Then No One Can Have Her Page 22

  “Jim, what’s the deal?” Sean asked when Jim showed him the weapon.

  “Well, I’ve told the sheriff’s office I have it, so they know,” Jim replied.

  Not happy with the choices Jim had made since he’d lost Carol, Sean still drove him to medical appointments, but stepped back from regular contact as his friend’s caretaker, and let Bill Thompson step up.

  After Jim was found dead and Sean’s emotions had cleared a bit, it started to make sense that Jim might have felt he’d solved all his problems by committing suicide. The depression, the pain, the debt and the sure feeling that he was dying of cancer—it all added up. After watching his mother suffer a long and painful death from the disease, and having his father die in his arms from cancer as well, Jim had told his friends he didn’t want to go that way.

  Sean told police that Jim had been acting particularly strange the last time they’d seen each other, a few evenings earlier at the video store. Jim had walked in with Alex, smiled and approached his friend.

  “Mr. Jeralds,” Jim said, surprising him with a long, slow, tight hug and a kiss on the cheek. Sean thought the random kiss and hug were a bit inappropriate, but he shrugged off the behavior, attributing it to Jim having “a lot of pain meds on board.”

  Jim had also told Sean that he’d recently seen an attorney to ensure that his sons—and no one else—got his belongings in the case of his death. It was as if he were preparing for this, getting his affairs in order.

  Over the recent Thanksgiving and Christmas holidays, Jim Knapp had traded e-mails with Ken Korn, a friend who had grown up with him and his brother, Bobby, in the San Fernando Valley, where their parents taught together at Valley College. Ken and Jim met when they were twelve, and went on to attend Grant High School in Los Angeles.

  “We all grew up surfing together and hanging out,” Ken said.

  He and Jim moved down to San Diego County during the 1980s, and lived together in Carlsbad for five years. Jim worked as an orthopedic surgical tech at Scripps Clinic in San Diego, and took flying lessons at a small airport, which prompted him to apply to Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University. He then moved to Prescott, where he met his future wife, Ann Saxerud, an ER nurse.

  To Ken, Jim was like a brother, which is why he asked Jim to be his best man in 1988, a few years after Jim’s own wedding to Ann.

  Jim received an associate’s degree in aeronautical science in 1991 from Embry-Riddle, then went on to earn a bachelor’s and a master’s degree in education from Northern Arizona University.

  Years later he returned to Embry-Riddle as the director of development, helping to raise money for capital projects and new buildings. In that job Jim rubbed elbows with wealthy donors such as the billionaire entrepreneur who gave millions for a library that was named after him and his wife, the Christine and Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Library and Learning Center.

  After leaving the university in 2004, Jim, his wife, mother-in-law and their family moved to the state of Washington, where he taught grade school. But missing Prescott, they all moved back eighteen months later.

  Jim and Ken weren’t as close during the last five years of Jim’s life, but in his last months, he talked about his melanoma diagnosis, biopsies and medical tests, receiving unemployment and being in debt. Jim gave Ken and other friends the impression that he thought the cancer had metastasized and he was going to die.

  The last time Ken saw Jim was in Carlsbad, a year or two before he died, where he came to get his “ocean fix” for a week, met up with old friends, went surfing and camped out at the state beach.

  Jim had always enjoyed surfing and flying, Ken said, because they “gave him a good feeling and allowed him to channel” his urge to get high on drugs and alcohol, with which he had struggled in the past, and focus on healthier activities.

  After Carol’s murder Jim exchanged some last e-mails with Ken, in which he seemed out of sorts, listing his struggles in bullet points. Between Carol’s death and his health and financial concerns, “he was not himself,” Ken said. “He was devastated that Carol was taken away—she was like an anchor for him.”

  Even so, Ken said, “He was still positive, and still upbeat. He was the kind of guy who always had something new going. Very funny guy. Great sense of humor. Was always open to new [things], kind of spiritual, just open to improving his life. Loved his kids. A very dedicated father.”

  Jim’s brother, Bobby, called Ken to tell him the sad news that Jim was dead and they both thought he “took his own life.”

