Smoke, Mirrors, and Murder and Other True Cases

by Ann Rule

Cheryl Snow said that Detective Cloyd Steiger had always been able to locate Yancy Carrothers and she had faith that he would find him.

  Judge Jones asked that the jury be brought in.

  Cheryl Snow began. She spoke of the emotions that had driven the defendant—William Jensen—to a “truly evil deed.” They were “fear, hatred, and greed.

  “Fear by the defendant that he was being cut off from Sue Jensen’s money. Fear by the defendant that he was facing imminent prosecution and that Sue Jensen would be a witness against him. Hate toward Sue Jensen for all that she had caused him. And finally, greed—his desire to inherit Sue Jensen’s fortune, even if that meant getting rid of everyone who stood between him and the money. That,” Snow pointed out, “was the defendant’s motivation in committing the crimes against his wife, Sue Jensen, against Sue’s sister, and against his own children.”

  The jury stared back at Cheryl Snow as she outlined twenty years of history between Bill and Sue Jensen, leading up to the almost unbelievable outrages she said Bill had committed against his family.

  Cheryl Snow and Marilyn Brenneman would alternate questioning witnesses. They had prepared a remarkably tight case, and they would bring forth all the witnesses who had seen or heard the defendant’s threats of violence and death against his wife—his comments that he understood “going postal.”

  Sue Jensen testified briefly, trying not to look into the eyes of the man she had lived with for almost a quarter century, still feeling somehow that this could not really be happening.

  The gallery looked up expectantly when Yancy Carrothers’s name was called. Yancy, a material witness, was being held in jail—to forestall the possibility that he might wander off. He didn’t seem to mind. He entered the courtroom walking with a cane; he had been in an accident. He took the witness stand with some élan, though. He knew he was something of a star.

  He explained the jail accommodations to the jurors, and he told them that after their first meeting, the defendant had asked him how he might be able to help him with his problems with his wife.

  Cheryl Snow questioned him: “During your specific conversations [with Bill Jensen], was there ever a suggestion or an agreement in regards to your taking any action towards his wife?”

  “Not until the next day. I approached his cell and said, ‘Have you thought of what you wanted done and whatnot?’ He said, ‘Yes, I’d like her sniped’—which means with a sniper rifle from a distance.”

  The witness told the jurors that he had commented to Bill that that sounded “amateur,” and he suggested that wasn’t a “professional elimination.”

  Yancy said Bill had asked if he could come up with a better plan. “I said, ‘Give me a day or two, and I’ll let you know.’ ”

  When Yancy told Jensen that he might have a better plan, he learned that Bill wanted more people killed, not just his wife.

  “When you say he added family members,” Cheryl Snow asked, “who specifically did he add that he wanted to be killed?”

  “The first one was his sister-in-law, because then the money would go to his daughter and his son. I don’t know how wealthy they are. He said they were wealthy to a point. And then, when I explained the way I would do it—if I was to do it—I said, ‘Well, wouldn’t your daughter get all the money instead of you, now that she’s eighteen?’ He went, ‘Oh, yeah. Let me think about this for a little while.’ So the next day, he said, ‘I wouldn’t mind if she goes with them.’ I said okay. He asked me a price. I told him one price for all.”

  “What was the price?”

  “A hundred and fifty thousand dollars.”

  “That was for killing how many people?”

  “Three. I told him it wasn’t enough, and if it was done right, there’d better be a bonus. He said he couldn’t give me a bonus until after the job.”

  “Did he explain why?”

  “Because he had to inherit the money.”

  Yancy told the jurors that he had asked for “up-front” money and also told Bill Jensen that he could make it look like an accident.

  “How did the defendant respond to that?” Cheryl Snow asked.

  “He loved the idea. He got tickled pink.”

  Snow asked the witness if there had been any more planning about how this should occur. Carrothers said that was when Jensen had started to give him descriptions and addresses of the specified targets.

  Cheryl Snow introduced into evidence the sheet of paper that Cloyd Steiger had removed from Yancy’s property box.

  “Can you tell me whose writing that is, or who wrote that document?”

