Lost Girls (32 page)

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Authors: Caitlin Rother

BOOK: Lost Girls
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Chapter 33
Ignoring his attorneys' advice to remain quiet until after the sentencing hearing, John Gardner issued a public apology through KFMB-TV on Sunday, April 25, 2010, in a statement that came through an unnamed source and was aimed at the families of Chelsea King and Amber Dubois:
I'm sorry. I wish I could take it back. I know that it doesn't mean anything to anybody but I really am sorry for everything. I wish that I was able to get help when I tried to get help. I tried to seek out help and was not able to get any.
Carrie McGonigle was the only parent who would comment: “To me, it's just words. There's no meaning behind it. It doesn't bring Chelsea or Amber home or back to us.”
After receiving regular e-mails from numerous media, including one persistent KFMB-TV reporter, Gardner called the local CBS affiliate collect from jail that same Sunday and agreed to do an interview, hoping to improve his public image. The station took several days to edit and gain legal approval for the segment, which didn't air until April 29, during sweeps week.
Gardner's attorney Michael Popkins was in Sacramento when his boss called him Sunday evening to warn him that Gardner had called KFMB, and to prepare Popkins for what was coming down the pike. Popkins was annoyed, to say the least, that his client had failed to heed his instructions once again.
When the interview aired four days later, it caused an uproar. Some complained that the media shouldn't have given Gardner a platform to talk about himself, just as Popkins had feared. Many others, however, couldn't pull themselves away from the TV.
“What I did is horrible,” Gardner said. “I hate myself. I really do. There is no taking back what I did. And if I could, yes, I would. Are you kidding me? But I was out of control. If I could stop myself in the middle, I would have, but I could not... . I was aware of what I was doing, and I could not stop myself. I was in a major rage and pissed off ... at my whole life and everyone who's hurt me, and I hurt the wrong people... . I'm afraid of myself.”
Asked about Cathy, he said, “She's an overcontrolling mom ... so I try to stay away and she tries to hold on.”
Gardner extended an offer to meet with his victims' parents and answer questions about how he killed their daughters, telling the reporter that he wasn't going to give those details to anyone but family members. “I'm not going to keep kicking dirt on something. It's just wrong,” he said.
When the reporter asked if there were other victims, Gardner chuckled. “Good try,” he said.
He said he figured he probably had a short time to live in prison. “I gave up on my own life a long time ago... . I'm guessing in the next two years—I don't even think it's going to take two years—and I'll be dead.”
After the interview and the outrage it caused, Gardner's attorneys got his sentencing date moved forward before anything else could go wrong. This was atypical in the usual scheme of things, but they actually were returning to the hearing date that would have been set—had Gardner not waived his due time for sentencing while they arranged a psychiatric evaluation and had a positron emission tomography (PET) scan done of his brain. Nonetheless, this acceleration brought Gardner from arrest to sentencing in a mere seventy-eight days, which is lightning speed in the justice system.
“I just didn't want him sitting there [in jail] any longer than he had to,” Popkins said, adding that he also couldn't guarantee the judge that Gardner wouldn't talk to the media and stir up the community again.
Gardner ultimately told Popkins that his attorney and advisors had been right, that giving KFMB the interview had been a mistake, because it hadn't helped his public image at all.
 
 
On Saturday, May 1, 2010, Carrie McGonigle responded to Gardner's offer and e-mailed Popkins, asking to see his client. Popkins wrote back and, believing their exchange was private, was not pleased to see the contents of his e-mail reported in the media. Carrie wrote back, wrongly accusing him and Mel Epley of putting her on a “no-visit” list.
On Monday, Popkins and Epley had a conference call with Carrie and her attorney, Robin Sax, during which they compiled a list of questions that Carrie wanted to ask Gardner. They promised to get answers for her, which they did in a call later that day. But in the end, that was not enough for her. She insisted on meeting with Gardner, face-to-face.
 
