Wasted (33 page)

Based on Justin Thomas’s testimony alone, Sheral Cole wanted to give him the electric chair, but that wasn’t a possibility. The state hadn’t sought the death penalty. Jurors are much less likely to convict if the possibility of death is involved.

In less than an hour, the jurors assessed punishment.

Kim LeBlanc went to listen. She walked into the courtroom. She sat down next to Anita Morales. Regina’s friends stared.

“I’m sorry,” Kim said to Anita. “I was shocked when you talked to me the other day. That’s why I didn’t say anything. I didn’t know what to say. You threw me off guard. But thank you for saying that. You know, I’m doing better now.”

Kim continued to talk about herself. Then she looked around the courtroom.

“Justin’s such an asshole,” she said. “What do you think will happen to him?”

Morales was in shock. To her, it seemed that LeBlanc spoke as if she’d never had anything to do with Justin Thomas.

“Who’s that?” asked Kim, leaning close to Anita.

“Dorothy Brown.”

“Oh, that’s Justin’s ex-girlfriend,” Kim said.

 

 

“We, the jury, having found the defendant, Justin Thomas, guilty of the offense of Murder, assess his punishment at confinement in the Institutional Division of the Texas Department of Criminal Justice for life.”

It was the maximum possible sentence—life in prison with parole possible after thirty years.

 

 

Judge Fuller asked the jurors if they wanted to talk to the prosecutors and defense attorneys. “Yes,” they said, “we have some questions.”

They all had the same question. “Why did Justin testify?”

“Because it’s his right, and he wanted to,” Sawyer and Ganne answered. They also told the jurors that they had pleaded with him not to testify, but that Thomas had insisted.

From that, Ledenbach surmised that Thomas had believed that, if he testified, he could convince the jurors that he was innocent.

“Why didn’t Justin’s father testify?” Ledenbach asked, stepping onto an item that all the jurors had wondered about. They’d guessed that Justin must have been guilty if his own father hadn’t supported him.

“We couldn’t put him on the stand because if Gregg Cox had asked him, ‘Did you do drugs with Justin?’ he would have had to say, ‘Yes,’” Sawyer answered.

“Why did we have such a highly educated jury?”

“Because it’s a very technical case. We wanted jurors who would understand the DNA evidence and take it for its scientific value,” said Cox.

“Yes,” agreed Sawyer, “it was a very technical case, and we wanted jurors who would listen to the facts.”

The meeting with jurors and lawyers lasted fifteen minutes. Their question for Cox and Van Winkle was, “What are you going to do about Kim LeBlanc?”

Even though Greg Ledenbach believed Kim, he also believed that she should be indicted—that Regina Hartwell’s murder wouldn’t be closed until Kim LeBlanc went to trial.

 

 

Regina Hartwell’s murder will never be completely closed. It still affects lives.

Within two months of his son’s conviction, Jim Thomas attempted suicide, now a pattern on both sides of Justin’s family.

He was found lying in his dream home, near death from an overdose of pills. Helicopters rushed to the Garfield house and flew Jim to the hospital. He lived, and signed himself into Pavilion Hospital—for treatment for depression and alcoholism. Jim Thomas had realized that Regina Hartwell hadn’t been his son’s first murder, and he couldn’t live with that knowledge.

Jim told Bonnie, “If this had been your son, I wouldn’t have stayed the way you did for Justin.”

Bonnie’s heart ached.

Kim LeBlanc’s plea to the Regina Hartwell murder charge was postponed more than twenty times. The following Memorial Day weekend, nine months after she had testified against her former lover at the murder trial of Regina Hartwell, Kim LeBlanc wed. She married a slim, young, blond boy with an appearance similar to Tim Gray, her best friend. They live in Houston, home to Kim’s natural father and Regina’s father.

Mark Hartwell, according to Regina’s friends, has “made a three-sixty.” He is loving, kind, and tender toward them; he wants to be a father to them. They all love him.

