Perfect Murder, Perfect Town - Lawrence Schiller [297]
By now it was apparent to Alex Hunter that he wouldn’t be able to use Al LaCabe. LaCabe’s boss, Henry Solano, said the Denver U.S. Attorney’s office was understaffed. Hunter withdrew his request and began to look for two prosecutors. With the grand jury start date just three weeks away, Bill Ritter recommended Mitch Morrissey, who understood DNA. From his office, Bob Grant said that he was willing to loan out Bruce Levin, his chief trial deputy.
Levin had the reputation of always doing the right thing in a case, though some of his colleagues thought he was only average. He’d been at his job for eighteen years. Unlike Pete Hofstrom, who did his own docket every week, Levin took only the cases he wanted. Nevertheless, Levin had good courtroom skills and came off as sincere and honest. Jurors seemed to like him. While several of Mitch Morrissey’s colleagues considered him unremarkable in the courtroom, he had handled five rape and murder trials where his presentation of DNA evidence had played a major role obtaining convictions. Morrissey was resident specialist on DNA evidence with the Colorado District Attorneys Council and was often called upon to teach his expertise to prosecutors.
Meanwhile, Michael Kane was working seven days a week, totally focused and giving every minute to the job. Awake well before seven in the morning, he worked until nine in the evening and would often sleep on an air mattress in the war room when he was too tired to drive to his apartment. He had even cut his running down to three miles a day—from the Justice Center down to Folsom Avenue and then back along the Boulder Creek bike path.
Levin and Morrissey reported to work at the end of August. Neither had attended the Boulder PD’s presentation, nor had they been around during the Ramseys’ interviews. Kane worried whether they would get up to speed by September 15, when the grand jury proceedings were to begin.
Hunter now had a team: Kane, Levin, and Morrissey. Pete Hofstrom, who didn’t want anything to do with the grand jury, took off for his yearly vacation to San Francisco to see old friends. Though Trip DeMuth still held to the intruder theory, he was important because he carried encyclopedic knowledge of the case in his head. Lou Smit, mad that the Ramseys were to be made the target of a grand jury investigation, was rarely in the office. He still thought that Bill McReynolds should be looked at again.
By now, it was likely, Kane had decided that his goal was to return an indictment and go to trial. And if the indictment was supported by the evidence, he hoped Hunter would be prepared to sign it. The attitude in the office was not “if this case reaches a courtroom” but “it will reach a courtroom.”
On September 3, Steve Thomas and his wife, Karena, took off for a three-week trip across the United States. Thomas loved to travel the country’s back roads, and this much-needed vacation would take them to Arkansas, Louisiana, Mississippi, and Florida, where they would visit John Eller.
Meanwhile, Hunter was adjusting to life with outside prosecutors in his midst. When one Boulderite saw the DA at the Boulder recycling center, his four-wheel-drive bursting with empty milk jugs and piles of newspapers, he thought that Hunter looked tired. The DA told his acquaintance that if anyone could do something with the Ramsey case, it was Michael Kane. It might take some time, Hunter said, maybe another six months, but Kane could