“I bet he drove back in a rental car!”
“And Tuan may have done the same thing! He was out there too. Kait said he flew first class and stayed only one night.”
“If she told you that, she hadn’t become aware of the drug running yet, or she wouldn’t have been so open about Tuan’s being out there. She probably found out about that after Dung moved in with her and she discovered he was out every night until dawn. Noreen said Kait ‘did some work’ for a man who ‘worked at and was part owner of a disco.’ Is it possible that the work was delivering drugs?”
“Perhaps Kait wanted to pull out, but Dung wouldn’t let her,” I said, picking up the scenario. “She told me Vietnamese men expect their women to obey them. That may have been the thing that was ‘threatening Dung’s manhood.’ ”
“Maybe he placated her by promising to go straight,” Robin said. “Then, when Laura and her boyfriend came over to watch videos and Dung took off on them, Kait realized he still must be dealing. They had another showdown, and he told her too much in an effort to convince her that he had no choice in the matter. Kait probably reacted by telling him that if he didn’t get out of the drug scene she’d blow the whistle on that as well as the car wrecks.
“The next night, before going to Susan’s, she swung back by the apartment to check on what Dung was doing. She saw him leaving with somebody, possibly An. She was afraid to follow them alone, so she called somebody she thought she could trust to drive her up there. Have you come up with any ideas about who that might have been?”
“The only person who fits the specifics of Noreen’s description is a boy named Rod,” I said. “He’s ancient history, Kait hadn’t seen him in years. So I guess it must have been one of the Vietnamese.”
“Well, whoever it was, they met at Coronado Mall and drove to the Desert Castle,” Robin continued. “What if Dung and An were at the Castle, involved in a drug transaction? Kait threw a scene—didn’t Noreen quote her as shrieking, ‘I don’t want anything more to do with it!’?—and somebody tried to intimidate her by threatening her with a knife. Then the mysterious second boyfriend took her back to the shopping center, and as soon as Dung was out of earshot, one of the others phoned the hitmen.”
“That’s setting things up awfully fast.”
“Not if the wheels were already in motion and this just served as the catalyst to make them move quickly. Mike told you that Dung had been out with a guy named Adrian, tailing Kait to see if she was being followed by a VW. If he did that, he must have been aware that her life was in danger.”
At that instant the room disappeared and was replaced by a flowering orchard with lacy pink blossoms blowing in the breeze. Then the vision was gone as quickly as it had come.
“I think we’ve got it,” I said shakily. “Kait just handed us a bouquet. What I don’t understand is why she didn’t come to Daddy and me.”
“I think she was coming to Daddy and you,” Robin said. “Why else would she have left Susan’s to go back on the road that night? She wasn’t headed for her apartment, she was headed for your house. Betty said Kait was ‘in the process of making a decision which would have not only put herself in jeopardy but all who knew her.’ The decision she made was the right one, but she made it too late.”
There was an article in the paper that night about the conviction of several members of an El Paso drug organization that had been operating in three states since 1987. The states were New Mexico, Texas, and California. The drugs were shipped by unsuspecting truck companies in huge wooden crates doused with chlorine to avoid detection at the border and stored in warehouses in Albuquerque to be picked up by buyers in their own trucks.
According to Nancy Czetli, Kait had stumbled onto a multiveined network that overlapped three states, and we knew that two of those states were California and New Mexico. Was it possible that the third was Texas?
I decided to do some research on the drug scene in El Paso.
27
WHEN I WENT TO the university library and dug out back issues of the El Paso Times, I was stunned by the magnitude of the narcotics trade that interconnected Albuquerque, El Paso, and Los Angeles.
One article titled “Police Benefit from Sale of Drug Assets” began with the statement “Thanks to drug dealers, the El Paso Police Department is $325,493 richer” from funds that were the result of asset seizures and forfeitures of property involved in illegal drug trafficking in the El Paso area.
