I'll Take Care of You

by Caitlin Rother

  “That killer is out there,” he said. “I can solve the crime. I’m the only guy who knows the truth.”

  He told me he’d started having trust problems with Nanette in October 1994, so he asked a buddy to trail her, and that’s how Bill’s license plate number ended up in his notebook. (This was a very different story from what he’d originally told police, which was that he’d gotten the number after Bill’s murder because he was trying to determine if his girl was in danger.)

  I listened, thinking that much of what he said was questionable “woe-is-me” stuff. When he finally let me get a word in, I asked him, if his story was true, then why not bring it up before his trial?

  Eric told me his attorneys knew all about the hit man story, but they didn’t bring it up in court because they didn’t think the prosecution had enough evidence to convict him. As a result, they decided to go “straight for the win. They didn’t tell me because I never would have agreed.”

  Eric said his attorneys also wouldn’t let him testify, and “I blew it by not forcing the issue.”

  So, I asked, if he knew that Nanette had hired a killer to murder Bill, then why did he stay with her for months after the murder, living with her on Seashore Drive in Newport Beach and later that summer on Foxhollow in Dove Canyon?

  Despite what came out at his trial, he still claimed he really wasn’t with her all that time.

  “I didn’t want nothing to do with that fucking girl after I found out what happened,” he said.

  But what about the photo the police took of his Pathfinder parked at the Dove Canyon house? I asked.

  That didn’t mean he was living there, he said. He came back to town to pick up the car in September 1995.

  “I was never going to live there,” he said. “I’m the one who called the guy in Lake Forest to tell him we weren’t taking the house.” (Eric did call the owner, but he said that he and Nanette still wanted to buy the house. They just couldn’t do it until after the controversy had died down.)

  In spite of such indignation, I had to ask him half-a-dozen times for details about the timing and reasons for his breakup with Nanette. Eric repeatedly tried to evade the question, then, as if I were his confidante, he acknowledged that it took him a while to pull away.

  “You keep your friends close and your enemies closer,” he said.

  At one point, he told me that he and Nanette weren’t together again after he left to train for the June 1995 season. Then a few minutes later, he acknowledged that he went to visit her at the “farm.” I found out later that the six months she served at that detention facility didn’t even start until May 1996 or I would have asked him to clarify that.

  Still trying to keep his ego in tact, Eric claimed he was the one “who broke it off, not Nanette. She wanted me to be with her. She wanted the relationship to continue.”

  I told him I’d be back to talk some more after Nanette’s trial.

  CHAPTER 43

  On the morning of January 9, 2012, when opening statements were set to start in Nanette Packard’s trial, there was a full moon in the cobalt blue sky, which slowly lightened as the sun rose over Santa Ana.

  Outside the courthouse, several satellite trucks from Orange and Los Angeles Counties were parked along the street for this high-profile media event, which was also being covered by Dateline and 48 Hours. The coverage proved that a greedy and diabolical woman charged with murder was considered just as, if not more, interesting to the American public than an NFL-playing pseudocelebrity such as Eric Naposki.

  True to form, Nanette’s appearance had changed dramatically since she’d gone to jail two and a half years earlier, only this time it wasn’t by choice. Her dyed and chemically straightened blond hair had grown out and was now back to its natural state: long, very dark, and wavy to the point of frizz. She wore it pulled back tightly into a ponytail or braid, with a few blond skunk-stripe highlights. Her hairstyle, reminiscent of jailhouse gang fashion, exposed her thin face and reportedly cosmetically altered cheekbones.

  Sitting behind the McLaughlin family were Nanette’s father and stepmother, Nanette’s daughter Lishele and her husband Shawn. Nanette’s ex-husbands Billy McNeal and K. Ross Johnston were there too, but the bailiff ordered them to leave the courtroom and said they couldn’t come back until the closing arguments. Nanette had made sure of that.

