Disturbed Ground (47 page)

"She was involved with the Mexican-American community?"

"That's corrrrect,
si.
And, but, um, my children saw in her their grandmother who they never have. When they get home from school, they would run up the stairs—"

"You say she was like a grandmother?"

"Like an aunt, like a grandma, like a mother take care for us our children. She took my children to San Francisco, to Marine World, that's why we consider her our family, too. Because she told us the first day that she doesn't have family, only ours."

Veering back to self-justification, Ordorica added, "That's why, when I saw all those things, when she asked me favors to cash the checks, I did. For part of the rent."

To get off the subject of money, Vlautin prompted, "You had referred to Dorothea Puente as
tia?
"

"Yes. Because emotionally," he said, choking out the words, "in our heart, emotionally, she is still part of our family."

"In your heart?"

"In our heart, in our lips, in our thought." Voice thick, Ordorica added, "My daughters dream of her, they wake up crying for her."

Defense attorney Vlautin thanked the witness, and Dorothea Puente blew her nose as little Ricardo Ordorica left the courtroom wiping tears from his eyes.

O'Mara had devoted nearly every waking hour to this case since February, trying to work in evidence as it continued to trickle in, handing to the jury every piece of the puzzle he could manage. Now, on June 7, 1993, after 136 witnesses, the prosecution rested.

CHAPTER 44

The morning of June 15, Puente’s attorneys looked particularly telegenic. Kevin Clymo appeared relaxed and upbeat as he shared a joke with his client, who sat beside him in a blue-and-white print dress. Her skin seemed so milky and translucent, one observer whispered, "She looks like a porcelain doll."

Speculation about Puente's defense simmered. After the prosecution's marathon case, what could they hope to present besides smoke and mirrors?

News vans with microwave dishes hummed out in the parking lot, ready for reports of Dorothea Puente's defense. A fresh flock of spectators peered and murmured. Reporters made room for sketch artists, who readied pencils and paints.

The jury appeared rested. Several were tanned. All seemed ready and alert.

The defense called their first witness, a retired social worker who spoke in bureaucratese about the clean, respectable, and openly unlicensed room-and-board establishment Mrs. Puente had run back in the seventies.

A backdoor character witness. O'Mara felt no need even to cross-examine this one.

But the next witness was different.

Plenty of behind-the-scenes wrangling preceded the testimony of longtime criminal Raul Hernandez. The defense argued that their witness, who happened to be a convict, ought to be afforded the same courtesies as others. But certain considerations mitigated against absolute parity. Hernandez was a violent felon and known escape risk; the judge had understandable misgivings about allowing him to sit, unshackled, just a few feet away. Finally, Judge Virga ruled that the prisoner would wear a leg brace. Hernandez would be brought in and seated during a break. Since the brace couldn't be seen beneath his trousers, the jury would not be unduly influenced.

Wearing the penal system's de rigueur orange jumpsuit, Hernandez shuffled in and sat in the witness box. With his big, bullet-shaped head, droopy mustache, and blunt features, he looked inherently menacing. A watchful armed deputy stayed close by.

With the jury again seated, Peter Vlautin carefully established the criminal's record, his heroin addiction, and the fact that he was now serving twelve years for armed robbery. Then he turned to the man's relationship with Brenda Trujillo.

It had to be done. Though Trujillo's testimony may have seemed lost in the prosecution's massive case, only Trujillo claimed to have seen Dorothea emptying capsules into a drink. Only she had claimed that Dorothea had killed people. Trujillo's credibility had to be destroyed, and Hernandez was The Terminator.

Hernandez explained that he and Trujillo had grown up together in the same low-income projects. As children, they'd played together. As adults, they'd drunk beer and shot heroin. In his quiet, calm voice, Hernandez described junkies relaxing with their drugs at the end of a long day.

Trujillo lied compulsively, Hernandez told the jury. In particular, he recalled Trujillo laughing and boasting about some story she'd cooked up about Dorothea Puente forcibly drugging her so that her urine test was "dirty" and she had to go back to prison.

"I told her that was wrong," Hernandez stated. "She said she just wanted to stay out of prison, and that was the best excuse she could think of."

He was here today, he said, to set the record straight. Trujillo lied so much that she offended even drug-addicted felons.

Vlautin turned the witness over to the prosecution, and all eyes turned toward O'Mara. For months, the jury had watched him question his own witnesses. How would he cross-examine?

First, O'Mara asked a few questions, laid a few traps. Then, at the first discrepancy, he flew at the witness, shouting out questions between snide remarks.

"He's badgering the witness," Vlautin objected.

The judge sustained.

But O'Mara's in-your-face assault continued. "You don't like being here, do you Mr. Hernandez?" O'Mara sneered.

More combative questions, more objections, and soon the judge was trying to calm the hostility between the attorneys, like a parent caught between squabbling children.

The jurors tittered and exchanged looks.

Meanwhile, the witness struggled to explain, "As far as dates, sir, like I said before, I can't remember the dates. Honestly, I can't."

Finally, O'Mara muttered that he had no more questions.

