Disturbed Ground (43 page)

Puente's former friend Brenda Trujillo hadn't changed much since the preliminary hearing. Perhaps her long, straight hair was a brighter shade of red, but she was hardly a shade brighter. Getting her criminal history on record for the jury
,
O'Mara questioned Trujillo about arrests, paroles, and rearrests. Even though he'd prepared a "cheat sheet" of facts for her, she bungled dates, contradicted herself, and came across as the same dim ex-con and former junkie who'd testified at the prelim.

Despite her disreputable history and weak answers, Trujillo knew another side of Puente's character. They'd been close, and Trujillo would put a new spin on the landlady's private moments. In fact, she said in her slow, soft voice, "She told people that I was her niece."

Trujillo had lived at 1426 F Street for short periods between arrests from September 1985 until September 1987. And during that time, she'd chanced to meet a few of Dorothea's doomed boarders. James Gallop, for one. She remembered the thin man with "a patch on his eye and a bandage on his head" who had come to live at the boardinghouse. "He'd just got out of the hospital. I don't think he could walk, 'cuz he was sick," she recalled.

Trujillo had kept in close contact with Dorothea after being rearrested. And the landlady had mentioned Gallop to her in two phone conversations, Trujillo testified. The first time, Puente said that Gallop was so sick "all he wanted to do was lay on the couch and hold her hand." He was throwing up and had diarrhea, and looked "like he was gonna die."

In the next conversation, Trujillo said, her voice cracking, "She said he had died."

"Did you ask any questions about his death?" O'Mara asked.

"I asked if she knew where he was buried, because I wanted to go there."

"What did she tell you?"

"She said no, that she had his body cremated because he had no family."

The courtroom was as still as ice.

O'Mara pressed on. "Did Dorothea tell you about buried bodies?"

"Yes. When we was drinking, she would tell me that she had bodies down in the yard and not to go down there."

This was only the beginning.

Trujillo remembered a man living with Dorothea back in 1985, and she identified a photo of Everson Gillmouth. Others had called him "Gill," but Dorothea's boyfriend was "Bill" in her recollection.

Later, held again at the county jail, Trujillo had a strange phone conversation with her friend Dorothea.

"What did she tell you about Bill, or Gill?" O'Mara prodded.

"She told me that he had a heart attack. She said that she couldn't
afford to call the ambulance because he was dead, and she didn't want to go back to prison." In a whisper, Trujillo added that Dorothea asked "if I knew someone who can get rid of the body. She would pay them four thousand dollars. I told her that I would ask around."

"Did she say anything else about this person?"

"She told me that he was buried down in her garden."

Why would Dorothea have said this to Trujillo? Gillmouth had been found in a box at the side of the river, far from Dorothea's garden. Was this some kind of twisted boast? Or was Trujillo fabricating now, venting anger at Puente, whom she blamed for her last arrest?

Next Trujillo described a quiet evening at Puente's home. "Me and her were sitting in the living room drinking. And she left, and I went to see where she was at. And I walked in the kitchen, and she was leaning over the table, with a glass about that high"—she indicated a height with her hands—"and had fixed a Bloody Mary. And on the table was a napkin with some open pills. She was leaning over the table, and she was opening these pills and putting them in his drink. And I asked her what she was doing."

"You say she was opening these pills," O'Mara interrupted. "What did these pills look like?"

"They were pink capsules with white substance in them."

"And where were these pills?"

"She had them in her hand, and she was opening them and shaking them in the glass, and there was some empty ones on the napkin."

"You say you asked her what she was doing?"

"Yes."

"What did she say?"

"Fixing McCauley a drink. She said to knock him out."

O'Mara asked her to continue.

"I standed in the doorway and watched her take it to him." Then they returned to the living room, sat down, and continued talking, Trujillo said. "About thirty minutes later she went back in the kitchen. I was wondering what she was doing, so I went into the kitchen," she said softly, "and I called, and she wasn't there. I peeked my head around the comer, and she came out of John's room with his coat."

"What was she doing?"

"Going through his pockets."

"What did you see her do?"

"She pulled out some money."

"What happened then?"

"She offered me the money, but I didn't take it," she asserted. "And then she went back, because there was nothing else in the coat pocket, and started going through his pants pockets. He didn't have nothing, so we went back out."

Trujillo might be a liar and a junkie, but for a moment, her testimony was golden. After all the talk of Dalmane prescriptions, this witness had finally put capsules in Dorothea Puente's hands. Better yet, she'd presented an image of those hands opening capsules and emptying them into a drink.

Yet the defense had plenty to work with on cross-examination. Trujillo seemed confused and unreliable. Though now on methadone treatments, years of heroin and alcohol use had apparently dulled her brain. She equivocated. She mumbled. And she was especially slow to admit any wrongdoing of her own. Everything she said seemed suspect.

Peter Vlautin felt the jury was with him, scrutinizing her credibility, squinting at her with skeptical eyes. But now he pushed too hard. He stood and demanded, "Dorothea Puente never told you that she killed people, did she?"

