by Barry Siegel
She’d started dating William Macumber when she was sixteen and married him four days after turning eighteen. “During our courtship he told me that when he was in the Army he worked for the CID. He told me that this was a secret intelligence unit and that even though he was out of the Army, he was still active in the unit. He told me stories about the ‘missions’ he and his men went on.… Needless to say, my parents tried desperately to stop the marriage but I was young, immature, naïve and oh so sure I knew better.”
At “about 10 P.M.” one night in May 1962, less than a year after their marriage, Bill came home with “blood all over him.” Since then, “many people have asked me why I was not suspicious over the coincidence between the Sterrenberg/McKillop murders and the events I witnessed” that night. “First, let me reiterate, I was young, naïve and believed everything Bill told me. Second, the newspaper accounts alternately reported the murders were the result of a drug deal gone bad or the work of a crazed random killer.” Since “we were not involved in drugs and I certainly didn’t believe Bill to be a random killer, none if it made sense.” So “I put the matter to rest.” Over the next ten years “we had three sons and life went on.” But during those years, “I matured and came to recognize many inconsistencies in the stories Bill told about his exploits.” By 1972, “our marriage was in serious trouble and I expressed my desire to leave.” Bill said “he couldn’t live without me and threatened suicide on several occasions.” Then he said he was dying of cancer. Then that he had a heart condition. “I tell you these things because I want you to understand that after ten years of tales of wild army exploits, stories of how he was dying and pleas for sympathy, I had had enough. I simply did not believe anything he said.”
From there, Carol turned to “an evening in April 1974.” Here she once again walked through her account of Bill confessing the murders to her. “After telling me this story, Bill told me he had lived with this terrible thing on his conscience for all these years and that the only thing that kept him going was me and the kids. He said that with this on his conscience, he didn’t know if he could go on if I left him.” Yes, Carol added, “I know people are incredulous that I did not go running to the nearest police station to tell what I heard. Please understand—I DID NOT BELIEVE HIM.” At the time, she was hoping to be hired as a full-time deputy sheriff. “I would have been greatly embarrassed to have to admit that I married and stayed married to a man who told such wild tales. And since I did not believe him, I could not see any good would be served.”
Then came the kitchen-window shooting incident. “My immediate response was ‘BS. He did it himself.’” Angry, thinking he was trying to implicate her, she gave her statement to deputies. Early the next week, “I was given a polygraph that related to the shooting at the house and I passed.” Days later, “shortly after Bill was arrested, there were accusations that I had framed him.… I was given a second polygraph and questioned about tampering with the evidence. I passed that test too.” Carol added, “The record of that I have here, and I assume that you have it also.” (In fact, the board did not; nor did the Justice Project or the county attorney.)
She did testify at the second trial, Carol pointed out, giving the jury the chance to evaluate what both she and Bill said. And days after Bill’s conviction, the foreman of that jury wrote her a letter. She’d enclosed it with her own letter sent to Duane Belcher, so “I’m not going to read the whole thing, but would like to read a part where he talks about how the jurors viewed the evidence and came to their conclusion. It says: ‘Now as to the attacks on your reputation and the countless affairs, etc. etc., you should know that the overwhelming majority of the jurors could have cared less. The overwhelming majority of the jurors felt that this was completely immaterial. The overwhelming majority of the jurors felt that if the affairs were true, more power to you and you’ve had it coming.’”
Carol’s conclusion: “In the end it boils down to this. Two people confessed to the murders but the physical evidence found at the scene points to only one of them—William Macumber. Since Bill could not explain why his palm prints or casings from his gun were found at the scene he came up with the story that I had framed him. I did not frame William Macumber. I did not tamper with evidence. William Macumber did, in fact, murder Joyce Sterrenberg and Timothy McKillop.”
* * *
Carol had been more effective than Katie expected, not shaky at all. But Katie didn’t think Bill the creature Carol made him out to be. The picture Carol painted did not at all resemble the one Katie had seen. Jackie thought the same—this was not the Bill she had known her entire life. Above all, he didn’t lie. Bill told funny stories. But never anything about secret agents and covert missions.
