7
ROUNDUP
Because of things that Natasha Adams said, Graham Pressley was brought in for questioning by Santa Barbara detectives on the evening of August 15, 2000. Pressley told SBCSD detective Cornell that at the Lemon Tree Inn he had asked Ryan Hoyt and Jesse Rugge for a ride home in the early-morning hours of August 9, 2000. According to Pressley, those two had taken him and Nick Markowitz up to West Camino Cielo Road and told him to wait in the car. Then Rugge and Hoyt escorted Nick up a trail into the brush and hills. Pressley said he waited in the car for about fifteen minutes, at which time he heard a rapid series of gunshots. When Rugge and Hoyt came back down the trail, Nick was not with them. They then drove Pressley back to the Lemon Tree Inn without saying anything about what had happened. Pressley denied being at a grave site or digging a grave.
Graham’s dad was with him during the interview, but detectives thought that Graham was withholding information and might be nervous discussing certain details in front of his father. Detective Bruce Cornell and Detective Legault told Charles Pressley about their concerns, and after a discussion he agreed to wait outside the interview room but could return at any time. The interview continued with Charles watching and listening to the rest of the interview on a television monitor from an observation booth.
A lot of the things Graham said just didn’t add up, and a later police report stated: By the end of the evening, detectives offered Mr. Graham Pressley a polygraph because they had two concerns. One concern, was that he was present at the time and location of the killing. The other was that Jesse James Hollywood was the mastermind of the plot to execute Nick Markowitz, and had been present in Santa Barbara when it happened. Whether they surmised this from what they’d learned from Graham Pressley or heard from Natasha Adams, the report didn’t state.
Graham told his father and the detectives he would pass a polygraph test based on those two questions and he wanted to take a test. It was agreed Graham would return the next morning to take the polygraph exam.
On the morning of August 16, Graham Pressley did return to the Santa Barbara County Sheriff ’s Department, along with his mother, Christina, to take the polygraph test. In the presence of his mother, Graham waived his Miranda rights, but he wanted his mother to be with him during the exam. Graham was told that polygraphs were taken without anyone else being present, since other people in the room could distract the subject. Graham agreed to take the exam without his mother being there.
Polygrapher Wayne Smith came into the room and explained the process to Graham and told him the questions that would be asked. One of the questions would be whether Graham had dug the grave up near the Lizard’s Mouth. Graham had previously denied having been to that location at all, but for some reason now, he told Smith that he had been there, and that, in fact he had dug a grave. Because of this admission, the polygraph test was canceled, and Graham was returned to the interview room, along with his mother.
According to another police report about this situation: Mr. Pressley initially asked for his mother, and then changed his mind and elected to proceed without her. During the interview he told detectives that he had actually taken two trips up to West Camino Cielo. He told detectives that Hoyt and Rugge knew of the area called Lizard’s Mouth, but did not know how to get there. Pressley knew that area and agreed to take Hoyt there, and he and Hoyt brought shovels and dug a shallow grave. Pressley stressed that he had been forced to dig a grave on Hoyt’s orders, and Hoyt had a gun.
The report went on to say that after digging the grave, Hoyt and Pressley returned to the Lemon Tree Inn. They were there for about twenty minutes; then Hoyt, Rugge, Nick Markowitz and Pressley all returned up to West Camino Cielo Road. Pressley again gave directions as Hoyt drove, until he parked the vehicle near the trailhead. Pressley said that Rugge was the front passenger, and he and Nick were in the back.
Graham declared that he did not return up the trail with the others, but only waited in the car. After twenty to twenty-five minutes, he heard gunfire, and about twenty-five minutes after that, Rugge and Hoyt returned to the car, minus Nick Markowitz. Once Rugge and Hoyt were back at the car, Hoyt drove away quickly and commented that this had been his first killing, and he had no idea that Nick Markowitz would go so quickly. According to Pressley, Rugge told him not to tell anybody.
In light of Graham Pressley’s statements, and those of Natasha Adams, detectives started fanning out across Santa Barbara and Los Angeles Counties. Jesse Rugge was soon arrested on August 16, and was tackled by police and pushed to the ground. Things were even more dramatic at William Skidmore’s arrest, around 4:30 P.M. on August 16. A Los Angeles SWAT team surrounded Skidmore’s residence, where he lived with his parents, in Simi Valley. A telephone call was placed by a negotiator into the house, and Skidmore eventually surrendered peacefully. One of the neighbors told a reporter at the scene, “We’re freaked out! Very scared!” Another neighbor called the Skidmore family, “The perfect family.” Other neighbors were less flattering about Will Skidmore. One said that he was a troublemaker and malcontent.