 
Later that day, Cathy Osborn came to visit her son while Carrie waited outside the jail to ask if she could have Cathy's half-hour visiting appointment the next day. As soon as Cathy saw Carrie, she ran to her car and drove away.
In the early hours that night, Carrie wrote to Gardner in jail about meeting him. Popkins, after his own experience with Carrie, told Gardner that he shouldn't meet with her after the way she'd behaved. But Gardner said he wanted to follow through with his promise, saying he could understand why she was so upset.
Before visiting him on Tuesday, Gardner's sister Sarina met up with Cathy and his sister Shannon. Sarina passed Carrie on the sidewalk outside the jail, as well as the three reporters with cameras who had been informed of Carrie's plans to talk to Cathy.
Asked for comment, Sarina said, “I have to say ‘sorry,' that's it.” Looking at Carrie, she added, “Very, very, very sorry. I am looking at her, saying, ‘I'm sorry.' She doesn't want to hear my sorry. I'm sorry.”
“Actually, I just want to talk to your brother,” Carrie said.
Sarina said nothing more and continued on her way. A few minutes later, Cathy and Shannon were walking along the sidewalk when Carrie came toward them. The scene, captured by the media, was replayed on the TV news that night and recounted in the newspaper: Carrie stepped in front of Cathy and Shannon, using her body to block their passage, forcing them into a corner edge of the building. Cathy buried her face in Shannon's side, crying, as Shannon hugged her close, unsure if Carrie was going to get physical.
“I just want to visit with your son,” Carrie said.
“Excuse me,” Shannon said, trying to veer away from Carrie and the building by holding Cathy with one arm and raising the other hand to keep Carrie from coming at them again.
“Don't touch me,” Carrie said. “I will hit you.”
“Stay away from her,” Shannon said.
“I'm not here to harass you,” Carrie said. “I want to talk to your son and find out why he murdered my daughter.”
Cathy and Shannon escaped inside the jail lobby, where Sarina was waiting.
This was her last chance to visit Gardner before the sentencing hearing that Friday, Carrie told reporters, and she hoped Gardner would at least talk to her by phone. She was worried he would change his mind after hearing her victim impact statement in court.
“I fought for what I believe in,” she said. “I did everything I could to try to see him. So I guess I have to trust his lawyers when they tell me that they will try to set up something.”
Carrie said she wanted to talk to Gardner to get some closure, to ask why he'd picked Amber in particular and to learn exactly how he'd managed to get her daughter into his car in front of the crowded school. She wanted to know if Amber had cried out for her, and if Amber had begged for her life.
“I never really thought there would be a chance for me to ask him questions until I heard him say that he would answer questions,” Carrie said, referring to his TV interview. “I've e-mailed twice, called three times and come down three times. They're not budging. He doesn't want to talk to me, even though he says he will.”
Carrie left, but the reporters waited outside for Cathy and her daughters to come out. When they did, Cathy had a jacket covering her head, shielding herself from the cameras and the questions, as they headed for Shannon's car, which was parked at the curb.
“Leave my mom alone,” Sarina said.
“Why didn't she let Gardner meet with Amber's mom?” a reporter asked.
Before the reporter could finish the question, Sarina said, “She didn't let Gardner
do
anything. We're sorry.”
After seeing the deep sorrow in Carrie's eyes that day, Sarina couldn't forget it. “I have nightmares of that lady, of her pain, and her eyes,” she said in 2011. “We've never been able to say we're sorry to the families. Our attorney advised us not to, told me not to send cards, not to say sorry. The thing wasn't over yet.”
After the confrontation, Cathy text-messaged Popkins, who had been adamantly against anyone speaking to Gardner before the sentencing.
“Maybe if she sees how crazy he is,” Cathy essentially told Popkins. “He's as stable at this moment as we're going to get him. She's making a nightmare out of the media. Let her see him. It can't make things any worse.”
Gardner felt the same way. “Yeah, she needs to be able to get it out and she can yell at me,” he said. “There's nothing that she can say that I haven't already told myself.”
With the hearing only two days away, Popkins relented, hoping this would end the media circus. He checked to make sure that his boss and the DA's office had no objection, then he made arrangements for Carrie to meet with Gardner for thirty minutes on Wednesday, May 12.
Gardner was afraid that Carrie would yell and scream at him, but she didn't. After seeking advice about how to conduct herself, she managed to remain calm, at least on the outside. He didn't think she was going to want to hear all the gory details, but she did.
“She wanted everything, from when I picked up the knife till the end,” he said later.
“You owe me that,” she told him.
“I'm sorry. I can't even look at you,” Gardner said.
“I don't care,” she said. “I don't want to look at you either.”
Afterward, Carrie told the media about some of their conversation. Gardner also told his mother his version of the exchange, saying that he was emotionally spent afterward, and ashamed. But he said Carrie was “nice to him—very, very nice,” and she offered to have her minister visit with him.
Chapter 34
Just before the hearing on May 14, attorneys for both sides met with Judge David Danielsen in his chambers to discuss security measures and some other issues that had come up.
John Gardner had wanted to make a statement at the hearing, but his attorneys talked him out of it. “He thought he could say something that could make things better,” Mel Epley said. “We didn't deny him. We just tried to make him understand there was nothing he could say that would make anybody feel better about what he did.”
Cathy Osborn, however, was still intent on addressing the victims' families, despite Popkins's and Epley's efforts to dissuade her. She wanted to say she was very sorry to both of the victims' families; she also wanted to thank Carrie McGonigle for being kind to Gardner and for offering to have her minister visit him. Popkins and Epley told Cathy this was not a good idea, that she would only make things worse for herself. When she wrote up a statement, they redacted parts of it, hoping she would give up. They also sent their two investigators to talk to her, but she remained adamant.
“I was doing it to protect her,” Michael Popkins said. “Nothing she could say would make the public like her or him any better.”
The judge made the final call, saying this was a hearing to which the sentence had already been stipulated. Although it was within his discretion to let Gardner make a statement, he didn't feel that was proper in this case, let alone allow Cathy to speak.
Popkins believed the judge made the right call. “I have absolutely no regrets about that,” he said later. “It would have been a disaster.”
 
