CHAPTER SIXTEEN

WEDNESDAY, MAY 25, 1994, 10 A.M

The gardeners were on lunch break, sprawled on a grassy area in the condo complex.

“Excuse me.”

Greco had been hoping they’d be there. He walked over to where they lay on the grass with sack lunches and a couple of small coolers between them. They were within eyesight of Norma’s condo on Continental Way, in the picnic area next to the guest parking. He couldn’t have asked for better timing. He was doing door-knocks in the neighborhood to see if he could find anyone who’d been around and might have seen something on Monday, the day Norma was killed. Greco had wanted to talk to the gardeners who were working in the neighborhood that day. He remembered seeing them curiously looking over at the condo when he got there Wednesday morning, the day the body was discovered.

“I’m Detective Greco with the Perris Police Department,” he said, holding out his badge. “I was wondering if you could help me with something. Do you have a minute?”

Greco didn’t want to tell them he was investigating a homicide. Sometimes potential witnesses will offer dubious information or shy away from answering questions completely because they are afraid of getting involved with a murder case.

There were five men, most of whom spoke Spanish but very little English. The youngest worker, 17-year-old Gustavo Lopez, was fluent in English and agreed to translate for Greco as he interviewed them individually. Through Gustavo, foreman Concepcion Limon said they were hired by the city of Canyon Lake to keep up the premises and perform sprinkler and pool maintenance. On Mondays, two of them—Jesus Limon and Gustavo Lopez—worked on the sprinklers and pools. First Greco showed each worker a photo of Dana’s brown Cadillac, but it didn’t register. Then Greco pulled out a photo of Dana with blonde hair.

“Yeah, yeah, I remember this woman,” Gustavo said immediately.

Greco was elated but also a little surprised. He hadn’t even asked a question but Gustavo was so certain, he was nodding his head emphatically and showing the photo to his father, who also a groundskeeper. Even though they spoke in Spanish, it seemed obvious to Greco that Gustavo was trying to prod his father’s memory about seeing the woman, but the older man shook his head.

“What do you remember?” Greco asked Gustavo.

“Well, it was a few months ago. I remember she was walking around over there,” Gustavo said, waving his hand. From where they were sitting, Norma’s condo was down the U-shaped street to the left.

“What was she doing?” Greco asked.

“She was just wandering around,” Gustavo said. “It was like she was in a daze. She had a blank look on her face. It was weird—like she wasn’t there. I was looking at her because I thought maybe she was sick or something and because of the funny look on her face. I thought she needed help.

“I went over and asked her if she was OK and if she needed help but she just brushed me off.”

“You talked to her?” Greco couldn’t believe it.

“Yeah,” he said. “She just said, ‘No, no, I’m OK.’ That was it.”

“Did you see where she went?” Greco asked.

“No, I just went back to work,” he said. “When I looked up again, she was gone.”

Gustavo couldn’t fix the time he’d seen her, so it would be impossible to tell whether it was before or after Dana had killed Norma. Greco’s mind was racing through the possible scenarios. Was she pumping herself up to go in and murder Norma? Or had she just killed Norma and was looking around to see if anyone could identify her? Greco thought that Dana had parked her car on the street, as opposed to the U-shaped driveway area, which would explain why the workers didn’t recognize it. Maybe she had killed Norma, then paced the grounds a bit as she made her way back to her car. Perhaps Dana was looking around to see if she had left anything behind that would identify her, or was hesitating as she contemplated going back inside the condo for some reason.

Gustavo recalled that she had on a flowered print shirt or dress. He also recalled that she “wasn’t skinny,” but had a sturdy build. When asked if he could narrow down the date he saw the woman in the photo, Gustavo said he was positive it was a Monday because he was working on the sprinklers. The closest he could get to the date was that it was several months ago.

Greco asked Gustavo again if he was sure about the identity of the woman. Did the photo accurately depict the woman he had seen?

“The woman and the picture are one and the same,” Gustavo said.