  Her attorney, Mick Hill, followed them into the hallway to explain. “She’s making it a point that you and K. Ross aren’t in there for the opening or for the trial,” he told Billy. Hill added that because they were prosecution witnesses, Nanette didn’t want them to be present while the other witnesses were testifying.

  Knowing how vindictive Nanette was, Billy wasn’t surprised. He also didn’t mind, though, because he hadn’t planned to come back until the closings anyway, when the whole case would be summarized. K. Ross, on the other hand, was quite upset. He’d attended every day of Eric Naposki’s trial as a walk-up to the main event, where the fate of his children’s mother would be decided.

  “I can’t believe this,” K. Ross told Billy in their first conversation ever, complaining that “his rights were being violated” because he couldn’t observe the proceedings.

  Now that Nanette’s accomplice had been found guilty, the McLaughlin family and the prosecution team felt more confident about their case, knowing that much of the same evidence and witnesses had already persuaded the first jury.

  This time, both sides gave their openings at the start. Speaking to the primarily female jury, Murphy’s two-hour presentation not only incorporated many points from the first trial, it was strikingly similar in some ways to the one that Eric’s defense team had delivered, alleging that Nanette was the real culprit because she was the instigator behind the murder.

  Given that this was a conspiracy-to-murder case, some of Murphy’s job was already done. Judge Froeberg didn’t prevent the jury from knowing that Eric had already been convicted, which likely bolstered the believability of Murphy’s theory about how the murder went down.

  Describing Eric Naposki’s dire financial straits, Murphy called the defendant’s “deadbeat dad status” a “milestone in fatherhood” that prevented him from getting a driver’s license in Massachusetts. Nanette had no assets or income of her own either, he said. She owed Bill McLaughlin $35,000, and “she had no job, no profession, no college degree, no formalized skill set.”

  He said the owner of the hardware store where Eric had keys made just weeks before the murder would testify that he could tell from looking at the key the killer had left in the front door that it had most likely come from his high-quality key-cutting machine.

  “He thinks he cut that key,” Murphy said.

  The prosecutor explained that the detectives drove from the soccer field to Eric’s apartment and on to Balboa Coves in forty minutes, proving that Eric had a ten-minute window to commit the murder while Nanette hightailed it over to Crate & Barrel.

  “Detectives have driven this route repeatedly,” he said.

  The evidence was going to show that “Eric Naposki was at [Nanette’s] side every step of the way.” She knew Bill would be home the night of the murder. She drove Eric toward the murder scene, where Eric got the key stuck in the front door. He fumbled around and dropped the other key, shot Bill, and walked across the bridge to work. Then, later in the evening, Nanette paged Eric as soon as the police left her at the beach house. She had him watch her kids the day after Bill’s funeral, and she asked Eric to move into the house on Seashore Drive while she was in jail. Eric owned a Beretta F-series 9-mm gun, and used the same Hydra-Shok bullets in his Jennings .380 that the killer had used. Eric had Bill’s license plate number in his notebook. They both lied about guns. Eric prevented Kevin McLaughlin from trying to change the locks at the beach house. And Nanette sued the McLaughlin family for half the estate, the beach house, and a monthly stipend.

  “I have every confidence you’re going to hold this woman accountable for what she did and conv
ict her for murder.”

  Mick Hill’s opening statement included points from both the defense’s and prosecution’s cases from Eric’s trial, but attempted to spin Nanette’s behavior in a whole new way. Hill claimed that seventeen years of delayed prosecution and the loss or destruction of exculpatory evidence made it difficult for his client to get a fair trial. He also characterized the NBPD detectives as aloof and incompetent.

  The jury already knew Eric was responsible for pulling the trigger, he said, “the question is why.” The evidence, he said, would show that Eric murdered Bill out of jealousy and greed, to eliminate the competition so he could have Nanette to himself.

  “Nanette was not involved in this case, so why are we here?” he asked rhetorically. Because her ex-husband showed police the singles ad she placed to meet Bill McLaughlin, he said.

