Gang Mom Read online

  To Michaud, murder was the ultimate game. And he was losing it. Mary Thompson’s hold over those kids was allowing her to get away with murder. It wasn’t so much that he liked Aaron Iturra, though his mother seemed to be a good person. And while it would be nice to effect an arrest because it might help Janyce sleep better at night, that wasn’t the real reason he wanted to get Mary.

  Michaud just hated, hated, any criminal who thought she was smarter than he was. And he had one more shot to show Mary who was smarter. If he didn’t win, she would get away with murder.

  I better not blow it, he thought. I better be right that we find out what she’s really like when we listen in.

  At first Mary Thompson did suspect that it was Lisa Fentress who was the snitch, but over the next month, as her paranoia waxed and waned, her suspicions fell on other members of the gang. Such was her feeling that she was above the law that she never once suspected the truth. The proof of that was that she kept talking and Michaud kept listening.

  By February, after the wire had been in place a month, Michaud figured he’d heard enough to get an indictment for aggravated murder, that is, Mary Thompson had caused Aaron Iturra’s death through her actions. It wasn’t murder one, but it was as close as he could get, and with a conviction, she would go to jail for life. After consulting with Skelton, the decision was made to conclude the tap, arrest Mary and present their evidence at trial. But first the evidence would be secretly presented before a grand jury to secure an indictment.

  That turned out to be just a formality; the grand jury came back with the indictment immediately.

  The night before her arrest, Michaud once more stood on the porch of his house. It was winter now and it had been raining for weeks. Usually, he found something soothing about the rain. It was never too cold in the Willamette River Valley and when it rained, it was a tranquil time.

  As he sipped his martini, Michaud felt anything but tranquil. He wondered if he’d done all that he could to secure a conviction. Nothing was ever certain with a jury. He was watching the Simpson case down in Los Angeles with interest because he had worked before with Marcia Clark and Mark Fuhrman and wasn’t overly impressed with either. And there was a case where they had Simpson open and shut, touchdown, and he could certainly see a way they could screw things up. He just hoped that he was not being overconfident, that he had done his job.

  The wiretaps after the car chase—another parallel to Simpson, but the Eugene version was high-speed—had shown that Mary Thompson had engaged in a criminal conspiracy to prey on the people of Eugene. Drug deals, burglaries, gun deals, it was all part of the same pattern of criminal behavior that had led Michaud to form his theory that Beau and Mary were more than mother and son: they were business partners.

  Their gang had preyed on Eugene’s citizens, which he felt accounted for the increase in selected categories of crime. It was Michaud’s hope that with her off the street, the numbers would start going down. But the prize here wasn’t in bringing down a racketeering gangster so much as it was bringing down a cold-blooded murderer.

  Not too far away, Mary Thompson was settling into bed with her husband John. She figured she had done all that she could to obscure her participation in the murder of Aaron Iturra and the criminal activities of the 74 Hoover Crips. She believed that since nothing had happened to her so far, nothing would. Well, maybe some sort of charge of obstructing justice, but nothing more serious than that.

  No, she was beginning to feel optimistic about the future.

  WOMAN CHARGED IN ITURRA MURDER

  Mary Thompson, an outspoken critic of youth gangs, is charged with aggravated murder.

  On Friday, February 11, 1995, the headline of The Register Guard, Eugene’s leading paper, said it all. Mary had been arrested and charged in a grand jury indictment with aggravated murder, first degree burglary, first degree theft and six counts of hindering prosecution. She was remanded to Lane County Jail without bail, pending arraignment.

  To the embarrassment of certain members of the Eugene Police Department, the article pointed out the following:

  “Thompson … was generally looked upon by police, reporters and community leaders as a knowledgeable and outspoken opponent of gang activity. She frequently used the story of her own son’s path into gang life as a tool to discourage youngsters from criminal behavior while persuading parents that gangs aren’t just a big city problem. Her family’s story was told in a front-page story in The Register Guard in December 1993.”

