And the Sea Will Tell (74 page)

“But whether or not the
Iola
was seaworthy is not the issue in this case. It’s almost irrelevant. The real issue is whether Buck and Jennifer
thought
it was seaworthy. It’s their state of mind that’s relevant. The
Iola
could be the most unseaworthy boat ever to sail the seven seas, it could be as unseaworthy as a cement block, but if Buck and Jennifer thought it was seaworthy, they would not feel desperate and stranded, would they? Would they?

“Did Buck and Jennifer feel the
Iola
was unseaworthy? Obviously not.” I pointed out that in addition to Jennifer’s testimony, her diary entries dated August 15th, 23rd, 24th, 25th, 26th, 27th, 28th, 29th, and 30th, all written
after
Wheeler told Jennifer the
Iola
couldn’t make it to Fanning, left no room for doubt that she and Buck felt the
Iola
was seaworthy, that they were planning to sail to Fanning, and therefore did not feel stranded. I further noted that Wolfe, the prosecution’s own witness, recalled a conversation with Jennifer wherein she told him of her and Buck’s plan to sail to Fanning.

“Granted, people like Jack Wheeler and Tom Wolfe said they wouldn’t have gone to Fanning on the
Iola
. But their states of mind are not at issue in this case, ladies and gentlemen. Many people would never drive across town in cars that other people wouldn’t think twice about traveling cross-country in. Jennifer’s state of mind is the issue here, and the evidence is overwhelming that she intended to go on the
Iola
to Fanning.

“Perhaps the very best evidence that Jennifer and Buck never felt stranded is that if they had, they would have sought to hitch a ride on one of the boats leaving Palmyra. But no prosecution witness said that any effort was made by Buck and Jennifer to do so. How stranded could they have felt if they never bothered to ask anyone for a lift off the island?

“Elliot Enoki cannot have it both ways. If they felt stranded enough to commit murder, why didn’t they feel stranded enough to ask these people who visited the island if they could leave Palmyra with them?”

I pointed out that even in late August, when all the boats except the
Sea Wind
had left, there was still no problem. “Within a period of a little over two months, seven boats entered the lagoon at Palmyra. With that type of traffic, Buck and Jennifer would have had every reason to believe that other boats would be coming to and leaving Palmyra within the near future, and they could most likely hitch a ride. At the very latest, they knew their friend, Richard Taylor, would be arriving with his brother on Palmyra in October, only two months away. Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, the stranded motive is just not going to fly. It just doesn’t have any wings.”

T
HE DESPERATION
-for-food motive, I suggested, was equally “lame and flimsy. Maybe even more so.

“Was there testimony from any witness at this trial that Buck and Jennifer looked like they were suffering from malnutrition? Or that they were losing weight? Or even that they looked weak, or unhealthy, or anything at all like that? I didn’t hear any such testimony.”

I told the jury that while it was undeniably true that Jennifer and Buck’s provisions had dwindled to very little, this didn’t connect up to the issue of starvation because they could have lived off the land
indefinitely
. I reminded the jury of the various types of edible food on Palmyra, and the testimony of several witnesses, including that of a
prosecution
witness, Sharon Jordan: “No, you couldn’t starve on Palmyra.”

I granted that Buck and Jennifer undoubtedly had tired of their limited diet and craved different kinds of foods. That’s why they attempted to trade for staples like flour and sugar so she could bake cakes, pies, and bread. “But to want and to prefer different kinds of food for the sake of taste and variety is a far cry from wanting these same foods to forestall starvation.

“I will stipulate that people will kill for self-preservation, such as killing for food to avoid starvation. But do people kill to improve their diet? Have you ever heard of such a thing? I haven’t.

“And again, since the Taylor brothers were coming to Palmyra with provisions in October, just two months away, and one could live
indefinitely
off the land on Palmyra, do you mean to tell me that Buck and Jennifer couldn’t live for two more months off the land?
Two more months?

