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Authors: M. William Phelps

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“On Thursday, the club closed at two
A.M.
,” Candy continued, “and I think Rachael and I left about two-thirty. Tiffany was still inside the club, working. Rachael and I went to the house on Millbridge and got there about three or three-fifteen. When we got there, a Hispanic dude, Marcus, and Frankie (pseudonym) were there.”
Candy described how Marcus took off to pick up Tiffany because someone else had her keys. This verified, of course, a part of the night HPD had gotten from another witness, which told them that it was likely true.
Good sign.
“[Frankie's] sister stopped by at about three forty-five. The Hispanic guy and [Frankie's sister] went outside on the patio to smoke some weed. . . . Rachael was inside the house on the phone.”
Frankie's sister left. Candy told the others she'd drop Frankie off on her way home in the early morning. Candy said something about Frankie and Adelbert—“the Hispanic dude”—doing X (Ecstasy) and cocaine, which made them “fidgety.” Because she was hungry, Candy said, she cooked a meal for everyone: “Fettuccini noodles and marinara sauce,” adding, “Everyone helped themselves.”
And there was the answer to that meal left out on the counter; it wasn't Rachael, after all, who'd fixed the meal. It was Candy Apple.
As they ate, Candy said, they watched a “Girls Gone Wild” DVD. Soon, just about everyone fell asleep or passed out on the couch, floor, and the easy chair in the living room.
Candy woke around 7:30
A.M.
Everyone else got up soon after. Then they all went outside and smoked some weed. Candy left about eight-thirty in the morning. She dropped Frankie off at his house; then she took off to the gym to meet her personal trainer for an appointment.
Pot. Pasta. Nap. More weed. Then a workout. The battle cry of the young!
Candy wanted to party some more after the gym, so she tried to find the Millbridge Drive house again, but she had trouble locating it. She ultimately got into work on Friday about 4:30
P.M.
and her boss was already “tripping,” she said.
“Why?” Ladd asked.
Candy blew a puff of smoke, stared at the tip of her cigarette, and looked up. “Because [Rachael and Tiffany] were not showing up for work.”
They had called in sick, apparently.
“Anything else you can recall?” Ladd said.
Candy took a breath. Stubbed out her cigarette. There
was
something, in fact. Getting back to how she felt about Rachael, something she had touched upon when she first sat down, Candy said that she wanted to begin dating Rachael—something Rachael would have wanted no part of.
CHAPTER 9
N
ICHOLE SÁNCHEZ AND
her family were devastated by the deaths of Adelbert and his cousin Marcus. They had no idea what could have happened, what could have brought on the murders, or who might have been responsible. It was all they could do to wrap their minds around the idea that they had to bury a son, a brother, a cousin, a pair of boys who seemed to have so much life ahead of them. So much potential. So much love to give to the world.
“We had no idea what happened,” Nichole said. “All we really knew was what was on the news. We didn't know why. We didn't know anything.”
Any information Adelbert's family was getting early on, at best, was sporadic and fragmented. The implicit nature behind the murders, which all the news organizations were running with, was, of course, a drug deal gone badly; whereas Nichole and her family felt different.
“My brother didn't even own a cell phone,” Nichole said.
“I mean, my brother didn't really know anybody from
that
side of town. He was at the house with Marcus. He was unfamiliar with a lot of Marcus's friends.”
There was never any talk within the family that drugs could have played a role in the murders. They were not naïve people, however; or ignorant to the reality of a kid in this day and age out in the world. Any parent or sibling knew that wherever a teenage or twentysomething party loomed—be it downtown Houston, Texas; Ogden, Utah; New York City; Bethlehem, Pennsylvania; Greenwich, Connecticut; the sticks; the burbs; the hood; anywhere—there was likely going to be a buffet of drugs.
This savage crime had the earmarks of emotion behind it. The killer (or killers) was angry. He or she had made it personal. It was clear the killer(s) had known one, two, or perhaps all of these kids; after all, revenge is one of the top three motivators for murder, right there behind love and money.
Regardless of why they were killed, there was the overwhelming task ahead of dealing with it. Nichole's mother called family members to the house.
The police, according to Nichole, were not giving them much information. In fact, she added, one investigator was trying to say it was, in not so many words, likely that the murders were “Adelbert's fault.” This made matters worse for a family coping with the death of two children. At one time, Adelbert's dad was asked to take a polygraph, which he declined to do after speaking with his lawyer.
“It made us feel horrible,” Nichole remembered. “Just horrible!”
So there was some disunion between HPD and the Sánchez family as the investigation continued and the Sánchezes went about making plans to bury Adelbert.
