Jeff tried hard to be the stable one. He had to keep working and try to keep some sense of normalcy in our lives. After this time, he would say that it was good for him to have a routine and a sense of responsibility. In a way, it was a detriment for me that I had no responsibilities that would force me to get up each day and get back on track.
I had difficulty remembering the details of the funeral, and of Nick’s sixteenth birthday, which was held at the cemetery. My sister Brenda and her husband bought Nick a star in honor of his sixteenth birthday. It was inspiring to look up into the sky and know that I could actually wish upon his star. I promised Nick that I would not abuse this privilege and save some room for the wishes he might need up in heaven.
At the cemetery, Nick’s friends each signed a white balloon with an attached memorial key chain, cut the strings, then watched them disappear into the blue sky, up to Nick. I don’t remember doing it, but I’m told I did. We brought Cokes, umbrellas, and blankets. We all left flowers and tears behind.
Nick’s best friend, Ryan, was so distraught, cheated out of his best buddy. I didn’t want to be selfish, so I asked Nick to please help Ryan through this, too. It was hard seeing him like that, sweet Ryan, who was now the closest thing I had to Nick.
Inappropriately, I also approached Nick’s former girlfriend at the cemetery, and I whispered in her ear, “I wish he had gotten you pregnant so there would be something besides memories left.”
Immediately I knew it was extremely wrong for an adult to say such a thing to a teenage girl, let alone place that kind of burden on her heart. The “what could have beens” had gotten the best of me. We cried together, and she told me how much she missed Nick. I gave her back the two rings she had given to him.
A few days later, I awoke to bright lights and strange voices.
“How many did you take?”
The nurses and doctors were bothering me. They wanted to know about the pills. I told them to go away, but they didn’t. And neither did I.
Please just let me sleep. Please just let me die.
They didn’t let me. They admitted me at the UCLA Resnick Neuropsychiatric Hospital. I guess this meant that someone else had gotten sane enough to give up a bed.
In an evaluation room with a dozen or more doctors and interns all staring at me, one doctor called out, “So, how are you feeling?”
I patted both of my cheeks, then twisted my index finger into my dimple zone. “Just peachy!” I said with a giggle.
I thought for sure they were going to bring out the restraints right then. The whole lot of them stared me down in such a way that I thought they were never going to consider letting me out of this place.
Very sternly, the doctor said, “That is inappropriate behavior!”
Yes, sir. Won’t happen again, sir.
Back in my hospital bed, I began seeing things in the carpet and drawing what I saw. Two animals: a seal and a dog. Plus, there was a third animal that I couldn’t make out, and two faces with closed eyes and curly hair.
Then I thought about all the potential uses for my medicine cup and wrote a list that Martha Stewart might have applauded, including these items:• Paint it red and put a handle on it to make a doll bucket.
• Stack several together to make a miniature Christmas tree; then paint.
• Cover it in fabric and make a Barbie lampshade.
This also began my rhyming phase, where almost everything I thought came out in a singsong rhyme. Brains can be weird things after trauma. Even I knew that I was nuts. Where are those nice young men in their clean white coats, anyway? Shouldn’t they be strapping me to the bed or something?
With limited poison available, I also took up smoking while at the hospital. We weren’t allowed to have lighters, of course—being that I was on suicide watch, I wasn’t allowed to even have a comb unless supervised—so we’d have to go outside and stick our cigarettes into this particular hole in the wall and press a button, which would ignite the flame. It looked like a car cigarette lighter. After our therapy sessions, we’d ask each other, “Are you going to the wall?” We’d meet up there and borrow each other’s cigarettes and talk. It became a welcome ritual, and I enjoyed the company.
Our days were highly scheduled and regimented, which was a comfort in itself. I didn’t have to think about when I had eaten last or whether it was time to take a shower or take a pill. And I didn’t have to do laundry or vacuum, either. It was like a vacation . . . except not at all.
This time, I was discharged after about two weeks, and I was afraid to leave. The doctors told me there would still be life to come, and that I would always have my memories of Nick, but I wanted more than memories. I still wanted to be with him.
One of the things that eventually kept me going, however, was knowing that if I died, I would also be taking all my memories with me—and that meant killing off memories of Nick that no one else could ever carry on.
The other thing that kept me going was the fight for justice. I had to stay alive. I had to stay alive long enough to make sure that everyone responsible for my son’s murder was behind bars.
CHAPTER 13
HUNTING
The grand jury proceeding was coming up in November, and the prosecutor would have to present enough evidence to show that all four suspects should stand trial for the crimes they were charged with: murder, kidnapping, and criminal conspiracy. My sister Brenda wanted me to get away for a few days before then, so she took me to a cabin in Big Bear, nestled in the San Bernardino Mountains. Our objective was to take our minds off reality for just a short while and pretend that life was normal again.
Shortly after setting foot in the cabin, we lit a fire in the fireplace, and a newspaper next to the woodpile caught my eye: Jesse James Hollywood’s picture was on the front page. Even here, even in this little cabin in the mountains, I couldn’t escape his smug little face and what he’d done to my life and, more important, to Nick’s.
