NINE

John Law

Solving the shocking slaying of the local merchant was top-priority business in the Steamboat Springs Police Department, among the CBI agents assigned to assist them, and Assistant DA St. James.

The law enforcement officers moved fast and cast a wide net in their search for the killer or killers who had bushwhacked Gerry Boggs in his home. Investigators began snooping through courthouse records in Steamboat Springs and questioning people in Colorado towns and cities from the Routt County seat to Denver, Westminster, Fort Collins, and Greeley.

They contacted Judy Prier-Lewis, who shared information with them collected during the investigation she conducted for her friend. Very quickly, the law enforcement sleuths expanded their probe far outside the boundaries of the Centennial State to Texas, Indiana, Louisiana, and Iowa.

Much of the early activity was focused on Greeley, where the odd couple who had rapidly become the principle suspects in the dreadful crime was living. After checking in with local Greeley police and enlisting their cooperation to avoid stepping on jurisdictional toes, DelValle interviewed the tenants who rented the downstairs portion of Jill’s house. The young men described their landlady and her live-in boyfriend as best they could for the officer.

Michael was described by Rick Mott as being in his middle-to-late thirties, between five-foot, eleven-inches and six-foot, one-inch, with a slim build, dishwater-blond hair and no beard or mustache. Steve Giamberdine told the detective Michael was about forty years old, six-foot-tall, and had his blond hair cut short. There was no beard or mustache.

Mott said his landlady was in her early forties, with large breasts, big hips, and dark brown hair almost to her shoulders. Giamberdine described her as about five-foot, seven-inches or five-foot, eight-inches tall, with brown shoulder-length hair, a “flat rear” and “kind-of-wide-in-the-hips.” Interestingly, both men’s description of their landlady’s “flat rear” fit in perfectly with Debbie Fedewa’s observation about the oddly-flat bottom of the strange cross-dresser lurking outside Gerry’s house.

After the interview on the Tuesday following the slaying, Michael telephoned Mott and said Jill wanted to talk with him. Mott conversed with his landlady for a few minutes, and she said she was coming to the house to pick up some clothes. She walked up to the house about five minutes later, and they greeted each other while he stood on the front porch. Mott didn’t see her red Paseo parked anywhere nearby. Jill didn’t want to go inside the house after all. She preferred to take a walk with her young tenant and have a little talk.

While they strolled slowly down the quiet street a few moments later, Jill peppered Mott with questions. She wanted to know what the police officer said to him, and exactly what information the investigators were after. As Mott recounted the odd encounter to yet another detective, Don Eyer of the Greeley Police Department, Jill cautioned that the lawmen were trying to harass him and advised him not to talk with them. He should get himself a lawyer, she said.

Why should he hire a lawyer, Mott asked? He hadn’t done anything wrong. But Jill insisted he needed legal representation. Her former husband was a homosexual who only married her to put up a front, she explained. But she was involved in a divorce and lawsuit with him, and several of his friends killed him in order to avoid personal embarrassment at the approaching trial.

It was a weird story that was difficult to swallow. The entire matter was very strange, in fact, like a children’s game of cops and robbers or an exceedingly-poorly written mystery yarn. Mott didn’t take his landlady’s suggestion that he find himself an attorney or avoid police. In fact, he disclosed one other especially-important fact to the same Greeley detective. He saw Jill about nine o’clock Friday morning, October 22, when she knocked on his door. That was only a bit more than six hours before Gerry’s body was discovered.

There was no question that Jill and her boyfriend were feeling intense pressure from the fast-moving police investigation. It was becoming more intense every day, and the stress was getting to them. The fallout from the savage slaying was also getting to other people, according to a story passed on by Houston Chronicle reporter Susan Bardwell to Worth Weller in North Manchester.

Houston police reportedly opened Clark’s old case file after an anonymous woman caller began telephoning them to inquire about the two-decades-old murder. Police pulled the file and traced the call. Then they telephoned the Oak Street Bed & Breakfast and Jill Coit answered the phone. In a follow-up call, the Houston police spoke with Julie Coit. When she was confronted and accused of being the mystery caller, she told the police her mother-in-law’s ex-husband in Steamboat Springs had just been murdered.

In Steamboat Springs, police descended on the Oak Street Bed & Breakfast with a search warrant. Among the items collected in the sweep were a cashier’s check with the name “William Clark Coit” on it and another paper with the name “Jill C. Metzger.” Another warrant was served on U S West Communications, which turned over Jill’s telephone records. Eventually more than a dozen search warrants would be issued and served during the rapidly-broadening probe.

On the Tuesday after Gerry’s death, Michael was summoned to the US West Communications offices a few miles outside Greeley in unincorporated Weld County. A CBI agent wanted to talk with him, he was advised by Neil Wilson, manager of US West’s Network & Technology Services in Greeley and Michael’s immediate supervisor. Robert Sexton was waiting at the office to discuss a murder in Steamboat Springs. Michael told the CBI investigator he wasn’t talking; any questions about the affair should be directed to Jill’s attorney.

Sexton told him he had been seen, and it was already “a done deal!” The agent also pointedly observed that it was obvious Michael was wearing new boots. The telephone-company worker wouldn’t budge however. He wasn’t talking to the CBI about a murder.

Michael had walked into a tense confrontation, but he stuck by his guns. Before Michael left the office his boss informed him the company was keeping the US West truck he usually drove. A different truck would be provided for him later. Being temporarily without company wheels wasn’t the problem for Michael. It was obvious why his truck was taken away. The CBI had a search warrant and was planning to comb it for evidence.

About eight-thirty the next morning, Michael telephoned his friend, Troy Giffon, and asked for a lift to work. He explained that police had his company vehicle tied up. On the way to work he pulled his wallet from his pocket, opened it up, ripped out a handful of papers and tossed them outside the window of the truck. He was becoming an emotional basket case, and Giffon was alarmed.

Michael had continued to show up for work, but he was jumpy, erratic, and his distraction was obvious. He told his friend that Jill’s ex-husband had been found dead of multiple gunshot wounds the previous Friday. Giffon reminded Michael about his efforts that summer to talk him into killing, or helping to murder the victim. “I was hoping you’d forget that,” Michael said. “This is the only thing that could hang me.”

Did anyone else know about the hit, Giffon asked? Michael said there was someone in Ottumwa, Iowa, and police were pretty sure to talk with the individual because the name was written down in the vehicle investigators were searching. At times while he was talking about the murder and the interest of police in him and his girlfriend, Michael choked up. Tears formed in his eyes.

Firmly gripping Giffon’s shoulder, he soberly advised: “Vietnam buddies don’t rat off their buddies.” Although it went unsaid, Gerry Boggs was also a Vietnam veteran, twice over, and he had suffered a much more terrible betrayal.

After the appeal to Giffon’s loyalty as a fellow veteran, Michael launched into a spirited explanation of the alibi he and Jill had for the period immediately surrounding the time of Gerry’s death. They went camping at Kelly Flats between Greeley and Steamboat Springs the Wednesday night before Gerry was found dead at the house. Michael said the campground was empty, and he filled out an envelope, wrote their name on it, and dropped it into a collection box along with a $4 fee.

