Mosley was a piece of work. The twenty-five-year-old Mosley worked as a warehouseman for the Lipton Tea Company in Galveston. The two-time loser was trying to keep his nose clean. He had been busted six years before for “unauthorized use of a motor vehicle”—he stole a car.
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The following year, in 1977, he was charged and sentenced with a ten-year prison term for aggravated robbery. Like so many other offenders in Texas prisons, Mosley received an early release. He did, however, stay out of trouble; but trouble apparently came looking for him.
On February 16, 1982, Galveston police arrested Mosley and charged him with the assault of Patty Johnson.
The six-foot-seven-inch Mosley was in serious trouble. Under the habitual criminal provision, any person in the state of Texas with three criminal convictions would be deemed a “habitual criminal” and sentenced to a life behind bars, regardless of the severity of the third felony conviction. It was the precursor to what is now more commonly known as the “Three Strikes Law,” which was passed in California in 1994 after the abduction and murder of Polly Klaas by three-time loser and early parolee Richard “Rick” Allen Davis.
Elena Semander was born on February 16, 1961, to parents Zaharias and Harriett, in Houston, Texas. Elena was the oldest of four children. She had two younger sisters, Maria and JoAnna, and a younger brother, John. The Semander clan was a tight-knit Greek family who not only believed in the concept of family, but actually lived it. Elena graduated from Kincaid in 1979. The successful athlete received a full athletic scholarship to play field hockey at the University of Denver in Colorado. She led her team to the national championship, but was dis-heartened when the girls’ athletic teams never received any improvements on their facilities while the inferior men’s teams received new gymnasiums, new lockers, and more. Elena, long before the Title IX era of college athletics, voiced her disgust by leaving the University of Denver and transferring to the University of Houston
(UH) in the fall of 1980.
Elena, always close to her family, moved back in with her parents in their comfortable home in northwestern Houston. She registered to attend school at UH, where she majored in physical education and coached local youth sporting teams. She broke her leg during her
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second semester at UH and instead focused her energy on her family, academics, and church.
On February 6, 1982, Elena decided to spend some time with her cousin and friend, Karen Pappas. Her sister JoAnna remembered Elena getting ready that evening. Elena dressed stylishly in purple corduroy pants, a black silk shirt, navy blue shoes, gold belt, gold Seiko watch, and a gray rabbit fur coat, which she playfully stole out of her sister Maria’s closet. Elena bopped into her brown 1979 Chevrolet Monza and drove about six miles to the Galleria, which was, at the time, Houston’s upscale shopping mall. She pulled her vehicle into the Bennigan’s parking lot at approximately 7:30
P
.
M
., walked inside the restaurant, and spotted Karen. The cousins sat down at a table, ordered dinner, as well as a few drinks. After getting their bellies full and downing a few adult beverages, the girls left the restaurant, in Karen’s Pontiac Sunbird. The time was 9:20
P
.
M
.
From Bennigan’s, Karen drove over to a nearby nightclub called Judge’s. Once inside the club, the girls met up, unintentionally, with one of Karen’s friends from work, Blake Blazer. The young women also ran into a friend of Elena’s named Paul Jahne. After several hours of dancing, cavorting, and consuming alcohol, the four decided to call it a night. They left Judge’s at approximately 2:15
A
.
M
., early Sunday.
According to Karen, Elena wanted to eat breakfast at JoJo’s diner. Neither Karen nor Blake was up for it, but Paul offered to take Elena for breakfast and then drop her off at her car at the Galleria. The cousins said their good-byes and Paul and Elena took off.
Paul drove his car to the JoJo’s located at Richmond Avenue, near Hillcroft Street. As they pulled up to the restaurant and looked inside the glass of the front door,
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they could see they would be waiting awhile. The post–bar-and-nightclub crowd had beaten them to the punch. They decided to test their luck and walked inside anyway.
Once inside, Elena and Paul were informed by the hostess that there was a long waiting list. They both decided to pass on an early breakfast and Paul took Elena to her car.
