Carlo Vartinelli, Esq.? First degree sex offender coaches Joe Gentz

Joe Gentz told the cops that Bob Bashara hired him to kill Bob’s wife, Jane, for $2,000 and a used Cadillac in January 2012.

Now, Gentz has recanted the statements that led to Bashara’s conviction in 2014 for first-degree murder.  Just before Bashara’s trial, Gentz announced he would not testify against Bashara, and word came down that Gentz was coached by fellow inmates to hold out for a better deal from prosecutors, who refused to play his game.

We now have a pretty good idea who the leader of that troupe of jailhouse lawyers was; Carlo Vartinelli, who was convicted in 1992 of first-degree sexual conduct and sentenced to life in Houghton County.

The Oakland Press has the most complete story about a recent affidavit from Gentz in which he recants the element of his confession in which he claimed Bashara forced him to murder Jane at gunpoint, a story Gentz told several people, including his family in the days after the murder.

It appears Vartinelli has ridden shotgun through all of Gentz’s antics since Gentz was committed to the state prison system in 2013 for second-degree murder.

From the Oakland Press story:

“In his motion, [Bashara’s appellate lawyer Ronald] Ambrose states he received word of the new version Gentz was offering through a private investigator who obtained it from Carlo Vartinelli, a prisoner serving a life sentence for a criminal sexual conduct conviction out of Houghton County.

Online court records show Vartinelli, 57, is somewhat of a jailhouse lawyer, having filed numerous on various issues in federal court. He was the one who compiled the affidavit with Gentz, according to court records after having several conversations, documents show.”

You can read one of those filings here, to get a picture of how Vartinelli works. 

In it, he speaks of the MDOC’s “torturous” conduct regarding his many physical ailments. I’m no defender of MDOC – far from it – but this should give you an idea of the brain trust that is driving today’s news.

Prison: “Everyone thinks of escaping; they just won’t admit it”

Sarah Pender, right. 

The two convicted murderers who escaped from a New York state prison last week are running around freaking everyone out. Stories of fearful residents in areas all over the state are blowing up.

Chances are pretty good they’ll be caught in short order.

Why? They’re male, to start with.

Every so often we hear of an escaped convict who made the break only to be found years later, living a peaceful life as an upstanding member of a community, usually far away from the prison.

Most of the time – not all of course – they’re female.  People don’t seem to fall apart when it’s a female escapee.  In a CNN splash on the escape, the news group pronounces a dozen top manhunts. All are male.

This list of five crazy-ass escapes from 2013 is pretty funny; all are male escapees.

Think of Sarah Pender, the convicted murderer who broke out of an Indiana prison in 2008. She stayed gone for 136 days, befuddling everyone. In the book Girl, Wanted: The Chase for Sarah Pender, I outline how she eluded the cops and how she spent her four months of freedom.

She did in best by blending in. She found a guy who would help her out but the couple cavorted in casinos, ate in restaurants, and she worked a job as a bookkeeper for a Chicago construction firm.

This, despite the fact that she was on American’s Most Wanted several times.

“Everyone thinks of escaping; they just won’t admit it.”

Pender told that to a TV crew in 2009, not long after she was captured after spending 136 days on the run.

Of course. Who doesn’t want to escape from prison?

It’s a little easier than anyone wants to admit. Pender was trading sex to a guard, Scott Spitler, who provided her with some civilian clothes, a cell phone with which to coordinate her break and, as a parting gift, drove her through the gates in the back of a prison van.

Spitler got eight years in 2009 for assisting. He served in county jail, an easier place to deal with.  The authorities claimed it was for his protection.

From the book, Girl Wanted:

Sarah Pender had outwitted an entire prison system that is designed to avoid exactly such flights and had done so with a plan so simple, yet flawless, that it took two hours for prison staffers to determine that she was gone. The usual head count at 4 p.m. showed one prisoner short. As according to policy, a second count was done and again showed one inmate short.

At that point, all inmates were ordered back to their dorms for a one-by-one count. It was a top bunk along the south side that was empty in one dormitory: Sarah Pender was gone.

And the caper also had serendipity all over it. Sarah walked past an unmanned security checkpoint. New security cameras were slated to be installed the week after her brazen walkout, cameras that might have caught her in the act. The gate allowing her to meet Spitler was open. The guard at the gate leaving the prison failed to conduct a search of the van in which she was hiding, allowing her to leave the facility grounds. It was a festival of incompetence and corruption, and Sarah was both the leader and beneficiary of the fiasco.

Bashara pushes appeal forward, sends email insisting he is innocent

I received another email from Bob Bashara this week, the fourth since he was sentenced to life in prison in January.
He continues to maintain his innocence and notes that he has filed some motions that he hopes will bring what he insists is truth to the situation.

In a previous email I asked him about the 472 phone calls between he and Joe Gentz, the man who confessed to killing Jane Bashara.  The calls took place, according to testimony, between August 2011 through January 2012.

Bashara says that almost 70 percent of those calls were under 25 to 35 seconds, which would indicate there was no connection made.

