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“That’s suspicious. Why do you think Wellesley would do that?”
“In the physical lineup, all the participants were Black. In the photo lineup only two of them were. I’m guessing she wanted Alan to think that his identification was more legit than it really was. Maybe she was hoping he’d confess. I don’t know.”
“What about the victims? Anything you didn’t mention on Friday?”
Since I’d just written out the interviews and they were fresh in my mind, I said, “Yes. In the other two cases, the identification process is also fishy. Cammy Wainwright was shown five suspects who didn’t fit her description and one who did. Joanne Yardley was put through a somewhat traumatizing lineup, where she was in the room with suspects in order to listen to them say abusive things to her.”
“So none of the three had reliable identifications.”
“I wouldn’t say so.”
“Good. I’ll read though what you have when Karen’s done. Have you read the file on Detective Wellesley?”
“I was about to.”
“Look at it closely. I need to know her like a sister. Actually, I need to know herbetterthan a sister.”
12
April 9, 1996
Tuesday afternoon
After lunch, I sat down with the file on Detective Brenda Wellesley. It wasn’t all that thick.
Brenda Wellesley was thirty-seven years old, divorced, no children. She had a BS in Criminal Justice from San Diego State University. Graduated 1982. She moved to L.A. and went through LAPD police academy in 1985, spending two years on patrol before being bounced up to detective the summer of 1987. That was important to know. Any mistakes she made in these cases were likely to be written off as inexperience, though it was just as likely an effort to prove herself. I doubted the LAPD was a very hospitable place for a woman.
But the next document I read made that seem untrue. It was a performance review from 1988 written by a Captain Bernard Latowski. Alan Dinkman’s attorney, a man by the name of Simeon Keystone, had gotten it, though I couldn’t see exactly how. It was the kind of document that if it wasn’t private, it should be.
The review gave her top marks and said truly complementary things. The only criticism it gave was that she might be a bit too dedicated to the job. Though even as criticism it sounded like a compliment. It also made note that she was very good with victims. That, at least, squared with my interviews. I doubted Keystone used it at trial. In fact, its glowing nature might be the reason he got it.
Wellesley would have testified in each trial as the investigating officer. The prosecution would have used her to create a narrative of the crimes. The crime scene, the condition of the victim, the identification of the perpetrator and his arrest. The victim would testify last, covering some of the same ground but from a more emotional angle.
The transcripts from each of the trials sat in a cardboard box under my work area. I hadn’t read them yet. I felt like it was better to get to know everything I could before I read them. It was hard to identify a lie if you didn’t know the truth.
Speaking of which, I wondered why Keystone hadn’t complained about not having a copy of the pictures Selma Martinez had been shown to identify her rapist. I set Wellesley’s file aside and picked up my copy of Alan Dinkman’s file. I flipped through it. I verified there were no copies of the pictures. There was also no letter to the DA asking for them. Of course, Alan probably told his attorney about the in-person lineup he’d participated in. So, Keystone wouldn’t have asked for anything.
Okay, now it was time for the transcripts. I reached under the table and got my hands on the box. I started to pull it out but then stopped. Selma was probably excluded from the courtroom; most judges made that decision. Wellesley could have said anything about the identification and there would have been no one to contradict her. I pushed the box of transcripts back to where it had been. I’d read it later.
I went back to studying Detective Wellesley. There was a list of addresses that covered the last fifteen years. From 1981 through 1982 she lived on campus at San Diego State in the Maya dorm. From summer 1982 until spring of 1985, she lived at three different locations in the San Diego area. I wasn’t familiar with San Diego, so the addresses didn’t mean too much to me. What I did notice was the amount of time she spent at each address. She spent two years at the first address, but then six months at the second and only three at the third. I felt like that might mean something, but I didn’t know what.
Then she moved up to Los Angeles for the academy. She lived in the Hollywood flats for about nine months. That made sense, she’d have been in the academy for six of that. I knew she worked out of Rampart, so the next address on Lucille in Silverlake made sense. She would have been ten minutes from work. Enviable in Los Angeles.
She stayed at the Lucille address for two years. Then from 1987 to 1991 she bounced around, nine months in one place, six in another. Six addresses in four years. I wondered if this had something to do with her divorce. Had the breakup happened around 1987? Had it taken her some time to get back on her feet? Were there other relationships involved? Ones that also went south? I tucked that away. It might mean nothing; it might mean a lot.
In February of 1994—just after the Northridge quake—she moved to the Fairfax area. I flipped through the file and noted that she’d transferred from Rampart Station to Wilshire around that time. Oakwood Avenue. Pretty nice area if I was thinking of the right place. She must have gotten a promotion and a raise.
At the back of the file, there were some printouts of newspaper articles that mentioned her. I was a little familiar with one of them. In it, she was being given credit for arresting Albert Wanderly, son of an old Hollywood actress who killed three gay men at different times: a costumer, an actor and an antique dealer. The murders happened in a short period and didn’t have a sexual component. Some kind of spree killing, maybe? Another article showed her getting a commendation for her work on that case.
There were other articles where she was mentioned. A drive-by, the murder of a prostitute in Echo Park, and a stabbing in Silverlake. That didn’t tell me very much.
Around four o’clock, Karen came back and handed me a stack of printouts. “Andy Showalter died in nineteen eight-five.”
“How did he—”
“Suicide.”
I nodded.