Larry Hammond believed it significant that Carol had not directly denied or addressed their claims about a “sensitive internal investigation” of her. In fact, what she didn’t say pleased him. Still, he knew she’d been effective before the board—at least those board members who wanted to vote no.
Effective, too, were Bill and Carol’s two oldest sons, Scott and Steve, who spoke next. Both also had sent the board letters.
Scott, at forty-nine the oldest of the Macumber siblings, retired now after twenty-one years in the U.S. Air Force, began: “First thing I want to say is, this man put me through personal hell that no child and no family should ever go through.” He is “flawed in character, flawed in integrity, and the man knows nothing of the word honesty.” Though he insists “we have been brainwashed” by Carol, “I looked at the facts of this case for many years.… I’ve learned many things about my father, not only through my mother but through other people. The man is not credible, nor is he honest.” This man “needs to remain where he is at.” His exemplary achievements in prison are “to make Bill Macumber look important or special. He is not special. He did not do this out of the goodness of his heart. He does this to make Bill Macumber look like a great soul or a humanitarian. He is neither.” In his letter, Scott had added one more thought, left unspoken now at the hearing: “Outside organizations are believing and listening to a twice-convicted murderer at the expense of my mother’s name and reputation. I am tired of attacks and implications that my mother ‘set Mr. Macumber up.’ These organizations and Mr. Macumber need to provide proof of their allegations or shut up, apologize and retract their accusations.” He concluded, “We have never been notified or been able to tell our side of this tragic story to the Board. In the past, your organization has heard only Mr. Macumber’s side of the story. My hope is this letter will help the Arizona Board of Executive Clemency to arrive at a sound and informed decision.”
Steven took the phone after his brother. At forty-six, he’d worked a variety of jobs, some in computer technology. If anything, he was even more vehement than Scott. “There’s a couple things I’d like to hit right off the top,” he began. “There were accusations made that my mother had never shown us the letters that my father had sent.… This is all blatantly false.… My brothers and I decided that they were to be returned without us reading them.… We did that intentionally. We returned those letters intentionally to him so he knew we wanted to have no contact with him.” Also false: “That my mother told us that my father did not love us.… In fact, she said just the opposite.” She said “sometimes good people do bad things but that has no bearing on whether he loves his sons.” False as well: “That she told us he was a murderer.” No, “we came to that conclusion ourselves.” Steve had read the news articles and legal briefs, he’d done a lot of research, he’d even questioned his mother. “In a lot of ways I’ve been harder on her than most.… With the events of the last three or four years, I have pushed her more, Scott has pushed her more to defend herself than anyone else.” His conclusion: “The lies that have been coming out about her framing my father are just astounding.”
Above all, given Larry Hammond’s “massive character assassination on her,” Steve wanted to talk about his mother’s character: “My mother took eve
rything she had to support her kids. She was a single mother when, frankly, being a single mother was not the fashionable thing to do. She was a cop. She didn’t make a lot of money. We lived on macaroni and cheese for a very long time. We didn’t get to see her much because of the shift she worked. So it was very tough for us for a long, long time.” He didn’t know where Hammond or his brother Ron had come up with the idea that his mother was capable of framing Bill. Rather, “I’ll tell you what she is capable of. She’s capable of taking care of three boys, doing the best she can to raise them, sacrificing her own self.” For thirty-seven years, he and Scott “have been quiet about this, and this is really the first opportunity that we’ve had to speak.” He wanted to tell the victims’ families how “very, very sorry” he is for their loss. “The only comfort that I can give you right now is that all three of us here—my mother, Carol, myself, and Scott—can assure you that the correct man is in jail for these murders. And he needs to stay there.”