 
The standing-room-only hearing drew a rare combo appearance of the DA, the sheriff and the head of the local FBI office, all of whom had been asked to attend by the victims' families. Dumanis and Gore sat behind the prosecution table, serving as a buffer between the victims' families and Gardner. His family sat on the other side of the aisle, with other folks acting as buffers between them and the victims' families.
Also in the courtroom was Brenda van Dam, the mother of seven-year-old Danielle, who was murdered in 2002 by David Westerfield, another of San Diego's high-profile child killers. Van Dam and activist Marc Klaas, who was also in the courtroom, had helped search for Amber.
Most of the 120 seats in the courtroom were reserved in advance, leaving only seven for the general public. With one still camera for print media and one TV camera, working as a pool, the extra electronic media were sent to one small overflow courtroom, where the floor became a thick mass of electrical cords. Other print reporters and members of the public were sent to a larger courtroom to watch the proceedings on a giant projection screen, while a group of two dozen supporters, holding sunflowers and lilies, talked to reporters and whoever else stopped to chat with them on the steps of the Hall of Justice next door.
As the hearing began, thirty-one-year-old John Gardner, dressed in a kelly green jail suit, looked as if his brain was spinning with anxiety. He had the strange, distracted expression of someone mentally unbalanced, and he appeared to be moving his tongue around, as if his mouth were dry. His chest rose as his breaths came shallow and fast, as if bracing for the hateful outbursts that Epley had warned would be coming his way. Epley told him he didn't have to look at the family members, who were going to be very angry.
“It's going to be hard, but try to keep yourself composed,” Epley said. “Nobody's going to feel any sympathy for you.”
Epley, of course, was right. The verbal attacks and several prophecies that Gardner would burn in hell came blasting in a constant stream for more than an hour as Chelsea's and Amber's parents threw their sorrow, grief and rage at him. Those watching in the gallery or on television monitored his face for reaction or remorse, any sign for how he felt about killing those innocent girls.
 
 
Before the speakers began their statements, the judge announced that the prosecution was going to play a 13.5-minute memorial video of Amber Dubois, which took everyone in the gallery through her short life. As the compelling montage of photos played, Gardner grimaced and let out a long sigh, his breaths quickening as tears ran down his face. He wasn't the only one crying.
Prosecutor Kristen Spieler didn't buy his tears as sincere sorrow for his victims, dismissing them as a ploy to play “the sympathy card,” to fool people into thinking he was feeling something. “People who are sociopaths ... very often are unable to express the pain and remorse for the pain and suffering of others,” she said later. “I suspect any genuine remorse he had was for himself.”
The courtroom was filled with the surreal as Amber sang “Beautiful One” off-key, a song by composer Tim Hughes, taken from a file on her computer. The video featured many shots of her hugging and being hugged—by her mother and father, separately and together, her red-haired grandmother and her girlfriends. At times, Amber looked serious; other times, she hammed for the camera and made faces, wearing a jester's hat, dressed up for Halloween or sticking her tongue out.
Emphasizing her love for animals, the little girl was shown playing with her dogs, riding a horse, holding a chimpanzee and sitting on a bale of hay with a lamb. She was also featured water-skiing, shooting a bow and arrow, listening to her iPod, playing with sparklers and playing Twister with her friends. In a very sweet and innocent moment, she was shown standing outside in the pouring rain, with her hands outstretched to catch the drops.
In several testimonials, her girlfriends expressed how they wanted Amber to be remembered:
“Amber was a great person. She was always so optimistic, had fun with life, didn't take things so serious. [She was a] tried-to-live-life-to-the-fullest sort of person.”
“I would want everyone to remember her love, her passion, I guess, for books, her love for life—just the spontaneous, exciting, carefree happiness that she brought.”
“If I could, I'd tell her she's made a difference to everybody. Everybody she met, she's done something to them that has made their lives better in some way.”
“She's someone who affected so many other people's lives, whether she realized it or not. She is something I would aspire to be, something more patient, more caring, more loving, more sincere. She would have been amazing. I just want people to appreciate that, and maybe they can come back and appreciate their friends and family more.”
The close of the video was a progression of school portraits, tracking her growth into the final shot, which everyone recognized as the more mature young girl, with a fringe of bangs, a half smile and her nose a little sunburned—the photo from Amber's “missing” posters.
 