  “He wrote the first one,” Yancy answered. “And then I wrote this one because he didn’t want his prints on it, or anyone to see it.”

  Yancy Carrothers was almost too good a witness, rushing forward with information before Cheryl Snow had a chance to ask the next question. She reminded him to answer one question at a time.

  This scene in Judge Jones’s courtroom was reminiscent of The Sopranos on television, only it was all too real.

  “Who wrote the material on the document you’re holding in your hand?”

  “Mr. Jensen. I copied it.”

  “Who provided the information that is listed there?”

  “Mr. Jensen.”

  “How did he convey that information to you?”

  “He wrote it on a piece of paper just like this. He brought it to my ‘room’ [cell], slid it through the door, told me to copy it and rip up the one that he did. Then I told him, ‘Oh, I don’t have any paper. Have you got a piece of paper so I can copy this?’ This paper came out of his notepad also. His prints are on it. I made sure of that.”

  Yancy was clearly aware of forensic evidence, and he smiled at the jury to be sure they caught the fact that he had tricked Bill Jensen.

  Now, at Cheryl Snow’s request, Yancy read the words on the page aloud for the jury, beginning, “Wife, Sue Jensen, white female, 47 years old, five six, 155 pounds, dark brown hair…Big house on corner…Car, Ford Mustang convertible…blue and white…Sister, Carol Harris, white female, early 50s…Daughter, Jenny. She lives with mother—”

  “I’m going to stop you right there,” Cheryl Snow cut in. She wanted the jury to understand exactly what this piece of paper was. “And that information was provided to you by the defendant?”

  “Yes ma’am.”

  “Prior to meeting the defendant on the eleventh floor of the King County Jail, had you ever met Bill Jensen before?”

  “No.”

  “Had you ever met Sue Jensen?”

  “No…I had never seen any of their family in my life.”

  The May afternoon grew late as Yancy Carrothers spelled out the details of a plot to kill three people. He testified that he had identified himself to Bill Jensen’s sister by using the code word “Flying Kings” and received $2,500 “front money.” Yancy stressed that he knew that the job was to be carried out before Bill went to trial on the felony–domestic–violence charges. Jensen wanted to be sure there were no witnesses against him.

  Yancy Carrothers gave no indication in his testimony that he wasn’t prepared to carry out the plan. He was voluble, accommodating, expressive, and he was akin to a creature from another planet to the jurors. None of them had ever seen a hit man in person.

  Judge Jones dismissed them for the day and said they would convene again the next morning.

  The face of Bill Jensen, wearing a black sports jacket and looking annoyed, flashed across television screens all over Seattle that night. He was an immense man whose face was dotted with several angry-looking eruptions. It was difficult to imagine him as he had once been—a tall, trim deputy in a perfectly pressed uniform.

  As court began the next morning, Cheryl Snow began to defuse what she was sure would be brought out on cross-examination by defense attorney James Conroy. She would beat him to it.

  “Mr. Carrothers, is it accurate to say that you have a lengthy criminal history?”

  “Yes—it is, ma’a
m.”

  “Is it true that you have problems with alcohol?”

  “Since I became a widower. Yes.”

  “Do you have problems with drugs?”

  “At times. I enjoy them more than they’re a problem.”

  “Is it accurate to say that, in some ways, you’ve spent most of your adult life behind bars?”

  “Yes—I’d say about seventeen years.”

  “And how old are you currently?”

  “I’m forty-two.”

  There was a rakish kind of handsomeness about Yancy. He resembled a carnival barker, fast-talking—but with a certain charisma. One expected him to wink at a female juror at any moment. He knew who he was, even though his image was hardly that of an upright citizen. As strange as it sounds, he was believable.

  He explained that he was housed with the O.G.’s (original gangsters) when he went to jail, a badge of honor among jail inmates.

  Bill Jensen’s sister Iris had given him twenty-five $100 bills at the ferry landing, he testified, but there was to be more in the way of a payoff if he should choose to carry out Jensen’s murder plot.