According to Stan Brue, the federal agent who analyzed the phone records for the prosecution, the calls originated with Gentz two-thirds of the time through December 2011. In January, Bashara made 67 calls to Gentz as opposed to 32 from Gentz to Bashara.  Jane was murdered January 24, 2012.

His appeal is moving through the system and it will take a long time.

The trial transcripts are trickling in, including the 40 days of trial. The analysis of them will be part of the work of Ronald Ambrose, who is Bashara’s appellate lawyer. 

"I will never, ever stop fighting for justice and the truth, until my hands are raw, blood comes from eyes and I take my last breath, " Bashara said at his sentencing hearing in January, when he received a mandatory life sentence for first-degree murder.

I’ve also talked on the phone with Gentz, who told me of his life as something of a wanderer. He said he worked as a civilian for the military for a while and as an AB, which is an able-bodied seaman in the Merchant Marines. As you can imagine, there's more to it than that. 

The book, Murder in Grosse Pointe Park: Privilege, Adultery and the Killing of Jane Bashara (Penguin/Berkley), is scheduled for a fall release.

BDSM community and the release of 50 Shades adaptation in the wake of Bashara

Film version of book release 2.13.15

The Detroit Free Press today has an excellent tie-in to the release of the film version of the book 50 Shades of Grey, which is charting at number two in Amazon's contemporary romance category this morning.

“Every time Grey's character took a hand or a belt to Steele's backside or bound her wrists, I thought about how he could be a Bashara in training — a younger, far more attractive version of the Grosse Pointe Park businessman sentenced to life in prison for hiring a hitman to kill his wife in 2012 because he wanted to live out his sadomasochistic fantasies unencumbered,” writes columnist Kristen Jordan Shamus.

As I worked on the upcoming book, Murder in Grosse Pointe Park: Adultery, Privilege, and the Killing of Jane Bashara (Penguin/Berkley, fall 2015), I spoke with numerous people tied to the lifestyle in and around Detroit’s BDSM and alternative lifestyle scene. All were critical of the way the lifestyle was used by the state as a motivation to murder. 

“Bob’s case put the lifestyle in an unfortunate light,” Rick Falcinelli, a longtime member of the scene, told me in January after he completed his testimony in Bashara’s two-month long trial. He said critics of the lifestyle are “going to get another boost…in February with the misinterpretations of a movie version of 50 Shades of Grey.”

“Ever since the book came out, we’ve been laughing," Falcinelli says. "It misrepresents the way people behave. The book is written for entertainment, not reality, and they write it to play to stereotype.”

Among the poorly portrayed elements is the main character, a wealthy guy named Christian Grey, who woos the lead female character.

“The book does not explain the mindset and motivation for” getting into the lifestyle, Falcinelli says.

Mindset and motivation for checking out the alternative lifestyle is explored in the Bashara book, which is slated for a September release. Why spoil the surprise?

The prosecution based much of its case on Bashara’s participation in the BDSM scene and his hopes to start a new life with his BDSM partner, Rachel Gillett. To do so with freedom, prosecutors said, he killed Jane, his wife of 26 years.

Bob Bashara: “What’s BDSM got to do with it?”

 

Flyer for Bashara's first business enterprise 

The Bashara trial is about to end, with closing statements coming Wednesday, and now we’ll see how the state did. It’s been almost three years since Jane Bashara was murdered, her life snuffed out in her garage under a boot on the foot of Joe Gentz, a man who says he was paid by Bob Bashara to kill Jane. 

Gentz is doing 17-to-28 for second-degree murder in the case.

For Bashara, the state wants a first-degree conviction, saying that without his actions, Jane would be alive. He's also charged with conspiracy to commit first degree murder, solicitation of murder, obstruction of justice and witness intimidation.

It’s been a drawn out trial, with 74 witnesses and typically graphic exhibits – a classic murder trial spiced with the BDSM world that Bashara admits he was part of during his last years with Jane.

“They’re using the fact that I had this alternative lifestyle as motive for me wanting to harm my wife,” Bashara told me one day last year. We spoke many times on the phone after he was sent for prison for soliciting the murder of Gentz. A lot of those conversations will show up in the book I’m wrapping up, Murder in Grosse Pointe Park: Privilege, Adultery and the Killing of Jane Bashara, which comes out on Penguin/Berkley in the fall.   

The state claims that he wanted Jane out of the way so he could have a life with his girlfriend, Rachel Gillett, who shared an affinity for the lifestyle with Bob. Also, the state claims that money issues were pressuring Bashara and Jane had a fat IRA that he would be privy to if she were to die.

“My wife was not inhibiting me,” he told me. “If I didn’t want to have Jane, I would have simply divorced her. But I had plenty of income and money was never an issue. I was paying for two kids going to college, had cars and they got whatever they wanted.  If [daughter] Jessie wanted a $500 pair of boots, Jane got them for her.”

Investigators found statements that showed a wide gulf between the income of Bob and Jane. She made close to six figures some years as a marketing consultant and he made barely $20,000 a year as a landlord and sales rep for a chemical company.