Cathy LeBlanc, Kim’s mother, remarried. Prior to the wedding, she expressed that she felt guilty that she wasn’t a strong person, still replaying the words of Ken LeBlanc.

Judy Thomas, Justin’s mother, began psychological therapy.

 

 

On June 11, 1997, John C. Carsey, Kim LeBlanc’s high-powered attorney, filed motion after motion in Travis County, Texas. The motions were to suppress Kim’s hidden videotape questioning by the Austin Police Department.

The next month, Justin Thomas wrote his father, who by then no longer communicated with his son, and asked for $20,000 for a defense attorney.

Days later, and just weeks after the second anniversary of Regina Hartwell’s murder, Jim Thomas committed suicide. He used one of Justin’s guns.

He couldn’t be there for his son like Bonnie was.

On October 13, 1997, District Judge Bob Perkins ruled that the police videotape of Kim LeBlanc was inadmissible. She had, indeed, asked for an attorney seven times. The police, according to Carsey’s motion, violated LeBlanc’s rights according to the Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments of the U.S. Constitution.

On November 3, 1997, the state dropped the murder charge against Kim LeBlanc due to insufficient evidence.

But Regina Hartwell’s burned-to-a-crisp corpse will never be dropped from the jurors’ minds. That image of a blackened monkey carved out of hard lava just won’t leave.

 

 

“Regina wanted so much to protect Kim and keep her safe. Now Kim is clean, getting her life together, and going to school. And to me, it cost Regina her life. But if Regina were here now, she’d say, ‘That’s the way I want it’ because she cared that much about Kim,” said Anita Morales.

“And you know what? The drama queen that Regina was, I don’t think she would have wanted to go out any other way but this dramatically. That was Regina.”

I am constantly asked why I wrote this book. My answer is always the same. Because it’s the story of abuse—be it alcohol, drug, sexual, physical or emotional—and how it destroys lives unless admitted and faced.

Three people in this story were involved in alcohol, drug, sexual, physical and/or emotional abuse. One is dead. One is serving a life sentence in prison. One eventually admitted and faced her abuses and is sober and a functioning member of society.

I wrote this book because on the surface I have nothing in common with these people, but scratch below the surface and my friends, my family, my society and myself have too much in common with Kim, Regina and Justin.

Regina, you are not forgotten. You are still affecting lives. Thank God, there are steps to a life as beautiful as your smile.

 

 

Thanks goes to Deborah Hamilton-Lynne who brought me this story, Gregg Cox who gave me an interview before there was a book deal, Monica Harris who picked up on the idea, Paul Dinas who bought it, Jane Dystel who closed it, and Karen Haas who edited it.

Thanks also to Gail Van Winkle, Sgt. David Carter, Joel Silva, K.C. Anderson, Patrick Ganne, Jim Sawyer, Bonnie Thomas, John Carsey, Sheral Cole, Greg Ledenbach, Tommy Swate and, yes, Justin Thomas. Justin, you are always in my thoughts and prayers.

 

 

A special thanks to Regina’s friends—Ynema Mangum (and Sheila), “Pam Carson,” Amy Seymoure, “Sam,” “Kyle Blake,” “Brad Wilson,” and “Mike White.”

A very special and heartfelt thanks goes to Jeremy Barnes and, particularly, “Anita Morales.” I couldn’t have written this book without you both.

I also could not have written it without my friends—Deb, Beth Martin Brown, Kathy Greenwood, Susie Craig, Kathe Williams, Jane Emily, Frank Campbell, Cynthia Clawson, Patti Berry and the Austin Writers’ League. Thanks, too, to my heroes Ben Masselink, of the University of Southern California Masters of Professional Writing program, and George Holmes.

But most of all thanks to my family—Mommie, Siba, Jeane, Robert, Townie, Kathy, and Lavonia. You’ve given me support that only God knows. I guess that means we’re stuck with each other.