One of the first people involved in the initial abduction of Nick Markowitz to really start spilling everything he knew was William Skidmore. Skidmore sat down with the Santa Barbara sheriff ’s lieutenant Drew Standley and sheriff ’s detective Bruce Cornell. Cornell started things off by saying to Skidmore, “You look familiar.” Skidmore replied, “I might have seen you before.” Then Cornell asked him if he knew why he had been arrested, and Skidmore replied, “Suspicion of murder—that’s all they told me.”
Cornell corrected him, “Kidnapping and suspicion of murder, and the murder aspect of it, I don’t think you went out and shot or killed anybody.”
“ No.”
“Okay, I know you didn’t, but some things that they’re implicating you in, well, that’s why we have the murder charge there. I don’t know you other than what I’ve heard over the last three or four days, so I want to read you your rights.” Cornell read Skidmore his rights, and then asked, “You’ve been arrested a few times?”
“Yeah,” Skidmore replied.
Cornell laughed at Skidmore’s expression, then said, “A lot?”
“Not too many times. Just a coupla months ago, I was arrested for a parole violation.”
“Well, I just wanna see what I can do. See where we can get to on this. So you wanna talk to me about this, so we can get down to what’s going on here?”
Skidmore laughed nervously and replied, “I really don’t know much. I heard what happened and I didn’t get on with his older brother and—”
“Whose older brother?”
“Nick’s. The rumor was going around that my buddy beat him up or took his brother, and that I took him, too.”
“Who’s your buddy?”
“Huh, my buddy Jesse.”
“You talking about Jesse Holiday.” (Cornell had the last name wrong at this point.)
“Yeah.”
“Hollywood. I call him Holiday every time,” Cornell responded.
“Yeah. I guess guys beat up Nick’s brother a coupla nights ago.”
“Who beat up his older brother a couple of nights ago?”
“A coupla older guys. Some Valley guys. I guess they beat Ben up at a Friday’s (T.G.I. Friday’s). Some peckerwoods and some other guys.”
Cornell asked, “Henry Chang, maybe?”
Skidmore said, “Yeah. I know a lot of people don’t like him.” (He meant Ben.)
Cornell wanted to know if Skidmore knew what had happened to Nick, and Skidmore replied, “Yeah, sure. My girlfriend told me. I saw the newspaper.”
Cornell responded, “Well, a lot of things have been goin’ on. We’ve been doing a lot of investigation and we haven’t stopped for a week now. You know we’ve come up with a lot of information. I wouldn’t have you here if I didn’t have enough to get to have you here, okay. Like I said, I don’t think you killed anybody, so I don’t want you to think that, but I do want you to understand [about the] kidnapping. Now from what I’ve been told, the kidnapping was a real violent kidnapping.”
“I know.”
“I want you to be real honest about it. Because if you lie about things, you know how that works.”
Skidmore said that he did know.
Cornell added, “If you lie, it just makes you look like you’re more involved than you really are. I think your involvement was picking up the kid off the street and taking him up to Santa Barbara.”
Skidmore agreed. “That’s pretty much the way it was. The only involvement was when he got in the van. He didn’t say nothin’. In the van he gave us some bud.”
Cornell was surprised by this and said, “Oh, really!”
“Yeah, he gave me some pills, and then I left that night ’cause we got drunk at Fiesta and Nick was drinking a little with us. And then I left that night and never went back.”
Cornell asked, “He was up at Fiesta in Santa Barbara? Was that on a Sunday night?”
“One of those days. We went up in the middle of the day, and we saw him walkin’, and I guess his older brother had bashed out my friend’s windows. So we were gonna go over there to his parents’ house and see if Ben was there, but we saw his younger brother, and we pulled up. We said, ‘Hey, what’s up? Get in the van!’ He’s like why? ‘We’re gonna talk to ya,’ we said. So he jumps in the van, and we talked with him for a little bit. He said, ‘I’ve got some drugs.’ We all started smoking weed with him, and we went up there (to Santa Barbara). Then I ended up going home, and I don’t know . . . I guess he stayed up there.”
Cornell replied, “Yeah, he ended up getting killed. So it’s kind of nasty stuff. Okay, when you say you saw your friend, you were driving around lookin’ for Ben? Who was your friend? Was that Jesse?”
“Yeah, Jesse. We were just gonna go for Ben and—”
“So what happened? Why did it go wrong?”
Skidmore replied, “I have no clue.”
Cornell asked where they had been when they picked Nick up, and Skidmore replied, “It was right off Sati. It was like Saticoy where it turns to Ingomar, and right by the Apple Market. It was like a block from there.” Then Skidmore laughed and said, “He came willingly.”
Cornell replied, “He really didn’t want to be there, though.”
Skidmore laughed again and said, “He jumped in.”
“So you were up by Saticoy and Ingomar, and you were gonna go over to Ben’s friend’s house?”