He didn’t learn of the murder until after he and Jill had temporarily gone off in separate directions, and she telephoned him from Steamboat Springs to leave a message on his answering machine, Michael said. When he checked his messages Sunday, he heard Jill’s voice telling him, “Something’s happened at Steamboat. Don’t talk to anybody about anything.”

According to Giffon’s account to investigators, his friend was concerned about how accurately it was possible for law-enforcement authorities to pin down the exact time of death. Giffon said he thought they could figure it out to within about an hour and that got his pal upset.

“They can’t tie me to the murder. I wasn’t there,” he declared. Several times he repeated that he didn’t own a light-tan jacket. Giffon listened, and for the most part, kept his own counsel while his friend rambled on. He knew that despite what Michael was saying, he had indeed owned such a jacket with a corduroy collar and details. He might not still have the jacket at that very moment, but he had owned one, and not very long ago.

Michael reportedly said the murderer would be bound to have blood on his shoes and could be “burned” if they weren’t disposed of. The killer, whoever that might be, would definitely destroy the shoes.

“There’s no way anyone could have evidence against me,” he was quoted. “I wouldn’t hide the stuff, and I wouldn’t save the stuff.”

Giffon glanced at Michael’s feet. The shaken man was wearing a pair of workboots that were sparkling new. Michael explained he needed new boots and bought them during the weekend.

The two men discussed which foreign countries had criminal extradition treaties with the United States and which ones would refuse to extradite. Giffon thought Argentina and Brazil would refuse to send someone back.

Michael was behaving as if he was going through a checklist in his mind about the evidence in the murder investigation. At one point, in mid-afternoon, he seemed to lose control and his emotions overwhelmed him. He was raving and waving around a knife he used on the job. Michael was “livid and going nuts,” according to Giffon, and begged him to slap and punch him, to beat him up. Giffon figured Michael’s conscience was bothering him, and he wanted to be punished.

He didn’t beat Michael up. He listened. When he got home, he told his wife about his unsettling day with Michael and about the camping alibi. They agreed the story was ludicrous. Later, when Susan Kitchen met with the couple, he told the CBI agent about the disturbing conversation. The Giffons also told her, in considerable detail, about Michael’s earlier efforts to enlist Troy as a hit man.

CBI Agent Scott Mundine talked with US West worker Bern Barry Boker while he was on the job. Boker, whose friends usually called him “Bud,” had known Michael since 1991 and never noticed him with a tan jacket. Michael referred to Jill’s father as his father-in-law and talked about owning ten percent of the bed-and-breakfast, a share that was worth a whopping $100,000, Boker recalled.

Michael never once talked in front of him about murdering Jill’s former husband in Steamboat Springs, Boker said. When he talked about wanting to kill someone, it was his ex-wife, Kathy who was named as the potential target. Sometimes when Michael talked about wanting to find someone to kill Kathy his anger was obvious. At other times he discussed it calmly.

In other discussions Michael said Jill would only stay at B&B’s when the couple was driving around Colorado, Boker revealed. She wasn’t the camper type. Michael’s reported remarks fit in with Jill’s history; she liked cleanliness and comfort and wasn’t known as a woman who looked forward to roughing it in the mountains or a woodland campsite.

As lead investigator, Rick Crotz was assuming much of the responsibility for coordinating the fast-moving probe. While interviews were conducted and other aspects of the investigation were carried out by CBI agents and other law-enforcement officers from cooperating police departments, reports were typed and filed with the Steamboat Springs detective. Somehow Crotz made time to conduct his own interviews while he and Captain Hays fought to keep up with the flurry of paperwork and information that was flooding in.

One of the people Crotz talked to was Sue Heiser, a Greeley manicurist who works out of her home. She told the SSPD detective a woman telephoned her about eleven AM on Friday, October 22, identified herself as Jill Coit, and asked for an appointment. The client showed up about three PM. Ms. Heiser described the woman as nervous and chatty. While her nails were being filed and polished, she confided that she was on her way to Steamboat Springs where she owned a B&B, and had to go to court Monday morning because her ex-husband was suing her for slander. The woman, who identified herself as Jill, added that she had gotten her marriage annuled after learning her husband was a homosexual.

Just before leaving, she asked Ms. Heiser if she knew a good lawyer. The manicurist recommended a local attorney and offered to permit her client to telephone him from there. The woman declined and said she needed to make the call from a public phone. She left the manicurist’s home about four PM.

That was about twenty minutes after Douglas Boggs reported finding his brother dead. Two people, Mott and the manicurist, had reported seeing Jill in Greeley on the day her former husband’s body was discovered, one in the morning and one in the afternoon.

If investigators expected to show that Jill was either the killer or was present when Gerry was murdered in Steamboat Springs, developing a close determination of the time of death was absolutely imperative. Her alibi for Friday was growing stronger as the investigation progessed. Judging from the way the situation was shaping up, she was more than a hundred miles away from Steamboat Springs on the day the murder was discovered. If Gerry died on Thursday however, she would have a big time-window to account for.

While investigators were developing new leads and sorting out such details, Crotz and Hays were continuing to deal with the shower of information and the steadily-rising mound of paperwork. Some of the most important aspects of the paperwork they were concerned with was tied to search warrants.

As searches were being conducted of the house the couple shared in Greeley and of his work vehicle, Michael asked his supervisor for a day off on Thursday so he could talk with his attorney in Steamboat Springs. Wilson was agreeable and told his troubled employee he could also have Friday off if he wished. Michael agreed that was a good idea and added that he might decide to take a vacation the following week, beginning November 1. His supervisor told Michael to be sure and let him know if he decided definitely on taking the work break.

In Denver, CBI laboratory ballistics experts determined that the bullet recovered at the crime scene and one of the slugs taken from Gerry’s body were .22 caliber round-noses, with copper color coating. Tests were still being conducted on the other bullet.

Also downstate, Detective Tim Palmer of the Fort Collins Police Department interviewed Michael’s daughter and his ex-wife, Kathy Backus at the elementary school in Wellington. Eight-year-old Erin Backus was a student there. The school girl told Palmer she was with her father from six o’clock Friday night, October 22, until six o’clock Sunday night. Jill was with them from about the time it began to get dark on Saturday night, and they drove to William Andrew Coit’s house in Denver, she added. Jill and Andrew left in a small, new red car.

A few days later when Detective Crotz interviewed Andrew in the office of the Denver apartment complex where the young man lived and worked as manager, he heard a different story. Andrew said he hadn’t even seen his mother since sometime before Gerry Boggs was killed, although he talked to her by telephone a few times after the slaying. So far as he knew, his mother’s red sportscar wasn’t parked anywhere near the apartments, and he didn’t see her on that weekend.

The conflicting stories told by Michael’s daughter and Jill’s son, were typical of the frustrating discrepancies investigators often run into when conducting interviews with different people. The inconsistencies posed a problem to be worked out in subsequent talks, sworn statements—or in a courtroom.

Investigators were faced with other problems. Michael didn’t return to work after his long weekend. The first couple of weeks of November came and went and there was still no sign of him—or of Jill. In Steamboat Springs, rumors spread that the couple was out of the country. The stories were right on target.

She was in Mexico. Jill’s youngest son, William Clark Coit III and his wife Robin were new parents. On her flight south of the border, Jill had a layover in California, and she telephoned William at his home in Manhattan Beach. William drove to the airport with his four-month-old son, so his peripatetic mother could see her first grandchild.

