Wasted (27 page)

“Hard to say,” said Sawyer. “Must be difficult to love two people so much at the same time, is it?”

“I wouldn’t say that I loved Regina the way I loved Justin.”

“When, you cleaned up dope and the paraphernalia to try to protect her ... you knew she had been burned to a crisp—her body had been—in her own Jeep. Is that true?”

“Yes, I did.”

“Because you were there.”

 

 

“And you sat there with [Regina’s friends] while they were smoking cigarettes and talking about her—‘My, God,’” and Sawyer began to mimic a shaming crying and whining, “‘she’s missing. This is terrible.’ And you participated in that, didn’t you?”

“Yes, I did.”

“But it must have been the dope that made you do it. If you had been sober, you would have piped right up and said, ‘You know what? That dirty rat, Justin, killed her. She’s dead. She’s burned to a crisp out in a field in Bastrop County.’ That’s what you would have done, isn’t it?”

“If I was sober,” said LeBlanc, “it never would have happened.”

“Because you would have called the police and intervened.”

“Because I never would have stayed with Justin.”

 

 

Sawyer looked at Judge Fuller. “May I approach, Your Honor?”

“Yes.”

“This knife here,” Sawyer showed Kim LeBlanc the single-edged lockblade knife with the slightly scorched wooden handle, “you ever see it?”

“No,” Kim answered quietly.

“Complete surprise to you?”

“Yes,” she whispered.

“Do you know this was found under her body?”

“No, I didn’t know that.” Her voice was barely audible.

 

 

“Great, big, old bowie knife, isn’t it? Isn’t that what this is? Not something a little, ole girl would carry, is it? You know girls who carry knives like that?”

“Not personally,” said Kim.

“You wouldn’t hang around with that kind of company would you?”

“I used to sell knives, so I have hung around with people that have owned knives.”

“Where did you sell knives, ma’am?”

“I sold cutlery for Cutco.”

“Cutco.”

“Uh-huh.”

“Knives that were sharp with long blades?” he asked seriously.

“Yeah,” LeBlanc answered. “To cut chicken with.”

It was an answer that kept Sawyer laughing for months.

 

 

“Let us switch forward. Let’s go to the police department. When you get there and, you know, when you’re asked specifically about that cut on his hand, you don’t tell them anything about Regina cutting him, did you?”

“No, I did not.”

“You know, it’s crazy that you didn’t hesitate to say he killed her, did you?”

“No, I did not.”

“So here we are. Let me see if I understand how you do this. He did it. Killed this woman, he wrapped her up, he took her out, he burned her. Do you think it’s important to spare him that last indignity about that cut in the web of his hand?”

“He told me specifically not to tell anybody where he got that cut from.”

Sawyer laughed in Kim LeBlanc’s face. “So if he had said, ‘Don’t tell them I killed her,’ you’d have done that, too?”

“I was under the impression,” said Kim, “that they already knew exactly what had happened since they had the Jeep and they knew exactly what had happened. My mother had instructed me that right now it was just up to me to tell the truth as best I could because they knew already.”

 

 

Judge Fuller looked over at the jurors, then back at Sawyer. “Can we quit?” It was noon, and he knew his panel was hungry and needed a break.

“Yes, sir,” said Sawyer. He liked his lunches, too.

Judge Fuller turned back to the jurors to let them know that testimony would continue after lunch, but that the defense first needed time to study Kim LeBlanc’s statement to the police.

As Kim LeBlanc and her mother left the court, Regina Hartwell’s friends glared at them. But the investigator protecting Kim stopped. “Y’all are being really hard on Kim,” she said, “and she’s all you’ve got.”

 

 

Court didn’t reconvene, however, until 10:10 the next morning, Friday, August 16, 1996. Despite Judge Fuller’s constant attempts to keep his jurors at ease, they were not as comfortable that day.

They were forced to move from the dirty, but large, 331st District Court in the courthouse’s newer annex to a smaller room in the main courthouse. Judge, witness, and jurors sat almost elbow to elbow.

Kim LeBlanc was on the stand for her third day in a row. Regina Hartwell’s friends still glared at her.

Jim Sawyer looked at her.

“Ms. LeBlanc,” he said, “you gave a statement. You remember giving that?”

“Yes, sir, I did.”

“And in your statement, if I recall what you told the police, was that you had told Justin that you wanted this woman out of your life. You wanted Regina to be gone. Is that true?”

“That is what I said then.”

And that was all Sawyer said, too. He passed the witness.

 

 

“Why did you tell the police that?” asked Cox, his voice gentle.

“I told the police that because I wanted to protect Justin.”

“How did you think that telling [the] police that you wanted him to take care of this would protect him?”

“I would go to jail for him.”

“You still told the police that he did the murder, though, isn’t that correct?”

