By the time I got to Menendez in a holding cell at Van Nuys Division, he had already given a statement that implicated him to the police. He had told detectives Howard Kurlen and Don Crafton that he had not followed Renteria home, as suggested by the news reports, but had been an invited guest to her apartment. He explained that earlier in the day he had won eleven hundred dollars on the California lotto and had been willing to trade some of it to Renteria for some of her attention. He said that at her apartment they had engaged in consensual sex—although he did not use those words—and that when he left she was alive and five hundred dollars in cash richer.
The holes Kurlen and Crafton punched in Menendez’s story were many. First of all, there had been no state lotto on the day of or day before the murder and the neighborhood mini-market where he said he had cashed his winning ticket had no record of paying out an eleven-hundred-dollar win to Menendez or anyone else. Additionally, no more than eighty dollars in cash was found in the victim’s apartment. And lastly, the autopsy report indicated that bruising and other damage to the interior of the victim’s vagina precluded what could be considered consensual sexual relations. The medical examiner concluded that she had been brutally raped.
No fingerprints other than the victim’s were found in the apartment. The place had been wiped clean. No semen was found in the victim’s body, indicating her rapist had used a condom or had not ejaculated during the assault. But in the bathroom off the bedroom where the attack and murder had taken place, a crime scene investigator using a black light found a small amount of semen on a pink towel hanging on a rack near the toilet. The theory that came into play was that after the rape and murder the killer had stepped into the bathroom, removed the condom and flushed it down the toilet. He had then wiped his penis with the nearby towel and then hung the towel back on the rack. When cleaning up after the crime and wiping surfaces he might have touched, he forgot about that towel.
The investigators kept the discovery of the DNA deposit and their attendant theory secret. It never made it into the media. It would become Kurlen and Crafton’s hole card.
Based on Menendez’s lies and the admission that he had been in the victim’s apartment, he was arrested on suspicion of murder and held without bail. Detectives got a search warrant, and oral swabs were collected from Menendez and sent to the lab for DNA typing and comparison to the DNA recovered from the bathroom towel.
That was about when I entered the case. As they say in my profession, by then the Titanic had already left the dock. The iceberg was out there waiting. Menendez had badly hurt himself by talking—and lying—to the detectives. Still, unaware of the DNA comparison that was under way, I saw a glimmer of light for Jesus Menendez. There was a case to be made for neutralizing his interview with detectives—which, by the way, became a full-blown confession by the time it got reported by the media. Menendez was Mexican born and had come to this country at age eight. His family spoke only Spanish at home and he had attended a school for Spanish speakers until dropping out at age fourteen. He spoke only rudimentary English, and his cognition level of the language seemed to me to be even lower than his speaking level. Kurlen and Crafton made no effort to bring in a translator and, according to the taped interview, not once asked if Menendez even wanted one.
This was the crack I would work my way into. The interview was the foundation of the case against Menendez. It was the spinning platter. If I could knock it down most of the other plates would come down with it. My plan was to attack the interview as a violation of Menendez’s rights because he could not have understood the Miranda warning he had been read by Kurlen or the document listing these rights in English that he had signed at the detective’s request.
This is where the case stood until two weeks after Menendez’s arrest when the lab results came back matching his DNA to that found on the towel in the victim’s bathroom. After that the prosecution didn’t need the interview or his admissions. The DNA put Menendez directly on the scene of a brutal rape and murder. I could try an O.J. defense—attack the credibility of the DNA match. But prosecutors and lab techs had learned so much from that debacle and in the years since that I knew I was unlikely of prevailing with a jury. The DNA was the iceberg and the momentum of the ship made it impossible to steer around it in time.
The district attorney himself revealed the DNA findings at a press conference and announced that his office would seek the death penalty for Menendez. He added that detectives had also located three eyewitnesses who had seen Menendez throw a knife into the Los Angeles River. The DA said the river was searched for the weapon but it was not recovered. Regardless, he characterized the witness accounts as solid—they were Menendez’s three roommates.
Based on the prosecution’s case coming together and the threat of the death penalty, I decided the O.J. defense would be too risky. Using Fernando Menendez as my translator, I went to the Van Nuys jail and told Jesus that his only hope was for a deal the DA had floated by me. If Menendez would plead guilty to murder I could get him a life sentence with the possibility of parole. I told him he’d be out in fifteen years. I told him it was the only way.
It was a tearful discussion. Both brothers cried and beseeched me to find another way. Jesus insisted that he did not kill Martha Renteria. He said he had lied to the detectives to protect Fernando, who had given him the money after a good month selling tar heroin. Jesus thought that revealing his brother’s generosity would lead to another investigation of Fernando and his possible arrest.
The brothers urged me to investigate the case. Jesus told me Renteria had had other suitors that night in The Cobra Room. The reason he had paid her so much money was because she had played him off another bidder for her services.