On November 9, Jill was at the US Embassy in Mexico City where she signed a document giving power of attorney to Seth so he could sell the B&B and the house in Greeley.

Two days later Michael telephoned his boss at US West and left a message asking for a two-year leave of absence. In two years he would be eligible for retirement and a pension. He was a bit tardy making the call. After he failed to return to work on time and didn’t get in touch as he had promised, Wilson advised a labor-union representative that the missing employee was going to be fired. But Michael had always been a dependable worker who compiled an excellent attendance record until his recent troubles. Wilson began looking into the matter of the leave of absence for him.

Robert DelValle executed a warrant for the search of one of the three Toyota 4-Runners Jill had driven at various times. One was black, one pewter-gray, and the other red. Her constantly changing fleet of vehicles during that period also included the red Paseo and a red Ford pickup truck. DelValle searched the first of the rugged, boxy, utility vehicles for a false mustache, hairs and fibers, and a pair of blue jeans. Nothing that appeared to be blood stains was observed by the detective and evidence technicians when they looked through the vehicle. And there was no false mustache or blue jeans.

On November 20, Crotz had a long talk with Ms. Hanley, and the Iowa woman recounted her story of Jill’s repeated efforts to talk her into carrying out a murder in Colorado. Incriminating evidence was piling up.

There was even more reason for police to be pleased over the way the investigation was shaping up. They received a tip that Jill and her boyfriend were returning to Greeley. The tipster was Jill’s youngest son. When his mother telephoned him from Mexico to say she was coming home, William quietly passed on the message to police. He was afraid she would get away.

Jill’s sons were shaken by the news of the brutal slaying in Steamboat Springs and the realization their mother was a principle suspect. William III telephoned his uncle, Charles Coit, to talk and to ask questions. Jill had raised her sons to believe that Clark died of a heart attack. The Episcopal minister, who was in semi-retirement in Orange Park, Florida, at the south edge of Jacksonville, knew better than that. But he wasn’t anxious to be the bearer of bad news.

“I was beating around the bush,” he says of the talk with his nephew. But as he later recounted, William was persistent. He wanted to know what happened to his father, and he continued to press his uncle for the truth. According to Charles the young man asked:

“My mother did it, didn’t she?”

The clergyman reluctantly confessed what he knew about the story. William’s father was shot to death in his home in a murder that was never solved. The Reverend Coit was so emotionally rattled by the developments, he went into therapy for awhile. He said his nephew did the same.

The tip was just what police were hoping for, and they began closing in on the couple. On November 22, Fourteenth Judicial District Judge Richard P. Doucette issued arrest warrants for Jill and Michael. They were ordered picked up on suspicion of first-degree murder for the gunshot slaying of Gerald W. Boggs.

The bulky twenty-three-page documents related the manner of Gerry’s death, the way his body was found, the witness’s sighting of strangers lurking in the neighborhood, and detailed some of the background of the bitter lawsuit fought out between him and his former wife. Significantly, the warrants indicated the date of death was Thursday, October 21. But they also noted the murder weapon, a .22 caliber handgun, was not recovered.

Sixteen names by which Jill was believed to have been known by at one time or another were listed on her arrest warrant. She was identified as: Jill Coit, aka Jill Johansen-Coit, Jill Lonita Billiot, Jill Steeley, Jill Steely, Jill Coit-Steely, Jill Boggs, Jill Johanson, Jill Carroll, Jill Kisla, Jill Billiot, Jill Ihnen, Jill Brodie, Jill Metzger, Jill Moore and as Jill DeRosa (sic). Although Jill had used Michael’s surname at least a time or two, it did not appear on the list. There were three dates of birth, all June 11, in 1944, 1946, and 1950.

Her companion’s arrest warrant was less exotic. He was named simply as Michael O. Backus, and a single birthday was listed, September 9, 1945. He was described as a white male, about six-foot, one-inch, 175 pounds, with brown eyes and blond hair.

At dusk Monday night, November 22, a cadre of law-enforcement officers from the Steamboat Springs and Greeley police departments and the CBI positioned themselves at various locations in the neighborhood surrounding the two-story house at 1309 Eleventh Avenue. Jill’s pewter-gray, 1993 4-Runner was parked in the driveway.

Ten hours later, around four AM, a couple drove slowly down the street in a car recognized by the license plates as a rental vehicle. A tall, bearded man and a woman were inside. As they got almost in front of the house, the waiting stakeout team pounced. Two police cars pulled up behind, the spotlights trained on the rental vehicle.

In moments, Michael and Jill were outside with their hands on the roof of the rental car and their legs spread while they were patted down by police. Moments later they were handcuffed, advised they were under arrest, and helped into separate police vehicles. Jill was carrying her passport. The couple also were carrying $3,000 with them. The arrests occurred just more than a month after the murder was discovered.

While they were driven to the Weld County Jail on Tenth Avenue and locked up on suspicion of first-degree murder and conspiracy to commit first-degree murder, the Toyota and the rental car were towed to the Greeley Police Department Auto Pound at 1300 A Street.

This time, authorities had Jill and her newly-bearded boyfriend solidly in custody. She wouldn’t be running to New Orleans and committing herself to a psychiatric hospital.

The police officers moved fast to take every bit of advantage of the situation they could, and by seven AM they were sitting down to an interview with her at the jail. It had already been a long, exhausting night for her and for the detectives. The gray late autumn sky that was just beginning to show slivers of light over the eastern horizon would have a bright mid-morning glow before she returned to her cell.

Jill had invited the interrogation team, Sexton and DelValle, inside the cell, but they insisted on using the interview room. They weren’t there for a five-minute chat about the accommodations.

It was Jill’s decision whether or not to talk with the officers, and she agreed to the tape-recorded procedure. But simply reading her the obligatory Miranda Warning which advises criminal suspects of their constitutional rights against self-incrimination was an ordeal. Jill repeatedly interrupted DelValle’s recitation with questions and comments.

Through the first ten minutes or so of the interview, she peppered the lawmen with questions and remarks including: “What is the fastest way to get me to trial so that I can get out?” “Okay, I don’t want to talk to you. I was gonna ask you one question though” “I don’t sign anything. That’s what Randy says” “Okay, and I get to ask questions, too?”

Jill apparently wanted to ask questions more than she wanted to avoid answering them. After a period of fitful starts and stops, DelValle finally completed the reading and wound up with Jill’s consent to the interview. She had always been a woman who liked to talk.

The lawmen began the deadly-serious procedure on a light note, joshing with the suspect and establishing as friendly an atmosphere as they could, considering the grim job ahead. Jill was still smarting from the coldly-efficient process of the arrest and booking and pleaded with Sexton and DelValle not to treat her “like the other cops.”

She complained about her bad hip and the fact that she almost ended up at the hospital the previous night because of her reputed rough treatment during the arrest.

Jill was also concerned about publicity that was so sure to be sparked by her arrest back in Steamboat Springs. “I want to get this over with as quickly as possible because the Steamboat paper is gonna come out and they’re gonna say I’ve been arrested,” she announced. “And it’s gonna be on the front page. And when I am released it’s gonna be on the little bitty back page so nobody will notice it.”

Klauzer advised her on the Saturday after the murder not to talk to police until she knew what time Gerry died, she said. For awhile the woman and the police officers verbally fenced over the subject. But the detectives couldn’t quote an exact time when it was believed Gerry died. They didn’t know. If the accusations made in the warrant for her arrest were correct, she knew more about it than they did.

