “we were not involved in drugs and I certainly didn’t believe Bill to be a random killer, none if it made sense.” So “I put the matter to rest.” Over the next ten years “we had three sons and life went on.” But during those years, “I matured and came to recognize many inconsistencies in the stories Bill told about his exploits.” By 1972, “our marriage was in serious trouble and I expressed my desire to leave.” Bill said “he couldn’t live without me and threatened suicide on several occasions.” Then he said he was dying of cancer. Then that he had a heart condition. “I tell you these things because I want you to understand that after ten years of tales of wild army exploits, stories of how he was dying and pleas for sympathy, I had had enough. I simply did not believe anything he said.”

From there, Carol turned to “an evening in April 1974.” Here she once again walked through her account of Bill confessing the murders to her. “After telling me this story, Bill told me he had lived with this terrible thing on his conscience for all these years and that the only thing that kept him going was me and the kids. He said that with this on his conscience, he didn’t know if he could go on if I left him.” Yes, Carol added, “I know people are incredulous that I did not go running to the nearest police station to tell what I heard. Please understand—I DID NOT BELIEVE HIM.” At the time, she was hoping to be hired as a full-time deputy sheriff. “I would have been greatly embarrassed to have to admit that I married and stayed married to a man who told such wild tales. And since I did not believe him, I could not see any good would be served.”

Then came the kitchen-window shooting incident. “My immediate response was ‘BS. He did it himself.’” Angry, thinking he was trying to implicate her, she gave her statement to deputies. Early the next week, “I was given a polygraph that related to the shooting at the house and I passed.” Days later, “shortly after Bill was arrested, there were accusations that I had framed him.… I was given a second polygraph and questioned about tampering with the evidence. I passed that test too.” Carol added, “The record of that I have here, and I assume that you have it also.” (In fact, the board did not; nor did the Justice Project or the county attorney.)

She did testify at the second trial, Carol pointed out, giving the jury the chance to evaluate what both she and Bill said. And days after Bill’s conviction, the foreman of that jury wrote her a letter. She’d enclosed it with her own letter sent to Duane Belcher, so “I’m not going to read the whole thing, but would like to read a part where he talks about how the jurors viewed the evidence and came to their conclusion. It says: ‘Now as to the attacks on your reputation and the countless affairs, etc. etc., you should know that the overwhelming majority of the jurors could have cared less. The overwhelming majority of the jurors felt that this was completely immaterial. The overwhelming majority of the jurors felt that if the affairs were true, more power to you and you’ve had it coming.’”

Carol’s conclusion: “In the end it boils down to this. Two people confessed to the murders but the physical evidence found at the scene points to only one of them—William Macumber. Since Bill could not explain why his palm prints or casings from his gun were found at the scene he came up with the story that I had framed him. I did not frame William Macumber. I did not tamper with evidence. William Macumber did, in fact, murder Joyce Sterrenberg and Timothy McKillop.”

*   *   *

Carol had been more effective than Katie expected, not shaky at all. But Katie didn’t think Bill the creature Carol made him out to be. The picture Carol painted did not at all resemble the one Katie had seen. Jackie thought the same—this was not the Bill she had known her entire life. Above all, he didn’t lie. Bill told funny stories. But never anything about secret agents and covert missions.

Larry Hammond believed it significant that Carol had not directly denied or addressed their claims about a “sensitive internal investigation” of her. In fact, what she didn’t say pleased him. Still, he knew she’d been effective before the board—at least those board members who wanted to vote no.

Effective, too, were Bill and Carol’s two oldest sons, Scott and Steve, who spoke next. Both also had sent the board letters.

