I'll Take Care of You

by Caitlin Rother

  When Nanette rolled up in the Cadillac around ten o’clock, she identified herself as Bill’s fiancée and said she’d just come from Christmas shopping at the mall. But even Detective Voth, who was working his first and only murder case with no homicide training, couldn’t help but notice that the athletic young woman’s key ring was missing a key to open that gate.

  CHAPTER 2

  Because the house was a crime scene the police wouldn’t let Nanette come inside. But even after chatting with the responding officers, she didn’t call anyone else in the McLaughlin family to inform them of Bill’s death.

  Once the detectives arrived, Sergeant Steven Van Horn and Detective Bill Hartford asked her to get into the police cruiser to answer some questions. Asked to outline her activities that day, Nanette said she’d gone shopping at noon, returned to write the housekeeper a check, then grabbed her son’s soccer uniform out of the dryer and drove him to his championship game in Diamond Bar.

  The game was supposed to start at 6:00 P.M., but had been delayed until 6:30. Then it went into double overtime, which lasted until sometime after eight o’clock. Originally, she’d planned to bring her kids home to Balboa Coves that night, but they’d stayed with their father because it was so late and they had school near his house in the morning.

  After that, she said, she headed to South Coast Plaza in Newport Beach. Showing them several shopping bags on the passenger side of the Cadillac, she also produced receipts from Crate & Barrel and Bullock’s, time-stamped 9:29 and 9:45 P.M. She said she’d bought a vase, which she’d shipped to her parents, and purchased about $138 worth of other items before the mall started to close.

  Asked who had keys to the house, she cited most of the same people as Kevin had, and said there could be one in the hide-a-key box on the dock behind the house. She, too, noted that Bill’s former partner, Jacob Horowitz, had sued Bill over the blood device, but she said she didn’t know who would want to harm her fiancé.

  “Do you have any idea why this would happen to him?” Detective Hartford asked.

  “I have no idea,” she said. “I have no . . . never heard of threats, never heard, you know, anything. I had no clue.”

  The detectives asked Nanette if she would object to a search of the house or to having her hands swabbed for gunshot residue.

  “I understand it’s probably upsetting,” Van Horn said. “It’s just procedure we have to go through.”

  “I have no objection,” she replied.

  Nanette told police she oversaw the day-to-day aspects of Bill’s various business activities, which included several investment projects. Bill had a number of insurance policies he kept in the home safe, she said, and he was being audited by the IRS concerning his Nevada residency claim. She led detectives to the safe and gave them the combination so they could look inside.

  She told them about Bill’s gun collection in Vegas, but she said she purposely stayed in the dark about all of that “gun stuff.”

  “Personally, I don’t like guns, so I stay out. I have kids in the house. I asked him if he would move the guns to the other place for that reason. So most of them are over there, but I’m not sure how many.”

  On the other hand, she said, she knew everything about his “business stuff.”

  “I write all the checks and I pay all the bills,” she said.

  Voth tried to offer some helpful information about changing the locks on the house, but Nanette said she wasn’t going to stay there. She was going to move her things to Bill’s second beachfront house on Seashore Drive, which was about four minutes away.

  “I cannot go back in there, where he . . . ,” she said, trailing off.

  And yet, four days later, she was back at Balboa Coves with her kids—and several times after that, meeting with various people. No one lived at the Seashore house full-time, she said, adding that it had been broken into two Thanksgivings ago, when they’d filed a police report.

  “When I went over there one day, all the lights were on. I opened the garage, and . . . I didn’t want to go in, so I called the police. And the police went in and found—and it was like a robbery, you know.... Somebody was, like, staying in there and they kind of messed stuff up and, like, vandalized it.”

  Everyone grieves differently, but this attractive young woman didn’t seem particularly distraught over her fiancé’s murder. And although she said the incident was “too much to comprehend,” her voice seemed rather monotone and her general affect seemed rather flat.