  How would Ken explain the odd scene at Jim’s condo? “He might have gone through a couple different phases before he decided to do what he did,” Ken said. “I guess we’ll never know for sure.”

  Sean Jeralds and Dave Roy came to a different conclusion: Knowing that life insurance companies often don’t pay benefits in suicide cases, Jim might have purposely left the room in disarray.

  Both thought that “in some twisted way, Jim had made it look like there had been a struggle” at the condo, Dave said. “That would have been a Jim thing to do, [to] make it look like there was another reason [for his death].”

  They didn’t know whether Jim had any life insurance, but Dave suggested that another “motivation may have been for his kids not to think that he committed suicide, and that it was something bigger than that.”

  Jim Knapp was pronounced dead at 9:20 P.M. on January 7, nearly an hour after Sean called 911. And by the next day, the detectives had looked at the totality of the circumstances and determined that Jim had shot himself four days before his fifty-third birthday. However, they still asked the ME to confirm their finding, which he did.

  Dr. Philip Keen and his assistant, Karen Gere, rolled Jim over and determined that the bullet had gone through his body and the closet floor, through a three-quarter-inch-thick piece of plywood, and into the dirt in the subbasement.

  “I’ve been doing this job for twenty-six years, and that was the one time I can remember I had the medical examiner and his assistant come to the scene, examine the body and see what his determination was as well, before we removed Mr. Knapp,” Sergeant Heath said.

  By seven o’clock the next morning, detectives had obtained a search warrant for the condo, which allowed them to collect the bullet casings and look for a note or other evidence concerning the cause of death.

  Inside a drawer in a plastic storage bin in Jim Knapp’s bedroom, the detectives found a black nylon handgun holster, with an extra magazine and a note that stated Jim had borrowed the gun from a former coworker at Project Insight, Inc., whose phone number was written there.

  Investigators also found quite a few vials of medication in the kitchen. After Ann Saxerud showed up, she told detectives that Jim was addicted to the prescription meds he took for chronic illnesses and depression. He’d had cancer, she said, and he’d planned to get a new growth checked. He also was unemployed and in financial trouble.

  A termination letter from Project Insight stated that Jim had worked there from January 25, 2007, until June 3, 2008, but he was let go after his position was eliminated “as part of a larger administrative downsizing.”

  Jim’s next-door neighbor told police she’d been startled awake by two loud noises at 12:30 A.M. on January 6, which caused her to jump up in bed. She listened for a short time and went back to sleep when she didn’t hear anything else. The last time she’d heard Jim in his apartment was on January 5, and she hadn’t seen him for a while before that.

  Dr. Keen, the same pathologist who conducted Carol’s autopsy, also performed Jim’s on January 10. Doug Brown, who was back to being a sheriff’s patrol deputy, but was still working on the DeMocker case, observed the examination.

  Keen’s report noted that Jim was five feet seven inches tall, weighed 189 pounds, had “mild to moderate” alcoholic liver disease, a “history of malignant melanoma,” and a 1 3/8-inch scar on his left cheek, a remnant of the skin graft placed where his melanoma had been removed.

  This man died
of a self-inflicted contact perforating gunshot wound to the chest with shored exit wound in the back, Keen’s report stated. There is a surrounding dark muzzle imprint and powder imprint ranging up to 1.5-inches in diameter with no discernable stippling of the adjacent skin surfaces. There is black soot residue on the anterior surface of the white T-shirt overlying the wound.

  Stippling, the term for a pattern of unburned gunpowder grains, like a tattoo, is usually found when someone is a shot from a short distance away. A self-inflicted gunshot, straight to the body, does not leave such marks.

  Keen said the shot went in right to left and steeply downward, perforating the center of Jim’s heart, leaving an exit wound in the back, left of the spine, which he determined was consistent with Jim holding the gun, probably in his right hand, and firing it into his chest.

  Cause of death: gunshot wound, thorax, the report stated. Manner: suicide.

