Chapter 15
The Rock
The reopening of the Lisa Ann Monzo case brought Michael Ihde into the orbit of a man who would become his worst nightmare—Rockne Harmon, Alameda County senior deputy district attorney. Better known as “Rock,” Harmon had already made a name for himself in the new field of forensic DNA analysis. A reporter from the San Jose Mercury News had termed him “a walking encyclopedia on DNA testing.” The reporter went on to say, “If Rock Harmon didn’t exist, someone would have to invent him—probably a scriptwriter.”
In 1993 Harmon was forty-seven years old, married, and a Vietnam veteran who had earned the Purple Heart. After his military service he graduated from the University of San Francisco School of Law and joined the Alameda County District Attorney’s Office. And despite his driven personality and intense respect for the law, he still managed to take his three small children to a local swimming pool every weekend. He was just as fanatical about his fitness as he was about the judiciary, working out daily in an Oakland gym and taking a couple of jogging laps around Lake Merritt near the Alameda County Courthouse.
In the courtroom he was more like a force of nature than a mere prosecutor. He had tried successfully one of California’s first DNA-related cases, and Peter Keane, chief assistant San Francisco County public defender, said, “Harmon comes out swinging, no matter what the arena is. It’s almost like he’s on a mission on all this stuff. A quest for the Holy Grail. Anyone who doesn’t believe [in DNA analysis] is a heretic and should be burned at the stake.”
Tom Orloff, the Alameda district attorney, the man who had once worked on the Kellie Poppleton case as an assistant DA, told a San Francisco Chronicle reporter, “If bombs were going off all around, while everybody else would be running for cover, Rock would be trying to figure out how to get back at the guy who’s dropping the bombs.”
In fact, Harmon had become involved in an Oakland triple murder case and had used a primitive precursor to DNA profiling back in 1988. By 1989 the technique had been refined and Rock Harmon used semen stain DNA analysis to win a rape conviction. He started writing and speaking on the subject all over the state, becoming one of California’s lead prosecutors on DNA. In the process he began to question the costly hearings California required before DNA evidence would be admitted into trial, whereas other states had already resolved that issue. He became so adamant in his resolve that he actually issued a blistering attack on an appeals court justice who handed down an adverse decision on DNA.
Every time prosecutors wanted to introduce the results of DNA testing in court they had to argue the validity of the technique all over again. The cost could come to $50,000. For small counties this process was such a financial burden that they often ignored DNA tests altogether. Harmon made it a crusade to change this inane and costly judicial procedure.
“We don’t have to argue that fingerprints are unique to each person,” a confederate in his cause, Lane Liroff, Santa Clara County deputy district attorney, said. “Literally, any tissue or any cell in the body that has a nucleus has DNA and can be used for testing. Scientists can test semen from the body of a rape victim; spit that has been used to lick a stamp; tears; earwax; vomit; or skin cells found beneath the fingernails of someone who has fought off an attacker.”
By 1994 Rock Harmon was making his presence felt in the California judicial system, and the appellate courts began issuing a string of rulings that all favored the use of DNA testing as evidence. A panel of experts convened by the National Academy of Sciences made a report to the courts that stated, “DNA analysis is one of the greatest technical achievements for criminal investigation since the discovery of fingerprints. The technology has advanced to the point where its admissibility as evidence should not be in doubt.”
As for those who doubted the validity of DNA tests, James McWilliams, an Alameda County deputy public defender, related that “Rock once called a defense DNA ‘expert’ at home and chewed him out as though he were a prostitute scientist.”
Harmon’s expertise on DNA evidence was so profound by 1995 that it brought him to national prominence in the O.J. Simpson case. Along with San Diego prosecutor George Clark, he joined Marcia Clark’s “DNA evidence team” and took on the formidable defense duo of Peter Neufield and Barry Scheck. It was a time of microscopic scrutiny by the media, and Marcia Clark had put together a team of experts for the prosecution.
Marcia Clark noted in her book Without a Doubt, “We were all nervous on the morning of May 24, when Collin Yamauchi took the witness stand. Collin had done the first PCR (DNA) testing at the LAPD lab—the lab the defense had taken to calling the cesspool of contamination.... This time he’d really gotten his act together. Under Rock’s direct Collin calmly explained how he’d begun his testing by opening a vial of Simpson’s blood and placing a small drop of blood on what is called a Fitzco card.... Collin went carefully over the procedure he’d followed in dealing with those samples. He’d even used a fresh knife after cutting each swatch. Pretty damned careful.”
Rock Harmon methodically tied O.J. Simpson to the murder of Nicole Brown Simpson and Ronald Goldman by the analysis of O.J.’s blood, hair and tissue. He even managed to bring the technical terms down to a layman’s understanding by inserting references to basketball players as part of his delivery.
The not guilty verdict did not deter Rock Harmon from his quest. He believed just as strongly as ever in the validity of forensic DNA evidence.
Tom Orloff, Alameda district attorney, said of Harmon after the Simpson trial, “Rock’s a very aggressive trial attorney. He knows the law, and he’ll push it as far as he can. If I committed a crime, I wouldn’t want him prosecuting me.”
