Without Pity: Ann Rule's Most Dangerous Killers (31 page)

“I asked her,” LeClerk said, “if divorce wouldn’t be the answer to saving the children from this guy, but Nancy said it wouldn’t be good enough.”

Nancy Brooks was asking him to kill Art so that her friend and the children wouldn’t have to be afraid any longer.

“I told her I’d think it over,” LeClerk said.

On Halloween, LeClerk and Nancy Brooks had had a second meeting at the Holiday Inn, this time in the parking lot. She seemed distraught and told him that the situation in Rose’s home was “deteriorating rapidly” and that he must do “it” as soon as possible. The children were suffering terribly.

He didn’t feel comfortable sitting in the hotel parking lot discussing murder, LeClerk said, so he drove Nancy to his own home, where they talked for about two hours, weighing the pros and cons of blasting Art off the face of the earth. There were two little boys in Art and Rose’s family, Nancy said—babies really—as well as some older children. Their father made them suffer, she said, very much as Bennett had suffered when he was a child.

LeClerk said Nancy promised to pay him $1,000 if he killed Art, but he said he wouldn’t take money from her; the money should come from Rose. “She shouldn’t be un-involved emotionally or morally,” he told Nancy. After all, they would be doing it for her and her children.

Nancy had convinced him, finally, that someone had to kill Art—and soon. “I told her I would do it,” Bennett said, “probably [the] next Tuesday.”

He then asked the woman who had been like an aunt to him, “But what if I get caught?”

“I hadn’t thought of that,” she reportedly said. “Then I would have to deny everything.”

She showed him some small pictures of Art so he would know what his target looked like—but she took them back, LeClerk said.

LeClerk said he had then figured that if he wasn’t caught in the first ten minutes after the shooting, he would be home free. Police would not be able to connect him to Art, any more than they could connect two strangers passing on a busy street. He didn’t even want to know Art’s last name.

Bennett just knew he had to kill him. It had to be done to save the children.

The detectives realized that if their prisoner was telling the truth, Nancy Brooks had been an integral part of this murder for hire. Quite possibly she was the instigator. She was the sole connection between LeClerk and Stahl; she was the only one who knew exactly which buttons to push in the complex mind of Bennett LeClerk; she knew all about his childhood; and she knew that he lost it when he heard about kids being abused.

Once he had agreed to do what Nancy Brooks asked, LeClerk said he began planning. He needed Sara Talbot to drive him to the address Nancy had given him—the place where Art went every Tuesday night. Sara’s car wasn’t nearly as recognizable as his own fleet of flashy cars. “I planned to find Art’s car and clip the ignition wires so he couldn’t drive away from that health center,” he told the detectives.

He spent Tuesday morning, November 5, looking at houses “because I planned to go into the real estate business with Sara,” he explained. “I ate lunch with her. Later I had supper—what little I managed to get down.”

He said he owned three complete theatrical makeup kits, and he made himself up to look like a South American revolutionary, with dark makeup, the false facial hair, and the fatigue jacket and pants. “I took two guns with me—one a drop gun [an untraceable gun left at the scene to confuse police] and the attack weapon that I tucked into my belt.”

He said he hadn’t worn his glasses for fear he might drop them and his prescription would be traced to him. “I’m nearsighted in one eye,” LeClerk said, “and farsighted in the other. My night vision in the medium range is poor.”

Duane Homan and Benny DePalmo stared at the hit man. He seemed to be living in a fantasy world—with his elaborate makeup—but he was not as clever as he pretended to be. To go out on a murder-for-hire mission half blind without even knowing what his quarry looked like seemed less than clever. And yet this man in front of them was supposed to be a genius.

“I deliberately had no identification on me,” LeClerk said, “just that napkin that Nancy gave me at the Holiday Inn on Halloween.”

They had arrived near the Acadia Health Center around 7:00
P.M.
, Bennett unaware, of course, that they were tailed by a caravan of law enforcement officers. “I figured Art would park his car near the Bounty Tavern,” he explained. “I found the 1979 Dart and I tried to clip the wires, but it was too dark to find the leads, so I gave up, for fear I might be noticed.

