Then No One Can Have Her (10 page)

Asked what motive Barb would have to kill Carol, Katie said she didn't want to say more for fear of saying the wrong thing. But she did say this: “I don't trust her is the bottom line. She's always been manipulative.”

Overall, she said, her mom had “very, very few enemies.. . . Everyone that she met liked her. She was nice to almost every single person.”

Brown asked how Charlotte was doing under the circumstances, and what her views were about all this.

“She's about the same place I am. She's scared and stressed that this is how it happened because, you know, we can't even really deal with the fact that we're sad that she's gone. We're stressed about who did it and, you know, I mean, we're just scared.”

“Have you talked to your dad about all this?”

“He's really sad. When I first got home, he just broke down and was crying.... He's been trying to be supportive of us and reassuring, but I think he's stressed out.”

Brown told Katie that the detectives were going to do everything they could “to find out the truth, not find out some made-up thing that we want just to fit. We want the truth, that's all we want.”

But in the meantime he asked her to keep to herself any information he'd told her about the investigation, a concern that ultimately became a major victims' rights issue in this case.

“The fact that it seemed accidental, but was not accidental, kind of puts this in position that somebody did this and for whatever reason tried to cover it up,” he said.

As he cited evidence to support that conclusion, Brown drew a diagram of the room where Carol's body was found, along with the position of the ladder and the bookshelves, one tipped over the other, almost propped up, “like it had been right there, pushed over.”

“Someone set this up, okay, to make it look like she fell from the ladder and possibly hit her head on the desk,” he said. “It looks like someone staged all that stuff.”

Last time she saw the ladder, Katie said, it wasn't even in that bedroom, it was out in the hall. “I've come to the terms with the fact that somebody killed her,” she said, promising that if she knew anything or “thought that anyone, no matter how much I cared about them, knew anything about this, I swear to you I would tell you.”

Brown asked Katie to think carefully, and if she had any information, to share it with the detectives. If she didn't, she was “doing [her] mom a disservice, because what everyone has said . . . is she did not deserve to be killed.”

“She didn't at all,” Katie agreed.

Brown said some “Joe Blow off the street” could have been “walking around in the backyard, came into your house, your mom's house, killed your mom and then staged it to look like an accident.” And although that was a possible scenario, he said, “is it probable, or does it make sense for somebody to do that, is the question.”

“Most likely not,” Katie agreed.

Because Carol didn't leave money lying around and no property was evidently missing or stolen, the probability of a stranger staging a scene in that situation “is so minute, it's almost just not even worth looking at,” Brown said. “Someone, for whatever reason, killed your mom because of anger, frustration, whatever.”

Brown asked if there was any reason she might have gotten blood on the passenger seat of her car, the black BMW that was parked in Carol's garage.

“Not that I can think of,” she said.

“There was blood found in your car.”

“Oh,” she said, surprised.

“Is there any reason your mom's blood would be in the passenger seat that you know about?”

“Don't think so. Wow,” she said. “That was a shock.”

Walking a careful line to gain Katie's help with the investigation and yet not give her too much graphic detail as to be insensitive, or to prompt her to share it with Steve, Brown tried to help Katie understand that the killer had to be someone close to her, and that investigators needed her help to solve the crime.

Carol couldn't have hurt her head so severely in a fall, he said. The trauma showed that she was hit multiple times, and she had “defensive wounds, meaning she tried to protect herself.” The murder weapon, he said, would be “something similar to a golf club, something similar to a very skinny stick.”

The trauma to her head was caused by enough force to fracture her skull, and her blood was not only in that room but tracked outside as well. “That was the first indication that this can't be an accident,” he said. Given the multiple “hits to the head, it's usually because of, they call it a passionate-type thing, you lose control for a brief moment. I believe that's what happened here.”

But every time Brown brought the interview back to Steve, noting, for example, that a block of his time was “lost” and that didn't “make a lot of sense” given the rest of his bike-riding story, Katie backed away and said she didn't want to talk about it.

