Never See Them Again, page 7
Adelbert’s family wanted to bury him with class. Adelbert had always wanted this one specific type of Houston Astros baseball team jersey, a white-, orange-, and yellow-colored shirt, with a big star off center. It was something Adelbert had talked about but never got around to buying. So the family agreed he needed to be buried in that jersey.
“He had been begging my mom to buy him one,” Nichole said. “He wasn’t into suits, ties, dress shirts, and the like. So my mom didn’t want to bury him in clothing that wasn’t him.”
So Adelbert was buried in his Astros jersey, a Houston Astros ball cap placed next to him, and his pallbearers all wore the black Astros jerseys with stars.
With all four victims in the ground, the reality of life without them began to settle on family and friends. Nichole probably spoke for all the families when she said life would never be the same again. Birthdays. Christmases. Fourth of July celebrations. Three Kings Day. Family gatherings. Births. And even deaths, too. There, invisible and obvious, weighing everyone down, the memory of a loved one not being able to take part in the affair. It’s like having a piece of your soul stolen; you just don’t know what part. It’s hard to figure out what, exactly, hurts more: the loss itself, how the person was taken, or the simple fact that he was here one day—talking, joking, loving, laughing—and the next . . . gone. Vanished like dust. There’s no filling that void. There’s no scratching an itch you cannot find. It will always be there. And you’ll never quite understand or entirely accept it. Time doesn’t heal this wound—it only stops the pain from completely destroying you.
AN INVESTIGATION SUCH as the one HPD’s Homicide Division was looking at postmurder could get out of control quickly. It took a delicate hand to keep things under control. Dead people—especially victims of murder—reveal a story; their lives, told from the grave, paint a picture. Working example: On July 22, 2003, four days after the murders, HPD got word of a man, Jason Uolla, who had been beaten with a baseball bat and left for dead in the parking lot of the apartment complex where he lived. Uolla had attended Marcus’s funeral. He hung around with Marcus. He knew Adelbert through Marcus.
He was known as “JU”; and he was someone HPD had been looking at, without telling the families, as a potential suspect.
“He was on the radar screen . . . for the killing,” one detective said.
Ladd was focused on JU. In talking to many of the people inside a local group of dope dealers, HPD learned that Marcus was looking to become what one detective described as a “big-time dealer,” according to JU. The supplier JU used, whom JU viewed as one of the biggest connections in the Houston area, turned out to be nothing more than a mule for the Los Zetas in Mexico and had been, HPD confirmed, skimming off the top of whatever load he transported for the Los Zetas. The Zetas, as they are known, according to government sources, is “the most technologically advanced, sophisticated and dangerous cartel operating in Mexico” today. This is a gang, it should be noted, that does not negotiate. They do not tolerate theft. They do not take kindly to punk kids trying to rip them off, or skimming from the top. They don’t ask questions. They kill you. Period.
JU’s connection was ultimately whacked himself, along with his girlfriend inside a Clear Lake City hotel. The HPD knew that JU, Marcus “and even Adelbert” were naïve to the fact that they were messing with big-time players in the drug world.
Now JU lay in a hospital bed, his skull beaten so badly with a baseball bat that he had been transferred to a second hospital, where a neurosurgeon was waiting to operate and relieve pressure accumulating on the young man’s brain.
It was always tough for a cop to get information out of friends and family gathering at a hospital, milling about the waiting area, wondering whether to plan a celebration or funeral, trying to come to terms with the idea that a loved one, no matter what he’s done throughout his life, was inside an operating room, fighting. Nonetheless, a quadruple homicide had taken place—and the trail led to JU.
Ladd did some digging and found out that JU had gone over to a friend’s house (a girl who had dated Adelbert at one time and had been with him recently). As the first story of what happened went, JU was there with his girlfriend (a dancer at the Club Atlantis, another Houston area strip joint). They fell asleep. At one point during the night, JU went out to his car to get some clothes. Someone—or a group of people—must have been waiting for him. Because, one source claimed, “unknown suspects” came up and “struck [JU] with a baseball bat.” The attack took place, HPD was certain, inside the parking lot of the Bayridge Apartments, in League City, just south of Clear Lake.