It’s not my job, but the defense failed to note that a self-employed individual should show a low adjusted income; better for taxes. I don’t know if that was the case with Bashara, but I’m sure that fact went by the jury in a state where so many people are desperately clinging to whatever employer will have them.

The state did, however, do a good job of exposing Bashara as a bad guy in terms of character. He cheated on his wife, who was clearly intent on working things out in a troubled marriage. He was a slumlord, and a hot-headed bully by a number of accounts. There was an episode in which his daughter found an incriminating text to one of his mistresses – yes, he had more than one - on his phone and he grabbed the phone, erased it, and handed it back to her: “What text?” he said, or something similar. That stuck with me as particularly mean-spirited. Who does that?

He was also head of the local Rotary Club. Do they let any angry man run that group? The club has done its best to erase all mentions of its connection to Bashara. Was he a great guy who did you wrong? Or did he do such a good job of glad-handing and bringing in money that they put up with him? It was never quite squared in trial. 

There were some lighter moments in a dark setting. He used to go out to the golf course in ritzy Grosse Pointe and do blow and smoke weed with a buddy, and we're talking in recent yeas. That he knocked back lines and joints on the golf course of the local country club was amusing to me; I’m sure he wasn’t the only one doing such a thing.

I wrote about the case at the outset of the trial for the Daily Beast.  We’re done. The jurors will do its best to figure it out after taking nine weeks out of their lives to listen to a parade of characters, some pissed off, some amusing and a few sad depressing. 

Bashara came into the courtroom on Monday whistling, ebullient. He’s apparently confident that the state failed to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that he procured the murder. Hang on. It could get good.

No Joe Gentz: Where is the state of Michigan hiding a convicted murderer?

Joseph John Gentz

Earlier this week, I was working on a story on the Bob Bashara murder trial for the Daily Beast and realized that on September 25, I had written a letter to Joe Gentz, the man who confessed to killing Jane Bashara in January 2012.

The letter came back a week later with the words “out for writ” written on the front of the unopened envelope, meaning he has been moved somewhere else awaiting a court date.  This was at least a week in advance of jury selection, a process Gentz would have no reason to attend. I called and emailed the Michigan Department of Corrections on Monday to inquire when Gentz was moved. Predictably, in a state where the citizens are viewed by government employees as a cash cow/annoyance, no response. 

Still, I thought perhaps the prosecution would want him to be closer to the Frank Murphy Hall of Justice in downtown Detroit, where the case is being heard.

I checked the Wayne County inmate search several times Tuesday and no Joe Gentz. I called the jail on Tuesday afternoon and asked. No, Joe Gentz was not in the jail.

I asked her to double check. Again, no Gentz.

At 1:30 a.m. Wednesday, I got an email from Russ Marlan from Michigan DOC:

“This prisoner is currently housed in the Wayne County Jail as his trial will begin shortly.  He will remain at the Wayne County Jail until the conclusion of this case.  You can contact the Wayne County Sheriff Department for additional information.”

Check the jail website again. No Gentz. So the question becomes, where is Joe Gentz? He’s been in trouble since being locked up in March 2012. He has defied guards, fought with fellow inmates and in general been disruptive.

Are they hiding him to ensure he stays out of trouble in the weeks leading up to the trial? Any recent trouble would be one more of many fallible points the defense can exploit in its cross-examination of Gentz. And how much is this secretive housing costing the taxpayer?

New Salvo in Bid for Interview Tapes of Manson Acolyte Watson

Stepped in to help

The Los Angeles Police Department has violated the California Public Records Act in turning back a bid to obtain the tapes of Manson henchman Tex Watson.  The remedy is a letter from esteemed lawyer Dean Wallraff of the California Public Records Access Project. Read it here. 

From the letter: You have violated the Public Records Act by failing to respond in writing with the determination required by Pub. Res. Code § 6253(c). You continue to violate it by failing to provide the documents Mr. Miller requested. There is no reason it should take over four months for you to provide what can’t amount to more than a handful of responsive documents.

Dean stepped in to help someone from out of state, and he has little to gain from this. This should be an example to all of the other so-called First Amendment groups out there who do very very little for the public. Dean is the fourth stop for me as I searched for some help on this. 

The tapes have a tale of their own. They were partly used for Watson’s little-read book, Will You Die for Me?, published on a small press in 1978.  The tapes were recorded in 1969 after Watson was arrested in Texas in connection with the Sharon Tate-LaBianca murders in LA.

The LAPD obtained the tapes a couple of years ago and contends they are being used to investigate some unsolved crimes.

The LAPD refused a request for the tapes themselves last year.  The department then disregarded an appeal letter.

It takes a lot of work to fight operations like the LAPD who profess to care about the public but also care about protecting their pensions and maintaining a team of bureaucrats to keep the public at bay.

It’s a worthwhile battle. I hope it doesn’t end up in court, as it’s the public’s money the department would spend to wage a defense.