“In summary, with respect to these motives Mr. Enoki has offered, I’ll concede that the
Iola
may not have been the most seaworthy boat ever to ride the waves, and I’ll further concede that Buck and Jennifer obviously were not doing well foodwise on Palmyra…. But they weren’t stranded, and they weren’t starving. Is this just Vince Bugliosi saying this? No, ladies and gentlemen of the jury,
this is the evidence at this trial saying this
.

“So what
was
the motive? We know there’s a motive for every murder. What was the motive here?

“It’s pretty obvious that Buck Walker, and Buck Walker alone, had the motive. And it was the most commonplace, garden-variety motive you can have: Buck Walker, a twice-convicted robber, wanted the
Sea Wind
, as he must have wanted the other things for which he was previously convicted of robbery. And because he was a hardened criminal, he was willing to murder to get it. The simple motive of wanting something that someone else had, and not having the moral restraint or fundamental humanity most of us possess that serves as a deterrent to committing the act of murder.

“Are we all capable of murder? I don’t believe so. Not for a moment. While perhaps all of us are capable of killing in self-defense, and a meaningful percentage of humans are capable of an instantaneous killing in the heat of passion where there’s extreme provocation—which is called manslaughter—fortunately, the overwhelming majority of human beings don’t have it in their guts, in their system, to commit a cold-blooded, deliberate, premeditated murder. How do we know this? Because statistically the percentage of such murderers among us is infinitesimal.

“Does the evidence in this case show that Jennifer is the type who could commit a brutal murder?” I asked.

I explained that the crime of murder, by definition, and at its core, reflects on the part of the perpetrator a wanton and utter disregard for the life of a fellow human being. “If you’re a peaceful, compassionate human being,
you don’t commit murder!
” I shouted out. “You don’t
do
that.
Nor do you help anyone else do it
.

“The testimony at this trial was not only persuasive, but completely uncontroverted by the prosecution, that Jennifer Jenkins is a very humane, gentle woman who is utterly repulsed by violence. Even by the instrumentalities of violence. You remember in Mountain View, Hawaii, she got Buck Walker to take those guns out of the house? This trial demonstrated that Jennifer Jenkins is one of the very least likely candidates for a murder suspect that one could possibly imagine.

“What about Buck Walker?” I asked, in my effort to separate the two.

I warned that although Jennifer’s ex-lover was not present, he must not be considered a “bloodless mannequin.”

“The testimony of witnesses at this trial created a very vivid physical and psychological portrait of him. And the portrait that emerged is that Buck Walker, so unfortunately for the Grahams, was tailor-made for what happened on Palmyra. And he was tailor-made to commit these murders
all by himself
.”

I summarized the testimony of defense witness Rick Schulze, the Hawaii lawyer who had described Walker as “rough and coarse…paranoid and defensive, and fascinated with weapons.” And I reminded the jury that Debbie Noland had testified that Buck had a “firecracker” personality, an explosive and violent temper.

“Mrs. Leonard testified how Buck would row his boat slowly past her boat, and look at her with very hard eyes. She would talk to him, and he wouldn’t answer. And she was very afraid of him. Tom Wolfe also said Buck was a scary guy.

“Stop to think about it. How many people have you personally met in your life who were actually scary to you, whom you were afraid of?

“Buck gave every indication of being the precise type of individual who would engage in violent crimes. And we know these indications were accurate ones because Buck Walker, long before he ever set foot on the coral reef of Palmyra, had already been convicted of two armed robberies.”

I pointed out to the jury that robbery, of course, is a violent crime, the taking of personal property from the person or immediate presence of another by means of force or fear, such as by a gun or knife, then pressed on with my “prosecution” of Buck Walker: “I submit that it takes a particular type of individual, one whose moral senses are coarse, one who has pronounced antisocial proclivities, to commit an act such as armed robbery.”

Because of Walker’s two prior robbery convictions, I told the jury, “we have proof positive, not foundationless speculation, that Buck Walker had the instincts coursing through his veins to resort to violence to get what he wanted. And the Grahams had something Buck Walker wanted, the
Sea Wind
.