This is going to do it, Greco thought. Although he was ecstatic, he fought to keep a straight face as he collected their contact information and thanked them for their time. He continued knocking on doors in the neighborhood, but found no one who had seen anything. Although Greco didn’t mention Norma’s murder, several people knew it was his reason for canvassing the neighborhood and invited Greco into their homes so they could question him. Greco obliged them because he knew the neighbors were curious and he wanted to reassure them that the killer was in custody and he was simply wrapping up loose ends. It was dark by the time he finished the interviews and left the quiet Canyon Lake neighborhood.

Greco would call Bentley in the morning. He couldn’t wait to let him know that a groundskeeper had placed Dana at the scene. The local DOJ criminalist had compared the dusty shoeprint lifted from Norma’s entryway with the Nike shoe taken from Dana’s house and come to the conclusion that the same brand of Nike had indeed made the print in the dust—but there were no individual markings, like wear marks or cuts in the sole that could identify that shoe and that shoe alone as the one that made the print in Norma’s entryway. In the rush to comply with the statutory forty-eight-hour deadline, Bentley didn’t feel comfortable filing the charge for Norma’s murder because there were no credit cards or bankbooks connecting Dana to it, and the criminalists, of course, had not yet examined the shoeprint. Placing Dana at the scene with a live witness might give Bentley enough evidence to file the murder count, Greco thought.

So far, the cases were shaping up. Detective Mason Yeo, the sheriff’s department detective who was at the Perris station the night Dana was arrested, had been collecting the checks, store receipts, bank records, and other paperwork needed to establish the timelines for the murders and for examining the handwriting. Meanwhile, Ora Brimer, the elderly owner of the antique store where Dorinda was attacked, went to pick up some photos at a Photomat kiosk and was told by the clerk in passing that Dana had left four rolls of film there to be developed. The clerk didn’t know what to do with them because Dana had been arrested. Brimer called Detective Rene Rodriguez, who had investigated the attack on Dorinda, and got a search warrant for the photos. The snapshots, taken around Christmas, showed Dana—as a blonde—unpacking Christmas decorations from a big box and decorating a Christmas tree with Jason and his stepsister. They also showed Dana playing on the sofa with Jason and her chocolate lab, Bosco, and bathing Penny, her white and black Queensland Healer puppy, in the bathtub. Rodriguez forwarded copies of the photos to Greco and the other detectives so they could show them to the store clerks to ID Dana.

Evidence taken from Dana’s house, as well as from the crime scenes, was routed primarily to the DOJ lab, where it was sorted, catalogued and stored. Some of the evidence remained with either the Perris police or the sheriff’s department.

Greco and Antoniadas were getting regular lab reports from the criminalists, but there were no breaks. No blood was found on any of the ropes from Dana’s car or house. None of the items collected from the crime scenes had clear, identifiable fingerprints. Although it wasn’t surprising, it was disappointing. Greco had been hoping for a palm print or a thumb print from the handle of the glass bottle used to hit June. There were also no palm prints on the iron used on Dora, but since the iron was found in the sink, it was obvious that it had been rinsed off, if not wiped off. Dana was either very careful or had worn gloves. Because of the volume of hair collected at the various crime scenes, the criminalists were continuing to catalog and compare the hairs and fibers collected at the crime scenes with those of the victims, with Dana’s and with those of the animals in the various households.

Detective Rodriguez had taken the soft, coiled key ring found hanging from Dana’s entertainment center to the antique store, where it unlocked the display case and the cash register. He also showed the collection of ropes from Dana’s house and car to Dorinda, but she said that none if them resembled the rope used on her, including the rope separating the framing area from the rest of the store.

Sheriff’s detectives searched the empty Canyon Lake house that Dana had shared with Tom on Ketch Avenue, but it stored only a few boxes of cookbooks, cookware and old clothing. Antoniadas thought that Dana might have ducked into that house to change clothing or to stash rope or gloves, but there was nothing with visible blood on it. Another search was made of the boat sold to Dana and Tom by Jeri, which Jeri said she was never paid for anyway. The police confiscated some rope, but nothing else of evidentiary value.

