A Fever in the Heart and Other True Cases

by Ann Rule

  Had Loretta not panicked, the gun could never have been connected to her—and through her—to Tuffy Pleasant.

  Jeff Sullivan had now found out everything he ever would about the death weapon, and about Anthony Pleasant’s movements on November 21, 1975.

  It was time to move ahead.

  On July 8, Tuffy Pleasant’s pretrial hearing was held in Yakima, and the possibility that Anthony and Kenny Marino would move to the state’s side of the chess game that is the law became reality. It was not a good day for the defense camp. Shortly before the hearing began, Tuffy’s attorneys learned that Jeff Sullivan was amending the charges against their client; instead of first-degree murder in Morris Blankenbaker’s death, and second-degree murder in Gabby Moore’s, the charge in Moore’s death was also first-degree murder.

  Appalled by what they termed “eleventh hour” tactics, Adam Moore and Chris Tait asked for more time. And they had other motions. They renewed their request for a change of venue, and for two separate trials. They told Judge Loy that Pleasant could not get a fair trial if the two murder charges were heard by the same jury. They argued that the alibi witnesses the state intended to call to corroborate the whereabouts of Anthony Pleasant and Kenny Marino at the moments of murder would “sandbag” a jury.

  The philosophical question naturally arose: If a man is guilty of two murders, should a jury not hear the connection between those murders? And, then again, if a man is innocent of two murders, or of one of the murders, should the same jury hear about both crimes? Defense attorneys always choose to separate charges; prosecutors always prefer to let a jury see all the possible ramifications—the similar transactions—of conjoined crimes.

  As it was, this trial promised to be one of the most expensive ever to hit the taxpayers of Yakima County. It would take an estimated three weeks, and jurors would be sequestered. That meant, of course, hotel costs and meals for the jurors on top of all of Tuffy’s lawyers’ fees and money for the defense’s private investigator. It was true, as Adam Moore argued, that “There is no place on the scales of justice for dollar signs on one side and fairness on the other,” but moving the trial to another city would be even more expensive than the projected fifty thousand dollars to hold it in Yakima, (Today fifty thousand dollars wouldn’t pay for half a day of a headline big-city trial such as O.J. Simpson’s or the Menendez brothers, but fifty thousand dollars would cut a huge chunk out of the Yakima County budget. As it was, legal fees for Anthony Pleasant and Kenny Marino had cost thirteen thousand dollars.)

  In the end, Judge Carl Loy’s rulings were split. He would grant the change of venue; he would not separate the two murder charges into two trials. The two murders had so many similar transaction aspects that Loy could not justify severing them.

  Tuffy Pleasant smiled when he heard that there would be a change of venue, but Yakimans who had planned to attend every day of the sensational trial were disappointed. If they wanted to watch all the action, they would have to travel 140 miles west across the Cascade Mountains to Seattle. Some of them would; King County promised to provide an adequate courtroom.

  Besides the family, friends, press, and gallery, there would be more than fifty witnesses traveling from eastern Washington for the trial in Seattle.

  In the end, the question of sequestration of the jury would be moot. The murders in Yakima might well have happened 14,000 miles away rather than 140; Morris Blankenbaker, Gabby Moore, and Tuffy Pleasant were celebrities in their hometown, but very few residents of King County had heard of them or of the murders. Seattle and the county it sat in had its own homicides to think about. It was almost shocking to realize that out of the fifty-member jury pool of King County residents brought in for the Pleasant jury, only one had ever heard of the case, and that was because she had friends in Yakima. Bitter tragedy and shocking double murder in eastern Washington had not filtered through at all. Perhaps murder is an insular phenomenon, its impact diminished by distance and geography almost as if the looming Cascades that separated Yakima from Seattle had absorbed the shock and pain.

  But the pain would come brilliantly alive again on August 16 and continue through the weeks of trial in Seattle. The case would be featured not only in the Yakima Herald-Republic but also in the Seattle Times and the Seattle Post Intelligencer. James Wallace, a Herald-Republic reporter, would file daily stories from the courthouse so that hometown people who could not make the trip could monitor the trial.

  Olive Blankenbaker and her sister would attend every session of the trial. A long time later, when she remembered those weeks, she would sigh, “It was so hard— so hard.”