  She also never mentioned how lucky it was that she and her children weren’t home that night, as originally planned, or that she was thankful that they were all safe, thanks to her decision to leave them with her ex-husband and go shopping. Nor did she seem to be scared that the killer might hunt her down at the beach house.

  Escorting her to the house on Seashore, the police assured that she got safely inside around one in the morning.

  Back in 1994, the city of Newport Beach, also known simply as Newport, had about 66,000 residents. Today, its population has grown to about 87,000 people, who are fortunate enough to live in one of the nation’s wealthiest communities.

  Located about fifty miles south of Los Angeles, and about eighty-five miles north of downtown San Diego, Newport spans fifty square miles of land surrounded by water, which flows around seven islands and is home to more than ten thousand recreational vessels. The clean white, beige, and pastel facades of the waterfront homes—many of which have pristine landscaping and private docks—convey the unspoken language of money.

  Some folks here are so affluent they can afford to keep a helicopter on the deck of their yacht, where they enjoy cocktails and watch the sun set, or sail over to Catalina Island for the day. In the ritzier parts of town, attire can range from yacht club or business casual to upscale designer wear, with sparkling multi-carat diamonds or trendy boutique jewelry.

  And then there are the wannabes, the gold diggers who want some of that money but don’t want or know how to work for it themselves. So they hang around the swanky restaurants and nightclubs, perch themselves seductively along the boardwalk, and hope to snag a sugar daddy or mama.

  Newport’s natural beauty, juxtaposed with the ostentatious materialism of some of its residents, made this area the perfect setting for the television show The O.C., as well as frequent episodes of the hit reality show The Real Housewives of Orange County. In addition to the nouveau riche women who keep their hair perfectly coiffed, their nails manicured, and their clothing just so, Newport Beach has drawn celebrity athletes such as basketball’s bad boy Dennis Rodman and superstar Kobe Bryant. Eccentric actor Nicolas Cage made news here when he expanded his boat dock to 156 feet to accommodate his personal flotilla and later sold his home for a record $35 million.

  Every December, Newport has its renowned “Christmas Boat Parade,” an event that dates back to 1907 and features more than one hundred boats of all sizes, lit up with bright holiday lights, cruising around the harbor like beacons of the good life.

  In 1977, Bill and his then-wife, Sue, purchased their home in Balboa Coves, to which they eventually added a second floor. Tucked into the southernmost corner of the community, just south of Coast Highway and east of the Newport Boulevard Bridge, the McLaughlin house abutted the Newport Channel, which feeds into Newport Bay and pours into the Pacific Ocean.

  In 2012, homes in Balboa Coves were selling in the $3 million range, and this particular 2,932-square-foot house was valued at $2.3 million.

  In 1992, after Sue left, Bill purchased the 2,376-square-foot beach house on Seashore Drive as a teardown, intending to fix it up and sell it later. He had good instincts, because the home sold in late 2004 for $3.54 million.

  Farther to the south and west of Balboa Coves, a fingerlike stretch of land called the Balboa Peninsula juts out into the ocean. Locals simply call it “the peninsula.”

  As of 2012, the murder of Bill McLaughlin was only the second—and the last—murder to occur in this community. As
many as nine murders have occurred in one year in all of Newport Beach, but often there is only one or even none.

  On the night of the murder, Detective Tom Voth, a tall, mellow father of three, was relaxing at home when his lieutenant called around nine-forty.

  Lieutenant Doug Fletcher told Voth that Sergeant Steven Van Horn and Detective Bill Hartford were already headed into the station. Fletcher told Voth to do the same. From there, the investigators caravanned over to Balboa Coves, where they arrived just before eleven o’clock.

  Voth was respected by his colleagues as a quiet, earnest, reserved, and “country strong” man. A good man. With a big, strapping frame and a gentle smile, he was seen as a powerhouse after playing football in the early 1970s at California State University, Fresno.

