PLUNGING SOUTH down Dysart Road from Glendale Avenue, into the great wide nothingness of the West Valley, everything is rubble and scorn.
It is about five miles from the Circle K on Glendale Avenue to the Whataburger on Van Buren, past the faux oasis of Litchfield Park, with its palm trees and cinder-block walls. Every now and again the flat, scrubby desert yields to a crop of humble ranch houses, stucco and painted wood, or to the high, plastic signs of fast gas and fast food, hyper-real against the pale vault of an empty sky. There are citrus orchards north of the interstate, strip malls to its south, and overhead the dull rumble of warplanes from Luke Air Force Base.
Everyone knows this is nowhere, and the teenagers who cruise between the local landmarks wear blank faces and play their music at breast-thumping levels. On weekend nights, after they've prowled the malls and multiplex cinemas, they meet in the desiccated bed of the Agua Fria River or at the end of Cotton Lane, where they drink beer and fumble with each other, exploring the usual adolescent universe.
In the summer, after school lets out, the days run together in a seamless, heat-numbed weekend rushing toward September. Most of the working-class kids find jobs-scraping off minimum wage and sometimes tips, often at irregular hours-to pay for their tapes and movie tickets, high-top basketball shoes, promise rings and cigarettes. But without the rhythms of school, there is little to mark the passing time-June seems like July, which blends into August. There are no reference marks: Summer vacation in the West Valley is as featureless as the landscape.
But something happened early on the morning of August 10, 1991, that would spike the consciousness of the West Valley and reverberate around the world. At nine minutes after 11 a.m., Chawnee Borders arrived at the Thai Buddhist temple Wat Promkunaram to discover the bodies of the nine people who lived on the premises.
The victims-six monks, an elderly nun and two young men-were found in a loose circle in a bedroom, lying face down. It appeared they had been herded together and forced to kneel, their hands extended above their heads, before being shot. Blood, dried to the color of chocolate sauce, stained their yellow-and-orange robes and flecked the walls of the narrow room. The office and the living quarters of the temple had been ransacked, a mattress overturned and someone had crudely scraped the word Bloods" into the wall with a knife.
All of them were dead because someone had shot them in the back of the head or neck with a .22-caliber rifle. Five of them had been wounded by shotgun pellets, but these wounds, for the most part, were superficial. It appeared that whoever wielded the .22 had methodically executed the residents of Wat Promkunaram.
Foi Sripanprasert, a 75-year-old Theravada Buddhist nun, had been shot once in the back of the head. She also suffered pellet wounds to her left arm. To her right lay the body of Somsak Sopha, a 46-year-old monk. He also had been sprayed with shotgun pellets, but two bullets-one in the back of his head, the other in his neck-were the fatal wounds. To Sopha's right lay the body of Siang Ginggaeo, 35. Shotgun pellets peppered his hand, shoulder and back, and there were two neat bullet holes in the back of his head and neck.
Next to him lay 33-year-old Surichai Annutaro, who had been killed by two bullets in his head and neck. To his right was the body of Chirasak Chirapong, a 21-year-old man with slight, delicate features and long, flowing hair. Chirapong, known as "Boy," worked as a handyman and janitor at the temple. He was killed by a single bullet in the back of the head. The body of Pairuch Kanthong, the temple's abbot, lay next to Boy. Kanthong, 36, was wounded with the shotgun and nailed three times with the .22. In addition to the ritualistic wounds in the back of the head and neck, he was also wounded in the scalp, indicating he may have struggled or flinched before the fatal shots.
Matthew Miller, a 16-year-old novice monk, lay next to Kanthong. Miller had been shot once in the back of the head. Miller, the son of an American serviceman and a Thai national, as well as the grandson of Sripanprasert, was the only American citizen living at the temple.
Chalerm Chantapim, 33, died from three bullets in the back of the head. His body lay between Miller's and that of Boonchauy Chaiyarach, a 37-year-old monk. Chaiyarach died from a bullet in the back of the head, and had also been wounded by a shotgun blast that left pellets in his right arm and buttocks.
Investigators found 17 spent .22 long-rifle shells at the scene, as well as a number of 20-gauge shotgun casings. There was a bootprint in the laundry room, the obvious attempted misdirection of the carving on the wall, and not much else. No eyewitnesses, no fingerprints, no indication of a motive beyond the haphazardly looted temple. It was the worst mass murder in the history of Arizona, and since eight of the victims were Thai citizens, it had international implications.
Word spread fast. Soon there were wild rumors of gangs run amok, that the monks had uncovered a drug-smuggling operation, all manner of improbable stories. By the time the television stations sent their camera crews out, that Saturday, August 10, was indelibly impressed upon the minds of the kids of the West Valley as the day they found the monks.
JOHNATHON DOODY'S FACE is scored with fierce red acne, abrading his otherwise hairless Asian aspect. His hair is black and coarse, bluntly scissored and cleanly parted, without much finesse. Though he is passably tall, his frame seems just that, a series of bony angles fitted together to make the foundation of an unfinished man.
Doody was born on May 5, 1974, in Thailand, on the other side of the world. His mother married an American airman who subsequently adopted Johnathon and his younger brother David. Aside from the mild anomaly of his heritage, he is a post-Watergate American kid to whom such signifying events as Neil Armstrong's walk on the moon or Hank Aaron's 715th home run must seem as remote as the signing of the Magna Carta or the Battle of Bull Run. His courtroom demeanor seems informed by television and movies: Like a good little soldier, he is rigid and bland-eyed despite mounting evidence.
