by Lee Butcher
“Okay,” Paula said. “I have a question.”
“Yes.”
“I don’t know. I’ve never been in this situation. I don’t know if I should talk to a lawyer first. I wanna cooperate,” Paula said, “but I really don’t want to go to jail.”
“You go to jail on the basis of evidence,” Black said. “You have to make that decision; I can’t make it for you. I’m not gonna lie to you, there’s a possibility you will go to jail. But you would go to jail even if you didn’t talk to us right now.”
“Do you have a lawyer here?”
“No, we don’t have one here. That’s the only problem.”
At this point of the interview, there was a long pause. No one said anything for twenty seconds. This would be a major point that Paula’s lawyers would use in her defense.
“Okay,” Paula finally said. “I’ll go with it.”
Paula signed to acknowledge that she had been informed of her rights and that she had agreed to talk. Black quickly established that Paula had not been under the influence of alcohol, medicine, or drugs at the time of the robbery.
“Nothing that would distort your remembrance. Have you been hit in the head in the last few days, which would cause you not to remember something.”
Paula said no. But she did note that she has had problems with depression, but she had never seen a doctor about it. She answered no when Black asked if she had ever been classified as a schizophrenic or a neurotic by a trained psychiatrist or psychologist.
When Black asked Paula what precipitated the bank robbery, she told him about Chino being fired, that they only had a dollar, no food, and a baby to take care of. They had a hard time paying the bills.
“So you were hurting for money?” Black asked. “Was this a split-second decision to go and rob the bank today or had you thought about it for a while?”
She said that when Chino woke up, he was “really stressed” and told her that they needed money.
“Why a bank?” Black asked. “Why not a convenience store? You just needed a lot of money right then and there?”
“We were down to a dollar. . . . We have a truck.... We need to pay bills.”
“Right, right.”
“No food in the fridge.”
“Did he set up a plan about how you were going to do this?”
“No. We woke up and, you know, he was really pissed off, and he said we have a dollar and we had no cash, no food, no milk, or anything; he said, ‘Let’s go, we gotta do it.’”
Paula told the detectives that she didn’t want to go into the bank because she was scared. She had followed Chino with the MAC-11 after he jumped out and ran to the bank.
“I didn’t wanna go in,” Paula said. “He was already in there.”
“But were you trying to protect him?”
“I don’t know. I was scared then.”
“He didn’t force you to go in though, right?” Black asked.
Paula said no.
“He just asked you and you wanted to please him, so you did it, right?”
“I didn’t wanna do it. I never did anything like that.... I was scared and he told me that we needed to do it in order to get food and . . . pay the bills, catch up.”
“So you were thinking of your baby, you wanted to feed her?”
“Yeah.”
Paula described her version of the bank robbery. According to her, Chino went into the bank first and she followed. Paula said she went just inside the door and no farther. After the dye pack went off in the car, Paula said, she couldn’t see, and she had no idea what route they took to get away from the bank.
“You weren’t expecting that, were you?” Black asked about the dye pack.
“No, of course not,” Paula said. “I don’t even know what happened.”
Paula related going to the Regency, changing clothes in the parking lot, and then calling Chino’s mother. She said they were at the Regency for five to ten minutes.
“Did you change your clothes?” Black asked.
“Yeah, I put my shorts on, yes.”
“Okay. And the reason for that was because you didn’t wanna be caught wearing the clothing you—”
“Well, that and . . .”
“And the dye . . .”
“It stunk.”
Paula told how they had gone back to the Crossings with Chino’s mother.
“Did she know anything about what had happened, what you guys had done?”
“Uh-uh.”
“Did you tell her what had happened?”
“She was just wondering why our faces were so red and irritated.”
“Did you tell her?”
“Chino told her.”
“He told her that you had robbed a bank?”
“Yeah, and she was mad.”
“What did Chino ask her to do?”
“She was mad, she dropped us off. She was pissed off.”
(Paula was lying here. Chino’s mother already knew about the robbery, although the police didn’t know this yet. Most likely, Paula was trying to protect Lissette, who may have been considered the getaway driver.)
Black touched lightly on the time Paula and Chino spent in the apartment at the Crossings. This would be another area that the defense would pounce on during Paula’s trial. He questioned her in detail about Officer Lois Marrero being killed.
Lois was in the courtyard beside the pool when Paula said she first saw her. The police officer had a gun in her hand and told Chino to stop or she would shoot. Chino, she said, ran a short distance and grabbed a blue bag that the MAC-11 was in, then ran across Church Street.
“You just saw him grab the gun . . . ?” Black asked.
“No, no, no. He ran when the lady was yelling. I don’t know where he went. And then I started going upstairs. I didn’t want to get between that. And then he came back. He started screaming, ‘Paula, Paula.’ And I came down and then the gun was down in the bag. He grabbed the gun and then the guy from upstairs was coming down.”
Paula didn’t know the neighbor’s name. (It was Mike Kokojan.) Chino snatched the neighbor’s keys, and then Paula saw the police officer coming again.