Justin Thomas sat in his Texas prison whites, the only apparel he’d worn since his conviction for murdering Regina Hartwell more than three years earlier. His short-sleeved pullover tunic of heavy cotton revealed the ever-increasing number of tattoos on his lean torso. The matching buttonless, zipperless, and beltless pants covered his hard, tattooed legs. The date was January 26, 2000, the start of a new century, a time when some thought life would end and others hoped for a new beginning.

“Specifically,” Thomas questioned, “what does your office intend for me?” He coolly watched Martin Silva, an investigator with the Riverside County, California, District Attorney’s Office.

Justin Thomas was one of those who hoped for a new beginning. “I wanna be with my kids, you know what I’m saying? I got something out there.” He really believed this. “I got goals I wanna obtain, man.” But Justin Thomas’s life before Regina Hartwell was about to come back to get him— first creating a new beginning, then, seven years later, a whole new ending.

Martin Silva had flown from California to Texas to interview Thomas about the murder of Rafael “Rafa” Noriega, the very same Rafa whom Dorothy Brown had accused Thomas of killing. “Well,” Silva said, audibly exhaling, “we’re—we’re probably gonna, we’re probably gonna see if there’s enough to, uh, if—if—if there’s gonna be enough to charge you.”

“Charge me?”

In fact, on June 30, 1999, Riverside, California, authorities had issued a warrant for the arrest of Thomas for the murder of Noriega. The warrant carried the added weight of serious felony because a firearm had been used, special circumstances—there had been a robbery during commission of the murder—as well the burden of a previous conviction, the murder of Regina Hartwell.

Silva didn’t tell Thomas that. What he said was “There’s a lot of finger-pointing. . . .” Then he mentioned the name Kelly Smith. “You don’t remember Kelly Smith? . . . Man! It’s the kid that drove up there with you guys. With you an-an-and Dorothy.”

“Drove up where?” Thomas tried to sound innocent.

“Up to the egg ranch—the skinny kid.”

“Skinny kid?” Thomas replied. There was a sly grin on his face. Thomas insisted that he was in Texas at the time of Rafael Noriega’s murder—with his father and grandmother, trying to kick his crystal meth habit so that he could repair his failing marriage to his then-wife, Dawn. He also swore he was in the military when Noriega disappeared.

Neither was true.

He further insisted that he didn’t have anything to hide, though he was nervous. “Because I got screwed over in this case ... by trying to help Kim out, you know what I’m saying? And I know how easy it is—”

Silva laughed.

“—for the DA’s office to manipulate the law, man, you know what I’m saying?”

“Well, I—”

“Goddamn! . . . You know what I’m saying? But . . . it keeps popping up.”

The Noriega case had popped up in 1994, 1996, and 1998. By then, Thomas had thought there wasn’t enough evidence to corroborate Brown’s story and believed the case against him had been dropped.

“You just can’t make things disappear,” Silva said.

And they didn’t. On June 13, 2000, nearly one year after the California warrant had been issued, Thomas stood in a Riverside County courtroom. He’d been extradited from Texas to the “Golden State” to face the Noriega murder charges. Thomas pleaded not guilty and was held without bail.

On July 5, 2000, five years to the day that he was incarcerated for Regina Hartwell’s murder, Thomas’s first California public defender asked to be removed from the case. Pete Scalisi, a veteran defender in capital murder cases, replaced him. On December 7, 2001, the state of California announced its intention to seek the death penalty. That began a nonstop series of postponements that would take Thomas through more than a dozen judges, two district attorneys, as well as three prosecutors. Twice, Deputy District Attorney Chuck Hughes took over the prosecution. He became obsessed with putting Thomas on death row.