Skidmore corrected him and replied, “Ben’s parents’ house. And we saw Ben’s brother walking, so we pulled over.”
Cornell wanted to know who was in the vehicle with Skidmore, and he said that Jesse Hollywood and one other guy had been with him. Asked who the other guy was, Skidmore responded that it was “Jesse Rugge.” Skidmore added that they had been in a rental van because Jesse Hollywood had been moving that day. (He didn’t say anything about it being John Roberts’s van.)
Cornell asked who else had been involved in all of this, or had seen anything of Nick, and Skidmore replied that his friend Brian Affronti had seen Nick. Then Skidmore added, “We picked him (Affronti) up on the way and he came in the van.”
“So you went up there and picked Nick up. Did you go straight to Fiesta after you picked him up, or did you take him anywhere else?”
“Uh, we went by my house ’cause I had to take my insulin, ’cause I’m diabetic and I thought we were gonna stay out for the night. I did my shot for the day and then we just headed up there.”
“You stay up there overnight?”
“Nah. We came . . . well, we started drinking Tanqueray, and it’s like a strong sort of drink. And we ended up coming back that night . . . me and Jesse Hollywood and Brian.”
Cornell wanted to know how long they had been at Skidmore’s house, and he answered they were only there for about two minutes while he gave himself a shot for diabetes. He also said that neither Nick nor any of the others went into the residence with him. They just stayed in the van. Skidmore said after that “we went to one of Jesse Rugge’s friend’s houses.”
“Do you know who that was?”
“It was, like, the first time I ever met him. He was a Mexican guy. He had a little hair on his chin.”(It was probably Emilio Jerez or Gabriel Ibarra.)
Cornell then asked, “Was Nick nervous about things?”
“Oh, yeah.”
“He say anything about it?”
“No, he just said, ‘Oh, my!’ ’cause Jesse Hollywood asked him . . . well, about the broken window, and he (Nick) said his parents would pay for it. And he and Jesse were talking about that.”
“Okay, so you leave Nick at his (Rugge’s) friend’s house? How long did you stay there?”
“About an hour and a half,” Skidmore replied.
“Get buzzed?”
“Yeah.”
Some of this didn’t add up and Cornell said, “You dropped Brian Affronti off at his house?”
“Um, you mean Jesse Rugge? We left him in Santa Barbara and we came back and dropped Brian off at his house, and then I went back to Jesse Hollywood’s house and spent the night there with my girlfriend. Well, she almost spent the night. She stayed a little bit and left.”
“Okay, so when you left Nick at this guy’s house, what’d you tell this guy?”
“Told him (Rugge) to hold Nick. Just hold him, because his brother owed money, and just hold him there.”
“Jesse Hollywood was telling this?” Cornell asked.
“Yes.”
“Did he say how long to hold him there?”
“ No.”
“Say he’d come back for him later?”
“Yeah, he’d be back.” Then Skidmore asked, “Have they taken anybody else into custody for this, or am I the only one?”
Cornell responded, “We’re getting everybody. We want to find out what happened. Did you guys tell Nick, ‘Hey, everything is gonna be okay. All we want to do is get in touch with your brother’?”
“I was expecting nothing like what happened!”
“Yeah. I think a lot of people were. I think it was one of those things that . . .” (Cornell did not want to finish this sentence, but rather let Skidmore explain things at his own pace.) “What did Hollywood tell Jesse Rugge?”
“Just told him, ‘Buddy, do you have any friends just to watch him for a little bit?’ And Rugge said yeah.”
Cornell wanted to know if Rugge or anyone was supposed to be paid $2,500 for holding or killing Nick. Skidmore said that he didn’t know anything about that, and added that he never was offered any money.
Then Cornell asked if Skidmore didn’t like Ben. This brought a surprise response from Skidmore. “I used to be good friends with him. I used to live with him.”
“You did?”
“Yeah, sort of. He used to live on Ventura, out in the Valley, and I used to stay there every night, and we used to do a lot of drugs together.”
“That was back when he was selling through Jesse Hollywood?”
“Yeah, that’s when he was. He jacked them, five or six different guys, for, like, ten thousand dollars. A lot of people.” (It was not clear who these people were.)
Cornell asked if Ben had stolen things out of Jesse Hollywood’s house, and Skidmore answered that he didn’t know. Cornell also wondered if Ben had stolen some dope from Hollywood, and Skidmore said, “Maybe some dope. ’Cause he stole from everybody, even his good friends. That happened a couple of months ago and I guess Ben owed Jesse, and Jesse went to the place where Ben’s girlfriend worked and got a free meal. He said to take it off the tab. And Ben said, ‘Oh, fuck you! I’m gonna come over there and sweat you. And I’m gonna beat your ass and shoot you! I’m gonna do this and that.’ And then he came over to Jesse’s house with an ax and he axed out the front windows, about three weeks ago. Then he left a voice mail, ‘Yeah, buddy. This is Li’l Shooter.’ He used his own gang name.”
