Manifest Injustice (7 page)

Bob immediately called his father. Together they talked to a private defense lawyer, who offered to represent Bill—for $25,000 up front. Vainly, Bob and Harold tried to raise that kind of money from relatives. They would keep looking for someone who charged less, but for the time being, they arranged for a county public defender to handle the case. That’s who had visited Macumber on his second day in jail. Talking to Bill now, Bob and Harold assured him that they were doing everything possible on his behalf. They sat before him, separated by bars. They couldn’t touch him, couldn’t slap him on the back.

Harold had a difficult question for his son: Are you responsible for this? Did you do this?

“Absolutely no,” Bill said. “I did not.”

That satisfied Harold and Bob. No way would Bill lie to his dad, Bob thought. No way. He’d always been an honest and trustworthy man. It made absolutely no sense that Bill would have killed those two young people in 1962. Newly married, awaiting the birth of his first child, working long hours—he had no reason to be out in the desert late at night following those two people.

Four days later, on September 3, Bill received another visitor—Carol. Her arrival shocked him. “Actually,” he wrote in his journal, “she didn’t come to see me but rather to tell me she needed money to make the house payment and to pay other bills.” Bill asked if he could see the boys. Maybe, she replied, if I get the money. Bill looked at his wife. You misunderstood what I said, he told her. I didn’t say I killed those two.

*   *   *

Macumber’s preliminary hearing began the next day in Mesa, just outside Phoenix, and continued for one week. Bill entered the courtroom each morning through a phalanx of reporters and photographers. On Wednesday, September 11—after listening to Diehl, Calles and the fingerprint experts testify—Justice of the Peace Lawrence Mulleneaux ordered Macumber held for trial in superior court on two counts of murder. A day later, at a bond hearing, Ed Calles added a new piece of seemingly damning evidence: The sheriff’s department, he testified, had just received a telegram from FBI laboratories in Washington, D.C., stating that ejector marks on one of the shell casings found at the murder scene matched the ejector of Bill’s .45-caliber gun.

Macumber’s defense could only counter with character witnesses. Half a dozen of them testified to Bill’s high character and reputation in the community. If released on bond, he would certainly appear for all court hearings, they said. They were convincing; despite it being a murder case, Superior Court Judge Williby E. Case Jr. ruled that Macumber should be bailable and set bond at $55,000.

The Macumber family didn’t have that kind of money, though. Bob and Harold put up their homes as collateral and started searching for others willing to do the same. “That’s an awful lot of money,” Macumber wrote in his journal. “I see no possible way that I can ever raise that much. At the moment I feel so very empty.”

For days now, the recurring themes in his journal entries had been his longing for visitors, his insomnia, his burning stomach pain, his missing medications, his mounting fears, and—most of all—his three sons. He hoped they were safe. He wondered if anyone had thought to take them dove hunting, as he would have at that time of year. He pictured them waking in the morning, getting ready for school. He wished he could be with them for just a few minutes. He prayed that they continued to believe in him, to believe him innocent.

On September 7, midway through the preliminary hearing, he had the chance to visit with his sons briefly at the jail. He assured them of his innocence. “This has been the most beautiful day I’ve had since this whole thing started,” he wrote in his journal. “All my questions were answered when I felt their hugs and their kisses.… Knowing that they love me and believe in me is the most important thing in the world. I am crying as I write this but it is out of happiness.… Everything is going to be alright. I just know it will be after seeing them.”

Things weren’t all right, though. Jail was like “a world until itself. No sunlight, no sounds other than those made by the doors or the prisoners.” He could not imagine how a man might exist over extended time under such conditions, without dying just a little or going partway insane.

His dad and brother came to visit after the bond hearing. They promised they’d try to somehow raise the bail, and they urged him to hang in, to have faith, for God would not forget him. But after they left, Macumber was alone again, without solace. He loved to have people around, he loved the kidding and teasing and normal bantering in life. In jail, however, his interactions with others were few and rarely positive. Once he cadged a sandwich from a corrections officer, another time a piece of steak in exchange for cigarettes. Mostly, all he had were distant noises—a fight going on in 42 Block, another prisoner shouting threats. That was it. Days went by without any visitors or mail. He read books, he played solitaire, he marked dates off on a calendar. He wished “with all his heart” he could say good night to his boys and tuck them into their beds.