A League City patrol officer had interviewed JU’s sister at the hospital.
“He’s in critical condition,” she said. The girl was a mess. Crying. Shaking. Unsure of whether her brother was going to pull through. The brain can only take so many shots without sustaining irreversible damage. If JU made it through, was he going to be in a vegetative state?
“Any idea what happened?” the officer asked.
“None . . . but I’m concerned about a possible tie to what happened in Clear Lake because Jason was a friend of . . . Marcus’s.”
“They knew each other well?”
“Jason had seen Marcus two hours before the murders!” she said, impassioned by this piece of information. The girl also mentioned how she was under the impression that the cases were related because she had heard that one of the victims in Clear Lake had received similar injuries.
This was true, Ladd knew.
JU’s friend had taken him to the hospital. An officer contacted the friend and interviewed him in another section of the hospital, where he sat with JU’s brother. Word had since come down that there was a good chance JU would pull through the operation, but there was no telling how he would be afterward, or how long it would be before he was alert enough to speak.
“We just don’t know,” the doctor said.
JU’s buddy explained what happened at Bayridge that night. He knew because he was there and had seen it. The story HPD had gotten earlier (JU heading out to his car to get some clothes) was wrong.
There was a party, the kid explained. He had also passed out, same as JU and JU’s girlfriend, who had woken the friend up at about four in the morning and told him that JU was hurt badly, bleeding all over the place, out in the parking lot.
“I walked out,” he explained, “and saw that Jason was bleeding from lacerations to the left side of the head.”
“Was Jason awake then?”
“Yeah . . . yeah . . . he was conscious and aware of his surroundings.”
“Did you two talk?”
“I offered to take him to the hospital, but he declined.”
But then came a different story from what JU’s girlfriend had given police. As JU’s friend explained, JU didn’t head outside to his car to grab a change of clothes. He and another guy at the party, Brad Carroll (pseudonym), asked JU to go out into the parking lot at about 3:00 or 3:30 A.M. “to look at a new ‘system’ in his car,” a stereo with subwoofers and enough power to shake the windows of the car next to it at a stoplight.
“What happened when they got out there?”
The friend had asked JU that very question before JU passed out and was taken away to the hospital. “[JU] told me that when he went to go look inside the car, he was attacked from behind with a metal tube or baseball bat.”
“Did he see any of his attackers?”
“Yeah, yeah. . . . He said he turned around to block the attack and saw that it was Taz Herald (pseudonym) striking him. He also said he believed it was Brad who lured him outside to facilitate the attack and that Taz was waiting for him outside in the bushes. He saw them both running away from the scene after the attack. They left in Taz’s vehicle, because Brad left his car there.”
“What type of car was it they left in?”
“Ah . . . um, a green Plymouth or Dodge. Brad’s car is a blue Cadillac with paper plates.”
Names, car models, times. This was the type of information investigators wanted.
It wasn’t until an hour after the attack, when JU began to sweat and vomit, that they decided to take him to the hospital. JU didn’t want to go. In the car on the way, though, he passed out. By the time they got to the emergency room (ER), JU was going into convulsions.
What was the connection between JU, Brad, and Taz? the investigator wondered.
Turned out that Brad and Taz were best friends and “had a long-standing feud” with JU and JU’s brothers. Taz had even “jumped” JU a few months before the attack and had sent JU to the hospital. It all stemmed from a beating JU had put on Taz in Seabrook some months ago, and had been ultimately arrested for. It appeared this was retaliation for that beat-down, not something that was in the least bit related to the Clear Lake case. Both Taz and Brad, however, were at Marcus Precella’s candlelight vigil a few nights before the baseball bat/metal pipe attack on JU and had “mad dogged” JU when they ran into him. Mad dogging is a term often associated with gay men staring at each other and locking eyes, but can also be used as an urban way to describe giving someone you are feuding with the “evil eye,” if you will, letting him or her know that their “time” is coming.
