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Authors: Michael Benson

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“Yes.”

“What range were you in?”

“I usually go to the short ten-yard one, and sometimes the twenty-five-yard [one].”

“You weren’t at the one-hundred-yard range?”

“No.”

“Did you fire all of your weapons?”

The witness said he did not, just the nine-millimeter gun and the two .22s. He didn’t fire the Russian pistol.

“Which weapons did King fire?”

“He fired his own, and then he asked to shoot my nine a couple of times.”

“Where do you buy your ammunition?”

“Wherever I can find it cheapest. Walmart. I buy reload.”

“The nine-millimeter ammunition you brought, was it reload?”

“Some of it was new, some reload.”

“As you were shooting, did someone occasionally come by and broom away the shell casings?”

“Yes.”

“What time was it when you and the defendant left the gun range?”

“Sometime around one o’clock.”

“And as you left, you had the defendant’s gun?”

“Yes, I gave him his gun back when we got to his car.”

“And you saw the defendant put his gun back under the seat of his car?”

“No, I put his gun under his seat for him.”

“And then?”

“We parted, and I went back to work.”

“On that day, on January seventeenth, did you know what was going on in regard to this case?”

“No.”

“When did you find out?”

“When officers rang my doorbell at two, the next morning.”

“When they started asking questions, did you know what they were talking about?”

“No. They told me he’d been apprehended and why.”

“How long did the police talk to you at that point?”

“Just a few minutes.”

“And what did you do after the police left?”

“My wife and I went on the Internet and we verified that what the police were saying was true. At first, we didn’t think it was that big of a deal, that this was just some domestic dispute with a girlfriend he had.” When the witness realized that there was more to it, he voluntarily went to the police and gave them his story in detail.

As he wasn’t sure which law enforcement agency the officers from the previous night were from, he called the Venice police, the closest police to where he lived. They gave him the phone number for the NPPD, which was handling the case. Later on that day, he went to the NPPD and gave them a detailed interview.

“How were they treating you?”

“They were hard on me. Looking back, I understand now. They were still trying to find her. So they were not being nice, but I guess they were being as nice as they could, under the circumstances.”

Robert gave the police some receipts he kept in his wallet. He was certain they lacked relevance to the case because he only kept receipts that had to do with his work, for tax purposes. But police didn’t know that and checked the receipts out.

“No further questions, Your Honor.”

“Mr. Meisner?”

“Thank you, Your Honor ... ,” Jerry Meisner said. Under cross, Robert Salvador said he’d met Michael King three or four years earlier. He’d worked with him. Hired him. Paid him. Made a lot of referrals.

“You drove by his house?”

“Yes. Once. To see if he knew of any work. I knew where his house was because I worked there.” Yes, they’d gotten together socially as well, a fishing trip being the best example. Under defense questioning, the witness rehashed his testimony, now framed the way the defense wanted it in jurors’ minds. He testified that, as he said before, it was not uncommon for him to go to the gun range, that he liked to think of himself as a gun enthusiast. He owned upward of twenty guns in all, and it had been his idea to go shoot together. He met King at a gas station and led him to the range. King didn’t even have any of his own ammo.

When the practice shooting was done, there were still nine-millimeter bullets left unfired, and Robert offered those to the defendant—but the offer was only for firing then and there. He
did not
offer bullets to King to take home with him or to use later. When King demonstrated that he was done shooting, Robert took back the bullets. As far as he knew, King had not pocketed any.

How did he know King was done shooting? Because there was a process that shooters went through when they were finished firing. With a semiautomatic, they would put the gun down, take it apart, and inspect it to see that there were no bullets in the magazine.

“You took the bullets with you?”

“Yes.”

“As far as you know, King left with no ammunition whatsoever?”

“Correct.”

“Let’s skip ahead. At two the next morning, you get up because there’s a ringing at the door. An officer asks to speak with you, and this is your first contact with the police?”

“Yes.”

“You lied to them at that point? You said you hadn’t been practice shooting with him?”

“They never asked if I saw him. I told them about seeing him the next day.”

“So you lied.”