She talked about her annulment, and she repeated her accusations that Gerry was bisexual or gay. All of a sudden, because Gerry was dead, he was suddenly no longer bisexual, Jill scoffed. “One of the main reasons why Gerry hated me was because of me getting—when we finally broke up, okay, people were going around saying he was gay. That’s the only reason Gerry married me. Gerry didn’t marry me because he loved me. It was all surface.”

In Jill’s version of the story, it was other people who were spreading tales that Gerry was gay. Other people who heard the stories, however, were pointing their fingers at her as the originator. Sexton pointed out she hadn’t answered the question: Did she get the annulment because Gerry was gay?

“For double fold,” she said. Although Jill never provided a complete explanation, she claimed to have obtained the annulment because Gerry was gay, and she was still married.

Moments later the suspect had the interrogators on the defensive. She accused them of being out to get her. She was an easy target because she had been married so many times. Sexton tried to get the message across that multiple marriages weren’t the point “Hey, we’re talking murder, not bigamy,” he said.

Suddenly, the interview veered back to the question of an alibi. “Let me tell you what. I have enough witnesses that are normal people that saw me there. There’s no way in hell I could have killed him Thursday or Friday,” Jill declared.

DelValle asked if she was saying the witnesses would confirm her story. Just give her attorney the time of death, she said. He took depositions from her witnesses.

DelValle asked if it was correct that it took four hours to get from Greeley to Steamboat Springs. Jill replied that was what she had figured, but her lawyer told her someone could make the trip by air in an hour and return in two hours. “So there’s one four-hour period that I’m not covered.”

The SSPD detective asked exactly when that four-hour period was, but Jill didn’t fall into the trap. “No, see, that’s what I’m not telling you because that’s when Gerry had died.”

Sexton asked if Michael could account for his whereabouts during the critical time period. Jill said he was with her part of the time and other people part of the time. DelValle asked if it was true she and Michael went camping. She agreed they camped out at Kelly Flats on Thursday, October 21.

Later in the interview, Jill flatly denied killing Gerry or asking anyone to murder him for her. “I was out of the country. I came back to clear up this shit,” she snapped.

Her irritability flared again when the subject turned back to her domestic relationships. “You know what was in the paper, okay, that I’m a bigamist? That I was living with two men! I wasn’t living with two men,” she declared. “Give me a break, okay?”

“You’re married to Roy Carroll and you’re living with Mike Backus,” Sexton pointed out.

“I have a question. I’m living…” Jill began, before starting over. “How do you know I lived with Roy Carroll? How do you know I even slept with him?”

“You’re married to Roy Carroll,” the CBI agent repeated.

“Just answer your question. Answer my question,” she demanded. Once more the suspect and the police officers were tilting over who was controlling the interview. Who was there to ask questions and who was there to answer them?

“Can I say something?” Jill asked.

“When I knocked—” the CBI agent began.

Jill was steaming and she interrupted him before he could finish the sentence. “You’re probably fucking wrong.”

Sexton ignored the profanity and pointed out that when he looked her up earlier for a talk he knocked on her cabin door and Carroll was inside with her. Jill agreed. He was in Colorado for her civil trial, which at that time was scheduled only three days away.

A bit later, Jill veered back to Gerry’s sexuality, asking if police had checked out any of his former lovers. DelValle answered the question with a query of his own. Who were the dead man’s former lovers? Did she have names?

Jill told him to look in Gerry’s address book. What names should they look for? DelValle asked. He pointed out there might be hundreds of names in an address book. Look for entries with initials and telephone numbers, she suggested.

The suspect claimed a family member of Gerry’s told her he was sexually abused by a teacher when he was in high school. “How many psychologists would put two and two together?” she asked. “If a person can only have sex from the rear, with the lights out, the person that I didn’t want [undecipherable word] here.” Jill said she had long hair when she first came to Steamboat Springs, and Gerry made her cut it off so she would look like a boy. “Totally like a little boy.”

It must have been difficult to believe that the big-breasted woman who spent a lifetime exploiting her femininity could ever be mistaken for a boy. Even with the lights out.

Before Gerry had her cut her hair it was so long she wrapped it around her head, she said. “I’m French. I’ve always had long hair.” No one bothered to bring it up, or perhaps it simply wasn’t considered important enough, but she had claimed at least one time in Steamboat Springs that she was being picked on because she was an American Indian. On the other side of the family, her mother’s maiden name was Engleman. If the surname was French, it had an oddly Germanic sound to it.

During a return to the question of alibis, Jill disclosed another ailment to her interrogators. She said she left her bed “super early” in the mornings. “By six o’clock in the morning I am wide awake. Wide awake, okay?”

“Okay.” Sexton was already convinced, or at least he seemed to be.

“Wide awake because I have to have food. I have hypoglycemia. If I don’t eat from the time of midnight to six o’clock, if I don’t have food in my mouth by six o’clock I get shaky and can’t function,” she blurted.

Jill complained that while she was standing with her hands on top of her car one of the policemen suddenly kicked her legs out to spread them further apart.

“Immediately I went down,” she said. There was just time for mental images to form of a helpless woman recovering from a major hip operation knocked to the ground, when she asked, “Well, you know how you’re the nice guy and he’s the bad?” When she said “nice guy,” she looked at DelValle. She glanced at his companion when she said “he’s the bad.”

Sexton sputtered, in mock surprise, “I’m the bad guy? I thought I was the nice guy.”

“Yeah,” Jill soberly confirmed. “You’re the one who is supposed to. Nice guy, bad guy.”

DelValle protested that they didn’t play that game. Jill began to resume her story about the policeman kicking her legs out when Sexton interrupted. “I’m too tired to hear this,” he groaned. He heard it anyway.

“Don’t do that. I’ve had hip surgery,” Jill recalled saying to the roughneck lawman. That was when another officer stepped in and stopped the leg-kicking.

Jill then proceeded to tie the story about the arrest and the trouble with her hip to her claim of innocence in the brutal attack on Gerry. “Because that’s the reason I couldn’t have killed him. Because the paper—Jan Boggs told the manicure lady that he was beaten, okay? Either by the fist or with a shovel or something, okay? And something about abrasions and stuff. If you so much as push me hard you would knock my hip out. The total hip surgery took a solid year, because the first six months if I even step in a hole, my hip popped out.” Jill said it would have been impossible for her to have fought a 200-pound man.

It was an interesting scenario, but in drawing the picture for her interrogators, Jill had unwittingly offered a wide opening to follow up. She seemed to know an awful lot about the brutalities of the slaying. “Who told you that the guy was beat up?” Sexton asked.

Jill stammered for a moment, but eventually managed to put together a reply that pointed the finger at her onetime sister-in-law. Jan Boggs told a manicurist in Steamboat Springs. That was Jill’s story. “That’s the gossip around town, is that Gerry was beat up,” she added.

“Okay,” Sexton said.

“And that he was either beat up with a fist or a shovel. And he was cut up with a knife or something. Okay? And he was shot. Okay, I’m guilty, you know. I said I am capable.” Jill wasn’t stammering anymore. She had turned to sarcasm.

