I'll Take Care of You (36 page)

CHAPTER 48

In the last days before the May sentencing date, Eric's attorneys decided they needed more time to work on their motion in light of the “new evidence” that Eric had brought forth about the hit man. Even so, the dynamic duo of Eric and Nanette were going to be in court together for the last time, a key draw for the media and other observers who were curious to see whether sparks would fly or knowing glances would be exchanged between them.

 

 

Fittingly, May 18 was a warm sunny day in Santa Ana. As Kim McLaughlin Bayless chatted with her father's college friends in the hallway outside the courtroom that morning, an expression of relief and anticipated closure played like soft light across her face. Now that the emotional heaviness caused by so many years of grief and frustration had been lifted from her petite shoulders, she walked with more bounce to her step. The pain of sitting through the trials had dissipated from her eyes.

“This is like icing on the cake for us,” Kim said, smiling at Sandy Baumgardner and Sandy's father, Ken. “Gives us such hope, such inspiration,” she added, explaining that the authorities never gave up on this case—a sharp contrast to the lack of justice that her brother received after the drunk driver hit Kevin on his skateboard all those years ago.

Hugging Adrianne Reynolds, the faithful juror from Eric's trial who had come to watch the proceedings, Kim said, “She gave five weeks of her life to us. We're grateful.”

It was like a family reunion for Bill's daughters and his friends, the crew of detectives and prosecution team, all of whom had been waiting so long for this day to arrive—some for many more years than others. It was also a day of justice, serenity, and peace, of reminiscing about Bill McLaughlin, and of satisfaction knowing that his killers were finally going to get what was coming to them.

“I knew she wasn't who she said she was,” Ken Baumgardner said of Nanette.

Tom Reynolds, Nanette's ex-boyfriend who had found her “Wealthy Men Only” singles ad while they were living together, came to watch as well. He wondered whether she would exhibit any emotional reaction.

“The ‘Ice Queen' has got to melt sometime,” he said.

Asked how Nanette had drawn in and manipulated him and the other men, he made an analogy to the recent best-selling erotic novel.

“You've heard of
Fifty Shades of Grey
? Well, this was
fifteen hundred.
”

 

 

Inside, the courtroom filled with many of the same people who had attended the two trials, although this time Nanette's family was noticeably absent. The only recognizable supporter was a pretty friend named Laura, whose well-groomed hair had gone from light brown to red and now to highlighted blond during the course of the court proceedings.

The bailiff led a grim-faced, handcuffed Nanette to the corner of the jury box at the judge's right, where she sat with her back to the single TV pool camera behind her. The bailiffs seated her there to keep her separated from Eric, who, in previous courtroom appearances, had sat at the defense table in front of the judge.

Her hair was pulled back into a long ponytail. Her blond skunk stripe cut across her dark waves and her thin face looked even more drawn than before. Wearing a long-sleeved pale pink sweater over the same simple black dress she'd worn at trial, she kept her gaze trained straight ahead, where no one could look her in the eye.

Nanette had been so tight-lipped about her past that she'd even been unwilling to speak in her own defense to the probation officer who had prepared her sentencing report, which typically includes a social history and any abuse, criminal acts, and other personal details. She'd been so guarded that even her own attorney, Mick Hill, said he didn't know that much about her. Because this was not a death penalty case, he'd never had to research her family background or look for mitigating factors to try to save her life.

“Beyond her just growing up in Arizona, and then hooking up with K. Ross Johnston, I don't know anything,” Hill said later, adding that he didn't think she had a very good relationship with her first husband.

Hill took the chair next to Nanette, which blocked even a side view of her from the gallery and made it just as difficult for the print photographer to get a decent shot of her face.

That's when the drama started.

Eric had announced to his attorney, Gary Pohlson, that he didn't want to come out of the holding cell, knowing, perhaps, that no one was going to make him. If the judge granted more time for the due process motion, Eric wouldn't be sentenced that day. The attorneys filed into the judge's chamber, apparently to discuss how to handle this, given that Eric had a right to be present at the proceeding and to hear the discussion, which, at least theoretically, could affect his case.

When the group emerged from the powwow, Hill returned to his seat in the jury box. The bailiff opened a little wood-framed door that served as a window into the eight-foot-by-eight-foot holding cell, where defendants were kept until they were brought into the courtroom. Pohlson, who had been seated at the defense table, stood up so Nanette and her attorney could move and sit there. But when the head bailiff motioned to Nanette and Hill to sit at the table, they didn't budge. The bailiff punched in a code and opened the regular door to the holding cell, allowing Eric, who had no speaker or microphone in there, to hear the judge and vice versa.

“Mr. Naposki,” Judge Froeberg said without looking in Eric's direction, “you don't want to be out here in court?”

“No, thank you, Your Honor,” came a disembodied voice from the cell, from which Eric was unable to see into the courtroom, even with the window and door open.

“You have the right to,” Froeberg said.

“No, thank you, Your Honor.”

As Pohlson told the judge he needed more time to finish the new trial motion, the judge expressed his displeasure that they were ten months past Eric's conviction and yet the defense was still asking for another postponement. He said he wasn't inclined to give any additional delays, making this the last one he would grant. Eric's new sentencing date was set for three months out, on August 10.

