Beyond This Point Are Monsters

Chapter Eleven

Ford addressed the bench.

“Your Honor, the testimony of this witness, Ernest Valenzuela, has presented a number of problems. Since he is no longer employed by the sheriff’s department, the files on the case are not available to him. However, I obtained permission for Mr. Valenzuela to refresh his memory by going over the files in the presence of a deputy and making notes for his appearance here today. I also arranged for a deputy to bring into the courtroom certain reports and pieces of evidence which I consider vital to this hearing.”

“These reports and pieces of evidence,” Gallagher said, “are they now in your possession?”

“Yes, your Honor.”

“All right, proceed.”

Valenzuela took the oath: the testimony he was about to give in the matter now pending before the court would be the truth and the whole truth and nothing but the truth.

Ford said, “State your name, please.”

“Ernest Valenzuela.”

“Where do you live, Mr. Valenzuela?”

“209 Third Street, Boca de Rio.”

“Are you currently employed?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Where and in what capacity?”

“I’m a salesman with the America West Insurance Company.”

“How long have you held your present position?”

“Six months.”

“Before that, what was the nature of your employment?”

“I was a deputy in the Boca de Rio division of the sheriff’s department of San Diego County.”

“For how long?”

“Since 1955 when I got out of the army, a little more than twelve years.”

“Describe briefly the situation in the sheriff’s department in Boca de Rio on Friday, October thirteen, 1967.”

“The boss, Lieutenant Scotler, was on sick leave and I was in charge.”

“What happened that Friday night, Mr. Valenzuela?”

“A call came in from the Osborne ranch at a quarter to eleven asking for assistance in searching for Mr. Osborne. He’d gone out earlier in the evening to look for his dog and failed to return. I picked up my partner, Larry Bismarck, at his house and we drove out to the ranch. By this time the search for Mr. Osborne had been going on for about an hour, led by Mr. Estivar, the foreman, and his son, Cruz. Mr. Osborne hadn’t been located but there was considerable blood on the floor of the mess hall. I immediately phoned headquarters in San Diego and asked for reinforcements. Meanwhile my partner had found small fragments of glass on the floor of the mess hall and part of a shirt sleeve caught on a yucca spike just outside the main door. The shirt sleeve also had blood on it.”

“Did you take any samples of blood?”

“No, sir. I left that to the experts.”

“What did the experts do with the samples of blood they collected?”

“Sent them up to the police lab in Sacramento for analysis.”

“This is the usual procedure?”

“Yes, sir.”

“And at a later date you received a report of that analysis?”

“Yes, sir.”

Ford turned to the bench. “Your Honor, I hereby submit a copy of the full report for you to read at your convenience. It is, naturally, detailed and technical, and in the interests of saving time — not to mention the taxpayers’ money — I suggest Mr. Valenzuela be allowed to give in his own words the facts essential to this hearing.”

“Granted.”

“I will give Mr. Valenzuela a copy of the report also, in case his memory needs further refreshing.”

Ford took two manila envelopes out of his briefcase and handed one to Valenzuela. Valenzuela accepted his reluctantly, as though he didn’t need or didn’t want his memory refreshed.

“The report from the police lab,” Ford said, “deals with blood samples taken from four main areas — the floor of the mess hall, the piece of shirt sleeve caught on the yucca spike, the butterfly knife found by Jaime in the pumpkin field, the mouth of the dead dog. Is that correct, Mr. Valenzuela?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Let’s take them in the order mentioned. First, the blood on the floor of the mess hall.”

“Two types were found in considerable quantity, type B positive and type AB negative. Both are uncommon types, AB negative, for example, being found in only five percent of the population.”

“What about the blood found on the piece of shirt sleeve?”

“Again there were two types. The smaller amount matched some of the blood on the floor, type B, and the rest was type O. This is the commonest type, found in approximately forty-five percent of the population.”

“What blood type was found on the knife?”

“AB negative.”

“And in the dog’s mouth?”

“Type B positive.”

“Did the amount of blood found and the fact that it was of three different types lead you to any conclusions?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Such as?”

“Three persons were involved in a fight. Two of them were injured seriously, the third injured to a lesser extent.”

“The type O blood found on the shirt sleeve belonged to this third man?”

“Yes, sir.”

From his briefcase Ford took a clear plastic bag containing a piece of blue and green plaid material. “This is the sleeve referred to?”

“Yes, sir.”

“I offer it in evidence.”

A few of the spectators leaned forward in their seats to get a better look, but they soon sat back. Last year’s blood appeared no more interesting than last year’s coffee stains.

“Now, Mr. Valenzuela, tell us what facts were established by the contents of the plastic bag.”

