Dead Men Talking (14 page)

The police and prosecutor believed, and still do, that Melanie had written this letter, while on bail and awaiting her trial, in an attempt to blow smoke around the prosecution’s case against her. And this author challenges anyone to find a similar correspondence sent to any prosecutor, in history, typed out by a Mafia mobster, whose bear-paw writing skills might stretch to ‘Yeah boss’, and little more.

I rest my case.

T
he correspondence sent by Phillip Jablonski from Death Row, San Quentin State Prison, arrives in white envelopes upon which he draws, in crayon, rather cute cartoons. But there is nothing cute or endearing about this brown-eyed, 6ft 2in, 200lb hulk; absolutely nothing whatsoever that could induce any right-minded person to ever want to spend more than a second of their time with him, and when you have read all that follows, would you?

If JR Robinson is the homicidal Del Boy, and Melanie McGuire is brighter than we think, where does Mr Jablonski fit into the scale of things? And, if JR’s IQ hits the 120 mark, with Mel’s crossing the finishing line at 150, how do we rate Phillip, who now sits on Death Row, waiting for the needle?

The answers to those questions are not good, for the creature we are about to cast our eyes over is 30 degrees below trailer-park trash, and the words ‘redemption’ and ‘mitigation’ do not apply.

Line up a queue of ‘rinky dink shrinks’, say ‘money’, and they will stretch from New York to the moon. Pay these ambulance-chasing ‘experts’ a few bucks and they’ll come up with more analyses for the character in question than you could count. The sad thing is that none, yes, not one of these psychiatrists would be able to agree with another colleague on the state of Mr Jablonski’s dysfunctional mind. Why? Because this guy lives in a world where elephants fly and lead balls bounce! This human being is a living example of early man…a cave-dweller, indeed, he is sub-human, he is a hillbilly gone real bad. In summary, this is not the sort of guy you’d want your daughter to date. Mr Jablonski, you are awarded first prize for being so thumb-suckingly dumb, and you also get a second prize, too – you get to feature in a chapter in this book.

Born on Thursday, 3 January 1946, Jablonski has been on Death Row since August 1994. Hunting pen pals on an internet web site, he describes himself thus: ‘Caucasian male – seeking an open-minded male/female for unconditional correspondence on a mature and honest level that has a caring heart to create a special friendship build from the heart [sic].’

Absent, however, from the web page upon which he seeks the aforementioned relationship is the fact that Phillip is an American serial killer whose CV in this department is shocking. Nonetheless, never one to be accused of being a shrinking violet, he adds:

Jablonski has been found guilty of five horrific murders. On Monday, 22 April 1991, he killed 38-year-old Fathyma Vann, in Indio City, located in the Coachella Valley of Southern California’s desert region. Vann was a fellow at the local community college, which Jablonski attended to satisfy the conditions of his parole. Fathyma, a recently widowed mother of two teenage girls, was found shot in the head and sexually assaulted, lying naked in a shallow ditch in the Indio desert. The words, ‘I Love Jesus’ were carved in her back. Her body had been subjected to other mutilations including removal of her eyes and ears, which her killer had eaten.

‘What do I like in a friend?’ Jablonski asks. ‘I like it if you like to travel, party. Someone who is mature and wants an honest friendship. Someone who is able to discuss personal issues on a mature level and is not scared of Frank [sic] discussion.’

His next two killings took place the day after he had murdered Mrs Vann, when Jablonski’s 46-year-old wife, Carol (nee Spadoni), and her mother, Eva Inge Peterson, 72, were killed in their Burlingame home. Spadoni was shot, suffocated with duct tape, then stabbed, while Peterson was sexually assaulted and then shot dead. A city in San Mateo County, California, Mateo is the second wealthiest in the state and the fourteenth richest in the US. And Burlingame, called ‘The City of Trees’ is a place where homicide is very rare.

Carol Spadoni met and married Jablonski in 1982, after answering a newspaper ad placed while he was serving time for having murdered his first wife, Melinda Kimball, in Palm Springs, California, 1978.