Lastly, Jesus told me it was true that he had thrown a knife into the river but it was because he was afraid. It wasn’t the murder weapon. It was just a knife he used on day jobs he picked up in Pacoima. It looked like the knife they were describing on the Spanish channel and he got rid of it before going to the police to straighten things out.
I listened and then told them that none of their explanations mattered. The only thing that mattered was the DNA. Jesus had a choice. He could take the fifteen years or go to trial and risk getting the death penalty or life without the possibility of parole. I reminded Jesus that he was a young man. He could be out by age forty. He could still have a life.
By the time I left the jailhouse meeting, I had Jesus Menendez’s consent to make the deal. I only saw him one more time after that. At his plea-and-sentencing hearing when I stood next to him in front of the judge and coached him through the guilty plea. He was shipped off to Pelican Bay initially and then down to San Quentin after that. I had heard through the courthouse grapevine that his brother had gotten himself popped again—this time for using heroin. But he didn’t call me. He went with a different lawyer and I didn’t have to wonder why.
On the warehouse floor I opened the report on the autopsy of Martha Renteria. I was looking for two specific things that had probably not been looked at very closely by anyone else before. The case was closed. It was a dead file. Nobody cared anymore.
The first was the part of the report that dealt with the fifty-three stab wounds Renteria suffered during the attack on her bed. Under the heading “Wound Profile” the unknown weapon was described as a blade no longer than five inches and no wider than an inch. Its thickness was placed at one-eighth of an inch. Also noted in the report was the occurrence of jagged skin tears at the top of the victim’s wounds, indicating that the top of the blade had an uneven line, to wit, it was designed as a weapon that would inflict damage going in as well as coming out. The shortness of the blade suggested that the weapon might be a folding knife.
There was a crude drawing in the report that depicted the outline of the blade without a handle. It looked familiar to me. I pulled my briefcase across the floor from where I had put it down and opened it up. From the state’s discovery file I pulled the photo of the open f
olding knife with Louis Roulet’s initials etched on the blade. I compared the blade to the outline drawn on the page in the autopsy report. It wasn’t an exact match but it was damn close.
I then pulled out the recovered weapon analysis report and read the same paragraph I had read during the meeting in Roulet’s office the day before. The knife was described as a custom-made Black Ninja folding knife with a blade measuring five inches long, one inch wide and one-eighth of an inch thick—the same measurements belonging to the unknown knife used to kill Martha Renteria. The knife Jesus Menendez supposedly threw into the L.A. River.
I knew that a five-inch blade wasn’t unique. Nothing was conclusive but my instincts told me I was moving toward something. I tried not to let the burn that was building in my chest and throat distract me. I tried to stay on point. I moved on. I needed to check for a specific wound but I didn’t want to look at the photos contained in the back of the report, the photos that coldly documented the horribly violated body of Martha Renteria. Instead I went to the page that had two side-by-side generic body profiles, one for the front and one for the back. On these the medical examiner had marked the wounds and numbered them. Only the front profile had been used. Dots and numbers 1 through 53. It looked like a macabre connect-the-dots puzzle and I didn’t doubt that Kurlen or some detective looking for anything in the days before Menendez walked in had connected them, hoping the killer had left his initials or some other bizarre clue behind.
I studied the front profile’s neck and saw two dots on either side of the neck. They were numbered 1 and 2. I turned the page and looked at the list of individual wound descriptions.
The description for wound number 1 read: Superficial puncture on the lower right neck with ante-mortem histamine levels, indicative of coercive wound.
The description for wound number 2 read: Superficial puncture on the lower left neck with ante-mortem histamine levels, indicative of coercive wound. This puncture measures 1 cm larger than wound No. 1.
The descriptions meant the wounds had been inflicted while Martha Renteria was still alive. And that was likely why they had been the first wounds listed and described. The examiner had suggested it was likely that the wounds resulted from a knife being held to the victim’s neck in a coercive manner. It was the killer’s method of controlling her.
I turned back to the state’s discovery file for the Campo case. I pulled the photographs of Reggie Campo and the report on her physical examination at Holy Cross Medical Center. Campo had a small puncture wound on the lower left side of her neck and no wounds on her right side. I next scanned through her statement to the police until I found the part in which she described how she got the wound. She said that her attacker pulled her up off the floor of the living room and told her to lead him toward the bedroom. He controlled her from behind by gripping the bra strap across her back with his right hand and holding the knife point against the left side of her neck with his left hand. When she felt him momentarily rest his wrist on her shoulder she made her move, suddenly pivoting and pushing backwards, knocking her attacker into a large floor vase, and then breaking away.
I thought I understood now why Reggie Campo had only one wound on her neck, compared with the two Martha Renteria ended up with. If Campo’s attacker had gotten her to the bedroom and put her down on the bed, he would have been facing her when he climbed on top of her. If he kept his knife in the same hand—the left—the blade would shift to the other side of her neck. When they found her dead in the bed, she’d have coercive punctures on both sides of her neck.