On his twenty-fourth day in jail, September 20, his dad and brother came again. They assured him that their efforts to raise bail were “going well.” Bill appreciated their report. He valued his brother’s support and regretted those times in the past when he’d treated Bob poorly. Always it had been over Carol, how he’d countenanced her hostility to his family. He hoped Bob understood. He hoped Bob would forgive him for being a fool.

Several times, during visits with his lawyer, Bill learned of “some evidence pending” that could be of great benefit but for legal reasons had not yet been released to his attorney. Each day he waited for more word about this. Evidence that could clear a man must surely be given out. Surely. “I have to win,” Macumber wrote one day. “There is no other way if I wish to go on living.”

On the twenty-sixth day, September 22, he received letters from each of his sons. They’d been written at a neighbor’s house. He wept, reading his boys’ words, the feeling so bittersweet. He hoped someone could find a way of getting him out of this place. Only that would settle his nerves and end his terrible depression.

Two days later, he woke up shaking and crying and couldn’t stop. A nurse at the dispensary gave him a pill, but it didn’t help. “I’m afraid I’m not going to make it and I don’t know what to do,” he wrote. “Dear God help me please.”

That same day, September 24, his lawyer from the public defender’s office came by with a release for him to sign. He was withdrawing from the case. In his place the Macumber family had hired a private attorney, James Kemper. Bill’s uncle—Jackie Kelley’s father—had paid Kemper’s $5,000 fee. They couldn’t afford a $25,000 lawyer, but they hoped Kemper would improve Bill’s chances. “I haven’t talked with my new attorney enough to have formed any opinion,” Macumber wrote two days later. “Everyone says he is very competent and that the change will benefit me.… I realize I am not in the correct frame of mind at present to be making those kinds of decisions for myself.” In fact, just then the prisoner in an adjacent cell was “doing his very best to drive me out of my mind. Starting about 10:30 at night he bangs on the wall about every three to four seconds. After an hour or so of this I get in such a state that I pray he will stop. When he does finally stop I lay there holding my breath waiting for him to start up again. These are the kinds of things that are pushing me to the breaking point.”

Sitting in jail for twenty-four hours a day, Bill found that he could easily slip into a state of depression. He began to wonder about his own soundness of mind. He thought about the fine line between sanity and insanity and feared sliding over the edge. He could not let that happen. He knew that the human mind, such a wonderful machine, could also be a person’s worst enemy. Rational could suddenly become irrational, logical become illogical. He had to pay attention to his internal environment, to control and direct his thinking as well as his emotions. He had to exercise extreme positive control over his actions. That was hard to do, Macumber thought. That was difficult.

One day, a correctional officer named Parks stopped by to visit. He told Macumber they had a 20 percent chance of rain that night. Bill thought of how he’d like to see rain. But even more, how he’d like to feel it on his face. Parks, one of the younger guards, was a nice man, rare in that place. He always treated Bill with respect and courtesy, never trying to undermine his dignity. Now Macumber, just in conversation, asked him, Will you have dinner with me when this is all over? Yes, Parks said. He would.

When this is all over.
Macumber’s mind kept drifting to that prospect. Perhaps he’d go back to Honeywell, if they wanted him. He’d try his best to make up with his brother, mother and father for whatever wrongs he might have done them. Maybe he could resume leadership of the search-and-rescue unit, though that would be up to the sheriff’s department; if nothing else, he could serve as an adviser. Maybe, heeding his father’s advice, he’d even reestablish communication with his God—he’d distanced himself from Him for too long.