  Michaud put down the paper. It was still a long haul. With pre-trial motions and such, it could take a year or more before they went to trial. He picked up the paper again and gazed at Mary’s mug shot, which graced the article, and allowed himself the luxury of feeling just a little bit good.

  In her cell at Lane County Jail, Mary Thompson was a celebrity. Mary basked in the good feelings toward her. She was “Gang Mom,” and the other prisoners gave her the respect they felt she was due. All except one.

  She hated Kristen Clooney and Kristen hated her. Bunk mates, they were both big, bluff, domineering women. Kristen thought Mary got special treatment from the guards because of her celebrity status. And she hated the way Mary bragged, especially the way she made threats.

  “If I’m convicted,” Mary boasted, “I’ll make Aaron’s mother dead too.”

  As for the possibility of conviction, Mary remained optimistic, and why not? As 1995 dragged on, she saw O.J. Simpson acquitted with far more evidence than she figured the district attorney had on her. It was only a matter of time and she’d be on the street once again.

  TWELVE

  By the summer of 1996, Maya Iturra, Aaron’s sister, had attempted suicide by slashing her wrists. Maya felt that she was responsible for Aaron’s death.

  After all, she had taken the call from Lisa Fentress and told her that Aaron was home. Had she not done that, her brother would still be alive, she reasoned.

  A psychotherapist put Maya on anti-depression medication and her condition improved. She continued to go to therapy, as did her siblings, who had been left with tremendous reserves of unresolved feelings over Aaron’s death. This all put that much more pressure on Janyce to hold things together, which she did, while going to therapy herself.

  Alternately, Janyce would feel that she had overcome the grief over her son’s death, only to plunge back into the dark abyss of depression. Up and down it went. But mid-June would see the trial of Mary Thompson and Janyce’s thoughts began to focus on one thing and one thing alone:

  Revenge.

  It had been Mary Thompson who brought this blight on her family and now, now, she wanted to see Mary Thompson get hers.

  Across town, Jim Michaud was thinking along the same lines, though without that depth of feeling. While he, also, wanted Mary Thompson punished, he was too seasoned a product of the system to expect that would happen. Even if she were incarcerated for life, would that bring Aaron back? If he had it his way, she would go to the death chamber and have her veins filled with poison and die a slow, agonizing death. Again, reality intruded.

  First, death by injection was looked at by the penal system as one of the more humane methods to put a murderer out. No pain. Just fall asleep and never wake up.

  Second, and more important, because Mary was charged with contributing to Aaron’s death, that is, not actually having pulled the trigger herself, the best the state could hope for was a conviction on aggravated murder, which in Oregon was only punishable by life imprisonment. Other states had more restrictive laws where Mary could have been charged with murder one and faced death. Not Oregon.

  Finally, Michaud was too pragmatic to expect that, no matter how good the state’s case was, a jury would automatically convict. The Simpson verdict was less than a year old and in everyone’s mind; it had proven that, however strong your case was, you could find a selected group of twelve morons who would choose to ignore what was right in front of them and opt for an innocent verdict.

 
; With all these things in mind, Michaud, ever the idealist tilting at windmills, decided, with the approval of his superiors, to attend the trial and offer Skelton whatever support he might during the proceedings. It was a duty he was only too eager to perform because, above all else, Mary Thompson had violated the law, and to a lawman like Michaud, she had to be convicted, plain and simple.

  As for Steve Skelton, he was the one who would be prosecuting the case on behalf of the state. Skelton always felt pressure when trying a big case, and on the “Gang Mom” case in particular, with all of its attendant publicity, he felt the pressure most acutely.

  Mary Thompson was a significant threat to the community. She was a murderer who had yet to be convicted and if she wasn’t, he was afraid she would keep on killing to reach her criminal goals of maintaining her gang’s power. For that reason and that reason alone, he wanted to win.