“The sleeve belongs to one of thousands of similar shirts sold by Sears, Roebuck through their catalog and retail stores. The shirt is a hundred percent cotton and comes in four color combinations and in sizes small, medium, large. Price in the catalog is $3.95. The style number and lot number are contained in the report of my investigation.”

“In your estimation, Mr. Valenzuela, how many shirts of that style, color and size were sold by Sears Roebuck last year and the year before?”

“Thousands.”

“Did you try to pinpoint the sale of that particular shirt to one particular person?”

“Yes, sir. We couldn’t do it, though.”

“But you were able to ascertain some facts about the man who wore the shirt, were you not?”

“Yes, sir. He was small for one thing, probably less than five foot six, a hundred thirty-five pounds. A number of hairs adhering to the inside of the sleeve cuff indicate that he was from one of the darker but not Negroid races.”

“In view of the proximity of the Mexican border and the fact that a large percentage of the population in the area is Mexican or of Mexican descent, there is considerable likelihood that the owner of the shirt was Mexican?”

“Yes, sir.”

“You didn’t examine the sleeve cuff yourself, did you, Mr. Valenzuela?”

“Just superficially. The real examination was done at the police lab in Sacramento.”

“Was anything significant discovered in addition to the hairs?”

“Quite a bit of dirt and oil.”

“What kind of dirt?”

“Particles of sandy alkaline soil of the type found in irrigated-desert sections of the state like ours. There was a high nitrogen content in the soil, indicating the recent addition of a commercial fertilizer which is used on most ranches in the area.”

“And the oil mixed with the dirt?”

“It was sebum, the secretion of human sebaceous glands. This secretion is usually abundant in younger and more active people and decreases with age.”

“So a picture begins to take shape of the man who wore the shirt,” Ford said. “He was small and dark, probably Mexican. He worked on one of the ranches in the area. He was young. The blood on his shirt was type O. And he got into a fight in which at least two other people were involved. Would it be possible to reconstruct this man’s part in the fight?”

“I think so. The evidence seems to indicate that in the first stage of the fight he was hurt enough to bleed and that the left sleeve of his shirt was torn. He decided to escape before things got any rougher. As he ran out the door the torn sleeve caught on one of the spikes of the yucca plant and ripped completely off.”

“And the other two men?”

“They finished the fight,” Valenzuela said dryly.

“What can you tell us about these two men?”

“As I indicated earlier, they had different blood types, B and AB. Both of them bled considerably, especially AB.”

“On the floor of the mess hall?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Were samples of blood scraped off the floor and transported to the police lab in Sacramento?”

“No, sir. A section of the floor itself was removed and sent up there. This method allows a more precise analysis.”

“To simplify matters I will refer to each of the three men by their blood types. Is that agreeable to you, Mr. Valenzuela?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Then O would be the dark young man who wore the green and blue plaid shirt and left the fight early after sustaining a superficial wound.”

“Yes.”

“Now let’s turn our attention to B. What do we know about him?”

“Traces of type B blood were found in the dog’s mouth.”

“Robert Osborne’s dog, Maxie?”

“Yes.”

“Since it’s highly unlikely, if not impossible, that Robert Osborne would have been attacked by his own dog, we know first of all that B was not Robert Osborne.”

“There is other evidence to that effect.”

“Such as?”

“Bits of human tissue, skin and hair found in the dog’s mouth indicate that B was dark-skinned and dark-haired. Mr. Osborne was neither. In addition, a small shred of cloth was caught between two of the dog’s teeth. The cloth was heavy-duty navy-blue cotton twill of the kind used to make men’s Levis. When Mr. Osborne left the house he was wearing gray gabardine slacks. In fact, he didn’t own any Levis. He wore lighter-weight, lighter-colored work clothes because of the heat in the valley.”

“Getting back to the dog for a moment, when and where was it found?”

“It was found the following Monday morning, October sixteen, near the corner where the Osborne ranch road joins the road leading to the main highway. The exact spot is out of range of the map on the display board.”

“What were the circumstances?”

“Several children from the Polk ranch, which adjoins Mr. Bishop’s, were on their way to meet the school bus when they spotted the dog’s body under a creosote bush. They told the bus driver and he called us.”

“Was an autopsy performed on the dog?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Tell us briefly the pertinent facts.”

“Multiple fractures of the skull and vertebrae indicated that the dog was struck and fatally injured by a moving vehicle such as a car.”

“Or a truck.”

“Or a truck.”

Ford consulted his notes again. “So we had definite knowledge that the man we have called B was dark-skinned and dark-haired, that he wore Levis, that he was bitten by the dog. What else?”