Another article, dated February 15, 1991, concerned an El Paso resident arrested on charges of drug smuggling. This man had bragged to an informant that he was the primary money-launderer for a crime organization that had moved 60 tons of cocaine and $80 million in cash between El Paso and Los Angeles in 1989. Charges stemmed from a 21-ton cocaine seizure near Los Angeles in September 1989, only two months after Kait’s murder.
When I pulled up articles from that date on microfilm, I discovered that the drug haul had set a world record. A DEA spokesman was quoted as saying, “This is not just powder on the table, it’s more like powder on the football field. This seizure should put to rest any further speculation that Los Angeles is, in fact, the major pathway for cocaine entering the country.” In keeping with Betty’s reading that said a “serpent’s head” was “a symbol of some great clan or force … which will have to do with a certain Vietnamese group which will hold power,” Oriental smugglers of drugs and illegal immigrants were known as “snakeheads.”
According to one article, one of the vehicles used to transport the cocaine had New Mexico license plates.
Not only did this account pull Albuquerque, L.A., and El Paso into a triangle of drug interaction—Betty had said there was “an overlay of a kind of triangle”—the self-proclaimed big time money-launderer was identified as being the administrative manager and part owner of a disco.
Could this be the disco owner Kait “did some work for”?
I copied the articles and took them home for Don to read.
“This is too right-on-target to be a coincidence,” he said. “If Dung forced Kait to go with him on an L.A drug run, they could have made the delivery to El Paso as easily as to Albuquerque.”
The DA’s office had told us that the trial of Miguel Garcia was scheduled for Monday, March 11, and had assured us that we would be notified if there was a postponement. On the appointed day Don and I went down to the courthouse to watch the selection of the jury and were told that the trial had been postponed. Don called the DA’s office to ask what had happened, but he couldn’t find anybody there who knew anything about it. Finally, on Thursday, he did get through to Susan Riedel, who told him that neither side was ready to go to court yet and the trial had been tentatively rescheduled for early April.
Something was going on, but we didn’t know what. People from the DA’s office and the office of the defense attorneys kept phoning our out-of-state children and asking them questions about Kait’s activities, personality, and friendships. An investigator from the DA’s office called me to ask if Kait had repaid us for the charges she had made on our credit card, but wouldn’t tell me why she needed the information. Brett had a call from a friend who worked at the jail, who said it was rumored that Miguel Garcia was going to be released and that Dung would be arrested in his place.
He also had a call from a former roommate, who had moved into Kait’s old apartment and become friendly with her neighbors.
“The neighbors say that the day after Kait was shot, when she was in a coma and Dung was at the hospital with us, the other Vietnamese guys threw a party at the apartment,” Brett told us. “You’ll never guess what the party game was. They were out in the parking lot, spray-painting a beige VW black.”
“There was an entry in the police report about their painting a car,” I said. “It said it was ‘a small car,’ but didn’t specify a VW, and it said the incident took place a full week before the murder.”
“The car was a beige VW,” Brett repeated. “And, according to Kait’s
neighbors, they painted it the day after she was shot.”
April arrived, and there was still no word of a new trial date. When Don called to ask about it, he was told that the trial had been rescheduled, but the information about it was on the desk of Assistant District Attorney Charlie Brown, who couldn’t be disturbed because he had guests in his office. Nobody else had access to this information, and every time Don phoned, Brown was occupied with guests.
Finally, on April 23, we were called to the DA’s office to meet with District Attorney Bob Schwartz, Charlie Brown, and Susan Riedel.
Schwartz told us that the charges against Miguel Garcia and Juve Escobedo were going to be dropped.
“The defense attorneys have turned up new evidence,” he said. “We’ve been in touch with law enforcement agencies in California and are going to have Sergeant Lowe start looking into some things that you folks have expressed an interest in. We’ll be calling you in next week to help us do some brainstorming.”