A Riverside detective fluent in Spanish was assigned to interview Gustavo and the other workers to see if he could get any more details. Gustavo again identified Dana from the photograph. The detective asked if he remembered when the body was discovered and Gustavo recalled that it was a Wednesday because on Wednesdays, they worked on lawn maintenance in that area. In relation to the time the body was discovered, the detective asked when he recalled seeing the dazed, blonde woman. This time, Gustavo said it was the Monday prior to the body’s discovery. He said he was able to place the time at about 10:30 or 11 a.m., based on the type of work he was doing as well as the fact that they knew that Norma played cards every afternoon, at the time he saw the blonde woman, Norma would have been alone in the house. Later, he recognized the woman who discovered the body, Alice Williams, as someone with whom Norma played cards.

After speaking with Greco, he remembered exactly where the blonde woman was walking. The detective asked if he would show him. Gustavo took the detective over to the U-shaped driveway off Continental Way and walked right up to Norma’s condo.

“Here,” Gustavo said, standing in front of the postage stamp–sized front lawn. “This is the path she took.”

*   *   *

Busted during the weekly cell searches for having a rubber band wrapped around her People magazine—“my channel changer”—and a razor blade secreted in the back of her TV, Dana moaned to Indio, “What am I supposed to do with a rubber band? So now if I get another one, do I have to hide it? How stupid!” The television set was mounted so high on the wall, she had to reach up and use a pencil rolled up in a magazine to change the channel. She claimed the razor blade was left there by the previous occupant of the cell. “This is not a good day. I’m going to take a shower to cool off. But what I really need is a hug.” Being in isolation with an orange plastic “parakeet band” around her wrist signifying her status in the keep-away ward, Dana demonstrated a masterful array of personas in her letters. She was a saucy flirt with Indio; a remorseful, devoted girlfriend to Jim; demanding and pushy, but full of loving thoughts to her father, and mostly upbeat with touches of wistful loneliness with her friends. A distinction became clear in her letters depending on whether the recipients were in custody or “on the outs.” She took advantage of that, particularly in the poem “Contraband Dreams,” written and sent to her by Indio. Dana immediately claimed it as her own, knowing that her worlds inside and outside bars would never blend, and that inmates confined to the same institution rarely cross paths.

In solitary confinement, the mail surged in importance for Dana as she wrote up to four and five letters a day and urged her new pen pal, Indio, to write. He, in turn, wrote tender letters 12 pages long and more, caressing with words the woman he was inspired to write to after gazing at her photo in the newspaper. The unspoken rule was to avoid discussing your case—with anyone—and they held fast to that. Dana underscored that point to Indio and her other friends by saying that other inmates who got to know her for a few days before seeing the news articles would have been against her if they had read the articles first. Since Dana was committed to lockdown twice within the first month, and afterward banished to solitary confinement for, in Dana’s own words, not getting along with her fellow cellies, one wonders if such exchanges even occurred or if they were a fiction created to reassure a potential suitor and friends inside and outside jailhouse doors.

The letters read like diaries that chronicled the monotony, the spats, the despair and the indignities of life behind bars. With no work to rush off to, no meals to prepare, no children to tend and no other distractions, writing letters became an end unto itself, where time was measured in increments of waiting for the next sliver of paper to get shoved underneath the cell door. From souls scarred by street life and violence and hardened from cycling in and out of jail, heartfelt intimacies spilled onto painstakingly handwritten letters, some in the crookedest scrawls, searching for romance on lined sheets of college rule. To most, it was an inside joke. Inmate courtship-by-letter was merely an escape from wasted days and lonely nights that was shed when they were released or sent to prison. Dana, pining for release, knew full well that she would never “kick it” on the outside with a heavily tattooed, 39-year-old Hispanic drug dealer who had been in and out of prison his entire adult life. But the exchange was even. Indio’s intention, like that of any other inmate, was simply to do his time.

