The next day, Laren continued, Sarah told her they hadn’t buried Larry deep enough. That afternoon they drove back to the scene in one of the BMWs. They saw a number of cars in the vicinity. Laren was sure the police had found the body. “So I just, like, lose it, and we go back to the house and I say, ‘I think it’s time …’”

Laren meant that it was time to get out of town.

For the next two weeks, as she tried to organize her departure from the Woodbridge house, Laren said, she kept thinking that at any moment someone was going to find the body. She began driving by the vineyard every day, looking for some sign that someone had found Larry. Her relationship with Sarah began to deteriorate, she said. Both of them were nervous and afraid, especially since the police were now actively looking for Larry.

By early January, Laren continued, they’d cleaned out the house, and had driven to Scottsdale for the horse show. Sarah was supposed to call her from Sacramento, Laren said, but when she didn’t call, Laren began to wonder whether the police had started talking to her. On the night of January 10, she was in the hotel with Greg in Scottsdale.

“And then my trainer receives this phone call, and I see him walk over around the bar, and I’m like, ‘Something’s going on’ … he said that the sheriff’s department had come to the ranch and asked him, asked his wife, where he was … that they understood I had given him some golf clubs … and [Mary Whalen] was asking where the golf clubs were.”

Laren said Greg told her not to worry about it, that it was some sort of mistake. He told her to go take a shower, and then they would get together for dinner.

“So then, we go have dinner … Greg tells [his clients] that they [the sheriff’s department] are harassing me for investigation in the disappearance of Larry. Greg says we [Laren and Haylei] need to go home and deal with this. And I said, ‘Okay, we’ll go home.’”

Greg gave her $300, Laren said, to go with $200 she already had. Then they got in the Jag and took off, down the road that led home, to Florida.

It was nearing 2 in the morning, Florida time. Laren seemed done. She gave a few more details: on the day of the long truck ride back to northern California, they had stopped in Yosemite, she said. Larry had tried to attack Sarah, she said. “He hated her, he just hated her.” Sarah had a shovel. She stopped the car and began digging a hole to bury Larry, Laren said, but he was still alive. She told Sarah that they couldn’t bury Larry alive. Sarah had agreed, Elisa said. But that day, she added, “Sarah was in control … I was too freaked out.”

Then, the next day when Larry really was dead, Laren said, they knew they couldn’t call anyone, not even poison control, because there would be too many questions. The chances were good that someone would figure out who she really was. And besides, making Larry disappear for a while would give them a chance to get the law business straightened out.

So they’d decided to put Larry in the refrigerator until they could figure out what to do, and the weeks had turned into months, and the money stopped coming in, and then people started looking for Larry, and then the only thing to do was get lost. They had come to Destin, had been found, and now it was time to face everything that had happened.

“I’m totally prepared to … I know I’m gonna spend the rest of my life in prison or to the electric chair or whatever it is you do with people … I mean, I know that, I know I killed him and I know I’m guilty, and I’m prepared to deal with the repercussions of it,” Laren said.

At about 2:20 in the morning, Harker wrote out a statement for Elisa to read:

I, Laren Jordan, provide the following statement because it is true. I was not forced to make this statement, nor have I been threatened or promised anything.

I, Laren Jordan, along with Sarah Dutra, planned to overdose Larry McNabney with a horse tranquilizer in a hotel in Los Angeles, California. After giving him horse tranquilizer, he was still alive. Dutra and I didn’t want to leave him in the hotel for the housekeepers to find. We, Dutra and I, began driving Larry McNabney home. We stopped in Yosemite and Dutra began digging a hole with a shovel we had bought. I told Dutra he was alive and we could not do this. We drove home together.

After we arrived at home, Larry McNabney went to sleep on the floor upstairs. Part of his face had been frozen the prior month, his face was drooping and one of his hands was cramped. During the evening before he fell asleep I told him I was going to call poison control. He told me not to call. I realize I could have called 911. I could have called poison control. The next morning Larry McNabney was dead.

Dutra and I wrapped him in a sheet and duct tape and placed him in the refrigerator in the garage for three months. I then took Larry McNabney’s body, cut off his clothes and buried him in a shallow grave in a vineyard. I then threw his clothes, my clothes and plastic wrappers in approximately ten different Dumpsters.

I understand Dutra and I killed Larry McNabney by giving him the horse tranquilizer, knowing he mixed this with other drugs and alcohol, and not getting him the help he medically needed.

Dutra and I together discussed how to discard the body. I alone buried McNabney’s body.

Laren Jordan

March 19, 2002

Laren read the statement over and signed it. The time was just past 2:30 in the morning on March 19, and even as she was signing, Detective Deborah Scheffel was on her way to Sarah Dutra’s apartment in Sacramento.