A Fever in the Heart: And Other True Cases (25 page)

With the burgeoning list of murder defendants and arguments over when and where the trials would take place, little official attention was paid to an event that took place in that strange spring of 1976. On April 18, Jerilee Blankenbaker Moore Blankenbaker quietly married for the third time. Where Gabby had been fourteen years older than she, and Morris three years older, Jerilee's new husband was seven years younger.

He was Jim Littleton, twenty-two. Littleton worked in the grocery business. A handsome young man, his lifestyle and interests bore little similarity to either Morris or Gabby, except that, like them, he was very protective of Jerilee. His ambition was to be a successful businessman. He had no interest in playing sports or coaching. Olive was shocked to learn of Jerilee's marriage. So was Vern Henderson. He remembered that Littleton had been one of the pallbearers at Morris's funeral services, although Henderson had no idea who Jim Littleton was or what his connection to Morris and Jerilee had been. It was not that Morris's family and friends didn't want Jerilee to go on with her life, it was just that it seemed too soon. Morris had only been dead five months and Gabby four when the woman who had been married to both of them appeared to have stepped completely out of the mess she had made of her life over the past few years. Of course, she would still have to testify in the trial or trials coming up. People wondered if hers wasn't a rebound marriage. And maybe it was in the beginning. Jerilee had been searching for a secure family unit ever since her parents divorced when she was in high school. Now, even before the first daffodils bloomed on Morris's and Gabby's graves, Jerilee had a new husband and a new family.

There were a few snide comments in Yakima about "the merry widow," and "I wonder how long this one is going to last?" but Jerilee and Jim kept such a low profile that the gossip and jokes soon died. It wasn't just Jerilee who had been through hell. The double murders had left a number of women emotionally adrift. Olive Blankenbaker had withstood blows before and come back, and she now proved that she could do it again. She was back at work, back in the midst of life. She would not allow either her illness or the loss of her son to destroy her. She didn't care what the doctors had told hershe was going to survive. Turfy Pleasant's girlfriend, Rene, was six months pregnant and already raising a toddler.

Although Turfy had not been the most constant of lovers, she had always figured they would be together for good one day. Now Rene didn't know what was going to happen, but she feared she might be left all alone after Turfy's trial. And Coydell Pleasant was trying to adjust to the horror of having two sons in jail awaiting trials on murder charges. The March polygraph test results and the subsequent arrests of Anthony Pleasant and Kenny Marino meant that Vern Henderson had to find more witnesses, enough so that they could absolutely account for both Turfy's and his brother Anthony's movements on the nights of the murders. Turfy had given them a reprise of his movements on November 21, but they needed someone who had seen him on his peregrinations that Friday night.

And, with accusing fingers also pointing at Kenny Marino, there was yet a third suspect to backtrack on. The investigators devoutly hoped that there would be no more suspects in this increasingly convoluted investigation, but it was within the realm of possibility that Anthony Pleasant and Kenny Marino had been present just before or even during the murders of Morris Blankenbaker and Gabby Moore. However, the Yakima County investigators doubted it.

Prosecuting Attorney Jeff Sullivan and Yakima Police Detective Vern Henderson were about to become partners in a sen seif improbable ones.

Both Turfy Pleasant and Joey Watkins had mentioned the name of one of the three people whose party Turfy had joined at the Red Lion on the night of November 21. There had been two women and a man that Friday, and Turfy said he had "caught a lady" that night. Armed with the name of the man in the party, Sam Berber,' and the information that the trio had come from Pasco, Washington, Vern Henderson and Jeff Sullivan headed for the Tri-cities area, which had burst from the desert with the advent of the Hanford atomic power project during the Second World War. (Pasco, Kennewick, and Richland are rarely referred to separately by Washingtonians.) Henderson's and Sullivan's investigation led them into a mostly black neighborhood in the Tri-cities, where the black detective and the blond Irish prosecuting attorney drew a lot of attention. "They used to take one look at us and say, Here comes Shaft and young Mr. Kennedy."" Vern Henderson laughs. "They'd never seen a black detective before and Jeff did look just like John Kennedy. We made quite a pair."