On 7 July 1978, Jablonski threatened Isobel Phals, Kimball’s mother, with a knife and attempted to rape her. Phals had also been the recipient of obscene telephone calls and other malicious acts which the police believed had been committed by Jablonski. Although Phals did not file formal charges against the man, she discussed with police the possibility of his receiving psychiatric treatment. Shortly thereafter, he volunteered to undergo a psychiatric examination at the Loma Linda Veterans Administration Hospital.

The police immediately called the hospital and were informed that Jablonski would be treated by a Dr Kopiloff, however, because the doctor was unable to take the call himself, the police officer spoke to Dr Berman, the head of psychiatric services.

And it is at this point that the wheels started to fall off the wagon.

The police officer advised Berman of Jablonski’s prior criminal record, the recent history of obscene telephone calls and malicious damage, and said that, in his opinion, Jablonski needed to be treated on an in-patient basis. However, although Berman promised that he would transmit this information to his colleague, Kopiloff, he failed to do so. Dr Kopiloff later said that had he received this information from the police, he would have involuntarily hospitalised the mentally disintegrating army veteran if possible. Now it was only a matter of time before Jablonski would explode.

On Monday, 10 July 1978, Melinda Kimball drove Jablonski to the hospital. During the interview, Kopiloff learned that his new patient had served a five-year prison term for raping his wife. He also learned that just a few days before the interview he had attempted to rape Isobel Phals. Jablonski enlightened the doctor, saying that he had undergone psychiatric treatment in the past, however, he refused to say where he had received this treatment.

Dr Kopiloff concluded that the patient was, ‘vague, non-communicative, and unwilling to share his prior medical history’. He diagnosed Jablonski as an ‘anti-social personality and potentially dangerous’. He recommended that Jablonski voluntarily hospitalise himself, but Jablonski declined. Kopiloff concluded that there was no real emergency and no basis for forcible hospitalisation, leaving Jablonski to return for another appointment in two weeks’ time.

The result was that Melinda Kimball was killed.

The hospital records of Jablonski’s prior treatment reveal that in 1968 he had received ‘extensive psychiatric care’ at an army hospital in El Paso. The El Paso records report that Mr Jablonski had a ‘homicidal ideation towards his wife… that on numerous occasions he had tried to kill her… that he probably suffered a psychotic breakdown and the possibility of future violent behaviour was a distinct possibility’. And, that he was ‘demonstrating some masculine identification in beating his wife as his father did frequently to his mother’. The final diagnosis concluded in part that Jablonski had a ‘schizophrenic reaction, undifferentiated type, chronic, moderate; manifested by homicidal behaviour toward his wife’.

The clock was now ticking, and the day after Jablonski’s interview with Kopiloff, Mrs Phals telephoned the doctor to complain about the two-week delay in Jablonski not returning for treatment. She threatened to call the police again, but Kopiloff persuaded her not to. However, to placate her he did bring forward the date to Friday 14 July. In the interim Kimball, and her daughter, Meghan, prudently moved out of Jablonski’s apartment and into Mrs Phal’s home.

Perhaps somewhat unwisely, Kimball called on Jablonski, and she drove him to see Kopiloff, and his supervisor, Dr Hazle, on 14 July. Although he volunteered that he had had frequent problems all his life, Jablonski again refused to be admitted as an in-patient. This time, Kopiloff concluded that his patient was not only possessed with an anti-social personality, but also with ‘explosive features’.

Dr Hazle went a step further. He believed that the man was downright dangerous, and that this case was an ‘emergency’. However, despite all of this, the two doctors still believed there was no basis for involuntary hospitalisation. And, again, no effort was made to seek out prior medical records. Instead, Jablonski was scheduled for more tests and sent home holding a prescription for Valium and with another appointment booked for Monday 17 July.

During the appointment between Jablonski, Hazle and Kopiloff, Melinda Kimball had waited in the hallway outside, probably praying that the next time she saw her man he would be wearing a strait jacket and chained to a padded cell wall. However, upon hearing the quiet discussion through a partly open door, she broke down, as well she might.

