Smooth Talker: Trail of Death, page 11
The jurors agreed that Angelo had done a magnificent job of tying together a complex case. The defense, however, particularly in its closing, acted as if they didn’t believe in their client’s innocence and were “grasping at straws.”
The jurors each l seemed to have one small thing they had picked out. For some, it was the way Melanson had driven around in Michele’s car so brazenly, knowing there was no one to report it stolen. One man thought it was incriminating to have found Okie’s leash in the car when Melanson had claimed he last saw the dog tied up outside the bar where he left Michele. A woman thought Michele would have had the insurance card on her person unless it had been taken.
However, they all reported having been most affected by the site where her remains were found. For some, it was the remoteness; for others, it matched Matthews’s description of his travels with Melanson: the steep slope, the thick vegetation ...
It all fit so well with the testimony of Diane France, who had related her findings in such amazing but understandable detail to what they saw at the site. Would they have convicted Melanson without Michele’s remains? The jurors said, there was no ignoring the bones of Michele Wallace. “It made her real,” said one juror.
That afternoon, Melanson was brought into the courtroom he had sought to avoid. Judge Brown sentenced him to life in prison, to run consecutive to his Kentucky sentence. In pronouncing judgment, Brown read from the U.S. Constitution and the Declaration of Independence, as Melanson stood sullen and brooding, noting that the defendant had deprived Michele Wallace of her “life, liberty and pursuit of happiness.”
“Quite frankly, you are nothing more than a big mouth and a big braggart with an empty mind and no conscience,” the judge said. “People have a right to be free, Mr. Melanson. People have a right to be free from people like you. You’re a waste of humanity.”
Melanson showed no reaction. He just sat and stared straight ahead as if bored.
It was a bright, warm end-of-the-summer day when the prosecutors, Sheriff Murdie, and Young at last left the courtroom. There wasn’t a cloud in the sky outside, but just as they stepped out the door, there was an enormous clap of thunder.
“I guess someone else approves,” Kathy Young said, and they all laughed.[1]
[1] Steve Jackson, No Stone Unturned (WildBluePress, May 2015), Kindle Edition
XIX
April 13, 1994
Donna Campeglia looked around at those gathered at the Woodland Cemetery in Riverside, Illinois. On what would have been her 45th birthday, the ashes of Michele Wallace were being buried in her mother’s grave and more than 150 people had gathered for the Mass and memorial service she’d arranged.
Contacting the media who jumped on the heart-wrenching story, she’d wanted everyone who knew Michele or had wondered about her disappearance all those years ago to know that she’d been found, her killer tried and convicted, and that she was now coming home. Amazed by the size of the crowd, she recognized old friends and their parents from high school and the neighborhood, teachers and former co-workers.
Also present was Michele’s father, George Sr., brother, George Jr., and the woman who she believed had made this final homecoming possible, Kathy Young. She’d met Kathy the day before and given her a whirlwind tour of Chicago and presented her with a plaque, thanking her for her persistence and dedication.
Life had never been the same after Michele’s disappearance and death. A fear factor had entered her formerly happy-go-lucky life. It wasn’t just that she wouldn’t go alone to walk dogs in the woods, or was always looking over her shoulder, wondering if some man was about to grab her; she was skeptical of anyone she met, she didn’t trust people. After all, Melanson had come off as just a charming, smooth-talking man when really he was just an evil liar and murderer.
Donna tried not to think much about Melanson. She didn’t like looking at photographs of him. She was afraid his evil would somehow permeate her being. But she’d recently seen a photograph of him taken from a prison in Kentucky where he’d been interviewed by one of the newspapers prior to the memorial service. He admitted to the journalist that he’d stolen Michele’s car and other belongings, but denied killing her. “I’ve always wondered what really happened to her,” he was quoted. “I am not a monster.”
Really? she thought when she read that statement. Then what should we call a person who beats and molests women, eventually killing them, so that he can steal their belongings and go off on his merry way?
After Michele’s murder she’d become fascinated with watching crime shows. She thought she might see or hear something that would help her solve Michele’s disappearance and murder. Then it was just a morbid fascination with the amount of violent crime and murder that permeated society; Melanson was the poster boy for all of that, the monster who lurked in the shadows of her mind.
Yet, neither the years nor the skepticism nor the television crime shows, could dissipate the love she still had for her friend or the memories. Indeed, for years she’d “protected” her mind from reality by “pretending” that Michele had tumbled down a mountainside, struck her head and got amnesia. It meant she was still out there somewhere, not knowing who she was but alive … and maybe someday would come home again.
Of course, when Michele’s remains were found, even that fantasy was dashed. But her memories remained, reinforced by the “arty” photographs that Michele had taken of her when they were young and were hanging on the walls of her home, daily reminders of her friend. She’d also kept every letter she’d ever received in a box.
Budding photograph Michele Wallace took this photograph of her best friend Donna Campeglia. It still hangs on a wall in Campeglia’s home in Illinois. Photo by Michele Wallace.
When she heard that Michele’s remains had been cremated, she’d arranged for the Mass and services, knowing that George Sr. was overwhelmed with yet another tragedy in his life.
