Cruel Death (29 page)

It was a plan, in other words, on Erika’s part, to walk into that interview and begin laying the foundation of her defense: it was all BJ.

Nevertheless, her freedom and subsequent charges were contingent upon Erika passing the polygraph.

“And if she cannot pass the polygraph,” Arcky considered, “we’re back to square one.”

Erika had been told a number of times about the importance of being honest with her attorney. It was something she was made well aware of by several different people. On the eve of the polygraph, Arcky had met with Erika and reminded her of this very issue and its importance. According to several sources, Erika understood clearly what her lawyer meant.

Arcky Tuminelli and Scott Collins were listening to Carri Campbell, and at first, none of it registered for Arcky. But then Campbell explained things further, and now there was this problem of the deal being quashed by Erika’s own words of admission.

After Campbell explained the most damning statements Erika had admitted to, Collins said, “That’s it. There will
definitely
be no polygraph now.”

It was Erika’s “Just fucking do it” statement that had turned out to be the clincher. This statement made her an abettor. Therefore, Erika’s own words proved her possible guilt. If that was so, there was no way she could take a polygraph and prove to Joel Todd that she’d had nothing to do with the murders.

To Arcky, however, the agreement he had written with Todd “wasn’t that clear,” he later said. “It simply said she had to
pass
the polygraph. It did not go into detail.”

“Wait a minute,” Arcky told Collins. “You have to get Joel down here. You weren’t there when we drafted this agreement. I don’t think it requires what you think it requires.”

“Fine. I’ll get him down here,” Collins finally conceded.

An hour went by. Arcky was sitting by himself in a conference room, where he and Collins had tried working things out previously. Erika had been taken back to the jail.

Looking at his watch, tired of waiting, Arcky went over to Detective Scott Bernal, who was also there, and asked, “What’s going on? Where is Joel Todd and Scott Collins?”

“They’re here,” Bernal said. “In that room over there.”

Arcky walked down the hall and opened the door. Collins and Todd were waiting.

Bernal followed.

Later, Joel Todd would say that Arcky Tuminelli had a “deer in the headlights” look to him when he entered the room.

“They had this look on their faces,” Arcky commented, “when I walked into the room, like the cat that swallowed the bird.”

They were gloating. And yet, sure enough, they had plenty to smile about. It was obvious they had been briefed by Carri Campbell as to what, exactly, Erika had said.

Erika was in a heap of trouble. She was going to face first-degree murder charges, which was what Scott Bernal and Joel Todd had expected—and wanted—from day one.

Bernal wrote in his report of this meeting that Todd sat down with Arcky and began talking about the previous agreement Erika had signed. Todd was firm. No way. Erika had not fulfilled her obligations, and the deal was done.

Finished.

Off the table.

Arcky was in a jam. What could he do?

“Are you satisfied,” Todd asked, which Bernal verified in his report of the meeting, “given the information that we got from Erika Sifrit, that [we] have fulfilled the conditions of the Memorandum of Understanding?”

According to Bernal’s report, Arcky thought about it for a moment: “Absolutely, I agree.”

“You do. Good,” Todd responded.

There had always been serious concerns about Erika from the prosecution’s side that she was more involved than she had wanted to admit. Now they had proof—in her own words: “You have me on murder, don’t you?”

Arcky Tuminelli left the OCPD after speaking with Joel Todd and Scott Collins, realizing there were going to be major repercussions over what had happened. He drove back to his hotel in Rehoboth, and sat and thought about things.

What do I do now?

He awoke at four in the morning and started reading the “Memorandum of Understanding,” which he and Joel Todd had drafted. He was looking for that loophole to get Erika out of what she had gotten herself into. It was his duty as her attorney. There had to be
something
.

“There was nothing in the agreement,” Arcky said later, “that specifically said that she
had
to pass the polygraph and that it
had
to be related to questions that she in no way participated in the murders or encouraged [Benjamin] to do the murders.”

It was a long shot, sure, but all that Arcky had at this point. Erika had created a vacuum. Her entire defense was being sucked into this one interview with Carri Campbell.

Arcky Tuminelli called Joel Todd later that morning. “Look, Joel, I have issues that this is concluded now and that you can go ahead and prosecute her for murder.” The previous day, Todd had made Arcky well aware of the fact that he was likely going to be filing first-degree murder charges. “I’m looking at the agreement,” Arcky continued on the phone to Todd, “and it doesn’t say anything about what the questions need to be. It simply says that she has to
pass
the polygraph.”

Erika, Arcky was arguing, had never been given an opportunity to take the polygraph, so how could she pass a test that she never had the opportunity to take?

“Come on,” Todd said. He felt Arcky was reaching. It was ridiculous.

“Technically speaking, you have an obligation to give her that polygraph test,” Arcky said.

After Arcky Tuminelli said it, he knew damn well it was a difficult argument, not to mention a stretch. The legal language was on his side, however.

“No way, Arcky. No way.” Todd was getting annoyed that Arcky would even try such a thing. “Come on—”

“You do what you have to do, but I think you need to give her a polygraph.”

That was the position Arcky said he was taking. End of argument.

Joel Todd was under the impression that Arcky Tuminelli clearly understood that taking the polygraph was for the sole purpose of proving Erika wasn’t involved in the murders.

Hanging up, they both knew that, in due time, the decision would be in the hands of a judge. For now, there was nothing else to talk about.

Part IV

He Said, She Said

75

Judgment Day

As promised, Joel Todd tossed out the agreement and filed first-degree murder charges against Erika. It took a few months, but a judge finally sat and heard evidence from both sides regarding a motion Arcky Tuminelli had filed to have the charges dismissed in light of the agreement he and Joel Todd had drafted and signed.