Cornell said, “So Jesse was a little bit upset with Ben for damaging his house. He likes his house a lot, doesn’t he?”
“Yeah.”
“He likes his cars, too. I hear he’s got some pretty nice cars.”
“Yeah. He’s got a nice car.”
“He doesn’t even work, does he?” Cornell questioned.
“Uh, he does flooring for a little bit, off and on.”
“More makin’ money off of other things?”
Skidmore only laughed at that, knowing that the answer was yes.
Cornell wanted to know where Nick had been taken after being at Hoeflinger’s house, and Skidmore responded, “That’s where you got me.”
“You don’t know at all?”
“Nah.”
“Okay, so when’s the last time you talked to Jesse Hollywood?”
“Might have been yesterday.”
“Where was that?”
“At my house.”
“Do you know where he’s at now?”
“I have no clue. He doesn’t return pages.” Skidmore laughed.
“Think he knows what’s going on?”
“You might have a better clue than me.”
Cornell wanted to know if Hollywood had told Skidmore anything about Nick on the previous day, and Skidmore said that he hadn’t. Then Cornell wondered if Skidmore had asked Hollywood why Nick had been killed, and added, “To be honest with you, I don’t think you’re the bad guy. Jesse had this done, that’s why we’re after Jesse. I mean, you’re in trouble for this, but I’m after Jesse. Jesse put . . . well, we know who the guy is that did the shooting. I mean, if he took Ben out and shot him, that’s between those two, because they did something to each other. But they took a fifteen-year-old boy and executed him, and that’s wrong.”
“Yes.”
Once again Cornell wanted to know what Jesse Hollywood had spoken about to Skidmore. Skidmore said that Hollywood hadn’t said much. In fact, Hollywood had originally told Skidmore a different story about what had happened to Nick, and had said he was still alive. Skidmore’s girlfriend, however, had shown Skidmore a newspaper article about Nick being dead, so he knew Hollywood was lying.
“Did you ask him about it?” Cornell wanted to know.
“When Jesse came over, I said, ‘Yeah, man, I seen it in the newspaper.’ And he said, ‘I’m outta here!’ and just left. Just left his cigarette pack right on my table in the front of my house. I think he was with his girlfriend. He just scatted.”
Cornell wanted to know what Hollywood’s girlfriend was named, and Skidmore told him Michelle, but he didn’t know her last name. Cornell asked if Michelle lived with Hollywood, and Skidmore said that she lived with her parents up in a gated community in Calabasas.
This was interesting to Cornell, who told Skidmore that he’d heard Jesse James Hollywood had another house in Calabasas, and might be hiding out there. Skidmore replied that he didn’t think Hollywood had another home there, and that someone had probably mixed up Hollywood’s girlfriend’s house as being another home that Jesse owned. To this, Cornell responded, “That’s good to know. Because if that is his girlfriend’s house, and we go barreling in there . . . well, it’s nice to know that.” Skidmore laughed about that and agreed.
Cornell added, “There might be some people in there to be careful with. You know, you’re friends with a guy that did this, and Jesse’s just as bad as the guy who shot Nick. Can you imagine having a fifteen-year-old . . . walk him out to the boonies when the kid has knowledge of what’s goin’ on, and then to shoot him?”
All Skidmore said was “No.”
“I mean, would your friend do that, just ’cause he works for Jesse Hollywood? I mean, I don’t understand that. Did you talk to him about it?” (Cornell was referring to Ryan Hoyt in these suppositions.)
“Not really.”
“What did you say to him about it?”
“I couldn’t believe it happened.”
“Do you know where he’s at?” (Cornell again meant Hoyt, who had not yet been apprehended when Skidmore’s interview began.)
“Um, no.”
“Did he make any money off this?”
“I don’t know if it cleared a debt or something,” Skidmore answered.
“Did he tell ya it cleared a debt?”
“Uh-huh.”
“Tell how much?”
“ No.”
“Do you know where he’s at?”
“No.”
“When he (Hoyt) said to you, Jesse told him to do it, did Jesse tell him how to do it?”
“No, he just told him find a spot.”
“Why did Hollywood say he had to do it?”
“Um, ’cause they didn’t trust Nick if they let him go,” Skidmore replied.
“They thought he might snitch?”
“That was the reason.”
“You know, I can see where a guy that does that—I can see him bragging about how he did it.”
Skidmore replied, “The word got around.”
Cornell asked how Hoyt had killed Nick, and Skidmore told him, “I guess he walked him up the hill, got him off a trail, took him out, told him that he was gonna give him to somebody else, or something like that. Brought him up there, and I guess hit him with a shovel and then shot him in the hole that he dug prior to that.”