More pills. More alcohol. I would not let his face ruin my day with my sister. We went to a candy store, where we bought everything. Enough to make ourselves very sick. We took it all back to the cabin and spread it out in a big pile in the middle of the bed. With our wax lips on, velvet crowns on our heads, and silly string sprayed everywhere, we dove face-first into our stomachaches.
We had fun . . . and I felt guilty for having fun. I felt guilty for laughing.
My sister is my best friend, and I knew she felt helpless and lost herself, so we clung to each other and faced a very empty world together the best we knew how. I knew I was lucky to have the kind of family I did—hugs and kisses, love and support. I cannot imagine not loving your siblings with your whole heart.
Back in hell, Jeff and I drove to a hotel in Santa Barbara, where we would stay during the grand jury proceeding. He’d bought Ben a new pair of shoes for court; this bothered me in a way it was hard for me to express. I didn’t want Jeff to ever do anything nice for Ben again.
Why hadn’t Ben come to me on his knees? Why had my son died looking up to a coward?
I’m sorry, Nick, I would think after these thoughts. I hope it doesn’t make you angry with me. Ben’s connection in your being gone forever is more than I can forgive or forget.
Forever is a very long time. I sat in room 54, above the workroom of the hotel, and thought, “This is the last chance to tell me that this is all a mistake. It was really someone else’s body they found.”
But no one said that, and on October 23, 2000, John Roberts became the first witness to testify in court about my son’s murder.
He talked about the meeting that he and Jack Hollywood had with Jesse after Nick had been kidnapped. Jesse hadn’t given them any information at all, Roberts said. “It was almost like he did not, at that time in front of us, regard it as being a terribly serious thing.”
But when Hollywood showed up at Roberts’s house after Nick’s body had been found, he was “absolutely terrified. He knew his life was over.” Roberts claim
ed that he didn’t know where Hollywood was now.
“Would you tell us if you did?” the prosecutor asked.
“Oh, God. I don’t know. I’m trying to answer you truthfully, but I don’t know. And I pray to God I never get a phone call from him.”
Court was adjourned. One day down. How many more to go? I was standing at the bottom of what appeared to be a very long staircase, and this was only the first step. Somewhere at the top was my image of Jesse James Hollywood serving a life sentence in prison, or being sentenced to death.
Stay alive for tomorrow, I told myself. Stay alive and look these witnesses in the eye and don’t let them lie. Don’t let them forget about Nick. Let your face haunt them.
I was one of the lucky ones—in fact, I’ve never heard of it happening this way ever again—who got hooked up with a victim’s advocate immediately. Her name was Joan Fairfield, and she would be with Jeff and me every day of every trial. When things got to be too much, Joan would walk out with me. When I needed to have something explained, she would explain it. In a situation this horrid, you took your blessings where you could find them, and Joan was definitely one of my blessings.
It had taken so much out of me to drag myself into that courtroom on the first day that I couldn’t believe I had to do it again the very next day. But I did, and faced Brian Affronti, who would tell his story about how Hollywood and his underlings had picked him up for Fiesta in that white van—with Nick inside.
“Did you come to the conclusion at some point or another that he was there involuntarily?” asked the prosecutor.
“Yes, by threatening remarks coming from Jesse Hollywood, who was sitting in the front.”
“The drive up from West Hills to Santa Barbara took, what, an hour and fifteen minutes?”
“Took about forty-five minutes to an hour.”
“Do you recall telling detectives that the pager went off repeatedly?”
“Yes, I do.”
So Nick had gotten my pages. I didn’t know whether to be comforted or even more saddened—if that were even possible. Nick had known that I was trying to reach him. If only I had known what he was going through . . .
Soon after Nick’s murder, William Skidmore had called Brian. “He told me that Nick had been killed. He told me that—what had happened, and that Jesse [Hollywood] and people were talking and he was calling to warn me to either keep my mouth shut or Jesse might come after me, too.”
“Did he tell you that you were the weak link?”
“He told me that that’s what was involved in the conversation with Jesse. I believe Jesse, Ryan Hoyt, William, and Jesse Hollywood’s father were all talking . . . he overheard them talking and that’s what they were saying about me.”
“Did you notice if Nick Markowitz was wearing any jewelry of any kind?”
“I remember a red ring that he talked about. When Jesse had taken away his pager, he had taken away his ring, too, and Nick asked him . . . you know, I forgot who gave it to him, but he said somebody had given it to him . . .”
“Would you recognize it again if you saw it?”
“I believe I would.”
“I’m going to show you Exhibit Number 35.”
“That’s the ring.”
Exhibit Number 35 made Jeff cry.
I had no power to help him. There was the ring his parents had given him, and he had given to his oldest son, and now it was evidence in his youngest son’s murder. It was the last thing that Nick had fought for in his life on Earth—to keep that ring on his finger until the moment he died.
Natasha Adams (who was now Natasha Adams-Young) took the stand next, describing how she’d met Nick and helped clean up his injuries. Then she talked about what she told her mother about the kidnapping.
“I didn’t give her any names or anything,” she said. “I just said I know these people, and this boy has been kidnapped. And she was kind of shocked, too, because it sounds really unreal. You don’t really expect kidnappers to be kids.”