Commenting on the “due process” portion of the motion, Murphy summed up the prosecution's position that the issues had already been adjudicated, the missing records for the alleged 8:52
P.M.
call in particular. Eric had told police that Nanette had dropped him at his apartment and he'd then driven by Leonard Jomsky's house before making that call, a story that Murphy deemed physically impossible.

After hearing the evidence presented at both trials, Froeberg agreed, saying he was even “less convinced than ever that the receipt [for that phone call] ever existed,” and that he believed his current reading of the situation only reinforced the accuracy of his original ruling, which was to deny Eric's due process motion. Froeberg also denied Nanette's motion for a new trial, which was based on similar grounds.

If Murphy couldn't force Eric to come out to face the family of the man he'd killed, allowing them to avoid making another set of victim impact statements down the road, then he was going to verbally skewer him for it. But by this point, one of the bailiffs, who had not been informed of the plan, had already returned Eric to the bus that would take him back to jail.

Murphy was left to state his thoughts about Eric for the record.

“Mr. Naposki is a coward . . . for not facing these people today to hear what they have to say,” he said, summing up Eric's behavior as “a final blaze of no-class cowardice.”

With that, Jenny McLaughlin began reading her statement, describing the scene she imagined in the kitchen the night her father's killer pointed a gun at him while he was helpless to defend himself. He must have felt sickened, shocked, and horrified, she said.

She talked about the sadness she'd felt being deprived of her father's presence at her wedding, how she'd cried through Kim's entire marriage ceremony as well, and that she was also sad that her husband had never gotten to meet her father.

“‘I feel very grateful for having such a wonderful father in my life for as long as I did,'” she said. “‘I wish he could have stayed with us longer and that God would have chosen his time to leave rather than a person with a gun and a greedy heart.'”

Then it was Kim's turn. Disappointed that Eric wouldn't hear the statements she'd prepared for him and Nanette, she walked to the podium, and edged it over to the right a few inches, trying to get to a vantage point—beyond the obstruction of Nanette's face by Hill's self-admittedly large head—where she could look directly into the eyes of the woman who had orchestrated her father's murder. But Nanette kept slinking behind Hill.

Kim started off by reading her take on a poem, “Imagine a Woman,” originally written by Patricia Lynn Reilly. Kim had written Reilly for permission to use parts of the original, informed her that she was going to read it to her father's killers, and had even sent her a copy of it. Kim had written her own version about the positive qualities her father had instilled in her—qualities she felt that Nanette lacked entirely.

She aimed to make her words poignant and from the heart. But unsure of what Nanette would take in, she hoped that Nanette wouldn't just shut out her message. Kim and her sister ultimately decided that these statements were more important for them to deliver, regardless of Nanette's response, as a way of carrying out their father's legacy and of challenging Nanette to be “a woman of integrity.”

The first line of her poem was this:
Imagine a woman who others aspire to be.

What followed was a long list of this woman's good qualities, such as being compassionate and tenderhearted, someone who told the truth and refused to surrender. Kim ended the poem by telling Nanette that this woman was everything Kim's father had taught her to be:
Everything you are not.

The schoolteacher then launched into the vile and astounding “destructive trail of deceit” Nanette had left in her wake.

“‘Your web of lies has caught up with you finally and your true nature has been revealed by this team of law enforcers,'” she said. “‘Your trial revealed what an abomination your life has been. We are appalled and repulsed.'”

Kim said Nanette had no right to do this horrible deed to a man who had been so good to her for four long years—let alone do this to her own children, Lishele and Kristofer.

“‘What a despicable, disgraceful disappointment you are to your family and the children you dared to bring into this world,'” Kim said. “‘Your one life, Nanette Johnston Packard McNeal, has been a complete and utter waste.'”

While Kim was speaking, Nanette remained expressionless until Kim mentioned her children. Only then did Nanette shake her head in disagreement—a reaction that went largely unseen except by those sitting nearby at the prosecution table.

Kim concluded by saying that she hoped and prayed that while Nanette sat in prison for the rest of her life, she would eventually own up to her part in the murder of Bill McLaughlin.

The last of three speakers was Bill's friend Don Kalal. Reading a letter written by Bill's brother Patrick, who could not make it out from Chicago for the hearing, Kalal was the most overtly emotional. His voice cracked as he read the short missive, which labeled Nanette as “a true black widow” who had ruined the lives of everyone with whom she'd come into contact.

After the statements were done, the judge promptly sentenced Nanette to the expected LWOP term. Asked if she had any questions about appealing her case, Nanette said the only word she spoke the entire hearing: a soft-spoken “no.”

Froeberg rose abruptly from his chair and walked out of the courtroom without saying another word. As the bailiff cuffed the disparaged femme fatale once more and led her back to the holding cell, her face remained blank and she looked at no one.

 

 

Downstairs on the second floor, a throng of cameras gathered for a news conference as Kim and Jenny rode down in the elevator with Gary Pohlson.

“My client is a jerk,” he said to them apologetically.

Pohlson later acknowledged that he'd communicated that same sentiment to Eric.

“For him not to come out that first time during their victim witness statements was appalling to me, and I told him that,” he said. “I like Eric Naposki, but I was embarrassed by some of the things he did at the end.”

During the news conference, Murphy smiled as he made his typical cutting remarks, with Detective Tom Voth and DA Investigator Larry Montgomery on one side, and Jenny and Kim McLaughlin, who stood with their arms around each other, on the other.