“Well, I spent a lot of that night thinking about it. Technically, it was a lie. They asked me if I knew him and I said yes. They asked if I’d seen him, I said no. My wife didn’t know I’d been to the gun range, so I didn’t volunteer it in front of her. But it bothered me all night.”

“You didn’t just deny seeing him, you also deleted calls on your cell phone from King. Isn’t that right?”

“Yes. I wasn’t up front with my wife about how often I went to the gun range, so I took those calls off my phone so I wouldn’t have to tell her why.” As it turned out, he’d done a sloppy job of it. Even though he tried to erase all records of his calls to King, he missed one.

“After you left the gun range, you went to a customer’s house?”

“Yes.”

“And after that, Home Depot?”

“I don’t remember. It’s possible. I have a lot of info to remember and it happened a long time ago.” After reading a written statement that he’d made on January 20, 2008, Salvador agreed that he’d gone to Home Depot after the customer’s house. After Home Depot, he went to Checkers and got something to eat; he had a receipt to prove it.

“That would have been about four o’clock?”

“If that’s what I said.”

“You told the police between four and five o’clock.”

“Then, yes.”

“Isn’t it true that when you first talked to police you didn’t mention Home Depot?”

“Yes. I was running all around, didn’t remember where-all I went.”

“I’m sure you were very careful about telling the truth, right? When police question you about a possible homicide, you want to make sure the information you give them is accurate.”

“Yes.”

“But you didn’t give them accurate information on the first day, did you?”

“I didn’t mean to.”

“You purposefully withheld information from the police, didn’t you?”

“If I did, it was not on purpose.”

“Before you left the pistol range, before you parted ways with Michael King, you arranged to meet him later in the day, didn’t you?”

“No, sir.”

“And didn’t you go over to his home on Sardinia that day, January 17, 2008?”

“No, sir—I did not.”

“And wasn’t the purpose of going over there to bring a lawn mower and a gas can?”

“Absolutely not.”

“To help him cut the grass?”

“No, sir.”

“And didn’t you meet him out on Plantation Boulevard during the evening hours of January 17, 2008?”

“No, sir.”

“Didn’t you fire the shot that killed and took the life of Denise Lee?” Jerry Meisner asked.

“Absolutely not.”

“You said you wanted to ‘burn’ King. Isn’t that right?”

“I didn’t say that.”

“No further questions, Your Honor,” the defense attorney said with disdain.

On redirect, the prosecution found the quote in Robert Salvador’s written statement in which he’d used the phrase “burn King.” When the sections before and after the quote were read, it became clear that what the witness actually meant was that he felt as if he’d been taken advantage of, that King took his bullets at the gun range without his knowledge for the purpose of killing a person. Salvador was angered and felt that
justice should be done as far as King was concerned, if what police were saying about him was true.
“Burn” in this case being the opposite of “protect.”
He should burn.

“Did your wife like you being around King?”

“No.”

“Did your wife like his number being on your phone?”

“No.”

The witness said it was routine for him to visit his storage unit after shooting, as that was where he stowed his guns and his gun-cleaning equipment.

“And you subsequently took the police to your storage unit and gave them your guns?”

“Yes.”

“When you were at the range, when someone takes a clip out, can you tell if there is ammo in the magazine?”

“If you look hard enough.”

“Could you tell if King had ammo when you and he finished shooting?”

“No, I had no reason to.”

“Did you keep your ammunition next to you?”

“It was between us.”

“And there were times when your eyes were not on the box?”

“Yes.”

“Is it possible that he took some of your ammo without you knowing it?”

“Yes.”

“Do you know whether or not he left the gun range with any of your ammo?”

“No.” But, the witness added, with the machinations of the range being what they were, there were “many opportunities” for King to take bullets and pocket them without his seeing him.

“While at the range, did you and King ever trade nine-millimeter pistols?”

“No.”

“Now you admitted that when you first talked to police, you didn’t say everything... .”

“I didn’t make a point to lie. I was terrified—plus, it was difficult for me to remember everything that went on.”

“Did the police treat you like a suspect?”

“I didn’t realize it at the time, but yes, they did.”

“Did you ever see Denise Lee?”

“No.”

“Did you shoot her?”

“No.”