Her mother told her to talk to police, but “it didn’t seem like a serious thing at the time, so I wanted to see what was going to happen before I did anything about it, because I didn’t want to get involved.”
Besides that, according to an interview with filmmaker Nick Cassavetes, Natasha’s mother told him that she was high on Ecstasy the night Natasha came to tell her about the kidnapping. It was her wedding anniversary, he claimed she’d said, and she hadn’t wanted to be bothered. But over the next few days, she learned more about what happened, so when she read the newspaper article about Nick’s murder, she knew it had to be the boy that her daughter had talked about.
How had Adams reacted when her mother showed her the article?
“I just started crying right away,” she said. “And I asked her, like, how it could happen. The normal responses to something like that.”
Her father was also apprised of the situation. So, both of her parents realized by then that Nick had been killed. And they both went to work?
“Yes.”
“OK. But they knew that this was the body of a person who you had seen alive in the previous days?”
“Yes.”
“And they knew at this point that you probably knew who was responsible?”
“Yes. My mom said she would make an appointment with a lawyer.”
Next to the witness stand was Gabriel Ibarra, one of the men who had been at Richard Hoeflinger’s apartment when Jesse James Hollywood and his crew showed up and duct taped Nick in the back room. He described seeing Nick with a sock over his eyes like a blindfold, and he described how they all left to party and tried to forget about the kid who was tied up in the apartment.
Casey Sheehan spoke next, mostly about Ryan Hoyt’s demeanor after he killed Nick. At first, Sheehan hadn’t believed that Hoyt had actually done it, because he seemed way too unaffected, even going shopping and partying that same day. Then they’d headed to Malibu to have dinner with Sheehan’s dad.
“We were just talking on the way out to see my father at the beach . . . that’s when he started to kind of seem scared.”
“OK. What specifically did he say at this point?”
“That Nick was dead. ‘What should I do? We took care of Nick. Nick is dead.’ I think he referred to it as a problem a few times.”
“Did he say specifically, ‘We took him to a ditch, shot him, and put a bush over him’? ”
“Yes, sir.”
“All right. Did you ask him who’s ‘we’? Who are these people you did this with?”
“Yes, sir. He said Jesse Rugge.”
“Do you know if Hoyt had a weapon?”
“Yeah, I know that he didn’t have a weapon in his possession. He didn’t own a gun.”
“Do you know whether or not Hollywood had a gun?”
“He had a shotgun and he had a TEC-9.”
On the day Ryan Hoyt was arrested, he had called Casey Sheehan to ask if he could come over because his house was “hot,” or under surveillance.
“Tell me why you didn’t call the police, or tell somebody at that moment,” the prosecutor said.
“I don’t really know why.”
Kelly Carpenter then talked about how she and Natasha Adams were both “very fond of” Nick and that she hadn’t called police because “I was already under the impression that my friend Natasha was probably going to talk to the police . . . I was really scared and I didn’t know what I would say.”
In response to the prosecutor’s questions, Hollywood’s girlfriend, Michelle Lasher, said “I don’t know” and “I don’t recall” seemingly hundreds of times. She didn’t know anything about the killing. She had never met Nick. She didn’t remember how long she had been in Colorado with Hollywood.
“At one point, you told detectives that the car you were driving to Colorado was a black Cadillac?” the prosecutor asked.
“Yes.”
“It, of course, wasn’t a black Cadillac and you knew it wasn’t a black Cadilla
c. Why did you tell them that?”
“I was just being protective.”
Attorney Stephen Hogg refused to answer questions, citing attorney-client privilege. The most unintentionally funny moment in the proceedings came when Jack Hollywood was called to the stand. He was sworn in, then asked if he was Jesse’s father.
“Yes, I am.”
“Do you know where Jesse James Hollywood is currently?”
“Could I talk to my attorney?”
“Did you not anticipate that you would be asked this question?”
It was so silly.
Jack Hollywood acknowledged knowing that his son sold drugs and that Ben Markowitz owed his son money for drugs. He acknowledged that his son had been a participant in kidnapping Ben’s brother and that they had had a meeting to talk about what to do with Nick. So, once he knew that a boy had been kidnapped, had he at least called the boy’s parents?
“I don’t know them. And I . . . no, I didn’t. No. I mean, I never met them, I didn’t know where they lived; I didn’t know anything about them.”
“Did you ask your son anything about that?”
“No.”
“Did you open up a telephone book and look up Markowitz?”
“No.”
Jack Hollywood said that he kept calling his son to talk about the situation, but Jesse kept putting him off and saying he had other things to do or he didn’t want to talk about it. Jack apparently never asked where Nick was being held.
“Why didn’t you ask him specifically where he was?”
“Like I said, I never really got a chance to sit down and talk to him.”
“Why couldn’t that be a conversation or a question asked standing? I mean, why couldn’t you ask him that first thing right off the bat on the telephone? ‘Where is this person? Where is he?’ ”
“I’m sure I could have, but I didn’t.”
“And why not?”
My Stolen Son Page 16