  “But he’s got a big heart,” said Dave Byington, a retired homicide detective sergeant who worked in narcotics with Voth during the late 1980s.

  The NBPD, the small agency responsible for keeping order in this town of mostly white, wealthy, and well-educated folks, has routinely moved its officers and detectives between specialty areas so they can gain experience solving all types of crimes. The department has traditionally thrown most of its available officers into the rare murder case, which meant that at least a couple dozen took some part in this investigation.

  After working three years as an officer in the city of Seal Beach, and thirteen more for the NBPD, forty-two-year-old Voth was soon appointed the lead detective on this case. But, as he pointed out later, this mostly meant that he was in charge of taking copious notes and keeping the records organized. He said his more experienced superiors made the decisions on how to proceed.

  “People were not coming to me and asking me what to do,” he recalled recently.

  The product of a modest upbringing, Voth grew up with two sisters in Norwalk in Los Angeles County, a long way from his parents’ native state of Kansas. His father, who was in the army, had been making his way from a training camp in the Philippines to Okinawa, Japan, when World War Two ended, and he decided to move the family to California.

  A star jock in his teen years, Voth was voted “Athlete of the Year” for his performance on the baseball, basketball, and football teams at Excelsior High School. After graduation, he played football at Cerritos College, then transferred to Fresno State to study criminology. While he was on a two-year football scholarship, the scouts came out to watch him play.

  As Voth got older, he switched from tight end to wide receiver and punter. He took some pretty good hits from behind, feeling lucky to have gotten through high school and college without a serious injury.

  “Like everybody,” he recalled, “you dream you’re going to go to the NFL.”

  But he never got a shot at the big time. Little did he know that his athletic experiences would play into a murder investigation.

  CHAPTER 3

  The morning after Bill McLaughlin was murdered, Nanette took his son, Kevin, out for breakfast at Denny’s. Kevin found this unusual because she’d never offered to do that before. Despite his speech difficulties, she told him that he was the one who needed to call his sister Jenny to tell her what had happened.

  Doing as he was told, Kevin tracked down Jenny at work.

  “Are you sitting down?” he asked.

  “Yes, what’s going on?”

  “Dad’s been shot.”

  “Is he okay?”

  “No, he’s dead.”

  “How did this happen?”

  “I don’t know. Somebody shot him.”

  “Okay, where are you?” Jenny asked. “I’m going to come get you. We’re going to figure out what’s going on.”

  “I’m at the beach house with Nanette.”

  With that, Jenny immediately left the high school where she was teaching and called Nanette for more details on her way to the Seashore house, where she planned to pick up her brother and take him back to Balboa Coves.

  Jenny thought the ensuing call was very awkward and oddly short.

  “Is it true?” she asked Nanette. “Kevin called me and said our dad’s been shot.”

  But Nanette had very little to say other than to confirm what Kevin had said.

  “Yeah, it’s true,” she said. “It sucks. It really sucks.”

  Worried this might be a trap, and that the shooter might be lurking around and would try to shoot them, Jenny asked Nanette to have Kevin meet her outside the beach house. Then Jenny called her mother, who, in turn, called Jenny’s sister, Kim.

  It was late in Tokyo when Kim got the call, just in from a night out with a friend. By that point, their mother was already making arrangements to fly to Newport Beach, where she ended up staying for several months, sleeping in the room she’d once shared with Bill, so she could take care of her disabled son and try to hold her grieving family together.

  As Jenny pulled up to the house in her gold Mercedes, Kevin was just coming out the front gate. Jenny was stymied why Nanette only peeked out the front door and then shut it quickly without coming outside to speak to her, console her, or try to share in their grief.

  After striking out with Nanette and Kevin for more details, Jenny decided to go straight to the police. She arrived at Balboa Coves with her brother just after 9:00 A.M. Finding no detectives, she headed over to the station, where she found Van Horn and Voth, who had been trying to reach her too.