  Of course, there was pressure on the state to do a thoroughly professional job. The community was watching and if the media had its way, they’d be watching very closely. And with that kind of microscopic scrutiny, the state needed to win. To do that, they had to present a case without mistakes to the jury.

  Skelton had an interesting way of trying cases. He tried them by memory. He may not have been “The Amazing Kreskin,” but he had a memory that allowed him to remember what people said, so he tended to keep a lot of facts in his head. In a case like “Gang Mom,” with thousands of pages of intercepts and police reports, he was close to having memorized all of it by the time the case came to trial.

  He hoped that his memory would be good enough to construct a case that the jury would believe, and that Mary Thompson would be convicted.

  JUNE 13, 1996

  The trial of Mary Thompson on the charge of aggravated murder in the death of Aaron Benjamin Iturra began on a bright summer’s day. After a jury selection process that lasted three days, a jury of six men, six women and two alternates were seated to hear the case.

  Sitting at the prosecution table to the left of Lane County Circuit Judge Lyle Velure was Steve Skelton. On the right, at the defense table, sat a prim, proper and bespectacled Mary Thompson. Next to her was Steve Chez, a noted Portland defense attorney she had retained to defend her against the state’s charges. Michaud sat in the back, listening to every word.

  “The purpose of the opening statement,” Skelton explained to the jury, “is to outline the important facts of the case,” which he proceeded to do in short order. He outlined Mary’s involvement in the murder, from her requesting and sanctioning it, to helping Brown dispose of the murder weapon.

  The 74 Hoover Crips, he explained, “were a very dangerous group of people,” perpetrating crimes on the citizens of Eugene, “and the leader of that group was Mary Louise Thompson. Now, the other purpose of the opening statement is to educate you on the law,” Skelton continued, explaining that once the state proved their case, the jury would have no alternative but to convict Mary Thompson of aggravated murder.

  When it was his turn, Chez presented another view of the case. He argued forcefully that Thompson’s actions and motives were entirely misunderstood.

  “Mary Thompson treated the gang members with kindness and respect. She was a positive source for these kids. If you didn’t know how to talk to them or know their language, there was no talking. She tried to be a positive force, but she had to have realistic goals,” Chez continued, explaining that the young people were “nobodies” in society’s eyes and that they overcompensated for their inferiority complexes by being “bad” and bragging about crimes that never took place. “There was no jumping-in ceremony,” he maintained.

  In fact, because these kids had such rich fantasy lives, Mary Thompson initially didn’t believe Elstad and Brown’s claims of killing Aaron Iturra.

  “The twenty-two caliber pistol that Lisa Fentress had was not given to her by Mary Thompson.” As for the way she was treated, “Over time, Mary’s opinion about law enforcement changed, especially when she came in contact with Jim Michaud.”

  But I didn’t kill anybody, Michaud thought in the back of the courtroom.

  Chez continued: “Police were using their vast power with the gang members to get Thompson. ‘Tell us something that we can use against Mary Thompson,’ they pressured all of the kids they interviewed. Angel Elstad, who you’ll hear as a state’s witness, was involved in crime,” Chez pointed out, and she agreed to testify only because, “Police have the ability to make her life rough. And remember that the state has the power to grant immunity and other deals” with reputed gang members in order to coerce them to testify.

  “Mary Thompson did not in any way request or sanction Iturra’s death,” Chez continued. When she found out what had happened, she felt tremendous guilt because she felt she could have stopped it from happening. It was that guilt she would have to live with for the rest of her life, not the guilt of causing the young man’s death.

  JUNE 14

  All through the year leading up to the trial, Michaud, Rainey and the other detectives who worked the case had interviewed the gang members, working quietly behind the scenes to get them to implicate Mary. Chez’s arguments to the contrary, most had been promised nothing in return for their cooperation. Promises really weren’t necessary anyway because most had neither committed nor been charged with any crime. What the detectives had, in effect, done was to de-brainwash them, and make them realize that Mary was anything but their friend. Instead, she was a scheming adult bent on benefiting from their criminal activities! And if they happened to be caught, they would just have to take one for the team while she continued to enjoy the spoils of their criminal acts.

