Love Me To Death (23 page)

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Authors: Steve Jackson

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A few minutes later, Randy Canney stood in the hallway fielding questions from more reporters. On principle he did not believe in the death penalty, and it had been troubling to have to sit silently in the courtroom while Neal hanged himself, figuratively if not yet literally. He told the reporters that he believed that Neal was mentally ill, delusional, and shouldn’t have been representing himself.
Even though Neal didn’t want a lawyer, Canney had continued to try to act as one throughout the process, only to be ignored. As a defense lawyer, he wasn’t immune from the horrors perpetrated by his client. He had to look at the photographs; his thoughts and dreams were sometimes haunted by those images. Sitting through the Neal case without much else to do, he’d been a witness to all the pain on the faces of the victims’ families and had been moved by their testimony about how deeply they’d been hurt. He was used to seeing the varied emotions of victims or their families. Some were horribly angry. Some were horribly sad.
A defense lawyer had to compartmentalize those things so that he could do his job. He had always wanted to be a criminal-defense lawyer; he liked the idea of fighting for the underdog against the state. His first obligation was to make the prosecution prove its case, but he felt the job went further than that. It was up to him to paint his client as a human being, not a monster. It had been deeply troubling that he had not been allowed to do that.
Prosecutor Tingle applauded the judges’ decision and their rejection of Neal’s excuses and pleas. “This is not a court of mercy,” he said. “This is a court of law.”
A half hour after the court was adjourned, the victims’ families met with the media in a room on the first floor of the courthouse. They had issued a joint press release that included a complaint aimed at those in attendance who were morally opposed to the death penalty, such as Jim Aber.
“We are offended by those who presume to manipulate the word of God to justify a request for mercy when such godless acts were clearly committed in complete absence of mercy.”
Sitting at a table, holding up photographs of their lost loved ones for the cameras, they thanked Charles Tingle and Chris Bachmeyer and the investigators “for their commitment and sensitivity.”
“This brings some closure, but it does not bring back my mom, Angela, or Rebecca,” Holly Walters said.
“This is not going to be over for us for a very, very long time,” added Wayne Fite, Angela’s father.
They said that they all planned to attend Neal’s execution. “To the end,” said Wayne. “To the end,” Holly repeated.
Epilogue
September 26, 2001
“In retrospect, that stone was more like a bombshell and those ripples more like tidal waves. People have not been merely touched by the heinous murders that Mr. Neal committed. People’s lives have been shattered; their futures have been destroyed.”
—Charles Tingle
As Chief Deputy District Attorney Charles Tingle knew it would, the ripple effect of William Lee “Wild Bill Cody” Neal’s bombshell has continued to wash over the lives of those whom he came into contact with. He has a way of making even his victims’ survivors feel guilty; some of them will have to live with that heartache, as well as their loss.
In the months before Angela’s murder, Wayne Fite had pushed his daughter away because she would not get out of an abusive relationship with Matt Rankin. What she found was worse, though only by degrees. Rankin, who had testified that he had never loved anyone as much as Angie, will also have to look at himself and ask why Angie had to look for love and safety in the arms of another man.
In 2000 Angela’s sister, Tara, gained custody of Kyle and Kayla after Rankin was accused of neglect and of domestic abuse of his girlfriend at the time. They are both a joy and a reminder of her loss.
All of their lives will never be the same. . . . There is no “getting over it” for the families of murder victims. Betty Von Tersch insists that Tara call her every day “or I’m over there knocking on her door.”
“It never stops hurting,” she says. Once she went to the hospital complaining of chest pains, but the physicians could find nothing wrong. She didn’t know how to tell them that the pains were symptoms of a broken heart.
The families weren’t the only ones affected. Deputy District Attorney Chris Bachmeyer, who for some time afterward was haunted by dreams of women dying, recalled being left emotionally “flat” by the trial. “There was no joy. Maybe a sense of satisfaction that the families got justice, but I can’t say I was happy. That’s not the right word.”
Her colleague, Tingle, said, “I hope it gave the families some closure. But it’s not over for them. This will drag on for years. As for myself, my biggest emotion was that I was glad it was over. It seemed like for that year, I was walking around day and night with a big dark cloud hanging over my head. I hope it goes away.”
The prosecutors and investigators still wonder if there are other bodies buried in Neal’s past.
Randy Canney remains troubled that the judges weren’t “painted a fuller picture of Cody’s life.” Had he been allowed to take a more active role, he would have brought in “people who have good things to say about him. . . . It’s not like for the past three or four years he’s been an absolute con. He can be a nice guy. He was a good businessman. He’s a very engaging man.