They found Sam Berber, twenty-eight, in Pasco. He worked for Standard Oil and said he rarely had occasion to travel to Yakima, which was eighty miles away. However, on November 21, he had volunteered to drive a friend, Sally Nash,' to Yakima to see her brother who was in the Yakima County Jail. Sam, Sally, and her girlfriend, Melodie Isaacs,'

arrived in Yakima about that night, only to find they were too late for visiting hours at the jail. They left some money for Sally's brother at the booking desk and then ventured out on the town. When Sullivan and Henderson asked Berber about Turfy Pleasant, Sam said he did know the man, but not well, they had met way back in November. In fact, Sam could name the date easily. It was the day after Thanksgiving. Berber explained that he and his two female passengers had been left with time on their hands after they missed visiting hours in the jail. They had looked for someplace in Yakima to have a few drinks and maybe dance.

They went first to the Cosmopolitan Chinook Hotel and the Red Lion cocktail lounge there. Berber said he and the ladies with him were interested in finding clubs that catered to blacks where they might find some music other than the standard hotel lounge canned music. They had noticed a young black man sitting at a table with another man. "I approached him and asked him if there were some places we might be able to go. .. and he offered to show us around," Berber recalled. "He had asked if the lady with us was with someone, and I told him she wasn't and then he asked if he could come over and sit at the table with us."

Berber had then invited the man, who introduced himself as Angelo Pleasant, to join their party. The man who had been sitting with Pleasant left. They had sat there in the Red Lion until Pleasant told them to follow him, he would lead them to a place that might be livelier. It wasn't. "We just stayed long enough to have a drink and leave," Berber said, "because it was just as dead as the place we had just left." Henderson nodded. That would have been the Holiday Inn, according to what Turfy had said in his confession. Their new friend had then suggested that they go to the Thunderbird. They had stayed there until almost closing time, and Pleasant had asked if they were anxious to leave for Pasco, or if they would be interested in some after-hours parties. "He took us past a couple of places," Berber said, "and there was nothing going on, so we just took him back to his car."

"Where was his car parked?" Brimmer asked.

"At the Chinook."

"And about what time did you get back to the Chinook?"

"I imagine it had to be just right around two A.M. because people were leaving. .. from the bar. That was about it. We invited him to Pasco and told him if he ever came around to give us a call or try to get in touch with us and we would try to return the evening." Sam Berber wasn't sure if he could positively identify the man.

But he had introduced himself as Angelo Pleasant and told them that he used to live in Pasco while he was attending Columbia Basin College.

Berber hadn't looked at the clocks in the bars they visited. He based his recall of when they dropped Pleasant off on his date's comment. "My young lady was in the front seat and she had fallen asleep and she had to get up and lean forward to let him out. We were right under a light, and she looked at her watch and said, It's two o'clockwe better head on back home."" Melodie Isaacs, who had been Turfy Pleasant's date for the evening, remembered meeting him, a good-looking man in a black leather jacket. They had had three or four drinks and some dances between nine P.M. and a little before two and then they had let him out of the car at two A.M. She had given him her phone number in case he ever came to Pasco but he hadn't called her. Sullivan and Henderson knew that the Chinook was only a few blocks, a few minutes, from Morris Blankenbaker's house. Neither of them said what they were surely thinking. If the quartet had found an after-hours place open that night, would Turfy have decided not to carry out Gabby's instructions? If it hadn't been that night, would it have been another night? Or would both Morris and Gabby still be alive? While the Pasco witnesses had placed Turfy only a few blocks from Morris's house a few minutes before Morris was killed, the investigators had to find witnesses who could either involve, or eliminate, Anthony from the shooting. One witness they found was ideal, the others they located were less desirable but made up in sheer number for their inherent lack of credibility. Eventually, they would find a plethora of witnesses who placed Turfy's younger brother, Anthony, far away from the shooting scene and, moreover, in no condition to walk, much less commit murder. Vern Henderson thumbed through the November 21-22 Firs (Field Investigation Reports filled out by patrolmen for every incident on every shift). He was elated to find an officer who had had occasion to contact Anthony Pleasant that night. Patrol Officer Allen D. Bischoff of the Yakima Police Department was working C-Squad that Friday night from eight P.M. to four A.M. He told Brimmer that he had responded to an incident on La Salle Street a "possible disturbance"