I put the files aside and sat cross-legged on the floor without moving for a long time. My thoughts were whispers in the darkness inside. In my mind I held the image of Jesus Menendez’s tear-streaked face when he had told me that he was innocent—when he’d begged me to believe him—and I had told him that he must plead guilty. It had been more than legal advice I was dispensing. He had no money, no defense and no chance—in that order—and I told him he had no choice. And though ultimately it was his decision and from his mouth that the word guilty was uttered in front of the judge, it felt to me now as though it had been me, his own attorney, holding the knife of the system against his neck and forcing him to say it.
NINETEEN
I got out of the huge new rent-a-car facility at San Francisco International by one o’clock and headed north to the city. The Lincoln they gave me smelled like it had last been used by a smoker, maybe the renter or maybe just the guy who cleaned it up for me.
I don’t know how to get anywhere in San Francisco. I just know how to drive through it. Three or four times a year I need to go to the prison by the bay, San Quentin, to talk to clients or witnesses. I could tell you how to get there, no sweat. But ask me how to get to Coit Tower or Fisherman’s Wharf and we have a problem.
By the time I got through the city and over the Golden Gate it was almost two. I was in good shape. I knew from past experience that attorney visiting hours ended at four.
San Quentin is over a century old and looks as though the soul of every prisoner who lived or died there is etched on its dark walls. It was as foreboding a prison as I had ever visited, and at one time or another I had been to every one in California.
They searched my briefcase and made me go through a metal detector. After that they still passed a wand over me to make extra sure. Even then I wasn’t allowed direct contact with Menendez because I had not formally scheduled the interview the required five days in advance. So I was put in a no-contact room—a Plexiglas wall between us with dime-size holes to speak through. I showed the guard the six-pack of photos I wanted to give Menendez and he told me I would have to show him the pictures through the Plexiglas. I sat down, put the photos away and didn’t have to wait long until they brought Menendez in on the other side of the glass.
Two years ago, when he was shipped off to prison, Jesus Menendez had been a young man. Now he looked like he was already the forty years old I told him he could beat if he pleaded guilty. He looked at me with eyes as dead as the gravel stones out in the parking lot. He saw me and sat down reluctantly. He didn’t have much use for me anymore.
We didn’t bother with hellos and I got right into it.
“Look, Jesus, I don’t have to ask you how you’ve been. I know. But something’s come up and it could affect your case. I need to ask you a few questions. You understand me?”
“Why questions now, man? You had no questions before.”
I nodded.
“You’re right. I should’ve asked you more questions back then and I didn’t. I didn’t know then what I know now. Or at least what I think I know now. I am trying to make things right.”
“What do you want?”
“I want you to tell me about that night at The Cobra Room.”
He shrugged.
“The girl was there and I talked. She tol’ me to follow her home.”
He shrugged again.
“I went to her place, man, but I didn’t kill her like that.”
“Go back to the club. You told me that you had to impress the girl, that you had to show her the money and you spent more than you wanted to. You remember?”
“Is right.”
“You said there was another guy trying to get with her. You remember that?”
“Si, he was there talking. She went to him but she came back to me.”
“You had to pay her more, right?”
“Like that.”
“Okay, do you remember that guy? If you saw a picture of him, would you remember him?”
“The guy who talked big? I think I ’member.”
“Okay.”
I opened my briefcase and took out the spread of mug shots. There were six photos and they included the booking photo of Louis Ross Roulet and five other men whose mug shots I had culled out of my archive boxes. I stood up and one by one started holding them up on the glass. I thought that by spreading my fingers I would be able to hold all six against the glass. Menendez stood up to look
closely at the photos.
Almost immediately a voice boomed from an overhead speaker.
“Step back from the glass. Both of you step back from the glass and remain seated or the interview will be terminated.”
I shook my head and cursed. I gathered the photos together and sat down. Menendez sat back down as well.
“Guard!” I said loudly.
I looked at Menendez and waited. The guard didn’t enter the room.
“Guard!” I called again, louder.
Finally, the door opened and the guard stepped into my side of the interview room.
“You done?”
“No. I need him to look at these photos.”
I held up the stack.
“Show him through the glass. He’s not allowed to receive anything from you.”
“But I’m going to take them right back.”
“Doesn’t matter. You can’t give him anything.”
“But if you don’t let him come to the glass, how is he going to see them?”
“It’s not my problem.”
I waved in surrender.
“All right, okay. Then can you stay here for a minute?”
“What for?”
“I want you to watch this. I’m going to show him the photos and if he makes an ID, I want you to witness it.”
“Don’t drag me into your bullshit.”
He walked to the door and left.
“Goddamn it,” I said.
I looked at Menendez.