Sexton moved the interrogation to the question of handguns, asking what kind of gun she carried in her purse. Jill replied that she had a .45, but she didn’t even carry a purse. “Do you have a chrome Derringer with pearl handles?” the CBI agent asked. She said she didn’t know; her gun was a .45.

She also said she didn’t know if she had a .22, when she was asked. Her interrogators knew Gerry was shot with a .22, and they pressed her for more information. Sexton pointed out she had a box of .22 shells in her car.

“In my car? Twenty-two?” she responded in surprise.

“Uh-huh,” Sexton said, nodding his head.

Jill said she didn’t have a .22. “My gun is at—the gun that I use, and would use in case of anything is a great big .45,” she said. “Because that way if I shoot you, you’re not moving.”

“That’s probably true,” DelValle agreed.

Jill said she had a gun dealer’s license and knew how to shoot a .45. DelValle wanted to know how she received her firearms training.

It was the result of being raped, she replied. The rape was also tied into the hip surgery, she related. “Yeah, I was raped and beaten approximately ten or eleven years ago,” she continued. “The guy did not get an erection … and so he proceeded to kick the shit out of me. I had a concussion … I had damage, uh, broke the ribs, did damage to my hip.”

The dreadful attack was bad enough, but apparently she was still suffering repercussions according to her tale. She confided she had a bad hip ever since and sometimes had seizures. She cautioned the two lawmen not to touch her in case she had a seizure while they were with her.

“Just leave you go?” DelValle asked.

“Yeah,” she said, “because it only lasts for … It’s going to be grand mal. It’s three minutes. If you touch me, if I fight, if I fight with this hip I’m in a body cast for six months. So please, I mean, I know you would want to help me,” she pleaded. “But I won’t die. Just don’t let anybody touch me.”

The officers were presented with a sobering thought. No one wanted the suspect flopping around helplessly on the floor with a grand mal seizure. For someone who was so frenetically active, however, it seemed Jill had suffered from a bewildering cornucopia of ailments; she had everything from a degenerative hip and grand mal to hypoglycemia and dyslexia. It was a virtual medical miracle that she was able to lead such an active life.

While tracing her ailments, Jill became so caught up in the subject she forgot what they had been discussing a few moments before. “What were we talking about?” she asked.

“The training, after the rape,” DelValle prompted.

Jill said she took firearms training after the rape, “a policeman’s course.” Later she took additional instruction with Captain Hays in Steamboat Springs, she explained. (Months later, Carl Steely would testify in court that she attended a paramilitary school in Georgia. She boasted that the training made her “more conniving,” he said.)

Sexton tried to slip in a quick change-of-pace question. “Can I ask you: Who is Thadius Brodie?”

If Jill was caught off-guard, she didn’t show it. “You don’t want to know,” she said.

“Why don’t I want to know?”

“Because I’m not telling you.”

With the subject of Thadius so firmly disposed of, the officers returned to the subject of firearms. If she was going to shoot someone, she would use her .45 caliber, she remarked at one point. “I would, too,” DelValle agreed.

“Okay, what caliber of gun was it? You can’t tell me what caliber of gun was used,” she asked. “Okay, no, if I was going to shoot somebody it [would] be with my .45.”

The two experienced officers weren’t interrogating the suspect in order to provide her with information about what they knew about the investigation. She was there to answer questions, not to ask them. DelValle responded with a cautiously neutral “uh-huh.” If Jill was the shooter, or present when the shooting occurred, it was obvious that she knew the caliber of the gun that was used anyway.

Sexton asked what kind of .38 caliber pistol she owned. Jill replied that she thought she had a .38 in her safety-deposit box, and when the CBI agent asked where that was she snapped, “You know where it is. It’s all over the Pilot from Steamboat.” Jill clearly didn’t appreciate the storm of publicity that had erupted since the murder.

She wasn’t sure about the location of the .38, however, and suggested that Seth might have it. If he didn’t have the pistol, then it would be in the safety-deposit box, she said. “Was he [Gerry] shot with a .38?”

“Where is the .45?”, DelValle asked in response. Neither he nor the CBI agent were there to spar with Jill over word games. She said the .45 was in her house, then hesitated and said she wasn’t sure. A moment later she switched direction again, and accused her interrogators of already knowing where the pistol was. Police saw the gun when they served the search warrant on her house. DelValle and Sexton claimed they didn’t go in the house. But Jill had been reminded of something that got her dander up.

“Okay, the people laid my dildo next to my .45 to be funny,” she accused. Jill was properly offended.

Sexton reacted with apparent shock to the outrageous accusation. “Somebody do that?” he asked as if in disbelief.

Jill didn’t think the low-class antic was at all funny “Yeah,” she said.

Both officers denied again they were even at the house when it was searched. DelValle said they were across Oak Street from the B&B in front of the Bell Telephone Company building. Sexton agreed. They weren’t at the house.

The suspect’s pique at the crude prank seemed to subside, and she veered away from the subject. Her girlfriend was also standing across the street watching the activity at the house during the search, she said. Jill had asked her to see what was going on, after being advised by her lawyer that the search warrant was going to be executed. Jill complained about officers rummaging through her desk and taking a pair of Seth’s blue jeans. It was illegal to take the jeans, she claimed.

Jill conceded that she didn’t blame the two officers for what went on at the bed-and-breakfast. DelValle agreed. They were down at US West, he said. The remark opened a brand new can of worms.

“Oh,” Jill responded. “Then it must of been you guys that told one of the people that … if they couldn’t pin it on me, they were gonna pin it on Michael.”

Michael was telling her a bunch of nonsense, DelValle replied. Sexton said it wasn’t their job to pin anything on anybody.

Jill asked if Klauzer had provided them with her alibi. “He doesn’t tell us anything, you have to,” Sexton said.

“Okay, then I have to tell you till after y’all charge me, because as soon as you charge me and I provide my alibi, then y’all can never harass me again?” she asked. “Is that right?” The officers said it was up to her, that she didn’t have to tell them anything.

“The only thing is that the alibi, if you got a good alibi…” DelValle began.

“I’ve got nine alibis,” Jill shot back, chuckling at her own awkward joke.

Her mood changed abruptly a few moments later when Sexton asked if she ever solicited anyone to murder her husband. Jill had enough. “Let’s stop the question, okay?,” she snapped. “No, I did not.” The question was ridiculous and tacky, she declared. The question wasn’t tacky at all, Sexton defended. “That is tacky,” she insisted.

The interrogation was almost concluded when one of the most startling moments occurred. Jill seemed to have a woeful misconception of just how much trouble she was in and how slowly it took the wheels of justice to grind out a conclusion to a matter as serious as she was faced with. Observing that she was already in jail, Jill said she figured she had seventy-two hours to be formally advised of the charges against her and another three weeks to wait until the trial. “So I’m looking at one month,” she concluded.

Both lawmen were taken aback by the naive assumption. It was an astounding remark.

“Ho, Jill, it’s not gonna come to trial in three weeks,” DelValle corrected.

It was a disappointing revelation, but Jill rolled with the punch. “Well, I guess I’ll be a bit longer than a month in jail,” she said. Sexton told her “a speedy trial” takes about six months. It went unsaid that although criminal suspects have a right by law to a speedy trial, it is usually their own attorneys who drag out the process. Long delays are generally much more advantageous to the defense than to the prosecution, as memories fade, witnesses die or drift away, or evidence is misplaced.