He was not so foolish as to believe that this matter would be over soon. Things might very well go badly for him. Still, he lay awake at night, thinking about walking out of the jail, of going home. At least it provided some light at the end of the tunnel. Light, and a diversion from the sounds around him, the constant clanging of steel against steel—doors being opened, people being brought in or taken out. There were the fights over in 42 Block, and a big fire one night in 43 Block, and that one prisoner who tried to poke out another man’s eyes. On the night of his thirty-second day in jail, Saturday, September 28, a near riot had erupted—prisoners trying to break down the 44 Block restraining door, burning rags thrown into cells, fire alarms, smoke and fire, firemen and police, the whole fourth floor evacuated. Macumber stayed in his cell, feeling safest there.

His cell. Compared to others, it was deluxe, he had to admit: twelve feet by six feet, with a bunk bed, a small table, a chair and a very small shower. The solid steel door had a feeding port and a viewing port. In one corner, Macumber had squirreled away a treasure: the three candy bars and three oranges he planned to give his boys when he next saw them. So very little, he knew, but all he had. Perhaps if his case didn’t go to trial—some visitors had raised that prospect—he could take the boys squirrel hunting. He imagined Scott watching football on TV, Steve and Ronnie right there with him, probably hassling over one thing or another. When this was over and done, he’d move from their home on Wethersfield and raise the boys in a larger house, what they deserved and needed. These plans took a great deal for granted, he realized—they assumed he’d walk free and be given custody of the boys. He had to believe all this, though. How else to think of the future?

Near the end of September, Macumber learned from his brother that they appeared close to raising the $55,000 bail. Someone in the community had stepped forward, offering to provide a major portion. Bill’s neighbors, including Paul and Shirley Bridgewater, had done the rest, agreeing to put up their homes as collateral. On Tuesday, October 1, in anticipation, Macumber packed up his belongings. Waiting, he listened for the elevator, the sound of someone coming for him. No one appeared that day, though, or the next. Bill worried that he’d be out of writing paper by the end of the week—he hadn’t ordered more tablets because he’d assumed he’d be released by then.

But on Friday, October 4, Bill’s father came to see him, bearing bad news: They had failed to raise the full bail. One of those involved had backed out. Bill could not hide his dismay. Harold promised that he would keep trying. Again he urged his son to hang in there.

That same day, later in the afternoon, Macumber received another visitor: John Thomas, the civil attorney representing him in his divorce proceedings. Thomas, too, had disturbing news for Bill, of an entirely different sort: He’d just heard that years before, someone else had confessed to the Scottsdale murders. But neither the county attorney nor the sheriff’s department, Thomas told Macumber, will allow the use of this information in your case. In fact, they will fight to keep it out of the courtroom.

This was how Macumber first learned of Ernest Valenzuela. In his journal, he vented: “If I knew I was going to die tomorrow I doubt I could or would feel any worse. I’ve been charged with the crime of murder. A crime I did not commit. I have sat here for the last 39 days and been questioned, lied to and who knows what else.… Men from this department have taken the stand and outright lied in an effort to make a better case. The media has done their very best to put me in the worst possible light.… I’ve lost my children, my home, my possessions, my income and my freedom.… I’ve been subjected to every possible indignity and have faced letdown after letdown. After all of this I find that someone else confessed to the crime and that the powers that be choose to ignore that confession. If there is anything more that can possibly happen it lies beyond my imagination.”

CHAPTER 5

Valenzuela’s Confession

SEPTEMBER–OCTOBER 1974

Word of Ernest Valenzuela’s confession had not emerged just then by accident. In September, Thomas O’Toole—still a federal public defender, not yet a judge—had followed the news about Bill Macumber’s arrest with mounting unease. O’Toole felt certain that he’d represented the true killer. But what could he do? The question haunted him. He couldn’t shake the memory of Ernest Valenzuela, couldn’t shake the image of that man’s eyes. Valenzuela, he knew, had not remained free for long in 1964, following his confessions to the cops and Dr. Tuchler. Soon after being released that August, he’d been arrested again on a second-degree burglary charge, drawing a four-to-five-year prison sentence. Released once more in the summer of 1967—despite a “very poor conduct record” in the state prison at Florence—he’d waited just ten days before kidnapping a couple, killing the husband and raping the wife. Because the murder and rape occurred on the Gila River Indian Reservation, Valenzuela needed a federal public defender.