A Family Business (18 page)

Edwards and David made small talk for a few more minutes, then David broke it off. “Give me a call if you want to talk,” he said affably.

Although David had not admitted anything directly in the conversation, Lewis became very excited when he read the transcript, especially when he got to the place where David had said, “Well, you weren’t around with that,” referring to Tim’s death.

From that point on Lewis was convinced that David was not only a creep who would steal teeth from the bodies of dead people, but also was a vicious thug who would have people beaten up and maybe killed for no reason stronger than they posed a threat to his illegal activities. The DDA was convinced that David belonged in jail, and he was going to do what he could to make sure that’s where he was going to be.

Earlier, Lewis had talked briefly with Roger Diamond, the Sconces’ attorney. When Diamond asked Lewis what kind of bail the prosecutor would seek if he talked his clients into surrendering, Lewis thought a moment and said he would be happy with $5000 each. But that had been before he read the transcript and listened to the tape of David’s telephone conversation with Edwards. That put the situation in an entirely new light.

As he sat listening to David matter-of-factly discuss how he was going to lie about vicious assaults on innocent people, Lewis’s sense of revulsion grew. Up until that time he had not understood exactly how dangerous David could be, but after playing the tape, he decided that David was
very
dangerous indeed; too dangerous to be walking the street.

There was another thing to consider as well, Lewis reminded himself: David’s move to Arizona. If David were released on bail, Lewis could not be sure that California would ever get him back. In fact, he recalled, snapping his fingers, David had even mentioned something to that effect when he was talking to Edwards. Flipping through the transcript, Lewis found the passage:

D.S.: You just take care of yourself
.

D.E.: Yeah, you too
.

D.S.: Yeah, well I’m out here in Arizona. You know, if they want to come chasing me down across state lines for some kind of misdemeanor thing, that’s their business
.

Lewis tossed the papers aside. David was saying that if the authorities wanted him, they were going to have to come get him. The possibility that he might bolt was too big a risk for the DDA to take. If he ever got David in his grasp, did he want him slipping out?

On June 8, Lewis took his seat at the prosecutor’s table, still debating inwardly about what he should do when it came time to ask for David’s bail. He had told Diamond he would request only $5000 each for David, Jerry, and Laurieanne. But that was before he knew the whole story. He could live with $5000 for the parents, Lewis told himself, but David was another matter. As he pondered these issues, deep in thought, Lewis was startled by a voice whispering in his ear. Spinning around, he saw that David had slipped onto a bench behind the prosecution table and was trying to make conversation with him. Lewis was too shocked to do anything but gape. In his years in the courtroom, he had never been approached before arraignment by a person he was getting ready to charge; it was a virtually unheard-of situation. Normally, a person accused of a crime will sit on the opposite side of the courtroom in an effort to maintain as much distance as possible from the prosecutor. Usually they are only too content to let their lawyer do the talking.

“This is all a mistake,” David said softly, flashing a quick grin. But only his lips were smiling; his eyes were icy cold. “This whole thing is crazy,” he said. “Just give me a chance and I can explain it all.”

Lewis’s mind was a blank, numbed by David’s audacity. When he recovered his wits, the DDA’s mind was made up. If he had previously waffled about the bail request, David’s action had taken him off the fence. If he could possibly do anything about it, he decided, he was going to see that David did not go free at the end of the day.

Soon afterward, when Judge Elvira Mitchell called the luncheon recess, Lewis dashed from the courtroom. Taking the stairs to his office, he summoned a secretary and begged her to give up her lunch hour to type an amended list of charges against David. To the original inventory, the prosecutor added solicitation of the murder of Lawrence and Lucille Lamb, plus the assaults against Hast, Nimz, and Waters. Once that was done, he asked the secretary to retype the bail request, changing $5000 to $500,000. “That ought to do it,” he said with determination.

Clutching the revised documents in his fist, he hustled back to the courtroom just in time to give them to Judge Mitchell as she gaveled the court back into session.

As he slipped into his chair, he realized that he had neglected one thing. In his haste to amend the forms, Lewis had not taken time to seek out Roger Diamond to explain what he was going to do. It wasn’t that he
had
to do it, but it would have been a lawyerly courtesy. As it was, the first Diamond found out about the change was when Lewis submitted the amended papers.

Predictably, when Diamond heard that Lewis had raised the requested bail amount on David a hundredfold, he was furious.

After glancing over the revised charge sheet, Judge Mitchell announced that she agreed with the prosecutor. Unless David could meet the high bail, she said, he was going to jail. She did, however, agree to a defense request for a formal hearing to air arguments from both sides on the issue. The proceeding was scheduled for two weeks in the future.

Lewis, who had been sitting tensely at the prosecution table, relaxed when he heard Judge Mitchell agree to his request. He felt a glow building inside himself. He had followed his conscience, and knew-he had done the right thing.

His mood of self-satisfaction was quickly shattered, however. As he gathered his papers and looked up, he found David staring at him with undisguised hatred.

David had come into the courtroom that morning expecting to be back in Arizona in time for dinner. Instead, he was about to be taken away to a cell and he had no idea when he would be free again. As he was led out of the room under guard, he turned once more to glare at Lewis. “You lied to me,” the look said, “You lured me into a trap with a promise you never planned to keep.” It was something that David would neither forget nor forgive. Lewis did not know it at the time, but he had just moved to the top of David’s hit list.

17

If David believed that Judge Mitchell was going to change her mind about lowering his bail once details of the charges against him were revealed in open court, he was soon disabused of that notion. Any hope that he may have entertained about seeing Bullhead City again anytime soon quickly evaporated in the face of a flood of damning testimony from his former employees, colleagues, and people he had called friends.