Many of Dana’s letters included cartoons, articles, Bible verses and poetry, but they revealed much about Dana when she not only claimed to have authored Indio’s poem “Contraband Dreams,” but “dedicated” it to Jim and, on top of that, tacked on a copyright symbol.

Dana mailed the poem to a half-dozen other people, mostly on the outside. Being in her cell 23 1/2 hours a day, Dana had little to occupy her time besides reading, sleeping, and watching television to drown out the twenty-four-hour piped-in country western music. She told Jim that watching an Oprah episode featuring low-fat recipes brought her to tears because she longed for doing “normal” things like cooking him and Jason dinner. Other times, she said she used TV to escape: “I forget where I am and escape into the program.” To inmates she’d left behind on the lower floors, she bragged about niceties, like being able to sit on her bunk and use the phone in peace and quiet and not have to wait to use the communal phones in the day rooms. She wrote to the state unemployment office to appeal the fact that they turned her down for unemployment; to the State Labor Commission for the same appeal; to the Department of Consumer Affairs, Board of Nursing to update her file to include her divorce, changing her name from Gray back to Armbrust, and a request for them to send a list of approved correspondence courses. In response to her request, Dana got Bibles from her friends, and completed a lengthy questionnaire from the prison ministries, signing her name and dating a form to document her conversion as a born-again Christian so she could receive Bible studies through a correspondence course. She continued to coordinate the storage, sale and interminable rearranging of her personal items between Jim and her father. In preparation for her trial, which Dana believed was just around the corner, she directed Jim to take her “nice, hang-up clothing” from his closet as well as from Jason’s closet, which apparently she had also used to store her clothing, and requested Polaroids of her shoes so she could select complete outfits to wear to court. She asked Jim to put her “special sunglasses,” her clown poster from Sweden and her art portfolio somewhere safe. She successfully “sold” her silk-screening equipment to Jim for $3,000 without money ever changing hands and directed Jeri to auction her antique player piano, which had an appraised worth of $2,500, and her wedding ring, which was valued at $3,700. With the TV as her sole companion, Dana asked for subscriptions to two magazines: People and TV Guide.

Having heard a tidbit about Social Security Income, Dana implored her father and Jeri to get her an application so she could receive the checks, believing that stating she is an alcoholic qualified her for the program, even though someone else would have to receive the payments. She continued to pester her father to write a letter to the jail requesting a vegetarian diet. “I feel physically ill and need it. I am continuing to throw up on this regular diet they are sending me. Other people here got court orders for veg diets I should be able to also! For example today all I’ve eaten is: 1 cheese sandwich, 1 apple, mashed potatoes, milk. No salad, no real veges!” Being in isolation prevented her from trading food from her tray with other inmates.

Dana’s father and Jeri sent Dana “keep busy” material to amuse her while she was in isolation: a deck of cards and a book, 255 Ways to Play Solitaire.

As she approached a month and a half behind bars, some of Dana’s friends—and old flames—contacted her. Rob Beaudry, her first longtime boyfriend, now married and a commercial pilot living in Northern California, wrote and Dana filled him in with her current propaganda. This time, she explained, she was in isolation because “they feel an inmate headed for state prison may try to make a name for themselves and stab me. All because of the press! I truly despise the media more than ever. Pump the negative. Ignore the truth.” She had harsh words for her brother Rick: “My psycho brother Rick wasted no time jumping into the lime light. Someone ought to take him to the vet for a doggie good-nite shot. He makes me sick.” Sky-diving friends she had not seen for many years came out of the woodwork to visit, write letters and express sympathy and shock at finding the beautiful, intrepid adventuress and queen of snappy comebacks behind bars. A surprise for Dana was finding another sky-diver also behind bars 250 miles to the north in San Luis Obispo County. When a mutual friend tracked him down, Dana wrote a letter expressing delight that one of their friends was showing support by visiting and writing cheerful letters. Dana cleverly created an atmosphere of kinship when there was none before. “You know, we were never that close. So her love and support is a surprise but very welcome. Gary, we come from such a special era ‘70s skydiviving’ and there are only a handful of us left. I feel the bond is such that no matter what, we should keep the home fires lit.” She revealed that in her association with Rob, he’d talked her into ending two pregnancies, for which she never forgave him and chose not to marry him. “I wanted children—he didn’t and that would have come between us eventually. Now I regret not keeping one of those babies.”

