Smooth Talker: Trail of Death, page 1
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SMOOTH TALKER published by:
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Copyright 2002, 2015 by Steve Jackson
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OTHER WILDBLUE PRESS BOOKS BY STEVE JACKSON
Bogeyman: He Was Every Parent’s Nightmare
http://wbp.bz/bogeyman
No Stone Unturned: The True Story of the World’s Premier Forensic Investigators
http://wbp.bz/nsu
Rough Trade: The Shocking True Story of Prostitution, Murder and Redemption
http://wbp.bz/rt
TABLE OF CONTENTS
OTHER WILDBLUE PRESS BOOKS BY STEVE JACKSON
PREFACE
II
III
IV
VI
VII
VIII
IX
XI
XII
XIII
XIV
XV
XVI
XVII
XVIII
XIX
XX
XXI
XXII
XXIII
EPILOGUE
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
PREFACE
He’s just a fat old man rotting away in a Colorado prison.
Terrified that he’s going to spend what’s left of his life behind concrete walls, steel bars and concertina razor wire, he spends his days filing appeals and writs in a never-ending stream of bullshit and lies. But he’ll die in prison. If not that one, then another, or another; they’re lined up like graves in a cemetery waiting for him. And there’d probably be others if someone wanted to go through the effort of making him pay for all the death, despair and ruined lives he’s caused. Just an evil old monster waiting for final justice.
But back in the day he’d been a charmer with his blue eyes and that soft south-Texas drawl. Not particularly handsome and already losing his hair by his thirties, but boy could he spin a tale. The Good Samaritan who’d offer to help with a flat tire, or clear some brush, or fix an appliance. Or just tell a good yarn about the places he’d been, the things he’d done. A smooth-talking son of bitch … a real lady killer.
I
July 10, 1974
On a summer evening when the Napa Valley was baking like a brick oven, Anita Andrews parked her tan 1967 Cadillac in front of the old three-story building that housed the bar she and her sister had inherited from their father five years earlier. She then unlocked the padlock and turned on the red-and-white neon sign that hung above the front doors, the signal to her patrons that tonight Fagiani’s Cocktail Lounge was open for business.
Not that she was happy to be there. A former county fair beauty queen, the 51-year-old Andrews didn’t like working at the bar. She already had a full-time job as a secretary at the Napa State Hospital, a psychiatric facility that included housing for the criminally insane. But long hours there weren’t the reason she dreaded going to Fagiani’s as her second job.
Although she’d practically been raised in the bar and had many fond memories of her father from the place, she’d told friends that she hated going there now. It was in a bad area of town and not a nice place to hangout anymore, at least not for a woman. That stretch of Main Street near the Napa River was a motley collection of dives mostly serving the same barflies, assorted drifters, and outpatients from the psych ward who lived in the seedy Connor Hotel opposite the bar.
Such was Andrews’ distaste for Fagiani’s that she and her sister, Muriel Fagiani, opened the padlock and turned on the sign—complete with a bright white neon martini glass on top—only enough to maintain its liquor license, which stipulated they had to operate 24 hours a week. They intended to sell the lounge and the license would be needed to lure a prospective buyer. In the meantime, they did what they had to do. Muriel handled most of the finances, while Anita worked behind the bar pouring drinks, listening to hard luck stories, staying open until 9 or 11 p.m., and hoping for somebody to take it off their hands. They were still waiting on that hot night in July 1974.
Someday that neighborhood would change again, get nicer. But back then, Napa, and the valley from which it took its name, wasn’t the pricey wine-tourist destination and playground for the wealthy from the Bay Area it would become in the next decade. With a population just shy of 34,000 souls, the town was still just a sleepy little county seat fifty miles north of San Francisco, surrounded by gently rolling hills and a bucolic patchwork of farms, pastures and the vineyards for which it had been known for more than a hundred years.
Once a jump off point for silver miners and known in the late-19th and early 20th centuries as having more bordellos than any other city its size in California, it was no great wonder that the town’s first official business was a saloon on the corner of Third Street down by the river. Nichola Fagiani opened his lounge about a hundred years later.
A native of Italy, Fagiani had immigrated to the Napa Valley where he’d acquired a vineyard and winery. He’d sold that and purchased the old stone building on Main Street that had once housed a speakeasy during the Prohibition and opened his own place.
Back then “Papa’s Bar,” as his daughters’ called it, was a nice place where a working man could bring his family for dinner, drinks and camaraderie. There was a pool table and a jukebox, and three deer heads on the wall overseeing everything. Nichola was the cook and head bartender while his daughters hung out and played with the kids of his customers.