Sarah Pender To Return to General Prison Population

Pender in 2008, at the time of her arrest

While Sarah Pender was denied an appeal last week, she has been removed from the solitary confinement cell she has lived in since being apprehended following a prison escape in 2008, according to a report in a prisoner advocacy journal.

Pender writes in an article for Solitary Watch, a journal that examines the practice of solitary confinement in our corrections system:

I am confined to my cell 22 hours each day, and the other 2 hours am handcuffed and escorted 25 feet down the hallway to another locked room for “recreation and exercise,” though the space is only twice the size of my cell…Despite knowing that isolation can drive people insane, the mental health care here is woefully inadequate. Once a month, a mental health staff comes to ask us if we are hallucinating, hearing voices, or are suicidal. More frequent meetings can be requested, but they offer no coping skills, no therapy, no advocacy. The luckiest among us are prescribed anti-depressants to numb us from the hardest parts of being alone. I am fortunate to have incredible support from my family and friends. To pass the time, I read, write, learn and plan for the future when I can be with them again. What sanity I eek out of these letters, books, phone calls and visits is enough to sustain me just a little longer. I am mentally stable now, but my mind broke down under the weight of isolation 3 1/2 years ago, and it was a long, slow, painful process of putting myself back together.

She is living in a transition dorm before returning to general population, according to Solitary Watch. 

Pender is serving 110 years for her role in a double homicide in 2000. Pender escaped from prison in 2008 and spent 136 days hiding in plain site before being captured. My book, Girl, Wanted, details her time on the run. From the book, this is where Pender is talking to Ryan Harmon, the cop who doggedly chased her while she was temporarily free. This is from a tape I obtained in the course of my reporting:

“I don’t have a sink, and I can’t flush my toilet. I can’t open or close my door, I can’t turn off my own light. I have a video camera in my room, I can’t make phone calls, I can’t have visits. I can’t even flush my own toilet. I’m in like the suicide room . . . the other rooms can’t talk to me. My door has to be closed at all times. If I come out of my room, all the doors have to be closed. They are not allowed to talk to me. The Commissioner said as a direct order, ‘If you talk to her you’ll get written up.’ The staff can’t even talk to me. The staff can only talk to me if I am asking them for something I need, like if I need my toilet flushed or I need a pencil sharpener. Like I could not even get a pencil for like five days; I think it was more like a week. They ask me if I want ice or whatever and I can say yes. But other than that there is no conversation. They cannot talk to me like a normal person. No conversation outside my immediate needs. And if it’s like a male officer they cannot even speak to me at all unless there’s someone else there. I can’t have my own clothes in there; everyone else has their own clothes. They have to bring me mine. I just now got my hygienes. I use to not be able to brush my teeth until I took a shower and when I take a shower . . . everyone else can just get let into the shower. I have to get locked in a cage in the shower. So that I am handcuffed at all times and I have no contact with the people. If I come out of my room there has to be three people on the floor. Two officers and the third has to be a supervisor or a man. Oh, it’s insane.

“I couldn’t have any mail at all for like the first week and a half. And then when they finally came over and interviewed me . . . they finally let me have a pencil and paper and they told me I could receive mail right now but I couldn’t order commissary so I have no stamps and envelopes to send out so my parents must think like ‘What’s going on?’ You get what they feed you. . . . which is really bad food.”

Bob Bashara, the Book, Coming Soon

Bob Bashara

Last week I signed the contract to do a book on the Bob Bashara case. It will be my fourth true crime book for Penguin imprint Berkley.  The case involved the January 2012 murder of Jane Bashara, a wife and mother in Grosse Pointe Park, Mich.  Her killer was Joe Gentz, a handyman and roustabout, who confessed to the killing but alleged he was hired by Jane’s husband Bob to carry out the murder. Bob Bashara is currently serving 6 ½ years in state prison for soliciting the jailhouse murder of Gentz, and is now charged with first-degree murder in the murder of his wife.

Joe Gentz

Also part of the story – the part that drives headlines – is the fact that Bob Bashara was involved in the BDSM lifestyle, coloring the case with a “Fifty Shades of Grey” element.  A September preliminary exam  included a number of parties connected to the case testifying in lurid, colorful detail, talking of Bob's penchant for dominance. Rachel Gillett, who was Bob's girlfriend at the time of Jane Bashara’s murder, met Bob on a BDSM chat site, where he called himself Master Bob. He also had a dungeon created for his trysts in the basement of one of several buildings he owned and rented out.

I’ve worked on the book for some of the last year and it’s in good shape already, plenty of original material that comes from some deep investigation and interviews with players large and small.

I’ve talked with Bob Bashara a number of times in the last year and much of that material will be part of this book. It’s the one thing I do with every true crime book, and I expect some Detroiters, provincial to a lovable fault, will be pissed that I even present the perspective of someone everyone expects to be found guilty. I got a lot of flak when I  did press for the first book, A Slaying in the Suburbs: The Tara Grant Murder, for talking and including the views of Stephen Grant, who was convicted of killing his wife Tara. Frank Beckman on WJR was charmingly critical of including Grant in the book when I hit his show. One book store, Borders in the northern suburbs of Detroit, refused to have an event/discussion of the book. I’m pleased to say that Borders is now out of business. That’s what I call real justice. That book, by the way, has sold over 30,000 copies, not a bad performance in the true crime genre.