Noticing that Melinda seemed distressed, a third psychiatrist, a Dr Warnell, the chief of the mental health clinic, invited her into his office, where Melinda expressed fear for her personal safety. Although compassionate, Warnell advised her in measured tones that if she was afraid of Jablonski and that if he didn’t fit the criteria to be held in hospital against his wishes, that she could consider staying away from him altogether.

Apparently, Kimball took Dr Warnell’s advice, for she returned to live with Mrs Phal, who was, by now, sick and tired of the whole sorry affair; reasoning that if the police were all but useless in dealing with the rages and deviancy exhibited by Jablonski, the medical profession had surpassed the cops’ negligence by miles. That she hadn’t filed a complaint, at least for sexual assault against Jablonski, apparently didn’t enter her thinking.

On Sunday, 16 July, Kimball went to Jablonski’s apartment, apparently to pick up some nappies for Meghan. He was either at his home at the time or arrived soon after. Whatever the case, he attacked and murdered her, and as murders go, this one was bottom drawer. He beat her, raped her, stripped her, slashed her, and, when death mercifully intervened, he cut off her ears, ate her eyes, and finished it all off by abusing the sexual organs and anus of the corpse.

Jablonski has since been diagnosed as suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder, ‘transient’ psychotic episodes triggered by ‘overpowering aggressive or sexual feelings that cannot be expressed, and has a passive/aggressive personality with intense feelings of inadequacy’, and that he is a sexual sadist. He also engages in ‘malingering behaviour and is a schizophrenic’.

No surprises there. Nevertheless, and not one to let his shambles of a mind get in his way of searching for a pen friend, adding to his internet page, Phillip Jablonski says: ‘What I miss most? Traveling, photography, male and female company, giving massages, partying, walking in the rain, romantic walks on the beach, romantic candle light dinners, cuddling in front of a roaring fire and soft music.’

All of which Phill won’t be doing anytime soon.

Mr Jablonski was also found guilty of the subsequent murder of 58-year-old Margie Rogers, in Grand County, Utah, on Saturday, 27 April 1991. The murder was in furtherance of a truck stop robbery which netted him the princely sum of $158. He was captured the next day at a rest area in Kansas. Among other evidence found in his car was a tape recording in which he described the murders and his sexual assault on Eva Peterson.

At his 1994 trial, evidence was given to show that Jablonski had a long history of violence against women that stretched right back to his first marriage in 1968. He claimed that he suffered as result of traumas he experienced in childhood and during his military service in Vietnam. However, the jury decided that he was legally sane at the time of the murders and recommended he be put to death.

In January 2006, the California Supreme Court upheld Jablonski’s death sentence on appeal.

Notwithstanding all of this, Phillip wants pen pals to share: ‘thoughts and feelings (good and bad) let’s learn about one another freely and watch our relationship bloom like a rose and be as strong as a castle wall which cannot be broken…a loving heart is worth more than a mountain of gold. Love communicates on any subject or issue. Write me please…you won’t be disappointed.’

But before you do put pen to paper you should know that Mr Jablonski is, in his own words, an ‘indigence [sic] inmate and depend on the state for postage and envelopes. I can use assistance with postage and obtain writing, etc, etc from the canteen. $50 should cover it.’ He also sells his artwork through a number of web sites, so he is pretty well fixed financially, for a dead man walking.

While Jablonski claims on the internet that he has most of the virtues of a saint, he also has a fascination for John Reginald Christie: ‘a famous killer in the UK, who killed his wife and prostitutes and burned their bodies,’ he writes. ‘A friend of mine sent me a photo of him and Christie and I look like brothers.’ And balding and bespectacled Jablonski does, indeed, bear a passing resemblance to John Reginald Christie.

As a man who slits throats, sodomised and even cannibalised his victims, Jablonski is also clearly proud of his wayward son, Christopher, and this psychopath seems to have few regrets for his own actions: