A CLOCKWORK MURDER: The Night A Twisted Fantasy Became A Demented Reality

by Steve Jackson

  During the opening statements, Peggy sat in the hallway outside the courtroom. There was no part she wanted to see or hear. Both fathers, Bob Luiszer and Bob Salmon, were present but were overwhelmed by the horrific video. Luiszer looked down at the floor and covered his ears with his hands. Salmon, who suffered from a hearing impairment, removed the headset he’d worn throughout his son’s trial and stared at his lap.

  The hearing had gone pretty much like the trial. Dave Young had opened again for the prosecution with Salmon’s confession before moving on. “Jacine was the type of person your son or daughter would be friends with,” Young said. “Her death caused pain and suffering to many people.”

  Young said the state would prove “beyond a reasonable doubt” the existence of six aggravating factors spelled out by the law: that Salmon “intentionally killed a kidnapped person”; that he was a party to a conspiracy to kill someone; that the murderers lay in wait and “ambushed” the victim; that the murder was committed to conceal another felony—in this case sexual assault; and that she’d been killed so that she could not identify them.

  The last aggravating factor was the big one, the one that had pushed juries into voting for the death penalty in the past. Young said the prosecution would also prove the aggravating factor that the murder was “especially heinous, cruel and depraved” and committed in a “conscienceless or pitiless manner which was unnecessarily torturous to the victim.”

  Speaking to that last aggravating factor, Young noted that when Salmon and Woldt finally succeeded in killing Jacine, they’d exchanged high fives. Pointing a finger at the defendant who kept his head down and drew on his legal pad, the prosecutor concluded, “It is a horror of this crime that looms large in our conscience and calls for the death penalty. This is the man who committed this crime. The only appropriate punishment is the maximum penalty.”

  Robert Pepin, the president of the Colorado Criminal Defense Bar who had replaced Enwall, opened for the defense, saying his side would be calling witnesses to testify that Salmon was a nonviolent, caring individual until he fell under the sway of the much more evil George Woldt. Some of those witnesses would be psychologists who would attest that Salmon had a dependent personality disorder that made him so desperate to keep Woldt’s friendship that he participated in the rape and murder.

  “If it weren’t for George Woldt, Lucas Salmon wouldn’t be involved in this,” Pepin said.

  Salmon was not the leader in Jacine’s murder, the attorney said. “He is a strange, lonely, immature, odd person, but he hadn’t done a thing to hurt anyone before this. He was captured by George Woldt, who made him his own.”

  Under Woldt’s control, his client did not have a firm grasp of right or wrong. “This is not a ‘woe is poor Lucas’ argument,” Pepin said, “but he was lost in this world. He was under unusual duress.”

  Apparently forgetting the high fives the two exchanged after Jacine’s death, Pepin told the judges, “There is nothing that suggests there was a particular joy in her killing. There were no shouts of glee and no particular effort to humiliate her.”

  The experts’ testimony, Salmon’s age at the time of the murder, and his general immaturity would be offered as mitigators, he said. Another mitigator was that Salmon had “cooperated” with the police after his initial denial.

  “He was told he didn’t have to talk, and he did,” Pepin said. “He was told he could get a lawyer anytime, and he didn’t. He went with the police to show them the body.”

  Pepin then made a curious comment. Bad as the crime was, he said, Lucas Salmon did not “fit the profile” of the killers on death row; the defense would be calling a witness to demonstrate that, too.

  “He needs to be taken away,” Pepin said, “and spend the rest of his life in prison. Nothing can ease the pain that she died so young and so horribly.

  His client should “spend every single remaining day of his life behind bars, but he should not be executed.”

  After Pepin finished, prosecutor Zook called the El Paso County coroner to the stand to testify about Jacine’s wounds—the pain, and fear, and suffering they had caused. And then Zook surprised everyone by announcing that he was resting his case. The judges had what they needed; there was little more the prosecution could add.