As Dana’s relationship with Indio grew, Dana claimed to be perplexed by her break-up with Jim and portrayed herself in the most favorable light: “You know, I’m probably one of the easiest women to get along with. I’m very sporty and adventuresome. I cannot understand this man one bit. If the tables were turned, I’d sure as hell be here seeing him and trying to figure out what happened and how I could help. I love him that much, even as a friend…”

When Indio sent her a photo of himself—with tattoo-covered arms and long, straight black hair—Dana supplied him with a flattering verbal self-portrait and dropped hints about creating a relationship. “I’m a 36 yr old little girl wth a broken heart lost in a system that’s hell bent to destroy her. I’m vulnerable and I think you know that. I like you alot and you’re way sweet to me. Handle me with care, okay? That’s all I ask. Mutual respect, and tenderness…” In a later letter, Dana ripped into him with a preachy lecture about his lifestyle of drug abuse that had put him behind bars for much of his adult life, a curious turnabout for Dana, who blamed alcohol abuse for her downward spiral and fought a drug habit in the months leading to her dismissal from the hospital. Dana constantly reminded Indio that she was “for real” and was completely open with him, but she apparently decided not to clue him in on her own substance abuse. “I guess I just have to face it—Drugs are your sport … There’s so much more to life Indio—but if you want to pickle yourself through it—then that’s your decision. I’d never be party to it though.”

She admitted finding it a relief to vent to him because he was a repeat customer of county jail. “My family and friends do their best to understand—but they don’t really have a clue—you do. I must admit, I don’t understand how you spent so much time in this system.” Dana wrote to her other friends that she enjoyed passing the time by exchanging letters with her friend, and taunted him in the same manner that someone would play with a toy just to see what it can do. “I re-named him ‘Kimo’ short for ‘Kimosabe.’ (The Indian of The Lone Ranger.) He sent me a photo and I swear he looks like an Indian. Long black hair to his waist, and that Aztec Indian face. He hasn’t acknowledged his new name yet so I know it erks him—but he’s a man and he’ll get over it soon. They usuallly do right? HA HA HA.”

When Indio initiated a more intimate form of expression by way of exchanging “fantasies,” Dana put her foot down and said she was not into “smut.” But it was only a matter of time before Dana succumbed to Indio’s advances and she soon became quite skilled at risque exchanges by mail and, later, full-blown sexual fantasies with other inmates.

Dana bemoaned the spotlight as a celebrity defendant, but while she said being in that role wounded her, she clearly took advantage of the intimidation factor inherent in being an accused serial killer. A young woman who’d read about Dana’s case in the newspaper wrote to Dana asking rather innocuous questions about her arrest and the placement of her dogs when she was jailed. Dana fired off a quick letter asking her to come for a visit and ask her the same questions to her face. To Carrie Ann, Dana joked about the “dumb” questions and “weird mail” she received, admitting that a letter from this woman had disturbed her. “I refuse to answer strange mail anyway—but this one fried me. So I told her to come see me and ask those same questions to my face. That’ll freak her out. Hopefully will shut her up.” She sent Carrie Ann a handwritten copy of “Contraband Dreams” in the same letter. To Lisa Sloan, Dana said the same letter made her feel “like a side show. She wrote me a letter that was kind of insulting.” Dana wrote out a copy of “Contraband Dreams” to Lisa, too. She complained about getting time in the recreation room at the ungodly hour of 6:30 a.m., but took advantage of the stationary bike and leg machine, then got her first drink of coffee since her confinement which gave her “a buzz. If I had a drink, I’d probably pass out.” With a melancholy tone, she told Jim that from her cell window, she had an unobstructed view of the seventh floor and located his house. She gave him a romantic picture of the soft, spring evening with clear skies and “the clouds right on top of the range.” Because she was surrounded by buildings downtown, she described watching the sun go down from a reflection in the widepaned glass of the County Administration Center.

