Opinion ID: 2624500
Heading Depth: 4
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: The Underlying Crime

Text: On May 30, 1979, 24-year-old Eleanore Buchanan, known as Fran, attended an evening math class that was scheduled to meet from 7:00 until 10:00 p.m. at San Diego Mesa College. Because she had missed several classes due to the birth of her second child, she chose not to take an optional quiz, given at approximately 9:15 or 9:30 p.m., and left the class. She was last seen walking toward the campus parking lot or a nearby street. She had driven the new blue van she and her husband Terry Buchanan had purchased weeks earlier; Terry used the van during the day to make deliveries for a dental lab. About 1:30 p.m. the following day, May 31, 1979, Harry Piper, a target shooter, discovered a body, later identified as that of Eleanore Buchanan, in a cul-de-sac in Pine Valley, [2] south of Interstate Highway 8. The head and hands were missing and there were ligature marks on the ankles and wrists. Forensic pathologist Dr. Joseph Luibel, who conducted the autopsy, testified the cuts around the head and right hand were smooth and consistent with marks made by a saw, while the cut on the left wrist was consistent with having been made by a knife. All of the amputation marks were consistent with having been made by someone without much knowledge of anatomy and with rudimentary knowledge of the use of a knife and saw. Although the body was exsanguinated, he was unable to determine with certainty the cause of death, and noted several postmortem wounds to the chest and abdomen. He noted that when the body was discovered, it was lying on its back and both forearms were raised several inches off the ground, a common result of rigor mortis. Based on an examination of the stomach contents he concluded the victim died between 10:00 and 10:30 p.m. on May 30, 1979. Based on the stage of rigor mortis and the condition of the forearms at the time of discovery, he concluded the body was left in Pine Valley approximately six hours after death, or between 4:00 and 4:30 a.m. on May 31, 1979. Defendant lived with his parents on Comstock Street in Linda Vista, California, approximately one mile from San Diego Mesa College. Donna Hatch lived in Terrell, Texas. She and defendant had corresponded since 1973, and first met in person in 1976. Telephone records from the Hamilton residence in Linda Vista revealed that at 1:52 a.m. on May 31, 1979, just hours after Eleanore Buchanan's classmates last saw her alive, defendant telephoned Hatch. Hatch testified defendant told her he planned to head for Texas that morning after he got some gas. During the evening of June 1, 1979, defendant showed up at Hatch's house in Terrell, Texas, driving a van. Hatch noted that the van had a broken window, a broken armrest, and a bent inside curtain rod. The next day, Hatch and her sister, niece, and daughter drove with defendant to Oklahoma and Ft. Worth, Texas, and back to Terrell, Texas, stopping to sleep at a rest stop where defendant used Buchanan's credit cards to buy gas. On June 4, 1979, defendant and Hatch stopped at a phone booth near a hotel where defendant made two telephone calls. After the second call, defendant's demeanor changed and he became nervous. [3] Hatch overheard defendant say he had traveled to Texas by airplane, which she knew to be untrue, and that he thought he had killed somebody, or thought he had killed a man. Defendant asked Hatch to go to a car lot and steal Texas license plates to exchange with the California plates on the van, but she refused. Defendant and Hatch talked about his former wife; defendant had led her to believe that his former wife was dead, but on this day he told her she was alive. When Hatch became upset about the lie, defendant asked her if she wanted him to kill his former wife. Hatch decided to end her relationship with defendant. On June 8, 1979, from Greenwood, Louisiana, defendant phoned Hatch at her house. Her grandmother answered the phone, and when Hatch got on the line, she heard defendant say, I'll kill you, too. On June 8, 1979, the use of Terry Buchanan's credit card at a Stuckey's restaurant in Marietta, Oklahoma, triggered an alert to the Love County Sheriff's Office to be on the lookout for the Buchanans' blue Dodge van bearing Oklahoma license plates. Officers thereafter found defendant driving the van. Upon his arrest, defendant told the officers he got the van from a friend of his sister in Oklahoma City. Love County Sheriff's deputies searched a site south of Marietta and, in a pile of dumped trash, found fast-food wrappers, unset false teeth, dental equipment, literature and pamphlets dealing with dental supplies, a Texas Department of Public Safety traffic warning slip bearing defendant's name and dated June 7, 1979, a collection of school notes and a quiz from a math class, a license plate bracket that said National City, Stanley Dodge (the dealership where the Buchanans purchased the van), and credit cards, courtesy cards and receipts bearing Eleanore Buchanan's and Terry Buchanan's names and bearing signatures that were not in Terry Buchanan's handwriting.