The Bashara trial is scheduled for March in Wayne County

. It will be quite the sensation, and could draw national interest, depending on how the news cycle is going at the time. The book will come out late 2014 or early 2015.

The Pursuit of the Tex Watson Tapes. Charles Manson Still on the Hook.

I covet the Tex Watson tapes that the Los Angeles Police Department obtained.  Yes, I’ve read the Watson prison book, Will You Die For Me? and his numerous mea cuplas. I’m sure he has a nice room in Hell waiting for him when he’s done with this life but maybe that’s just a view jaundiced by viewing the murder scene photos at Cielo Drive. 

Watson was a knife-wielding maniac that night in August 1969, and the carnage was mostly of his making. He was also the first of those charged to declare his conversion to religion.

A couple years ago, it was revealed that there are about eight hours of audio tapes from 1969 of Watson talking with Bill Boyd, a defense attorney in McKinney, Texas, about 40 miles north of Dallas. The tapes were made shortly after Watson was arrested in connection with the murders at Cielo and in Los Feliz of Rosemary and Leno La Bianca.  Here’s a good story laying it all out.

I knew Bill Boyd when I was a reporter at the McKinney Courier-Gazette in the early 90s. He was a tough guy who was still cruising on that legend of Watson, but he was also a great criminal defense guy who pissed off endless assistant prosecutors.

In September, I filed an open records request with the department for the Watson tapes.  The LAPD, taking its time, denied my request, which I could see coming.  Watson has asserted that “there are no unsolved murder committed by the Manson family,” but the LAPD appears to be looking into something related to the tapes. Or at least that’s what it is asserting in its denial. 

Last year,  LAPD Commander Andrew Smith said the tapes could hold the key to a dozen unsolved murders. It would seem that in a year, there would be some progress, which the LAPD would be happy to share. 

But t

hese tapes need to be public if there is no imminent investigation. Below is the email I sent this week in a mild appeal. This is the first salvo. It's never good to quit in these efforts and hopefully it will lead to something in the end.

If anyone is interested in seeing this through, legal eagles in particular, let me know. Maybe we can keep the LAPD honest.

November 6, 2013

Caydene Monk

Los Angeles Police Department

Discovery Section

 201 N. Los Angeles St., Space 301,

Los Angeles, Calif.  90012

RE: Public Records Act Request, Tex Watson tapes

Ms Monk

I am in receipt of your letter dated October 29, 2013 (attached) regarding my open records request of September 20, 2013 (attached).

In your response, you cite Government Code Section 6254 (f), which contends that the material I seek is exempt under the provision of investigation.

Media reports, which have not been corrected by the LAPD, have said these tapes were obtained “because authorities believe the tapes might provide new clues about unsolved killings involving followers of Manson.” (CNN 6/13/12) This source sites court documents.

However, the exemption for law enforcement investigatory files arises “only when the prospect of enforcement proceedings becomes concrete and definite… Under section 6254, subdivision (f), the police agency is directed to make public certain categories of specified information unless disclosure of a particular item of information would endanger the integrity of an investigation, or the safety of a person involved in the investigation or of a related investigation,   (Williams v. Superior Court, 5 Cal. 4th 337, 356 (1993)

I would add that this same decision notes that “the labels of…"internal investigation" are captivatingly expansive, and present an elasticity menacing to the principle of public scrutiny of government."

I ask that you please reconsider your decision. Feel free to contact me if you have any questions as to what I am seeking or the information I am trying to extract.

Thanks

Steve Miller

Beyond the Obvious: Five Solid Charles Manson Books

The new book on Charles Manson, Manson: The Life and Times of Charles Manson, is getting good reviews and strong word-of-mouth. It indicates there is still a lot of interest in the Manson case and crimes, perhaps more than had been considered before. The books are countless, some bad, some decent. The most well-known,  Helter Skelter, was a touristy, breathless exercise by prosecutor Vincent Bugliosi. But The Family by Ed Sanders is the test by which all Manson books should be judged.  I still check in with it a couple times a year. For completist readers of the Manson legend, though, here are five lesser-known books that will give your reading on the man a bit more depth.

Desert Shadows: A True Story of the Charles Manson Family in Death Valley by Bob Murphy (Sagebrush Press, 1993) Murphy is a former superintendant of Death Valley National Park and delivers a well-told book on the Family’s move to Death Valley after the murders, including the best account yet the arrest of several members, including Manson, at Barker Ranch in a remote part of the park.

Charles Manson: Music Mayhem Murder by Tommy Udo (Sanctuary, 2002) The factual errors are minor irritants when you look to this as the best tome yet on Manson’s connection to the Topanga Canyon music world in the late 60s. It’s also a solid primer on the relationship between Manson and Bobby Beausoleil, a skilled musician who did the soundtrack for Kenneth Anger’s movie, Lucifer Rising, after Jimmy Page flaked.  Includes both a discography and some lyrics.