Vlautin was immediately on his feet. Seeing his opening, he asked Hernandez why he'd mentioned being uncomfortable, and that opened the floodgates. Hernandez's rock-hard features crumbled. "My wife is expecting a baby. And right now, my life is in danger." The big man's voice wavered and turned to sobs.

Everyone stared in amazement.

"If any of this [testimony] gets twisted just a little bit," he whimpered, "my life is in danger. I'm in for twelve years. And there wouldn't be nothing for me to be up here lying about."

Hernandez looked suddenly vulnerable and small. If his buddies back in prison mistook him for a snitch, he'd be in for a world of hurt

"You said your situation has changed," Vlautin prompted gently. "What did you mean?"

Regaining his composure, the witness replied, "I'm a born-again Christian. That's another thing, I can't lie. I have nothin' to gain from this! Nothin'!"

Now it appeared that the criminal was the victim, O'Mara the bully. Scanning the jurors' faces, one wondered whether O'Mara had made a strategic blunder.

Over the next few days, the defense continued their onslaught against Brenda Trujillo. And they weren't just taking potshots, they were engaged in full-blown character assassination. They called former
boyfriends, cell mates, junkies, even a special agent with the Department of Health and Human Services, who, among other things, pointed out that Trujillo had once made the outlandish claim that Puente had used Visine—Visine, of all things!—to drug people.

There was little O'Mara could say. There was no point bickering about the Visine issue now. Being more circumspect in his cross-examinations, often forgoing questions altogether, O'Mara just hoped that the jury remembered that Trujillo had gone to the police about bodies buried in the yard months before Puente's arrest. About that, at least, she had told the absolute truth.

The defense bulldozed forward, employing the oldest of strategies: blame the victims. They set out to prove that it was ill health, not Dorothea Puente, that had caused these deaths. And in this case, attacking the health and lifestyles of the victims was child's
play.

The next several witnesses portrayed Bert Montoya as a down-and-out drunk. A former boardinghouse operator named Lloyd Lambert recalled that when Montoya had been a tenant at his place in the early seventies, Bert had consumed alcohol "anytime he could get a bottle." Puente's neighbor, Alice Mansuetti, testified that she frequently saw Bert sitting in the shade, drinking from a bottle in a paper bag. And a fellow who had worked at Puente's house said that one day Bert was so "snockered" he could hardly walk, so he'd helped him back to the house.

Some of the prosecution's witnesses had also described Bert gulping down beers. Coupled with previous medical testimony, this fit in nicely with the defense's scenario that Bert had suffered a fatal diabetic coma.

To illustrate this scene, they called Mark Anthony, Don Anthony's brother. More law-abiding and better-looking than his weasely brother, Mark Anthony described a day in the summer of 1988 when he'd given his brother a lift to 1428 F Street. As he was about to drive away, he said, his brother had come back to the car and asked if he'd give him a hand because, "one of the boarders was unconscious over at the bar across the street." Anthony described rushing over to find Bert passed out on the floor. "We shook him and called out his name, tried to bring him into consciousness."

"Were you able to arouse him?" Vlautin asked.

"No."

"Were there signs of breathing?"

"Not heavy," Anthony said. "He was blowing bubbles out of his mouth."

The men had tried to lift Bert off the floor, he said. Finding him too heavy, the Anthony brothers and another tenant, Pat Kelley, had finally hoisted him under the arms, letting his feet drag as they hauled him across the street, through the gate, and into his room. Then they'd laid Bert on his bed and loosened his clothing.

Mark Anthony soon had to leave for work, he said, and as he was leaving, "Dorothea showed up. Seemed like she got out of a taxi on Fifteenth Street. My brother tried to introduce me to her, but she seemed pretty concerned about what was happening to Bert. It seemed like she was already informed. She was asking questions—where he was and everything."

That was it, plain and ugly. Bert Montoya had collapsed one morning in Joe's Corner Bar. Had he been poisoned? Or had his blood-sugar level zoomed out of control, sending his metabolism into a terminal tailspin?

After a brief cross-examination, Judge Virga called the noon recess, giving the jurors time to ruminate on the awful image of Bert Montoya lying unconscious and blowing bubbles.

As June waned, the defense continued to slowly undermine O'Mara's case. The prosecutor had called more witnesses and had taken more time, but they were intent on weakening the foundation of his case. Grain by grain, they were draining the sand from beneath his pillars of reasoning. And now, with a surprise witness, Ruth Munroe's death was cast in a much different light.

Dean Fesler, former husband to Munroe's daughter, Rosemary, described Munroe as "a chronic complainer" who popped pills like candy. The court had already heard that Munroe had once worked in a pharmacy. With Fesler on the stand, they also heard that she'd hoarded manufacturers' samples of both prescription and over-the-counter drugs, stashing them in a large cardboard box. "Each time she had aches or pains," Fesler said, "she'd reach into her box and take something."

Fesler described Munroe keeping "between eight and twelve bottles of pills" on the nightstand beside her bed. "She was always getting a glass of water and taking one of these pills," he said.

When Clymo asked Fesler what he knew about Ruth Munroe's death, he said, "My information was that she died of pills," underscoring the impression that—whether accidentally or intentionally—Munroe had self-administered the lethal dose of codeine and Tylenol.