“Why, when he was forty-two years old, did he suddenly do this horrible thing? While he may not have been the most law-abiding citizen, he had no criminal record. In looking for answers, you have to hope that there’s some good in everybody, an explanation for the bad. I don’t believe in abject evil. I think there’s a reason.”
Canney said he didn’t know if that “fuller picture” would have changed the judges’ minds, “but they should have heard it.”
In the meantime, Neal was appointed two appellate lawyers from the Colorado Public Defender’s Office. He vacillated between keeping them and firing them—that much had not changed about his personality.
In December 1999, one of Neal’s appellate lawyers, Jeff Pagliuca, filed a complaint with the Colorado Supreme Court’s attorney-regulation committee, accusing Jefferson County Chief Deputy District Attorney Mark Pautler of unethical conduct that included dishonesty, fraud, deceit, and misrepresentation. The complaint stated that Neal told sheriff’s investigator Cheryl Zimmerman that he wanted a lawyer to represent him or he would “not surrender without one.” The court’s attorney-regulation committee found reasonable cause to go ahead with a formal complaint, and a trial date before a panel of disciplinary judges was set with a potential consequence of disbarment.
Neal’s advisory counsel, Randy Canney, noted that the alledged misconduct could be used by Neal’s appellate lawyers to overturn the sentence. “It is certainly going to be grounds that the postconviction lawyers are going to try to utilize,” he said. However, he told this writer that given the circumstances, he couldn’t fault Pautler. “I would have probably done the same thing.”
Pautler told the media that he didn’t believe that the complaint, even if the court ruled against him personally, could be used to overturn Neal’s conviction. “It didn’t have to do with any evidentiary matters,” he said.
William Tuthill, an assistant county attorney appointed to represent Pautler, defended his client. “Mr. Pautler spoke to Neal as a ‘public defender’ to assist in persuading Neal to surrender,” he said. “The law enforcement objective was to prevent further bloodshed, and to apprehend Neal without further threat to the public, the officers, or to Neal.”
In January 2001, a judge with the disciplinary committee ruled that Pautler had committed misconduct by engaging in “intentional deception,” a violation of the ethical rules for attorneys. A hearing was set for March before three judges with the Colorado Supreme Court’s disciplinary judicial panel to determine what, if any, action would be taken against Pautler.
At the hearing, deputy attorney-regulation counsel Nancy Cohen argued that Pautler’s deception strained already frayed working relationships between the Jefferson County District Attorney’s and Public Defender’s Offices.
(This argument made little sense: If Neal had been upset with the ruse, he should have turned even more to his defense lawers. In actuality, of the myriad of issues that Neal talked about in his letters and conversations with Tingle and Bachmeyer, none had anything to do with Pautler misrepresenting himself as a public defender, or this being the cause of the rift between him and the public defenders’ office. In fact, Neal repeatedly told just about anybody who would listen that he fired the public defenders because he wanted to plead guilty and they wanted to prevent him from doing so.)
Cohen argued that a public defender would have been obligated to advise Neal to turn himself in. Public defender Jim Aber, whom Neal had fired, and Pagliuca both testified that they would have faced sanctions if they had not given that advice. Pagliuca said that Pautler’s deception was to gain a “tactical advantage.”
“The notion that if the crime is bad enough, government lawyers are entitled to lie is a flawed one,” he said, urging the panel to suspend Pautler’s license. “Any attempt to justify this kind of conduct is the epitome of arrogance.”
Along with the contention that Pautler was a law enforcement officer acting within the boundaries of that position, Tuthill argued that the Colorado Rules of Professional Conduct, the portion of the canons that apply to attorney ethics, states that while lawyers are not supposed to engage in deception, the rules also recognize that they should be “guided by personal conscience.” Those rules should “exhaust the moral and ethical considerations that should inform a lawyer, for no worthwhile human activity can be completely defined by legal rules,” and were intended to “provide a framework for the ethical practice of law.” Any discipline of the offending lawyer, according to the canons, should take into account the “facts and circumstances as they existed at the time of the conduct in question and in recognition of the fact that a lawyer often has to act upon uncertain or incomplete evidence of the situation.”
Jefferson County District Attorney Dave Thomas and other Denver metro-area district attorneys testified on behalf of Pautler saying that they agreed with his actions. Pautler was himself unrepentant. “I’m quite comfortable with what I did that night,” he told the panel. “What I did that night I did to save lives and take a killer off the streets.”
After the hearing, and while the judges were deliberating, various people weighed in on the charges in the press.