  “We were to meet Monday for an additional $2,500 and a bottle of OxyContin [pills] that are worth probably another $2,000 on the street. It’s a synthetic heroin and it’s very well known on TV and whatnot and shootable. It kills people and people get addicted to it a lot.”

  Bill Jensen had been prescribed OxyContin for “severe pain,” and he also had a prescription for more on his jail books.

  “How did you know that?” Cheryl Snow asked Yancy.

  “He had told me.”

  Iris Jensen was supposed to get the OxyContin and the prescription for more pills out of Bill’s property. The pills were worth from $40 to $50 apiece on the street. Yancy acknowledged that he had much experience in “turning drugs” for money.

  “Can you tell us what Mr. Jensen said to you as part of that agreement?”

  “Part of it was for if the $5,000 didn’t cover my research before the contract would have supposedly been fulfilled. It would have also been used to tranquilize the people as the accident that would have been set up occurred.”

  But the second meeting between the witness and Iris Jensen never took place, so she didn’t deliver either the pills or the second $2,500.

  Cheryl Snow asked Yancy what had happened to prevent their second rendezvous.

  “I went to a friend’s house and got intoxicated and got arrested in front of their apartment. They found me with a bottle of Absolut [vodka] in my hand, diamond rings, and a sweat suit. They thought I was a big drug dealer and they ran me in.”

  If this was a movie and not a conspiracy to commit murder trial, Joe Pesci would have played Yancy Carrothers. He was rueful, but also rather pleased to explain that he had also been holding a Gucci watch, and the sweat suit was a very high-end name brand.

  “Did you have any drugs on your person?”

  “No—but the apartment was a drug house.”

  And so Yancy had gone off to jail. He wasn’t in any danger of a long sentence, and he could do jail time standing on his head, but he was now full of anxiety that something might really happen to Bill Jensen’s family. Yancy had been confident that he could romance Jensen along, wangling money and drugs out of him, while at the same time he could avoid hurting anyone. But when he landed on the eleventh floor again, and Bill pretended he didn’t even see him, he feared that Bill might have hired someone else.

  “Who, if anyone, did you contact?”

  “First of all, I wrote a letter to Mr. Jensen, and then I tried to call Mr. Steiger. I left messages—kites, they call them. Jail mail.”

  Yancy’s letter warned Bill that nothing must happen to Sue or her sister or her daughter. He read it to the jury as the gallery leaned forward, straining to listen.

  “I’m writing to you in regards to things we discussed—you’ve given a deposit on. I now wish for you to send the last $2,500 to [my] King County Jail booking account, as I have had a few setbacks. Consider this one of our last conversations unless you don’t do as I have asked. You have four or five days for it to hit my account, or I’ll have to go to the prosecutor and the Homicide unit and so on. I have more than enough to make you do a lot of years. I have the paperwork you gave me with all the info and your fingerprints, plus my statement.

  “Also, you are to tell no one and no harm is to come to any one of these ladies or your ex, your sister [sic], or your daughter. You must not harm them, Bill. I will not contact you [until] after we both get out, and you may then get most of the evidence I have on you. Until then, you must do exactly what I have instructed you to do. P.S. I know you don’t want your daughter or anyone else to know.”

  Yancy testified that he figured that would keep the Jensen women safe over the weekend, in case he couldn’t get through to Cloyd Steiger.

  “That wasn’t your only purpose, was it?” Cheryl Snow asked.

  “Well, sure. I wanted my other $2,500. I’m a businessman.”

  As it turned out, Bill Jensen never received that letter. Yancy had reached Steiger, and the homicide detective had jailers intercept it, confident that the intended victims were warned, protected, and that Bill Jensen would believe that Sharon Stevens was “Lisa,” the hit woman.

  There were plots within plots, but the most important thing for everyone concerned—from Yancy to Cloyd Steiger—was that Sue Jensen and her family would be safe.

  Yancy settled in to explain all the intricacies of the plan to brief Sharon Stevens, whom he pointed out in the courtroom as “that nice lady over there in the green pretty outfit.” She had to know certain things about the real Lisa before she approached Bill Jensen. But she was not to know about the murder plot itself.