Six months didn’t go down as well with Jill.

“Okay, then I’m looking at six months in jail,” she conceded. “Am I allowed to have my glasses and reading material? Or do I just have to sit in this fucking jail?” The two lawmen surmised she would be permitted to keep her glasses with her.

“Well, good, as long as I can have my glasses and carry my computer, then I’m in good shape,” Jill said. “I can spend six months in jail.”

Before the matter of her guilt or innocence was decided in court, she would mark hundreds of days off her calendar. She had far more than six months in local jails to anticipate while awaiting trial. There was the grim possibility of years behind bars—or execution by lethal injection—if she was convicted of the murder.

Jill had apparently been back in Colorado with her boyfriend at least a day or so before they were apprehended and one or both of them had already been in the house. Mott gave police a photograph of Jill he found on the floor near an overturned garbage bag after Backus was inside cleaning up. Several bags were filled with refuse. Michael also sold his motorcycle back to a Harley-Davidson dealer in Fort Collins and cashed the check the Saturday before the arrest.

Police tracked the fast-moving couple’s movements to a rented room at Lowry Air Force Base at the east edge of Denver between the Mile High City and suburban Aurora. Jill and Michael stayed in Room C232 in Building 1400 of the Mile High Lodge, which was set aside for rental to visiting families and civilian dependents of military men and women.

Base Commander Major General Jay D. Blume Jr., signed a search warrant for the room. Jill’s 1992 red Paseo, parked behind the three-story brick building, was also searched.

Considering Jill’s later claims that she and Michael returned to Colorado to face the music and straighten out the mess over Gerry’s murder when they were suddenly thrown in jail, the couple’s temporary living and driving arrangements were exceedingly strange. They had at least two of their own cars available to them, as well as a house in Greeley. Yet they rented a car to drive, and also rented at room a Lowry AFB. It was curious behavior for someone who wasn’t trying to hide something.

Special Agent Richard Griffith, of the Air Force Office of Special Investigation at the base, was in charge of the searches, which were carried out at night. Air Force authorities pointed out that civilian private investigators had been snooping around the lodge trying to get into the room.

The searches at Lowry yielded a plastic bag containing two wigs, one brown and one a darker brown; two pairs of surgical gloves; maps of Mexico and Europe; a hotel receipt from Cancun, Mexico; two Aero Mexico tickets for trips to Spain; EuroRail passes which would permit each of them to travel through Europe fast and cheap; a Continental Airline employee ID issued to Jill Boggs; a MasterCard issued to Jill C. Backus; an Alaska voter-registration card issued to Jill Boggs-Coit; a US Embassy document from Mexico giving power of attorney from Jill Coit Steely to Seth J. Coit; the military dependent ID card issued to Jill Coit-Brodie; a photocopy of a military ID card issued to Chief Petty Officer Roy C. Carroll; an empty envelope addressed to Jill Coit-Backus; and a pair of international driving permits.

Jill’s international license was issued on November 1, 1993 at Heathrow, Florida. It was signed “Jill Coit (Boggs).” Jill was behaving strictly in character, utilizing a confusing combination of names on important documents.

She may have known her way around the jet-set world, but if reports about her behavior are true, Jill didn’t know a crucially-important rule of behavior for people who are locked up in prisons or jails. Never talk about your troubles with the law or reveal your personal business to your cellmates.

Two women inmates who were locked up with her passed on information to police about conversations with Jill while they were locked up together in Weld County jail. One said Jill claimed she established an alibi for the time of Gerry’s slaying by writing checks at different businesses in Greeley. The other said Jill posed a rhetorical question about how she could be in Steamboat Springs at two o’clock if she was somewhere else. At that time, police had not told Jill the date or time frame when they believed Gerry was murdered.

The suspects appeared at a brief court hearing in Greeley where they were formally advised of the charges against them. Each was charged with first-degree murder and with conspiracy to commit murder. The homicide charges carried maximum penalties of execution in Colorado’s death chamber or life in prison with no parole. The conspiracy counts carried a maximum prison sentence of forty-eight years. They were also liable to fines totalling nearly $1.5 million each on the charges.

Colorado is one of thirty-seven states with the death penalty, and specifically permits execution by lethal injection for first-degree murder, felony murder, and kidnapping when the death of the victim occurs.

On Saturday, Jill and her co-defendant were driven back across the mountains to Steamboat Springs in separate Routt County Sheriff’s Department cars, the possibility of the death penalty looming ominously over them.

Before being led to their cells in the Routt County Detention Center, they were run through the booking process, posing for mug shots and standing quietly while their fingers and thumbs were inked and rolled onto fingerprint cards. Jill’s SSPD booking number was 934966A. Michael’s was 934966B. The couple also exchanged their civilian clothes for baggy orange jail-issue jumpsuits.

As accused killers, they were locked in maximum security areas of the jail, and held on temporary bail of $5 million each.

Jill’s shoulder-length, reddish brown hair was curly, but news reporters who later wrote about her appearance seemed to be more impressed with her eyebrows. She was described in nationally-distributed press reports as “stocky” and “heavy-eyebrowed.” Michael’s hair, beard, and mustache were cut short and neat. Sometimes he wore glasses, and at other times he didn’t.

The same law firm Jill had depended on to handle most of her legal matters during the past two years continued to represent her immediately after her arrest. But Klauzer and Tremaine had built their practice with strong focus on civil law. Criminal matters, especially when such critical charges as first-degree murder were involved, were another thing altogether.

The talk in taprooms, coffee shops, and courthouse corridors began to speculate that Jill would call in a big-time criminal lawyer. Staff at The Steamboat Pilot and the Steamboat Today were pestered for collections of news clips on the story by journalists from other cities and by lawyers whom Dodder described as “name-brand attorneys.”

Michael didn’t have any property or cash to speak of. Even his Harley was gone. And in an application for a court-appointed attorney, he stated he was on leave without pay from his job at US West. Judge James Garrecht appointed Deputy State Public Defender William S. Schurman to represent him.

Schurman was in his corner when Michael and Jill appeared in court on the Monday morning after their arrival back in Steamboat Springs for an advisement hearing. At the proceeding, Judge Garrecht soberly explained to the defendants the charges against them and the possible penalties. About twenty people witnessed the brief hearing, including five sheriff’s deputies.

Bob McCullough was also among the spectators for the appearance of the couple accused in the slaying of his longtime friend and business colleague at Boggs Hardware. He was astonished when Jill turned to look at him and said, “Hi.”

A request by Schurman and Klauzer asking that their clients be released on their own recognizance was denied. The motions were based on claims the defendants were not formally charged within seventy-two hours of their arrest as the law required. Garrecht disagreed, pointing out the court appearance in Weld County the previous Friday. It was one of those go-through-the-motion motions, and it seemed doubtful anyone really expected it to succeed.

The pair wore their bright orange jail jumpsuits and were handcuffed during the hearing. The roomy rear-end of the suit on the woman who had once impressed acquaintances in Indiana with her fashionable clothes slumped into a weary mass of wrinkles. The defendants didn’t look at each other during the hearing, or if they did it wasn’t noticed by most observers.