In the parking lot of the Galleria, Paul got out of his car and walked Elena to her car. They said their “good nights” and Elena drove off. Paul saw the smoke puff out of the Monza’s tailpipe. The time was just after 2:30
A
.
M
. Instead of driving home to her parents’ house, Elena decided to pay a visit to some friends who lived in a nearby apartment complex. Barry Elson, Timothy Stasinoulias, and Nicholas Anton all shared a tiny apartment at the West Hollow Apartments, located at the 10000 block of Fondren Road. Semander met Anton a few weeks earlier at church, where they both coached basket-ball teams. Anton introduced Elena to Elson and Stasinoulias soon thereafter.
Stasinoulias noted that Elena had dropped by to visit Anton at least three or four times since they met, but she had never stayed the night.
At approximately 2:45
A
.
M
., Gregory Rhodes, who had fallen asleep inside his parked car behind the West Hollow Apartments, arose. His car was parked next to a gray Dumpster. When he looked up, he saw Elena step out of her brown Monza. Rhodes watched Elena as a black man walked up to her, put his arm around her, and pulled her back behind the Dumpster, out of his line of vision. Rhodes did not think much of it and fell back asleep. A few minutes later, he was awoken by the sound of a low moan that emanated from behind the Dumpster. The
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next sound he heard was a
thud
, as if something had been tossed inside the Dumpster. Rhodes stirred momentarily, then fell back asleep.
Several hours later, on Sunday, at 11:05
A
.
M
., Guillermo Shaw backed up his 1981 orange Ford refuse truck to the same Dumpster. Shaw worked as a garbageman for Brehm’s Disposal Service B#4, Inc. He hooked the large metal bin to the back of his truck and activated the mechanism that grabs the bin, lifts it in the air, and dumps the trash inside the vehicle.
After he disposed of the trash, Shaw activated another switch, which began the compacting process. Shaw went about his normal routine until something he saw out of the corner of his eye caught his attention.
A human leg.
Shaw immediately deactivated the compactor and looked inside. There he saw what looked like mangled female legs. He could tell that one leg had been broken. It was later determined that this was a direct result of the compaction. Shaw stepped away from the vehicle, ran to a pay phone, and called police.
Once police arrived, they scoured the scene and found a brown Chevy Monza parked twenty feet away from the Dumpster. One of the officers searched the car and found a woman’s brown purse inside. After rifling through its contents, the officer discovered the driver’s license of Elena Semander.
Inside the garbage truck, Elena Semander lay facedown. Her body was covered with trash. Officers, led by Detective Paul Motard, eventually removed the body from the back of the garbage truck and placed her on a stretcher. Elena was clad only in white cotton panties and nylon stockings. Even more disturbing was her black shirt had
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been used as a gag in her mouth and was tied in with her hair in the back. She had blood on her mouth and nose. A West Hollow Apartments resident, Carlos Nava, informed the officers that he knew Elena. He was also friends with Stasinoulias and Anton and went to retrieve them. The two young men had the unenviable task of identifying their dead friend’s body. As one of the officers pulled back the sheet that covered Elena Semander’s
beautiful face, they recoiled in horror.
The following day, a police officer located several of Elena’s personal items in a Dumpster on the 12200 block of Fondren Road, behind the Cobbleston Village Apartments. Among the items located were Elena’s purple pants, her car keys, her gold belt, three rings, and her sister Maria’s rabbit fur coat.
One month later, on March 19, 1982, Coral Watts moved out of his apartment on Sylvan Road and into a new apartment complex located at the 300 block of Sunnyside Street. He listed a “Sheila D. Watts,” or Shelia Williams, as his wife and roommate. Williams had a daughter whom Watts listed as a resident as well.
At fourteen, Emily Elizabeth LaQua was more mature than people twice her age. Or so she thought. Like most teenagers, Emily believed she was older than she really was. Or at least she wanted to be older.
Emily was born on October 4, 1967, in Moscow, Idaho, originally known as Paradise Valley, located just northwest of the Nez Perce National Historical Park, also on the border of the state of Washington, to parents Frank and Elizabeth. She was the second of three children, including her older sister, Geraldine, and a younger brother, Franklin junior.