The Garbage People: The Trip to Helter-Skelter and Beyond With Charlie Manson and the Family by John Gilmore and Ron Kenner (Omega Press, 1971) Re-released in 2000 as Manson: The Unholy Trail of Charlie and the Family, Gilmore interviewed Manson and other family members a number of times in 1969 and it shows in this thorough account. It’s an abbreviated walk through Family land, with details that most authors have missed. Photo section includes morgue shots that you’ve likely seen before but remain a little unsettling.

The Shadow over Santa Susana: Black Magic, Mind Control and the Manson Family Mythos by Adam Gorightly (Creation, 2009) Takes on the religious and, well, spiritual side of the Family, including explorations of connection to the Process Church of the Final Judgment and Scientology.  Shadow is the best exploration of mind control and conspiracies around the murderous ways of Manson.

Will You Die For Me? The Man Who Killed For Charles Manson Tells His Own Story, Tex Watson as told to Chaplain Ray (Fleming H. Revell Company, 1978) Watson was the hatchet man on the Big Night at Cielo Drive. He got religion pretty quick after being sentenced to death in late 1971, and while this book reflects Watson’s conversion, it’s also a brutal account of life in the Family, including a first person step-by-step of the murder at the Cielo house.  

The Saga of Sarah Pender, Featured on Investigation Discovery Sept. 22, 9 P.M. Eastern

It’s been hard for the media to get it right on Sarah Pender. There have been erroneous reports that Larry Sells, the prosecutor who tried and convicted Pender of murder in 2002, was going to represent Sarah in a bid for freedom. A recent story noted that the Marion County, Indiana, prosecutor’s office has decided Pender does not deserve a new trial or consideration for a reduced sentence, despite Sells’ opinion that she did not receive a fair trial based on previously undisclosed evidence.

Marion County prosecutor Terry Curry said in that story, “I don’t doubt Larry’s sincerity in stating that but all we were presented with was a motion to modify the sentence.” That leaves the door open to more legal movement in the case, as Pender takes her hopes to the state Court of Appeals to ask for a second round of post conviction relief. 

Pender’s case will be featured on the Sept. 22 episode of Deadline: Crime with Tamron Hall.  I was part of the taping. In advance of that show, here's an exclusive interview with Larry Sells.  

For 15 years, Larry Sells was the iron fist of the law in Marion County, Indiana, home of Indianapolis, ground zero for middle America.

As deputy prosecutor of homicides from 1991 to 2006, Sells put convicted murderers to death with creased-brow scorn.  He was a no bullshit guy, a rangy Marlboro Man lookalike who had done some modeling in his wild days before settling into a law career. His Southern fried accent and dramatic demeanor gave him great favor with juries.

Today he's 69 years old and has spent the last year in sleepless nights over a 23-year-old girl he put away on murder charges in 2002. He’s advocating on behalf of that young girl, Sarah Pender, who is serving her 110-year sentence in the Indiana Women’s Prison. Sells believes she didn’t get a fair trial.

His crusade began after reading a true crime book that revealed information that compromised his key witness in that case, a career criminal and jailhouse snitch named Floyd Pennington.

I wrote the book that changed Sells' mind, Girl,Wanted: The Chase for Sarah Pender, an Edgar award finalist in 2012.

On page 115 of that book is a graph that may eventually give Pender her freedom.

There was a problem with [Pennington’s] testimony and, in the rearview mirror, its impact on the jury. A letter discovered after the trial in the police file found that Pennington had offered to turn evidence on a list of people, from drug dealers to chop-shop owners. He named names on a yellow legal pad in his own writing. But the list was never presented by the defense during Sarah’s trial.

The letter was a snitch list I found in the homicide file.  It had never been seen by anyone outside the investigation, including the defense.

“Just some top-notch dope dealers I’m close to and can get in and make sells for and bust them…” Pennington notes in the handwritten list.

 “That letter should have been given to the defense and I never even saw it,” Sells told me in a phone call in mid-2012, when he admitted it had stuck in his mind since he had reread the book earlier that year. “If that had been introduced to the jury, it would have made a huge difference on the impact of the testimony of the key witness, that of Floyd Pennington. She did not have a fair trial.”

Pender was an unsympathetic character. A former engineering student at Purdue, she had been part of a bloody double homicide on the city’s south side. The two victims, Andrew Cataldi, 25, and Tricia Nordman, 26. were found shot to death in a Dumpster, their hair matted with dried blood. Pender and her boyfriend, Richard Hull, were arrested. Until the murder on October 24, 2000, the victims, Hull and Pender had been roommates and business partners. They moved pot, meth and acid out of the two-bedroom house they shared.

But when some money got funny, Cataldi and Nordman wound up dead and Hull and Pender blamed each other for the shootings.  Who pulled the trigger? Only those four knew for sure, and two of them weren’t breathing.

Helped by the testimony of Pennington, who testified in court that Sarah confessed to her role in the murders to him while both were in a jailhouse infirmary, Pender was sentenced to 110 years.

