Dancing on Her Grave (15 page)

Reactions

The reaction of the Las Vegas community to the trial verdict seemed to be a general consensus of total outrage over Jason Griffith’s actions. After his arrest in January 2011, most of the cast members of both
FANTASY
and
LOVE
had turned their backs on him. Most of them said he was a monster, and they sided with Debbie.

Rene Delgadillo, the magician with whom Debbie worked on occasion, was of that mind-set: “Well, I am very disappointed to say the least,” he said of the verdict. “I’m just not too happy about the way it all turned out for Debbie. There was no justice at all.” Rene, like Celeste, still wanted Jason Griffith to receive a life in prison without parole sentence, if it could not be the death penalty.

But not everyone was surprised by the verdict. Luke
Ciciliano, the attorney and personal friend of Debbie’s who’d represented her in her lawsuit against Jamile McGee, said that “the trial went about as I expected it to and I can’t say that there were really any surprises.

“I guess being a lawyer gave me a little different perspective. I think I would have to say that my main reaction to the decision is a sense of relief that Debbie’s family can potentially have closure to this aspect of the situation; while it will never be ‘behind them’ they can stop worrying about this part of the process and, hopefully, they can start worrying about the ‘healing’ process instead of what’s going on with the court situation.”

He hoped that the verdict would help bring closure to the family, though he was of the opinion that “finding that closure is up to the family now. I personally have never believed in the end result of a criminal case bringing closure to a family. There’s lots of research that shows that a verdict has little to do with how a victim’s loved ones deal with things going forward.”

Ciciliano said he believed Debbie herself would also have focused on her family’s well-being, and less on the results of the trial. “I think the bigger focus on how Debbie would have felt would have been concern for her loved ones going forward and not so much on the case itself.”

Sonya Sonnenberg, Debbie’s roommate and the person who’d called in a missing person’s report on her to police, said she’d had “a bad feeling” when Debbie disappeared.
The roommate stated that when Debbie first went missing, she’d assumed Jason Griffith had her. “But I didn’t think that he had killed her,” at least not at first. “After days went by, I kind of assumed that she was dead, but you never know. We didn’t want to make any assumptions.”

Sonya, who is cool and logical, also stated that she believed the verdict was the right one, though she, too, hoped for a stiff sentence. “I think it was correct, because in order to be first-degree murder it had to be premeditated, but I hope that he gets more than ten years because of everything he did afterwards. There were aggravating circumstances, and it makes my skin crawl, what he did to her afterwards, that somebody could do that to someone else, especially someone they claimed to love at some point.”

#JusticeForDebbie was a social media hashtag created by Debbie’s friends and family members during her trial. Just like the news outlets covered Debbie’s murder trial, in social media, everyone in the dancing community was getting their information, and most were using #Justice ForDebbie whenever they referred to the case.

Social media had been very active—Celeste in particular on Facebook—but some people chose to stay away.

Mia Guerrero, the first person who’d reached out to me when she’d heard that her good friend was missing, said she’d tried to stay away from the trial and the gossip. To her, Debbie was and will always be in her heart.

Mia had been very close to Debbie, and the passing of the Puerto Rican beauty who’d made her laugh left an empty space in her fellow dancer’s life, though Mia said she knew that time went on.

Mia, a wife and mother of two, was now focused on her family. Even though she didn’t go to the trial, it was all over the news, and she’d heard bits and pieces about it. She knew that Jason Griffith had been found guilty, but she hadn’t wanted to know any more than that.

Last time we spoke, Griffith had been awaiting his sentence, but as far as she was concerned, his fate was in God’s hands, and she preferred to leave it at that.

The same could be said of Marci Gee, one of Griffith’s ex-girlfriends, now twenty-seven years old. She had since changed jobs and was in a very stable relationship with a new boyfriend.

But Marci had some poignant and revealing thoughts about her past relationship with Jason Griffith.

“It could have been me,” was her opener, and then she continued with a wise musing: “We never do think bad things could happen to us. We do not expect them, and we think, ‘That would never happen to me.’”

She said she now thinks about the episode almost every day. “The trial, everything that came out of it was very shocking and painful,” Marci said. “It was painful because of the fact that he lied to my face so many times.” Ever since Debbie’s disappearance, there has not been a
day when she doesn’t tell herself, “I could have been Debbie. I could be dead now.”

Only a month before Debbie was brutally murdered and dismembered, Marci had been considering getting back together with Jason.

In September 2010, Marci had moved to San Diego, California, for a month. During that period, Griffith had called her, texted her, looked for her, and tried to convince her to come back to him, that she was the only woman in his life.

