by Lee Butcher
“Why would you be arrested if you weren’t involved in the robbery?”
“Yeah, but I was with him. I was in the car.”
“No, no, you weren’t involved in this robbery,” Batista said. “He was in there, you were outside. He (Chino) has his own reactions. He does what he wants to do. I mean, if you had walked in there with him, it would have been different, but you were outside. You need to talk, to settle him down. We need to resolve this because Ashley . . . is Ashley your daughter?”
“Yes, she’s my daughter.”
“How about Ashley?” Batista asked. “Who’s going to take care of Ashley? She needs her mother. She needs her father, too. It’s better to have a father, even if he may be in prison for a while, than no father at all.”
“You know, I will go to jail?”
“I’m sorry?” Batista asked.
“I will go to jail.”
“Why do you say that?”
“Well, you people haven’t looked at the bank tapes,” Paula said. “I was there.”
Batista was surprised. Up until this point, he had been under the impression that Paula was little more than a bystander. Now it appeared that she had been actively involved in the armed robbery, and if so, that made her an accessory in the murder of Lois Marrero.
“Well, we haven’t looked at the bank tapes,” he said. “I really don’t know much about what’s going on here.”
“Okay. I was there.”
“Okay, you might have walked in there. Were you in there with a gun?”
“Yes.”
Batista fumbled around as he tried to regain control over the conversation. Above all, he didn’t want to lose Paula’s and Chino’s trust because they thought he was lying to them.
“You may . . . What kind of a record do you have?” he asked. “Do you have a long criminal history? Probably not. Have you ever been arrested before?”
“No, nothing.”
“Okay. You see, the first time people are arrested, they are very lenient with you,” Batista said. “People can make one mistake, you know.”
“. . . lenient.”
“Very lenient. They go very easy on first offenders. They have first-offender programs where people have never committed any crime. People that got in with the wrong person or the wrong crowd and committed a crime. This is the first time, they are not going to throw the book at you. You have to think about that. But the longer this goes on, the tougher it is going to get for you, for him, for everybody. I mean, we don’t want this to drag on for hours. We need to resolve this. You want to resolve this, too, don’t you?”
“Of course.”
“You don’t want anybody else to get hurt, do you?”
“No, of course not.”
“I promised Chino that I would let him see Ashley. And I would let him talk to his mother if he wants to.”
“No, I think, we won’t even see her,” Paula said. “Because you guys will come in here and beat us.”
“No, we’re not.”
“And step on our necks.”
“No, wait a minute. We’re not going to do that.”
“Yeah. One of your officers is dead. You guys should be angry.”
“She’s not dead,” Batista said. “She’s in the hospital.”
So far as Batista new, Lois was still alive. The updates he received from Detective Gene Black had not mentioned that she had been killed. Batista tried not to think about Lois because they were good friends and had been on patrols together in their early days on the force. Batista feared that his emotions might cloud his judgment during negotiations, and a mistake could have murderous consequences.
The negotiations were going fairly well, he thought, because he had managed to establish a tenuous bond with both Paula and Chino. Batista was optimistic that he could resolve the situation without anyone else getting hurt. Of course, there was the possibility of a shoot-out at any moment with bloody consequences. If Chino found out that Lois was dead, things could change drastically; he would know that he had nothing left to lose and he might want to go out in a blaze of glory.
And then, in a move that defied credulity, the Tampa chief of police made the situation even more volatile and dangerous.
Chapter 10
The news media swarmed like bees around the Crossings. The robbery, hostage standoff, and murder of a female police officer was major news in the Tampa Bay area. So many news helicopters circled overhead that police officers, including the SWAT team, couldn’t hear their radios. Sergeant John Bennett, who was in command of the SWAT team, had to order the helicopters out of the area. Reporters badgered police relentlessly for additional information to put into their news updates. They were particularly keen on the condition of the wounded police officer.
Under this badgering, and the emotional pressure cooker that engulfed him, Police Chief Bennie Holder spoke at a press conference and reported that the wounded police officer, Lois Marrero, had died. The negotiators were dumbfounded. The revelation could change how Paula and Chino felt about giving up or shooting it out with the police.
“Once they know someone is dead,” said Sergeant Bennett, “it’s easier to kill again.” He defended Holder, stating that a hostage situation after the murder of a police officer was “a very chaotic, emotional scene.”
The news media’s coverage of the standoff was not always conducted with good sense or with the safety of the police officers in mind. Some of the harshest critics of the media’s coverage came from other journalists, notably Bob Steele, director of the ethics program at the Poynter Institute for Media Studies, an organization that owns the nearby St. Petersburg Times.
“My goal is to urge journalists to think about these situations before they’re in the minefield,” Steele said. “Just as a SWAT team prepares, so should journalists.”
Reporters, Steele said, should assume that a suspect has access to the news. Because of this, they should never report on police movements or mention situations that could change the status quo. One television station circled the apartment complex where the standoff was being staged and showed a SWAT tank moving onto the scene. The media was broadcasting information that could allow the suspects to spot and kill police officers.