Fagiani’s bar where Anita Andrews was murdered July 10, 1974. Photo courtesy of the Napa County District Attorney’s Office.
The family was staunchly Catholic and conservative; his daughters weren’t allowed to wear pants, only dresses. They were both beautiful young women, which was acknowledged publicly when Anita was crowned queen of the Napa County Fair in 1940. “I’m more than happy to have the honor, but a little sorry that Joan didn’t win,” the 17-year-old modestly told a reporter for the Napa Valley Register, referring to runner-up Joan Hofacre.
Anita graduated from Armstrong’s Business School in Berkeley. Then two years later, in June 1942, she married Clarence “Mike” Andrews Jr. The couple moved to Berkeley and had two daughters, first Diana and then eight years later, Donna. However, the marriage didn’t last and the couple divorced in 1951.
A few years later, Andrews moved with her daughters back to Napa. She was a single mother, which was unusual for those times, but she worked hard and emphasized the need to get a good education to her daughters.
Time passed, her daughters grew up and moved out and onto their own lives. She remained close to her father and the two often attended boxing matches and watched football together. When he died, she and Muriel, a former schoolteacher who moved back to Napa from Sacramento, inherited the bar. They had to work it themselves because it didn’t bring in enough money to hire someone else.
Everybody in town knew Anita Andrews and her tan Cadillac. Neat and fastidious about her appearance, she always dressed well, wore a Bulova watch and, when she worked, a black diamond onyx ring so that those customers who didn’t know her well would think she was married. As a secretary she always wore high heels, and then when she arrived at the bar, she’d change into flats; when she left for the night, she’d removed the flats and put the high heels back on.
Anita never remarried. There was an on-again, off-again boyfriend for awhile. No one seemed to know much about him other than he worked for a carnival and traveled a lot. But about a week earlier, she’d told her daughter, Debbie, that she was fed up with him. He’d run up a $400 phone bill at her apartment, and she was keeping his tools in the back of her car until he paid her back. But after that, she said, they were done.
Anita Andrews was 51 years old when she was killed. Photo courtesy of the Napa County District Attorney’s Office.
Anita also had other long-time friends, like Joseph Silva, who’d lived next door to her on Main Street until he bought a home in 1973 and she moved to a new apartment on Soscol Avenue. He owned his own tan Cadillac, but his was a ’52. They’d get together for coffee on some mornings, or just sit on the front porch chatting. She was outgoing and warm, and he enjoyed her company. They’d even made plans to go out to dinner the night before, but she called to ask for a rain check.
Andrews also told Silva she didn’t like working at the bar. It scared her. One night she’d called him up and quietly said, “I got some creep in here, would you call me back and pretend you’re my boyfriend so I can get rid of him?”[1]
Even the police looked out for Anita. There were no set hours for Fagiani’s, but as part of his late night patrol down Main Street, the officer on duty would slow down as he passed the bar. If the padlock was off and the Cadillac parked out fro
The evening of July 10 went like most nights at Fagiani’s. Only a handful of people had stopped in. By late evening, the only customers were three local men who were carousing around town and drinking at one end of the bar counter, and another man sitting on a stool at the far end smoking cigarettes, cutting a pack of cards, and flirting with Andrews.
The three local men didn’t recognize him, but he seemed to be a real smooth talker with a Southern drawl of some sort. He sat with his back to them and kept his face covered with his hand so they couldn’t get a good look at him.
A little after 9 p.m., Andrews started cleaning up. She kept the place spotless and that included wiping the bar down until it shone, and lining all the stools up neatly beneath the counter, except where the stranger sat, his stool pushed out from the bar, smoking and drinking.
Finally, one of the three locals decided he didn’t like the way the stranger kept hiding his face. “Hey, what’s your problem?” he shouted.
However, Luce, who’d been in the bathroom when the commotion started, got his friend to stop badgering the other man. He then walked over and held out his hand. “We’re not trying to cause you any trouble,” said Luce, looking the man in the eyes.
The stranger shook his hand but didn’t say much. Then Andrews started hustling the three carousers out of the door. Noting that she wasn’t making the stranger leave, Luce asked if he was her boyfriend. She indicated that he was, but he wasn’t sure if that was true or just a way of getting them to move along.