A sheriff's deputy found a saw, two shanks of rope, a butcher knife, a screwdriver, credit cards, a spiral notebook entitled Math 118, and a handwritten note addressed Look, Donna inside the van. Blue fibers from the carpet in the van matched fibers found on top of Eleanore Buchanan's abdomen, on her socks and feet, and on the exposed bone of her right wrist. The rear of the van had a couch seat spanning the two rear fender wheel wells; the seat folded up to reveal the spare tire and additional storage space. San Diego County Sheriff's officers found a fairly extensive bloodstain on the inside, top, and side carpeting covering the right fender wheel well and running down over the edge of the fender wheel well onto the flat surface of the carpet bed and van floor underneath the couch seat; blood drops on the rim and wheel of the spare tire; blood on the couch rail; two small bloodstains in the middle of the van forward of the couch seat and behind the driver's seat; and blood on the inner right toe of a pair of shoes identified as belonging to defendant. A total of approximately one unit of blood was found in the van. Using blood-type group characteristics, Criminalist Brandon Armstrong opined that Eleanore Buchanan's blood was consistent with the blood found inside the van: The samples of Buchanan's blood taken at the autopsy, the blood taken from the couch rail of the van, and the blood taken from the carpet in the van were all of blood group O, and each of the three samples contained identical enzymes and serum proteins. The blood found on defendant's shoe inside the van could only be tested for blood type, and was found to be type O. Defendant's blood was type A. Armstrong testified that the one unit of blood found in the van, which was approximately 1/12 the amount of blood in a human body, was inconsistent with the amount of blood he would have expected to find had the body been dismembered inside the van. He believed the body had been transported inside the van on top of the spare tire in the wheel well. Tire marks, compressed grass, drag marks, and blood on the berm of the cul-de-sac in Pine Valley where Eleanore Buchanan's body was found indicated something heavy had been dropped and dragged away from the middle of the tire tracks. Several sets of tire tracks were found at the scene; none matched the tires on the Buchanans' van and none was definitively connected to the Buchanan murder.
Detective Crawford of the San Diego County Sheriff's Department interviewed defendant on June 9 and 10, 1979, in the Love County Sheriff's Office in Oklahoma. Crawford made audiotapes of each interview, and the prosecution played both tapes during trial and gave each juror a written transcript of each tape. In the first interview, defendant said he ran into Calvin Spencer, also known as Spider, a friend whom he had not seen since 1973, and Spider's old lady, Fran, at College Billiards in San Diego on Wednesday, May 30, 1979. Fran had left her husband, and she and Spider were driving across the country. Defendant, who told Spider and Fran he would like to do some traveling, agreed to travel with them. Defendant told them he had no money, and Spider and Fran said they would take care of expenses. Defendant told Crawford he thought he might be able to make some money with a check writer machine he brought with him from home. Defendant told Crawford he, Spider and Fran drove to his parents' house in Linda Vista to pick up his clothes and shoes before leaving San Diego. They drove east on Interstate Highway 8, using Fran's and her husband Terry's credit cards to buy gas along the way. Throughout the trip, all three of them signed the credit card receipts. Defendant told Crawford he dropped off Spider and Fran in Shreveport, Louisiana, after Fran gave him permission to drive the van on his own to his cousin's house in Oklahoma City. Fran and Spider were to call him there the following day. Fran also left the credit cards with defendant for him to use for gas and stuff along the way. Defendant explained that Spider had exchanged the California license plates on the van for Oklahoma license plates in order to minimize any difficulty defendant might encounter in using the Buchanans' credit cards at gas stations when Fran would not be there to vouch for his use of the cards. Defendant first learned there was something wrong when he tried to use one of the credit cards at the Stuckey's restaurant in Marietta, Oklahoma, and the cashier called the police. Defendant said he bought the butcher knife sheriff's deputies found in the van at a variety store in Shreveport, Louisiana, explaining that he thought he might need some protection on the road and, since he was an ex-con, he could not purchase a gun. He denied purchasing the saw and rope found in the van, and denied picking up any hitchhikers along the way. Defendant acknowledged that Terry Buchanan's name was on the credit card he used. He told Crawford that Spider sometimes referred to Fran as Eleanore, that a photograph of Eleanore Buchanan holding her newborn baby, shown to him by Crawford, looked like Fran, and that Fran was wearing light-colored jeans and carrying a beige cloth purse when they were traveling. He said he last saw her in Shreveport, Louisiana, on Thursday, June 7, and she was alive, well, and hiding from her husband. In the second interview, conducted the next day on June 10, 1979, defendant told Crawford that earlier in the evening of Wednesday, May 30, 1979, before going to College Billiards where he met Spider and Fran, he visited a friend, Theresa, at her house in San Diego. Theresa then drove him to the house he shared with his parents, where he stayed until at least 9:00 p.m. Five or 10 minutes later, without speaking to his parents, he left and went down the road hitchhiking. He then walked to College Billiards, arriving shortly before 10:00 p.m. There he ran into Spider, whom he had not seen in quite a few years. They discussed defendant's desire to get some paper with which to print up and write bad checks on the check writer, and defendant suggested that Fran would cash the checks he wrote. He also stated that he brought the butcher knife from his parents' home, and he did not remember telling Crawford the day before that he had bought the butcher knife in Shreveport, Louisiana. He also said he might have bought it in Benson, Arizona. He acknowledged police in Texas had stopped him for speeding and issued him a warning ticket while Spider and Fran were with him. Defendant told Crawford he never went near San Diego Mesa College on the night of May 30, 1979; he had not seen any blood in the van but any blood found there was his; and no crime had been committed but the police just got stuck with a corpse and a runaway wife.