  Nanette placed a great importance on money, he said. “She wants a rich man to take care of her. . . . She always had a lover on the side. Does that mean she’s a killer? No.” She would never murder Bill McLaughlin “for someone who had no money,” because her MO was to have sex with men on the side.

  Using Bill’s money, she bought these men presents, took friends to concerts, and told everyone that she was successful, he said. She also adopted Bill’s life story as her own. But, he said, “she never, ever, ever leaves Mr. McLaughlin for all of these people,” because he was worth more to her alive than dead.

  Eric, on the other hand, was a deadbeat dad who wrote in his journal that his goal was to get out of his financial mess. He owed money to everybody and “he saw Nanette as this way to get out.”

  As Joseph Stoltman Jr. would testify, he said, Eric became suspicious of Nanette two months before the murder and wanted to hire him to tail her. But instead, Eric asked Todd Calder to do the job, which is how he got Bill’s license plate number in his notebook.

  It was Eric, not Nanette, who made copies of the keys, he said, and one of them jammed in the lock. “She wouldn’t give him a key that would jam,” he said, and “the fact that he had a silencer made is indicative that he was planning something.”

  “We know that Eric did the planning and the murder on his own,” Hill said, adding that he even “boasted about the murder to Suzanne Cogar.”

  And it was Eric, not Nanette, who knew that the gun used to kill Bill was a nine-millimeter. He changed his story to incorporate the Denny’s call at 8:52 P.M. and said he had the phone bill. But “the bill never surfaces . . . and that’s because he never made that call.”

  At that point, Hill switched gears to focus on his client, acknowleding that she was a “horrible person.” But at the same time, he said, she was also a “loving mother,” a school volunteer, and a soccer mom.

  “She was really engaged in her children’s lives . . . and she wanted the best for them.”

  Because money was her primary motivator, he said, she wasn’t “going to kill the golden goose to be with the pauper. She would not have done this to her kids,” certainly not two weeks before the Christmas gift-giving season.

  From there, Hill explained the importance of Bill’s lawsuit with Jacob Horowitz: Nanette knew that Bill had finally won the protracted legal battle and was about to get $10 million more in the coming months, one more reason to keep him around.

  Nanette wrote the $250,000 check while she was on a spending spree, he said, but “the fact that she files a palimony suit is far more indicative of her not being involved in the murder than of her being involved in the murder,” because ending up with a $220,000 settlement would not be anywhere as lucrative as that $10 million.

  Eric did this murder, he said, but he did it on his own. “You’re going to realize she has her perfect life.”

  As the prosecution witnesses discussed Nanette’s lies, the defense piled on during cross-examination until the extent of her general bad behavior was cumulatively astounding. The heartbreaking testimony of her first and third ex-husbands, who clearly had once loved her dearly, showed how incredibly skilled she’d been at seducing and manipulating men into giving her more love and money than most people see in a lifetime. And yet, here she was, indigent enough to qualify for a public defender, with nothing to show for her years of deceit.

  Nanette scribbled furious notes, which she showed to her attorney. This trial moved much more quickly than the first one, because Hill didn’t spend anywhere near as much time as Angelo MacDonald cross-examining witnesses. But in a strategy that baffled some observers, Hill, nicknamed “Columbo” by Judge Froeberg, brought out more of her scheming and nasty behavior than the prosecutor.

  Hill admitted at the start that he was going to spend a lot of time showing what a bad person Nanette was, but that didn’t make her a killer. Yet, as he continued to highlight his client’s negative traits, his claims that she was a good and loving mother—with a pattern of cheating on Bill but never leaving him—left virtually no room for sympathy.

  “Did Nanette have expensive tastes?” Hill asked for the zillionth time, prompting annoyed utterances from one of Bill’s friends who had been watching every day.

  “Yes,” K. Ross Johnston replied.

  “You kept a pretty thick file on Nanette?”

  “Very,” K. Ross said. “My son is twenty-six.”

  “She burned you numerous times. Would that be fair to say?”

  “I wouldn’t say it’s all of them, just the ones I know of,” K. Ross said, referring to her affairs.