When Dana finally got a vegetarian diet, she told Indio that she was eating too much and needed to lay off the chips so she wouldn’t gain weight. “I’m drinking coffee again now that I get a good diet … I don’t eat much because my metabolism is down from lack of exercise (aerobic) but what I eat is good. My face cleared up and I feel generally good … as one can expect here at the County Inn.”

Her plan to keep her weight down was temporarily foiled when her next-door neighbor, an inmate by the name of Bill Suff, gave Dana two packages of nutty fudge cookies. A long-time resident of the jail, Bill used his subscriptions to People and TV Guide to write out a weekly movie schedule for her. She recruited Indio to dig up the story on Bill. “I know his case is serious—but not sure about details and there’s no way in hell I’m gonna ask—so try and find out for me. My dad about freaked when I told him who my neighbor was. I told him relax—we rarely ever actually see each other. I’ve only seen him twice in transport. The creepy thing is, he kind of looks like John Wayne Gacy’s California cousin. EEEK!” Dana eventually learned that she and Bill had a lot in common: They were both accused serial killers. Bill had been a resident of the county jail for 2½ years awaiting trial on charges of murdering twelve prostitutes in the Riverside area and mutilating two of them by slicing off their breasts, which were never recovered. Dana found that Bill was also in solitary confinement in the adjoining cell and was so lonely that he was writing two novels and a cookbook. Dana and Bill struck up a friendship formed around their common interest in cooking. Because they could not see one another, Dana summoned Bill by pushing the cigarette lighter button. When the jail was first built in 1990, the cells were outfitted with electrical cigarette lighters similar to those found in cars, except that one had to insert the cigarette in order to light it. It wasn’t long before smoking was banned in the jail and the lighters were disabled. Clever inmates found ways to wire the lighters to deliver electrical shocks. The disabled lighters in the cell Dana occupied still made a clicking noise which Bill was able to hear, and he would come to the wicket, the wide, narrow slot in the cell where the food trays slide in. She called the cigarette lighter her call button for Bill.

Dana did not know that Bill had been a county employee for many years and had traditionally participated in the annual chili cook-off, including the year the serial homicides occurred. That year, as always, sheriff’s detectives and DA investigators, along with other employees, attended the event and tasted most of the concoctions in the finals, including Bill’s, which was unanimously declared the winner for its tender meat and unusual flavor. It wasn’t until weeks after his arrest that some of the detectives began to wonder about the ingredients in his chili, leaving some to wonder whether he had slipped breast tissue from his victims into his blue ribbon chili.

To Dana, Bill was just another person with whom to pass the time. One wonders whether it was mere coincidence that the two were housed smack next to one another or if jail authorities had a macabre sense of humor. Dana reported hearing part of a joking remark from a snickering guard: “I heard one of them say they put us together so we could mate and make … I didn’t catch the rest—but I’m sure Suff heard it too. What complete assholes! Just goes to prove the mentality we’re often spoke of. Most of the deputies are nice up here and polite—but every now and then we get a real weenie patrol.”

She and Bill shared a love of horror novels and exchanged Dean Koontz books. Despite their proximity, they were not allowed direct contact, so all of their correspondence went through the mail.

*   *   *

With access to a phone in her cell and no competition from other inmates, Dana patched things with Jim, even though she knew the relationship was doomed. She declared her love for him and hinted about a proposal, coming up with the novel idea that they use this time as a courtship because they hadn’t dated before she left Tom for Jim. She told Jim that he had all she had ever wanted in a man, “but I was too fucked up to deal with it.” Dana said she realized that she had tossed aside their relationship for “a long road of hell and heartache,” but insisted that she would come around and was completely in love with him and wanted to be with him forever. “I’d asked you to marry me if I thought you would.” After sending “Contraband Dreams” around to all her friends, Dana finally sent Jim the poem she “dedicated” to him.

