CHAPTER 35
The defense team repeatedly tried to get the five death penalty “aggravators” against Steve dropped for lack of evidence and also to reduce his bail bond, which went as high as $2.5 million. The goal was to get him released with a GPS bracelet so he could help his attorneys prepare for trial.
Carol’s killer is still walking free, Steve’s parents wrote in a letter to the judge in the fall of 2009.
That November, the prosecution, referred to as “the state,” listed the following aggravators, which made him eligible for a death sentence if he was found guilty of murder: The state presented sufficient evidence to demonstrate probable cause to believe defendant brutally murdered Carol for pecuniary gain and to prevent her from reopening the divorce case and turning him in to the IRS. The state also presented sufficient evidence that the murder was committed in a cruel and depraved manner as well as a cold, calculated manner without pretense of moral or legal justification.
At a hearing on November 17, Steve’s daughters pleaded with the judge to release him on bail until trial.
Charlotte testified that her father wouldn’t even kill spiders when she was young, only catch and release them. “If there is one thing I just know, it is that my father is not capable of what he is accused of,” she said. “I am certain of my father’s innocence and of his nonviolent nature.”
It had been “acutely painful” for her to go through the tragic loss of her mother, she said, “but the added loss of my dad was and is unbearable.”
Katie testified that both of her parents hated violence, and “despite the fact that I was a stubborn terror of a child sometimes,” they didn’t even believe in spanking. The last time she was spanked, she was “very, very little,” and acting out in the backseat of the car. Carol did the deed and regretted it.
“It affected her and my dad so much that they decided from then on, I would only be given time-outs,” she said. “I’ve never seen my parents, really, or my dad, be violent toward my family or my mom, or anyone.... The most he would ever do is yell at me, when I was being . . . the very stubborn child that I definitely had the tendency to [be].”
Katie, who was twenty-two by now, described Steve as her best friend over the last four years, the one she called when she was walking home from class, upset about boys or school. He’d been willing to wake up early, even before 5 A.M. if necessary, to edit a paper she’d just written, “just because he loved being our dad. He liked being there and being part of our lives.”
Charlotte was the one who really needed him the most as she prepared to apply for college, Katie said. And although she appreciated the time Renee had been spending with her younger sister, “I don’t think anyone can really replace a parent, especially in such discombobulated circumstances that are currently taking place” and that were causing “confusion and instability” in Charlotte’s life.
The girls’ attorney, Chris Dupont, noted his “bewilderment” when he heard that the judge presiding over Steve’s first court appearance in October 2008 had ruled that his daughters were required to waive their victims’ rights in order to maintain a relationship with him.
Judge Lindberg agreed. “I thought that was a misinterpretation of the law,” he said.
As a result, Dupont said, he was joining the defense’s motion to address this problem by asking the court to declare unconstitutional portions of the state Victims’ Rights Act. This law had kept the girls from being advised of hearings, from being briefed by prosecutors and from speaking in court over the past year, Dupont said.
The defense also had been prohibited from contacting crime victims such as Ruth Kennedy for interviews unless they chose to talk, he said, and even then, such requests had to go through the county attorney’s office. Attorney Anne Chapman explained that the defense team wanted to provide Ruth with information about “the lack of evidence, and about the state’s failure to pursue other suspects who may still be out there.”
The defense’s inability to contact Ruth and Carol’s brother, John, was violating Steve’s right to a fair trial, they said. Furthermore, all of these factors had strained the relationship between the girls and their grandmother, with whom they’d once been very close.
Prosecutor Joe Butner objected to Dupont’s characterization of the issues, contending that state law was not to blame for the girls’ strained relationship with their grandmother, but “rather, it’s a function of the facts in this case.”
Chapman disagreed. “I know that they don’t feel like the information has been free-flowing from that office,” she said.
Butner countered that the defense’s arguments struck him “as being based upon false premises and concocted from the outset,” because he’d tried to reach out to the girls through their attorneys.
Lindberg denied the defense’s motion, and Steve remained in jail.
Trying to be supportive of Carol’s daughters, Katherine Morris flew out to Los Angeles in advance of the trial and had dinner with Katie. Steve happened to call from jail while Katherine was picking her up.
“He thanked me for looking in on Katie, taking her to dinner, and [said] what a great support I was to her, you know, pleasantries,” she recalled recently.
In one of the few conversations where she and Katie discussed the case, Katherine brought up a few points of contention in the evidence and posed some questions.
“What about the Internet searches?” she asked.
Katherine was skeptical of Steve’s claims that these searches were done in the course of researching and writing a mystery novel. Looking back, Katherine recalled that she often saw Steve reading a book, but never writing one.
“I never heard that he was writing a book,” Katherine said recently. “Never in my life.”
But Katie said this was nothing new to her. “My dad always talked about writing a book,” she said.