Pender was sent to state prison, where she remained until August 2008, when she escaped. For 136 days, Pender lived in relative freedom, meeting and being romanced by a man, working a regular job at a construction contractor in Chicago, living in an apartment in Rogers Park.

She was captured that December and returned to prison.

Even during her time on the run, Sells was convinced she had been rightfully convicted, calling her “the female Charles Manson” for her ability to convince others to do her felonious bidding.

Now, Sells talks about his change of heart and how the woman he so enthusiastically put away for the rest of her life needs to be let out of prison.

Steve Miller: The common joke is that prisons are full of innocent people – just ask the inmates. How common is something like this in the justice system, in which evidence that could influence a jury never comes to light?

Larry Sells: If a book were written about every case and the author was as thorough as in this book, there would be more things found. There are convictions set aside, of course. But usually it’s the defense that ferrets that out.

Steve Miller: You called me around June of last year to tell me that there was a major problem with the case and that justice was not served in Sarah’s trial. But you knew about that document, Pennington’s snitch list, since 2009, when I asked you about it.

Larry Sells: I didn’t look at the list very long although when I did, I thought, ‘Damn, why didn’t I have this back then in 2002?’ It really affects the credibility of Pennington. He was a shady witness then, as all jailhouse witnesses are. But by 2009 I was no longer a prosecutor. I retired in 2006. I still had a prosecutor mindset but I wasn’t in the office where I could do anything about it. When I reread it, it became crystal clear to me that this letter destroyed Pennington’s credibility. I had to do something. Yes, I saw the list, but when you see it described in writing, it makes more of an impact.

Steve Miller: What was your first move to make this right?

Larry Sells: I got hold of Sarah’s mom, Bonnie, it was the Friday before Mother’s Day. I told her, ‘you know Bonnie, it’s my opinion that Sarah didn’t get a fair trial and I will do what I can to help.’  When she realized I wasn’t pulling her leg and I was who I said I was, she burst into tears.

Then I called Sarah’s lawyers and told them what I thought. Then I got a call from the prosecutor’s office, which had heard through Sarah’s lawyers about my opinion. He was pretty attentive to what I had to say. Then I got a call from the sentence modification committee at the prosecutor’s office, and we met. We looked at the document, and at first, they were thinking this is no big deal, it’s simply impeaching evidence. When I ran my opinions by them, though, their opinions started changing. I’ve been interviewed by the Marion County prosecutor’s office. Sarah’s lawyers are pushing forward. Now things are up to the system.

Steve Miller: So is Sarah Pender an innocent person who has served all this time?

Larry Sells: I thought she was guilty before any testimony. I thought she was a dangerous person. She has expressed a couple of times that it didn’t bother her that her roommates were brutally murdered. I can’t say what her role in the shooting was, but based on this letter and the fact that her attorney didn’t have this document deprived Sarah of a fair trial.  I am still not convinced of her innocence. But that doesn’t factor in to what I believe about her case. I had to come forward because it’s the right thing to do. I had to do it as a lawyer and a human being. My conscience wouldn’t let me do otherwise.

          

Nobody’s Women Found Among Possessions of Newly Discovered Cleveland Serial Killer?

Michael Madison charged today

 Michael Madison, and his neighbors, are reportedly chattering about a fascination with Anthony Sowell, whose crimes I chronicled in a book last year, Nobody’s Women: The Crimes and Victims of Anthony Sowell.

The first thing I wondered was if he had simply followed the Sowell case via the local media, which did a terrific job, or if he had read one of the two books about his supposed inspiration. I’d like to know when law enforcement releases the evidence list. If I were there, I would ask the cops. Yes, I am curious.

Madison, 35, born in New Castle, Penn., lived a mile from the East Cleveland home in which Sowell grew up. He had three felony drug charges over the years in Cuyahoga County before being popped for attempted rape. Madison pleaded guilty and got four years with 121 days credit for time served.

The first victim was identified as Angela Deskins, 38, who had

a host of driving violations and little else. Police are still seeking information on the other two victims, and fear there are more. Like the remains of most of Sowell’s 11 victims, they were wrapped in trash bags.

The urge is to ask what’s up with Cleveland, where in May it was discovered that former school bus drive Ariel Castro kept three women hostage in his home for up to a decade.  Lumping these three cases together is irresistible for most of the media – you know, what is it about the city? A story with little to hold it together save for a batch of “soul searching” quotes.

It’s ridiculous to blame the usual inner city woes, as Cleveland doesn’t have that market cornered.  That would be just another money grab excuse for race hustlers. It’s perhaps more of an indictment of the justice system in Ohio. I’m no authority on that system at this point, but it’s certainly the first stop in any investigation I would do.

More News From Nowhere – Sarah Pender’s Legal Team Continues Push for Her Freedom

The lawyer for Sarah Pender has filed a petition with the Marion County Prosecutor’s office in hopes of getting her client sprung. The motion includes an affidavit signed by Larry Sells, the man who prosecuted Pender for a double homicide in 2002. Pender received 110 years.