Because such an outpouring of grief and show of support was expected, the funeral home staging Adelbert's wake and funeral had set back a few funerals. And the turnout didn't disappoint. Hundreds came (same as with the other three victims' funerals). When a young person dies, a community stares into the face of its own mortality. You're dying, essentially, the moment you arrive on the planet. Sometimes that process is sped up by cancer or heart disease or any number of ailments; other times it's just in the nature of God calling you home early, if you're a believer, or your ticket being pulled. But the sudden death of a child—no one can prepare for that. It is debilitating, numbing, and shakes you to the core.
Adelbert's family wanted to bury him with class. Adelbert had always wanted this one specific type of Houston Astros baseball team jersey, a white-, orange-, and yellow-colored shirt, with a big star off center. It was something Adelbert had talked about but never got around to buying. So the family agreed he needed to be buried in that jersey.
“He had been begging my mom to buy him one,” Nichole said. “He wasn't into suits, ties, dress shirts, and the like. So my mom didn't want to bury him in clothing that wasn't him.”
So Adelbert was buried in his Astros jersey, a Houston Astros ball cap placed next to him, and his pallbearers all wore the black Astros jerseys with stars.
With all four victims in the ground, the reality of life without them began to settle on family and friends. Nichole probably spoke for all the families when she said life would never be the same again. Birthdays. Christmases. Fourth of July celebrations. Three Kings Day. Family gatherings. Births. And even deaths, too. There, invisible and obvious, weighing everyone down, the memory of a loved one not being able to take part in the affair. It's like having a piece of your soul stolen; you just don't know what part. It's hard to figure out what, exactly, hurts more: the loss itself, how the person was taken, or the simple fact that he was here one day—talking, joking, loving, laughing—and the next . . . gone. Vanished like dust. There's no filling that void. There's no scratching an itch you cannot find. It will
always
be there. And you'll never quite understand or entirely accept it. Time doesn't heal this wound—it only stops the pain from completely destroying you.
 
 
AN INVESTIGATION SUCH
as the one HPD's Homicide Division was looking at postmurder could get out of control quickly. It took a delicate hand to keep things under control. Dead people—especially victims of murder—reveal a story; their lives, told from the grave, paint a picture. Working example: On July 22, 2003, four days after the murders, HPD got word of a man, Jason Uolla, who had been beaten with a baseball bat and left for dead in the parking lot of the apartment complex where he lived. Uolla had attended Marcus's funeral. He hung around with Marcus. He knew Adelbert through Marcus.
He was known as “JU”; and he was someone HPD had been looking at, without telling the families, as a potential suspect.
“He was on the radar screen . . . for the killing,” one detective said.
Ladd was focused on JU. In talking to many of the people inside a local group of dope dealers, HPD learned that Marcus was looking to become what one detective described as a “big-time dealer,” according to JU. The supplier JU used, whom JU viewed as one of the biggest connections in the Houston area, turned out to be nothing more than a mule for the
Los Zetas
in Mexico and had been, HPD confirmed, skimming off the top of whatever load he transported for the
Los Zetas
. The
Zetas,
as they are known, according to government sources, is “the most technologically advanced, sophisticated and dangerous cartel operating in Mexico” today. This is a gang, it should be noted, that does not negotiate. They do not tolerate theft. They do not take kindly to punk kids trying to rip them off, or skimming from the top. They don't ask questions. They kill you. Period.
JU's connection was ultimately whacked himself, along with his girlfriend inside a Clear Lake City hotel. The HPD knew that JU, Marcus “and even Adelbert” were naïve to the fact that they were messing with big-time players in the drug world.
Now JU lay in a hospital bed, his skull beaten so badly with a baseball bat that he had been transferred to a second hospital, where a neurosurgeon was waiting to operate and relieve pressure accumulating on the young man's brain.
It was always tough for a cop to get information out of friends and family gathering at a hospital, milling about the waiting area, wondering whether to plan a celebration or funeral, trying to come to terms with the idea that a loved one, no matter what he's done throughout his life, was inside an operating room, fighting. Nonetheless, a quadruple homicide had taken place—and the trail led to JU.
Ladd did some digging and found out that JU had gone over to a friend's house (a girl who had dated Adelbert at one time and had been with him recently). As the first story of what happened went, JU was there with his girlfriend (a dancer at the Club Atlantis, another Houston area strip joint). They fell asleep. At one point during the night, JU went out to his car to get some clothes. Someone—or a group of people—must have been waiting for him. Because, one source claimed, “unknown suspects” came up and “struck [JU] with a baseball bat.” The attack took place, HPD was certain, inside the parking lot of the Bayridge Apartments, in League City, just south of Clear Lake.