But when Schwartz rushed off to another appointment and Charlie Brown took over, it was clear the two men hadn’t gotten together on their script.
“We’re sure that Garcia’s guilty, but our case has eroded,” Brown said. “The two children who originally testified they heard Garcia say he killed Kait now say they didn’t believe him, that ‘Mikey was always lying about things like that.’ And the neighbor who reported seeing Garcia hand a gun in through his kitchen window to his mother or sister has turned out to be highly impeachable. She hates the Garcia family and would blame them for anything.
“Meanwhile, the defense has concocted a ridiculous story about your daughter’s alleged involvement with the Vietnamese mafia. That’s absurd, of course, but since our case has been weakened, it wouldn’t take much to cause dissension among the jurors. Once a suspect is tried and found ‘not guilty,’ he can’t be retried for the same crime even if he confesses to it, so, rather than risk a verdict of ‘not guilty,’ we’re withdrawing the charges. We’re ready to reinstate them when we get new evidence.”
“You are going to keep investigating, aren’t you?” Don asked him.
“The case is still open and active.”
I decided to grab this opportunity to tell the prosecutors about the three-hour time gap that had been camouflaged in the police report by misquoting me as saying Kait ate dinner at our house.
Brown’s only reaction was to the term camouflaged.
“The police make mistakes like that all the time,” he said. “There are often statements in their reports that aren’t accurate, but that doesn’t mean they’re deliberate fabrications.”
“It wasn’t my intention to disparage the police,” I said hastily. “My point was that, even if the misquote was an innocent mistake, the end result was that it did serve to camouflage the fact that three hours of Kait’s last evening are unaccounted for. She went somewhere and did something she didn’t want anyone to know about, and it seems to us like that has to have some sort of significance.”
Neither Brown nor Riedel responded to this statement.
Then, realizing this might be our last chance to get anything on record, I told them we had a copy of Bao Tran’s check
They expressed no interest in seeing it.
“Please, keep us informed,” I said as we got up to leave. “We’ve felt so out of it, with nobody willing to talk to us.”
“We’ll call with a progress report every two weeks,” Riedel said. “In return, we want you to promise not to talk to reporters. The media is going to have a field day when Garcia is released, and we’d rather they didn’t quote statements from the family of the victim.”
Don and I promised not to give interviews, and we kept our word. In fact, I spent the next week in Dallas with Kerry and her family in order to avoid having to field questions from friends in the media.
As expected, our local newspapers ran banner headlines:
Albuquerque Tribune, April 24, 1991:
POLICE BLASTED ON ARQUETTE CASE
Two defense attorneys say Albuquerque police conducted a “shoddy” investigation into the shooting death of Kaitlyn Arquette.
The investigation focused on two innocent men and ignored a possible connection to Vietnamese gang activity, attorneys Joseph Riggs and Michael Davis said.
District Attorney Bob Schwartz said the decision to drop the charges was partially based on an investigation by Garcia’s attorneys. They discovered that Arquette’s relationship with a group of Vietnamese under investigation in a multimillion-dollar insurance scam may have led to her death.
Had the case gone to trial as scheduled next week, Davis said, “We were going to kill them on the stand, really do a number on the state’s case.”
He said the scam involved filing insurance claims on accidents with rental cars. A car rented with Arquette’s credit card was involved in a California accident. After the accident a deposit of $2,000 appeared in Arquette’s bank account.
Schwartz declined comment on the quality of the police work
Albuquerque Journal, April 24, 1991:
DA DROPS CHARGES IN ARQUETTE SHOOTING
One of the men accused of killing Kaitlyn Arquette, Miguel Juan Garcia, 19, walked out of the Bernalillo County Detention Center at about four P.M. (today) after fifteen months in jail. Carrying a Bible and a garbage bag full of his belongings, Garcia said he felt “blessed” to be free.
Jail employees and inmates waved to him from the windows as he hugged his mother, Maggie, and other family members.