  The remaining days of the hearing featured testimony by Salmon’s friends and family, but mostly was taken up by another battle of the psychologists. The former described a completely different young man from the one who had raped and killed Jacine. His brother, Micah, testified, “He was a gentle person then and now. He was a nice, kind, quiet person.”

  Woldt was the problem, Micah said. “Lucas was jealous of George being a ladies’ man and meeting women. He admired George’s freedom.”

  The former girlfriend Salmon dated at the end of 1997 and early 1998, Christina, said she’d liked Salmon from the first time she met him. “He spoke German,” she said. “He had a sarcastic sense of humor. I was happy when he characterized me as his girlfriend.

  “He was consoling and so respectful of my boundaries. He enjoyed making out, but he was the most respectful guy I have ever dated.”

  Lucas’s friends said that he never seemed to quite fit in. However, they acknowledged on cross-examination that they never thought of him as being anything more than another out-of-step teenager. They also conceded that he’d played in a rock-and-roll band, could be friendly and outgoing, and used his considerable intellect to engage in conversations and debates, especially on matters of religion.

  As promised, the defense called its experts to testify about Salmon’s psychological makeup. At Salmon’s trial, Cleaver had told the jury that her client’s dependent personality disorder made it impossible for him to “deliberate” the murder of Jacine. The jury had rejected that contention, but the defense still hoped that the judges would accept it as mitigating.

  Colorado Springs psychologist Alice Brill said her examination revealed Salmon had “problems with reality and a high level of anxiety,” but he did not fit neatly into any one psychological category. “He’s passive and doesn’t have a clear identity,” she said “He’s confused, has no direction, and can’t find his way in life.”

  Wilfred Van Gorp, a professor of psychology at New York University and Cornell Medical Center in NYC, testified that Salmon suffered from an “introverted personality disorder” and was easily influenced by strong-willed people. “Lucas Salmon felt the friendship between he and George Woldt would be threatened if he didn’t go through with the plan.”

  Berton Dragten, another Colorado Springs psychologist who said he’d interviewed Salmon twenty-one times since his conviction, said, “I see him as emotionally immature and dependent, a person who seeks the approval of others.

  “He did not have the ego, strength or self-esteem to resist Woldt’s influence in taking part in the crime.” However, on cross-examination Dragten admitted that Salmon knew what he was doing was wrong and that there would be penalties for his actions.

  Thomas Thompson, a neuropsychologist from New Mexico, said Salmon was immature. The defendant’s thinking was “not orderly” and his social skills “impoverished.” That all led to him falling “under the spell” of George Woldt.

  The defense’s star expert, Meloy, took the stand again to essentially reiterate what he’d told the jury: Woldt put Salmon under “unusual and substantial duress,” important wording, as it mirrored one of the legal mitigators the defense was trying to get the judges to accept. By the time he stepped down from the stand, Meloy had racked up $70,000 for his examinations and testimony.

  The prosecution had countered the defense experts with experts of their own, who again testified that none of the personality problems or “thinking disorders” described by their counterparts—even if they existed—took away from the fact that Salmon knew that was he was doing that night was wrong, and went ahead anyway. Nor was he simply a brainwashed follower. In instance after instance, they pointed out where Salmon had been a
n equal partner and, indeed, had taken a lead role in the stabbing of Jacine.

  Colorado Springs psychiatrist Daniel Kinsey said Salmon was not suffering from an antisocial personality disorder, normally considered dangerous, nor was he under the control of Woldt. “He recognized emotions in himself and others. I don’t think there is an adequate explanation for this crime. I don’t see any mental illness.”