“He was opening the door for the car,” Paula said. “And she said, ‘Stop or I’m gonna shoot you, I’m gonna shoot you.’ She was grabbing her gun. And then he shot her.”
“How many times? Do you remember?”
“Three times.”
“Okay. What happens then?”
“And then he’s squeezing me; he tells me, turn it . . . open the car, and then he tells me, ‘Grab the gun, grab her gun.’”
“We’re gonna go back to the point to where you mentioned that Chino had gone up to the car, he was trying to get into the car, he has his gun, and the officer comes up to him, and the officer tells him to stop or she’ll shoot. What do you see happen then?”
“I’m just frozen. I didn’t know what was gonna happen.”
“What did you see?”
“I saw him shoot her.”
“Did she go down immediately?”
“Yeah.”
“Did she ever fire her gun?”
“Uh-uh. I don’t think so.”
“Did the officer say anything after she was shot? Did you go up and look at her?”
“She was right in front of me.”
“Okay, so you saw her?”
“I saw her.”
“Did she appear to be dead then?”
“I don’t know.”
“All right. You could see blood coming from her, though?”
“I saw blood.”
Paula said she didn’t remember hearing sirens or other police officers arriving. She remembered following Chino toward the apartment building. Paula started to sob, and Black asked if she needed a moment to compose herself. No, Paula told him, she just wanted to get the interview over.
Paula remembered seeing Chino shoot the gun right after he kicked an apartment door in, but she didn’t see who he was shooting at. S
he said she believed it was at other police officers. Chino, Paula said, told Isaac Davis that they had robbed a bank, but didn’t remember him saying anything about shooting a police officer.
“And what did the man say? Did he ask you guys to leave?”
“No, he just . . . He was kind of sick.... He said he had been sick for two weeks.”
They told Davis they weren’t going to hurt him, she said.
“Did you hold him there against his will?” Black asked.
“Well, yeah. He was just . . . calm.”
But Davis was throwing up in the bathroom, too. She said Chino turned on the news and they saw cops everywhere, and that the apartment was surrounded. Paula and Chino looked out the window, she said, and saw Lissette talking with the police.
“He calls her and she’s telling him to give himself up,” Paula said, “and they’re arguing, saying, ‘Now you gotta go to jail. You killed a cop.’ That he (Chino) was gonna shoot himself.”
“Because he didn’t want to go to jail?”
“He said he ain’t gonna stop and . . . I know he really regretted everything, but he said . . . he wasn’t gonna go to jail for the rest of his life or get, you know, the electric chair.”
“Uh-huh.”
“And he just wanted to take his life. And he wanted me to do the same.”
“He wanted you to kill yourself?”
“Yeah.”
“Why didn’t you?”
“My daughter.”
“Right, right.”
“I spoke to my mother.... I called her up in New York. She was begging me not to do it. So I didn’t do it.”
“Where is the officer’s gun?”
“It’s under the bed.... We were sitting on the floor and he wanted to count to three and just shoot ourselves.”
“He wanted you to shoot yourself with the police officer’s gun and then he would shoot himself with the gun that he had?”
“Yes.”
Paula said Chino couldn’t buy the MAC-11 because he had a criminal record, and even though the gun was in her name, she had never touched it until that day. Black, noting that Chino couldn’t be hurt anymore, asked if he had committed any other robberies. Paula said no, but he was a shoplifter.
“Let me ask you this,” Black said. “Have you done any other robberies in the city, other than this one?”
“No . . . that’s it.”
Black asked her again if she had ever been involved in a robbery with Chino. Paula again said that she hadn’t.
“Has Chino talked about doing these types of things with you?” Black asked.
“No . . . we were doing fine, and then he got fired and then we started getting late on the car payment. They kept calling me, they were gonna repo. And we couldn’t pay the bills and today . . . woke up and he just couldn’t take it. Said he couldn’t live like that.”
Hevel asked, “So other than that bank, when y’all carried that bag with the gun, I mean, did he take it anywhere else for protection or anything like that?”
“He always carried it,” Paula said. “He always says, ‘Oh, we need to take it.’”
Black noted that Paula looked emotionally drained and stopped taping so she could have some time to rest. The police concluded the first portion of the interview with Paula at 5:34 P.M. The second part of the interview began with Black and Detective Hevel questioning Paula about the robbery at Flowers By Patricia. Paula had told Hevel during the break that she and Chino had committed that robbery.
“Can you just explain to me in your own words what happened that day?” Hevel asked.
“We needed money, Chino and I. We didn’t know where to go. We went to the flower shop.”
She told Hevel how they had parked in back of the flower shop, told the clerk that they wanted a bouquet, and then robbed her.
“We pulled out the gun,” Paula said. “He told her to sit on the floor, and [asked] where is the money?”
She said she had retrieved the woman’s purse, dumped it, and that it contained $45. Then they restrained the woman’s arms and legs with duct tape and “just went home.”
“What happened to the lady?” Hevel asked.