In his letter to the board, Steve had put it in even harsher terms: “What you have here in your midst is a killer and likely a sociopath who manipulates and lies to get what he wants.… Mr. Hammond, by repeating these lies about some big conspiracy, only fuels my father’s need to be someone important enough for this to happen to.” Mr. Hammond told Ron “we are SURE your mother framed your father.” Steve thought that incredible: “Really? You’re SURE? Where is your EVIDENCE? You don’t have any, do you?” Steve directed his final comments to the board: “Please use your common sense and best judgment and realize this man is a manipulator. Understand everything he does is for himself and no one else. He is a liar and a killer and is where he deserves to be.”
* * *
It was nearly noon now, the hearing about to enter its fifth hour. Duane Belcher called for a ten-minute break. The Justice Project team and Macumber family members rose from their seats looking subdued. In the lobby, Ron stood alone off in one corner, shaking his head. He’d known his mother would be on the phone but not his brothers. What his mom and Steve said, he’d heard before; it was nothing new. Steve had been living at home with Carol for more than twenty years, and Ron felt he was just repeating what she’d told him. But Ron had not known his more independent oldest brother also felt this way. They hadn’t spoken in more than ten years.
Jackie sat in another corner of the lobby with Robyn. She’d gone into the hearing pessimistic, prepared for what the other side would say, convinced Jan Brewer would, at any rate, veto a clemency recommendation. But still, she was shaken. Those two boys, Scott and Steve, were so young back then, nine and eleven, too young to have developed such a venomous attitude on their own. This must have come from Carol. How else could those boys so loathe their own father?
Katie had to walk outside the building, to the front landing, for fresh air. By the end, she’d felt seriously ill in the hearing room. Like all the oxygen had been sucked out of the chamber. It must have been so hard for Bill, so horrible, listening to his sons denounce him after thirty-seven years. It had been hard for her, too. She struggled with what she’d heard. Who knew? She wasn’t there back then; she’d been on this case for just three years. Maybe Bill and Carol did talk about this crime at one time or the other. But even if Bill confessed to the crime to keep her, that didn’t mean he committed the murders.
Ron, Jackie, Katie—they kept running everything through their minds. What Scott and Steve said about their father differed so greatly from Ron’s memories, and differed also from all the independent descriptions of Bill as the devoted, loving primary caretaker of the boys. They’d seen those descriptions in Frieda’s affidavit, in Pat Ferguson’s Conciliation Court report, in the neighbors’ testimony. Bill was a good father, Bill was the one who took care of the kids, he would play with them and cook meals, he was the better parent, Carol didn’t care as much.… All three boys expressed a great desire to visit with their father. Not seeing him is apparently very distressing to all of them. It is apparent that in the past, Mr. Macumber was the major parental figure for the boys. Witnesses state that they spent many hours together and seem to be very devoted.
Then there were Bill’s many letters. Pages and pages over the years to Jackie, more recently to Ron and Katie. Bill’s journal as well, the four-hundred-page chronicle of his experience. Katie had read that journal, Ron and Jackie too. It did not seem possible to them for all this writing—all of Bill—to be false. If guilty, Bill Macumber had for fifty years delivered an extraordinary performance. In fact, his entire life—all day, every day—had then been nothing less than sustained masterful deception. Not just his public life in prison and the community but his private life on the page—all his writing a fiction, his journal, his clemency petitions, his dozens of letters to Ron and Jackie. He had to have devoted his entire existence to forging an alternative narrative—to fixing and denying one horrible, bizarre moment when he lost himself and murdered two strangers out in the desert.
To Katie and Ron and Jackie, this was flat-out unimaginable. Nothing they’d heard this morning had altered their assessment of the case. Katie remained convinced of Bill’s innocence. Ron felt even more certain now. Jackie hooted at the question: “Heavens no, I haven’t changed my mind. Not at all, not in any way, shape, or form.”