  Like Kevin, the only person Jenny could offer as a possible suspect was Jacob Horowitz.

  Asked about her father’s relationship with Nanette Johnston, Jenny said she knew of no problems, even given the difference in their ages. As far as she knew, her father wasn’t seeing anyone romantically besides Nanette.

  Anyone with access to keys was a suspect at that point, so the detectives asked Jenny where she’d been around nine o’clock the night before. She said she was horseback riding with a couple people at the Nellie Gail Ranch in Laguna Niguel. Afterward, she headed home to visit with some friends, until nearly 11:00 P.M. After confirming her alibi, the police had Jenny take a lie detector test. She passed, as did her sister, Kim. Detectives crossed them both off the list of possible suspects.

  Meanwhile, Nanette called her ex-husband, K. Ross Johnston, to tell him what had happened.

  “Bill has been shot,” she said.

  “I’m sorry to hear that,” K. Ross said. “Is he going to be okay?”

  “He’s no longer with us.”

  “Oh, I’m sorry. I didn’t know.”

  Nanette explained that Bill had been killed at the house after Kristofer’s soccer game, while she was out shopping, and she had receipts to prove it. But she said the police would probably be calling him to confirm her “alibi” all the same.

  “When they do, you don’t need to tell them anything about Eric, because he’s not involved,” she said, referring to Eric Naposki, the professional linebacker and nightclub bouncer whom she’d been bringing to Kristofer’s games for the past eighteen months.

  Kevin McLaughlin didn’t have anywhere to go that Friday. Because the police were still processing the house for evidence, they didn’t want him wandering around, so he rode his three-wheeled bike around the community, presumably looking for Goldie, the family’s golden retriever, who had run off after the murder. Nanette had to call Animal Control to see if they could find her. The dog turned up a couple of days later.

  Told for the second consecutive night that he couldn’t stay at the Balboa Coves house, Kevin called his girlfriend, Sandy Baumgardner, who worked in pharmaceutical sales, around four o’clock to come get him.

  “Someone came in last night and shot my dad,” Kevin said.

  Sandy heard someone in the background telling him not to say anything more. “Who is that talking to you?” she asked, confused.

  “That’s Bill,” he said.

  Now she was even more confused. I thought he just said Bill was dead, she thought.

  “Put me on with Bill,” she ordered.

  Sandy could hear Kevin expla
ining who she was to a man who then took the phone and identified himself as Detective Bill Hartford.

  “What happened?” she asked.

  But Hartford didn’t say much. Sandy wasn’t sure that Bill McLaughlin was dead, but she suspected as much because the detective was being so cagey. She immediately called her father, a college buddy of Bill’s, who split his time between Newport and Colorado Springs.

  “I think Bill McLaughlin was murdered last night,” she said. “I’m going down there and I’ll call you back when I know more.”

  As soon as she arrived at Balboa Coves and saw the yellow police tape around the house, her suspicions were confirmed. Hartford met her out front, lifting the tape so she could get under it.

  “Whoever did this had intimate knowledge of his schedule,” Sandy said.

  Hartford seemed irritated that Jenny had dropped off Kevin and left him there all day, because he couldn’t be left alone while the detectives were trying to work.

  After talking briefly with the police, Sandy took Kevin to the house of a family friend who had done business with Bill and was a surfing buddy of Kevin’s.

  “There’s only one person who stood to gain from this,” the friend said. “Nanette.”

  CHAPTER 4

  After interviewing Jenny McLaughlin, Detectives Voth and Van Horn headed back to Balboa Coves to continue their search for evidence at the house.

  Voth looked for the spare keys in the dock box on the rear patio, but the box was empty. He hadn’t expected the shiny keys left by the killer to be from there anyway, because they showed no signs of rust or salt corrosion.

  In an interview that afternoon at the station, Nanette told detectives that she’d met Bill in early 1991 while in-line skating on the boardwalk, where they were introduced by some mutual friends. Only she couldn’t remember their names.