shortly after ten P.M. Bischoff and his partner found several young black men, a young white woman, and an older white female. The men were arguing. Bischoff said they had been a little wary about going to the call, there had been some threats against the lives of police officers, particularly in this area. Since it came in with an "anonymous" citizen reporting, they had wondered if it might be a setup, and Bischoff was actually rather relieved to find that he knew one of the young men. It was Anthony Pleasant, whom he did not consider a threat. Bischoff talked to Anthony, shined his flashlight in his face to check his eyes for signs of drinking (police officers know that there is an involuntary shifting of the pupils in the eyes of someone under the influence), and concluded that Anthony had, indeed, been drinking. The fight seemed to be over after Bischoff talked to Anthony and his partner talked to the other combatant. "I told him to leave. .. and go directly home," Bischoff told Brimmer. Anthony had gotten into a Chevrolet sedan and left the scene. As Bischoff went on the air to clear the complaint, it was approximately ten minutes to eleven. He assumed that Anthony had gone home as he directed, but he could not be certain of it. However, Anthony did not go home, as Henderson found when he located a number of teenagers who told him about almost-weekly "floating" parties where the guest list was whoever showed up. The refreshments were beer and marijuana. Henderson might have wished to have witnesses whose memories were a bit more crystalline than those he found, but eventually, he did discover some party-goers who remembered the night of November 21 very well. More importantly, they remembered exactly where Anthony Pleasant had been that night between the fight in the street and dawn. Most particularly, they remembered where he had been around two A.M.the time when his big brother claimed Anthony had been shooting Morris Blankenbaker. Although the party on the night after Thanksgiving had been full of drop-ins and drop-outs, there were a few people who remained in the home of the young woman who was the hostess that night.

Everyone agreed that one couple had disappeared into a bedroom and stayed there. There was a girl who had had an argument with Anthony Pleasant, and there were several other people who had laughed to see Anthony passed out cold on a couch. One of the best sources Henderson found was an eighteen-year-old girl named Casey Lynn Anderson. She was a recent graduate of Davis High School and was working as a cook and waitress at the Cosmopolitan Chinook Hotel. Casey and her sister, who also worked at the Chinook, went to the party-of-the-week on November 21. Casey said she had "babied a beer" all night, and she had had no marijuana at all. She was upset with Anthony Pleasant because he had been in a fight with a friend of hers over a girl. (This was the "incident" that Bischoff had just investigated.) Anthony had returned to the party, and Casey said she had given him a good lecture about fighting. "I was trying to tell him that he was stupid," she recalled.

"And then he told me I didn't know what I was talking about that he had his reasons and he was man enough to take care of himself." Casey said she found Anthony's arguments almost unintelligible because he was very, very drunk. "He was standing uphe was trying to stand up against the wall and I remember telling him, Sit down before you fall down,' and he told me to shut up." As far as Casey was concerned, her longtime friend Anthony was in no condition to remember anything about their argument that night. "He looked like he was ready to just say good night' to the world." A number of people at the party confirmed that Anthony had fallen asleep on a large couch in the living room. A girl had vomited on the couch sometime earlier, but Anthony had been so out of it that he hadn't noticed. People watching had thought this was hilarious. "What time?" Henderson asked again and again of those who had been at the Friday night party. "What time did you see Anthony Pleasant passed out on the couch?" The consensus was that it was well before two A.M. Since two A.M. was the magic hour to buy beer and they were running low, a group left to buy more. When they left, Anthony had already been almost comatose and the subject of many giggles and guffaws. One girl said that she had been there both when the beer buyers left, and when they came back without finding any stores open. She had stayed awake until three-thirty or four. When she and her friend finally did get tired enough to sleep, they had a problem. "Okay," she explained, "we were laughing at him [Anthony] because he was on the couch and he was passed out. Me and a girlfriend were getting tired and we wanted to go to sleep, but he was on the double couch. .. and so we rolled him off the couch and he just fell right on the floor, and he was just blah. And we sat up for a while longer and kind of laughed at him, and then he crawled over to the chair and sat in that and fell asleep." Under ordinary circumstances, Anthony Pleasant, nineteen, might have been chagrined that he had made such a fool of himself by getting passed-out drunk, and becoming "the main part of the night, because we were all laughing at him." However, the number of witnesses who recalled absolutely that he had not left the party between eleven and dawn would eventually save him from murder charges. Vern Henderson reported to Jeff Sullivan that he now knew where Anthony had been at two A.M. on November 21, and where Turfy had been. They knew where Turfy had been on Christmas Eve, but they still had to check on where Kenny Marino had been. Once more, it was the memory of teenaged girls that provided alibis. Kenny Marino had invited three girls to come to his parents'