“I am not sure if you could call what we had a formal relationship,” she said, qualifying that the two would date “on and off.” “I remember asking all my girlfriends. I would ask them if I should believe he was single and committed to me.”

No one could give her an answer, but deep inside, Marci had a feeling it was not true. She knew he was a player.

“I was so tempted to go to his house, but now, I am so relieved I never did. I could have been Debbie. It could have been me,” she repeated.

By this point, it had been almost four years since Marci had last seen Jason in person, though she clearly remembers the last time they hung out, at his house.

She was surprised that Louis Colombo had testified in court against Griffith, especially because the two men were so close. Marci remembered when Griffith had lived
in a converted garage in the same house as Louis and his wife, before the couple split up, so she’d heard.

Griffith had told her that his roommate was an unconditional friend. He referred to him as a “brother,” and said that when Griffith was having difficult economic times, Louis helped him with his expenses.

“It seemed like a good friendship. I could not believe that Louis and Agnes appeared in court to testify against him,” Marci remarked, still surprised. She had known about Griffith’s relationship with the dancer Agnes Roux.

All her friends knew that Marci had been dating Jason Griffith for a while, so when the trial finally started, and the TV stations began to cover the story and make headlines on local and national television, Marci had no other option but to hear what was going on.

When her mother found out that Marci had been dating the guy now in the news facing murder charges, she was very worried. After all, this was a case that issued a warning to all women, like the neon lights that illuminate most of Las Vegas. If you’re in relationship that turbulent, RUN. Do not become another Debbie.

Marci, like the majority of people, was unsurprised when Griffith was found guilty, and she hoped that he would spend many years in jail for what he did. Not because she wanted to punish him, she said, but because she felt he needed time to fully comprehend the extent of his actions toward women. “I think it’s better for him to stay
in jail. For his own good. I am not sure what could happen to him if he gets out of jail now or so soon.”

No woman, no human being deserves to die like Debbie did, but Marci thought Debbie should have known better. “What do I think about Debbie? For Jason, I feel pity. In Debbie’s case, I feel she could have prevented this.”

Marci also mentioned that Jason Griffith had gone to jail once before, which kind of raised a red flag for her. He told her his ex-wife had been cheating on him and when he’d found out who she was “fooling around with,” he’d confronted the guy and assaulted him so badly that Griffith ended up in jail.

“If Jason was violent once, he could become violent again and he did. I could have been Debbie and this is very scary.” She repeated her mantra.

“What did I learn from this? Not to ever date a man I find on the Internet,” she said with a soft, bitter
laugh.

Domestic Violence

Throughout this whole case, a major question to my mind and to the minds of many others had always been, how and why had Debbie let herself get into these violent situations over and over again? She was a smart, beautiful, talented woman with multiple advanced degrees, and she’d found success in the difficult entertainment business. So why had she been drawn to men with whom she had such volatile relationships?

Looking for answers, I turned to Rebeca Ferreira, a delightful, charismatic woman in her forties from the Dominican Republic. Rebeca is now the director and founder of Safe Faith United, a nonprofit organization that started with an almost homeless woman wanting to make a difference in her community, wanting other
women not to go through her same experiences: domestic violence.

Everyone who works as a journalist in Las Vegas knows Rebeca. Fortunately for us, she is often our main contact in the most odd, tragic, and unique stories. Unfortunately for the victims, most of them never get to meet this remarkable woman in person.

Debbie Flores-Narvaez’s picture hangs outside Rebeca’s office, where she has a gallery of photos, some of them very disturbing and graphic, of women who have been killed by their partners. I met Rebeca when I first arrived to work in Sin City. She was helping out a twenty-one-year-old, undocumented young woman from Mexico in a very abusive relationship, so much her boyfriend would close the door of their little apartment leaving the girl and their son to sleep outside in the hallway. The boyfriend ended up kidnapping their son, and without her permission, of course, took him out of the country.

This was a very long process, but thanks to many national and local stories, and with the help of different organizations in both countries, Rebeca and I were able to bring the child back to the United States, and the woman was able to apply for a humanitarian visa. Our efforts were such that we were recognized with one of the most prestigious journalistic awards, an Emmy, for the best crime coverage.

Rebeca is one of the most courageous women I have
met in my career. To place it in perspective as to how passionate this woman is with her victims, when I first met Rebeca, she didn’t even have enough money to put gas in her car to go see a victim. She had to do it based on donations. Now, almost seven years later, she has become a voice for all those women who maintain silence on their abusive relationships. She is so dedicated because she was part of the statistics.