The day the Gunnison coroner called George Wallace to ask where to send the ashes, the old man had just minutes before returned home from the hospital and the bedside of his wife, Melba. She had died that afternoon.
Michele’s remains arrived in Florida where he’d moved, the same day that he picked up Melba’s ashes. It was almost more than one man could bear, and still he had another dilemma to face.
When he was married to Maggie, George had reserved a place for the two of them, side by side in Woodlawn Cemetery. He had never dreamed he would have to bury two wives and a daughter before he, too, passed on. But if he buried Melba next to Maggie, there wouldn’t be any more space available in the original plot, and Maggie had asked to have her daughter buried next to her. Nor did he want to be separated in death, as he was in life, from the three women he loved.
Heartsick and unsure of what to do, George wrestled with the problem until he discovered that Illinois law allowed one body and the cremated remains of a second person to be buried in the same grave. Michele and her mother would at last be reunited, and George would be buried with Melba’s ashes, next to the grave of his beloved first wife and daughter.
George had Kathy Young, who sat next to him at the ceremony, and the wonderful people at NecroSearch to thank for bringing Michele back to her mother. And her best friend, Donna Campeglia, who saw that “Mush” was surrounded by people who had loved her. She’d never been forgotten, and now they could all find peace and let her go.
Just like in the photograph he treasured and given to Young, Michele was turning toward the light; she was going home.[1]
[1] Tragedy would continue to follow the Wallace family. In January 2006, two young thugs entered the St. Petersburg home of George Wallace, eighty-five-years old and confined to a wheelchair. They put a comforter over his head and beat him unconscious then ransacked his home and took his car. Wallace died in the hospital eight hours later.
The killers, Stephen Sterling, 22, and Eugene Wesley, 17, were eventually arrested. Two years later, Wesley testified against Sterling and pleaded guilty to second-degree murder; he was sentenced to 25 years. Sterling was convicted of first degree murder and sentenced to life without parole.
XX
November 5, 2009
The barely restrained excitement in the woman’s voice on the other end of the line made Napa police detective Don Winegar sit up. “We got a hit,” she said. “It’s for a convicted murderer named Roy Melanson. He’s incarcerated in Colorado.”
Winegar couldn’t believe what he was hearing from Michelle Terra, a criminalist who worked for the California Department of Justice DNA laboratory. After 35 years, there was a name for the stranger sitting at the end of bar, smoking a cigarette, at Fagiani’s Cocktail Lounge on the night of July 10, 1974.
Roy Melanson. Didn’t ring a bell, but Winegar, who knew every name and detail having to do with the case, didn’t care. We got a hit!
The 52-year-old detective had been working on the cold case homicide since 2006; the last in a line of investigators assigned or inclined to look into the murder of Anita Andrews. He’d picked up the case after he and Detective Todd Shulman solved another homicide through hard work and the relatively new crime-fighting tool, for Napa anyway, of DNA comparison analysis.
The result of the other case meant life without parole Eric Copple, a 26-year-old man who had stabbed two young women to death in November 2004. Based on the success of DNA evidence used to convict Copple, chief of detectives Sgt. Tim Cantillon had asked Winegar and Shulman to look at other cold cases that might be solved through DNA.
The science of comparing Deoxyribonucleic acid, a molecule found in all living organisms, and with humans can be used to match blood, semen, skin, saliva and hair found at a crime scene, to that of a suspect was first used to convict a killer in 1988. Since then the science had slowly gained widespread acceptance in courtrooms. But even twenty years after that first conviction, the process was expensive and slow, especially in light of the sheer number of cases that constantly inundated understaffed and underfunded crime laboratories, such as at the California Department of Justice.
Shulman took the case of Doreen Heskett, a five-year-old girl who had gone missing on March 3, 1963, and whose skeletal remains had been discovered in a field nine months later. Winegar chose the Anita Andrews homicide.
The science of DNA comparison was interesting to Winegar, who early in his law enforcement career had worked as at the Napa County Sheriff’s Office as a patrol officer and deputy coroner investigating causes of death. But he’d harbored few illusions that three years later it would put him on the doorstep of cracking one of the county’s oldest unsolved cases.
Hired by the Napa Police Department in 1987 and a detective since the late 1990s, Winegar was well aware of the local legend behind the still-closed and shuttered Fagiani’s Cocktail Lounge in downtown Napa. Just about anybody who’d ever spent any time in Napa, especially in law enforcement, knew about the murder of Anita Andrews. Anita’s sister, Muriel Fagiani, was a well-known gadfly at city council meetings, sticking up for long-time residents as “progress” threatened the Napa way of life, but also reminding anybody who’d listen that her sister’s killer was still a mystery.
It seemed like every five years or so, the media would trot out the story and different detectives who worked on the case would be interviewed though there was never much new to add. Like most small cities, Napa didn’t have a cold case homicide unit dedicated to just old unsolved cases. If a detective worked on a cold case, it was in addition to their regular full caseloads, and because detectives were transferred in and out of investigations every few years, it was hard to put much time or effort into solving one.
