A Warrant to Kill: A True Story of Obsession, Lies and a Killer Cop (27 page)

At the darkened house on Amber Forest, the threatening storm must have given Susan White a sense of impending doom: her son locked up behind heavy steel jailhouse doors miles away in downtown Houston. Did she walk through the cluttered house, littered with unopened shopping bags and fast-food containers, stripped of its beautiful furnishings, like a soldier circling through war debris?

“I’m going to get Jason a court-appointed attorney,” she told Ray when he called that night. “I can’t afford anything else. The hearing is in the morning.”

“Just get someone to get him out, and we’ll get him a new lawyer when I get back,” he assured her. Ray planned to leave early the next morning to promote the circus when it arrived in Wichita Falls, Texas. “I’ll be back Wednesday.”

“I’ll get him out,” Susan said, crying. “I have to get my baby home.”

At the Cypresswood substation, Kent McGowen was also too busy to spend the night worrying about the probability of a hurricane in the Gulf pivoting in its path and tracking to Houston. Getting in touch with Michael Shaffer’s mother proved more difficult than he might have expected.

“McGowen kept calling me wanting her phone number, but I wouldn’t give it to him,” Shaffer recalls. “I felt like it was stupid, the whole thing. I wasn’t afraid of Jason’s mom, and I didn’t want him calling my mom and getting her all upset for nothing. But he kept calling and calling.”

Finally, just before midnight, Shaffer relented. But by then it was too late. Jaques and her husband would be asleep, their telephone unplugged until morning. When
McGowen insisted he had to talk to her, a hesitant Shaffer gave him directions to her apartment.

“I’m sending an Austin officer to her house,” McGowen told Hughes when he called to update her at the D.A.’s intake office. “I’m going to have her call me.”

“My shift is over at midnight and I’m leaving here in a few minutes,” Hughes said. “But I’ll tell Jim Mount, my replacement, about the case. You talk to the mom; I’ll tell him to sign the warrant. Then all you’d need to do is get it signed by a judge.”

“Great,” McGowen said as he hung up the telephone.

Jeannie Jaques and her husband were sleeping soundly when they awoke to urgent rapping on their apartment door, just after midnight.

“Who is it?” Jaques inquired, tying her robe around her.

“Police. I’ve got a message from a deputy in Houston,” someone answered.

“Is something wrong?” Jaques asked as she swung open the door.

“This deputy needs you to call him,” the Austin officer in uniform said, handing her a slip of paper.

Jaques slammed the door shut and rushed to plug in the telephone. As her husband watched, she dialed the number and asked for the deputy whose name appeared above it, Kent McGowen.

“This is Deputy McGowen,” a man said.

“What’s going on?” Jaques asked. “How’s Michael?”

“He’s okay.”

“Then what’s going on?” she repeated. “You’ve scared me to death.”

“Do you know Susan White?” he asked.

“No, but I talked to her today. Why?”

“What’d she say?”

“First tell me what’s going on,” Jaques demanded.

“Well, this woman is evidently crazy. We’re getting an arrest warrant right now and we need you to confirm some things,” McGowen said.

“I can’t confirm anything,” Jaques scoffed. “I only talked to her once.”

“Yes, you can,” McGowen said. “Did she tell you informants don’t live long? Did she say that to you?”

“Well, yeah, she did.”

“Didn’t it worry you?” McGowen asked.

“Not at the time,” Jaques said. “But I guess I should have been concerned?”

“Yes, you should have,” McGowen said.

Jaques’ face flushed. She felt embarrassed. It was obvious from the deputy’s concern that she shouldn’t have dismissed Susan White’s words so quickly.

“What makes you say she’s crazy?” she asked.

“White was at the station, acting like she was drunk, going crazy, yelling and screaming,” said McGowen. “We had to ask her to leave.”

“So she’s after Michael?”

“We’re going on that assumption, that she’s threatened his life. Will you say she threatened his life?”

“No,” Jaques replied, wondering why he wanted her to say that. “She didn’t threaten him directly. I didn’t take it that way.”