It could have been just the end of another night at Fagiani’s, but it wasn’t. For one thing, the usual police drive-by didn’t happen; otherwise, the officer would have noticed that a little later in the evening the Cadillac was gone but the doors weren’t padlocked.
However, it wasn’t until the next morning when Muriel Fagiani received a call from her mother that the horrible truth about how the rest of the night had gone began to make itself known. Her mother said she’d just received a call from the Napa State Hospital; her sister hadn’t reported to work or phoned in sick. “Go check on her.”
Muriel was puzzled; that wasn’t like Anita who was always punctual and never missed work without letting somebody know why. She drove over to his sister’s apartment but the Cadillac was missing and no one was home. She then decided to check the bar.
When she arrived, Muriel saw that the front door was missing its padlock, which was odd. She walked in and noted that the counter was wiped down and spotless and that all of the bar stools were neatly lined up—except for an ashtray on the far end and one stool that was out of line.
Then she noticed that two swinging doors leading to the storeroom, normally always open, were closed. She pushed through them and discovered why. The half-naked body of her sister lay on the floor in a pool of blood.
[1] Anita E. Fagiani Andrews, Findagrave.com,
II
July-August 1974
When Napa police officer Joe Moore responded to the call for help at 9:04 a.m. he arrived to find Muriel Fagiani in a state of shock. “I think my sister’s been raped,” she said and pointed to the storeroom.
Moore walked into the room and immediately saw that Andrews was dead, but she had put up a hell of a fight. There was broken glass and blood everywhere—splattered on the walls, dripping down the cases of beer and mixers, and pooling on the floor beneath the victim’s upper body. He secured the area and waited for assistance; meanwhile a BOLO, or “be on the lookout,” was issued for the missing Cadillac.
Criminalist Peter Barnett arrived at 10:45 a.m. to collect evidence and record what he saw that would be relevant to putting a homicide case together. The DA’s office didn’t have the money for a full-time crime scene investigator so they hired Barnett, who lived in the Bay Area, to process major crimes scenes.
He noted that the bar counter was wiped spic and span except for an ashtray containing a single cigarette butt, a shot glass, and a spoon, all of which he bagged as potential evidence. Unlike the other stools, which were all neatly lined up beneath the counter, the stool in front of the ashtray had been moved out, as if someone had been sitting at it.
The bloody floor where Anita’s body was found and outlined in white. Photo courtesy of the Napa County District Attorney’s Office.
The sink behind the bar counter was also clean and empty except for a screwdriver sitting on the drain. It had been placed there wet and left a rust mark. Each of the three basins contained a small amount of water; the water in the middle one tested positive for blood.
A crumpled towel lay on the floor beneath the sink. There didn’t appear to be any blood stains on it, but Barnett collected it too, as well as the screwdriver, and beer and alcohol bottles from the trash.
There were blood stains on the bar floor about two feet from the doors leading into the storeroom. Inside the room, Andrews lay on her back. Her clothes were torn, punctured by a sharp object, and partly removed. Her pants and underwear had been yanked off her right leg but remained on her left leg; her blouse had been opened and the bra pulled down. She still had one of her high heels on, though the other was found behind the counter, but was not wearing her watch, ring or any other jewelry. Nor could investigators locate her purse, credit cards or car keys.
Bloody footprints made by a man’s shoe led from the storeroom to an upstairs office which contained a now-empty cash box and safe. He’d apparently dropped some of the coins on his way back down the stairs. Another bloody shoeprint was located just inside the front door of the bar.
While investigators were still going over the crime scene, David Luce arrived at the bar. He’d heard what happened and wanted to tell them about the previous night. He described the stranger as looking to be in his mid-30s, with a “flattened” hairstyle and thin lips.
After leaving the bar about 9:30, he said he and his friends had gone to dinner. When he walked past the bar an hour or so later, he noticed that the lights were off, the door closed and the Cadillac was gone.
The autopsy performed the next day revealed that Anita Andrews had been subjected to an attack of intense savagery and rage. Due to glass in her hair and cut on her scalp, as well as blood on the floor leading into the storeroom, the investigators surmised that she had been struck on the back of the head with a bottle while she was behind the counter, then dragged into the room.
However, while she might have been stunned at first, she fought valiantly for her life. Her nose was broken and other bruises attested to the closed-fist punches she took. But eventually she’d been overpowered. Her attacker stabbed her thirteen times, mostly in her chest, with the screwdriver found in the storeroom sink. He then tore her clothes off and attempted to rape her though the autopsy couldn’t determine if he’d accomplished the act.