The longer Dana was in custody, the more her inmate friends were getting released after serving their time. She wrote a cheerful good-bye to a friend, putting the best face on her situation. “Dig this—they installed a pay phone in my room. Now all I need is a mirror and an appointment for a color weave & cut and I’ll be stylin. Of course Rec time would be nice. When I told Jim they put a phone in my room, he asked me if they got tired of my shit. (I can nag.)”

After her May 20 appearance in court, her lawyer told her that her preliminary hearing wouldn’t come for several weeks and her trial was not likely to occur that year. Dana realized that she wouldn’t get any quicker results than from a private attorney and geared up for a longer stay in jail.

The weeks in jail didn’t dampen her desire for her beauty treatments. She thought up a cockamamie scheme to somehow convince a top stylist from a nationally prominent, celebrity-studded Beverly Hills salon to drive 60 miles out to the decidedly un-hip county of Riverside to give her a haircut. “I’m gonna write the Jose Eber Salon and try to get someone out to cut my hair—I need it badly.” Sponge rollers and styling gel weren’t doing much good because she didn’t have a mirror to properly curl her hair. Dana also wanted a cut and color. The sergeant had promised to get her a mirror but the least they could do, she wrote, was “let me have a contact visit to get my hair cut.”

As time went by, her coterie of outside supporters dwindled and her in-custody cast of characters—and lingo—grew. There was Cha Chi, Killer, Snake Woman, Smokie and Pork Chop, who got into a fight with another inmate. “Hey how’s it girl? Heard you and Alicia had a dance? What’s up with that? Things are fine up here. No complaints. Just lonely. Write me about your dance and lock-down and I’ll write you back…” In the meantime, Dana lost another “outside” friend, but tried to buckle down on the ones who remained while blaming it all on her alcoholism. “Can you imagine being so damn down that you can’t help yourself?” Dana was careful to keep the relationship taut around her, making it clear that a “certain few” would be among the trusted, loyal friends in her inner circle, as if entrée were a privilege, and warned that their bond would be tested. “It is only gonna get uglier, Juli, and I need a certain few to count on—I can see how you will be one of those certain few.” Dana noted that her support group should keep in close touch with one another and asked Juli to write or call Jim and her parents and tell them how much they meant to her.

She discussed books, movies and her bad marriage with her outside friends, but with inmates buddies, she was hungry for gossip on the floors below her—who was also in lockdown, who was talking about her case in the day room, how to sweet-talk the guards into sharpening the pencil nubs they left outside their cells and euphoria over scoring a new bra on their weekly clothing exchange. While she was on the seventh floor, Dana bragged about how the male inmates across the pod lined up in their cells to wave and steal a glimpse at their high-profile female neighbor when she went to her cell door to get her daily dose of Motrin.

Inspired by Indio’s poetry and Bill Suff’s ambitions to write books, Dana also decided to write a book about being in jail from a women’s standpoint titled “Beneath Still Waters,” inspired by her favorite Emmylou Harris song: “Beneath still waters there’s a strong undertow … the words are perfect, wish I could still remember them all.”

THURSDAY, MAY 26, 1994, 10:30 A.M.

Tom nervously fingered the $100 bills in his pocket as he sat waiting for Dana to show up in court. Today they were supposed to settle the divorce. The court attendant told him it would take a little longer for Dana to arrive because the deputies typically transport the vast majority of in-custody defendants to criminal court first. Since very few have to go to civil court, they arrive later. From what he’d been hearing from Russell and Jim, he knew that Dana was not going to be that happy to see him. He’d brought $1,000 in cash with him hoping that it would, in part, help to convince her to settle with him. Dana had completely wiped him out financially with her spending and he had hoped to sell a couple of pieces of equipment to settle things up, but, through Jim, she put her foot down. He was leery of visiting her in jail, so his lawyer volunteered to see her the night before with a proposed property settlement that he thought was fair. But once Dana found out who it was on the other side of the visitors’ glass, she stormed off. Tom came by himself to court, bringing only the proposed settlement with him and wondering what he was going to have to do to get her to sign it. He thought a cash-for-equipment deal might work.

