Gang Mom (18 page)

Mary worried about Beau being sent back to MacLaren, and about her own future too, because of the pressure police were putting on gang members to testify against her. On the tapes, she sounded paranoid and scared, though sometimes she did a 180-degree turn and just seemed to laugh everything off, as if nothing had happened and nothing mattered.

“If I were going to get hooked up for murder, they’d have come and got me already,” she said in one call. In another, she was recorded as follows:

MACHINE: Hi. You have reached 555-9039. Sorry we’re unable to take your call, but please don’t hang up. Leave your name, number and a short message and we’ll get back to you.

THOMPSON: Yo. It’s the murderous brainwashing bitch here and it’s Saturday and if you get a chance, give me a call. Bye.

JUNE 25

The first witness of the morning was one of Mary’s foremost allies: Angel Elstad, the older sister of the “shooter,” Jim Elstad.

By the time Angel took the stand, she was twenty years old, and trying to turn her life around by attending Lane Community College, where she was a sophomore. Since her first child was born, on the night Aaron died, she had given birth to another who was now five months old.

“How many times had you been to Mary Thompson’s house with your brother?” Skelton asked.

“About ten to twenty times with Jim,” Angel answered.

“To the best of your knowledge, when were the Seventy-four Hoover Crips formed?”

“About one to one-and-a-half months before Aaron died.”

“And were you ‘jumped in’ at that time?”

“No, I was eight months pregnant then.”

“What did Mary Thompson mean by ‘taking care of’ Aaron Iturra?”

“That meant that Aaron couldn’t testify against Beau.”

“And how did she incite the gang against Aaron?”

“Well, first, she claimed that Aaron snuck over the fence to her house and poisoned her dog Lars. Second, she said Aaron was involved in selling drugs to little kids and third that he was having sex with little kids. But see, she would be, like, talking about all that and then I remember a lady arrived at Mary’s house in the middle of the day and the conversation changed to gang intervention.”

“It was like she was another person?”

“It was a complete contrast,” Angel agreed.

“Did Mary Thompson have a gang background?”

“Mary said that she’d been a Crip for thirty years and that she kept a can of spent bullets she used in her life under a floorboard in her house.”

“Did she tell you to wear your gang rags?”

“All the time. You were supposed to wear your rags all the time. Mary said, ‘Don’t let anyone mess with the rags.’”

“What about John Thompson, did he know what was happening?”

“No, he was at work. We had private meetings where kids did drugs like crack. The kids would come back from the back bedroom where Mary was, rubbing their noses.”

“Was there a burglary Mary masterminded?”

Angel nodded.

“At the Pleasant Hill gun shop. Mary told [the gang members] the specific guns to steal. I was driving the getaway car and everyone got cold feet when a police officer drove by.”

“What about Jim? What kind of relationship did he have with Mary?”

“We have a difference of opinion. Mary Thompson was his ‘Moms.’ See, Jim changed around August [of 1994]. We used to be involved with rock slides and swimming and just hanging out.” Then he started hanging with Mary and began declining. Eventually, Mary had such a hold on him that “if Mary asked him to do something, there was nothing on God’s green earth that could stop him from doing it.” Angel described her brother and the other teens as being pressured into taking care of Aaron for Mary.

Throughout Angel’s testimony, Mary scribbled notes to Chez, uttering profanity under her breath. Angel went on to describe how she heard the shot that killed Aaron, how her brother and Joe Brown showed up a few minutes later.

“What happened then?” Skelton wondered.

“A zillion things were coming out of their mouths a million miles a minute,” Angel testified. When she asked Jim why he had killed Aaron, “He said from conversations he’d had earlier with Mary that my [unborn] son would have gotten killed if he hadn’t taken care of it.” After that, they all went over to Mary’s.

Under cross-examination, Chez got Angel to admit that she thought Thompson, her brother and Crazy Joe merely intended to beat Aaron up. But noting that Aaron was a big guy they couldn’t just lean on, she assumed they’d threaten him. “I figured they’d say something and Aaron would put them in their place and they would come home. I didn’t even think he’d get a scratch.” She admitted knowing that Brown had stolen a .38 caliber revolver, but didn’t think he’d use it.