“I figured that would be quite obvious. I thought if I changed the motive to where it seemed more justified, then it wouldn’t be as bad. I knew that telling them that he didn’t do it would be ridiculous.”

“So were you thinking they would go easier on him?”

“Yes,” said LeBlanc, “I did, if he had a justified reason for it.”

“What did you tell the police was your reason for asking him to do it?”

“I told them that Regina had done some things against my will, and that he knew about that.”

“Was that true?” said Cox.

“Yes. She had not done things against my will and I had not told him that.”

 

 

“Okay. Now, Mr. Sawyer was asking you yesterday about a fifteen thousand dollar discrepancy. Did you have any other access to Regina’s money besides the Pulse card or her actually physically giving it to you?”

“No, sir, I did not.”

 

 

Cox asked LeBlanc about Thomas’s motor-scooter accident injuries. “Was there much blood?”

“No,” she said. “But it’s like when you scratch yourself and there starts to come, like, little droplets because it’s a pretty good scratch, you know? It wasn’t oozing down his legs, but you could see dark red. It wasn’t much, but ... I asked him if he wanted a paper towel.”

“Did he accept it?”

“No. Well, can I go on with the sequence of events?”

“Yes.”

“Okay. Then he grabbed the keys to her Jeep and left.”

 

 

“I believe you testified yesterday that Justin had, at some point, told you how he got to Regina’s. What did he tell you about how he got there?”

“He told me that Josh and Carlos had driven and dropped him off at Lamar.”

“Who is Carlos?”

“Carlos is a friend of Josh’s.”

 

 

Sawyer focused his dark brown eyes on LeBlanc. “Did you believe that you were in Regina’s will as an heir?”

“No,” said LeBlanc, “I did not.”

“You never held that belief?”

“No, I did not.”

“You never told anyone that you were an heir?”

“No, I did not.”

 

 

Cox held his pen in his right hand, as he often did. “Did you and Justin ever discuss Regina’s money?”

“Once or twice about, before she ever—she was killed, he asked me if there was any way that I could go into a bank and since I looked somewhat like her and [sic] get her money, just extract millions of dollars from her bank.”

“What did you tell him in response to that?”

“Told him that that was not possible, that I personally did not think I looked that much like Regina either, because she was much bigger than I was and, plus, the fact that people don’t walk into banks and extract millions of dollars from the bank by looking like another person.”

“Was that the only time you discussed it?” asked Cox.

“After the murder, he told me that it was a shame that we couldn’t have gotten any of her money.”

The prosecutor passed the witness one last time to Sawyer.

 

 

“You mean more than the three hundred dollars a day that you were maxing out everyday after her murder?” said Sawyer.

“More than . . . I’m sorry. Was that a question?” said LeBlanc.

“Yes,” answered Sawyer.

“I’m confused,” said LeBlanc.

“He was regretting you couldn’t get more than the money that you were taking out everyday.”

“Yes.”

After fourteen minutes, Kim LeBlanc was finally excused from the witness stand.

 

 

As she walked past Anita Morales, who still sat daily in the hallway, Anita thought about the investigator’s comment—“she’s all you’ve got.”

Morales stood up and walked toward LeBlanc. Everyone stopped. The hall fell silent as everyone expected her to tear into Kim, verbally rip her into tiny pieces.

“As much as it is hard for me to say,” said Morales, “I want to thank you for having the courage to come and give your side, because without that we wouldn’t be able to put him away. And I want you to know that I do appreciate this because I know you don’t have to do it.”

Tears welled in Anita’s eyes. It hurt to look into the face of someone who had had so much to do with taking her best friend’s life. Anita’s friends led her away, and she wished that Kim LeBlanc had never come into Regina’s life, that Kim LeBlanc had never set foot in Club 404.

But there was no changing the past.

 

 

Jeremy Barnes watched Cathy LeBlanc. No one spoke to her. He thought about his mother and his family. Some of his brothers weren’t the salt of the Earth either, he told himself, and he knew his mother was a wonderful lady. She hadn’t raised her sons to be thugs. He didn’t think Ms. LeBlanc had raised Kim to be a thug or a drug addict or an accomplice to a murder either.

He tried to put himself in Cathy LeBlanc’s shoes, to think of himself as a straight parent with a child in unspeakably horrendous trouble. He felt her hurt, how her heart must grieve.

He walked up to Cathy LeBlanc. “I just want you to know that I feel so sorry for you. I just want you to know that I know it’s not your fault, and I cannot hold anything against you. I feel so bad for you having to go through this. I pray for your peace. If you ever need someone to talk to or need an understanding person, please call me. I’m in the book.”

But he couldn’t speak to Kim. He couldn’t look at Kim. It didn’t matter if she was all they had.

At 10:24 a.m. on Friday, August 16, 1996, Detective David Carter took the stand. He testified about meeting Kim LeBlanc at APD headquarters, interviewing Justin Thomas, seeing the gash on Thomas’s hand, and asking the suspect about it. “He told me that he got the cut when he was helping his father mend some fences.”