Now Joel Todd and Arcky Tuminelli were witnesses. Testifying, telling their versions of what was now being called the “midnight deal.”

During a hearing on September 30, 2002, from Arcky Tuminelli’s viewpoint, the charges against Erika were supposed to be dropped in exchange for her helping authorities locate the victims’ bodies, and also for her potential testimony against her husband, BJ. It was, Arcky said, as simple as that: Erika helped the OCPD; now it was their turn to help her.

Arcky insisted that Scott Collins and Joel Todd had violated the arrangement. “The breach,” he said rather vehemently, “occurred when they refused to allow my client to carry through with a polygraph examination, terminating a pretest interview after she incriminated herself.”

“She maintained that [Benjamin] was the murderer and she was the obedient spouse,” Todd testified. “She contradicted herself so many times, I wasn’t sure she had any value as a witness. She was
not
innocent! And therefore, well, she needed to be prosecuted for murder.”

Plans for BJ’s trial had moved quickly. He was scheduled to face a jury on December 9, 2002. Arcky described Erika as “too distraught at the prospect of not being allowed to testify against her husband.”

When Erika was asked whether she remained willing to take a polygraph and testify against BJ, she said, “Most definitely. Yes. Of course.”

In rejecting the motion, which Arcky expected, circuit court judge Theodore R. Eschenburg Sr. said, “In early interviews, Erika Sifrit told authorities she had been on the first floor of the two-story Ocean City condominium and heard shots as her husband killed Ms. Crutchley and Mr. Ford in an upstairs bathroom. Her statements, July twenty-third, however, show otherwise.”

Erika had changed her story. Not once, but time and again.

Erika’s trial was scheduled for December 2, but Arcky told reporters outside the courthouse after the motions hearing that he was seeking a postponement based on the “extensive publicity” surrounding both cases. More than that, Arcky said, “I’ll be asking that my client’s trial be moved outside Worcester County.” There was no way, Arcky maintained, that Erika could get a fair trial in any courtroom near Ocean City, seeing that the case had generated so much publicity—most of which pointed a guilty finger at BJ and Erika.

Regardless of what happened during the hearing, many were now well aware of the fact that innocent little Erika Grace Sifrit, who had been paraded in various news stories surrounding the case, up until this point, as some sort of golden child, whose family and friends could not ever place her in the role of a potential killer, had had a much more significant part in the murders and dismemberment than she had originally admitted.

The tide had changed.

76

The PI

Mitch and Cookie Grace were beside themselves with pain, dread, and disappointment. They had expected at some point that their daughter would be released on bond and back home working on a defense for what would be the fight of her life.

But that never happened. Erika was denied bond and her trial date was postponed until June 2003.

And to their credit, Mitch and Cookie, every week, drove the eight hours down to Maryland from Pennsylvania, stayed in a hotel, and visited with Erika. Meanwhile, however, as Arcky began to build a case for Erika, Mitch hired a private investigator without, according to Arcky, telling him. Arcky didn’t find out until the guy was running around interviewing people and doing nothing more than eating up—some close to the case later said—Mitch’s money.

“Look,” Mitch later said, “Arcky told me that at some point we would need private investigators, and so I hired them and sent them to see Arcky to see what needed [to be] done.”

Arcky saw this differently, saying, “That’s bullshit. Of course, Erika, Mitch, and I understood that if a plea agreement could not be worked out, we would eventually need an investigator. If I had been involved in hiring an investigator, it would have been someone I was familiar with in the Maryland area. Without any knowledge or input on my part, Mitch announced to me that he hired [this guy] and a former police officer as investigators. After my initial introduction to [this guy], a short time later he called me. He advised me that after talking to Mitch, he would be traveling to Virginia to conduct some interviews. I told him it might make sense to wait to see, if after the polygraph was done, we got a plea agreement from Joel Todd. I mentioned that it did not make sense to spend Mitch’s money on interviews in Virginia, if there would not be a trial. [This guy’s] response was ‘You’re on my dime. It’s none of your fucking business how Mitch spends his money.’ With that, he hung up on me. He later called me back after speaking to Mitch and told me he was going to Virginia to conduct the interviews. [This guy] later suggested that Mitch hire a DC lawyer (an acquaintance of his) to take over Erika’s case. Mitch informed me of this, since he was considering hiring a lawyer to work with me. . . . [This private investigator] remained part of Mitch’s team until [he] was barred from visiting Erika after she and [this guy] were observed fondling each other in the visiting room.”

According to reports, the PI was kicked out of Worcester County Jail when guards caught him and Erika in an awkward position. Sure, this spoke to how inadequate, perhaps, the PI was as an investigator. But what did it say about Erika? She had claimed she couldn’t live without BJ, that her entire life had revolved around the guy. She even said that BJ had controlled her and that she could do nothing without his order. But here she was, not six months after being arrested, caught in a compromising position with a private investigator her father had hired.

“What was clear with Erika and her family,” one source told me, “is that the legal system is not a system where culpable people get punished. It’s a system where, they believe, if you have a good enough attorney and you pay him or her enough money, that no matter what the case is about, or what the hearing is about, you can
always
win.”

It’s not about justice; it’s about winning at any cost.

“We would do everything we can to help our daughter,” Mitch Grace told me more than once.

Part of Erika’s downfall was that she expressed a sense of hubris in that she believed, said one source close to her during this period, that “all she had to do was walk in there and pass that polygraph.”