Free Manifest Injustice by Barry Siegel Page A

reservation. Once there, Valenzuela pulled a gun, shot the husband, ordered him into the trunk of the car, drove a ways, then stopped to shoot the man several more times, killing him. Then he held his gun on Salina Nelson while raping her in the front seat of the car. She eventually snuck away and sought help at the Gila Crossing Presbyterian Church. Police found Valenzuela nearby, asleep in the Nelsons’ car.
    The state had an easy case, O’Toole had to admit. His client was toast. He started visiting with him regularly. Valenzuela, a fit and wiry twenty-three-year-old Pima Indian, looked like an Apache or Hispanic. Sharp features, piercing eyes. Early on, Valenzuela started talking about the double murder north of Scottsdale. He flat out said he killed those two. He identified the victims by name, Joyce Sterrenberg and Timothy McKillop. He said he came upon them in the desert while high on booze and grass. In a matter-of-fact way, he said, “One was running. I shot ’em like a rabbit.” As Valenzuela recalled the killings, his eyes lit up. He appeared possessed—O’Toole thought him bloodcurdling. Valenzuela was clearly a homicidal person who enjoyed killing people. He told O’Toole that he liked to get into fights, liked to get hit. He also told O’Toole that he liked to fantasize about women, that he would go to Arizona State University to watch the girls on campus. He would follow them around and imagine having relations with them. O’Toole had never met anyone like Valenzuela. A shocking man, really—evil personified. O’Toole and his supervisor, Tom Karas, decided to never meet with him alone. They’d only visit Valenzuela together.
    All told, they saw him eight or nine times, an hour at a time, in the U.S. marshal’s office on the eighth floor of the Federal Building in Phoenix. The Scottsdale murder confession came up more than once, and O’Toole took fairly detailed notes, though this was not the focus of their conversation; they had their own murder-rape charge to defend. O’Toole didn’t need or want to know all the details on how Valenzuela killed the young couple. Even so, he couldn’t help but notice that this murder on the Indian reservation looked rather similar to the Scottsdale lovers’ lane murders. Booze and marijuana, a couple in a car, a gun, random violence.
    O’Toole’s job had made him fairly skeptical. Dealing with all sorts of people, he’d learned to smell out the bullshit, but he sensed truth here. He had no reason to doubt—Valenzuela had the persona of a cold-blooded killer.
    O’Toole wasn’t the only lawyer to reach this conclusion. Because of a scheduling conflict, the federal public defender’s office had to withdraw from Valenzuela’s case in December 1967. The court appointed a private attorney, Ron Petica, to replace O’Toole. Over the next six months, preparing for trial, Petica visited with Valenzuela at least once a week, accumulating a number of clear impressions. Valenzuela appeared physically strong, cold, and unsmiling. Petica did not think he had the capacity to be friendly, or to like or dislike other people. One day, sitting at a table together discussing the murder and rape on the Indian reservation, Valenzuela said, “This is not the first person I have killed.” He started talking about the couple he’d shot north of Scottsdale. As he spoke, he looked directly at Petica, holding his gaze, his eyes suggesting cold steel. Like O’Toole, Petica felt scared. Again, Valenzuela was just talking, not boasting, discussing the murders as if killing were part of living to him, his modus operandi. He had no reason to lie. Petica believed him.
    So did a psychiatrist, Dr. Leo Rubinow, brought in by Petica to administer Sodium Pentothal—at the time considered a kind of truth serum. After testing and interviewing Valenzuela twice in March 1968, Rubinow wrote a letter to the judge presiding over Valenzuela’s case, conveying his assessment: “He is