After a weighty pause, Trujillo murmured, "Yes. She did."

Vlautin was incredulous. "She told you she killed these people?" he repeated.

"Yes," she quietly insisted. "She told me herself that she had killed people and that they were buried in her yard.'"

This was more than anyone had expected. Puente glared at her.

Vlautin continued to slash at Trujillo's credibility, getting her to admit that she'd never used the word
kill
before, despite numerous interviews with police. But he couldn't stop her soft words from settling across the room like dust.

After more than a hundred witnesses, the jury may have thought Mrs. Puente had an odd circle of friends, socializing with drunks and lowlifes like McCauley and Trujillo. Some probably wondered how she'd supposedly gotten away with these crimes for so long. She was an ex-con on parole, after all; hadn't her parole officers gotten suspicious when they saw her associating with junkies, ex-cons, and alcoholics? Ah, but Dorothea Puente was, as Judy Moise once said, "Many things to many people." And O'Mara was about to prove that with a surprise witness.

Dressed in a fine three-piece suit, looking solid and upstanding, Mr. Gilbert Avila took the stand. He articulately described how he'd been introduced to Dorothea Puente in late 1979 or early 1980 when he was working as a special assistant to then Attorney General George Deukmejian (who later became governor of California).

Puente had "purchased" a table at a charity dinner, and Mr. Avila had been invited to join her party. Throughout the evening, Mr. Avila believed that his charming hostess was a medical doctor who ran "some kind of rehabilitation facility or home for alcoholics."

Dorothea always had a way with men, and Mr. Avila was apparently as susceptible as any. This Mexican-American fund-raiser launched a two-year "friendship." Avila explained that during their relationship (mostly "dinner dates"), he remained convinced that his well-heeled companion was a physician.

Dorothea Puente had eventually asked Avila to become cosignatory on one of her savings accounts, claiming, he recalled, that "she had cancer and didn't trust anyone but me."

Many things to many people, indeed.

CHAPTER42

Poor James Beede. He was just a man trying to do his job. Sure, he'd made some mistakes in his career. And, yes, the cocaine contamination that showed up in Ben Fink's specimens had posed problems. But if anything, Beede had gone the extra mile for this case, not only testing the tissue homogenates himself, but also sending them out for testing by two other labs. He certainly hadn't expected to end up in the hot seat for all his efforts.

But here he was. Since toxicology was an issue, James Beede was an issue.

After determining in intensive closed-door sessions with Judge Virga just how far they could press this witness, the defense was doing exactly that. First, Kevin Clymo grilled Beede on the apparently lax protocol at the crime lab. Then he zeroed in on the issue of contamination, establishing that even an airborne microscopic speck of some drug could contaminate an entire sample. "Isn't it true," he asked, "that you were reprimanded in 1986 for having raw drugs in your work area and at your desk without authorization?"

The jury perked up at this.

"Yes, that's correct," Beede said, explaining that he'd been doing "personal research with respect to cocaine" following the cocaine overdose of a local football star.

"In November 1990, you were again severely reprimanded?"

"Yes," Beede had to admit. "I was disciplined for conducting personal research with the compound sufentanil [citrate]."

Under questioning, Beede stated that sufentanil, a narcotic analgesic used in surgery, is one of the most potent painkillers known, "roughly a thousand times more potent and powerful than morphine."

"It's extremely toxic?"

"Yes."

"It can kill you?"

"Yes, it can."

Beede was compelled to explain that the substance is so dangerous that, even if wearing a full-body protective suit, one is supposed to be kept under observation for two hours after handling it. And Beede admitted that he hadn't worn a suit, not even goggles.

Clymo wasn't going to let him off easy. "You just cavalierly brought that into the lab one night, right? You just had it there on your desk?"

"Yes."

Judge Virga was listening carefully to how far Clymo was taking this.

"You were suspended without pay for twenty days?"

"Yes, I was."

"The whole lab had to be decontaminated?"

Virga pounced. "Counsel, I'm going to restrict that."

But the jurors got the message.

Kevin Clymo scored big points with his cross-examination of this witness. Clearly, there had been lapses in Beede's work. Without question, there had been cocaine contamination of the Ben Fink homogenate.

But the issue here was Dalmane, and the Dalmane debate was hardly won. The attorneys were just warming up.

O'Mara again called Dr. Robert Anthony to the stand, establishing that, besides being a forensic pathologist, the doctor was a recognized expert in toxicology.

O'Mara hoped the jury was paying attention as Dr. Anthony explained that Dalmane, or flurazepam, has a half-life of one to three hours, so, after six or seven half-lives, this "parent drug" is eliminated from the body. Completely. It may take as few as six hours, or as
many as twenty-one hours—to be conservative—for the drug to be fully broken down into its metabolites. Meaning that, in his expert opinion,
each of the individuals buried in the yard had ingested Dalmane less than twenty-four hours before death.