Michael Ihde certainly wished Rock Harmon wasn’t prosecuting him. By the winter of 1996 all the DNA evidence concerning him had been admitted into an Alameda court of law. His lawyer, Judith Browne, had tried to stymie Ihde’s return to an Alameda courtroom, citing that his testimony could be transmitted from the Washington State Penitentiary. But the penitentiary administration flatly refused, stating that any television cameras would compromise security. They won their case. Michael Ihde would have his day in court back in the Bay Area.
It was there that he came face-to-face with the ghost of his murder victim Lisa Ann Monzo. As the Monzo case commenced in September 1996, Rock Harmon came out swinging. He had eighty-four People’s Exhibits for the jurors to view: everything from a close-up of Lisa Ann Monzo’s dead body, to a photo of the murder scene area, to a map drawn by Richard Danielson that particularly zeroed in on the murder scene, showing the overpass, the railroad tracks and the pillar where Monzo had been raped and killed. But the most damning evidence of all was People’s Exhibit #44, an analysis of a semen stain from Monzo’s vaginal swab that matched Ihde’s own semen analysis. A thin thread of the strand of life, DNA, was about to hang Michael Ihde for good.
Expert witness Martin Buoncristiani of the California Department of Justice DNA Lab took the stand. He stated that he had worked for the California Department of Justice DNA lab for the last 3 1/2 years. He had a science degree in molecular biology from San Francisco State University and a forensic science degree from the University of California at Berkeley. He had worked on twelve murder cases prior to the Lisa Ann Monzo case and definitely knew his business.
When the Alameda County Sheriff’s Office had sent him vaginal samples from Lisa Ann Monzo and blood and semen samples from Michael Ihde, Buoncristiani first did a PCR test to determine if the more precise and complicated RFLP testing was necessary.
Rock Harmon asked him, “How would you describe those results in terms of whether you consider Mr. Ihde to be a possible source of the sperm that was on the vaginal swab?”
Buoncristiani answered, “Yes. He would be included as a source, a possible source for the sperm.”
Buoncristiani was then asked to describe the RFLP test and its results.
“For the six loci tested, the profile that was abstracted would be seen in one in 398 billion blacks, one in approximately 90 billion Caucasians, and one in approximately 32 billion Hispanics,” said Buoncristiani.
To double-check, the same samples had been sent to an independent laboratory, Cellmark Diagnostics. They came up with the same results—there was only a one-in-90-billion chance that the sperm found on Monzo’s vaginal swab came from someone other than Ihde.
For every objection and alternate theory that Ihde’s attorney, Judith Browne, came up with, Senior Deputy DA Rock Harmon had a plethora of “irrefutable evidence.” There were no escape hatches for Ihde this time, no deals he could make. He’d already seen to that by pleading guilty to Ellen Parker’s rape and murder in Vancouver, Washington. Harmon sought the death penalty on charges F187 (A) Spec pc and F261 PC 4 PRS in the rape and murder of Lisa Ann Monzo.
On November 5, 1996, at Alameda County Superior Court in Oakland, the jury took all the evidence in for deliberation. They weighed Michael Ihde’s guilt or innocence all through Monday and into Tuesday afternoon. By 1:15 P.M. they had their verdict. He was escorted back into the courtroom and listened as the jury pronounced judgment upon him: “Guilty on both counts.”
Ihde broke down at his penalty phase as Gloria Hazelwood from Amador County was once again placed on the stand to relate her tale of terror. She described her rape and near death at his hands while he reached for tissues to blot back tears. But the jury had no sympathy for him as they sat riveted by Hazelwood’s testimony. “I was terrified,” she said. “I thought for sure I was going to eternity.”
Even his lawyer’s pronouncement that Ihde had “found God” in prison and turned over a new leaf fell upon deaf ears. Instead, the jury was absorbed with every outraged word of Lisa Ann Monzo’s maternal aunt, Ms. Brodie, who vented her anger upon Michael Ihde.
“He is a despicable creature. And I use the word creature because I do not, I cannot, believe he is human. I listened to garbage testimony about what a great guy he is. How he’s such a positive force in this life, a positive light. If he ever was a positive light . . . that light was extinguished totally and irrevocably on the night he committed his first act of brutality against another human being. Not only was that testimony repulsive to me, but it was an insult to Lisa’s memory. Lisa is and will always be deeply missed by so many good, good people. Her death left a huge void in this world, but when he dies, no one will miss him. No one will grieve for him. He will not leave a void.
“I still have trouble believing that I have to live in a world that does not contain Lisa. I still sometimes wonder how the world can keep spinning and spinning without her. But when he’s gone, I will rejoice in a world that does not contain him. So when he meets his maker, Satan, because I believe he’s a creature of the devil, I hope and pray that he rots in hell forever!”
Michael Ihde’s appeals to escape the death sentence have systematically been denied. Even as this is written, he awaits a lethal injection at San Quentin in California in accordance with Code 3604. He’d come down a long and terrible path since he used to hang out with his buddy James Daveggio on Pleasanton’s Main Street in 1977. His career in rape and murder was coming to a close just as Daveggio’s criminal career was about to go into high gear. But one unsolved case still hung over both of them like a dark cloud that would not go away—the rape and murder of Kellie Poppleton. It remained to be seen in which direction her spectral finger would point as to who was her murderer.