“You could see the sniper in the tank,” Bennett said. “That infuriated me.”
Paula and Chino were watching the news when a television journalist reported that the wounded police officer was dead. They lost what little composure they had, shouting, cursing, and wondering how they could get out of the situation. Chino had nothing left to lose, and Paula wasn’t sure how the law would view her involvement with Lois’s murder.
“I just robbed a fucking bank and killed a cop!” Chino yelled over and over. He seemed ready to jump out of his own skin. “How many times did I shoot her?”
Paula was too tied up in knots to answer. She held her face in her hands and shook. “I’m not going to jail,” she said. “I’m not going to jail.”
“God! I just killed a cop!” Chino repeated.
Davis was scared at the heightened tension in the room. What would stop Paula and Chino from killing him, since they already had committed murder? He was almost certain he was going to be killed, and he was sure that Chino would commit suicide. He trembled.
“It was all fucked up,” Chino said to Paula. “It’s all your fault.”
Paula said, “I don’t want to do it (commit suicide).”
“Are you crazy? Don’t you know what we’ve done?”
“Yeah, okay.”
“I’ll probably get like ten or fifteen years and then I can come out of prison,” Paula said. “My mother can take care of Ashley while I’m away.”
“Why did the cop have to do that?” Chino asked. “We were running and she jumped out behind us and said, ‘Stop or I’ll kill you.’ Kill me? Kill me? That’s what she said to me. Can you believe that?”
Nobody said anything.
“How could she say that to me?” he asked angrily. “
Can you believe that?”
“I was only involved with the bank robbery,” Paula said.
“Yeah, you’re an accessory to bank robbery.”
“I can’t really be charged with anything but the bank robbery.”
“No, you’re gonna be charged with conspiring and being an accessory to all of this,” Chino explained.
“No, I don’t think so.”
“We should have stolen a car.”
Bay News 9 continued to update events at the standoff. Paula telephoned her mother again and told her to take care of Ashley and apologized for “messing up.” Davis didn’t think that Paula was considering suicide now, although he thought Chino would probably kill himself.
The telephone rang and Paula picked it up to find Batista on the other end.
“She’s dead!” Paula screamed at him. “Why are you lying to us?”
“I wasn’t lying,” Batista said honestly. “This is the first I’ve heard about it.”
In fact, Batista felt sick to his stomach. He had tried not to think of Lois and now he had found out that his friend was dead from one of these suspected killers.
“Yeah, one of your officers is dead. You guys should be angry. When are you guys going to beat us?”
“We’re not going to do that, Paula. You know, we have all the news media out here. We got cameras everywhere. We got helicopters.”
“Okay, you’ve got helicopters—”
“We’re not going to beat you.”
“You’re going to beat us and step on our necks,” Paula said. “When you don’t have the helicopters and media.”
“This is 2001,” Batista said. “This is a new century. We’re not talking about—”
“[It’s] 2001, yes, but it still happens. I’ve seen it.”
Batista thought fast to stay on top of the negotiations. The news about Lois had made things much more difficult. Chino was now a man who had committed one of the worst possible capital offenses: killing a police officer. Batista felt that the negotiating process was sliding downhill fast.
“It’s not going to happen here,” he said. “There is media everywhere, there are witnesses. I promise nothing is going to happen to you guys. You know, all you have to do is surrender. You put your hands behind your back, you’re going to be handcuffed and taken away from here. We’ll give you a chance to see Ashley. You both want to see Ashley, right?”
“Of course.”
“What’s going to happen to Ashley, you know?” Batista asked.
“I don’t know. I don’t know.”
“What’s going to happen to her? Think about Ashley. A week, two weeks, a year from now. Ashley is two years old. What is going to happen to Ashley when she is three, five?”
“Three, five. I’ll . . . I’ll be in jail. I . . . I was in the bank. I’ll . . . I’ll be in jail.”
“Chino will probably be in jail for a while, but you won’t be,” Batista said. He knew he was fighting an uphill battle now. Suicide, at the very least, seemed probable. Talking about Ashley was the only thing that calmed either Paula or Chino. “You’re a first-time offender. I don’t know what happened in the bank. It has to come out in court. You know, it’s a lot. We’re talking about—”
“One of you guys is dead. Are you going to come in here and shoot?”
“No, we’re not going to come up and shoot. We have the SWAT teams all over the place. We’re not going to leave. We’re not leaving. We’re not going anywhere. We’re going to talk as long as it takes. We want to resolve this.”
“Don’t come in here,” Paula warned, “because there will be a shoot-out.”
Batista instantly picked up the threat. He had expected that from Chino, but he thought Paula might surrender. Batista’s first impression was that Paula had little to do with the robbery or shooting; now he believed she was an equal partner with Chino. He no longer viewed her as even a partial victim of domination by Chino. He felt that negotiations were falling apart once again.
“Well, we don’t want that,” Batista said. “We don’t want anybody to get hurt. If you give up . . . that’s different than if we have to go in there and get you.”