* * *
Outside on the landing, with minutes to go before the hearing resumed, the Justice Project team huddled around Larry Hammond under cold, misty skies. Utterly exhausted, he could barely stand. He hadn’t expected to be spending five or six hours at this hearing. Hammond seethed over everything they hadn’t seen coming. The letters from Carol and her sons, plus the unexpected testimony by Luke Haag, his revelations about seeing the evidence, talking to Sibert, advising Bedford Douglass. Hammond, fighting his fatigue, exhorted his team, punctuating his points with repeated jabs of his finger, stabbing at the air. By then, though, he’d read the tea leaves. He thought they would probably lose.
At least they’d have one more chance to argue their case. After the county attorney made his closing comments, the Justice Project could offer a final rebuttal statement. Hammond hadn’t planned to do this himself, didn’t think he could physically, but his team implored him, saying they needed him up there at the podium. He agreed, asking only that Bob Bartels and Rich Robertson participate as well. One thing he knew they’d all have to do in those few moments: be less delicate about Carol.
First, though, Vince Imbordino had his turn. “It is not our intent to retry the case,” he told the board when the hearing resumed. Yes, it “would be fair to say and honest to say” that if the case were investigated today, “there’s no doubt that the crime scene would have been handled somewhat differently.” And yes, in the years since this trial, “there clearly have been changes suggested in how experts testify in all the sciences.” Yet the fact remained, “those casings were matched to that gun” by FBI agent Robert Sibert. As for Bill Macumber, when you read the record, “there’s no question” he admitted to telling his wife he committed the murders. In his own short bit of testimony—I suppose to keep her from leaving us—he “is admitting to saying it, but trying to spin it if you will.” Then Detective Ed Calles, in his testimony, confirms that Macumber admitted confessing to Carol—“unless you believe he is a part of the conspiracy.” Yes, Macumber’s fingerprints didn’t match any off the car, but “his palm print wasn’t taken until he was brought in for questioning.” Valenzuela’s confession was excluded by “a judge who ultimately became a Justice on the State Supreme Court,” and now “here we are, forty years later, arguing about whether this confession was really valid.” After reviewing all the evidence “there’s no question in our mind that William Macumber killed these two young people.” Yes, “obviously the people who are here believe that he didn’t do it.” But “if we believed that he didn’t do it, we certainly wouldn’t be opposing his release from prison.”
By the time Larry Hammond approached the podium, the hearing was inching into its sixth hour. “Mr. Chairman,�
�� he began, “I know we all have been here a good long while today, and we are not going to restate and replow the ground that we have laid out before.” He knew the board members “have looked carefully” at all the documents provided, all the statements and affidavits. Over the years, “we have come to respect your independent review of the materials.” So we “are not going to stand up here and respond to each of the things that we heard today that we think you all know are incorrect.” He would, instead, offer just “a very few points.” Most particularly, about Carol Kempfert.
Here the gloves came off: Years ago, the Justice Project associates went “to considerable length to try to communicate with Ms. Kempfert.” Above all, they had wanted to ask her about “the testimony she gave at trial with respect to whether she had any motive to lie … or to assist in the fabrication of evidence.” We have “provided to you affidavits.… You have seen those affidavits.” Ms. Kempfert “has not responded to those, nor has she responded today in all her remarks to the core question, whether she in fact was having affairs with members of the sheriff’s office and, most critically, lied about that under oath at trial.” Justice Project investigators had vainly “tried to interview her up in Washington” about this. Instead, they’d found others willing to talk. Hammond directed the board to Frieda Kennedy’s affidavit: “There is no question—and we wanted to be delicate this morning—but there is no question that now we have multiple witnesses, all of whom say that Carol Kempfert lied at the time of trial about whether she was having affairs. She was having multiple affairs. And those affairs provided her the motive to do what she did.” In her affidavit, “Frieda Kennedy also pointed out that Carol Kempfert told Frieda that Carol was the one who shot through the window.… We now have sworn testimony … that Carol fired that shot.” Hammond left the rest unsaid, relying on the documents sitting before the board: “I’d like to say nothing further about that. I think that the questions about her credibility have been properly addressed in the papers we have filed.”
