I'll Take Care of You (26 page)

Billy also discovered that she'd been making false claims about her first husband, K. Ross. Just as she'd done with the other men in her life, she'd painted K. Ross to Billy in a negative light, presumably to keep Billy from wanting to talk to him and learning things that would make Nanette look bad.

Nanette had claimed, for example, that while they were still married, K. Ross had pushed her into the closet and forced her to have sex with him—a similar type of story, he would soon learn, that she'd told Eric Naposki about Bill McLaughlin. This incident, she'd told Billy, made her feel paranoid and scared around K. Ross because he was so big.

Billy had thought it was an odd tale at the time, given that K. Ross was her husband. But now he realized that this was Nanette's manipulative way of shaping his perception of her ex-husband for her own benefit.

She'd also told Billy that K. Ross had molested Lishele when their daughter was seven or eight. Nanette had said that she, Lishele, and Kristofer were on a sunset cruise when Lishele burst out sobbing. Asked what was wrong, Nanette quoted Lishele as saying, “Dad, he touched me.”

When Billy talked with Lishele about this story later, the poor girl said Nanette had even tried to convince
her
that this had happened. Over time, however, Lishele had come to realize that it just wasn't true.

CHAPTER 36

By the time the preliminary hearing started on November 6, 2009, at the Harbor Justice Center in Newport Beach, Billy McNeal believed it was more likely that Nanette would be found guilty than innocent.

On the outside, he pretended to be a supportive, loving husband, but inside, he knew things looked “really, really bad” for his wife as he sat in Judge Robert Gannon's courtroom with Nanette's friends, who rolled their eyes during the proceedings. They still had no idea who she really was.

Nanette had one attorney at the defense table to Eric's three. From where Kim and Jenny McLaughlin were sitting behind Eric, they could see that he'd applied makeup to the back of his neck, apparently to cover all the tribal-design tattoos he'd gotten since the 1990s.

As Detective Tom Voth testified that day, he gave numerous “I don't recall” answers under heated cross-examination by Mick Hill, who flailed his arms as he implied that the NBPD had not done a thorough job. Hill got so worked up that his Irish brogue grew thicker as he spoke faster and faster, prompting the judge to stop him.

“Slow down,” Gannon said, adding that Hill also needed to refrain from asking compound questions.

“I get excited,” Hill said with his usual mirthful charm.

Voth felt that Hill was obsessing over unimportant details, such as why he hadn't questioned the parents or children at the soccer field, and whether he knew how many parking spaces were in the parking lot.

Sergeant Dave Byington, who couldn't go into the courtroom because he was a witness, asked Sandy Baumgardner during a break in the hallway how it was going inside.

“Did this guy not prepare?” a frustrated Sandy replied, referring to Voth. “It doesn't seem to be going very well. I assume he's had all summer to go through the material.”

Byington tried to reassure Sandy and the McLaughlin sisters, who were also concerned, that this was nothing to worry about.

“We knew this was going to happen,” he told them.

Later, Voth said he didn't take Hill's questioning personally, knowing that defense attorneys typically attacked a police investigation that led to charges against their clients. To Voth, his job was simply to explain decisions made by “those ultimately responsible,” meaning the sergeants, lieutenants, captains, and even the chief, who had directed the investigation.

“I prepared the best I could,” Voth recalled, adding that he'd spent many hours reviewing his files, but he didn't know what questions prosecutor Matt Murphy was going to ask him.

No one could change the fact that fifteen years had passed since the murder occurred, memories had faded, details had dissipated, and evidence had disappeared. Which was precisely the point emphasized by both defense teams.

“Mick kicked their butt the first day,” Billy recalled recently, adding he didn't believe Murphy did the best job of presenting his witnesses.

Murphy shrugged off the criticism, explaining that he'd intentionally focused on the technical aspects of the case in a presentation designed specifically for this judge (whom Murphy had met while clerking in the DA's office), not for people watching in the gallery.

“It's not about making a good show. It's about knowing your audience,” Murphy said. “Drama at a prelim means nothing. It doesn't get you anywhere. It's unnecessary, and you could actually be damaging your own credibility [with the judge].”

Eric's defense attorneys Gary Pohlson and Angelo MacDonald, who both cross-examined witnesses, saw Voth referring to a binder of extensive handwritten case notes that the defense had never seen before. They demanded to get their own copy.

 

 

Things looked better for the prosecution on the second day.

“[Investigator Larry] Montgomery did a great job on the stand, and Mick had a hard time with him because he knew his stuff,” Billy said. “He was a rock-solid witness.”

That said, it didn't go unnoticed that Montgomery paused for about ten seconds before answering Hill's question about whether Newport Beach police had “adequately” investigated Eric's phone call “alibi” in the 1990s.

“I think that more could have been done,” Montgomery finally said. “However, not enough information was available to determine if that was a valid alibi or not.”

Hill asked the judge and court reporter to make sure that Montgomery's uncomfortable silence was noted for the record.

For Billy, Murphy's closing was the turning point, as he outlined how the murder went down, “point by point, minute by minute.”

“As soon as Bill McLaughlin realizes that Nanette is stealing from him, I'm going to go out on a limb and bet that their relationship is not going to be healthy,” Murphy said. “The evidence is overwhelming that these two people conspired and murdered him.”

Voth may not have remembered all the minutiae of the case, Murphy said later, but on the technical areas he'd asked the detective to prepare, “Tom was a rock star.” And the bottom line came in the final ruling by the judge, who found enough evidence to bind Eric and Nanette over for trial.