“Yeah. I’m scared, though.”
“What? If you surrender, it’s a lot easier for everybody. The judge looks at that, the jury looks at that. You’re a mother. You have a two-year-old child. Her father made a mistake. Her father is going to go to prison. We’re not going to destroy his entire family. We’ve got the father going to prison and the mother may have to do some jail time, but not much. Somebody has got to bring up that little girl.”
“I’m not going to go to jail and get raped by all those bitches,” Paula said.
“Come on, Paula. You’ve been watching too many movies.”
“No, I don’t think so. I know it happens in there.”
“Paula, you want to resolve this,” Batista pleaded. “You want to be with Ashley. Think about her. What’s going to happen with Ashley? If you both aren’t around, what’s going to happen to her?”
Paula said something that was inaudible.
“Like I told Chino, she’s going to grow up to be a young lady,” Batista said. “A couple of years from now, she is going to go to the public library and she is going to see what happened to Mom and Dad. And it’s going to be all over the papers, Mom and Dad.”
“If I leave, will the newspapers all catch my face? I don’t want nobody to see my face.”
“Nobody’s going to see your face,” Batista said. “What we are going to do is bring you into a house, let you spend some time with Ashley. And then we are going to put you in a police car and take you to the police station. They will close off the camera. You’ll be surrounded by police officers. Keep your head down. We’ll put something over your head. They won’t have to see your face.” Batista heard Chino talking nervously in the background.
“Is that Chino?” he asked.
“Yes. He won’t shut up.”
“He’s scared about what’s going on. This is very tough. It’s not easy for you. It is not easy for you. We could resolve this. We could end this. That way, nobody else gets hurt. You get to see Ashley.”
“Okay . . . I want to talk to him (Chino),” Paula responded.
“Could I talk to Isaac?”
“Isaac, no.”
“Is Isaac okay?”
“Yes, he is fine.”
“We don’t want anybody to get hurt, okay?”
“We won’t hurt him.”
“You know, if you let Isaac go, that’s one less problem you have to worry about,” Batista said. “You will talk to Chino?”
“Okay, I will talk to him,” Paula said, and then added a warning: “Don’t come up here, please. Just let me talk to him. Give me five minutes.”
In his previous conversation with Chino, Batista had convinced him that they should converse on a police telephone to avoid outside interference. This telephone also contained a hidden television camera that broadcast to a police receiver. The camera was fixed and offered a limited view, but it helped police determine the layout of an area that might have to be raided. Police can get a better idea of how an area was defended and the subject’s state of mind.
“Isaac doesn’t need to be there,” Batista said when Paula gave the phone to Chino. “What do you need Isaac for?”
“If Isaac wasn’t here, you would have been up here already.”
“Come on, man, come on.”
“Come on,” Chino mocked.
“Chino, we don’t want to do that. We don’t want anybody else to get hurt. We don’t want Paula to get hurt and we don’t want you to get hurt. I promise you, we want to take you into custody without a scratch. You come out, you put your hands on top of your head, you’re going to be handcuffed. We’re going to get Ashley over here, you know. If you want to talk to your mom, you can talk to your mom.”
“Yeah, but I did,” Chino said. “You interrupted it.”
“You want to talk to your mom face
-to-face or on the cell phone?”
“I’d have to go downstairs, face-to-face.”
“Face-to-face. Down here in a room.”
“No. No.”
“Chino, we can’t stay here doing this forever,” Batista said. “We’ll wait it out, whatever it takes. But we have a lot of people out here. All of these SWAT guys are out here in the hot sun. That’s what they get paid for. But you know human nature. People get out there in the sun, they get irritable. I know it is a big decision you got to make. But think about Ashley. Think about your future. Paula doesn’t have a criminal record. They are very lenient with people who have never been in any type of trouble.”
“She is an accessory.”
“Chino, she has a clean record, as far as she told me.”
“Yeah, she has never been arrested, never.”
“She doesn’t even got a parking ticket,” Batista said. “She may do some jail time, but she will get out to take care of your daughter . . . Ashley.”
“Do you have a point system?”
“I don’t know the point system,” Batista replied. “I’m a burglary detective. I worry about doing my job and if I arrest people . . . the court system . . . What’s the point system have to do with it?”
“The higher the points, the higher the minimum. And I think we are high up there. At least I am.”
“You have to go before a judge. You have to be convicted. We are talking about months, maybe years.... A lot goes into play here, you surrender.”
“Listen, I’ve been in jail . . . like a week. I got twenty days.”
“What’s the other [choice]? Death. Dying? What about your kid? What about Ashley?”
“What I did is a capital crime, correct?” Chino asked.
“It’s a crime. It’s not—”
“It’s a capital crime.”
“It’s a serious crime.”
“A cop died.”
“Yeah, it is a capital crime.”
It didn’t get any worse for a suspect than this, Batista thought. His mind raced to find something that might convince Chino that he wouldn’t spend his life in prison if he surrendered.
“I’ll get the death penalty now,” Chino said.
