Pigs!” Debra Angelo had muttered in the backseat of the sheriff’s radio car. “How could you do that in front of my child? I didn’t kill the sonofabitch.”
They took her to the sheriff’s station in Malibu, venue of the crime, where she was booked, printed, strip-searched, and photographed. Next, they transported her to the Sybil Brand Jail for Women in East Los Angeles, where superlawyer Marvin Samuels was already waiting with bail money, having been alerted to her crisis by a friend at the funeral who happened to have a cell phone in his pocket and great affection for Jack Nathanson’s first wife.
Everyone knows there’s no bail on a murder rap in L.A. County, and nobody knows what Marvin Samuels did to get Debra Angelo out on bail—beg, plead, promise, bribe—but get her out he did, on a million dollars’ bond. By the time the two walked out of Sybil Brand, a sizable contingent of media had gathered outside, flashbulbs popping, minicams cranking—this was hot stuff! Debra said nothing; you never heard her curse when there was press around.
Marvin, who loved the press, courted the press, shot some bon mots their way with his big teddy-bear smile. “No way they’ll make this stick, lads and ladies. Tell me,” he fired at them, squeezing Debra’s shoulders, Debra in the too-tight designer suit, the too-high heels, the major hair, “does this look like a murderess to you?” Then he ushered her into his waiting limo and they screeched off.
Samuels had learned that they’d found Debra’s fingerprints on the murder weapon.
“Of course my fingerprints are on the fucking gun,” she told him. “It’s my gun, for God’s sake. I take target practice. Ask Tony Morano at the Lakeside Gun Club. My fingers are all over the damn thing all the time! If I’d killed the shithead, do you think I’d be dumb enough to leave the fucking gun on the fucking floor next to his fucking head?”
Still, Marvin thought, Marvin who had been there through the mutual carnage that was the Nathanson vs. Angelo divorce-and-custody trial—still, Debra’s fingerprints were found on Debra’s gun, which killed Debra’s ex-husband in Debra’s house.