Cornell wondered if the shooter said what the shovel blow had done to Nick, but Skidmore said that hadn’t come up. Cornell wanted to know if the guys up at Lizard’s Mouth had buried Nick or just had left him in the hole. Skidmore said that they’d buried him.
Cornell made more of a statement than a question when he said, “It was Jesse’s gun, wasn’t it?” (Cornell was referring to Hollywood.)
“I guess he had two or three guns.”
“I think he (the shooter) told you how he did it, because I think he probably showed you how the gun went. From that, you probably know which gun it was. Which gun do you think he used?”
“I think he probably used the TEC or the AR (assault rifle).”
“What’s a TEC?”
“TEC-9.”
“Did he tell you how it went? How the bullets hit the body?”
“Nah. Though I think he said Nick was lying in the hole already when he shot him. Something like that.”
“Tell you who was with him?”
“No.”
“Do you know who was with him?”
“No.”
“A couple of scared people. I think they probably crapped their pants,” Cornell observed.
“Yeah.”
“You know, one of them threw up. So what did you think when he was telling you that? Do you think he was bragging about it?”
“Could have been, yeah,” Skidmore agreed.
“Did he tell you how many times he’s done this before?”
“Nah, he’s never done it before.”
Cornell wanted to know what had happened after Nick was dead, and Skidmore heard that they’d just left Santa Barbara. Asked where they went, Skidmore said they went home. Cornell asked how many days after the killing it was before he saw the shooter again, and Skidmore replied, “A couple of days.”
“After you saw the newspaper?”
“I think it was two days ago. I saw him the day before that. I seen him a couple of times and just hung out.”
“But before you saw the newspapers, what did you start talking about? Did he tell you anything before that?”
“Right before, but I didn’t believe him. I mean, before that, he told me what happened, but he gave me a little story about it. It was set up in the mountains.”
Cornell asked if the “gunman” said that he’d met Rugge, Nick and others in downtown Santa Barbara. Skidmore said that he hadn’t heard that, and that Hoyt hadn’t given much in the way of details about where they met or where in the mountains the killing had taken place, other than it was a quiet area.
Cornell inquired, “He didn’t know that area, did he?”
“I don’t think so.”
“Did he tell you who showed him around?”
“It must have been one of the guys that was in Santa Barbara.”
“He didn’t tell you who?”
“No.”
“Did he tell you how the others reacted?”
“He said someone threw up, but I think it was only two of them (at Lizard’s Mouth). He said he was nervous, too.”
“He tell you how the hole got dug?”
“Nah, I think it was dug earlier in the day.”
“Did he bring those things to dig with, or what?”
“I don’t know.”
Cornell asked, “What happened to the gun?”
“I thought he buried it with him.”
“Did he say what he did with his clothing or anything afterward?”
“Nah. I think he got new clothes.”
When Cornell asked what kind of vehicle Hoyt drove up to the killing site, Skidmore said, “That’s a good question. He might have gotten someone’s car. Because the van, we already . . . well, Rugge got rid of it.” (Actually, it had been taken back to John Roberts’s residence.)
Cornell asked what kind of cars they had access to, and Skidmore said they had access to a white van and a rental car from a Van Nuys Mercedes dealership because Hollywood’s Mercedes was in the shop. Skidmore also said that Hollywood might have access to his girlfriend’s car, which was a blue BMW. Then Skidmore added that his friend Casey Sheehan had an older red Honda Accord. Skidmore said that Casey Sheehan lived in Reseda, not far from the San Fernando Mission, and was a friend of Jesse Hollywood’s. Cornell wondered if Hollywood might have used that car, and Skidmore said that he might have.
Back to Hoyt, Cornell wanted to know if he’d said anything to Nick before shooting him, and Skidmore didn’t know. Skidmore continued that “his friend” (meaning Hoyt) had said Nick was scared as they took him up the trail toward the Lizard’s Mouth. Cornell then said, “You haven’t asked Jesse Hollywood much about this, have you?”
“No.”
“Can I ask you a question without getting you riled up? Are you afraid of Jesse Hollywood?”
“Yeah . . . no, I’m not afraid of him, but . . .” Skidmore didn’t complete his thought.
“Afraid he could do some damage to you?”
“Yeah.”
“It seems like a lot of people are afraid of him. Does he really have (inaudible word)? I’ve never talked to the guy.”
“He’s a nice guy. Just, ah . . .”
“Just doesn’t take things from too many people.”
“Yeah, I could beat him up, but he’d probably have a gun.”
“He’d shoot ya. Okay, I know the name of this guy who killed Nick. I haven’t asked you the name of the guy because I’d really rather you just say it. There’s a lot going on here, and I need you to tell what it is.”
This brought a question from Skidmore: “Is it Ryan?”