 

 

Shortly after the murder, Charlotte's boyfriend, Jake, was working at Barbudos, a Mexican restaurant in the Safeway shopping center on Iron Springs, when Jim Knapp came in. Jake overheard Jim telling a woman that he thought Steve DeMocker was the only person who could have killed Carol and that he might have had financial motives for doing it.

Jake immediately texted Charlotte, and she came right over, which seemed to catch Jim off guard. Jake went back to work while Jim and Charlotte went outside to talk. In Jake's view, Jim seemed “a little shady” and had strong feelings for Carol.

The DeMockers heard that Jim was also telling people that Steve had been violent with Carol in the past, dragging her around by the hair.

The family asked Jim to vacate the guesthouse, which he didn't want to do. After Steve's brother Jim finally evicted Jim Knapp in August, the tenant asked for $5,000 in damages to his personal belongings—rust on his washer and dryer, which he said the DeMockers had left outside for several weeks.

In an e-mail to Katie, he noted that he was in a “very precarious financial situation,” living on unemployment, with possible surgery coming up. He said he wasn't sharing that information to gain sympathy, only to inform her of his circumstances.

Katie, I loved your mom deeply,
he wrote.
She was my coach, my confidante, and my friend.
But he also noted that despite the rumors going around, they n
ever had a romantic involvement.
When Carol was killed, he wrote, he was really
at a loss of what to do, where to go, and how I would manage,
but he did his utmost to care for Carol's two dogs and her cat, Max.

As executor of Carol's estate, Katie and her attorney worked out a percentage of Jim Knapp's damage claim and paid him. Without waiting for her attorney's advice, she also wrote a check for about $20,000 to her father, who pressured her to pay the claim he submitted for the professional cleanup team that removed the blood at Bridle Path so they could sell the house.

Some of Carol's closest longtime friends, including Debbie Wren Hill, Katherine Morris and Sally Butler, flew in to attend one or both of the celebrations of life that were held in Carol's memory.

Like Carol, Debbie and Katherine are both therapists. Debbie works with children, and Katherine with children and families. Sally, who had known Steve since college, also had worked with him in Outward Bound fifteen years before she met Carol in the late 1980s. The two women subsequently developed a close friendship.

The first memorial service was open to the public, just before Carol's birthday, on the afternoon of Thursday, July 24, at the Unity Church of Prescott, where Carol had sporadically attended services.

The second was a private service for about fifty family members, neighbors and close friends on Sunday, July 27, outside the L'Auberge resort in Sedona. The Reverend Dan Spencer, a Unitarian minister and close friend of Renee Girard, facilitated the ceremony. Steve later submitted a claim for the service costs to Carol's estate, which had assets valued around $284,000, including several bank accounts and furniture. Claims against the estate came in pretty close to that same amount.

 

 

Debbie flew up from Nashville for the second service in Sedona, as did Ruth and John Kennedy, and John's two kids. Steve's father picked up Carol's family at the airport and dropped them at a hotel. The Kennedy family rented a car, then drove to the service with Debbie.

As the Kennedys pulled up to a red light, they looked over and saw Steve, Katie and Charlotte in the car next to them.

Oh, God, I just don't want to see him there,
Debbie thought, dreading the inevitable interaction at the service.

They pulled into the parking lot at the same time, and after getting out of their respective cars, Debbie hugged the girls.

“I'm really sorry for your loss,” Steve told Debbie.

“Thanks,” she replied, uttering the only words she could manage for the man she was already convinced had killed her dear friend.

David Higgs, one of Carol's college friends, showed up after saying he didn't think he could make it. When Ruth saw him, she was so touched that he'd come, after all, that she hugged him and burst into tears.

Katherine Morris and Ali Rappaport, another of Carol's former students and friends, gave eulogies during the service, as did Ruth, Katie, Charlotte, Steve and his mother.

Ali talked about “walking the labyrinth” with Carol—one of Carol's specialties, involving a spiritual meditation to find inner peace, knowledge and healing—and described the strong connection they had formed.

Charlotte mentioned that she'd gotten into a rollover car accident in Phoenix the day before in Carol's Acura, and felt like her mother had been with her as a guardian angel, helping to keep her safe.

Clearly in a lot of emotional pain, Katie and Charlotte's heartfelt speeches were very difficult to listen to, but Steve's speech was the one that some mourners found odd.

