Wasted (29 page)

“Was the obtaining of that chain a responsibility that was delegated to anyone?”

“Justin.”

Ganne walked toward Bonnie with the bright, shiny chain in hand. “I’m going to show you what’s been marked and introduced into evidence as State’s Exhibit Number 52, and ask you if this looks familiar to you.”

“That looks like the chain that we used to tow my brother’s truck,” she answered.

“And after you used it to tow your brother’s truck, what was done with it?”

“The chain?”

“Yes, ma’am,” he said politely.

“It was put in the back of my truck,” said Bonnie.

“And it was left there?”

“Yes, sir.”

“And it was still there when, in fact, it was taken from you?”

“Yes, sir,” she answered.

“The garbage can—were you there when it was taken?”

“Yes, sir.”

“And how was it being used at the time?”

“For our garbage.”

“Was there, in fact, garbage in it?”

“I believe so, when they took it.”

“And do you know what happened to the garbage?”

Bonnie shook her head, no.

“Was Justin assigned a responsibility of getting that?” said Ganne.

“Yes, sir,” said Bonnie.

“That was part of the chores—”

“That his dad told him to go to town,” Bonnie interrupted. “We were using a big box in the basement to put our garbage in and [it] just wasn’t no good, so he told him to go get a garbage can for us.”

“And is that when you piped in about the chain?”

“Yeah,” she said.

“Who set up the chain the way it is? I notice it’s just not a chain. It’s got some other items on it.” Ganne showed her the chain.

“Well,” said Bonnie, “we had to put it through his bumper and put those nuts and bolts on there to hold it onto his bumper and the same to mine.”

 

 

“Ms. Thomas,” said Ganne, “I have no further questions. I think the prosecution may have some for you.”

“May I have a glass of water, please?”

Judge Fuller smiled. “I wonder if it’s today’s or last week’s,” he joked.

Gail Van Winkle was erect, polite, businesslike. Her young, pale skin and bright, red lipstick were in direct odds to Bonnie’s sun- and wind-weathered, natural face.

“Let me ask you some questions,” said Van Winkle. “Did you see your brother’s truck when it was towed?”

“Yes, I’m the one that helped tow it.”

“And you see that this chain here has a padlock on it?”

“Yeah.”

“Do you know where the key is to this padlock?”

“No, I have no idea.”

“Have you seen this [padlock] before?”

“No.”

“So when—do you know how this padlock got on this chain?”

“No. I have no idea. There was no padlock on that chain when we towed, I don’t believe so, ma’am.”

“When it was taken from your truck, it was on here, wasn’t it?”

“I don’t think so.”

“So you’re saying when the officer seized this, this padlock was not on this chain.”

“I don’t remember that lock being on that chain.”

 

 

“Do you know why [Justin] would have bought cement?”

“No, ma’am.”

“You did not ask him to buy cement.”

“No, ma’am.”

“And you didn’t ask him to buy a padlock.”

“No, ma’am.”

“You don’t have any idea why Justin Thomas would purchase that.”

“No, ma’am.”

Bonnie Thomas was on the stand for less than an hour.

“What are you, crazy?” Regina Hartwell’s friends taunted Melody Mann, Justin Thomas’s new girlfriend. She sat there, her blue eyes focused on a paperback novel, her young, tanned, thin legs, sticking out of her short shorts. To Hartwell’s friends, the curly, blonde-haired teenager looked as trashy as her novel.

“Your psycho boyfriend is going to go to prison.”

Mann took a lot of verbal abuse, from Regina’s friends, from a Christian, cussing mother, from an angry brother who had no qualms about telling their mother to “shut the fuck up.” It was no wonder she was attracted to Justin Thomas, a man capable of extreme love and extreme anger.

Each day, Melody sat outside the courthouse, perched on a concrete wall, and hand signaled her love to Justin, as though talking in street-gang sign language. Melody Mann had had her own brushes with the law. Sitting in a courtroom, as she did that day, was not an unknown to her.

 

 

At 10:10 a.m., Justin Heith Thomas took the witness stand in front of a jury of his peers—twelve mostly highly educated men and women. It was his choice, and his choice only, to testify. Jim Sawyer questioned him.

“When did you first notice Kim LeBlanc?”

“She asked me a couple of questions [at the gym] about, you know, different lifts to improve certain strengths. I guess that would have been the first time. I don’t know when that was.”

“Were you attracted to her?”

“Oh, yeah,” said Thomas. “I thought she was, you know, very pretty.”

 

 

“Did you begin a sexual relationship with Kim LeBlanc that first night [y’all went out]?”

“Yes, sir, that first night.”

“Was it a fairly intense physical relationship that you enjoyed with her?”

“Yes, sir.”

“If we had an intensity scale,” said Sawyer, “from, let’s say, one to ten, where would that relationship lie in terms of physical intensity that you enjoyed with her?”

“Had to peak the scale—ten,” Thomas said.

Melody Mann clutched her paperback novel.

