A Family Business (28 page)

“If an individual were poisoned with an oleander leaf [or alcoholic beverage in which an oleander leaf had been soaked,] he could die from this,” Lovell wrote, “and the findings in the blood of digoxin would be about that of the blood level found in Mr. Waters.”

There was still another hurdle to clear, however. The lab at Foster City had found digoxin, the presence of which Lovell felt was caused by ingestion of oleander. But to make this connection in court, there had to be more definite authority. To help establish such substantiation, Lovell turned to the country’s foremost expert on oleander poisoning, a Ph.D. named Frederic Rieders, the founder and director of a Willow Grove, Pennsylvania, organization called National Medical Services.

Lovell sent Tim’s specimens to Rieders—a sample of his blood and a small vial of bile taken from his liver—in December 1987, about the same time he wrote his report based on the Foster City findings.

It took Rieders more than nine months to perform and verify his own tests. By then, testimony in the preliminary hearing for David and his parents had long been over. But that did not matter. There is no statute of limitations on murder; David could be charged with killing Tim Waters at any time.

On August 9, 1988, Rieders wrote Lovell saying his lab had come to four determinations after examining the Waters specimens:

1. The tests had detected oleandrin.
   
2. The tests did
   not
   find any other “potentially death-producing kinds or concentrations of…exogenous toxicant.” (Translation: there was nothing else in his system that could have killed him)
   
3. Oleandrin is a “sufficiently cardiotoxic glycoside…to be capable of causing death.”
   
4. Analysis of the specimens “established with reasonable scientific certainty the intake, absorption and distribution of the oleander poison by this individual prior to death.”
   

Rieders’s conclusion: “In the absence of other similarly competent or more competent cause or causes, the oleandrin findings provide a competent, independent mechanism and cause of death in the captioned case.” In other words, nothing else appeared to have killed Tim Waters, so it had to have been the oleander.

In Pasadena, when Walt Lewis was told of Rieders’s report, he rejoiced; his persistence had paid off. Although he was totally out of the picture as far as possible prosecution went, he felt he had a very large personal stake in what happened to David Sconce. If Lewis could see David charged and convicted of Tim’s death, he would feel completely vindicated. But the first thing a person learns in dealing with the criminal justice system in the United States, especially in California, is that patience is not only preferred, it is required. If the old saw about the wheels of justice grinding slowly holds for America as a whole, it could be modified in California to proclaim that movement is infinitesimal, sometimes even nonexistent. In actuality, David would not be charged with Tim Waters’s murder until February 1990, nineteen months after Rieders submitted his report, some sixty-two months after Tim’s death. Proceedings leading to a trial would not begin for for more than a year after that.

But even before receiving Rieders’s report, investigators suspected that Tim Waters had not expired as naturally as Dr. Holloway believed. With that in mind, Detective Hopkins decided to battle the freeway traffic for a ride into downtown Los Angeles on the off chance that David might open up to him.

26

There were several significant differences between David’s interview with Diaz and the one with Hopkins. The first was the circumstances under which the two meetings were held. While David had initiated the interview with Diaz, it was Hopkins who sought the second meeting. And where Diaz had openly placed his recorder on the tabletop during the conversation, Hopkins, apparently fearful that David would be less than enthusiastic about agreeing to speak into a tape recorder, decided to make a surreptitious tape. A week before the scheduled interview, Hopkins called the L.A. County Jail and made arrangements to huddle with David in one of the attorney’s cubicles
and
to bring along a recording device, which he planned to conceal in a specially adapted briefcase. It was a decision that would come back to haunt him later when David’s attorney would try to have the recording tossed out.

Another noticeable difference was in David’s attitude. While he had been sociable, even jocular, with Diaz, he was downright hostile to Hopkins. In fact, virtually the first words out of David’s mouth were bitter: He seemingly found it impossible to contain his anger about the prosecution’s use of inmate informants—called K-9’s in the Los Angeles jail system—during the Pasadena preliminary hearing.

“How can you guys in good faith sit there…and believe what the six fucking asshole K-9’s came forward and said about this situation?” he asked even before Hopkins and a detective he had brought along, Jess Estrada, had introduced themselves.

Hopkins, a mild-mannered, amiable man, tried to soothe him, explaining that was the reason for his visit, to talk about what the inmates had said about Tim Waters.

“You can’t charge me with this thing because I didn’t have anything to do with it,” he snapped. A few minutes later, however, he half-heartedly apologized for his outburst.

“I am usually not this abrasive, guys,” he said. “I have been cooperative ever since I have been in jail…but it’s burning me, it’s hurting me, and I haven’t done anything but tell the truth.”

Hopkins repeated that he and Estrada were from Ventura County, not Los Angeles County.

“There are no charges against me in Ventura County,” David said, “and there never will be. I’m not worried about that. Even if there were, I’d shove it down all your throats because I didn’t have anything to do with this.”

As he had with Diaz, David again denied that he knew Tim Waters.

“Not even in your business dealings?” Hopkins asked.

“Not in my wildest dreams,” David responded, “have I ever met, seen, or spoken to Tim Waters, ever.”

As the interview progressed, it was increasingly apparent that the detectives and David were working toward opposite goals. Hopkins wanted David to talk about Tim; David wanted to talk about the inmate informants. The session evolved into an odd compromise, with Hopkins following his agenda and David following his, and only occasionally did their interests overlap.