  Before Jim Knapp’s toxicology tests came back, Prescott police were still hedging about the cause of death, telling the Daily Courier that they were searching Jim’s computer for threats against him and more solid evidence that he had committed suicide.

  But that search didn’t turn up any threats. And when the toxicology results landed on January 22, they showed that his body was full of prescription drugs—with no undigested pills in his stomach and no alcohol in his system.

  Jim’s blood contained six different substances, including metabolites, the chemicals still present after the body has processed a drug. If no traces of the original drug are present, this usually indicates that the person took the drug some hours or days ago, depending on its half-life, said forensic toxicologist Dwain Fuller, who testifies as an expert in homicide cases. Fuller, who had no official role in this case, looked over the toxicology and autopsy reports before commenting.

  The toxicology results showed that Jim had elevated levels of zolpidem, better known as the common sleep aid Ambien, which could mean he took a higher than therapeutic dose, Fuller said. But the elevated level could also result from postmortem redistribution, because drug concentrations can rise between the time of death and when toxicology samples are taken.

  Jim’s blood contained less than a therapeutic level of chlordiazepoxide, otherwise known as Librium, a Schedule II controlled substance and muscle relaxant used as a sedative for anxiety and symptoms of alcohol withdrawal. Because this is an older drug, Jim might have been taking it for quite some time, Fuller said.

  The tests also showed the presence of tramadol, which is a quasi-narcotic painkiller marketed as Ultram, and promethazine, which is used to control allergy symptoms, nausea and vomiting.

  Three different metabolites were found—for tramadol, for the antidepressant Zoloft, and for nordiazepam, a product most likely of metabolizing the Librium.

  Asked how this combination of medications might have affected Jim’s state of mind at the time of the shooting, Fuller said that antidepressants don’t tend to acutely affect a person’s mood and the Ambien would have made him sleepy. If Jim had been taking the Librium for some time, that shouldn’t have been debilitating, either.

  But based on the “malignant melanoma” notation and the number of surgical scars described in the autopsy report, Fuller said Jim may have had more than one growth removed. He already had one surgical scar—and a skin graft—on his left cheek, as well as two other scars on his right arm, one on his left thigh and two along the midline of his abdomen. A Mayo Clinic “order for photograph,” dated February 2008, had boxes checked for his right shoulder, “face and chin.”

  “Once melanoma gets going, it’s not a good thing,” Fuller said. “A lot of times it can metastasize to the brain and you will be dead in six months. Melanoma is a very serious condition. I can see him very fearful that he didn’t have long.”

  It’s difficult to try to speculate about a suicidal person’s state of mind, Fuller said, but “having cancer, owing a lot of money and thinking you’re going to die probably has as much psychological impact as anything he would have taken.”

  Knapp’s Mayo Clinic records, which were entered into evidence in the DeMocker case, show that he did, in fact, have a number of serious health issues requiring surgery over the years, and had been prescribed narcotic painkillers for some of them: a diagnosis of diverticulosis in 1999, with symptoms still present through 2008; a partial colec-tomy, with subsequent infections and revision surgeries in 2000 and 2002; treatment for abdominal adhesions in 2004; a diagnosis in 2006 of Barrett’s esophagus (a precancerous condition where abnormal cells grow in the esophageal lining), reconfirmed in 2008; an open xiphoid resection in late October 2008 (which left a scar near the gunshot wound); and consistent complaints of pain in various parts of his body. His history of melanoma included growths frozen and surgically removed and skin grafts. In 2008, he reported concerns about various skin flaws, as well as a tumor in the perineal area, which a biopsy in May proved to be benign.

  “He’d obtained pain meds for those things, and his temptation was that his best friend, [Carol], probably as close as they could be without dating, here she was murdered, he was upset about this and really felt like that’s it, ‘I’m out of here, life isn’t worth living,’” Ken Korn said.

  The Northern Arizona Department of Public Safety crime lab conducted DNA and other tests on the nine-millimeter gun, bullets and casings found in Jim Knapp’s condo. The results all came back to Jim, not to an unknown intruder.