“He owned, or at least used, the butterfly knife.”

“How can you be sure of that?”

“The blood on the knife belonged to the other man, AB.”

“Do you know who that other man was?”

“Yes, sir. Robert Osborne.”

Though there was no one in the room who hadn’t anticipated the answer, reaction to the spoken name seemed to be one of group surprise, simultaneous intakes of breath, sudden stirrings and rustlings and whispers.

“Mr. Valenzuela, tell the court why you’re so sure the third man was Robert Osborne.”

“The pieces of glass found on the mess-hall floor were identified by Dr. Paul Jarrett, an ophthalmologist, as fragments of contact lenses he had prescribed for Robert Osborne during the last week of May 1967.”

“Dr. Jarrett’s report is on file as part of the record?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Without going into technicalities, can you tell the court to what degree contact lenses are distinctive?”

“They’re not absolutely unique the way fingerprints are, for example. But each lens has to be fitted to each eye with such precision that it’s highly unlikely a mistake in identification could be made.”

“Since you’ve brought up the subject of fingerprints, Mr. Valenzuela, let’s pursue it. In reading your report of the case I was struck by the small amount of attention given to fingerprints. Will you explain this?”

“A large number of prints were lifted off the doors, walls, tables, benches, and so on. That was the trouble. Everybody and his little brother had been in and out of that mess hall.” Valenzuela paused, looking guilty, as though he’d committed a punishable offense by using language not condoned by the official rule book. “There were too many fingerprints in and around the building to allow for proper classification and comparison.”

“Now, Mr. Valenzuela, on November eight, nearly four weeks after Robert Osborne’s disappearance, a man named John W. Pomeroy was arrested in an Imperial Beach bar. Is that correct?”

“Yes, sir.”

“What was the charge?”

“Drunk and disorderly.”

“Was anything pertinent to this case found among Mr. Pomeroy’s effects when he was booked?”

“Yes, sir.”

“What was it?”

“A credit card issued by the Pacific United Bank to Robert Osborne.”

“How did it come into Mr. Pomeroy’s possession?”

“He said he found it, and his story checked out. At the beginning of that week the valley had its first rain of the season. The river flooded — or, more accurately, it appeared — and a lot of debris washed down that had been accumulating for months. Pomeroy was a lifelong vagrant; searching through piles of debris was second nature to him. He picked up the credit card about a quarter of a mile downstream from the Osborne ranch.”

“Is Mr. Pomeroy available for questioning in this proceeding?”

“No, sir. He died in the County Hospital of pneumonia the following spring.”

“Except for the credit card found in his possession, was there anything linking him to Robert Osborne’s disappearance on October thirteen?”

“No, sir. Pomeroy was in jail in Oakland on October thirteen.”

“We offer in evidence exhibit number five, the credit card issued to Robert Osborne by the Pacific Union Bank... There is one more point I’d like to bring up at this time, Mr. Valenzuela. You stated a while ago that the blood on the butterfly knife was AB negative, an uncommon type found in approximately five percent of the population. Was Robert Osborne one of this five percent?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Can you offer proof of that?”

“In the summer of 1964 Mr. Osborne underwent an appendectomy. Preoperative blood tests were routinely conducted and the hospital records indicate that Robert Osborne’s was AB negative.”

Judge Gallagher had slumped further and further into his chair, his arms crossed over his chest giving his black robe the appearance of a strait jacket. For the most part he kept his eyes closed. The lighting in the courtroom had been cunningly engineered by experts to be too bright to look at and too dim to read by.

He said, without opening his eyes, “There is no precise law on this point, Mr. Ford, but in trying to establish the death of an absent person, it has become general practice to include an averment of diligent search.”

“I was coming to that, your Honor,” Ford said.

“Very well. Proceed.”

“Mr. Valenzuela, did you conduct a diligent search for Robert Osborne?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Indicate the time covered.”

“From eleven p.m. on October thirteen, 1967, to the morning of April twenty, 1968, when I submitted my resignation from the department.”

“And the area covered?”

“By me personally, or by everyone connected with the case?”

“The whole area covered during the investigation.”

“The full details are in my report. But I can summarize by saying that the search for Mr. Osborne and the search for the missing workers ultimately became the same thing. It spread out from the Osborne ranch to all the large agricultural centers of California where migrant labor is used — the Sacramento and San Joaquin and Imperial valleys, certain sections of various counties like San Luis Obispo, Santa Barbara, Ventura. Out-of-state areas included places that had served as reception centers during the bracero program, Nogales, Arizona, and El Paso, Hidalgo and Eagle Pass, Texas.”