Arrest warrants were issued for Brad and Taz.
Meanwhile, the following morning, JU was “able to talk,” surprisingly, and had even requested a sit-down with police.
JU admitted to the ongoing feud with Taz and his brother. He said he had, in fact, jumped him. Taz had called JU, he said, on the day of Marcus’s candlelight vigil and said, “I don’t like you, but on this day, we should squash it for the event.” It being the feud between them. They should act civil, in other words, for the sake of the vigil and respect to the families. “Just stay away from me,” Taz said.
Ladd and his team, however, were still unconvinced that the attack on JU wasn’t connected in some way to the Clear Lake homicides. The other problem investigators faced was the idea that capital murder in the state of Texas, if one was convicted and sentenced to death, truly turned into a death sentence. And murdering four people in the aggravated way that the Clear Lake case exhibited was a crime that was going to be tried under the death penalty. Everyone knew it.
CHAPTER 10
SEABROOK POLICE WERE back at the woman’s house who had called in that burglary (the rifle and the pistol stolen from her father’s bedroom) days before. She had heard about the attack on JU and claimed to have information.
“I spoke to [a friend] who was present when JU was assaulted in League City,” she told the responding officer. “He said he saw Brad Carroll holding a handgun that night that matched the one stolen from my father’s bedroom. I also heard that Brad and Taz were on their way to Florida in a Cadillac.”
“That it?”
“I’ll try to get the name of the city where they’re heading.”
WITH ALL OF THESE names—dozens coming in every day—crossing HPD Homicide Division detective Tom Ladd’s desk, it was enough to drive the seasoned lawman crazy with frustration. How was he ever going to check out every single person’s story? And everybody seemed to have one to tell.
“Some of [the stories],” Ladd said respectfully, “were just total BS from the beginning, and we didn’t deal with them—but we still had to check these people out. And, of course, everything we did, everything we learned, just went right back to Marcus dealing drugs.”
Ladd and his brother, between them, had spent fifty-seven years of their lives in the Homicide Division. Almost six decades searching for murderers.
“We went from kids to old men working murder cases,” Ladd said with the fatigue of those years texturing his voice.
Envision the life of a Homicide Unit cop: Every day you wake up and you’re looking at another dead person, and the life he or she led. You step into someone’s world, begin ripping it apart, and you learn things not even their closest friends, spouses, or family members know. You get jaded after that many years wading through so much darkness. Nothing surprises you. Then you try to turn around and question family and friends about what you’ve learned, and sometimes the tables turn. You become the bad guy.
“Everybody we talked to kept giving us name after name after name after name,” Ladd said. “We started out with four Homicide investigators on this case.” (Which turned into Phil Yochum and Tom Ladd after a week or so.) “The [others] had their own cases to work,” he added. “We were just overwhelmed.”
“There were some idiots,” Ladd said bluntly, “that led us down rabbit trails, and two or three days later, you realized that this dummy just wanted to be involved with this big, high-profile case. He doesn’t know anything. He just wants to be a part of the investigation.”
MILLBRIDGE DRIVE WAS designed as part of a development. When looking down on the neighborhood from a bird’s-eye view, you’d see how the infrastructure of the community was laid out conducive to the profit-inspired idea of fitting the most houses into one space, while at the same time giving each piece of property its due for raising a couple of kids and maybe a dog. Millbridge is a cul-de-sac, as are several other streets in the immediate vicinity. This was one of the reasons why it had been so difficult to find Tiffany’s house if you only had been over there once or twice. By the same token, if you were someone who spotted a vehicle in the neighborhood on the day of the murders, there was a good chance you’d remember—simply because most vehicles heading into a cul-de-sac are not lost drivers, kids out for joyrides, or part of the normal cycle of everyday traffic; most vehicles heading down Millbridge were driven by people who lived on the street. So a vehicle that didn’t belong stood out rather sharply to the eyes and ears of the neighborhood watch.
