Wasted (23 page)

“No. I just know it. And I know the bank teller at First Interstate bank, and he told me about the accounts Regina used. Look, all of Regina’s friends know that Kim was the cause of Regina’s death, and it looks like the police made a deal with Kim to get to Justin.”

Gilchrest felt like Kelli Grand was trying to use him to get information rather than trying to give information.

 

 

Hope Rockwell tried to avoid the police and would only talk to them briefly over the phone.

 

 

Anita Morales stood in Regina’s apartment and sketched the homicide scene. She had to keep busy, she had to think, to save, to rescue Regina. It was her only way to cope.

The worse thing I’ve ever done?
thought Anita.
Ignoring my friend’s drug problem because it was just something that I didn’t want to see, deal with, or be involved in. I could have done more for her. I just convinced myself that, since Regina seemed okay she was okay.

Morales couldn’t cry. There was too much to do. Friends to call. A funeral to prepare for.

 

 

Mike White got a phone call from Morales telling him that Regina had died. He closed his blinds, sat in his room, didn’t go to work, and cried for a day.

 

 

Amy Seymoure’s father closed the door to his office. “Honey, Regina has been murdered.”

The breath slammed out of Amy, as though she’d been smacked into a brick wall. She collapsed onto the floor and sobbed. Her tears fell heavily, like a summer storm.

“She didn’t go out without a battle,” Amy said. “Regina was a fighter.”

It wasn’t enough.

 

 

Jeremy Barnes didn’t know what to do, how to feel. At times he thought,
Jeremy, you’re exaggerating. This is stupid. Just get over it. This is the way it is, and you can’t change it.

Other times, he beat his head against the wall because he missed his friend Regina so very much. He thought she was so beautiful when she took off her mask of makeup, when she was just her natural, gorgeous, country-girl self. He wept as he thought about how they country danced together, two-stepped across the dance floor.

“Son, did you ever think that maybe God let her die when she did because she prayed with you and she believed in her heart that she wanted to become good and get away from all that stuff, that she was really trying? So God took her home then so that she wouldn’t slip and fall again?” Jeremy’s mom said that to him when she went to stay with him and comfort him for a week.

Thank God for moms. Regina was finally with hers. “She just needed to let go of all of that superficial life so that she could for sure go home—to Heaven. I pray that’s how she really felt, and I have to believe that’s how she felt because I loved her so much,” said Jeremy. Then he cried some more.

 

 

On Monday, July 10, 1995, Detective Carter watched the DPS Crime Lab team as they searched Regina Hartwell’s and Kim LeBlanc’s formerly matching Jeeps, each parked at DPS headquarters in Austin.

Kim LeBlanc’s Jeep was set inside the DPS paint shop so that the lab crew could do a Luminol test in the dark. Blood glowed on the passenger door and passenger seatbelt. It matched the DNA of Justin Thomas. But Justin Thomas’s drugs and money, which he’d stashed in Kim’s Jeep and inventoried time and again since Hartwell’s murder, were not to be found.

Burned CDs were found in the chalky-white Jeep. Ash remains of Hartwell’s, piled in a compressed heap, sat in what would have been the backseat. Mixed in the ash were burned remnants of an XL black, denim shirt, reeking of smoke, and remnants of what appeared to be fatigue pants, burned black.

Also in the pile of compressed ash were flesh and bones.

 

 

The following day, Carter contacted the Riverside County Sheriff’s Department about Justin Thomas. Hours later, he got a return call. Thomas was a suspect in a drug-and gun-related murder. “The victim was a known drug dealer, and his body was possibly set on fire,” Carter was told.

 

 

Hartwell’s body was cremated twice. First in the car fire, then by the mortician. Still, her ashes weren’t at her July 14, 2 p.m. memorial service at the Pasadena Funeral Home in Pasadena, Texas.

Regina’s father, her stepmother, Dian, her grandparents, uncle, and cousins were there. Amy Seymoure and some of Regina’s friends from high school went. They all stared at, and studied, a poster of photos of Regina.

Ynema Mangum, Anita Morales, and Carla Reid had made the collage of memories. Ynema had enlarged the photos on a color copier. Anita and Carla had pasted them on the board. It was their salute to their beloved friend.