Tom had been confused about why they weren’t divorced earlier in the year. He had been expecting dissolution paperwork in January but it never came. He got a chill when he thought about his decision to skip their meeting on February 14. That was the day, he later learned from the newspaper, that Norma Davis was murdered. He was supposed to have met Dana that morning. Maybe if he had met her, Norma might not have been killed. But Tom couldn’t help but wonder if he was the intended victim. After Dana’s arrest, he wondered why their divorce paperwork hadn’t gone through in mid-January like it was supposed to. When he looked at their court file for the divorce, he found that Dana had filed two documents. One paper delayed the divorce, extending the marriage by six months. The second paper gave him a chill. It was an insurance policy. When he read it carefully, he found a clause in it stating that if one of them was to die, the policy would completely pay off the Canyon Lake home and it would belong to the surviving spouse.

Tom couldn’t believe it. He didn’t want to believe that Dana would have killed him. A part of him could not believe that she had done what she was accused of, but another part of him knew that she was capable of violence. There was another strong part of him that still loved Dana. He didn’t know if he could ever stop loving the sassy, hippie girl he fell for in seventh grade.

The rattling chains startled him. Looking up, he saw a thinned-down woman with reddish-brown hair in a blue jail jumpsuit being led by two deputies into the courtroom, her hands cuffed to a chain around her waist, her ankles shackled. He saw her eyes harden when she saw him. It was a family law courtroom, commonly referred to as divorce court. It was not set up for criminal cases, so the deputies brought her to the counsel table a few feet from Tom and stood nearby as the judge called the case. Tom felt a lump in his throat. Seeing Dana in her jail clothes brought the reality of the murders and her criminal case right under his nose. He was devastated. He hadn’t seen her in months before her arrest. He was trying not to stare, but he couldn’t keep his eyes off the inmate who used to be his beautiful, sky-diving, windsurfing, devil-may-care wife, whose smart mouth used to set his pants on fire. How could she have done this to herself? To her family? To him? To her victims?

Before the judge, Dana vehemently protested signing the property settlement that Tom put before her, and demanded the Cadillac and the silk-screening equipment. Tom found it hard to speak. They were at an impasse. The judge calmly addressed them and offered them a counsel table and chairs in her courtroom after she had finished with the rest of her cases so they could sit down and work out an agreement. In remarks directed primarily to Tom, the judge diplomatically suggested that, given the gravity of Dana’s case, it would be a very, very long time before the two of them had another opportunity to resolve these issues one-on-one and suggested that they leave court that day with a signed agreement. Tom took the hint and within the hour, when the judge completed her calendar for the day, he was sitting face-to-face with Dana.

Trembling, he felt his anger rise. He was angry for how she’d spent every last dime they had, building a mountain of debt and then blaming him for it. He was angry that she chose to hurt him when she was hurting, instead of talking things out. He was angry that instead of resolving her own pain, she chose to kill, lashing out at innocent victims, just as she had lashed out at him. He was angry that she wouldn’t let go of the things they’d bought together—the music and the silk-screening equipment—and wanted to use the material remnants of their life together as a means of striking out at him. He was angry that despite everything, he still loved her.

Tom couldn’t get over the fact that he was sitting across the table from her. There was so much that he wanted to say. It would be easier to talk business first. Under the watchful eye of the deputies, they negotiated for a while and finally worked out a settlement in which Tom paid Dana $2,600 in exchange for the music and silk-screening equipment. When the paperwork had been signed, he knew it was time to go, but he couldn’t leave without saying something, without finding out if she realized how her actions had affected everyone around her. The hard part was that he couldn’t help looking at her. He knew that it might be a very long time before he ever saw her this close, face to face, again.

“Do you realize how many people you’ve hurt by what you’ve done?” he finally blurted out.

She looked at him, her ice-blue eyes frosty.

“I didn’t kill anybody,” Dana said.

“And if I did,” she said, dropping her voice to a whisper, “it would have been you.”