Scott, at forty-nine the oldest of the Macumber siblings, retired now after twenty-one years in the U.S. Air Force, began: “First thing I want to say is, this man put me through personal hell that no child and no family should ever go through.” He is “flawed in character, flawed in integrity, and the man knows nothing of the word honesty.” Though he insists “we have been brainwashed” by Carol, “I looked at the facts of this case for many years.… I’ve learned many things about my father, not only through my mother but through other people. The man is not credible, nor is he honest.” This man “needs to remain where he is at.” His exemplary achievements in prison are “to make Bill Macumber look important or special. He is not special. He did not do this out of the goodness of his heart. He does this to make Bill Macumber look like a great soul or a humanitarian. He is neither.” In his letter, Scott had added one more thought, left unspoken now at the hearing: “Outside organizations are believing and listening to a twice-convicted murderer at the expense of my mother’s name and reputation. I am tired of attacks and implications that my mother ‘set Mr. Macumber up.’ These organizations and Mr. Macumber need to provide proof of their allegations or shut up, apologize and retract their accusations.” He concluded, “We have never been notified or been able to tell our side of this tragic story to the Board. In the past, your organization has heard only Mr. Macumber’s side of the story. My hope is this letter will help the Arizona Board of Executive Clemency to arrive at a sound and informed decision.”

Steven took the phone after his brother. At forty-six, he’d worked a variety of jobs, some in computer technology. If anything, he was even more vehement than Scott. “There’s a couple things I’d like to hit right off the top,” he began. “There were accusations made that my mother had never shown us the letters that my father had sent.… This is all blatantly false.… My brothers and I decided that they were to be returned without us reading them.… We did that intentionally. We returned those letters intentionally to him so he knew we wanted to have no contact with him.” Also false: “That my mother told us that my father did not love us.… In fact, she said just the opposite.” She said “sometimes good people do bad things but that has no bearing on whether he loves his sons.” False as well: “That she told us he was a murderer.” No, “we came to that conclusion ourselves.” Steve had read the news articles and legal briefs, he’d done a lot of research, he’d even questioned his mother. “In a lot of ways I’ve been harder on her than most.… With the events of the last three or four years, I have pushed her more, Scott has pushed her more to defend herself than anyone else.” His conclusion: “The lies that have been coming out about her framing my father are just astounding.”

Above all, given Larry Hammond’s “massive character assassination on her,” Steve wanted to talk about his mother’s character: “My mother took everything she had to support her kids. She was a single mother when, frankly, being a single mother was not the fashionable thing to do. She was a cop. She didn’t make a lot of money. We lived on macaroni and cheese for a very long time. We didn’t get to see her much because of the shift she worked. So it was very tough for us for a long, long time.” He didn’t know where Hammond or his brother Ron had come up with the idea that his mother was capable of framing Bill. Rather, “I’ll tell you what she is capable of. She’s capable of taking care of three boys, doing the best she can to raise them, sacrificing her own self.” For thirty-seven years, he and Scott “have been quiet about this, and this is really the first opportunity that we’ve had to speak.” He wanted to tell the victims’ families how “very, very sorry” he is for their loss. “The only comfort that I can give you right now is that all three of us here—my mother, Carol, myself, and Scott—can assure you that the correct man is in jail for these murders. And he needs to stay there.”

In his letter to the board, Steve had put it in even harsher terms: “What you have here in your midst is a killer and likely a sociopath who manipulates and lies to get what he wants.… Mr. Hammond, by repeating these lies about some big conspiracy, only fuels my father’s need to be someone important enough for this to happen to.” Mr. Hammond told Ron “we are SURE your mother framed your father.” Steve thought that incredible: “Really? You’re SURE? Where is your EVIDENCE? You don’t have any, do you?” Steve directed his final comments to the board: “Please use your common sense and best judgment and realize this man is a manipulator. Understand everything he does is for himself and no one else. He is a liar and a killer and is where he deserves to be.”

*   *   *

It was nearly noon now, the hearing about to enter its fifth hour. Duane Belcher called for a ten-minute break. The Justice Project team and Macumber family members rose from their seats looking subdued. In the lobby, Ron stood alone off in one corner, shaking his head. He’d known his mother would be on the phone but not his brothers. What his mom and Steve said, he’d heard before; it was nothing new. Steve had been living at home with Carol for more than twenty years, and Ron felt he was just repeating what she’d told him. But Ron had not known his more independent oldest brother also felt this way. They hadn’t spoken in more than ten years.