To the contingency from Austin—twenty-five friends or more including Anita, Carla, Ynema, Pam Carson, Kelli Grand, Jeremy Barnes—Regina’s family members seemed stunned at the appearance of the girl in the photos. The girl with the bright red lipstick, the perfectly plucked eyebrows, the black hair. Some didn’t recognize which person in the pictures was Regina. She had changed that much.

Mark Hartwell walked up to Jeremy and leaned over to him. “Jeremy, I just want to let you know that this is for you and Regina.” Hartwell then sat down, and the music started. He looked over at Jeremy and smiled. Jeremy burst out laughing.

So did Anita. The music was the song “New York, New York.”

If Regina were here right now,
thought Jeremy,
she’d fucking drop dead of embarrassment. She’d say, “My God, what in the hell is this country bumpkin doing?”

Jeremy, Anita, and Carla sank their heads in their laps, hoping that people would think they were crying. They knew Regina was up in Heaven, laughing and dancing.
Hell,
they thought,
if she’s still doing drugs up there, she’s doing a great big line right now.

Another song was played. Amy Seymoure gave the eulogy. Pam Carson read a poem. Anita finally broke down and cried. Ynema stared at the stained-glass window over the memorial, and she felt a sense of peace—everything was going to be okay. It made her feel much better.

At the moment Regina had died, Ynema had been landing in Florida, lightning flashing around the tips of her plane’s wings. She believed it to be Regina’s call for help.

Suddenly, the lights flickered in the funeral home. Everyone knew that it was Regina saying hi.

 

 

Over the next few months, Ynema’ s career blossomed, and she believed Regina had a part in that. Regina would do something like that from her grave, she was that generous, Ynema felt.

Regina was buried next to her mother.

 

 

“Hey, let’s go do an eight ball of coke.”

“Yeah, in honor of Regina!”

It sickened Jeremy Barnes to hear Regina’s drug-using, Regina-using friends from Austin.

“Let’s go to Manuel’s.”

“An eight ball of coke for Regina.”

“She’d want us to do that!”

Barnes’s grief exploded inside.
Y’all are a bunch of losers,
he screamed to himself.
You don’t even know the real Regina. It’s people like y’all who really fucked up her life in the first place. She probably wouldn’t even be dead right now if it weren’t for you.

Anita Morales pulled him away from the crowd.

Hartwell’s girl friends went back to Austin and to Manuel’s. Kim LeBlanc’s high school friend Amanda Dexter was there to celebrate Regina.

Kelli, Regina’s favorite server, said to Pam, “You should have seen Kim on the New York trip. She just threw a fit and sat in her room the whole time. We wanted to go out and do stuff, and Kim just threw a fit and sat in her room.

“And Regina would go out by herself and go on foot and went to all these fabulous stores and bought all these clothes and would just come home with bags and boxes of clothes and hold them up and Kim would either nod or shake her head. And whatever Kim didn’t like, Regina would take back. Kim was being a big baby. Nothing was good enough for her. She wouldn’t socialize with anyone there. She just walked all over Regina.”

 

 

Jeremy Barnes didn’t go to Manuel’s. He went to his apartment.

He called Regina’s apartment, time and time again, before her phone was disconnected, just to hear her voice on the answering machine, one more time, one last time.

Anita Morales phoned, too. Time and time again. She was there when Jeremy cleaned Regina’s apartment for the last time.

A friend of Jeremy’s helped. He scrubbed the toilet and turned to Anita and said, “I saw Kim here with Regina at eleven o’clock the night before she died. I came by to say goodnight, and they were here watching TV. Then the next morning when I was going to work at 7:30, I saw Kim’s car. It was parked next to Regina’s.”

Morales phoned the police and relayed the information. No one recalls getting that call.

Barnes found CDs in Hartwell’s apartment—heavy music like Led Zepplin. He didn’t think they were hers. Regina liked lighter music—Madonna, Reba McEntire, the Oak Ridge Boys, the Pet Shop Boys, dance music. He thought they were Justin Thomas’s.

Jeremy couldn’t take it anymore. The residents of the Château loved to gather in the evenings, down by the pool, drink, and talk about the murder of Regina Hartwell. Jeremy Barnes moved out.