“This was simply, ladies and gentlemen, a very brutal murder committed
alone
by a cold-blooded human being named Buck Walker for the purpose of acquiring one of the most magnificent boats that anyone has ever seen.”

I
NEXT DREW
bead on what I called the “very core” of the prosecution’s case. “Simple arithmetic is all they really have. Four people on an island, two end up dead, and the other two end up with their boat, acting suspiciously. These two must both be guilty, because four minus two leaves two. Basic, simple arithmetic. One of the two, Buck Walker, has already been found guilty. Jennifer is the remaining one, they say.

“In the remainder of my argument to you, I’m not only going to be talking about the evidence in this case, evidence that points irresistibly to Buck Walker’s guilt and Jennifer’s innocence, I’m also going to be talking about life. Not life as we would perhaps like it to be, but life as it is.”

Though it had not come from the witness stand, from the very beginning I knew that human nature would be a part of the evidence in the case I would argue to the jury.

“Some of you, at this juncture, might be saying to yourself: ‘Mr. Bugliosi, you’re saying that Jennifer Jenkins is a warmhearted, compassionate human being, but you say that Buck Walker is a vicious, cold-blooded robber and murderer. Isn’t this somewhat of a contradiction? Because if what you say is true, why would she be with him? Just as water seeks its own level, don’t people tend to seek their own kind? The so-called birds-of-a-feather syndrome?’”

Enoki had made the same point. “
What was she doing with him if she was not…like him?
”

“That type of question necessarily implies that things in life fall into a predictable pattern. That life proceeds in apple-pie order. But, ladies and gentlemen of the jury, you know as well as I that that’s not the way life is. Life is an endless series of inconsistencies, a bewildering mixture of contradictions, where the only thing stranger than fiction is reality.

“For whatever reason, Jennifer loved Buck Walker. Rick Schulze said she saw a spark of goodness in Buck. Jennifer herself testified that though she knew Buck had a bad background, she felt he had a lot of potential and felt she could help him.

“And don’t forget that by the time Jennifer found out that Buck Walker had been convicted of robbery, she had already fallen in love with him and started living with him. By that time, she probably had lost the capacity to see Buck Walker for who he really was. Jerome Kern’s ‘Smoke Gets in Your Eyes’ is not just a ballad to dance to, it tells us a lot about life.

“Undoubtedly, most people would not approve of a nice girl loving a guy like Buck Walker. But we don’t get to approve of whom people love, do we? We cannot hold it against Jennifer for loving Buck Walker. And, above all, we certainly cannot say that because she was with him, and because she loved him, that it’s likely she is also
like
him. That is, that she is also a murderer.

“As an extreme example of what I’m talking about—sometimes extreme examples are good to underscore a point—I’m going to give you a historical one you’re familiar with. My example might sound farfetched, but it’s relevant because Mr. Enoki’s point is that if Buck Walker was vicious and violent, and Jennifer was with him, she was the same type.

“Let me transport you for a moment to the Second World War. While the furnaces were blazing in places like Treblinka, Auschwitz, and Chelmno, the malodorous smell of burning human flesh permeating the countryside, Adolf Hitler, in the rarefied atmosphere of Berchtesgaden high in the Bavarian Alps, was spending pleasurable moments with the woman in his life, Eva Braun.

“Though Hitler was one of the most satanic men ever to walk the face of this earth, though his monstrous crimes are beyond human calculation—over forty years after his death we’re still cleaning up the debris of his Third Reich—Eva Braun apparently loved Adolf Hitler, eventually electing to die with him in that besieged Berlin bunker in April of 1945, rather than escape to safety. Apparently, Eva Braun saw something human in the inhuman Adolf Hitler. Though Eva Braun loved, and on the last day of her life married, Adolf Hitler, whose crimes were of biblical proportions, did that make her the same type of person he was? No historian of this period has even remotely hinted at this, or at her complicity in the horrors of the Third Reich. By virtually all accounts she was a rather uncomplicated, fluffy-headed but decent Bavarian girl of simple tastes.