Before the proceeding concluded, Judge Garrecht set Thursday morning, December 16, 1993 for the preliminary hearing to determine if there was sufficient probable cause to continue the prosecution. Unable to even come close to raising the staggering $5 million bail, both defendants were returned to the detention center. They traveled the same way they were transported from the center to the court, handcuffed in the back of separate sheriff’s cars.

In the meantime, Detective Eyer, and other officers and technicians had already searched the impounded 4-Runner. According to the warrant, they were looking for .22 caliber firearms and ammunition, bloodstains, body fluid and tissue, footwear, false mustaches or false-mustache hairs and adhesive, baseball caps, including a cap with a ponytail, a light canvas rancher’s jacket, camping gear, maps, soil and vegetation, and other items.

They came up with a treasure trove of potential evidence, including an Omega stun gun. Stun guns come in different varieties and have different shapes, but the job they are designed to do is the same. They stop and temporarily incapacitate people or animals they are used on. Contact of only three or four-seconds from one of the more powerful stun guns can shock nerves and muscles with up to 4,700 volts of electricity and deliver a blow like a horse’s kick.

They were initially developed to provide police and corrections officers with a non-lethal means for subduing unruly or dangerous criminal suspects or convicts. Inevitably, stun guns spread from law-enforcement and corrections agencies to the civilian market where they can be legally purchased by anyone. Police also seized a stun gun from Seth. Discovery of the weapons were significant to investigators because marks on Gerry’s body appeared to have been inflicted with a stun gun. No fingerprints from the stun gun found in the car or the package it was in, could be traced to Jill or to Michael.

The search team recovered a wealth of less dramatic items from the vehicle that were of interest nonetheless. Texaco and Chevron credit cards issued to Roy G. Carroll, a photo of Jill, and a vehicle registration made out to Jill Coit were taken from the glove compartment. The Colorado license tag was also issued in Jill Coit’s name. A floor mat was tagged, and hair, fiber, and other debris were carefully vacuumed from the front and back, then placed in nine marked envelopes.

No firearms or ammunition were found, and there were no obvious bloodstains, although laboratory analysts would make the final determination after concluding their examinations.

While police continued to press their investigation and Jill and Michael cooled their heels at the jail, important changes were being made in their legal representation. The earlier speculation was right on target.

Jill’s local lawyers bowed out of her criminal case, and were replaced by one of the best-known defense lawyers in Colorado. Joseph Saint-Veltri took over the defense chores after Klauzer and Tremaine left. Saint-Veltri was a grizzled twenty-five-year veteran of the legal wars who had a reputation for defending clients hauled into federal court on various drug charges.

At the time Saint-Veltri’s entry into the sensational murder case was publicly disclosed, Joanna Dodder wrote a piece in the Steamboat Pilot based on an interview with a pair of noted Colorado trial lawyers and law partners, Walter Gerash and Scott Robinson. Referring to Gerash as the man Saint-Veltri called his “mentor,” the reporter quoted him as saying the Denver law firm was considering taking on Backus as a client.

The big-time city lawyers had compiled a glittering record of murder acquittals, including that of former policeman James King, accused of killing four guards during a holdup of the Mile High City’s United Bank in 1991. Robinson was quoted as saying the firm was contacted by Backus’s family, and the lawyers expected to take the case if they could work out the details.

“I like Michael Backus. He seems like a decent guy. I’m hard-pressed to see him as a murderer,” Robinson added.

Jill’s longtime Steamboat Springs lawyer also pulled out of the civil case after Tremaine explained to Judge Kourlis he wasn’t being paid. The judge gave Jill until the middle of the following month to get herself a new lawyer or else she would have to defend herself in the continuing dispute with the Boggs family. Douglas Boggs was executor of his brother’s estate and was working with Halvorson to defend against Jill’s lawsuit and to continue to press Gerry’s claims.

Money was rumored to be the bait reputedly used to lure Jill and her boyfriend back to Colorado and interrupt a planned trip from Mexico to Europe. She was forced to return to try and free some of her money or possibly pick up valuables that were stashed away and could be converted to cash.

Significantly, during the same hearing where Jill’s former lawyers were permitted to step out of the civil case, Judge Kourlis refused to release the restraining order preventing sale of the bed-and-breakfast. Speaking for his clients, Halvorson argued vociferously against lifting the ban. If the Boggs family won the countersuit, he declared, the B&B might be needed to pay off the award. The lawyer added that although some of the allegations in the countersuit were now void because of Gerry’s slaying, it was possible a wrongful-death suit might be lodged.

The development meant Saint-Veltri was taking a chance Jill wouldn’t be able to pay him for his work. She needed the money from the sale for her defense. Judge Garrecht warned the high-powered criminal defense lawyer that if things went the wrong way for his client in her efforts to sell the B&B, Saint-Veltri might wind up as her court-appointed attorney. That would mean, of course, that his normal fee would probably be drastically reduced.

Saint-Veltri didn’t talk in open court about his exact fee schedule, but it seemed safe to assume it was somewhere between the $140-per-hour that was the going rate for Steamboat Springs lawyers practicing civil law and the whopping $475-per-hour commanded by big-time Washington lawyer Robert Bennett for defending President Clinton in the Paula Jones sex-harassment case. But when a complicated and long-drawn-out defense like Jill’s promised to be was at hand, even fees based on the lower end of that spectrum could be staggering.

After all the years Jill spent accumulating wealth, it seemed the orderly transfer of her riches to lawyers was inevitably underway. And her already desperate situation was becoming even more complicated.

Her new criminal defense attorney’s entry into the fray added another odd element into the equation as well. For people who concern themselves with such matters, there promised to be an interesting matchup in the courtroom, if for no other reason, because of the similarities in the surnames. St. James would be on one side of the courtroom, and Saint-Veltri would be on the other. St. James was a recent arrival in Colorado from Palm Beach county, Florida, where he was also an assistant district attorney. In one of his more high-profile cases there, he assisted in the successful prosecution of members of a gang of contract killers who advertised in Soldier of Fortune Magazine, and of a boatyard owner who hired them to murder his wife. But there was more at stake than idle interest in surnames. St. James’s boss, District Attorney Paul McLimans, joined his subordinate and began assuming an increasingly important role in shaping the prosecution’s case.

Michael also changed lawyers, dropping his public defender. But he didn’t sign on with Gerash and Robinson. He replaced Schurman instead, with Leonard E. Davies, another Denver-based lawyer with a respected record in Colorado for criminal defense. In the 1960s and 1970s, Davies drew considerable attention to himself in Colorado for his work in several high-profile civil-rights cases, and he was author of a book dealing with cross-examination. Details of the financial arrangements were not publicly disclosed, but stories circulated that members of Michael’s family were providing money for his defense.

Settling down with a pair of experienced criminal-defense lawyers would appear to have been a plus for the defendants in their efforts to make their pleas of not guilty to the horrible charges against them stand up. On the negative side, perhaps the most discouraging development occurred about as close to home as possible. After talking in early January with Agent Kitchen, Jill’s son, Seth, and daughter-in-law, Julie, agreed to a deal with authorities to testify as prosecution witnesses at the trials. In return for their cooperation, they would be given immunity from prosecution. The immunity pact was not further identified publicly by St. James or by police at that time.

The first public notice of the drastic turn taken in the case occurred less than three weeks into the new year when the preliminary hearing for Jill and Michael was postponed. They had already been led into the Routt County Courtroom for the proceeding when St. James disclosed that two new witnesses had surfaced with evidence that was tremendously damaging to the defendants.