“I asked Sara to move her car several times, and I made several reconnoitering trips around the neighborhood on foot. I saw the alley between the health center and the Bounty Tavern and figured that would be the best place…. I would just stand there and wait for Art. Sara would wait for me at the other end of the alley. After the shooting, I was going to take off my makeup as we drove away.”

“Why did you leave the area that one time and drive through Windermere?” Homan asked, curious. Windermere is one of Seattle’s poshest neighborhoods.

“Oh, that?” LeClerk said. “Well, this woman who worked for me had relatives there. I told Sara, ‘It should be
him
I’m killing.’ See, this Brenda left the week before, and she took money from my tavern and left a note. It said, ‘Try to understand—this is all I can do. I’ll get in touch.’”

(Bennett LeClerk certainly led a complicated life. Two wives, numerous mistresses, and one woman he wanted as a mistress, Brenda Simms, who would one day give detectives a good deal of background on him.)

“Tell us about the shooting,” Homan said.

“Well, the class got out a little after nine. I saw the man I’d seen in the photographs Nancy showed me. He was talking to other people in his class. I walked up to him and said, ‘Are you Art?’ and he said, ‘Yes,’ and I fired. It was a misfire, and I fired again. But at the last minute, I turned the gun to avoid a fatal shot.”

DePalmo and Homan looked at each other. Since Art Stahl had suffered a through-and-through wound to the dead center of his chest, it was hard to believe that Bennett LeClerk had
really
turned his weapon away. You couldn’t aim with much more fatal intent than he had.

Bennett LeClerk pleaded guilty to first-degree assault and on March 5, 1975, was sentenced to up to twenty years in prison by Judge William C. Goodloe. Deputy Prosecutor Lee Yates had recommended that LeClerk be sentenced for “up to life” in prison, and Goodloe suggested that the minimum should be the same as the maximum—twenty years. “You are not a contract man flown in from Chicago with a violin case,” he said scathingly to LeClerk. “You are a citizen of this state who made a decision that turned to mud.”

LeClerk was uncharacteristically humble. “There is no question that my judgment was poor beyond description. The act is repugnant to me and leaves scars I am going to bear for a very long time.”

It was a classic sociopath’s statement; those with this personality disorder
always
think of events in terms of themselves. While Art Stahl had barely escaped with his life and bore
real
scars on his neck and chest, Bennett LeClerk talked of
his
scars.

LeClerk remained in the King County Jail so that he could serve as a material witness against another suspect. The investigation, of course, was far from over. That very afternoon after the sentencing of her old friend, Nancy Brooks was arrested.

Detectives Homan and DePalmo obtained a warrant for her arrest on suspicion of conspiracy to commit first-degree murder. They arrived at the Brookses’ Bellevue home at 4:17
P.M.
Nancy Brooks seemed only a little surprised when she saw the warrant for her arrest. Otherwise, she maintained the same calm demeanor they had always seen. She quickly made arrangements to have her children and her dogs cared for and then walked with the Seattle investigators to their car.

She talked a little with detectives Homan and DePalmo at headquarters.

She told them that Bennett LeClerk had “haunted” her since 1970, remarking, “I don’t know why I am even telling you this, because you won’t believe me. LeClerk is so
strange
you will think I made it all up.”

They knew LeClerk was strange from personal experience with him, but the fact remained that Nancy Brooks was the thread that bound shooter and victim together.

Nancy denied any connection to Art’s shooting. She told Homan and DePalmo that she did go to Bennett’s house on Halloween and that he had insisted on giving her a “tour” that included even his shower. “I was afraid,” she said, “because I kept thinking of that movie,
Psycho.
But I only met him, as I told you before, because he was upset and said he needed to talk to me.”

Nancy Brooks was released a few hours later on $10,000 bond. A week later she pleaded innocent to the charges against her.