“Well, she’s convinced your son is an informant,” McGowen maintained.

“Is he?”

“No,” McGowen lied. “He’s innocent of all this. That’s why we let him go.”

McGowen went on to say he’d been watching a gang of teenagers, including Jason Aguillard, for several days. He claimed he’d seen them break into a house and a car, and that he’d found stolen credit cards, guns, and other items.

“I guess I should have been more concerned,” Jaques admitted sheepishly.

“Well, don’t worry, we’re going to get her tonight,” McGowen said. “I’ve got the warrant in progress. I just needed to talk to you.”

McGowen assured Jaques she had no reason to worry about her son and that he’d be protected. Then he promised to call her as soon as they had White in custody.

The line went dead and Jaques turned to her husband.

“There’s something strange going on here,” she said. “That cop seems really gung-ho, but I’m either not getting all the information or there’s something really wrong here.”

In the Cypresswood substation, after McGowen had finished his phone call, he turned to a fellow deputy and friend, Kevin Stanley. “Kent wasn’t outwardly furious,” says Stanley. “He was just biting the bit, waiting for her to mess up. And when she made that call to [Mike Shaffer’s mom], that was it. He said, ‘I got her. All the trash she talked about me, I am going to get her.’”

At 4
A.M.
that morning, jailers roused Jason and the other detainees to herd them to breakfast and walk through the tunnels, under the still sleeping streets of Houston, to the criminal courthouse. As soon as he entered the holding cell in the courthouse, he dialed his home telephone number. Court was still hours away, but Susan answered immediately. She was obviously awake.

“Mom, are you coming for me today?” he asked. “Will I get out?”

“I’ll be there, baby,” she said, her voice spent, her words slurring. “We’ll get you home.”

Kent McGowen had arrived at the D.A.’s office intake desk, on the first floor of that same criminal courthouse,
little more than an hour earlier. Jim Mount, a tall, pale, affable man, waited for him.

“I’m Deputy McGowen,” he said.

“Jean told me you’d be in,” Mount said. “Let’s see what you’ve got.”

Mount wasn’t too worried as he looked over the “to be” warrant form McGowen had filled out, nicknamed “to be” because it was “to be served.” He’d never known a deputy to flat out lie to him, although they sometimes colored the truth to get what they wanted. He wasn’t thrown off when McGowen vehemently complained about Spence and her decision not to issue a warrant against Jason for any charges related to the gun. Mount simply changed the subject, not wanting to discuss another A.D.A.’s decision.

McGowen ran down the details with Mount. Again, as he had with Hughes, he spoke of Jason as the “head turd” in a major gunrunning operation that included automatic weapons, even implying that his C.I. had been used to buy a fully automatic Uzi from Jason Aguillard.

“You’re here about the boy’s mom?” Mount asked.

“Yeah, she’s threatened my C.I.,” McGowen answered.

When Mount questioned if White truly intended to harm Shaffer, McGowen recounted the incident with the black Mitsubishi, suggesting the teenager who’d made the threat was connected to White.

Mount looked at McGowen, not knowing what to think.

“We need to get this done right away,” McGowen urged, noting that at seven he’d be off duty. “My C.I.’s in danger and I want to serve this myself.”

Mount sighed. “All right. Let’s get it done.”

The A.D.A. escorted McGowen to the clerk’s window. There he presented the warrant, which described Kent McGowen as “a credible and reliable person reputably employed as a peace officer” and maintained that White
had threatened Mike Shaffer and that his mother, Jeannie Jaques, “believed that White intended to inflict serious harm or death on her son as a result of the statement made to her.”

“Raise your hand,” the clerk ordered McGowen. “Do you swear the information here is true and correct to the best of your knowledge?”

“Yes,” McGowen answered.

“Now you just need a judge’s signature,” Mount told him. “Judge Shipley will be in at seven-thirty.”

“I can’t wait,” McGowen told him. “I need to serve this warrant myself.”

Mount shook his head. “No way, I’m not waking a judge up for a third-degree felony,” he said. “Besides, by the time I wake up a judge to sign it, it’ll be seven-thirty and Shipley will be here. You’ll just have to wait.”