 

 

During his daughters' time at the microphone, Steve didn't show any emotion. Yet, after only a minute or two into his own eulogy, he was pushing away tears. The minister noticed the marked contrast in Steve's reactions and figured he was an emotional guy, after all.

But after listening to Steve's entire speech, Reverend Spencer was struck again. Rather than talking about Carol, “the whole thing was about him, and how much Carol still meant to him, and about their dating, and what their relationship was like, and how he'd gone to Colorado and put up some kind of reconciliation pin,” the minister recalled later. “He was suggesting that he and Carol had pulled things together, which wasn't true.”

“I think Renee's dating a sociopath,” Reverend Spencer told his wife afterward, recalling that he'd also found it curious that Steve had made a point of telling him before the service that no one should be allowed to record the eulogies.

 

 

Debbie and her group also listened to Steve's speech with disbelief. First, they couldn't believe that he wore his sunglasses through his entire remarks, and second, that he was able to speak so beautifully and eloquently about losing Carol, the woman with whom he'd spent half his life, after they thought he'd killed her.

Debbie's impression was different from Reverend Spencer's, though it was still negative. “He seemed so smooth as he gave the eulogy,” Debbie said, “working the crowd, just being Steve, charismatic, charming Steve. . . . He painted this picture of a soul mate that he had loved dearly. He referenced the fact that they were no longer married, but made it sound like that didn't affect the love that they still shared with each other.”

As she listened, Debbie couldn't understand how he could carry around what he'd done to Carol and yet say such wonderful things about her. It was confusing for her—not just as Carol's friend, but also as a licensed therapist who had previously experienced such behavior only in objective or academic textbook terms. At one point she turned to David Higgs and shared her feelings of conflict and ambivalence.

“Maybe he didn't [do it],” she said. “How could he get up here and say those things if he'd just brutally murdered her?”

Carol's mother shared with Debbie that she, too, had been sitting in disbelief as she listened to Steve's eulogy, wondering how he could stand six feet in front of her and say such things when they both knew that he'd killed her daughter. Where did he find such nerve?

It wasn't until later that Debbie realized, “This is what a narcissist can do. He wanted to get rid of Carol and he also wanted to create a favorable impression in front of her closest people and make himself look innocent.”

At the reception in the shade by the creek afterward, Debbie was standing with David, expressing their common dread that Steve would come over to speak to them.

“I don't want to talk to him. I don't want to shake that man's hand. I hope he doesn't try to,” David said just before Steve approached them and did just that. Not wanting to make a scene, David accepted the gesture and shook Steve's hand.

“I just really want to thank you guys for being with Carol after the divorce,” Steve told them. “Every divorce has two sides and I really appreciate you guys being there for her.”

Debbie and David were dumbfounded and almost speechless.

“It was just stupefying, having to interact with him, knowing what we thought we knew, to have that hand that we thought had brutally murdered Carol reach out to us,” Debbie recalled.

Steve looked at Debbie as though he wasn't sure—and maybe with some apprehension—about what she was going to say. Debbie and Carol used to discuss each other's dreams, and Carol had inspired Debbie to chronicle them in a journal, a practice she continued for some thirty years.

“I think I'm going to get a dream that will let me know what happened,” she told Steve.

One of the most difficult concepts for Debbie to process was that she'd known Steve and Carol when things were so good between them, when Steve had seemed so benevolent.

“There are some people you meet and you know, this is a really devious person, but it wasn't like that with Steve,” she said recently. “He seemed like a very nice guy, very attentive, and engaged with Carol.”

 

 

Ruth Kennedy found it odd that Steve didn't say a word to her, hug her or offer his sympathies to her at the service, or on any other occasion, frankly.

Her son John had never come to Arizona to visit while his sister was alive, but being there now he wanted to find out more about what had happened to Carol.

Steve's girlfriend, Renee, introduced herself to John Kennedy at the reception, but every time he tried to talk to Steve about the murder, Steve moved away from him. John tried half-a-dozen times that day, but he could not get Steve's ear.