 
Carrie McGonigle stepped up to the mic first, describing the past fifteen months of “minute by minute agony” she and Amber's family had experienced. “Amber was my passion,” she said. “I would have laid down my life for Amber.” Although she had decided to forgive Gardner, she said, “I'll never forget that you stole from me God's most precious gift.”
Apparently, her meeting with him had sapped much of her anger, because she was the least aggressive of the six speakers that day. And, after the hearing, she walked down the hallway of the courthouse laughing and looking giddy.
Up next was Dave Cave, whose life and relationship with Carrie had been extraordinarily challenged by this murder case. He summed up Gardner's TV interview as “woe is me crap.”
“You should have never been let out of your cage after you beat up and, no doubt, molested another thirteen-year-old in 2000,” he said.
Then came Moe Dubois, his voice growing louder and more animated as he spoke, drawing parallels between Gardner and a mountain lion that had been placed in a cage for the community's protection, but was then freed so he could roam, and, not surprisingly, began to attack people.
Moe asked rhetorically who was at fault. “Is it this coldhearted monster? Is it the failures in the law enforcement systems? Or perhaps it is even all of us, who have not forced and held accountable the people and the organizations who are supposed to protect us from these predators and who have not? ... It's obvious the legal system failed us here.”
Still, he said, “I truly hope he suffers a hundred times the amount of pain he's caused our family.”
 
 
Before the Kings gave their statements, the prosecution played a memorial video of Chelsea, featuring the teenager in various poses, making faces or hugging her friends, who gave a series of testimonials. Many of these described Chelsea's ability to enjoy herself. They would laugh together, until their faces were red, their eyes were streaming with tears of joy and their cheeks ached. No challenge was too big for Chelsea, who had an overwhelming vigor for life and walked with a bounce in her step.
“She was always ready to do something outrageous.”
Her advice to them was this: Whatever you choose to do, “just be passionate about it.”
“She always told me, ‘Go big or go home.'”
Brent King, reading from a nine-page statement, said that although they'd almost lost Chelsea during the pregnancy, she was born with a “‘joy and zest for life few of us have ever known,'” and he missed her terribly. Noting that he was saying Gardner's name for the first time, he minced no words as he described Gardner as pure evil, “‘a monster, sociopath, serial killer, animal,'” and, most of all, a coward.
“‘Unlike you, Chelsea was no coward. I can assure you she showed more courage in her last moments than you have shown in your entire life.'”
Brent said he couldn't accept mental illness as an excuse for Gardner, who he was sure had had enough lucid moments to know he should turn himself in after killing Amber. But instead, Brent said, Gardner indulged his evil thoughts, and took out his rage on others because he didn't want to admit his wrongs and suffer the consequences. Chelsea was as good as Gardner is evil, he said, and he could only hope that Gardner would live the rest of his life in fear that one of his cellmates would kill him in his sleep.
From there, Brent launched into Gardner's mother, who was sitting to his right. He called her a coward as well, blaming her for doing nothing to protect them from her son, and accusing her, as a psychiatric nurse, of knowing full well what he was capable of, and yet doing nothing to stop him.
“Ms. Osborn, you have Chelsea's rape and murder and our pain on your soul,” he said, adding that he would leave Cathy Osborn's fate up to God, but that she had her own wrongs to account for in the afterlife.
He attacked KFMB-TV and CBS News for airing Gardner's interview, and chimed in with the others in blasting the system that had failed to identify Gardner as a lifelong violent threat to young girls, and to either keep him behind bars or continue to monitor him closely.
 
 
Kelly King, who had seemed so demure during her TV interviews, seemed just as fiery and enraged as her husband. Saying she couldn't speak her full, true feelings in a public forum, she demanded Gardner's attention. “You dismantled a family life that was built on love, trust and faith, but you did not destroy it. Look at me!”
As she waited for him to meet her hostile glare, Gardner reluctantly raised his head to do as she asked. He glanced away furtively before looking back at her for a moment, then returned to his previous downward stance. When she issued the same demand later in her statement, which circled from anger to grief and back to anger, he did not comply.
“Why am I not surprised?” she asked rhetorically.
Still, Kelly said, she wouldn't lie down and be defeated by all of this, because every morning she heard her daughter telling her to get up: “‘We have important things to do, Mom.'”
 
 
As Candice Moncayo stood at the microphone to start her statement, she was so overcome with emotion that it took at least a minute as she stood, holding her hand to her mouth, before she gained her composure and could begin speaking. Still breathless and her voice breaking, she described the aftermath of her run-in with the man sitting at the defense table. “‘It's been six months since John Gardner attacked me, and some mornings, I still wake up screaming,” she said, noting that she felt pain and guilt from being the only one of Gardner's recent victims who had lived to address him. Her articulate statement was so heartfelt that observers wiped away tears.

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