Carter stated that he had observed the searches of the Jeeps and had spotted a piece of a denim shirt marked “XL” and a piece of burned fabric from perhaps fatigue pants. He also had tried to locate ATM machines that had been accessed with Regina’s Pulse card after the murder, in hopes that there would be video of the transactions. There wasn’t. And he had obtained blood samples of the deceased and Kim LeBlanc.

Patrick Ganne then cross-examined Detective Carter.

“Aside from the information that you received concerning ATM transactions, you received additional financial information concerning Ms. Hartwell, that is, other accounts that she had,” said Ganne.

“Yes, sir.”

“Okay. And one of those is that there are some documents, that Ms. LeBlanc was to receive a sum of money in the event of Ms. Hartwell’s death.”

“I was told about that, but I never saw any document to that effect,” said Carter.

 

 

On redirect, Cox said, “And the money that you discovered that Mr. Ganne asked you about that would go to Ms. LeBlanc in the event of Regina’s death was the $5,000 mutual fund?”

“I recall $5,000,” answered Carter. “I don’t recall a mutual fund or what kind it was specifically.”

 

 

Next, Detective Mark Gilchrest testified to having taken Regina Hartwell’s dental records to the Travis County Medical Examiner’s office on July 7, 1995 and then, on July 10, 1995, having gone to the Heritage Inn with a photo of Justin Thomas. An employee there, Maria Lisa Davis, had identified Thomas and stated that the couple had checked out on July 1, 1995. She had not identified Kim LeBlanc, said Gilchrest, because he had not had a photo of her.

Court recessed at 12:15 p.m.

 

 

After lunch, Dr. Roberto Bayardo, Chief Medical Examiner for Travis County, Texas, sat down in the witness chair.

A veteran of more than twelve thousand autopsies, Bayardo stated that he had identified Regina Hartwell from her dental records, primarily from the permanent retainer she had worn and the two teeth that the retainer had still held.

State’s Exhibit Number 73 was the retainer and the two teeth of the late Regina Hartwell. She had begun wearing a retainer just about the time her mother had died.

“She was severely burned, ... partially cremated,” said Bayardo of Hartwell. “Some parts of her body were missing.” But there had been a few clothes. “I found portions of a T-shirt. I found two purple-color pads, and there were also panties.”

When he had opened Hartwell’s body cavity, Dr. Bayardo had found her right chest cavity completely filled with blood, three pints.

Prosecutor Gail Van Winkle presented the jurors with Regina Hartwell’s autopsy photos. Hartwell’s guts resembled cooked, pink meat, perhaps pork or salmon, with bright, yellow fat on the side, like lemon or apricot chutney. Stomachs tightened.

Van Winkle introduced photos of Hartwell’s lungs. Their absence of soot proved that Regina had died before she was burned. A single-edge blade, three-quarters to one inch in width had killed her, said Bayardo. And, yes, the slightly burned knife found under her body could have been the murder weapon, despite the knife being shorter than the wound.

A chest wall is elastic and can easily be compressed by a strong person, someone like a former football player and body builder, someone like Justin Thomas. So, yes, the wound and blade were consistent, Bayardo stated.

 

 

On cross-examination, Dr. Bayardo said that Regina Hartwell may have been asleep or near sleep when she had been stabbed, that perhaps she had been partially upright, and that the perpetrator would not have been covered in blood because the majority of Hartwell’s bleeding was internal, not external.

The defense team wanted the jurors to believe that Kim LeBlanc had seduced the sexually dominant Regina Hartwell in the bathtub and that she had stabbed her when Regina was down.

Dr. Bayardo stepped down from the witness chair.

At 2 p.m., Anita Morales took the stand. She told the jury about Regina Hartwell paging her on the day of the murder, about being worried about Regina, about searching for her, and about paging Kim LeBlanc.

As she spoke, Morales leaned forward in the witness chair, as if anticipating the next question, ready to answer, as though she had things she wanted to say but couldn’t. She did have things she wanted to say but couldn’t. She believed with all her heart and soul that Kim LeBlanc had been present during the murder.

She testified about finding the blood and LeBlanc in Hartwell’s apartment. She talked about filing the missing-person report and told how Kim had cowered away from Anita as she had tried to comfort the crying Kim. Not once did Anita Morales lean back in the witness chair. She was too angry.

Judge Fuller looked over at his jurors. They appeared worn—the autopsy photos had gotten to them. He gave them a break.

 

 

While the jurors were out, the prosecutors attempted to present Maximina Bautista, a housekeeper at the Heritage Inn.

Her testimony was a disaster for the prosecution. The Spanish-speaking witness was terrified about testifying. She only occasionally sneaked a look at Justin Thomas. Bautista did admit, however, having run into a man at the Heritage Inn with very short hair, so short that one could barely see it, and that his hand had been wrapped and that the bed sheets had been bloody.