  The prosecution also called former coworkers and acquaintances to the stand to combat the image of Salmon as die introverted loser, painting him instead as self-assured and sexually aggressive. One woman from his father’s business testified that they’d had normal conversations until the day he put his hand under her dress. “I wanted to be his friend but he wanted to get together to have sex,” she said. “One day he thought we were laughing at him and he said, ‘I’ll have both you bitches fired.’ ”

  Often during the defense case, especially when one of the experts testified about what a “victim” Salmon had been, or when one of his friends or family members described the sweet and good-natured young man they knew, Peggy and Bob had inserted the earplugs or cupped their hands over their ears. They were not in the courtroom, however, when Salmon’s parents took the stand. They understood the other family was also suffering, they just didn’t want to hear any apologies for his actions.

  The Salmons told the panel they loved their son, but did not ask that his life be spared. Bob Salmon blamed himself in part but also said his son had always been a little strange.

  “I was too busy to really dwell on everything that could happen to him,” he said. “He was the sweetest, most unselfish, compliant child, but Lucas has always been different. He was slower to learn things. He sometimes wore his clothes inside out or backwards, didn’t tie his shoes or comb his hair.

  “Back then you thought it was cute, but he didn’t quite get it. He looked like an unmade bed. You thought he would outgrow it but he didn’t…. To know Lucas is to know that there is something horribly wrong here.”

  Lucas was picked on in school, his father said. Even when he got to college, he never fit in. “He wasn’t popular. He’s severely troubled. He doesn’t think like other people. He had very strange and bizarre perceptions of what is real.”

  However, having said all that, Bob Salmon told the judges that he hoped that whatever decision they reached, he hoped it would “bring some closure for Jacine’s family and friend. I recognize that their loss is complete. Our loss can’t be compared to theirs.

  “I guess I don’t envy your decision. I love my son. But I have to tell you that Jacine’s family is my primary concern. I have to tell you that whatever’s best for them is my desire.”

  Salmon’s mother, Gail Keller, told the judges that Lucas was bright but had never “lived up to his potential.”

  “I’m not here today to make any excuses for my son. I want to express my deepest sympathy to Jacine’s mother. I’m so sorry. She’s been on my mind and in my prayers since this happened.

  “I believe in a God who punishes sin. I love my son, but I hate what he did. I pray for all of you. I know it’s a very difficult thing. His family will honor any decision that is made as a just decision. “I never, never could have imagined this … that my son could be convicted of rape and murder and be facing the death penalty. I just ask that you come to this decision carefully and honestly. I’ll be praying for you.”

  After the Salmons testified, and over the prosecution’s objections, Judge Parrish allowed the defense to call defense attorney Ingrid Defranco to the stand to present a “proportionality review” that compared Salmon to the other men already on death row. Until this point, judges serving on death-penalty panels had considered much the same evidence that juries had. Even their decisions had mirrored past jury decisions. For instance, although the option was on the books, no jury had ever sent a defendant to death row for a first-degree felony-murder conviction. Nor had the panels that decided the fates of two of the men who had faced the panels convicted of felony murder. But now, the Salmon defense team was offering evidence that no Colorado death-penalty jury had ever been asked to contemplate.

  Always in the past, a proportionality review had been reserved for an appellate court trying to determine whether a defendant had been fairly sentenced. Gary Davis, through his attorneys, had asked the Colorado Supreme Court for a proportionality review—a comparison of crimes and criminals to determine if his death sentence for the 1987 murder of Virginia May was appropriate. In that case, the court had ruled that a proportionality review was not constitutionally required and determined that there was “no defect” in the state law. In pretrial motions in other cases, defense attorneys had asked that such information be allowed in front of a jury, but trial courts had denied those motions as well. Now all that had changed.

  When Defranco took the stand to testify for Salmon’s defense, she presented a chart comparing other killers, as well as the crimes they’d committed, to Lucas Salmon and the murder of Jacine Gielinski.

  According to Defranco, Salmon was younger than any of those defendants, had not committed other crimes, and therefore did not “fit the profile” of the other men on death row. The defense strategy of a proportionality review had caught the prosecution by surprise. They had nothing to counter it, except the hope that the judges would see that the defense was comparing apples to oranges.