Rebeca used to work for the North Las Vegas Police Department as an interpreter. Ironically, while she was herself a silent victim of domestic violence, she was mostly called upon to translate for women who had contacted the police after domestic disputes.

Rebeca, like most of the victims of domestic violence, was also embarrassed to tell her family and, even more so, the police department what was going on at home. But one day, when her sister came to visit from Canada, Rebeca decided to open her heart and confess what was going on: that her husband had been abusing her for years. After talking to her sister, Rebeca decided to leave her husband and find a path to save her own life and the lives of others.

Every time Rebeca Ferreira hears about a domestic violence case, her own memories of being abused come back to life. She remembers how it feels to be put down time and again, and to feel the need to be silent, to feel embarrassed, or to even feel guilty. This happened to
Debbie as well, feeling minimized by her lover, like she meant nothing to him and he had to keep dalliances with other women.

The numbers fluctuate, but a study released by the Violence Policy Center in 2012 revealed that Nevada’s rate of women killed by men was the highest in the nation. During that same year, Las Vegas police handled more than twenty-two thousand domestic violence–related cases where a crime was committed—and the authorities responded to more than
sixty thousand
calls for domestic-related cases in the course of a single year.

In 2010, the year Debora was killed, Nevada also had the highest percentage of murders related to domestic violence. Sadly, Debbie became one more number to add to this very tragic statistic.

I wanted to know why there were so many instances of domestic violence and violence against women in Las Vegas in particular. Why Las Vegas?

“Some say the drinks, the drugs, the casinos, the strip clubs, but to me, they’re all excuses.” Rebeca has seen the most horrifying cases in Las Vegas in particular, but she emphasized that men and women, not only in Nevada, but all over the world, need to have faith. Whatever it is you believe in, she says, the lack of faith from both sides is, to her, the main reason why we see so much violence. The day she devoted her life to God, she believed and
understood she deserved better, and she stopped the cycle of domestic violence.

As a woman, it is terrifying to read and to report these cases. The statistics from the National Coalition Against Domestic Violence are alarming:

• 3 to 4 million American women are battered each year, yet battery is the most under-reported crime in America.
  
• 95% of all spouse abuse cases are women who are hurt by men.
  
• Battering occurs among people of all races.
  
• A battering incident is rarely an isolated event, and tends to increase and become more violent over time.
  

A couple of days before I’d reached out to her to talk about Debbie, Rebeca had helped the family of a woman whose husband beat her to death with a belt. Her husband had been upset because she’d gambled away almost all of her paycheck at a local casino.

“There must never be a reason why a woman has to become a victim of assault,” Rebeca observed. “Just like Debbie. Jason claimed she was a stalker, but yet,
he continued the relationship with her, and ended her life.”

“Debbie’s murder is one of the most brutal cases I’ve seen. One was a woman whose hands were cut off with a machete; the other, a woman stabbed more than 150 times, and now Debbie. None of them had a peaceful death,” said Rebeca. “Debbie was a dancer, a performer; her body was her instrument for work. Jason committed the most humiliating act on her: he chopped her legs off!” Rebeca noted, almost crying.

Many people I’d talked to had said the same thing, that “Debbie liked bad boys.” But Rebeca became upset every time she heard someone say such a thing.

“No woman is crazy enough to like a ‘bad boy; no woman likes to be abused. This is a lie. We fall in love with a good man, but then this man shows his true colors and we love him so much, we hope he changes, and he never does. If we wait too long, we could end up dead like Debora,” she told me in a very agitated tone. And yes, Debbie had hoped that she could change Jason Griffith. “Respect me,” she pleaded with him at one point according to one of her friends, Merriliz Monzon.

Annette Scott is the outreach program manager in Las Vegas for S.A.F.E. House, which stands for Stopping Abuse in the Family Environment. She is proud to say she has been an advocate for victims for seventeen years, first with victims of crime and then for domestic violence.

“There is nothing to ‘get’!” Annette states about Debbie’s friends and family members who didn’t understand her loyalty to Jason Griffith, especially considering what an intelligent, strong, independent woman Debora Flores-Narvaez was.

“It’s not unusual for people to find unhealthy relationships over and over again, regardless of their status in life or their educational background,” said Annette.

As to Debbie’s previous domestic violence incident with Jamile McGee, Annette is of the same mind-set: “We’re not going to have a concrete answer as to why she was in another domestic violence incident. There are women who are involved; not only are the men manipulative but they are predators. You can have a hundred university degrees but that’s not going to protect you.”