  Ned Blankenbaker, Morris’s father, his face reddened with emotion and unshed tears, would sit nearby. Andrew Pleasant, Sr., Tuffy’s father, and Tuffy’s grandmother would be there, all of them at once linked and divided by the enormity of the crimes Tuffy stood accused of. Many family members were barred from the courtroom because they would be called as witnesses.

  Tuffy Pleasant would be housed in the King County Jail, a two-story elevator ride to King County Superior Courtroom West 1019. He would be accompanied to court each day by Yakima police officers Dennis Meyers and Marion Baugher.

  Seattle’s media, caught up in the drama of this case, were prepared to be on hand. John Sandifer, anchorman for the nightly news of the ABC affiliate in Seattle, KOMO, marked off two weeks on his calendar, and photographers from the Seattle Times and the Seattle Post-Intelligencer did too.

  Defendants and witnesses alike would walk the gauntlet from the elevators, through the marble-walled corridors, to the King County courtrooms.

  Jeff Sullivan, Mike McGuigan, his deputy prosecutor in this trial, Vern Henderson, Court Reporter Lonna Vachon, and the rest of the entourage from Yakima County had trouble simply finding a place to stay in Seattle; there was a huge convention in town that August. Eventually, they found enough rooms at the old Roosevelt Hotel, which was more than a mile north of the courthouse and had yet to be refurbished.

  The sheer logistics of getting witnesses to Seattle to testify was a challenge. Jeff Sullivan was grateful for the transportation provided by the Yakima Police Department. “We had a number of teenage witnesses,” he recalled. “We tried to bring them over in the morning and get them back home in the evening, so we didn’t have to worry about their staying over in Seattle without adult supervision.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  And so it began. This long-awaited trial that might reveal the seemingly inexplicable reasoning behind the deaths of two most unlikely murder victims.

  Tuffy Pleasant invariably grinned at the cameras, as insouciant as a rock star passing through a crowd of fans. Female photographers got an extra-large smile. He spoke with the Yakima officers who escorted him as if they were old friends and they talked just as easily with him.

  Were it not for his hands cuffed behind him, it would have been difficult to pick Tuffy out as the defendant. He looked like the young athlete he had been until his arrest for double murder. His shoulders were broad and thickly muscled, his waist trim, his ears were the “cauliflower ears” of a longtime wrestler. Despite his situation, he seemed optimistic and smiled easily for photographers.

  Would he testify? Murder defendants usually don’t, but Tuffy Pleasant had such an outgoing manner about him. He might make a good witness for himself, and then again, if he took the stand, he would risk opening himself up to Jeff Sullivan’s fierce cross-examination. Time would tell.

  Would Jerilee testify? And what about Anthony Pleasant and Kenny Marino? They were rumored to be potential witnesses for the state.

  The players took their positions in the courtroom. Judge Carl Loy sat on an unfamiliar bench in Department 27 of King County. The six who would be present for the whole trial were seated at a long oak table. J. Adam Moore and Christopher Tait sat on either side of their client, Angelo Denny “Tuffy” Pleasant. Yakima County Prosecuting Attorney Jeffrey C. Sullivan sat at the far end of the table next to Vern Henderson who w
ould be the “friend of the court,” the detective responsible for bringing in evidence and being available for consultation on the investigative facts. Deputy Prosecutor Mike McGuigan sat to Henderson’s right.

  First, a jury had to be selected. Monday, August 16, passed and only eight jurors were chosen. It would be Tuesday at noon before a full jury was seated. Eight women and four men, and three alternates— two men and a woman. Potential jurors who had demurred had done so because they didn’t want to be tied up for two weeks or possibly three, not because they had formed opinions on the case.

  Adam Moore asked interesting questions of potential jurors. “If ‘A’ wants someone removed and he goes to ‘B’ and asks him to do the job, what kind of judgment would you make about ‘A’ and ‘B’?”

  Moore asked one juror a question that spurred Sullivan to ask for a sidebar conference: “Have you ever known a man who became extremely jealous over a woman?”

  After the sidebar with Judge Carl Loy, there were no more questions in that vein from the defense.