  After the defense rested, Jacine’s parents were allowed to speak, although they were limited in the scope of their comments. According to Judge Parrish’s interpretation of the Colorado Victim’s Rights Law, which allows victims or their families to address the court and the defendant, the family could not make recommendations as to what sentence they thought was fair.

  Peggy Luiszer went first. She carried Jacine’s favorite flowers, daisies, the photograph of her daughter that she’d kept on her lap throughout the trial, and a square bronze urn containing Jacine’s ashes.

  Before Jacine’s death, when she’d learned about murderers and heard about their crimes, she’d thought that they didn’t deserve to live and that the death penalty was a fitting punishment. But she’d never given capital punishment much thought beyond that.

  Then Jacine was murdered, and Peggy had been forced to think about capital punishment. To be honest, she wasn’t sure that life in prison was a better deal than the death penalty. But the law allowing executions was on the books, and if two men deserved to die, she thought they were Lucas Salmon and George Woldt.

  So she didn’t understand the rationale behind the proportionality review. How could the defense compare one murderer to another? So what if Salmon was young? He was over eighteen, the legal age for executions. Besides, Jacine had been young, too. And so what if this was his first offense? It was a horrible one.

  But all she was allowed to do was speak on behalf of her daughter. Jacine was a good person, she told the panel, someone who’d always been willing to help others, whether it was teaching a child to kick a soccer ball or gathering clothes to give to homeless shelters.

  “After twenty-two years of being a mom, this is all I have left,” she said. “Obviously, I’ll never get to be the mother of the bride. I’ll never be a mom again, never be called ‘Mom.’ ”

  Peggy paused, tried to hold back the tears, couldn’t, and went on. “I just miss her awful much. It’s unexplainable. I can’t tell you how I feel. There’s a hole in my heart. It’s like an amputation. It’s just never going to come back.”

  As she spoke, Salmon continued to watch her or turned to read the transcript of her testimony as it appeared on a monitor in front of the defense table. Behind him, his father closed his eyes.

  Before she started she was afraid that she would falter, but now the words came tumbling out, including words of regret. “After she died, we asked to come see her,” she said. “But the coroner and doctor advised us not to. So we didn’t get to say good-bye. It was terrible. Absolutely terrible.”

  Her life, her marriage, and her future had all b
een changed forever for the worse, Peggy testified. “This has been our life. Wherever we go, it always comes up. Everyone keeps saying how strong we are now. But we’re not strong. It’s just the way our life is now.”

  “At night I go to bed and see their faces, Salmon’s and Woldt’s faces, and I don’t want anybody to touch me. I don’t know how rape victims survive.

  “Everyone says it’s supposed to get better as time goes on. But it hasn’t. It just hasn’t. … This has hurt so many people on both sides. It hurt the Salmon family, too.”

  Peggy spoke for fifty minutes. Throughout the courtroom people—spectators, jurors, families and friends, and lawyers—wept openly as Jacine’s mother exposed her broken heart. At last there was nothing much more for her to say, except, “I just wish she was here. I’ll never forgive him for what he’s done to me and to her.”

  Returning to her seat, Peggy buried her face in her hands and sobbed. Her husband put his arms around her shoulders, but he couldn’t stay there long, as he was called next to the stand. All he carried with him were memories of the girl who promised that he could escort her down the aisle on her wedding day.

  “It’s finally our chance to speak, after listening to the defense talk about Salmon and Woldt and say nothing about Jacine,” Bob Luiszer said bitterly, “as if she didn’t exist.”

  His voice quavered and his breath often came in short gasps as he offered snapshot memories of the flower girl at his wedding, the young woman who’d cared for a biological father who had never given her much of anything as he was dying, and the unquenchable competitive fire that drove her. “She wasn’t always the best player, but boy, she put her heart in it,” he said and tried to smile. “She accepted everybody. She had close friends among teachers, coaches, everybody.