“Was there a particular part of the investigation for which you were personally responsible?”

“I checked out the names and addresses given to Mr. Estivar by the men who’d arrived at the Osborne ranch during the last week of September.”

“Do you have a list of those names and addresses with you this afternoon?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Would you read them aloud to the court, please?”

“Valerio Pinedo, Guaymas. Oswaldo Rojas, Saltillo. Salvador Mayo, Camargo. Victor Ontiveras, Chihuahua. Silvio Placencia, Hermosillo. Hilario Robles, Tepic. Jesus Rivera, Ciudad Juárez. Ysidro Nolina, Fresnillo. Emilio Olivas, Guadalajara. Raul Guttierez, Navojoa.”

There was a brief delay while the court reporter checked with Valenzuela on the spelling of certain names. Then Ford continued: “Did anything about this list strike you as peculiar right from the beginning?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Tell the court what it was.”

“Well, Mexicans are very much family-oriented. It struck me as odd that no two of the men had the same name or even the same hometown. They were traveling as a unit in a single truck, yet they came from places as far apart as Ciudad Juárez and Guadalajara, nearly eighteen hundred miles. I wondered how such a mixed group had gotten together in the first place and how the truck they were driving managed to cover the distances involved. From Ciudad Juárez to the Osborne ranch, for instance, is another seven hundred fifty miles. The truck was described to me by various people as an ancient G.M., and on the stand this morning Mr. Estivar said it was burning so much oil it looked like a smokestack.”

“Did you, on seeing the list, immediately sense that something was wrong?”

“Yes, sir. Normally a group of ten men like that would come from just two or three families, all living in the same area and probably not far from the border.”

“So when you started into Mexico to try and find the missing men, you already suspected that the names and addresses they’d given Mr. Estivar were fictitious and their papers forged?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Did you, in spite of this, conduct a diligent search of all the areas?”

“I did.”

“And you found no trace of Robert Osborne or of the men who’d been employed at the Osborne ranch?”

“None.”

“During this time other police departments in the Southwest joined the search and bulletins were circulated throughout the country.”

“Yes, sir.”

“At the end of November, Robert Osborne’s mother offered a ten thousand dollar reward for information about her son, dead or alive.”

“You know more about that than I do, Mr. Ford.”

Ford made a quarter-turn to face the bench. “Your Honor, this reward was handled through my office at Mrs. Osborne’s request. Notices of it were posted in public buildings, and ads were placed, in two languages, in newspapers both in this country and Mexico. There was also considerable news coverage on radio and TV, mainly in the Tijuana-San Diego area. I rented a P.O. box to receive mail and a special phone was installed in my office for calls. The reward generated plenty of interest — $10,000 dollars usually does. We had a lot of crank calls and letters, a couple of false confessions, anonymous tips, astrological readings, suggestions on how the money might better be spent and a few assorted threats. One woman even appeared at my office carrying a crystal ball in a bowling bag. No useful information was received from the crystal ball or any other source, so on my advice Mrs. Osborne withdrew the offer and all ads and notices were canceled.”

The judge opened his eyes and gave Valenzuela a brief penetrating glance. “As I understand it, Mr. Valenzuela, from October thirteen, when Robert Osborne disappeared, until April twenty, when you resigned from the sheriff’s office, your full time was spent in trying to locate Robert Osborne and/or the men allegedly responsible for his disappearance.”

“Yes, your Honor.”

“That would seem to constitute a diligent search on your part.”

“Many others were involved. Some still are. A case like this is never officially closed even though the deputies are assigned to other jobs.”

“I believe it’s legitimate for me to ask whether your resignation from the sheriff’s department was due in part to your failure to locate Mr. Osborne and the missing men.”

“It wasn’t, your Honor. I had personal reasons.” Valenzuela rubbed one side of his jaw as though it had begun to hurt. “Nobody likes to fail, naturally. If I’d found what I was looking for, I would have hesitated before going into another line of work.”

“Thank you, Mr. Valenzuela.” Judge Gallagher leaned back in his chair and recrossed his arms on his chest. “You may continue, Mr. Ford.”

“Has diligent search been proved to your Honor’s satisfaction?”

“Of course, of course.”

“Now, Mr. Valenzuela, during the six months you worked on the case you must have reached some conclusions about what happened to the ten missing men.”

“There is no doubt in my mind that they crossed the border, probably before they were even missed at the ranch and before the police knew a crime had been committed. The men had a truck and they had papers. Once they were back in their own country they were safe.”

“How safe?”

“Let’s put it in terms of figures,” Valenzuela said. “At that time Tijuana had a population exceeding two hundred thousand and a police force with only eighteen squad cars.”