  Moore also asked a potential juror, “Have you ever known anybody, who, out of loyalty, took the blame for something he did not do?” Jeff Sullivan shifted uneasily at that line of questioning, but he did not object.

  At 1:30 P.M. on August 17, Jeff Sullivan rose to begin his opening statements.

  If ever opening statements were diametrically opposed regarding the facts of a case, those of Prosecutor Jeff Sullivan and defense lawyers Adam Moore and Chris Tait were. Sullivan’s voice was disdainful as he paced in long strides in front of the jury box. He promised the jurors that the state would offer them proof that Angelo Pleasant was guilty of two murders, and that they would actually hear him confess to those murders on tape.

  Sullivan told them that the defendant had killed Morris Blankenbaker “in cold blood” at the urging of his mentor and former coach. Then, Sullivan said, Pleasant had killed Moore himself because Moore “had a claw in him.”

  There was no one else involved, Sullivan said bitingly. Only Tuffy Pleasant. Jeff Sullivan was succinct as he gave the jurors two terrible scenarios of murder— the first of the night Morris was killed and the second of the Christmas Eve shooting of Gabby Moore. The prosecutor spoke for thirty-five minutes, as a hushed courtroom listened avidly.

  It was the first time Olive Blankenbaker had really heard her son’s death described. It was difficult to listen, but she could not not listen; this was what she had come to Seattle to do, to hear all the evidence and, hopefully, to see justice done.

  Sullivan explained how Gabby Moore had told Tuffy Pleasant on November 21, “If you’re going to do it, tonight’s the night.”

  The prosecutor described Morris’s arrival home after work, the familiar voice calling to him from the alley, and then the shot that hit him in the mouth, knocking out several teeth, before it lodged in his spine. The second bullet had struck him behind the left ear, and the third in the back of the head.

  Sullivan said that on Christmas Eve, Gabby Moore had coerced Tuffy into retrieving that same gun by threatening to turn him in to the Yakima Police, his finger poised over the final digit of the police number. Tuffy had gone back to his cousin’s, Sullivan said, retrieved the .22, and returned to Moore’s apartment later. According to Sullivan, he had found his brother and Stoney Morton there, although they didn’t stay long. A short time later, Tuffy had shot Gabby Moore from a distance of nine inches.

  There should be no going back, the prosecutor stressed. Tuffy Pleasant had confessed twice. Within days of Tuffy’s arrest, he had described both murders— and on tape.

  More long-winded and perhaps a bit more histrionic, Adam Moore and Chris Tait painted Tuffy Pleasant as an innocent man, almost a saint, a family man who had confessed to two murders only to protect his younger brother and his best friend. For an hour and a half, the defense team gave their version of the murders. Yes, they readily acknowledged Tuffy had known about Gabby’s plan to kill Morris, but he had absolutely refused to have any part in it.

  Chris Tait agreed with Jeff Sullivan’s chronology of events on November 21, but only up to a point. Tait said that when Tuffy left the Red Lion, he was with his brother Anthony. The Colt Woodsman .22 was under the front seat of Tuffy’s car. In this scenario, the two brothers drove around for a while and then Anthony had said he wanted to go visit Morris. Tuffy had obliged him and parked on Lincoln Avenue, a half block away from Morris’s house.

  Yes, Tuffy had seen his younger brother take something from beneath the seat, but he thought it was only a beer. That’s what Anthony had been drinking during the evening. When they saw Morris’s car pulling up, both brothers had gotten out of their car.

  Here, the script for murder changed radically as it played out in the defense case. When they were a few feet apart, it had been Anthony who told Morris he wanted to talk to him about Jerilee. According to Chris Tait, Morris had said he didn’t care to discuss her and had walked menacingly toward Anthony.

  It was at that point, Tait said, that Anthony Pleasant had pulled out the gun and shot Morris. Running away, the Pleasant brothers had driven off, promising never to tell anyone. They were “very close,” Tait said.

  Later, when Tuffy was arrested, he was “willing to take the rap.” It was not until detectives bore down on him, saying they did not believe that he had acted alone that Tuffy had changed his story and admitted to them that Anthony had killed Morris. His first confession had not been the truth, only the words of a brother trying to save a younger brother.