The prosecution read into the record defendant's testimony from the first trial; there, defendant admitted stealing the Buchanans' van and forging Terry Buchanan's name on credit card receipts, but denied knowing, seeing, or ever coming into contact with Eleanore Buchanan, alive or dead. Specifically, in the first trial defendant testified that around noon on May 30, 1979, he walked from his home to his doctor's office to receive treatment for a cut on his right hand. He then walked toward his home but before he got there his friend Theresa Roch picked him up in her car. They drove to several locations before stopping at Jean Zimmerman's house, where they stayed until 7:00 or 7:30 p.m. when he left to return home. He got into the car of another friend, Johnny Renault, who drove first to the Linda Vista shopping center, where defendant got out and talked to friends for five minutes before walking home. He got home around 8:00 p.m. Around 9:00 or 9:10 p.m., his friend Clifford Harris stopped by. Defendant and Clifford left around 9:10 p.m. and walked several blocks to his sister-in-law Carolyn's house. He stayed there for 25 or 30 minutes. When he left, he walked alone to a Minute Mart store, where he bought a beer. He ran into a security guard he knew, Butch Smith, talked for a moment, and then walked home. He saw no one when he got home, and went to his room where he listened to the radio and wrote poetry for a couple of hours. He again left the house sometime after 12:00 a.m. to go to a 7-Eleven store where he bought cigarettes and saw his friend Butch McIntyre. He saw a police car and, because he knew there were traffic warrants for his arrest, he took another route home. Defendant claimed he first saw the Buchanans' van around 1:00 a.m. on May 31, 1979, parked on Tait Street in Linda Vista when he was walking from the 7-Eleven store on Linda Vista Road. He peered inside and saw a purse on the passenger seat. He found the van unlocked, opened the door and reached for the purse. He saw the keys in the ignition and because he didn't feel like walking, drove it home. Defendant called Donna Hatch, his fiancée, who lived in Texas and was a prospective witness in a criminal case defendant had pending in San Diego involving a 1976 crime. He earlier had made plans to go to Texas to visit Hatch, and after he stole the van he decided to use it to get there. He went through the purse he found in the van, kept the credit cards, and packed some clothes and shoes. By the time he left his parents' house in the van, it was nearly light. He drove east on Interstate 8, [4] stopping for gas in El Cajon. He tossed the purse out of the window in El Centro, after he turned onto Interstate 10, and drove to Terrell, Texas. Defendant admitted that when Detective Crawford first interviewed him after his arrest, he made up the story about driving across the country with Spider [5] and Fran because he stole the van and didn't want to get stuck with auto theft. He testified that he intended to burglarize several stores in Terrell, Texas, and to that end bought a saw, a wrench set, and a screwdriver. He admitted that he bought the butcher knife and rope on June 7, 1979, in Lewisville, Texas, because he planned to abandon the van in a wooded area near Shreveport, Louisiana, and use the knife and rope to cut and tie bushes to camouflage the van from view so he could leave inside items taken during the burglaries; he would then fly home. He admitted he told Donna Hatch he may have killed a man, but he did so in order to distract her from the lies he told her about his former wife. Defendant testified that he exchanged the California license plates for Oklahoma license plates while he was in Oklahoma City because I always do that the week after I'm driving a stolen vehicle. He identified the shoes found in the van as his, and denied ever seeing blood on the shoes or anywhere inside the van. Defendant acknowledged that in June 1979, before the preliminary hearing, he wrote a letter from the San Diego jail to Terry Buchanan in which he said, Fran is not dead! . . . She is alive and either in Shreveport, Louisiana or Oklahoma City with a guy named Calvin Spencer . . . you are probably full of grief when you should be highly pissed off . . . Fran might be somewhere all wacked off from P.C.P. and about to get into some really serious trouble with Calvin. He also acknowledged that these statements were lies, and explained he wrote the letter because he did not trust his appointed counsel or the district attorney's office, and it was my hope that if I present such a letter and was convincing enough that I might possibly . . . get Mr. Buchanan to get the FBI to investigate to determine whose . . . body was found out there. Because I didn't think my luck was bad enough to have stolen a homicide vehicle. He admitted he wrote several letters to Theresa Roch in June 1979, asking her to pretend she was Eleanore Buchanan and to call Terry Buchanan and the television news stations and tell them she was still alive. He also wrote a letter to a friend, B.J. Brown, asking him to tell the police that I came to your house on June 1, 1979, with a Black dude and his lady . . . his name was Spider and his lady was Fran. It's very important that you remember this because I need witnesses who can say they saw me with these two people in that blue van.