At the beginning, David wanted to get his feelings off his chest, directing most of his venom toward David Gerhardt. “He is the most notorious con man, lying, conniving, manipulative K-9 in this jail,” David said. Knowing this, he said, he was amazed that Walt Lewis had believed Gerhardt’s story, especially the part about him allegedly offering Gerhardt a place to live when he was released. “Oh, right,” he said sarcastically. “I am going to let [Gerhardt]…move into the one-bedroom apartment with my wife and two kids. Let’s put him in front of a jury and see who they believe. I can’t believe the cops believe these jailhouse rats,” he added. “I can’t fathom why they believe it.”

“Did you ever mention the poisoning of Tim Waters to any of these people?” Hopkins asked.

“Never!” David answered emphatically.

“Did you ever mention to any of these people the beating of Tim Waters?”

“No!” he said. “I didn’t talk about Tim Waters.”

Well, if he had not mentioned Tim, Hopkins asked reasonably, how did they come up with all the information about him?

“Through my transcripts,” David insisted. “Through my transcripts.”

Hopkins looked at him dubiously. “I don’t think the transcripts were that detailed,” he pointed out. “They come up with some very detailed information that all seems to fit. It all seems to correlate.”

David asked what kind of detailed information Hopkins was talking about. “The parts that dealt with Waters’s poisoning,” Hopkins responded.

“Waters wasn’t poisoned,” David shot back. “Waters died of natural causes.”

“Okay,” Hopkins replied condescendingly.

“That hasn’t been established at all,” David responded. “That’s still a fishing expedition in fantasy land, and both you guys know it. You know, you can say what you want, but Tim Waters died of natural causes. I know who had it out for Tim Waters,” he said, touching on the subject he had brought up with Diaz in hopes of working a deal for bail.

Hopkins asked if he was talking about Richard Gray.

“No, I’m not going to talk about this,” David said. “This is a viable part of my defense.”

“Okay,” Hopkins said agreeably.

Then David proceeded to talk about it. “You know, when are people going to want to wake up and smell the coffee and really realize what’s going on here? What motive would I have to hurt Tim Waters? I didn’t compete with him. I didn’t do any business with him or for him or against him or anything. I didn’t compete with anybody in the cremation industry. See, that’s been a big stigma attached to me from the start. I didn’t have any competitors.”

Hopkins let him ramble, then he directed the questions back to Tim, asking David again when he met with him.

“I have never met him at all,” David repeated. “Where is this going? Ultimately, do you guys seriously think this guy was poisoned? Or are you spinning your wheels? Because this guy died of natural causes.”

Although Dr. Rieders would not turn in his written report on his laboratory findings in the Waters case for another month, the Pennsylvania scientist apparently had given a verbal report to Lovell, who seemingly had passed it on to Hopkins. But the detective did not want to play that card yet. He wanted to push David some more before revealing his information.

Despite your protests, Hopkins told David, authorities had eight people who had testified that David admitted poisoning Waters.

“No,” David said, contradicting him. “You’ve got six jailhouse informants that don’t know their head—”

“Well,” Hopkins interrupted, “we’ve got Edwards, who testified that you told him you dropped something in Waters’s drink.”

“So?” David said.

“We’ve got Galambos testifying that you told them that you poisoned Waters by putting something in his drink.”

“So?” David repeated.

Hopkins shrugged. “Okay,” he said, “we’ve got Gerhardt…”

That sent David off on another tirade that lasted for several minutes. “All I need,” he said finally, “is twelve rational people on a jury. That’s all I need.”

Hopkins decided to give up half his information.

“You know that Dr. Lovell changed the cause of death, don’t you?” he asked.

“No, I didn’t know that,” David said in surprise. “To what?”

“Well, right now it’s undetermined,” Hopkins said.

David smiled. “Bullshit,” he said. “Foster City hasn’t come up with the cause of death yet, and they are the leading forensic pathology lab in the nation. If they haven’t ascertained the cause of death, there
is
no cause of death…If Foster City can’t come up with something, then no one in the world is going to come up with something.”

Hopkins figured it was time to play the trump card. He told David that Foster City had determined that Tim had ingested oleander and they sent their findings on to Rieders for confirmation.

“No, wait a second,” David said. “They discovered digoxin.”

“You are right, they first discovered digoxin,” Hopkins said, putting a slight emphasis on the word “first.”

“Digoxin is consistent with many substances,” David said.

“Okay,” Hopkins replied. “Through other tests and analyses they discovered oleander in the blood. Dr. Rieders has now determined positively—positively determined!—that the cause of death was oleander poisoning.”

David was disbelieving. “Positively?” he asked. “Digoxin!” he added.

“No,” Hopkins insisted. “Oleander.” Not only did the scientists find evidence of oleander, Hopkins added, but they determined that oleander was the cause of death, and that there was nothing else that could have killed him. Hopkins wanted to emphasize this so David would be sure to grasp the significance of the test results. “Then this situation down here in L.A. County arises and eight people testify that you told them that you poisoned him,” Hopkins said.

“Throw six of them out right away,” David said, unflustered by the information that Hopkins had imparted.

“Well, you throw out who you want.”

“I will. And I’ll discredit all those guys. I’m not worried about that.”

Hopkins gave David a questioning look. Eight people who testified that you admitted poisoning someone and you’re not worried?

“Then charge me with it,” David challenged.

“Okay, listen a minute,” Hopkins said calmly. “They come to me and say this guy died in Ventura County—”

“You wouldn’t be here if you thought I did something,” David interrupted. “You wouldn’t be here right now talking to me. You would just charge me with it.”

“What do you think the chances are of eight people saying that you poisoned Tim Waters, and some of them even describing a method of poisoning that is consistent with oleander poisoning, and we have someone who died in ‘eighty-five. It’s all been signed off, and we send his blood away and, by God, he did die of oleander poisoning.”