Thomas was equally obsessed with fighting his Texas conviction. On December 22, 2006, more than ten years after he’d been pronounced guilty in Austin, the California court allowed Thomas to sit as co-counsel on his Texas case, as he hoped for an appeal, still claiming he did not kill Regina Hartwell. By the beginning of 2007, Thomas wanted to fire his attorneys and be his own lawyer on the California case too. On February 23, 2007, the court granted Thomas’s motion—Scalisi and Darryl Exum, who had since joined the California defense team, were relegated to the role of standby counsel.

Approximately two weeks later, the court deposited taxpayer money in Thomas’s trust account so that he could buy a phone card. The card was only supposed to pay for phone calls that would help him prepare for his defense. Thomas used them for other purposes. He was becoming an old pro at manipulating the judicial system for his benefit.

By August 2007, after sitting in the Riverside County jail for more than seven years, the longest time of any inmate in the jail’s history, Thomas told reporters from the
Riverside Press-Enterprise
that he spent his time studying the law and he’d just received a stack of legal manuals, which the court had purchased for him. Right about that same time, Thomas relinquished his role as attorney.

But the morning of October 3, 2007, the day his trial was to begin, the defense asked to withdraw as counsel. They were in constant conflict with their client. Their motion was denied. The case was moved a final time to Judge Terrence R. Boren, a cold case strike force judge from Marin County, California. The following week, the prosecution presented Judge Boren with a motion to have Thomas appear in restraints in front of the jury every day of the trial. Hughes wanted the defendant in restraints because of his reputed Mexican Mafia connections.

On October 29, 2007, fifteen years after Rafael Noriega’s decomposing body had been discovered, opening arguments began in
The People of the State of California
v.
Justin Heath Thomas,
now spelled “Heath” rather than “Heith.” (Thomas had thought his name was spelled one way; his birth certificate spelled it another.)

Not wearing restraints, Thomas sat before the jury; his hair hung past his shoulders and was styled in two huge poof balls. Thomas’s attorneys had asked him to cut his hair or tie it into a ponytail to be tucked neatly inside his shirt so that he’d look more acceptable to the jury. They wanted to keep him out of the death chamber. Thomas had strategically disobeyed their desires. He had his own plan. Thus, with his hair combed in rebellious poofs, he listened for thirty-four minutes as Deputy District Attorney Chuck Hughes presented his opening arguments. Hughes’s case strategy was to retry the Texas case.

The defense declined to make an opening statement.

The prosecution began its case in chief by providing the jury with color photographs of a wooden pallet with dust-coated shoes protruding from it and of Noriega’s decomposed body, which lay partially covered by desert rocks and dirt. Hughes also showed the jurors a photograph of a watch, a bracelet, and a cross on a chain. He added a color photograph of four bags containing a white substance—drugs.

He next showed the jurors a sealed bag, which was then unsealed. A .45-caliber casing rolled out. Whereas Regina Hartwell had been stabbed, Rafael Noriega had been shot—as many as five times. And whereas Regina Hartwell’s body had been burned, no one could confirm that Noriega’s had been burned. His body was decomposed too badly. Those were things Thomas’s defense attorneys wanted the jury to understand.

To end that first day of prosecutorial testimony, Deputy District Attorney V. Hightower stepped into the witness-box. Hughes read aloud the Texas prosecutor’s questions that Dorothy Brown had been asked in 1996. Hightower read the Texas answers. Dorothy Brown was unavailable to testify in this trial. She’d been killed in a police shoot-out in Orange County, California, in 2004. Hughes also read the Texas defense team’s questions to Brown because Justin Thomas’s California attorneys refused to participate in the prosecution’s courtroom re-creation.

The following morning, Hughes began retrying the Texas case. The date was October 30, 2007, four days before Justin Thomas’s 36
^th
birthday and four days before the tenth anniversary of the day the state of Texas dropped its murder charges against Kim LeBlanc. Hughes called Kim LeBlanc to the stand.

For LeBlanc, Thomas wore his hair down and free, like romance novel cover model Fabio. Thomas was leaner than he’d been in 1995. His brow was a bit more prominent. Squiggles of wrinkles lined his forehead. Gray circles aged his eyes. Still, he was handsome for a man who had spent thirteen years incarcerated, eleven of those in administrative segregation.