Doody, who has appeared in court dressed in the Air Force Junior ROTC color-guard uniform he was arrested in, will soon stand trial for the murders at Wat Promkunaram. Investigators claim the weapons used in the killings have been linked to Doody and his 16-year-old friend Alex Garcia. Some items similar to property believed stolen from the temple were either found in Doody's possession or linked to him. He made self-incriminating statements to investigators, and he apparently made damaging statements to some of his friends.
Though he has been adjudged an adult for the purposes of justice, Doody seems very young. He speaks with a preternatural softness and what may be a residual Thai accent or a mild speech impediment. He drops the final "s" from his plurals, and reflexively bows his head toward whomever he is addressing.
"He's a very quiet, very reserved, very very polite young man," said Peter Balkan, Doody's court-appointed attorney. Balkan describes a psychological report prepared by Phoenix psychologist Roger Martig for the court as "absolutely unremarkable."
"Dr. Martig did recommend that he be transferred to the adult court, but only on the basis of the severity of the alleged offense and the lack of time until Johnathon's 18th birthday," Balkan said. "He could point to nothing at all in his interviews or his psychological testing of Johnathon that indicates anything out of the ordinary, any violence or sociopathic propensity... . It's just not there. It's probably one of the best psychological reports I've ever received in a transfer situation."
Until late last October, Doody was a junior at Agua Fria Union High School, an "ROTC rat" who moved in a fairly tight orbit of students. Most of his classmates who remember him describe a quiet and intense boy, very much taken by the exacting drill and elaborate costuming of Junior ROTC.
He was a member-some say commander-of the chrome-helmeted color guard that performs before football games and other school functions. He also joined the Civil Air Patrol, which provides its members with green fatigue uniforms. At the outbreak of the war in the Persian Gulf, Doody told some classmates he had attempted to enlist in the Air Force but was rebuffed because of his age.
For at least part of his sophomore year, Doody had been a back-up quarterback on the junior-varsity football team. There is some indication he was fascinated with things mechanical and precise, like cameras and weapons. During ROTC field trips, he would bring along his father's 35mm camera, clicking away at fighters, ordnance and other cadets.
Among the military-minded clique, Doody was well-liked and considered "a cool guy." Most of the kids at Agua Fria outside the ROTC program, however, have no sharp memories of Johnathon Doody. By most accounts, he was a slight presence who seemed to fade into the background in social situations. As a student, according to his principal, O.K. Fulton, he did little to distinguish himself outside the ROTC program.
And even if his classmates had formed definite impressions of Doody, the school discourages their talking with the media. Lieutenant Colonel Darrell Ahrens, the ROTC instructor at Agua Fria, ordered his cadets not to speak to the press and declined to be interviewed himself. Other students said various members of the administration had instructed them not to talk about Doody, or his co-defendant and classmate, 16-year-old Alessandro Alex" Garcia, to anyone except investigators.
They talk anyway. Since Doody and Garcia were arrested before an Agua Fria football game on October 25, the school has been humming with rumor and disbelief. It hardly seemed possible that Doody and Garcia could be involved in something as terrible as the Buddhist temple murders. In the days after the murders, Fulton said the Agua Fria administration brought in counselors to help students cope with the enormity and shock engendered by the arrest of two of their classmates.
At a recent hearing to determine whether he would be transferred to adult court, several friends and classmates testified that Doody had told them he participated in the temple murders or that he had killed people. But not one went to investigators until after Doody and Garcia were arrested. No one believed Johnathon had ever really killed anyone.
BENJAMIN LENININGER, a stocky, 210-pound sophomore at Agua Fria, said he talked to Doody about the temple case two days before the arrests. The conversation allegedly took place around 3 p.m. at the ROTC "compound" adjacent to the main Agua Fria campus. Lenininger said he and Doody were briefly joined by another ROTC cadet, freshman John Mills Jr., but that they "ran him off."
Lenininger said Doody told him he and Garcia were occasionally employed as snipers by the Air Force Office of Special Investigations. "He said it involved OSI, that they used Alex and himself as snipers, that he was involved in assassinations of government officials...that they popped 'em off with an X-formation."
Lenininger explained that an "X-formation" is a system where a "target" is caught in a crossfire by two snipers, and that Doody told him Alex and he had flipped a coin to determine who would be the "primary" shooter.
"He said the OSI was involved in the monk murders out here," Lenininger said. "That the monks were invading national security so OSI had to eliminate them. He said that himself and Alex and a couple of others met in the riverbed and that he shot them mercenary-style... . He said once you've shot someone mercenary-style you will always see and hear the blood rushing from their heads."
Similarly, Angel Rowlett, a 19-year-old who was a cadet lieutenant colonel and drill-team commander in the Junior ROTC program before graduating from Agua Fria, said he had a conversation with Doody about the temple case "sometime before school started" last year. They met in the parking lot of the Circle K at the corner of Glendale Avenue and Dysart Road, sometime around 9:30 or 10 p.m.
"I asked him, because his mother and brother were members of the temple, if [investigators] had any leads," Rowlett said. "He said they discovered it might have been gang-related. He told me the whole purpose of this incident was that they were going to rob and leave, that it was supposed to be an in-and-out job."
As the conversation drifted on, Rowlett began to hear the narrative's "they" become "we." Doody implicated himself, Garcia and Rolando "Rollie" Caratachea, a 17-year-old Agua Fria dropout, in the crime.
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TEENAGE WASTELLAND DEATH AND BORDOM IN ... v2-19-92