“Nothing. We just tied her up.”
“When you left, where was she?”
“By the door to the fridge, where the flowers are at.”
“Was she inside the freezer?”
“She didn’t want to be inside,” Paula said. “She freaked out a little. She shifted so that she could hold the door open with her feet from the inside.”
Hevel had the confession that she wanted and concluded the interview at 6:12 P.M. After a short break, Black questioned Paula to learn more details in the shooting of Officer Lois Marrero.
“She came up to the back (of the car) and you said she had her gun drawn?” he asked.
“Yes.”
“Had Chino pulled his gun out yet . . . ?”
“Yeah . . . he had it in his hand.”
“Tell us what you remember the officer saying.”
“Well, to put . . . that she . . . she didn’t want to shoot him.”
“And she had . . . enough opportunity to shoot him . . . if she wanted to?”
“Yeah . . . she could have shot him when he was running from her.”
“And then Chino . . . shot her because she hesitated, right?”
“Yeah.”
“Because she didn’t want to kill him?”
“No . . . no, she didn’t,” Paula replied.
“By her act of not firing first, that gave Chino more than enough time to fire at her?” Black asked.
“Yeah.”
Paula said again that she didn’t remember running to the apartment or see whom Chino was shooting at. She said she was in shock from having seen the police officer killed. Paula wasn’t sure that Lois was dead.
“I saw blood,” she said.
“A lot of blood?” Black asked. “Were her eyes open?”
“Yeah, they were open.... I think she was awake.”
“Could you hear her saying anything?”
“No. She didn’t say anything.”
“She was just lying there?”
“Uh-huh.”
Black then took another break so that Paula could visit with Lissette and Ashley. She ate some pizza, went to the bathroom, and drank some bottled water. The interview started again at 8:30 P.M. Black read Paula her rights again and she acknowledged that she understood what these were and that she wanted the interview to continue.
“Did Chino ever mention to you any planning if you committed a robbery and . . . the police happened to locate you?” Black asked. “Did he have a set plan for how you would deal with such a situation?”
“No.”
“There had to be previous planning about how you would deal with the possibility if the police—”
“We thought about it,” Paula said. “He said that he’d rather die.”
“So you took that to mean that if . . . he was cornered or caught or something like that, he would probably kill himself then?”
“You’re right, but I didn’t think that he was going to do it.”
Black asked Paula how long she and Chino were in the apartment at the Crossings. She said it was about fifteen minutes or even less. Paula agreed that they had changed clothes so that they wouldn’t be seen in the clothing they wore to rob the bank.
“Why did you leave your apartment?” he asked. “Why didn’t you stay there? You went to the apartment and changed clothes. Why didn’t you just stay inside the apartment? What were you worried about? Why did you leave? Was there a reason for leaving?”
“He was nervous,” Paula said. “Helicopters flying above.”
“So you could hear the police helicopters flying? And he thought the police might be on their way there?”
“Yeah.”
“So he was still thinking about trying to get away from . . . the police.”
“Yeah. He didn’t want to get caught.”<
br />
“Uh-huh.”
“And neither did you?”
“Of course.”
“Of course not, right? So what was the plan? Obviously, just before Officer Marrero came up, he was starting to walk away and you were getting ready to walk with him, right?”
“I was closing the door, and he was already around, you know, by the pool.”
Paula said that Lois started chasing Chino when he was at the pool. As Chino and Lois ran toward the cemetery across the street, Paula saw Kokojan come out of his apartment and ran to him. Paula told Black that although she had never spoken with Kokojan before, she asked him to let her inside his apartment.
“Because you wanted to hide?” Black asked.
“Yeah, I was scared. I saw the cops and everything. And Chino came, calling my name and stuff. Asking me about the gun. And the officer came, like, not too long after he came, that’s when it happened.”
Paula said that she was on the passenger side of Kokojan’s car when Chino shot Lois.
“And your plan was to get in the car, too?” Black asked.
“Yeah.”
“Just to get away, right?”
Paula said that was correct, but that Lois appeared before they could get inside.
“Did he never tell you that if he was cornered by the police, he was going to shoot an officer?” Black asked. “He would rather shoot an officer than give up?”
“He never said that.... He said that he would take his life.”
Black asked Paula if Chino had been arrested for anything in the past, and she told him that he had been to jail for shoplifting.
“He never told you about doing any robberies before, or anything like that?”
Paula said no, and then Black asked if she wanted to say anything that would help with the investigation.
“I didn’t want that . . . the cops to get shot.”
“Okay.”
“He did it.”
“Okay.”
“But he did it. I don’t know why he did it. I don’t want to be in this position. I want to be with my daughter.”
Black concluded the interview and Paula swore that everything she said was the truth and nothing but the truth.
During the four-hour interview, Paula had confessed to the Bank of America robbery, buying the MAC-11, invading Isaac Davis’s home, and being present when Lois was shot and killed. She lied when she said that the Bank of America armed robbery was the first, omitting the one at Flowers By Patricia just four days earlier.