  Yancy Carrothers wasn’t being paid for his cooperation—either in money or in time off a jail sentence. But for the moment, he seized his own payoff as he sat in the witness chair. He saw himself as a heroic king-of-the-mountain, and he regaled the courtroom with his grasp of criminal activity, police procedure, physical evidence, and con games. It was a small price to pay for his saving several lives. He boasted that he had promised Bill Jensen that a “pretty black lady” would be coming to see him. And that was exactly what had happened.

  It worked. Jensen had bought the whole thing, and gone ahead confidently, it seemed, with his deadly games.

  And they had certainly been deadly games. There was a bleak irony in Jensen’s repeated offers of “big, big money” to Yancy. Maybe the ex-deputy believed that he was in line for a huge inheritance, but it just wasn’t there. Neither Sue nor Carol Harris had inherited millions of dollars—not even 1 million. There was the house in Newport Hills, a residence Bill had shared for twenty years, and there had once been about $210,000 that Sue had put in their joint bank account. But Bill had spent that long ago. He had no information at all about what his sister-in-law might own.

  Either he had woefully overestimated the “fortunes” his wife and sister-in-law had or he wanted revenge so much that he was willing to kill.

  Bill Jensen was talking about $150,000 but he didn’t have even the $2,500 to pay Yancy the second half of his “research” money. Sue had to work for a living, and so did her sister. Scott and Jenny had part-time jobs to help out.

  There was no fortune.

  On cross-examination, James Conroy hammered at Yancy Carrothers about his criminal record, trying to impeach him as a witness, but his questions and Yancy’s answers had little impact. Yancy came across as a wannabe rather than a heavy hitter, his answers laced with humor rather than evildoing. Court watchers stifled giggles when Yancy explained that the many gangs he was affiliated with had infiltrated the diaper-service industry, and hinted that he was an agent for many undercover groups—whose names he was not at liberty to divulge.

  But he had somehow pulled off what seemed impossible; even though he exaggerated about his connections, his testimony and the backup physical evidence in the form of notes, letters, audi
otapes, and fingerprints had been absolutely convincing.

  No one knew what the jurors were thinking, but court watchers murmuring in the courthouse corridors said they believed Yancy Carrothers. When he testified that Bill Jensen’s favorite scenario for the multiple hits was to do something to his wife’s car that would make it “fly over the edge of a hill or a mountain at certain times of the year,” he was believable. Jensen had suggested that his wife, sister-in-law, and daughter often went shopping together, and if Yancy could find a way to slip OxyContin to Sue and tinker with her car, they could carry out the perfect murders.

  “I didn’t think his ideas were too bright,” Yancy offered, “like taking out a high-powered rifle and shooting them.”

  It sounded like something the Three Stooges might come up with, but the witness said that Jensen had been coldly serious.

  Conroy, for the defense, suggested that Bill Jensen had been deliberately stupid, that he had been setting Yancy Carrothers up.

  “You didn’t know he was a police officer? Correct?”

  “No.”

  On redirect, Cheryl Snow asked Yancy if he had “forced” Bill Jensen into a murder plan.

  “No ma’am.”

  “That piece of paper—that yellow piece of paper that you showed us where you had the details of Mr. Jensen’s wife, his daughter, his sister-in-law—did you have to twist Bill Jensen’s arm to get all those details out of him?”

  “No ma’am.”

  “Did you have to twist Bill Jensen’s arm to get the location of his wife and sister-in-law’s homes—their addresses?”

  “No ma’am.”

  “Did you have to twist Bill Jensen’s arm to get the description of his wife’s home with the big tree in front…the description of her car…his sister-in-law’s car…to [hear] that his wife had an inheritance, and that he would inherit that money if she was dead?”

  “No ma’am.”

  “At the very end, it was going to go to his son, and then he wanted his son killed. Did you have to twist his arm to get that information out of him?”

  “No ma’am.”

  “Mr. Carrothers, my last question. On the defense’s suggestion to you that poor Bill Jensen got tricked by you into agreeing to this plan, do you think that’s accurate?”