“Some people question, ‘Why did she go back there?’” Annette said of Debbie, who kept going back to Jason Griffith. “None of us has the right to judge her. He was out to hurt her. He may have been threatening her. This is a man who went as far as to manipulate her, and yet some people will report that she was violent. I remember seeing an argument online about her stalking him. The whole thing doesn’t make any sense.” No matter what, he had an option to stop.

And then the advocate adds, sadly and sardonically: “He had two domestic violence charges, so was it easier for him to kill her and mutilate her? That sounds to me
more like the MO of a serial killer! My concern is, where is the history of violence in his background?”

Annette expounded on what she believed was Jason Griffith’s character.

“We have an extreme narcissistic personality; mutilating a human being was nothing to him. To have no remorse and say he was doing it to protect himself, we have someone who was really sick. Even if she had stalked him, he is a sick, sick man. The reality of domestic violence is that it crosses all lines. . . . They are the worst kind of predator there is. I’m not surprised more did not come out in the court. A lot of times prosecutors don’t focus on the history of violence because this is a murder case.” That was true: prosecutors are not legally allowed to bring up a defendant’s previous history; they may only focus on the case at hand.

But Jason Griffith’s ex-wife had told Dr. Phil’s production team that he had punched her in the face, which the host mentioned during the broadcast, and that makes Annette Scott see red: “A wife stating that, this man is just sicker than how they tried to portray him. There had to be warning signs about him,” she said. Nor did she believe Jason Griffith’s verdict was fair: “No, I don’t think he should have gotten second degree, no. I know there has to be an amount of premeditation. [ . . . ] Remember, manipulation is the key to a personality disorder. Her sister and her family will play the most important role at
the parole hearings. They have to make sure that the perpetrator does not go unpunished.”

In Annette’s more general estimation, “Women should try to get away from men who try to hurt them and eventually kill them. We have an epidemic, not only in our country, but all over the world.”

Despite all the unofficial diagnoses of Jason being “a narcissist,” however, that still did not explain all of his behavior—or Debbie’s.

Olga E. Hervis, MSW (master of social work), LCSW (licensed clinical social worker), is the coauthor and codeveloper of
Brief Strategic Family Therapy (BSFT) and Family Effectiveness Therapy (FET),
a nationally recognized and award-winning book.

In 2003, she founded the Family Therapy Training Institute of Miami in order to disseminate her thirty-five years of education, research, and practice in this field.

The therapist believed that Debbie suffered from what is called “dependent personality disorder,” and that Jason Griffith preyed on that. “Predators can smell sick, injured, lost prey. I am convinced that these predatory individuals have a sixth sense to uncover women like her.”

Dr. Hervis offered an appropriate allegory from a comic strip, no less:

“Remember the old Charlie Brown cartoon where Lucy holds the football and promises Charlie she will not move it this next time?” the therapist says with a knowing
laugh. “Charlie, who actually knows better from all the past experiences, still decides he needs to give her one more chance and trust her. Of course, Lucy removes the ball as he is kicking it, and Charlie falls and bumps his head on the ground. This, my friend, is the nature of these repetitive abusive patterns. The abuser knows it and almost every single time engages in what psychology calls [in Behavior Conditioning Theory], an ‘Alternating-Opposing Reinforcement program.’

“It goes like this: The rat is taught to navigate a maze and gets rewarded with food at the end, until she has learned it. After that, in an alternating fashion, the rat runs the maze, gets food, runs the maze, and the rat gets an electric shock. Over and over and the rat never remembers the shock, just the food, so she keeps doing it as long as you want to run the experiment. These men alternate love and roses and ‘I’m sorrys’ with abuse. The victim becomes a rat. A friend of mine, years ago, gave me a great T-shirt. It read: ‘Neurotics build castles in the air, Psychotics live in them, Personality disorders refuse to believe they are not there.’”

Then Dr. Hervis moved on to her diagnosis of Jason Griffith: “Narcissistic, abusive men view women as objects, not people. He is not necessarily psychotic, but more likely psychopathic, with no conscience.”

As to the manner of death and the way he amputated Debbie’s legs, she observed: “It is like cutting up a piece
of furniture and disposing of it for
his
convenience. He had no regard for his victim as he does not see her as human like him. The world of narcissists revolves entirely around them and is
only
about them.”

The therapist noted that she wasn’t enough of a legal expert to weigh in on the verdict, but in her opinion, she hoped he would never get out of jail, “because undoubtedly he will continue to abuse and probably kill again the next time a woman becomes inconvenient or a nuisance.”