“And you knew this gun?” Chez asked.

“Yes, I’d borrowed it a few days before and drove to Mapleton to scare this kid that was threatening my cousin.”

Angel wasn’t such an angel after all, which was exactly what Chez was trying to establish.

“Did you ever hear Mary Thompson say she wanted Aaron Iturra murdered?”

“No,” Angel answered.

“Shortly after the murder, you had a phone conversation with Mary Thompson in which you said that you knew your brother and Brown were going to ‘cap’ Aaron the night he died, right?”

“Well, I can’t remember any of that. I was heavily medicated after my delivery. The details about the day of the murder and the days afterward are all just a blur. Maybe I was trying to impress the detective at that time. I couldn’t tell you. My attitude was just very childish and just stupid, plain stupid.”

“Did you believe that Mary Thompson would kill your brother James if he tried to leave the Seventy-four Hoover Crips?”

“You bet!” she practically shouted. “I overheard Jim say that he would be killed in a conversation before the murder with our mom. She was urging him to stop his gang stuff.”

Chez had apparently made the one mistake lawyers are never supposed to: he had asked a question without knowing what the answer would be in advance.

“Did you really believe she had a can of bullets under the floor boards?”

“Yes.”

“Did you participate in conversations against Aaron Iturra?”

“Perhaps. I think I stood up for Aaron.” Angel concluded, “It was all centered around her. Our family was nothing.”

THIRTEEN

Next up to the stand was gang member Cameron Slade.

Quickly, Skelton established in his early questioning that Cameron was eighteen years old, living in nearby Klamath County with his girlfriend, that the last grade he attended was the tenth and that he was unemployed.

“What kind of relationship did you have with Mary Thompson?” Skelton continued.

“I considered her to be ‘Moms,’” the teenager answered.

He said that Elstad hung around Mary constantly, that he snorted drugs in the back room with the other teens. Skelton was curious as to why Elstad carried out Thompson’s bidding.

“Jim would get respect if he killed Aaron Iturra,” he answered simply.

“Did you know what was going to happen that night?”

“Yes, I knew it would happen.” Afterwards, “When I saw Jim that night, he had his blue bandanna across his face and one over his head. Both Jim and Joe were very excited when they came back to the house.” Then they all drove over to Mary’s. At first, he watched them go into Mary’s house, but when Angel began having labor pains, he went in to get them. Inside the house, he heard Mary on the phone.

“She was telling someone, I don’t know who, that ‘It was done,’” Cameron said. As they were leaving to take Angel to the hospital, Mary said to Jim and Joe, “Good job,” and warned him, Cameron, not to talk. “She said not to say anything about this [the murder].”

Then Steve Chez took over for cross-examination.

“Were you a member of the gang?”

“I was asked to join the gang by Mary but I didn’t because I thought gangs were stupid.”

“Aren’t you concerned over your legal exposure?”

“No, because I didn’t encourage anything.”

“When did you first find out Mary went to the police?”

“I didn’t know she did do that.”

“Did you know Beau?”

“No.”

“Did you know Joe Brown?”

“I did not like Joe Brown. Jim Elstad was my friend.”

On redirect, Cameron admitted that the original idea was to beat Aaron up but once a gun was obtained, killing became the goal.

“Did you ever see Mary Thompson processing drugs?” Skelton asked.

“I saw her melt down the drugs in a spoon,” he testified.

It seemed that Mary had not left her drug-processing past behind her when she moved to Eugene from Josephine County.

“One more question. Why was the jumping-in ceremony videotaped?”

“So Mary could mail it to Beau at MacLaren,” Slade concluded.

Throughout the trial, in addition to local reporters, the courtroom was packed with scribes from Portland and surrounding localities. The Associated Press had their correspondent there; the Iturra case was going out on the wires around the world. The “Gang Mom” trial was big news.