St. James didn’t identify the witnesses during the hearing, and it was a few days before the names came to light through public documents. The prosecutor also declined to identify the nature of the information, but he did reveal the witnesses were given immunity from prosecution.

The development was so recent, the prosecutor wasn’t yet able to provide the defense with transcripts of the statements by the new witnesses. That was a necessary legal requirement as part of the discovery process, which according to American rules of law requires sharing of information developed by the prosecution with the defense. The process is governed by strict rules, and prosecutors can’t hand the information over at the last moment in order to take the defense by surprise. Discovery is one of those elements of the system that provides a distinct advantage for the defense, but is so necessary to ensure a fair trial. It is in keeping with the long-established legal reality of the American system of criminal justice which requires that the burden be on the prosecution to prove guilt, not on the defense to prove innocence.

The defense had already been complaining that the prosecution was slow in complying with the discovery process. “Mr. St. James won’t even tell me when Gerald Boggs died,” Davies complained. “How am I supposed to determine an alibi without the time of death? I’m flabbergasted not to be told this. A preliminary hearing should be to determine probable cause, not a trial by ambush.”

Davies pointed out that information available at that time left a glaring twenty-six-hour window between one PM Thursday when Gerry was last seen alive leaving the store and about three PM Friday when his body was discovered. Saint-Veltri asserted that the prosecutor could do better than that. Forensic science was sufficiently sophisticated to pin down the time of death within an hour, he claimed.

The assistant DA disagreed. “It is the state’s theory that only three people know when Gerald Boggs died,” he responded. “Jill Coit, Michael Backus and Gerald Boggs.” Nevertheless, the legal fallout over the failure or inability to be more exact was already beginning to be felt.

The defense lawyers also appealed to the judge to permit their clients to appear at hearings without their shackles.

“My client is brought in here shackled like he’s a convicted criminal. I think it’s highly prejudicial,” Davies carped. “Mr. Backus must be presumed innocent, and we must preserve that.”

The judge denied the motion. He pointed out that Routt County Sheriff’s Department officers considered the shackles to be a necessary security measure. Later, when a trial or trials began and a jury was present, the defendants would appear in civilian clothes without handcuffs, ankle, or belly restraints. Judges are not as likely as juries to be swayed or impressed by defendants who appear in court in cuffs and chains.

The exchange was one more replay of a contest that occurs in courtrooms throughout the United States practically every day, when defendants are involved who are charged with major felonies. Jurists usually rule as Judge Garrecht did. The wishes of the defendants to appear unshackled at preliminary hearings must give way to security requirements as decided by the local sheriff or other experienced and knowledgeable law-enforcement and judicial authorities.

Judge Garrecht postponed the hearing until the middle of February to give defense attorneys an opportunity to examine the new information. Jill and her co-defendant were driven back to the detention center where she was marking time reading and studying languages and psychology.

When the preliminary hearing finally occurred on schedule a few weeks later, Kitchen’s testimony about her conversation with Seth and Julie was devastating.

Between three-thirty and four PM, a couple of hours or so after Gerry was last seen alive, she said, Seth received a telephone call from a woman whose voice he recognized as his mother’s. The caller relayed a message that was chillingly blunt, according to the testimony, and advised, “Hey, baby, it’s over, and it’s messy.”

It was a critical statement, that if accepted as true, could become a vital element in helping the prosecution pin down the time of Gerry’s death. The time window between one PM when he was seen leaving the hardware store, and three-thirty or four PM, was considerably less than the twenty-six hours investigators were previously faced with. There would be a time period of only a few hours on Thursday, October 21, for proving the whereabouts of the defendants that would be crucial to both sides facing off in the courtroom shootout.

The CBI agent recounted the other conversations between Jill and Michael and the younger couple that were tied to the alleged murder plot against Gerry sparked by the civil dispute. Seth told her Michael claimed to have an untraceable .22 caliber pistol, the witness said. She also quoted Julie as talking about watching her mother-in-law trying on scarves and a wig she planned to use as disguises.

During cross-examination, Saint-Veltri quickly followed up on disclosure that Seth and Julie claimed to have known in advance that Gerry’s murder was being plotted, then kept quiet about their knowledge for months after the slaying.

“If what they told you is true, they both knew an impending murder was going to take place in Steamboat Springs,” he observed of the couple. “Did they tell you what benefit they stood to gain?”

Kitchen said Seth and Julie would never be prosecuted for any role they may have played in the murder, and were also given immunity for an alleged insurance scam. No details were provided about the affair involving the insurance. Julie was also planning to write a book about the case, the witness added.

Agent Kitchen also testified about the statements by Giffon, tying Michael to the alleged murder scheme through a $7,500-offer for a contract hit and other remarks.

Members of the Boggs family crowded into the courtroom with scores of Gerry’s friends and other spectators. It was an ordeal, and some of the testimony was especially agonizing. When a police photo of Gerry’s body was introduced and described by a witness as “messy,” although the picture was shielded from the audience, William Harold and Sylvia Boggs leaned against each other in horror and pain. Douglas Boggs cried.

Jill watched the proceedings from the defense table, and frequently smiled.

When it was Rick Crotz’s turn to testify, he brought up the statements by Ms. Hanley in Iowa about Jill’s reputed efforts to talk her into killing a man in Colorado. But the lead detective on the case ran into stiff cross-examination from the defense. He had to concede no physical evidence had yet been turned up that positively linked either of the defendants to the crime scene.

The defense lawyers established that police did not have a murder weapon, blood-stained clothing, or identifiable fingerprints or footprints, despite the execution of at least thirteen search warrants. And once again, they criticized initial handling of the investigation that led to the difficulties establishing a more exact time of death.

Two other law enforcement officers and Sharon Halvorson also testified at the hearing. Mrs. Halvorson recounted her two sightings of the red Paseo in the days immediately following Gerry’s murder, including observation of the weirdly-costumed woman both she and her lawyer husband recognized as Jill at the wheel.

St. James and his team of law officers were constructing a solidly-impressive case. With Seth’s devastating revelation, so far the prosecutor had three people lined up who were ready to testify they were solicited by either Jill or Michael to carry out the murder. And circumstantial evidence was piling up from the searches, laboratory tests, and other sources.

The assistant DA told the judge that statements from the witnesses about being solicited to carry out the slaying was proof the crime was premeditated. It was not a crime of passion, a spur-of-the-moment act. “Each of these defendants had a long-standing desire to kill Gerald Boggs or to have him killed,” St. James declared. “They had motive, opportunity, and method, and the evidence confirms the great premeditation of this act, the premeditation of two evil minds.”

Saint-Veltri passed on his opportunity to make a closing statement. Davies, however, claimed there was a woeful lack of evidence against his client. He insisted there was nothing in Michael’s background to indicate he would commit such a “heinous act,” and he called the case against the bearded defendant “singularly circumstantial.” Davies asked the court to dismiss the charges.

Judge Garrecht didn’t comply with the defense attorney’s proposal for dismissal. At the conclusion of the tedious six hour proceeding, he declared that the prosecution had established its case and bound the matter over for trial. There would be no quick or easy out for Jill and Michael, not that anyone really expected there to be. They were one big step closer to a first-degree murder trial.