Defense lawyers chastised him, some merely to say that he should have allowed a police officer to effect the ruse. Others contended that his actions put their profession into “even more disrepute.” One Missouri lawyer even wrote to a Denver newspaper columnist echoing Pagliuca’s “epitome of arrogance” quote. He added, “To permit an attorney to evade responsibility and accountability for violating the very trust they swore to uphold is nothing more than reinforcing a Godlike mentality and belief that they somehow are above the law.”
Meanwhile, the court of public opinion favored Pautler. Letters to the editor from police officers and citizens criticized the attempt to censure Pautler.
Russell L. Cook, the police chief of Golden, a city located in Jefferson County, said that Pautler had put public safety first. “You can appreciate what Mark Pautler was going through. He had just been to the scene of the murders. . . . The images in his mind were of the hideous brutality Cody Neal had unleashed. He quite possibly averted a massive manhunt that may have driven Neal to flee, harm other victims, or take hostages.
“I understand these rules of professional conduct that attorneys operate under. But they are simply a framework for the ethical practice of law. You can’t have a rule for every single issue that comes up. It seems to me they could say, ‘Yes, this was an exception.’ ”
Writing for the chapter of the Fraternal Order of Police, with the Lakewood Police Department, Detective Patrick Wilson wrote: “It is our understanding that Mark Pautler’s actions in July 1998 were instrumental in the apprehension of the person who murdered three women and who indicated the desire and ability to kill even more people. Thanks to Pautler’s quick thinking, there were no further deaths and the killer, William “Cody” Neal, has been sentenced to die for his heinous deeds.
“Now because of his heroic actions, Pautler is being prosecuted by a group of lawyers who obviously have little contact with the realities of the criminal-justice system and even less understanding of dealings with killers.
“Many of us have worked with Pautler on murder and other cases during the past sixteen years, and we know he only does what is right and what best protects society.
“As Lakewood police agents, our job is to enforce the laws justly and fairly. We are outraged that an agency such as the Attorney Regulation Counsel would prosecute one of the finest and fairest prosecutors we have ever worked with, or anyone else, for doing what was necessary to prevent further killings and to bring to justice a triple murderer.”
Betty Von Tersch wrote as well. “As the mother of Angela Fite, who was brutally murdered by William “Cody” Neal in July 1998, I am shocked and very disturbed to learn that the Attorney Regulation Counsel is prosecuting the person who caused Neal to be arrested as quickly as possible without further deaths or harm to our community. . . . It is hard to believe that Pautler could be found guilty of misconduct for his actions, which brought my daughter’s killer to justice.
“I believe that Mark Pautler is a hero for what he did. Not only should he not be sanctioned . . . he should be praised for having the courage to do what he did to stop William Neal’s killing spree.”
Neal’s surviving witness, Suzanne Scott, added her own letter. The only reason that she had been able to go on with her life, she wrote, was because of the “heroic” actions of Pautler.
In the end, the judges handed Pautler one year’s probation. Still, too much for his supporters.
Meanwhile, as of February 2002, the courts were still trying to determine when to hold a new competency hearing for Neal. His other appeals couldn’t begin until that matter was cleared up once and for all.
Neal was offered the opportunity to comment for the purposes of this book. In September 2000, he contacted this writer for the first time since the July 28, 1999, interview with him at the Jefferson County Detention Center. He requested that the writer provide him with numerous documents and newspaper articles, including a two-part series of stories the writer published in
Westword,
a Denver weekly, in October 1999, in exchange for his renewed communication.
Only the
Westword
article was sent. His response was to “rebuke” the articles and the writer as having been the instruments of Satan, who, he said, had “typeset” the piece, and to refuse to cooperate in the writing of this book. He enclosed his diatribe in an envelope on which he’d printed a number of biblical warnings, among them: “He who guards his lips guards his life, but he who speaks rashly will come to ruin.” Proverbs 13:3. . . . “A false witness will not go unpunished and he who pours out lies will not go free.” Proverbs 19:5. . . . “Hatred stirs up dissension but love covers over all wrong.” Proverbs 10:12. He signed off with: In His Service, Cody Neal.
Manipulating, always manipulating, that’s Wild Bill Cody. He was very good at it. Maybe not better than Bundy, but out of the same mold. One of the most difficult aspects for the families of Neal’s victims to deal with has been that the women were somehow at fault. How could they have believed his stories? What made them so gullible?
But many women have fallen for Neal’s lies and deceits, his charms, and his ability to make himself whatever they wanted or needed, to reach out and touch their dreams and make them believe that he was the guy who could make them come true.

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