A League City patrol officer had interviewed JU's sister at the hospital.
“He's in critical condition,” she said. The girl was a mess. Crying. Shaking. Unsure of whether her brother was going to pull through. The brain can only take so many shots without sustaining irreversible damage. If JU made it through, was he going to be in a vegetative state?
“Any idea what happened?” the officer asked.
“None . . . but I'm concerned about a possible tie to what happened in Clear Lake because Jason was a friend of . . . Marcus's.”
“They knew each other well?”
“Jason had seen Marcus two hours before the murders!” she said, impassioned by this piece of information. The girl also mentioned how she was under the impression that the cases were related because she had heard that one of the victims in Clear Lake had received similar injuries.
This was true, Ladd knew.
JU's friend had taken him to the hospital. An officer contacted the friend and interviewed him in another section of the hospital, where he sat with JU's brother. Word had since come down that there was a good chance JU would pull through the operation, but there was no telling how he would be afterward, or how long it would be before he was alert enough to speak.
“We just don't know,” the doctor said.
JU's buddy explained what happened at Bayridge that night. He knew because he was there and had seen it. The story HPD had gotten earlier (JU heading out to his car to get some clothes) was wrong.
There was a party, the kid explained. He had also passed out, same as JU and JU's girlfriend, who had woken the friend up at about four in the morning and told him that JU was hurt badly, bleeding all over the place, out in the parking lot.
“I walked out,” he explained, “and saw that Jason was bleeding from lacerations to the left side of the head.”
“Was Jason awake then?”
“Yeah . . . yeah . . . he was conscious and aware of his surroundings.”
“Did you two talk?”
“I offered to take him to the hospital, but he declined.”
But then came a different story from what JU's girlfriend had given police. As JU's friend explained, JU didn't head outside to his car to grab a change of clothes. He and another guy at the party, Brad Carroll (pseudonym), asked JU to go out into the parking lot at about 3:00 or 3:30
A.M.
“to look at a new ‘system' in his car,” a stereo with subwoofers and enough power to shake the windows of the car next to it at a stoplight.
“What happened when they got out there?”
The friend had asked JU that very question before JU passed out and was taken away to the hospital. “[JU] told me that when he went to go look inside the car, he was attacked from behind with a metal tube or baseball bat.”
“Did he see any of his attackers?”
“Yeah, yeah. . . . He said he turned around to block the attack and saw that it was Taz Herald (pseudonym) striking him. He also said he believed it was Brad who lured him outside to facilitate the attack and that Taz was waiting for him outside in the bushes. He saw them both running away from the scene after the attack. They left in Taz's vehicle, because Brad left his car there.”
“What type of car was it they left in?”
“Ah . . . um, a green Plymouth or Dodge. Brad's car is a blue Cadillac with paper plates.”
Names, car models, times. This was the type of information investigators wanted.
It wasn't until an hour after the attack, when JU began to sweat and vomit, that they decided to take him to the hospital. JU didn't want to go. In the car on the way, though, he passed out. By the time they got to the emergency room (ER), JU was going into convulsions.
What was the connection between JU, Brad, and Taz?
the investigator wondered.
Turned out that Brad and Taz were best friends and “had a long-standing feud” with JU and JU's brothers. Taz had even “jumped” JU a few months before the attack and had sent JU to the hospital. It all stemmed from a beating JU had put on Taz in Seabrook some months ago, and had been ultimately arrested for. It appeared this was retaliation for that beat-down, not something that was in the least bit related to the Clear Lake case. Both Taz and Brad, however, were at Marcus Precella's candlelight vigil a few nights before the baseball bat/metal pipe attack on JU and had “mad dogged” JU when they ran into him. Mad dogging is a term often associated with gay men staring at each other and locking eyes, but can also be used as an urban way to describe giving someone you are feuding with the “evil eye,” if you will, letting him or her know that their “time” is coming.
Arrest warrants were issued for Brad and Taz.
Meanwhile, the following morning, JU was “able to talk,” surprisingly, and had even requested a sit-down with police.
JU admitted to the ongoing feud with Taz and his brother. He said he had, in fact, jumped him. Taz had called JU, he said, on the day of Marcus's candlelight vigil and said, “I don't like you, but on this day, we should squash it for the event.”
It
being the feud between them. They should act civil, in other words, for the sake of the vigil and respect to the families. “Just stay away from me,” Taz said.

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