For three months the Stahl-Brooks-LeClerk case faded from the media. Nothing would be happening, at least on the surface, until Nancy Brooks’s trial in June. Chief Criminal Deputy Prosecutor Roy Howson and Deputy Prosecutor Les Yates would represent the state, and Defense Attorney Gerald Bangs would attempt to show that Nancy Brooks had no connection to the near-murder of Art Stahl.

It was ironically fitting, perhaps, that Bennett LeClerk was the first witness for the prosecution. He made a striking figure as he left the jail elevator. His wrists were manacled, but he wore an expensive suit, a crisp white shirt, and a silk tie. His head was shaved, and he had grown a goatee and mustache. (This time, his facial hair was real.)

As he was led toward the courtroom through the marbled corridors of the courthouse, LeClerk passed his would-be victim, Art Stahl, who by now had recovered. Suddenly LeClerk whirled, and the court deputies’ hands moved to their guns. They need not have been concerned. LeClerk merely leaned down and presented a very surprised Art Stahl with an expensive book about Buddhist philosophy. He had carried it in one hand, ready for this meeting.

Stahl, bemused, accepted it and thumbed through it as he waited to testify.

As a witness, LeClerk seemed intelligent and responsive, if more than a little eccentric, as he discussed his wives, mistresses, Buddhism, the temple of worship in his basement, and his small collection of
shrakin
(Japanese weapons), which included a
manreiki,
a chain with weights on the end.

“The Imperial Guards used [the chain] on assassins,” he explained to the jury, “so that they could disarm them of samurai swords without spilling blood in the palace.”

LeClerk spoke of his long friendship with Nancy Brooks and of his revulsion when she told him about a man named Art who was cruel to his children. Nancy had told him that Art was a sadist. He testified that she had finally convinced him that Art would have to die so that the children could be safe.

The jury would have to choose between this flamboyant witness and the prim, sweet-faced woman at the defense table whose skirts hung discreetly below the knee, whose makeup was barely visible, who was a registered nurse, and who had no criminal background at all.

Defense Attorney Bangs hit hard on LeClerk’s many affairs and his religious “disciples,” but the witness appeared to enjoy jousting with Bangs. He went into minute detail about his Buddhist shrine and the Buddhist symbol—a water dragon, or
miziechi.
He denied that he considered himself the eye of the dragon, or
so-ryugn.

The words might as well have been Greek, but the man on the stand radiated charisma, and something more—perhaps a thin sheen of madness? Nevertheless, his genius was apparent to the jury and the gallery. No one listening would have denied that.

Nancy Brooks, sitting at the defense table, showed no reaction at all as LeClerk gave his version of the events of the previous fall. He said that his “conscious intent was to kill the man” but that a “subconscious intent” had made him attempt to turn the gun. So, in effect, he had saved Stahl’s life.

LeClerk’s mother, Claire Noonan, testified that she had called Nancy Brooks as soon as she read about the shooting in the newspapers. That would have been the day after—November 6. She said Nancy claimed to know absolutely nothing about it. Next, Claire had called her son in the hospital, where he was recovering from his neck wound.

“Why
did you shoot that man?” she asked, and he replied that he “had done it for a friend of mine.”

The witness said the only friend she had in Seattle was Nancy Brooks. “I asked my son if Nancy was the friend, and he said, ‘That’s right.’”

Art Stahl, the intended victim, was the last witness for the state. He recalled that the “violence” in his marriage had come not from him but from his estranged wife, Rose, who was furious over the way he spent his trust fund. No one except Rose and two friends at the university had known that he attended reflexology class on Tuesday evenings.

Stahl testified that he didn’t see the stranger with a gun until a moment before he was shot in the chest. He also said he had filed for divorce from Rose as soon as he was well enough to leave the hospital.

Sara Talbot, the young woman who had driven the hit car, testified for the defense, but not in person: she had been diagnosed with terminal cancer in the months between the crime in November 1974 and the trial in June 1975. Her image appeared in the courtroom on videotape as she recalled the frightening evening she had spent with Bennett LeClerk. She had been told he had cut his “kill fee” because he was going to shoot a man “for a friend,” but she had never heard the name Nancy Brooks.