  “Do you think she’s motivated by money?”

  “Yes, that’s a fair statement.”

  Turning K. Ross’s testimony his own way, Matt Murphy got him to say that even though Nanette followed a general pattern with her lovers, she broke it with Eric. And that although Nanette went on cruises and skiing with other men, to K. Ross’s knowledge, Eric was the only one she introduced to her family.

  Reminding the jury that Nanette had asked K. Ross not to tell police that Eric was with her at the game, Murphy asked, “Are you telling the truth about that?”

  “Absolutely,” K. Ross said.

  On the morning of day three, Murphy was about to play one of Eric’s interviews with police when Mick Hill renewed his motion to keep the jury from hearing it. Judge Froeberg had already denied the request once, ruling that Eric was a co-conspirator, but Hill contended that Murphy still “has failed to present any evidence there was a conspiracy.”

  The judge disagreed. While the jury was absent, Froeberg recited a compelling list of points and evidence that bolstered the prosecution’s conspiracy theory, signaling that he appreciated the merits of Murphy’s case:

  1) The boot salesman had testified that when Nanette bought lizard skin boots she said they were for her boyfriend who played in the NFL.

  2) Eric called Jason Gendron and threatened him, trying to get the Cadillac back for Nanette.

  3) K. Ross Johnston testified that Eric and Nanette said Eric had to leave the soccer game because he had an appointment at eight o’clock. Then Nanette asked K. Ross not to tell police Eric was at the game.

  4) Sharon Hedberg, the real estate agent, said Eric and Nanette had been shopping for a home in July 1994, but they couldn’t purchase it until the next spring.

  5) Brian Ringler, Bill’s accountant, detailed all the sums of money that Nanette had misappropriated.

  6) And Detective Voth had talked about the keys the killer had left in the door and on the doormat, noting that Nanette didn’t have one for the pedestrian-access gate on her key chain.

  Hill tried to argue one last time. “I don’t believe any of that evidence is indicative of a conspiracy at all,” he retorted. Insisting that Murphy’s theory was “innuendo” and “stretched” at best, he said that allowing the jury to hear Eric’s interview would be prejudicial for his client because Hill couldn’t cross-examine Eric.

  Murphy disagreed. “Every single one of those things [the judge listed] independently is enough to introduce Mr. Naposki’s [statements],” he said.

  Froeb
erg sided with Murphy again, and the jury heard the tape.

  Knowing he was about to testify, Nanette’s third husband, Billy McNeal, stopped in the bathroom, where, to his discomfort, he ran into Nanette’s father. Billy hadn’t talked to the Maneckshaw family since the summer before her arrest in 2009, and yet her father acted as if no time had passed. It was almost as if they were running into each other at the grocery store.

  “Hey, Billy,” Adi Maneckshaw said in a friendly voice.

  Billy politely returned the salutation, but he had no interest in prolonging the conversation. “Hey,” he said, then proceeded with his business, thinking, Dude, you’re crazy, man.

  Putting the awkward encounter behind him, Billy walked with confidence to the witness stand, where he sat down and stared at Nanette, giving her the “dead eye.” This silent confrontation sent the typically unemotional and expressionless defendant into an instant fury.

  “Fucking bastard,” she said loud enough for Billy—and presumably the jury—to hear.

  Billy watched her seethe as Mick Hill scolded her for the outburst. Billy then turned to the jury box to see if any of them noticed the exchange. He was shocked to see how little self-restraint Nanette had when it counted the most.

  Anxious because there was so much he wanted to say, Billy hoped to demolish her with his testimony. Therefore, he was a bit disappointed that Murphy didn’t probe any deeper than the quick, straightforward questions about the lies she’d told and how much money she’d made Billy spend on her. It seemed like Murphy had “left a lot of artillery in the gun.”

  Under cross-examination, however, Billy was pleased to see that Mick “did all of Matt’s work for him,” and was equally pleased when this “opened up a whole can of worms.”