“I thank the Lord and two great lawyers,” Garcia said, his voice choked with emotion.
District Attorney Schwartz said he dropped the charges because “there’s been some erosion in the state’s case … and then there seemed to be this other angle while the state’s case was dwindling.”
He said the new angle was “the emergence of these other facts regarding her association with this group of Vietnamese. She had a clear association with that group.”
He said he informed police homicide Sgt. Ruth Lowe Tuesday that he was dropping the charges and that Lowe said “they would be very interested in looking at the new angle.”
Riggs said private investigators Dennis and Tanya Hicks were able to provide new evidence indicating detectives failed to investigate other avenues.
“Our investigators found that Kaitlyn Arquette’s boyfriend Dung Nguyen actually fabricated a love note and told police she wrote it,” Riggs said. “I think the prosecutors are saving the [homicide] detectives some embarrassment from having to own up to serious mistakes at the trial.”
APD officials have said any comment would have to come from the prosecutors.
Albuquerque Tribune, April 25, 1991:
FORMER SUSPECTS STILL UNDER SCRUTINY IN ARQUETTE SLAYING
Although authorities have dropped murder charges against two men in the Kaitlyn Arquette case, they remain suspects in her shooting death, police say.
Arquette’s former boyfriend, Dung Ngoc Nguyen, also is a suspect, Deputy Police Chief Nick Alarid said Wednesday.
When asked why Garcia and Escobedo are still considered suspects, Alarid said, “Everybody’s a suspect. This is still an open investigation, and everyone’s suspect.”
He declined to elaborate.
Defense attorneys accused police of conducting a “shoddy” investigation for focusing on what the attorneys called two innocent men and ignoring a possible connection to Vietnamese gang activity.
But police defended their investigation.
“The investigation is a good investigation,” Alarid said.
He did not know whether there were any Vietnamese gangs in Albuquerque.
Alarid said the attorneys’ claims concerning Vietnamese gang activity may be nothing more than “smoke.”
There was a photograph in the Journal of Miguel Garcia tearfully embracing the sister who we believe had made the threatening phone calls to us. The child I had heard babbling in the background during her phone calls was cudd
led in her arms.
On April 25 a feature article appeared in the Tribune describing how Garcia had found God during his incarceration. “I gave my life over to the Lord and he was telling me not to worry, that he was going to get me out of that place,” Garcia said. He also said he now planned to become a minister. He reported that after his release from jail he went outside and hugged his family, spent most of the evening talking with his girlfriend and visiting with his eleven-month-old son, born while Garcia was in jail, watched a gospel show on television, and fell asleep at ten-thirty.
The release of Garcia was frightening to the state’s witnesses.
“We are so afraid,” said the woman who allegedly saw him pass the gun through the window. “There’s already been threats made against me and my mother.”
She said Garcia’s family had told her they were going to burn down her house with her seventy-two-year-old mother in it.
Another witness, who demanded anonymity, said she was terrified for her children, because one of the suspects knew what school they went to.
“He has our address,” she said. “I don’t know what I am going to do.”
On April 26 the burglary-related charges against Garcia were also dropped. Assistant DA Charlie Brown declined comment on the reason for this.
Two weeks passed, and we didn’t get the promised call from the district attorney’s office.
Four months went by, and nobody contacted us.
Finally, Kerry ran out of patience and phoned Tanya Hicks, one of the private investigators for the defense.
After talking with Tanya, Kerry phoned me with her report.
“She’s a very nice woman and told me a lot,” she said. “The reason the defense attorneys never talked with you and Daddy is because the police warned them not to. They said the Arquettes were—and I’m quoting her exact words—‘hostile and uncooperative, and everything they say is totally ludicrous.’
“And there’s something else the police don’t want us to know about. A Vietnamese informant has told the Hickses that An Le has been arrested for murder in Oklahoma. Tanya says the informant told her it was the same type of drive-by shooting as Kait’s.”