Lewis had used the two weeks since the arraignment to line up witnesses to support his high bail request. Once the session got under way, it was apparent that he had utilized the time well. The tales the witnesses spun about the son of two of Pasadena’s more respected businesspeople, as limited as it was to meet Lewis’s specific purpose, were decidedly unpleasant. It was not as overwhelming as later testimony would be, but at that stage Lewis was not building a case for a conviction. The purpose of the June 22 hearing was not to determine David’s guilt or to allow the prosecution to present a panorama of the case during the preceding four years, but only to present enough information to help Judge Mitchell decide if David’s bail had been set unfairly high.

It was Lewis’s job to convince her that David needed to be locked up until he was either ordered to stand trial or the charges against him were dropped. Otherwise, he contended, if bail were reduced and David were freed, others would be in serious physical danger. There was the additional possibility, Lewis argued, that if David were allowed to walk out the door, Los Angeles officials might never see him again.

Conversely, Diamond’s argument would be based on the supposition that David could be trusted not to flee. As a member of a family whose Pasadena roots went back three generations, David was not likely to disappear.

Under the rules governing such procedures, Lewis got the first shot. He called his first witness. Then another, and another, and another. For four days prosecution witnesses paraded before Judge Mitchell describing their experiences with the pleasant-looking, blond-haired man staring fixedly at them from across the room. If they were intimidated by his presence, their testimony did not reflect it.

• David Shively, the policeman involved in the investigation of two burglaries of David’s former girlfriend’s house in 1976, told how David showed no remorse for the break-ins. It was almost as if he considered his actions justified by the circumstances, the officer claimed. In his opinion, he added, David was a man obsessed with vengeance and retaliation, a drive that could be precipitated by almost anything, but usually by a perceived insult. It did not seem to matter if the affront was real or simply imagined.
  
• Former employee Jim Dame testified that when he asked David why he was not concerned about the possibility that former employee Steve Strunk might go to the authorities and tell them about what he had seen at Lamb Funeral Home, David snapped: “If anyone deters me from providing for my family, I wouldn’t stop at killing them.” Dame added that he had been present during an argument between Lisa Karlan and David, and that David had told him afterward: “That girl has gone too far, and one of these days she’s going to wind up dead.”
  
• When she got on the stand, Lisa Karlan detailed her particularly stormy relationship with David during the time she worked for him at CIE&TB and related how he had threatened her life when she hinted that she might report him to the authorities. She took the threat seriously, she added, because David had once told her how he planned to track down a man that he believed had cheated him, and when he found him he was going to “get him” and then “take care of whatever remains were left.” She interpreted that to mean that he planned to incinerate the body in one of the retorts.
  
• Dave Edwards, supporting earlier testimony from Hast and Nimz themselves, told how David had furnished him with the pair’s address, their physical descriptions, and the license number of Hast’s car, so he, Galambos, and Augustine could find them and beat them up. He added that when he reported back to David about the success of the attack, David had told him, “Good, I’ll have money for you.” Edwards also related how David had asked his help in finding someone to kill his grandfather, Lawrence Lamb. David wanted to see him dead, Edwards explained, because Lawrence had told his daughter, Laurieanne, that he was going to sell the funeral home and that had “made his mother cry.”
  

• Regarding Tim Waters, Edwards testified that David had originally told him that Tim had died of a heart attack, but later offered another version. In the second story, Edwards quoted David as telling him how he had met “the fat guy” in a restaurant and that when he left the table David “dropped something in his drink.”
  

• Dan Galambos said when he mentioned the attack on Nimz and Hast, David told him how “happy” he was with the results. Galambos said David also told him that he planned to kill his grandparents by poisoning their drinking water, but if he couldn’t do it that way, he wanted to hire someone to do it. When David asked him if he would be willing to kill someone, Galambos told him no. However, David pressed the issue and asked the weightlifter if he knew anyone who might be available for such a job. Galambos said he again told him no. When Lewis asked the 245-pound ex-football player what he thought of David, he replied, “He’s a scary and dangerous guy.”
  
• Richard Gray, who had been Tim Waters’s best friend until he decided to open a competing business, said that when he asked David and his father if they had heard about Tim being attacked in his office, the two of them “looked satisfied,” and David had quipped that Tim “got what he deserved.” Then David added: “Now maybe Tim Waters won’t talk so much.”
  
• Andre Augustine, who had helped Galambos and Edwards beat up Hast and Nimz, said that when he saw David after the incident, David seemed “joyful or happy.” When Lewis asked Augustine if he felt threatened by David, the 265-pound ex-athlete said that unless he had to meet him on a one-to-one basis under street-fighting conditions, he was afraid of him. Why? Lewis asked. Because David did not forget, Augustine replied. “Pretty much anything David says he will do, he will do.”
  

When the testimony was finished, Lewis slumped in his chair, exhausted but confident that he had made a good case for David’s high bail.

Diamond rose. “I am sure,” he told Judge Mitchell, “that Mr. Lewis will concede he didn’t expect to get exactly what he was requesting” as far as bail was concerned. “Maybe something lower than that—” he began.

Lewis bounded to his feet. “For the record—” he started to say, only to be cut off by Judge Mitchell.

“Mr. Diamond,” she said, leaning forward, “I will be very, very sincere with you. If it were me, based on what is in the [list of charges], I would have asked for more than $500,000 [bail].”

Lewis sank back in his chair, sighing inwardly in relief. He had made his point.

“What is set forth in this request,” the judge continued, tapping a stack of papers, “causes me more concern than you can imagine. We are not here to litigate what is set forth in that report. I am here to determine whether or not there is sufficient bail to make sure, one, that Mr. Sconce does not flee the jurisdiction, and two, whether or not there is a safety situation as far as the public is concerned.”