“What’s Ryan’s last name?”
“Hoyt,” Skidmore replied. (He had not said Ryan’s last name until this point.)
“And he’s the guy who shot Nick?”
“Yeah. Uh, have my parents been contacted yet?”
“Your mom’s here.”
“Oh.”
Cornell said that she was being talked to by detectives and they needed to find out what she knew. He asked if Skidmore had told her anything, and he responded, “Not really, no.”
“She know what happened that night?”
“No.”
“She guess?”
“No.”
At that point Cornell showed Skidmore some photographs and asked if he recognized anybody in the set of photographs. Skidmore said that he thought he knew the one at the bottom left, and said it looked like Ryan Hoyt. Shown another set of photos, Skidmore said that Jesse James Hollywood was at the middle bottom. Viewing another set, Skidmore said, “That’s me at the bottom right”; then he laughed.
Cornell said, “The reason I’m asking you is—you see how we picked you up?”
“Yeah.”
“I mean, this was dangerous stuff. I’m glad you just walked out like that.” (Cornell meant when Skidmore was arrested.)
“I didn’t know what was happening. I thought at first I was in violation of probation.”
Cornell laughed at that and said they wouldn’t have sent a SWAT team in to get him on a probation violation. Then he added, “You know you were described to me by some people as kind of crazy, but you seem okay to me.” Then Cornell asked, “This didn’t have anything with Nick being Jewish, did it?”
“No, no! That’s the first time I ever heard that.”
“So you know where Hoyt is at?”
“I got a call the other day. He wanted to see what I was doin’, me and my girlfriend, and I just told him we weren’t doin’ much. I told him to page me later.”
“What’s his page number?”
“I have it at home. I just wrote it down today.”
Cornell wanted to know if Skidmore’s mom could get to that pager number, and Skidmore said he’d written the pager number down in a phone book at home. He had written it in the H section of the book.
Cornell next wondered if Skidmore knew where Jesse James Hollywood was. Skidmore said he knew his pager number, but not where Hollywood was at the present time. Skidmore gave Cornell the pager number and Hollywood’s cell phone number.
Cornell said that he appreciated Skidmore being honest. At this point, for some reason, Skidmore said, “My aunt went to school with Nick’s father twenty years ago and did gymnastics with him.”
Cornell replied, “You know that it didn’t just kill Nick, they killed the family. If you lose a kid like that, you never are the same. You’re never happy, so you know that these guys need to go away. ’Cause if a guy like Ryan can go out and shoot a fifteen-year-old, he can go out and shoot anybody. That’s why I’m kinda worried about him. I’d like to find out where he’s at so we can be a little more controlled and not have some officer stop him on the street and get killed.”
Skidmore said that he understood, and Cornell added, “I know you wouldn’t want Ryan to get killed. I don’t like to see people get killed.”
Skidmore said, “He has no weapon.”
Cornell was surprised by that and said, “What did he do with it?”
Skidmore said, “I thought he said they buried it with Nick.”
Cornell wondered if Hoyt might have an assault rifle, but Skidmore said that the AR-15 belonged to Jesse Hollywood. Realizing that Hollywood seemed to own all the guns, Cornell asked, “Did Jesse Hollywood tell him to do it?”
Skidmore replied, “They just told me what happened and they got rid of the little gun. That’s the only gun I know about.”
Cornell wanted to know where Hollywood was when the killing took place, and Skidmore responded, “He came back with me when I came back that night.” (Skidmore, at that point, was speaking about August 6, not the early-morning hours of August 9, when Hollywood was at Michelle Lasher’s parents’ house.) “I came back and slept at his house. The next day I got picked up by my mom. I went back to my house and I didn’t talk to him for two days. I think maybe three days. And he showed up at my house with his new car.”
Cornell asked if Skidmore had heard anything about a Colorado connection concerning Jesse James Hollywood, and Skidmore said that Jesse Hollywood used to live there. Asked if Hollywood might go back there now, Skidmore laughed and said, “Probably.”
Cornell told Skidmore, “I don’t know what’s gonna happen, but like I said, I think your involvement ended when you took Nick up there to Santa Barbara. I don’t think you really took him up there to be shot or anything. And I know what you’ve been saying here is the truth because everybody else is telling the same thing.” (Everybody else, at that point, equaled Graham Pressley and Kelly Carpenter.) “Whether you’re leaving some things out about the van, or if you guys picked on Nick or treated him a little bit bad. Did Jesse Hollywood treat him bad, a little bit, on the way up there?”
Skidmore said that Hollywood had been yelling at Nick, and Cornell wanted to know what Hollywood had been yelling. Skidmore said, “‘Your fucking brother owes me money!’ and Nick would say, ‘Oh, yeah, but my parents will pay.’ And Jesse said, ‘No, your parents won’t give me shit!’ Just stuff like that.”