 

 

Right around the second service, Katie DeMocker arranged for some of her mother's friends to visit the Bridle Path house, where a strange scene played out.

When Katherine arrived with her sister and Sally Butler, she was stunned to see that Steve had brought Renee, which she saw as inappropriate. Steve's brother Jim and sister Susan were there as well, along with Katie and Carol's mother and brother.

Carol's office, where the murder had occurred, hadn't been cleaned yet, and the desk and carpet were still covered with her blood. Jim DeMocker was trying to keep her friends out, but Katherine was determined. It's not that she wanted to see the crime scene. She simply felt she needed to be in the place where Carol's soul last was.

“The door was shut and I went to go open it and Jim [DeMocker] intercepted me,” blocking her from going in, she recalled. “Jim walked away, I looked at Katie, Katie gave me the nod, and I opened it up and went in.”

Because Carol had been cremated, Katherine wasn't able to see her body, which is an important part of the grieving process—to fully realize and accept that a loved one is dead. As a result, viewing this room was something she felt she needed and wanted to do. Katherine also wanted to see if she could feel Carol or any part of her there, or if anything else came to her.

But as she stood in that room and looked around, she didn't feel her friend there. Carol was gone. Instead, what Katherine felt was deep grief as reality set in and a sense of shock at the gruesome nature of the scene—the pool of blood still on the floor, the blood spatters on the walls, the shelves and the desk, which still had strands of Carol's hair stuck to the corner.

“It became more real, the violence of her death,” Katherine said. “It became more apparent the brutality of it, the animalistic state that someone would have to be in to do that.”

As Katherine emerged from the room, crying, Steve was standing in the hallway with Katie. As Katherine stood with her right side toward the kitchen and laundry room, Steve put his arm around her and gave her a sideways hug.

“You just want to think that it was an accident,” he said. “Things would be so much easier if it was an accident.”

Steve was usually gregarious, but not that day. He was a man of few words. His remark and hug sent shivers down Katherine's body as she shook her head no.

Katie agreed. “Dad, they ruled that it was not an accident,” she said.

Based on that exchange, as well as her earlier conversations with Steve, Katherine again felt like he was trying to “groom” her to take his side, to believe his accident claim.

Steve had been guarded with her at the service, and he still seemed so calm, detached and composed. But after seeing the crime scene, and talking with Carol's mother about the details of Carol's death, Katherine knew that it was a murder.

“It was not an accident,” she told him.

When Ruth walked into the house that afternoon, she noticed a vase of dead flowers on the dining-room table, where Carol had always kept fresh blooms.

“Well, would you look at that, the dead flowers are still on the table,” Ruth said.

Steve's sister Susan promptly ran out of the room with the withered flowers, and Ruth subsequently felt bad about her remark because she knew Susan was under a lot of strain.

Unlike Katherine, Ruth couldn't bear to go into the room where her daughter was killed. Ruth noted once again that Steve didn't try to comfort her at this difficult moment.

“I don't know why he didn't, if he was so innocent, [why] wouldn't he? Why wouldn't he come up to me and hug me, say, ‘Ruth, I'm so sorry about this. I'm out of my mind about this'?” she said recently. “But to say nothing and to do nothing. I thought that was really strange.”

That night Katie begged Ruth to come to dinner with the DeMockers, so she did, although her son, John, refused.

On her way out the door afterward, Ruth put one arm around Katie to say good-bye. When Steve came up and put his arm around Ruth's waist, she did the same to him, although it was more out of reflex than a purposeful hug on her part.

 

 

Debbie Wren Hill had never seen the Bridle Path house. So while she was in town, she, too, made a trip over there with Ruth and John Kennedy after making arrangements by phone with Jim Knapp to show them around the property.

As they walked the grounds, Debbie noticed the empty bird feeder and the untended garden.

It's all so overgrown. It never would have looked like this if Carol was here,
Debbie thought.

Before Carol had even had her morning coffee, she used to water her garden, which was surrounded by a stucco wall, and feed the horses, which she used to keep in the barn. The back area also had a trampoline, an outdoor shower, a hot tub, a fire pit, an old tree house and a maze made of stones that Carol had designed to “walk the labyrinth.”