“Was that a flattering relationship to you? Were you happy to be in this relationship?”

“Oh, yeah, I was.”

“Had you dated a girl that was as pretty as she was?”

Bonnie held in her wallet a photo of Justin’s ex-wife, Dawn, and their two children, the ex-wife who looked almost exactly like Kim LeBlanc.

“I didn’t think—I didn’t ever think so. I thought she—”

Melody Mann just sat there.

 

 

“When you met Regina three or four weeks after you knew Kim, was it clear to you what that relationship was?”

“Quite apparent, right away.”

“Did they treat each other with affection even in your presence?”

“Yes,” said Thomas, “they did. In fact, every time the three of us were together, Regina was usually in Kim’s lap or Kim was usually holding Regina.”

“Did you personally have any problem with the relationship between Regina Hartwell and Kim LeBlanc?”

“No.”

 

 

Sawyer and Ganne had talked with Thomas about his testimony perhaps a half a dozen times.

“Now, you heard the testimony about the motor-scooter accident. Did you have an accident on that motor scooter?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Can you recall for the jury about when it was you had it?”

“I believe it was ... they had returned from the trip [to Cancun]. I can’t recall [the] exact date, though.”

Jeremy Barnes had testified that the accident had been before the trip to Cancun. So had Kim LeBlanc.

 

 

“Whenever you were moving out of the apartment after the trip to Cancun, what was the relationship, to your understanding, what was the relationship between Kim and Regina?”

“Well,” said Justin, “it was kind of messed up because, for a while there, Kim thought I was—[that] Regina and I were messing around, which wasn’t the case.” He didn’t blink an eye. “They were arguing about money. And it didn’t seem like it was going all that well between them, you know. But, like I said, a lot of times Regina would pull Kim to the side and they would talk.”

 

 

“Was there ever a time when Kim LeBlanc told you that Regina was mistreating her or that she was being taken advantage of in such a way that she felt that you should go and kill her?”

“No.”

“Was there ever a time when she looked at you and said you got to go bump her off?”

“I don’t recall that. I recall her telling me—”

“At this time I’m going to object to hearsay,” Gail Van Winkle interrupted. “Kim’s statements are hearsay and that’s not admissible.”

“I’m sorry,” Jim Sawyer said, then looked at Judge Fuller. “They’re absolutely not hearsay. Kim’s statements come in. She’s an accomplice here. I’m sorry. They come in.”

“Only if they can show somehow that it’s a conspiracy to commit a murder between the defendant and Kim,” argued Van Winkle. “If it’s just a statement that she made out of court, then it’s hearsay. If they’re going to say it’s [a] co-conspirator statement between the defendant and Kim LeBlanc in the furtherance of this murder, then I gather it’s not hearsay.”

“Kim, if Kim LeBlanc, God forbid, is in fact the murderer, . . .” said Sawyer sarcastically.

Judge Fuller soon sent the jury out of the courtroom.

 

 

“Let me speak directly to the record,” said Sawyer. “This witness is the accomplice. If she is conspiring on her own to commit murder instead of [being] a patsy, then I think any statement—”

“How can you conspire with yourself?” asked Judge Fuller.

“Of course, you can conspire with yourself. If she has intent, then I think that the statements are admissible.”

The attorneys argued, the Judge wisecracked, Thomas was questioned out of the jury’s presence, the attorneys argued more, and the Judge listened. Sawyer was denied permission to ask Thomas the questions about what LeBlanc said.

 

 

“So the jury can know, were you any kind of a cocaine addict or drug addict at that time?”

“No, sir. I could do without it.”

“Did you do drugs on a recreational basis?”

“Yes, sir, I did.”

 

 

“Did you and Regina ever go into business as Kim described, you know, where you all went out and sold dope at the 404 Club?”

“No, sir, we didn’t.”

“All right,” said Sawyer. “Did Regina ever give you, you know, large sums of money so that you could go out and buy dope and front it out to drug dealers?”

“Not large sums,” said Thomas. He was soft-spoken, polite. “Just enough to party with at the time.”

“She was only giving you money to buy dope to use herself?”

“For the three of us or the two of them.”

 

 

“Did you . . . was there anything that had happened between you two or among the three of you, you know, that left you with the feeling that you just had to do something dramatic, or mean, or harmful?”

“Not at all,” said Thomas. “In fact, when they returned [from Cancun], I bought them a pretty expensive gift as a gesture of friendship ’cause, like I said, I thought her and I—”

“A gift for whom?”

“Regina.”

“What was that gift?”

“A leather recliner.”

Damn,
thought Sawyer.
God damn.
This was the first that he’d heard that Thomas had purchased the recliner. And God knows how many times he’d told his client not to volunteer any information on the stand.

“All right,” said Sawyer, staring his brown eyes on his client. “Is that, in fact, a leather recliner that we have seen in these photographs inside that apartment?”

“Yes, sir, it is.”

“And that’s a gift you paid for with your money?” Sawyer acted nonchalant.