“I need to serve this myself,” McGowen argued. “My C.I. is in danger.”

But Mount remained firm.

“Shipley’s your best bet,” he said again. “If you can’t wait, leave the warrant at the clerk’s office and another deputy can serve it.”

McGowen looked angry.

“Well, if that’s what needs to be done,” he said.

“That’s what needs to be done,” Mount answered.

The lack of a judge’s signature essentially took the warrant out of Kent McGowen’s control. With no possibility of serving it before he finished his shift, he called Deputy Tommy Moore at six that morning and told him of the progress he’d made the night before.

“Will you get it signed and served for me?” McGowen asked.

“Yeah,” Moore answered. “No problem.” Back at the substation at the end of his shift that morning, McGowen ran into Al Kelly, a day-shift deputy
who patrolled Olde Oaks. Kelly had known Susan and Jason since they’d moved into the area, and while he felt the boy was troubled, he’d had but a few problems with him. He’d listened as McGowen had complained about Jason over the months, labeling him a troublemaker who influenced other teenagers in the neighborhood. Kelly hadn’t paid much attention that summer when White stopped him on the street to complain about McGowen. But he knew she worried about his new co-worker.

This particular morning, McGowen bragged about his big bust, filling Kelly in on the sting.

“His mommy called my C.I. and threatened him,” McGowen boasted. “I just got a warrant for her arrest.”

“You need to be careful going over there for whatever reason,” Kelly warned as McGowen turned his back to him to look through his box. “That woman’s afraid of you.”

Kelly could hardly believe what he heard next. With his back to Kelly, McGowen sneered, “If I get the opportunity, I ought to kill that fucking bitch.”

Still, it seemed Susan White’s fate was at least momentarily out of McGowen’s hands. Tommy Moore was the deputy who stopped at the clerk’s office at ten that morning to pick up the warrant. He was the one who would see that it was served, handcuff White, and bring her in for booking.

But something strange happened, something Moore had never experienced before. When he arrived at the clerk’s office at 10
A.M.
to get the warrant to take to a judge, he looked it over. Everything appeared in order until he noticed the line marked “Affiant,” the person bringing the charges. Somehow, Kent McGowen’s signature had been mysteriously obliterated with Wite-Out.

“I couldn’t get it signed or serve it without his
signature,” says Moore. “So I called Kent and told him what’d happened.”

Just hours earlier, McGowen had sworn to Jim Mount that the warrant had to be served immediately, imploring him to wake up a judge. He told Jean Spradling-Hughes that without it, Mike Shaffer could be dead by sunset.

But when Moore called, McGowen’s attitude abruptly changed. He no longer seemed intent on having Susan White arrested as soon as possible.

“He said I shouldn’t worry about the warrant,” Moore remembers. “McGowen said he’d have it signed when he came back on duty. He said he’d serve it himself.”

At five that Monday morning, Hurricane Andrew slammed the tip of south Florida, leaving behind nine more dead and a thick swatch of utter devastation. It then bounced back a second time, stalling in the Gulf of Mexico, where it mindlessly swirled, building even more deadly strength. Texas and Louisiana hung precariously in its path. No one could predict which city or town, which once quiet beach, the storm would next assault with its unrelenting rage.

Meanwhile, in Houston, Jason sat in a holding cell inside the criminal courthouse, awaiting his hearing, handcuffed and bound to his fellow prisoners with thick ankle chains. He felt someone’s eyes bearing down at him, and when he looked up he found Kent McGowen standing outside the cell.

“How do you like the big house?” McGowen asked, smiling. “Even your mommy can’t get you out of this.”
The phone rang next to Maggie’s bed at six-thirty that Monday morning, August 24, the first day of her senior year.

“Maggie, Jason is appearing in court this morning. I need to have you go with me,” Susan pleaded.

“Susan, I can’t,” the girl answered. “My mother would kill me.”

“Please, Maggie, please,” Susan begged. “I can’t go through this alone.”