But every night for the next two weeks, he returned to Regina’s apartment and sat by her door, with flowers and Mexican votive candles, and wept. He wished he’d never let her leave his apartment that Wednesday night, that he’d called her back on Thursday, or gone over to her apartment on Thursday. He wished he’d pushed harder, sooner, for Regina to get away from Kim and Justin. He wished.

 

 

Due to the widespread allegations of murder, drugs, guns, and gangs outside the jurisdiction of APD, Detective Carter notified the federal authorities about Justin Thomas.

He also entered known information about Thomas into the National VICAP—a clearinghouse for violent offenses and repeat offenders involved in the likes of murder and sexual assault.

K. C. Anderson sat down and looked her client straight in his hazel-green eyes. Even seated, Justin Thomas looked almost giant-tall in comparison to the petite Anderson, and he was as bald as a skinned chicken since his Mohawk had been shaved off.

But even with his new skinhead look, Thomas had a gentle demeanor. Anderson glanced down at her notes. To the young attorney, Thomas didn’t appear to have one iota of a mean or menacing presence. He was sweet-natured, friendly, and surprisingly open.

“I don’t want to know yet what happened,” Anderson said, concerned that Thomas was going to tell her that he had done it. “Let me tell you where we’re at.”

A bright, animated, smiling, young woman with plenty of stories and plenty of energy, Anderson didn’t show her excitement and nervousness over this, her first murder case in ten years of practicing law. As the daughter of the late legendary horse-racing announcer Chick Anderson, she had a lot to prove.

Anderson had been on vacation when she was appointed by the court to represent Thomas against the charge of murder. She arrived home, found and read the affidavit, talked to a television-reporter friend who was familiar with the case, and immediately thought,
My God, this is a book. It has everything. It has drugs. It has sex. It has lesbians. It has murder, loyalties, mixed loyalties, betrayals. It is a microcosm of the seamy side of life.

Anderson and Thomas talked for thirty minutes, maybe an hour. She reassured him that someone was there for him and that she would file the motions he wanted her to file. Justin seemed intelligent, on top of things. K. C. Anderson never saw any other side of him. Not then, not ever.

 

 

Kim LeBlanc spent the four weeks following Justin Thomas’s arrest in inpatient drug rehabilitation in Houston. As part of Kim’s rehab, she finally claimed to her mother that Kenneth Dwain LeBlanc, Cathy’s husband of almost eighteen years, had raped her.

On August 1, 1995, Ken moved out of the Dripping Springs house he shared with Cathy and ran to Baton Rouge, Louisiana. A week later, on August 8, 1995, Kim’s mother filed for divorce in the 200th Judicial District Court of Travis County, Texas, the Honorable Jon Wisser presiding. Wisser normally handled criminal cases.

Cathy was forty-two years old. Ken was fifty-two years old. She was represented by the law firm that had employed her for more than a decade.

“The marriage has become insupportable because of discord or conflict of personalities between Petitioner and Respondent that destroys the legitimate ends of the marriage relationship and prevents any reasonable expectation of reconciliation,” said the original petition for divorce.

As part of the divorce settlement, Cathy received her three-year-old Pontiac Bonneville, her retirement funds, her bank accounts, some Wal-Mart stock, the Dripping Springs house less $10,000 to Ken, the adjoining lot, another lot in another subdivision, and her clothing and personal effects.

She was also ordered to pay off all existing credit-card debt jointly incurred by herself and her soon-to-be ex-husband.

Ken received his brand-new 1995 Mazda truck, his retirement funds and bank accounts, and absolutely no financial obligations to his stepdaughter Kim LeBlanc, with the exception that Kim and Cathy would be covered by his medical insurance. He was not civilly sued for rape. However, according to prosecutor Gregg Cox of the Travis County District Attorney’s Office, Ken LeBlanc didn’t deny Kim’s accusation.

On October 25, 1995, the final divorce papers were mailed to Ken in Baton Rouge. By then, his stepdaughter was about to be released from a supervised home, still a part of drug rehab. Through the help of a twelve-step program, Kim had survived suicidal days.

Cathy sold the Dripping Springs home to pay for an attorney for Kim.