Winegar was no different. He had a full caseload and could only work on the Andrews murder in fits and starts when time allowed.
Initially he began looking at the evidence kept in the Records and Property Divisions, which consisted of three binders with reports, and a number of boxes containing the physical evidence, miraculously including three boxes of beer bottles that had not been thrown away.
At first he viewed the reports in the binders as historical documents to be read and put in some sort of order. As he began creating binders of his own, such as one in which he listed every name and the facts associated with those names, he was cognizant of the fact that what happened the night of July 10, 1974 wasn’t only a murder, but also a sexual assault and a robbery, both of which might be important for establishing motive if a suspect was identified.
He read reports generated by other detectives over the years, particularly the first two assigned to the case, Robert Jarecki and John Bailey. He noted the good old-fashioned gumshoe canvassing of neighborhoods, and checking out other rapes, robberies and murders looking for something that might be similar what happened at Fagiani’s.
They’d eventually identified the carnival mechanic reputed to have been Andrews’ sometimes boyfriend. He’d lost his job due to alcohol issues and moved to the South where they lost track of him. But, as Winegar noted, the timeline of his movements didn’t jibe with the evidence and he’d been crossed off the suspect list.
He also saw where Jarecki had found Liston Beal in April 1990 living in Oklahoma. He even visited the man and obtained fingerprints and hair samples. However, the fingerprints didn’t match any of those found at the murder scene, nor could any of the witnesses pick him out of a photo lineup.
After putting the case file in order, making notes as he went along, Winegar began using the internet to see if he could locate the witnesses and law enforcement personnel mentioned in the files. He discovered that quite a few had passed away, including two of the men who’d been in the bar on the night of the murder.
However, Winegar was excited to learn that the third man, David Luce, was still alive and living in a healthcare facility in Chico, California. If the investigation reports were correct, Luce was the one man who might actually be able to identify the stranger sitting at the bar. But the detective’s excitement was tempered; he had a possible eyewitness, but no suspect.
Winegar was also surprised to find out that the original criminalist, Peter Barnett, was not only still alive, but working for his own company, Forensic Science Associates. The detective had been impressed with Barnett’s thorough processing of the crime scene. The photographs he’d taken of the bar matched Luce’s story about the man with the Southern drawl sitting on a stool at the far end, smoking a cigarette. If there was ever a trial, having a living witness who could walk a jury through the crime scene and the evidence was far better than reading from reports.
Interior of Fagiani’s bar showing stool pulled away from the bar. The “stranger” suspected of murdering Anita Andrews was last seen by witnesses sitting on the stool. Photo courtesy of the Napa County District Attorney’s Office.
Reviewing the material, Winegar saw that in 2001, one of the last detectives to work on the case, Peter Jerich, had attended a DNA cold case class in December 2001 put on by the California Department of Justice. Jerich had talked about the case with other officers and the criminalist teaching the class, Bruce Moran, who asked Jerich to send some of the evidence—specifically the towel found on the floor beneath the sink and the hair samples taken from Liston Beal—to the DOJ crime laboratory. The evidence was sent in December 2001.
However, according to a report in the binders from Jerich, when he contacted the laboratory in October 2004, the material had not yet been tested. Current cases with suspects took precedence and the lab had simply been too busy to work on an old cold case. The detective, who soon transferred out of investigations, was told in December 2004 that the work would be done.
It was now May 2006 and Winegar couldn’t locate any results of the testing in the binders. So he placed a call to the criminalist listed on the report, Michelle Terra. He was told that she was on maternity leave and the evidence had not been examined.
In July, however, he received a call from Terra. The towel had tested positive for male DNA, however, the DNA was “degraded” and would need to be sent to a private laboratory with better equipment for further examination.
Degraded DNA meant that it was missing some of the attributes that could absolutely link the hit to a suspect within the necessary legal framework of “reasonable scientific certainty.” A number of factors can result in degraded DNA: the passage of time, or exposure to the elements, or contamination from other DNA sources or substances. However, while it wasn’t as good as a high quality DNA hit, it could be used to exclude an individual, or in court it could be put into evidence as “similar” to a suspect’s DNA.
The towel was sent to the Serological Research Institute. On April 16, 2007, Winegar received both bad news and good news.
The bad news was that the degraded sample didn’t meet the standards necessary to be uploaded to the FBI’s Combined DNA Index System, more commonly known as CODIS. Using the system, qualified DNA profiles from crime scenes, as well as samples taken from convicted offenders and arrestees, are stored in a computer database that can be quickly identified and matched. So the DNA from the towel wasn’t going to be compared to the DNA of known criminals and other crime scenes stored in CODIS.
The good news, however, was that the sample was enough to once and for all eliminate Liston Beal as a suspect. Even though detective Jarecki had established that Beal’s fingerprints weren’t on any of the evidence from the bar, and none of the witnesses had picked him out of the lineup; he’d remained the only name on the suspect list.
One of the first things Winegar did after the call from Terra was get in touch with Muriel Fagiani. The detective thought eliminating Beal as a suspect was a big step in the process. One more box checked off the list of things to do. He thought Muriel would be happy to know it, too.