  The first gang member to take the stand was Linda Miller. She related a conversation she had had with Mary on January 14, 1995. Michaud recalled that the DNR had turned on a little after midnight.

  “So anyway, it got all messed up and they know I know more than what I’m saying,” Mary began.

  “Same with me, but there’s no way they can prove it,” said Linda.

  “But they’re trying to f—ing indict me because of what Jim said. About me telling Jim to go do it.”

  Mary, her paranoia kicking in, was convinced Jim had ratted her out to the cops, but nothing could be further from the truth.

  “And my alibi is tight for that Sunday,” Mary continued. “’Cause Angel told them that I went over there for an hour and talked to Jim.”

  “Uh huh.”

  “And told him it needed to be done. Soon.”

  “Uh huh.”

  “And I never went over there, Linda.”

  “Why would you go over to their house and say something like that?” Linda agreed. “I mean that’s gotta be a little obvious. ’Cause they got police reports. They got the police reports all screwed up too.”

  “Mary often brought up the subject herself about getting Aaron killed,” Linda testified in court. “She wanted Aaron capped so he couldn’t testify against Beau about his role in the knife fight.”

  At the defense table, Mary sneered at Linda but she seemed to squirm just a little.

  “Mary originally recruited my boyfriend Wayde Hudson to do the job. She told Wayde he had to take care of his ‘family.’ Mary phoned me ten minutes before the shooting and again afterward.”

  It was particularly damning testimony but Chez thought she was a liar and was determined to counter it.

  During his cross-examination, Linda copped an attitude. Arms folded protectively across her chest, she gave monosyllabic answers. When she bothered to put more than one syllable together, her answers to Chez’s questions formed the labored phraseology of “I don’t know.”

  Chez’s strategy had been to try to show the discrepancies in her story and her memories but it was proving difficult going because of her intransigence. When he asked her why she implicated Thompson in court after telling her during the January 14 phone conversation, “I know you didn’t tell them to do it,” Linda was vague in her response. Asked why sh
e lied about her testimony to the grand jury investigating Thompson’s role in Aaron’s murder, Linda gave various explanations for the discrepancies: she lied to win Mary’s trust; she lied because she feared for her safety and her family’s safety; “She was the one who went to the police and told on everybody. Why should I tell the truth to someone who didn’t tell me the truth?” Linda asked Chez.

  Linda recalled that she hung out at Mary’s house where, three days prior to the murder, she saw Angel Elstad there with a .38 tucked in the waistband of her pants. Linda said she took the gun from Angel for Angel’s safety, then gave it to Thompson at the request of gang member Larry Martin.

  “Me, Mary and ‘Truth’ [Martin] went into the bedroom and Mary handed the gun over to Truth in a holster. Mary said it was the weapon that would take care of our problem.”

  Linda went on to say that she was afraid of the gang members after the killing, claiming that Truth threatened that “… whoever talked was going to be taken care of” in the same way Aaron was.

  Chez felt her fears were groundless. Asked if she had had second thoughts about being present when her gang friends were laying out the plot to kill Iturra, she answered with a reluctant “No.”

  JUNE 18

  Wayde Hudson, all of seventeen years old and already a gang veteran, took the stand.

  Hudson related how, in September 1994, at the beginning of burning season, Mary Thompson drove to a local park and watched as one teen after another was jumped into the gang she had formed, the 74 Hoover Crips. He said that he, Joe Brown and Lisa Fentress were all jumped in on that night.

  “Mary had a certain routine I guess she wanted done, an order of the people she wanted beaten in,” Hudson testified under direct examination by prosecutor Steve Skelton. Mary let him join up without being beaten because he said he’d lie to the cops about Beau’s involvement in the knife fight. Hudson figured he could take the blame himself because, being a minor, it wasn’t such a big thing.