The pretty, petite, blond cheerleader had grown into a slightly chubby, married thirty-one-year-old with long, warm brown hair highlighted with blond. Justin Thomas thought she looked stunning. He’d always told her she’d look beautiful with long hair, and what he saw on that witness stand confirmed his every belief. She was sworn in as Kimberley Reeder. She tossed her highlighted locks flirtatiously. He fell in love all over again, in love before the prosecutor had even asked Kim LeBlanc Reeder if someone had admitted to her that he had killed Regina Hartwell.

“Justin Thomas,” she answered. Just like in Texas, Kim LeBlanc Reeder had been granted immunity from prosecution in return for her testimony against Thomas. Gregg Cox had facilitated the California immunity agreement. LeBlanc Reeder pointed to her former lover. “He’s wearing a green blouse with burgundy tie.”

Thomas, whose upper body was now covered in even more tattoos—one depicting a skull full of nails, others showing fanged demons, as well as women with long, flowing tresses—was still loving Kim LeBlanc.

“He told you that he killed Rafa in California?”

“Right.”

“And why did he say he killed Rafa?”

“Because he was a narc.”

It was the same reason Kim LeBlanc had given for Regina Hartwell’s murder in Texas. And from then on, Hughes focused his questioning of Kim LeBlanc Reeder on Austin, Texas, July 1994 to July 1995, events that happened nearly two years and more after the murder of Rafael Noriega.

He placed a photograph of Regina Hartwell on the Elmo projector that sat between the defense and prosecution’s tables. The Elmo beamed the image over the five courtroom televisions. LeBlanc Reeder turned to her right and stared at the photograph on a small black Panasonic TV. She had no reaction to the picture of Regina.

Hughes placed a photograph of the young LeBlanc on the Elmo. She looked at it on the TV screen and turned away. It was the same black-eyed, red-nosed, sickly photo the police had taken of her on July 5, 1995. She began to cry. “I need a break.”

As Kim LeBlanc Reeder exited the courtroom for her requested recess, others in the room focused on the fact that she hadn’t reacted at all, not one iota, to the picture of her dead friend, Regina Hartwell. But she had wept over her own wasted image.

 

 

After court reconvened, Chuck Hughes asked LeBlanc Reeder if she had an idea what Justin Thomas planned to do to Regina Hartwell. She believed he was going to kill her, she said. She swore she didn’t want Regina murdered; she just wanted more drugs. Likewise, she didn’t phone the police because she wanted to get high. “Even though I knew it was going to cost her her life.”

Hughes took her through the disposal of Hartwell’s body. For the most part, LeBlanc Reeder answered every detailed question, including her belief that Jim Thomas, Justin’s father, knew that Regina Hartwell’s dead body was in her Jeep.

Then, under Hughes’s questioning, she reported that the last time she used drugs was on July 5, 1995, the day the Austin police had picked her up for questioning. After completing rehab, she “went back to college, joined the army, got out of the army, figured out what I wanted to be, finished my degree, and now I’m a research scientist.”

“What subject do you research?” Hughes said.

“Cancer,” she replied.

Justin Thomas sat up straighter. He was so proud of Kim. He’d dated a girl who had become a cancer research scientist.

She was a mother too.

 

 

On Halloween, 2007, the young mother endured a four-hour cross-examination by Pete Scalisi. Would you have testified against Mr. Thomas without immunity?” Scalisi asked regarding the Regina Hartwell murder trial.

LeBlanc Reeder said she didn’t know. “I was pretty scared.” She later added, “I would have been incriminating myself for murder.”

Scalisi asked if on the very first night she’d met Regina Hartwell, had she thought Hartwell was attracted to her in a romantic, sexual way?

“I did.”

“And were you interested in her in that way?”