Opinion ID: 2624500
Heading Depth: 5
Heading Rank: 4

Heading: Defendant's testimony in the first trial

Text: 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.