On the third day of the trial, Skelton stood and intoned, “The state calls Neil Crannell to the stand.” A tall, distinguished-looking man in a gray suit came forward and put his hand on the Bible.

“Do you swear to tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth, so help you God?” asked the court clerk.

“I do,” said Crannell, and took his seat in the jury box, while Skelton took his by the lectern. Unlike on television, attorneys are rarely allowed to approach the witness and must do their examining from lecterns across the courtroom.

“Please state your full name.”

“Neil Crannell.”

“And, Mr. Crannell, how and where are you employed?”

“I am employed in Portland as a policeman for twenty-one years.”

“Mr. Crannell, do you have any special expertise?”

“I do. I have testified more than ten times as an expert on gang activities. And I’ve been a gang intelligence officer for four and a half years. I’ve interviewed over four hundred gang members in both formal and informal format in both Portland and Los Angeles. I also do training of other police agencies, communities and school settings, et cetera. I was a detective for three years, dealing with violent crimes and primarily black gang activities.”

“Your Honor, I’d like the witness admitted as an expert on gang activities.”

“Mr. Chez?”

“No objection, Your Honor.”

“Now, Mr. Crannell, can you tell us a little bit more about how street gangs are constituted?”

“Most street gangs are divided along racial lines. The Seventy-four Hoover Crips in Portland are all black, there are no whites nor Hispanics. The Crips have their roots in South Central Los Angeles. Another word for gang is
set
. The Seventy-four Hoovers are a
set
. They got their name from where Seventy-fourth and Hoover Streets cross in L.A. The name transferred to Portland, when gang members from California migrated north, bringing their gang mentality and name with them.”

“And can you tell us how big gang sets tend to be?”

“Gang sets vary in size. In Portland, the Bloods having fifty to seventy-five members, the Seventy-four Crips between ten and twenty. It’s hard to tell how many members there are, some may be in jail, out of town, whatever.”

“Could you please define for the court what exactly a street gang is?”

“A street gang is often loosely organized, claiming a specific name and territory. All are involved in criminal activity, use of hand signs and insignia to identify themselves, such as
do-rags
. The
rag
is the flag of the particular gang, and worn with pride. However, the rags are not worn as much anymore, as they are quite visible, and the police and rival gangs see them as a target.”

“How does one become a gang member?”

“Well,” Crannell continued, shifting a little in his seat, “first, it depends upon racial make-up and geographic area. One tends to join a neighborhood gang where one has grown up. Actual initiation occurs during the
jumping in
, wherein the initiate has to stand through a beating until the
OG
declares he has
heart
. Jumping in is not seen in Portland anymore.
Mixing in
is another term, meaning the same, but usually referred to only by Hispanics.
Jumping in
is a black term.”

“You used the term
OG
. What does that mean?”

“An OG is an
original gangster
, because he has been around a long time, is the
shot caller
and has a lot of influence on others, especially the younger members.

“A key concept to the gang membership is to not show or be disrespected,” Crannell continued. “A second key concept is to have power or
juice
. Respect is
very
important, and
dissing
could occur to you or someone close to the gang. Being dissed can actually cause the
dissee
to shoot the
dissor
.”

“And what does it mean to
put it on the set
?”

“To
put it on the set
is equal to saying that ‘I swear it is true’ or ‘Cross my heart.’ If a person swore or put it on his set and did not follow through, he would be dissing himself. To put it on the set is not done lightly.”

“What’s the primary purpose of a gang?”

“To communicate fear,” Crannell answered simply. “Fear is power, and power is obtained through violence, such as shooting.”

Throughout all of these questions pertaining to definitions and gang activities, Mary was nodding her head, totally in agreement with everything Crannell was saying.

“How do you track gangs in Portland?”

“Well, we have a data base with the gang members’ names.”

“Does the gang name ‘Sonny’ come up in your data base?”

“No, it doesn’t.”

“Now Larry Martin stated that Beau Flynn told him that when he was fourteen, he had been jumped into the Portland Crips.”