Tips filed into HPD in a barrage of phone calls. Callers reported every type of vehicle imaginable: black truck, light blue four-door, maroon four-door, blue-green Volvo, silver two-door, brownish gray car, with patches of maroon, and so on. Dozens of concerned citizens called in any car that was seen in the neighborhood directly following the murders, some even on the day of the murders. Several reports gave descriptions where drivers and passengers were specifically mentioned: black male with white woman, white male with black female, black males, white and black males. White, black, and every ethnic race in between was reported. One caller, who refused to give his name, rattled off a list of people entering and exiting Tiffany Rowell’s house during the days leading up to the murders.
Where to go from there?
George Koloroutis was a strong guy, no doubt about it. Big. Husky. He rode a Harley. At one time in his life, George was all about working out, lifting weights, and even managed a few gyms. These days George felt a little softer, but he was still, as anyone around him knew, tough as weathered leather.
“There’s still muscle,” George said of himself, trying to lighten the mood, “but it’s underneath a layer of fat.”
George had lived through the big-hair days of the 1980s and came out the other end with a few war stories of his own. He understood that kids getting out of high school liked to go wild a little bit. Yet, this full-bodied man, who had prided himself in being able to take care of his family financially, emotionally, and certainly physically, had been brought to his knees by the savage murder of his daughter Rachael. Her death was, of course, devastating to the Koloroutis family. As the one-week anniversary of Rachael’s murder came to pass, George and his family were beside themselves with grief. They didn’t know what to do. George had been in management his entire professional life; he had run small and large companies. He knew how to get things done. George had people working under him. He could delegate. He could ask someone to step it up when he wasn’t satisfied. In that respect George would be the first to admit that he was a bit of a control freak. The way he dealt with things was to jump in headfirst, take a look around, and find out where he was going to be most useful; then he would get busy making things happen. With his daughter’s murder, about the only thing George Koloroutis could do at this stage was pray that those responsible were soon caught and brought to justice—and justice, at least in this type of case, meant a last meal, a T-shaped, padded table, maybe a priest or cleric, if you believed, and then a cocktail of Sodium Pentothal, pancuronium bromide, and potassium chloride—the one chemical that ultimately stops the heart and shuts out the lights for good. Texas courts do not mess around when it comes to carrying out death sentences, George understood. Texas was on the top of the executions-by-state list, beating out its closest competitor by hundreds of executions; Harris County alone had put more criminals on death row than any other state. By the end of the year 2003, Texas would execute twenty-four males, from all walks of life. And by George’s estimate, nothing less would suffice for those responsible. And if the state didn’t get to them, George was considering (although not telling anyone) a plan to take care of his daughter’s killer or killers himself.
George liked Tom Ladd’s style: that old-school investigator type who didn’t take crap from anyone. Ladd was a guy who went about his business the way he thought was best for the case, told people exactly how he felt about them, and didn’t give a damn what the brass said.
Bust the door down first, ask questions later.
George could relate.
“Tom is a tough old guy,” George observed. “We developed the kind of relationship that was respectful. . . . I would cry—literally—on his shoulder. A tear from Tom is like a hand over your shoulder to console. The guy has seen more stuff than we’ll ever imagine.”
Ladd could sense George’s pain. He knew how badly a family that lost a child suffered, with no end seemingly in sight. Not to mention, as journalist Lisa Miller writes in her book Heaven, how that overwhelming grief and numbing pain of losing a child “obliterates everything else.” You feel like you’ll never laugh again. That you have no more tears left to cry. That pang of numbness is always there. You’re angry and on edge. And all these feelings, wherever they’re stored in the emotional psyche, can come up for no reason. Ladd had dealt with plenty of families in similar situations; he knew George was volatile and apprehensive, ready to burst.