The family moved to Seattle, Washington, when Emily was two. When they arrived at their new home, Emily’s mother was stricken with pneumonia. Even as a two-year-old, Emily was a caregiver as she helped while her mother lay prone in bed.
Five years later, when her sister, Geraldine, had thirteen various surgeries, Emily participated fully in her recovery by cleaning up around the house and cooking. She seemed destined to try and make other people feel comfortable.
Emily was also very creative. When she was four years
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old, she won first prize at the county fair for a floral arrangement.
As Emily grew up, she became a social butterfly. She joined the Bluebirds, a group for young girls similar to Girl Scouts, and routinely sold the most cookies each year due to her outgoing personality and ability to make others trust her.
After Emily’s parents got divorced, her father moved almost twenty-five hundred miles away to tiny Brookshire, Texas, located smack-dab in the middle of Houston and Columbus, about thirty-seven miles west of downtown Houston and about thirty-seven miles east of Columbus. Elizabeth, Emily, Geraldine, and Franklin junior stayed put in Washington. To make ends meet for the low-income family, Elizabeth LaQua was forced to work two jobs. As a result, a lot of the household chores and family
responsibilities fell on Emily’s shoulders.
Elizabeth LaQua stated that her daughter was an active participant in school, church, and at home. She described Emily as “an intelligent girl” who excelled in school. She enjoyed writing poetry, participating in ballet, and ice-skating. Emily’s mother also described her youngest daughter as a polite young woman. “She had the social graces of a cultured Boston lady,” her mother poignantly recalled, “with an old-fashioned name that fit her perfectly.”
Emily was also an accomplished musician, who played cello in the school orchestra. She also helped out at the First Baptist Church in Bellevue, Washington, where she was a class assistant for the younger children in Sunday school. She also worked with the mentally challenged parishioners in the special-education classes.
At home, she helped out with her younger brother, Franklin, who was “retarded,” or mentally challenged.
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Emily’s mother appreciated her daughter’s help with Franklin, whom she described as a “handful.”
“Emily accepted too much responsibility too young,” her mother recalled, “and wanted to be eighteen years old when she was only fourteen.”
Emily’s need to appear more mature began two years earlier, when she was only twelve years old and in the seventh grade. She began to hang out with people her mother considered to be from the “wrong crowd.” The wild group of teenagers helped lead Emily astray. She began staying out late at nights, oftentimes with older boys. She even informed her mother that “she had good judgment of men.” Emily’s grades began to fall. It was apparent her interests had been severely sidetracked. Her mother eventually took her out of public school and placed her in an alternative school for problem students.
Elizabeth LaQua did not believe her daughter was taking drugs. Of course, parents are usually the last to know. Emily’s best friend, Elaina Davison, was another problem child. After Emily was transferred to the alternative school, Elaina moved to Florida with her parents. Soon after, Elaina ran away from home and hitchhiked all the way back to Washington, to be with her best friend. Elizabeth LaQua allowed Elaina to move in with the LaQua family, as well as two or three other troubled teenage girls. Elizabeth, who had aspirations of becom-ing involved in the ministry, believed it was her duty to
care for these troubled souls.
It was tougher than she ever imagined.
“I had a terrible time,” Elizabeth recalled. “I have certain rules that must be obeyed. It seemed like they would gang up on me. They all seemed to work under the same thesis—that the world owed them a living,” she declared of her own daughter and her teenage friends.
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Emily became even more bored with school. She informed her mother that because she appeared to look eighteen, she wanted to become an adult. She also informed her mother that she had no interest in completing her scholastic education and that she wanted to drop out of school and take her General Educa-tional Development test (GED), which would give her the equivalent of a high-school diploma. Her mother was adamantly opposed.
Emily threatened her mother that she would leave if her mother did not let her do what she wanted. She warned her mother that she would go live with her father in Brookshire, Texas. She even sarcastically told her mother, “Don’t worry about me, Mom, I’ll be okay. I can take care of myself.”