“Jesse never called Ben?”
“No.”
Cornell asked,”Then why take Nick if he didn’t call Ben or anything?”
“Yeah, that’s what I was wondering, ’cause I thought they were just gonna—well, he was gonna call him and say, ‘Give me my money or we’re gonna beat up your brother.’ Then they shot him.” Skidmore laughed nervously.
Cornell replied, “My lieutenant sometimes says, ‘Why didn’t you ask him these questions?’ and, damn, I knew I should have asked this or that certain question. So, is there something I’m not getting here that’s important—I mean, you gave me all the information, but is there something you didn’t give me that I didn’t ask? It’d be nice so I don’t have to worry about my lieutenant asking if I asked you.”
Skidmore replied, “I can’t think of anything. You pretty much asked everything.”
Cornell did have more questions, however, and asked what color the van was that they had been in. Skidmore said that it was white. Asked if he knew what rental company it had come from, Skidmore said that he didn’t know. As to how old the van was, Skidmore answered that it was an older model, not a minivan. He called it a “gardener’s van.”
Cornell wanted to know what had occurred between Ryan Hoyt and Jesse Hollywood after Nick was killed. Skidmore said, “He just came back and he said his debt was cleared.”
At that point there was a knock at the door and Lieutenant Drew Standley popped his head in and said, “Hi.” There was a brief conversation between the two detectives and then Standley left. Cornell turned to Skidmore and said, “Remember I told you my lieutenant may ask me questions, and he was right there listening and asked me a bunch of questions.” Skidmore responded by laughing.
Cornell started asking questions that Standley had posed. “What is Brian Affronti’s pager number?” Skidmore didn’t know that, but he gave him Affronti’s cell phone number. Cornell wanted to know what kind of car Jesse Hollywood had now. Skidmore thought it was a silver Lincoln Town Car. Cornell asked what had started everything in the first place, and Skidmore replied, “Ben just broke the windows. He just came up to Jesse [Hollywood’s house], and me and Jesse were sleeping right on the floor in the living room, ’cause his furniture had already been moved out, and the windows were just bashed right in on us. We didn’t think it was Ben at the time, but then he called later that night and left a message, saying, ‘What’s up?’ We knew his voice. And he was all like, ‘This is Li’l Shooter.’ And he’s all, ‘Yeah, motherfucker!’”
Cornell wanted to know if anyone else was involved that the police didn’t know about at the present time. Skidmore said, “No. Well, Brian. I called him and told him what happened and he was just ‘Oh, shit! I can’t believe that!’ He was scared, too.”
Lieutenant Standley came in at that point and began to ask Skidmore questions directly. Standley said, “It’s kind of hard to believe all of this started out as one thing and it kind of ended up as another. It all seemed to kind of overlap. When you guys got out of the van, there’s this little discrepancy about what you’re saying transpired and what we’ve learned from interviews that we did with some witnesses. Can you explain to me what you did when you got out of the van?”
Skidmore replied, “We got out, we just said to the kid, ‘Get in the van.’ Jesse Hollywood grabbed him by the back of the shirt and then Nick said, ‘I’m getting in the van.’ And he jumped right in.”
Standley said, “Imagine—a couple of guys pull up. He’s fifteen and scared. You said something about this van and someone moving. Who was moving?”
“Jesse Hollywood was moving. He moved all his stuff to storage. Right off Canoga and Roscoe, between DeSoto. There’s a big storage place there. It was furniture from his house—the Cohasset house.”
Standley wanted to know if Jesse Hollywood usually carried guns around with him, and Skidmore said that he didn’t that often, unless he thought the place he was going might have an enemy with a gun there. Skidmore said that the guns were under a blanket in the van on the day of the kidnapping, but that no one had taken them out and shown them to Nick.
Standley replied, “Detective Cornell told me that you were saying that Hoyt admitted to doing it.”
“Yeah.”
“To killing Nick?”
“Yeah. So he had to have been the one to go back to Santa Barbara.”
“Did he go alone or did Jesse Hollywood go, too?”
“I don’t think Jesse Hollywood went, but there was somebody else there.”
“And who do you think the somebody else was?”
“It could have been a couple of different people.”
“Who do you think?”
“Ah, I don’t know. It’s hard to say,” Skidmore replied.
“Come on. You’ve come this far.”
“Couple of friends. I mean, it’s hard to say. Jesse (Hollywood) has a couple of friends that would probably do it. It could have been one of the guys up in Santa Barbara.”
Standley wanted to know how close Skidmore was to Jesse Rugge, and Skidmore said that he’d known him for a while and that he’d played sports with him. Standley continued, “All right. How did they get this fifteen-year-old kid all the way up in the mountains and on this hiking trail in the middle of nowhere?”