 

 

Justin Heith Thomas never left jail, and the next thirteen months were rough. Dawn told him that their daughter, Harlie, was not his. “You’re a liar,” he told her. “You’re just doing this to hurt me, to break any ties with me.”

Jim Thomas phoned K. C. Anderson to ask her a few questions. “This is my first murder case,” she admitted. “But I’m certainly associated with very skilled lawyers, and I’ll be able to handle it. But it won’t hurt my feelings if you want to look around and hire another attorney.”

Thomas mentioned names of attorneys with whom he wanted to talk. He conveyed to Anderson that he was puzzled by Regina Hartwell’s murder and that he felt responsible.

“How about Patrick Ganne and Jim Sawyer?” said Anderson. She was married to Ganne, but she also believed he and Sawyer were the best criminal attorneys in Austin.

Jim Thomas, though he seemed poor, said he had access to some money—he owned land in Oregon.

“If that’s all you have,” asked Anderson, “would you feel better if you didn’t spend it and went with a court appointed attorney and lost, or would you feel better if you did spend it and got a hired attorney and lost?”

“No, question,” said Jim, with softness in his voice, “I’d much rather spend everything I have and know I’ve done everything I could.” His hurt revealed itself in his tenderness.

Anderson stayed on the case until Thomas found a way to hire Ganne and Sawyer; that happened a year later, just before the trial began.

 

 

On September 28, 1995, at 4:36 p.m., the Travis County Grand Jury filed an indictment in the 147th Judicial District Court of Travis County, Texas against Justin Thomas for the murder of Regina Hartwell. At the time, Hartwell had been dead almost three months.

The indictment stated “that Justin Thomas, on or about the 29th day of June A.D. 1995, and before the presentment of this indictment, in the County of Travis, and State of Texas, did then and there intentionally and knowingly cause the death of an individual, namely, Regina Hartwell, by stabbing Regina Hartwell with a knife, a deadly weapon, that in the manner of its use and intended use was capable of causing death and serious bodily injury.

“And The Grand Jury further presents that on or about the 29th day of June A.D. 1995, and before the presentment of this indictment in the County of Travis and State of Texas, Justin Thomas did then and there, with intent to cause serious bodily injury to an individual, namely, Regina Hartwell, commit an act clearly dangerous to human life, to wit: stabbing Regina Hartwell with a knife, a deadly weapon, that in the manner of its use and intended use was capable of causing death and serious bodily injury, thereby causing the death of said Regina Hartwell, against the peace and dignity of the State.”

On November 20, 1995, K. C. Anderson filed eight motions including those for discovery, to suppress evidence, for production of evidence favorable to the accused, and for investigative and expert assistance fee in indigent case.

 

 

On December 30, 1995, Thomas set a small fire in the jail. Three months later, he got fed up with the slowness of the legal process and, on March 29, 1996, filed his own handwritten motion for discovery and inspection “to insure [sic] proper representation.”

Dawn Thomas divorced him.

 

 

On April 11, 1996, at 4:06 p.m., the Travis County Grand Jury filed an indictment in the 147th Judicial District Court of Travis County, Texas against Kim LeBlanc for the murder of Regina Hartwell.

The indictment stated “that Kim LeBlanc, on or about the 29th day of June A.D. 1995, and before the presentment of this indictment, in the County of Travis, and State of Texas, did then and there intentionally and knowingly cause the death of an individual, namely, Regina Hartwell, by stabbing Regina Hartwell with a knife, against the peace and dignity of the State.”

The following day, an arrest warrant was issued and bond was set at $50,000. On April 18, 1997 Kim LeBlanc turned herself in to the Travis County Sheriffs Department. Quickly, she was released on personal bond.

 

 

Not long before his trial was scheduled to begin, Justin Thomas’s financial arrangements for new attorneys were finalized by his father—one hundred acres of Oregon property to be deeded over to Patrick Ganne and Joe James Sawyer, an old law school buddy of Ganne’s. Jim Thomas was also to build them some fine wooden cabinets.

On June 26, 1996, Ganne and Sawyer filed motion after motion. That continued well into July.