If you’re here, you are aware of the legal debacle. I outline it here, using an article by the local newspaper in Indy, the Indianapolis Star. The town is blowing up over this story, which has received only local coverage so far. But when Pender is released, the cameras will swoop in from everywhere. 

Gannett Publishes Story on Sarah Pender Case Based on Info in Girl, Wanted

The Indianapolis Star made a stab at a significant story regarding my book,  the Edgar-nominated Girl, Wanted: The Chase for Sarah Pender, and a change of heart by the prosecutor who sent the 23-year-old Pender to prison in 2002 for 110 years on a double homicide.

Sadly, the Gannett newspaper misses the mark in a crucial way. Instead of portraying prosecutor Larry Sells as a man with a doubt, it paints him as a man who believes Pender is innocent.  What he has said in numerous conversations we’ve had over the past two years is that Pender did not receive a fair trial – a huge difference.

I have to doubt that this reporter was at fault. It looks more like crazy train that is Gannett incorrectly cast the story at a higher level. It was initially to run June 2, but it was held over. A lot of damage can be done to a story at the editorial level in a week.

And here’s where it all started, as I wrote about a key witness in Pender's trial named Floyd Pennington.

From the book: But still, there was a problem with his testimony and, in the rearview mirror, its impact on the jury. A letter discovered after the trial in the police file found that Pennington had offered to turn evidence on a list of people, from drug dealers to chop-shop owners. He named names on a yellow legal pad in his own writing. But the list was never presented by the defense during Sarah’s trial.

“I never saw that list, and it would seem that the defense never saw it either, since it wasn’t in evidence or used to combat Floyd’s statements for us,” says Larry Sells, who prosecuted the case for the state.

The book came out in June 2011. No one  - and Pender’s advocates have railed ever since the book hit about her innocence - ever made a deal out of the list on page 115, until Sells had the courage to do so.  Really, with friends like those…

From the story, which hit yesterday:

But after all that has been written, filmed and dramatized about Pender, there’s still more to her story.  Well, no, there isn’t. The story is the same. The change of opinion in light of that graph from the book is different.

Sells found it in 2009 while poking through the old detective files on Pender’s case. It came to Sells when I found the letter. This was written despite the fact I told the reporter so in a conversation earlier this year. I found it as I was seated at a table in the office of Mark Rice, head of homicide for the Indianapolis Metropolitan Police Department. I dug into an accordion police file and pulled out a yellow sheet of paper that day. Sells was helping me in my research for the book and sitting to my right at that table, as we both looked at things in the file. I showed it to him. He kept his poker face but knew immediately how important it was.

More from the story: Sells now believes Pender’s account: She wasn’t there when the shots were fired. She was irresponsible and arrogant. Her actions made her appear guilty of the murders but she hadn’t really participated in them. Incorrect. “I do not know for certain who pulled the trigger, but it is my opinion that the most credible evidence suggest it was Richard Hull,” Sells says. But he certainly doesn’t hands down believe Pender’s tale of going to the store, coming back and walking in on a murder scene. The story “makes it sound like I believe her story, that she went off somewhere,” Sells says.

At any rate, it’s the fairness of the trial that is the point, and with the snitch list written by the main state’s witness that was never seen by either side, that is the issue here. 

This graph was corrected in the Indianapolis Star after Sells complained Saturday to: Sells is not sure what happened in the house on Meikel Street. But he now believes Pender was not the shooter: She was irresponsible and arrogant. Her actions made her appear guilty of the murders, but in the end, she did not get a fair trial. But Gannett affiliates all over the US are still running the first version of this.

“My position has always been there is no credible evidence as to what she did in that house,” Sells told me. “That doesn’t mean she didn’t do something in there. That’s been my position all along.”

The bottom line is that there’s a big difference between being not guilty and being innocent. If Pender was there and did nothing, well, that’s like sitting in a waiting car as someone holds up a bank. You’re part of the crime, like it or not, if you do nothing. A fair trial is a whole different thing.

One more from the story: It really makes no difference why, said Joel Schumm, a criminal law professor at the Indiana University Robert H. McKinney School of Law in Indianapolis. The fact that the snitch list was withheld at all, Schumm said, could raise serious questions about the validity of her guilty verdict.

The list wasn’t withheld – in fact its existence was never known to Sells. This graph makes it sound like the state, as represented by Sells, “withheld”  evidence.

And, really, calling Girl, Wanted, a “true crime novel” is a high level oxymoron. Believe it – true crime is a true story. A novel is fiction. What are they implying?

Let’s end with something from Girl, Wanted. Make your own judgment here. The context is a letter Pender wrote to Tom Welch, the wealthy trucking business entrepreneur who became her lover after she escaped from prison in August 2008.

She professed her love for Welch and included some telling details of her own take on the crime that got her into the situation in the first place. Sarah said she was not sorry for being caught with regard to the murders, but she was sorry that she got involved in anything like that in the first place.

“I am not sorry they are dead,” Sarah wrote. “People die all the time, for lots of reasons, many at young ages . . . killing people is not such a big deal, because people die. We are human.”

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