“You got me there. ’Cause they just told me they took him to a spot, and they were like, ‘I don’t think anybody’s gonna find him for a while.’”
“Who else have you talked to about this?”
“I talked a little to Jesse Hollywood about it. He was like, ‘Oh, man. It went bad. Don’t say nothing!’”
“Who’s responsible for all this?”
“When it first started, Jesse Hollywood. Then we went away from there, and I have no idea. I was there the first day, and that’s all.”
“You’re responsible.”
“Responsible for going over there to break windows and then that not happening,” Skidmore said.
“Yeah, but you got Nick in the van. So you’re somewhat responsible, right?”
“I don’t know. If you consider me being there, then okay. But Nick and Jesse were right there smoking weed in the van, and me coming home and not knowing what happened the next couple of days, and then finding out what happened.”
“Yeah, all right. So if Jesse Hollywood’s the ringleader, he’s more responsible, right?”
Skidmore laughed and said, “Yeah.”
“So the initial plan was just to break windows, and not try to get Ben?”
“It was to break windows.”
Wanting to know what other relatives Jesse Hollywood had in the area, Skidmore said that he had an aunt in Reseda or Saticoy. Asked if he knew Hollywood’s girlfriend’s last name, Skidmore said, “I don’t know. She has a weird last name.”
“What’s she look like?”
“She’s short, has curly black hair. Real thin. She works, I think, at Nicky’s Gymnastics. I think that’s on Ventura in the Valley.”
Wanting to know if Hoyt had a girlfriend, Skidmore said he didn’t think so. Then Skidmore said that Hoyt had a brother in Tehachapi State Prison and he thought the guy was doing six years for armed robbery. As far as where Hoyt might be at the present time, Skidmore thought he might be at Casey Sheehan’s house in Reseda.
Once again the question came up as to why Ryan Hoyt would shoot Nick to death. Skidmore said, “I don’t know. It might have been to clear his debt. That’s what I’m guessing, ’cause he owed Jesse money. Twelve hundred dollars.”
“So you think he would do something cold-blooded like that to a kid?”
“You never know. You see people on the news doing bad stuff.”
“He’s your friend.”
“If he was intoxicated or something.”
Asked if Ryan Hoyt might still be in town, Skidmore said, “Maybe. I don’t think Jesse Hollywood is, though. He probably went to Colorado. He had a lot of money. He said he could go to Puerto Rico if he wanted to, or Costa Rica.”
“Was he scared?”
“He was yesterday, because he bolted out.”
Then Skidmore asked, “Is my mom still here?”
“I think they took her back home. The warrant for you is no bail, so what that means you stay in jail until you go to court in a couple of days. Then they decide whether you should have bail or not. They’ll have more information on the case by then.”
“Who do I tell I’m diabetic? I take insulin.”
“We’ll do that in jail.”
By August 16, Ryan Hoyt knew something was in the wind. Still, he did not make any concrete plans about leaving the area. Hoyt said later, “I made a phone call to speak with William Skidmore, but I reached his sister. She said that he’d been arrested. Then she told me to be careful. I was pretty shook-up. I started making phone calls and paged Casey Sheehan. He contacted me and told me he didn’t want me at his house, but I went there, anyway.
“When Casey got home, we discussed the article that had been in the newspaper. While I was there, I got a page and it was an unfamiliar number. At first, I didn’t think anything of it, but it got very repetitive, and it seemed that every time it stopped beeping, it beeped again. That’s when I thought the police were trying to page me. I asked Casey if I could use his phone, but he said no, because he thought his phone was tapped. So I told him to take me to a pay phone.”
Sheehan recalled of these events that “Hoyt phoned me, and I said, ‘My house is hot.’” (He meant it was under surveillance.) “He came over to my place, and that’s when I really, really found out what was going on. Ryan was very worried. He was scared. He kind of repeated himself, and said, ‘We did something bad.’ I called my aunt, and I called a cousin, because I felt that my car was involved in this murder. And when Ryan came over, he was getting pages—well, I believe the sheriff ’s office paged him quite a few times. The events that had occurred, [they] really started making sense now. Two and two was going to equal four. Earlier it wasn’t equaling four.”
Hoyt got Casey Sheehan to drive him to a phone booth down the street. Hoyt later would say that he was going there to phone law enforcement. Others believed he was going to the pay phone to try and make arrangements to flee the area. Whatever the circumstances, Sheehan drove him to a pay phone, and Hoyt barely stepped out of the vehicle before he was tackled by officers, pushed to the ground and handcuffed. Casey Sheehan was also taken into custody because detectives didn’t know at the time how much he was implicated in everything that had transpired. At this point detectives were pulling in everyone even remotely involved in the case so that they could try and make some sense of what had occurred in the abduction and murder of Nick Markowitz.