  Adam Moore rose to continue the defense’s opening remarks. He explained how Gabby Moore had been killed. Moore listed four themes that sparked murder: jealousy, manipulation, loyalty … and irony. Gabby Moore had been living in a “fantasy world, consumed with the intent to get Jerilee back. It was more than he could hold up to … the loss of her … ”

  But, Moore said, Gabby’s fantasy had “backfired.” Jerilee had added up the facts and she suspected her ex-husband had had a hand in the murder of Morris, her once and future husband. Adam Moore gave Gabby grudging credit for being “clever in a bizarre way” when he planned his own shooting— to take the suspicion off himself. Yes, on Christmas Eve he had demanded that Tuffy go and get the same gun that had killed Morris and shoot him. But Tuffy had refused adamantly. Yes, Tuffy had stayed on talking with Gabby after Anthony and Stoney had left Gabby’s apartment. Gabby had received a phone call and that call, said Adam Moore, was from Kenny Marino. Gabby had not wanted to discuss it with Tuffy, but Tuffy had said he was upset by the call.

  Later in the evening, this rendition of the “facts” went on, Kenny Marino had come over to Gabby’s. By this time, Adam Moore said that Tuffy had returned with the gun he had borrowed for the second time and he had given it to Gabby. When Kenny Marino came over, Tuffy had urged Gabby to take a walk in the backyard with him to clear his head and to help him forget his wild plan about wanting Tuffy to shoot him.

  Apparently unconvinced, Gabby had walked into the house, while Tuffy stayed outside, turning the situation over and over in his mind, trying to find some solution to Gabby’s problems— and his own.

  And then, according to Adam Moore, Tuffy had frozen in horror as a shot sounded inside. When he ran in, he had seen his best friend standing over their coach with the pistol in his hand. Gabby was lying on the kitchen floor with blood covering his T-shirt.

  “Merry Christmas, everyone,” Adam Moore said sarcastically with a wave of his hand.

  But Moore wasn’t quite through. According to the defense attorney, Tuffy had promised Kenny Marino that he would take the rap for him too. Tuffy had said since he had no previous record, the court would go easy on him.

  The jurors sat expressionless—as all jurors, everywhere, always do. What could they he thinking? The two versions of the murders were so disparate. Was it possible that the young man at the defense table was so good-hearted and generous of spirit that he would risk giving up years of his own life to keep his younger brother and
best friend out of prison?

  Or was it possible that he really had shot an old friend in cold blood and then turned on the coach he had once loved in a panic that he might be discovered?

  The jurors had weeks of testimony to listen to. Maybe the truth would filter out like clear water from a silty stream.

  Adam Moore had either misspoken in the last part of his dramatic opening remarks, or he was not aware of the details of the crime scene that Sergeant Bob Brimmer and Detective Howard Cyr had noted. Kenny Marino could not have been standing over a body dressed in a bloody T-shirt. There had been no blood on Gabby’s T-shirt—not a speck of it—not until Brimmer and Cyr had lifted his body to turn it over.

  Then it had gushed out, quarts of it.

  But, by then, the killer—or killers—were long gone.

  The prosecution began its case. Whenever possible, a good prosecution case begins with witnesses whose words can reconstruct the ambiance of the crime scene, using exhibits and evidence that will draw the jurors back in time to the moment of murder. It was the middle of an unusually hot summer in Seattle. To step from the marble halls of the King County Courthouse into the late afternoon heat was akin to walking into a sauna.

  What Jeff Sullivan had to do was summon up the icy dawn the November before in Yakima, and then the snowy Christmas Eve that followed. He had to make the jurors shiver involuntarily, even as they perspired in fact. He needed to let them feel the shock Morris’s apartment house neighbors had felt when they heard Jerilee scream. They had to “hear” the screams themselves.

  Gerda Lenberg, Dale Soost, and Rowland Seal were only the first of dozens of witnesses who would make their way across the mountains to Seattle so that they could fill in their personal “segments” in a giant mosaic of murder.

  Since the jurors were from the Seattle area and not familiar with the streets of Yakima, Jeff Sullivan provided an easel with a large sheet of white paper so that addresses, streets, and directions could be drawn in by witnesses. Gerda Lenberg picked up a crayon and made the first marks on the pristine white.