“Yes, sir,” said Thomas.

“Wasn’t money that Regina gave you?”

“No, sir, it wasn’t.”

 

 

“All right. What happened that morning, the morning of the 29th?”

The jurors leaned in to listen intently.

“I got up pretty early. I couldn’t sleep. We were doing drugs that night. I got up pretty early and I wanted to go out to my house. Kim was asleep, so I didn’t want to wake her up. I walked over to my cousin Josh’s.”

“You heard Josh’s testimony this morning, didn’t you?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Was he testifying truthfully to the jury about what you all did that morning?”

“Yes, sir.”

 

 

“Did anything special happen that morning, you know, between you and Josh?”

“No. We wrestled around, you know, just b.s. like we normally do.”

“All right. You remember when Kim was testifying to the jury and she said that you had gathered your posse, I think she called it, at Jim’s Frontier to discuss slaughtering Regina Hartwell.” Sawyer had a knack for description. “Is that true?” And he loved that knack. Outside of court, he grinned and laughed when he referred to Kim LeBlanc as a “skinny-assed snitch, bitch and witch.”

“No.”

“All right. Did you ever go up there, you know, and visit anybody and say, ‘We’re going to go and kill this woman’?”

“No.”

“And you heard her when she testified . . . to the jury that you all had conspired to get rid of the Jeep, of Regina’s Jeep, after she had been killed. Is that true?”

“No, sir.”

 

 

“And what vehicle was it that you were offering to sell or trying to sell at that time?”

“It was Kim’s Jeep.”

“Why were you trying to sell it?”

“She was having problems making the payments or something to do like that. Regina was offering to pay it off, but she didn’t want to because she didn’t want to be attached with Regina. She wanted to break things off. I was, you know, trying to help her out. I have a few friends that had Jeeps, were interested in Jeeps.”

 

 

“Let’s come back to the 29th. Josh dropped you at your place?”

“No, sir.”

“Where did he leave you off?”

“At Kim’s apartment.”

“All right. What did you do?”

“I walked up to the door, and at that time I had a key. So I opened the door and went in, and when I went in Kim was real hysterical. She had come out of the shower. The water was still on. I asked her, ‘What’s wrong? What’s wrong?’ And she was just hysterical. And she got back into the shower. I didn’t really pay it no attention because I just thought, well, she’s geeking, man, she wants some more coke or something.”

“You say ‘she’s geeking.’ What does that mean?”

“That she’s showing physical signs of a dependency,” said Thomas.

 

 

“And then what happened?”

“And she told me that, uh, Regina was dead.”

“What was your reaction to that?”

“I was like, ‘What are you talking about? What do you mean Regina’s dead?’”

“What happened next?”

“She said—”

“At this time, I object,” said Van Winkle, “to statements that Kim made unless they’re going to—they’re in furtherance of a conspiracy, as hearsay.”

 

 

“Maybe we should approach the bench,” said Sawyer.

The opposing forces gathered in front of Judge Fuller.

“What I want to get to now,” whispered Sawyer, “is about what had happened that morning prior to his arrival. Those are inculpatory. If you want the jury out while we argue this. But I don’t think this is rocket science.”

 

 

Several minutes later, Judge Fuller, overruled Van Winkle and allowed Sawyer his questions.

“And then what happened?”

“She asked for my help, and she begged for my help. Said she needed my help.”

“Why?” asked Sawyer. “Help to do what?”

“I guess to try to, you know,” Thomas tried to sound meek, “conceal the fact that what was done was done.”

Sawyer looked straight at his big client. “Mr. Thomas, answer to the jury directly. What did she want you to do?”

“She wanted me to help her somehow get rid of, I guess, the body, [that was] what she was asking.”

“Did you do it?”

“Yes, sir, I did.”

“Did you leave the apartment—her apartment, Kim’s?”

“We left together.”

 

 

“Was it pretty soon after you had been dropped off by Josh?”

“It was a while because I tried after I got the explanation, well, after I, you know, started believing her, I was like, you know, ‘Call the police. What are you talking about?’ That’s what I told her.”

“You never did call the police, though, did you?”

“I couldn’t convince her to, and I didn’t, no.”

“Did you all go over to Regina’s apartment from Kim’s place?”

“Yes, we did.”

“Did you actually go into the apartment with her?”

“Yes, we did. Yes, I did.”

“Just tell the jury where was Regina’s body in the apartment as you recall when you walked in.”

“She was lying face-up in the bathtub.”

 

 

“What was your state of mind by the time you all got to your [father’s] place?”

“Pretty much shocked.”

“Were you scared?”

“Very scared.”

“What was Kim, what was her demeanor like? What was she looking like?”

“She’s pretty relaxed because she was on coke. So she was pretty relaxed.”

 

 

“Did you go and buy this garbage can, and the chain, and that concrete to bury her in the river?”

“No, sir.”

“Did you ever, even for a minute, contemplate chopping up this woman’s body and putting it in the garbage can?”