Read Bad Boy From Rosebud Online

Authors: Gary M. Lavergne

Tags: #Biography & Autobiography, #General, #Law, #True Crime, #Murder, #test

Bad Boy From Rosebud (84 page)

 
Page 314
26
Austin American-Statesman,
February 13, 1993.
27
State of Texas v Kenneth Allen McDuff,
SOF in Cause #643820, Closing argument by Crawford Long, pgs. 2035.
28
State of Texas v Kenneth Allen McDuff,
SOF in Cause #643820, Closing arguments by Mr. Goains and Mr. Reaves, pgs. 5678 and 10629.
29
State of Texas v Kenneth Allen McDuff,
SOF in Cause #643820, Closing arguments by Mr. Segrest, pgs. 13062; Crawford Long; Mike Freeman.
30
Waco Tribune-Herald,
February 17, 1993.
31 Ibid., February 19, 1993;
Austin American-Statesman,
February 19, 1993; John Segrest.
32
Austin American-Statesman,
February 18, 19 and 22, 1993.
 
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20
The Reed Trial
"The scary part is, those guys reproduce."
David Counts, Travis County Assistant District Attorney
I
Only a few days after Kenneth McDuff had been arrested in Kansas City, the Travis County District Attorney's Office began to gather circumstantial evidence to establish that Colleen Reed was dead. Under a 1974 law, such evidence could be gathered in cases where a victim's body was not found. Such laws are necessary. Without them, for example, murderers with access to the means of completely destroying bodies could never be prosecuted. "If the date or the method can be proven on circumstantial evidence, so can death," explained David Counts, the young, handsome Assistant District Attorney who became the lead prosecutor of the Colleen Reed Murder Trial.
1
David Counts was born in the small West Texas town of Knox City, near Abilene. He graduated from Texas Tech and got a law degree from St. Mary's University Law School in San Antonio. He always wanted to try cases. At the time of the Reed abduction, David was Travis County's major crimes attorney. He had already put in so much time assisting investigators in the Reed Case that it was logical for him to go ahead and prosecute it. His supervisor, another assistant district attorney named Howard "Buddy" Meyer, asked to help. The two men were genuinely fond of one another and looked forward to working together again.
2
Buddy Meyer was born in Taylor, Texas, a small town east of Austin. He attended a number of colleges before graduating from St. Edward's University in Austin. He earned a master's degree in Public Administra-
 
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tion from Southwestern Texas State University in San Marcos and then went to law school. He practiced law for a short time in Louisiana, his wife's native state, where he developed a weakness for Cajun food. He is known for his massive, dust-colored mustache: Each whisker is a rugged individualist, determined to point in its own direction.
Internally at the Travis County District Attorney's office, David and Buddy faced a major challenge. The Reed Trial came at the same time the Travis County District Attorney was trying Texas's newly elected United States Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison. Over thirty people worked on that case, and it siphoned resources. But the two prosecutors and their investigator, Alan Sanderson, worked so well together that the case went "smooth and easy," as David recalled.
3
It took less than two hours for a grand jury to return indictments of capital murder, aggravated sexual assault, and aggravated kidnapping. The case had been assigned to State District Judge Wilford Flowers. Wil Flowers could not have been more different than Bob Burdette. He had a reputation for being patient, and was well respected among judges and lawyers. Lawyers who have experience in his courtroom often describe him as "predictable." But he can be tough, especially with someone who has taken advantage of a chance he has given them. In Judge Flowers's court, there
will
be reverence for the law.
4
The legal challenge for the Reed Case was corroboration. Of course, the cornerstone of the case against McDuff was going to be the testimony of Alva Hank Worley. But Worley was an accomplice, and under state law, "a conviction cannot be had upon the testimony of an accomplice unless corroborated by other evidence tending to connect the defendant with the offense committed; and the corroboration is not sufficient if it merely shows the commission of the offense." Hank's eyewitness testimony would not be enough for a conviction. Virtually everything he claimed in his statements and testimony needed to be supported by other testimony or evidence.
5
The trial date had been set for January 3, 1994, but the defense asked for a continuance when they learned that David and Buddy intended to prove that McDuff was responsible for the deaths of Melissa Northrup and the three teenagers McDuff killed in 1966. Flowers granted the continuance and the trial date was reset for January 20, 1994.
6
That there would be a change of venue was never really in doubt. "I think any lawyer would have to give some due consideration to a motion
 
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for a change of venue. I think everybody feels like he's guilty, just based on everything they've read about him and the case," said Chris Gunter, one of two lawyers appointed to represent McDuff. When representatives of the
Austin American-Statesman
revealed that they had published over 150 stories involving Colleen Reed, and producers from Austin television stations testified that they aired over 200 stories about the car wash abduction, a change of venue was a foregone conclusion. (Nationwide, more than 1,000 TV stories appeared involving Colleen Reed or Kenneth McDuff.) Judge Flowers did not waste much time. "[This case] has gotten more coverage than anything I've ever seen in Travis County," he said, as he granted a defense motion for a change in venue. "We'll go someplace that can accommodate us."
"We're ready to try it wherever he moves us," Buddy said the same day.
Judge Flowers moved the trial to Seguin, in Guadalupe County. Seguin is a lovely and historic community just east of San Antonio. David remembers the hot tub at the Holiday Innit was shaped like the state of Texasalthough he never got in it. The courtroom where the trial took place had high ceilings and terrible acoustics. Almost every witness had to be told to talk louder or get closer to the microphone.
7
Just like everyone else who had ever been there, David and Buddy both remembered the powerful sadness of their first trip to the abandoned road Worley identified as the murder site. Buddy recalls the day Tim Steglich took him there: "Standing there on that old dirt road where Hank said [McDuff] administered that final blow and feeling that she was close. . . ." Buddy could not finish the sentence. In all of his years of putting away some very nasty people, Buddy had never encountered anyone like McDuff.
And yet there were some, who surely did not know of McDuff's history, who wondered why Travis County would try someone who had already been convicted and sentenced to death for another murder. During his preparation for trial, David Counts and J. W. Thompson encountered a jailer who asked David, "How many times can you kill him?"
J. W. replied, "As many times as it takes."
"How lazy," an angered David thought.
8
He was right. Kenneth McDuff had been convicted of first degree murder and sentenced to death in 1966. He had been convicted of the murder of Marcus Dunnam only. He had never been tried for his murder of Louise Sullivan, in part be-

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