The defense objected on the basis of inadmissibility and irrelevance.

Bautista became more frightened and got quieter.

Gently, Judge Fuller questioned her.

But it was to no avail. The witness was dismissed. Gregg Cox was irate. He’d worked hard to prepare that witness, and then she had frozen tighter than an iceberg. Cox shook his head in frustration and glanced over at Thomas. Thomas was wearing one of his knitted-brow Frankenstein’s monster looks. Cox loved being the white-hatted good guy who put monsters like Thomas in prison. “Shit,” said Cox, and he stormed out of the courtroom.

 

 

Anita Morales again briefly took the stand for cross-examination by the defense. Ganne pounded her, harassed her, and tried to infuriate her. Hartwell’s friends cringed in the gallery, fearing she would blow. But she didn’t. Two minutes later, Anita Morales was off the stand.

 

 

The parade of witnesses continued. Robbye Cellota, LeBlanc’s and Thomas’s boss at World Gym, testified. He said that Thomas had worked at World Gym for four to six months. Cellota had met Kim when she was a junior in high school when she had worked part-time, on weekends, in the gym’s gift shop. In May of 1995, said Cellota, Kim had worked at the gym for eleven days as a receptionist.

He stated that he hadn’t known about LeBlanc’s and Thomas’s relationship. Yet, when Thomas had phoned Cellota about the Jeep, Cellota had presumed it was Kim’s that Thomas had wanted to sell.

No one questioned Cellota as to why he would make such a presumption when he had just testified that he hadn’t known about the couple’s affair.

After eight minutes, Cellota left the courtroom. Michael Mihills, one of Thomas’s posse, took the stand.

Mihills, a very reluctant witness for the prosecution, talked about seeing Justin Thomas at Jim’s restaurant the night before the murder. Justin was “somewhat, but not really nervous,” he said. He told the jurors that sometimes he and Justin had smoked pot and done crystal meth together.

Judge Fuller looked over at the jurors for one last time that day. He thanked them for their duty. He apologized for sending them out of the courtroom and for the delays. He told them they’d be in Courtroom 216 on Monday.

“It’s like going through the corral to the pen,” said Judge Fuller of taking the witness stand in Courtroom 216. “You’ll be disappointed in the jury room, but at least you’ll be close to the cafeteria.” He dismissed the jurors for the weekend.

 

 

Anita Morales, Carla Reid, Ynema Mangum, Pam Carson, and Mark and Dian Hartwell left together. They grieved and consoled each other that evening, as they did every evening, as Mark Hartwell took the time to embrace Regina’s Austin family. He spent time with Jeremy Barnes, and he spent the night at Mangum’s. She cooked for the Hartwells. Dian was kind, and Ynema gave her a handcarved wooden elephant that Dian had admired.

The Hartwells were grateful for the hospitality.

Mark Hartwell began referring to Regina’s friends as “my girls.”

 

 

On Monday, August 19, 1996, the trial, the photos, the heat, the different rooms, the tawdriness of it, were all wearing on the jurors.

Criminalists Ivan Wilson, Gary Molina, and Jill Hill each took the stand regarding the blood evidence. Wilson simply stated that, on August 14, 1995, he had received the victim’s blood samples and refrigerated them.

Molina testified to having assisted criminalist Hill in the collection of evidence at the Hartwell and LeBlanc apartments and to having tested for blood at both apartments and on both Jeeps.

Molina said they had done presumptive and Luminol tests for blood. Luminol, he noted, is not a great test, but it is helpful.

Hill stated that, on July 5, 1995, at Regina Hartwell’s apartment, they had spotted blood on the arm of the black, leather recliner.

“What did you do?” said Cox.

“I did a presumptive test called TMB. . . . It tells us it may be blood. It doesn’t tell us if it’s human blood, but it tells us it may be blood. If a presumptive test is positive we will collect that stain and then take it back to the laboratory for further analysis.”

“And, just briefly, how is that done?”

“We will take a Q-tip and moisten the Q-tip with a little bit of sterile water. We will take just a tiny portion of the bloodstain on the swab. We will add reagents to the swab. If there’s a color change to a blue color, that means that it is presumptive positive, and we will go further to collect that stain and take it back to the laboratory.”

She then stated that they had done additional presumptive tests on the side of Regina’s black cube-shaped table, on the top of the cube table, on the foot portion of the black leather recliner, and on a statue on the coffee table. All turned out presumptive positive.

Hill had also collected a knife from the kitchen, brushes that had been used to clean the apartment, and a portion of the carpet pad from in front of the black leather recliner.

She then marked on a diagram of the apartment, every place from which they had collected blood evidence—in the living room, kitchen, hallway, and bathroom.