  This lab found that James Knapp’s DNA was located on this firearm, Officer Ryan Hobbs of the PPD wrote in his report. They also tested the spent casings located at this scene as well as several unspent rounds [which] . . . matched this firearm.

  After Jim Knapp’s death, the Embry-Riddle alumni website posted a blurb about him, which was similar to an obituary that ran in the Courier: Jim will always be remembered as a deep emotional person with a tireless entrepreneurial spirit and endless enthusiasm for fresh new ideas. The notice described him as someone who could share deep philosophical insights, then immediately break into a joke. The writer also noted Jim’s deep love for his two sons, his affinity for the ocean, his easygoing surfer sensibility and his “constant quest for knowledge, friends and fun.”

  A celebration of life for him was held January 17, 2009, at the Watson Lake Ramada. Recommended dress was aloha shirts, shorts and sandals. Organizers asked that donations be made to the Surfrider Foundation in lieu of flowers.

  Interviewed by prosecution investigator Mike Sechez, Bobby Knapp said his brother had talked about committing suicide at least once during phone calls in his last months. Once Jim was diagnosed with melanoma, he told Bobby he would rather kill himself than go through the same ordeal as their mother had. Jim’s struggle with prescription drug and alcohol abuse dated back to his twenties. For this and other reasons, Bobby was certain his brother had taken his own life.

  Bobby told Sechez that he’d gone over to Jim’s condo a week after his death to retrieve his belongings, accompanied by Sean Jeralds, Dave Roy, Ann Saxerud and her sons. Among Jim’s things they found a diary, with a note asking Bobby to give it to Alex and Jay once they were old enough. On the kitchen counter they found a camera, which Jay asked if he could have as a keepsake. Dave took the camera to his car to check the photos on his laptop and make sure they were appropriate.

  Three photos featured Jim wearing a Santa’s hat and holding a black semiautomatic handgun, the same one that was found next to his body. One, time-stamped December 25, 2008, at 10:01 P.M., showed him pointing the gun across his chest. A second, taken a minute later, had him pointing the gun into the air. And a third, taken a minute later, showed him holding the gun in his right hand and a knife in his left. Roy deleted the images before giving the camera to Jay.

  When Sechez retrieved the camera from Jay, he couldn’t find the deleted photos on it, so he collected the memory card and adapter from Prescott police and sent them to the DPS Computer Forensic Unit. The unit was able to recover the deleted images, which
were necessary for the prosecution to illustrate Jim’s state of mind around the time he shot himself.

  Jim was truly in dire financial straits. When Bobby looked through his brother’s bank statements, his accounts showed that he had $5 in his saving account and $172.51 in his checking, as of November 30, 2008. After closing those accounts six months later, Bobby received a check for a whopping $241.

  In January 2012, Detective Norman Peterson of the PPD met with Steve’s attorney to discuss evidence found at the condo.

  A month later, Peterson went there with prosecution investigator Sechez and sheriff’s Deputy Doug Brown to follow up on a photo Peterson had snapped of a bullet hole through the master bedroom ceiling the day Jim’s death was reported. Climbing on the roof, Peterson found a bullet hole in the shingles above the bedroom, but he was unable to find the actual bullet. Brown also crawled into the attic space to track the bullet’s course, and photographed the hole in the ceiling and where it had exited through the roof. The bullet that killed Jim Knapp was never found, even after investigators ran a metal detector through the crawl space under the condo floor.

  CHAPTER 33

  After his arrest, Steve stayed busy behind bars, making phone calls, and writing letters to the Hartford Insurance Company, trying to collect on Carol’s policies. He also took steps to ensure that his daughter Charlotte was being cared for, and that Renee stayed on his side.

  On November 9, 2008, Steve wrote Renee a six-page letter, explaining his affair with Leslie Thomas, and asked for Renee’s forgiveness. Renee hung in there.

  Charlotte started off staying with her aunt Susan DeMocker at the condo. However, after they butted heads, the very upset teenager called Steve to complain, and he subsequently called Renee.