As soon as the ruling was announced, Nanette started shaking, and the back of Eric's shaved head and neck grew red with anger—visible even under the makeup—as his blood pressure rose.

Billy walked out of the courtroom with his feelings confirmed: Nanette was guilty as it gets.

If I put myself in the shoes of a juror, it all makes sense, and it's very believable,
he thought.

Unlike Billy, however, Eric Naposki's fiancée, Rosie, stood by her man.

 

 

Billy had always been able to handle a lot of stress without losing the fight. But this was different. This was a battle like no other he'd seen before, and it seemed like it would never end.

“You can never measure the pain and time and suffering, and all the emotional baggage and damage,” he said.

In the couple of months before the prelim, it had become difficult for Billy to keep visiting Nanette. In addition to the time-consuming and tedious trips to jail with the baby, the letter-writing on her behalf, and the checks he sent so she could buy things from the commissary, the dark truths he'd been learning about her were making it hard for him to hide his feelings. He couldn't look at her and talk to her the way he used to, feeling as betrayed as he did.

After the prelim, she noticed that he wasn't telling her he loved her when they talked on the phone as often as he once had.

“Are you going to leave me?” she asked. “Are you seeing somebody?”

“No,” he said. “I don't know what you mean.”

This was a lie. He had, in fact, started dating someone, but he didn't let on. It wasn't time yet.

After seeing the evidence Murphy had presented against his wife at the prelim, Billy began to help the prosecution team any way he could.

“I know she did it,” he told his sister and brother-in-law.

By early 2010, he went back to the same child psychologist to discuss what to do next. Not surprisingly, she advised him to stop taking Cruz to visit Nanette.

“There's no physical contact,” she told him. “You're only going to confuse the child. The only needs that will serve is the mother's.”

Billy had been hanging in for Nanette's kids, so they didn't feel as though he'd abandoned them too.

“I didn't want it to just disintegrate,” he said. All her kids had left “was me, and they didn't think she did it. No way, uh-uh.”

But he couldn't stand to face Nanette—physically or psychologically—any longer. He didn't believe anything she said anymore, and he felt hardened by his anger and resentment toward her.

Right before Jaycie's birthday on March 20, he decided he was ready to tell Nanette their marriage was over. He went to visit her that day for the last time.

“Are you seeing someone?” Nanette asked him again.

This time, he looked her straight in the eye and said nothing, the same response she'd given him when he'd asked her for answers all those months earlier. The moment had arrived. He was finally ready to confirm her suspicions.

“Yes,” he said, “I am seeing somebody else.”

Furious, Nanette proceeded to blast him with a stream of expletives.

They had one more conversation by phone when she called his sister's house to talk to him.

“How's the asshole who ruined my family?” she asked.

“I'm sorry, but I'm not the one who's sitting in jail,” he said.

When she laid into him again, he told her he didn't want anything from her, and he wasn't going to try to take her house either. He would even help her sell the thing and be done with it.

 

 

Bill's next emotionally tough task was to tell Nanette's daughter Lishele and her husband, Shawn, that he was seeing someone. They weren't so much hurt by the news as they were shocked and disappointed that he was leaving Nanette.

He told them he didn't want them to feel alone. “Know I'm here,” he said. “I'm just not with your mom.”

Billy's father and stepmother continued to take Cruz to visit Nanette, but it wasn't easy.

“My stepmom had a hard time dealing with the immensity and magnitude [of the case],” he said. Being very religious, “they would pray with her and share God's word with her. . . . Cruz was the first baby [my stepmom had] spent time with. She had this great fear that if Nanette gets out, she's going to take this child away from all of us, and she didn't want to take that risk.”

It was difficult for Billy to decide what to do about Jaycie. Although John Packard was her biological father, Billy felt he was much closer to her than John was.

“She called me ‘Papa,'” he said. “I was more her dad than anyone had ever been in six years.”

As he struggled with what to do, he delayed severing legal ties with Nanette for the children's sake. But on May 24, 2010, he finally filed for divorce, citing “irreconcilable differences,” an understatement given that she was behind bars. Even though she'd been in jail since May 2009, Billy told the court that they hadn't officially separated until March 20, 2010.

Noting in court papers that he and Cruz were living with his sister's family in Winchester, he wrote,
I request that I have sole legal and sole physical custody with no visitation to respondent until further order of the court.

Nanette responded a month later, saying she didn't consent to his terms. Although she acknowledged that she was incarcerated, she wrote,
Once released I want custody of my child back in full.
She said the extent of separate property and debts of each party was unknown at that time, so she reserved the right to address those issues later.

But in the meantime, she wrote—with a shocking level of narcissism and arrogance—that she wanted legal and physical custody and was “willing” to grant visitation to Billy. She also said she wanted him to pay her spousal support and “such other and further relief” as the court “deems just and proper.”

Billy countered with a filing that said there was “no possibility of reconciliation,” and that no delay in ending their marriage would help resolve the issues between them.

There is only one piece of community property to divide, a painting purchased on our honeymoon,
he wrote, referencing a Greek painting valued at $3,500. All other property had been deemed separate under an agreement they signed on April 26, 2007, eight months after they were married.

The last time Billy's parents took Cruz to see Nanette was in June 2010. They got a flat tire on the way and Cruz had a meltdown. Billy finally put his foot down and said he wouldn't allow them to take Cruz to visit Nanette anymore, and they conceded that that was the right decision.

Not surprisingly, Judge Michael Naughton awarded sole legal and physical custody to Billy that July. The divorce was granted on May 24, 2011.