“All vehicles are stopped at the border, aren’t they?”

“The Tijuana-San Diego border is said to be the busiest in the world, 20,000,000 people a year. This averages out to 54,000 a day, but in actual fact weekday traffic is much lighter and weekend traffic much heavier. Between a Friday afternoon and a Sunday night three hundred thousand people or more travel between the two countries. Numbers alone present a very serious problem to law enforcement agencies. There are also other factors. Mexican laws differ from U.S. laws, enforcement in many areas is inconsistent, bribery of officials is a general practice, policemen are few and usually poorly trained.”

“How much chance did you figure you had of locating the missing men once they’d crossed the border into their own country?”

“When I started out I thought there was some chance. As time went on, it became obvious there wasn’t any. The reasons have been mentioned — generalized corruption, overcrowding and understaffing at the border, lack of training, discipline and morale among Mexican police officers. Such statements aren’t going to make me very popular among certain people, but facts must be faced. I’m not inventing anything in order to justify my own failure in this case.”

“Your candor is appreciated, Mr. Valenzuela.”

“Not by everybody.”

Valenzuela’s smile appeared and disappeared so fast that Ford wasn’t quite sure he’d seen it and not at all sure it had been a smile. Perhaps it was merely a grimace indicating a twinge of pain in the head or stomach or conscience.

“One more item of interest, Mr. Valenzuela. There’s been considerable talk about the blood found on the floor of the mess hall. Between the mess hall and the bunkhouse there’s an area of blacktop. Was any blood found on it?”

“No, sir.”

“Near it?”

“No, sir.”

“What about the bunkhouse?”

“It was a mess, as the photographs in the file clearly indicate, but there were no bloodstains.”

“Was it possible to determine if anything had been taken from the bunkhouse?”

“Not that night. The following day a careful examination was made with Mr. Estivar present and it was discovered that three blankets were missing from one of the bunks, a striped flannelette, more like a double sheet, and two brown wool, army surplus.”

“Did you connect the fact that no bloodstains were found outside the mess hall with the fact that three blankets were missing from the bunkhouse?”

“Yes, sir. It seemed reasonable to assume that Mr. Osborne’s body had been wrapped in the blankets before it was removed from the mess hall.”

“Why three blankets? Why not two? Or one?”

“One or two probably wouldn’t have been adequate,” Valenzuela said. “A young man of Mr. Osborne’s height and weight carries between six and a half and seven quarts of blood in his system. Even if as much as two quarts were found on the floor of the mess hall, there would have been enough left to cause a lot of trouble for the other men.”

“You mean the other two men who were involved in the fight?”

“Yes, sir— O, who left the fight early, and B, who lost a considerable amount of blood.”

“Your previous evidence indicated that both of these men were small.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Did you know Robert Osborne personally, Mr. Valenzuela?”

“Yes, sir.”

“How would you describe his physique?”

“He was tall, not heavy but well-muscled and strong.”

“Could two small men, both wounded, one of them quite badly, have been able to wrap Mr. Osborne’s body in blankets and carry it out to a vehicle?”

“I can’t give you a definite answer to that. Under special circumstances people can sometimes do things which ordinarily would be impossible for them.”

“Since you can’t give a definite answer, perhaps you will tell the court your opinion.”

“My opinion is that O, the man who was wounded slightly, went to get help from his friends.”

“And got it?”

“And got it.”

“Mr. Valenzuela, in California jurisprudence it is held that where absence from any cause other than death is inconsistent with the nature of the person absent, and the facts point to the reasonable conclusion that death has occurred, the court is justified in finding death as a fact. However, if the person at the time he was last seen was a fugitive from justice or was a bankrupt, or if from other causes it would be improbable that he would be heard from even if alive, then no inference of death will be drawn. That’s perfectly clear, is it not?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Now as Mr. Osborne’s lawyer I can testify he was not a bankrupt. Was he a fugitive from justice, Mr. Valenzuela?”

“No, sir.”

“Was there, to your knowledge, any other cause, or causes, which would prevent Mr. Osborne from getting in touch with his relatives and friends?”

“Not to my knowledge, no.”

“Can you think of any reason at all why an inference of death should not be drawn?”

“No, sir.”

“Thank you, Mr. Valenzuela. I have no more questions.”

As Valenzuela left the stand the court clerk rose to announce the usual afternoon recess of fifteen minutes. Ford asked that it be extended by half an hour to let him prepare his summary, and after some discussion the extra time was granted.

The bailiff once again opened the doors. He was getting bored and weary. Dead people took up a great deal of his time.