On July 16, 1996, Judge Jon Wisser, the same judge who had granted Cathy LeBlanc’s divorce, granted Kim LeBlanc immunity from her testimony. Anything she said in court could not be used against her and could not be used to gain evidence against her.

Two days later, Ganne filed a motion to compel disclosure of any agreement with co-defendant Kim LeBlanc. Eleven days later, Ganne and Sawyer filed another motion to declare LeBlanc an accomplice.

Thomas’s trial was postponed.

 

 

Justin got a new girlfriend, a high-school-aged runaway whom he met through his cellmate. They communicated through jail windows by gang-style hand gestures. She was there in the courtroom the day the trial started, and she was there everyday, often in cutoff blue jean shorts. August in Austin is always hot and miserable.

 

 

August 13, 1996 was no different. Innocents and criminals alike could step into the day and break into a frying sweat in ten seconds flat. But in the District Court 331st Judicial District of Travis County, it was black and chilly.

Closed, black mini-blinds covered two long walls of the courtroom and kept sun and sound at safe distance. Air conditioning blew too strong.

A khaki-clad Travis County Sheriff’s deputy ushered Justin Heith Thomas into the courtroom. Thomas wore dark slacks, a white shirt, and a tie. He looked at his attorneys, Patrick Ganne and Joe James Sawyer, street-fighters who were dressed like TV evangelists. They wore sharp, expensive suits, silk ties, gold cufflinks, and gold watches.

Ganne, a Navy Reserve pilot with a luncheon taste for good wine and good cigars, was perfectly tanned. Sawyer had piercing, dark eyes, salt-and-pepper brows, a tight butt, stained teeth, and also a taste for good red wine. Time and time again, around the Travis County Courthouse, Sawyer was described simply: “slick.” He was even known to refer to himself on occasion, including in this trial, as a “slick dog.”

Sawyer and Ganne stood to the left of the state’s attorneys, lead prosecutor Gregg Cox and chief prosecutor Gail Van Winkle. Cox, a slight, but determined, young man, walked with the unafraid confidence of a strong, wiry bull terrier.

Van Winkle, with tightly curled brown hair, was smart, erect, and had a dancer’s posture. She, too, was determined, so much so that some thought she was unfeeling. She was not. She was simply controlled, like a dancer. It was her father’s teaching. A law professor at the University of Houston, he was theoretical and brilliant. Over dinner, he never gave his children a straight answer. It was good training for a lawyer.

Retired, but visiting, Judge Larry Fuller called the attorneys to attention. Thin, with slicked-back, graying hair, he ran his courtroom like a saloon—loose, freewheeling, with humor, with respect for the customers, criminals, and jurors alike. He motioned to prosecutor Cox.

 

 

Cox looked at the jury pool, his eyes dark and intense. “The most important thing is that you only accept evidence from the witness stand.” His voice was calm and methodical. “The testimony of witnesses or through exhibits that are entered into evidence.” He seemed at ease, trustworthy. “What we, as lawyers, say in the case in opening statements and closing arguments is not evidence, and you’re not to consider it as such.”

His words went uncontested by the defense. “When you’re looking at a witness who’s testifying, you don’t have to believe everything that witness says. You don’t even have to believe anything that witness says.” He was reassuring.

“You can determine a witness’s credibility by looking at things such as their demeanor when they testify, the motives they may have to testify a particular way, any biases they have, their opportunity to observe, or the reasonableness of their testimony. Your most important tool in this case is going to be your common sense.”

Those were some of the last words prosecutor Gregg Cox spoke that went uncontested by the defense. Time and again, the defense objected during the selection of the jury. Sawyer and Ganne watched carefully the reactions to their objections.

Then Sawyer stood. He straightened his cuffs and cufflinks. He looked at the jury pool, and he talked about his father, the sharecropper. Dramatically, he talked, like a Pentecostal preacher.

He talked about the movie
Body Heat,
about how a beautiful woman can manipulate a man into murder. “You’re dumb. I like that in a man,” he quoted. He closed with, “If you’re going to . . . hold it against the lawyers for objecting, you’re depriving the defendant of a fair trial, aren’t you? If you just hate the lawyer and think,
‘God, that slick dog, I don’t like him,’
are you giving the defendant a fair shake? Probably not.”