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Doody told detectives Caratachea approached him asking for help in defeating the temple’s “motion sensors”-floodlights activated by movements on the grounds. This may have been the “intrusion alert” exercise Joseph Burner said Doody told him he was going on. Earlier this month, new evidence surfaced against Caratachea when two juveniles held in Maricopa County’s Durango Juvenile Detention Center said Caratachea told them he was at the temple the night of the murders. They told investigators Rollie said he was “stupid” for not disposing of the rifle. Caratachea was in the detention center for the burglary of an Avondale storage locker, a crime to which he pleaded guilty and received probation.
To many at Agua Fria Union High School, Caratachea was a mysterious, weird, improbably romantic figure. He was a dropout who had the reputation of being a facilitator. Some say he sold drugs and was able to obtain weapons for other kids. While Caratachea denies he was a drug dealer who could get guns for underage kids, he admits he had a reputation and he can’t resist intimating that he “was a popular person” who “knew a lot of different types of people.”
On August 20, 1991, ten days after the temple murders, security police on Luke Air Force Base stopped Caratachea and Doody as they cruised around the base. Doody was driving a 1983 Mustang and Caratachea was following him in his 1972 Nova, and the officers believed the boys were acting suspiciously.
After they were stopped, one of the officers noticed a .22 rifle-the same rifle later identified as the murder weapon-in the Nova. Caratachea was told to put the gun in his trunk, and the boys were released.
The next day, Caratachea and Doody were again stopped by Luke security police, as they rode in Doody’s Mustang. The same officer who had previously instructed Caratachea to put the rifle in his trunk asked about the gun, and was told it was in the back seat of the Nova, which was parked in front of the base housing duplex assigned to Doody’s father. According to incident reports and court documents, Caratachea consented to a search of the Nova.
The security officer found the rifle under a pile of clothes in the back seat. Caratachea told the officer he had been living out of his car since his father had kicked him out of the house. Since the Luke officer believed the rifle had been concealed, he called the Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office and a deputy was sent to the scene to investigate. After interviewing Caratachea, the deputy told the boy to put the weapon in his trunk and Caratachea was again released.
But the Luke security police officer filed a report on the incident. And the Luke Office of Special Investigations was working with the sheriff’s office on the temple case. So, on September 10, when Maricopa County Sheriff’s Detective Rick Sinsabaugh was informed of the incident involving the .22 rifle, he went to interview Caratachea. Nothing about the lead seemed particularly promising, but the interdepartmental task force investigating the temple case was interested in all stray .22 rifles-more than 80 weapons were eventually submitted for ballistics tests.
Sinsabaugh met Caratachea at his job at Le Gourmand restaurant, on Indian School Road near Litchfield Park. The detective asked Caratachea if he would voluntarily surrender the rifle for examination. Caratachea agreed, and Sinsabaugh drove him back to the Suneagle Apartments, where Caratachea was living with Johnathon Doody and Michael Myers.
During his visit to the apartment, Sinsabaugh came into contact with Doody, Myers and Garcia. When Caratachea retrieved his rifle and handed it over to the detective, Sinsabaugh noticed it was dirty, and there were what looked like bloodstains on the barrel. When he asked Caratachea about the rifle’s condition, the young man told him he had loaned the gun to a friend who had returned it dirty. Rollie didn’t say who had borrowed the gun, and-at that time-Sinsabaugh didn’t ask.
After he took possession of the rifle, Sinsabaugh drove Caratachea back to work. But he returned to the apartment to question Doody. At some point during the evening, Caratachea had told the detective that Doody had two police scanners, two 35mm cameras and a hand-held camcorder, property similar to items believed stolen from Wat Promkunaram. Caratachea also allegedly told Sinsabaugh that he had arranged for 19-year-old Angel Rowlett-the former commander of the Agua Fria ROTC drill team-to pawn Doody’s cameras. In Arizona, it is illegal for minors to hock or sell items to a pawnbroker.
Sinsabaugh then returned to the apartment to speak to Doody, who told him he had been living with Caratachea for several weeks, and that his brother David had been a monk at the temple until just before the murders. Doody also volunteered that he had been with Caratachea on Luke Air Force Base when the security officers stopped him.
Doody was, Sinsabaugh later noted, “visibly nervous” while being questioned, and he kept his eyes cast down. At one point during the conversation between the detective and Doody, Alex Garcia intervened. He claimed he was Doody’s “legal guardian,” and that Sinsabaugh had no right to talk to Doody outside Garcia’s presence. When Sinsabaugh asked Garcia his age, the 16-year-old fudged and told the detective 17.
Michael Myers, who was also there that night, remembers Garcia’s belligerence toward the detective.
“[Sinsabaugh] asked the size of his foot, and Alex just came back with sort of a bad attitude,” Myers said.
Later, after search warrants were served and Caratachea, Doody and Garcia were in custody, detectives would find something interesting in a closet in Garcia’s bedroom. A military-style boot-with “A. Garcia” printed inside-perfectly matched the muddy print found in the Wat Promkunaram laundry room.
THE SAME DAY Rick Sinsabaugh was interviewing Caratachea and Doody, a Tucson mental patient named Mike McGraw was implicating himself and several friends and acquaintances in the temple homicides. Within a few days, four young men from South Tucson had made self-incriminating statements. One of these men, 28-year-old Leo Bruce, told investigators he had shot the temple residents with his .22 Marlin rifle, a weapon virtually identical to Caratachea’s gun. Where Bruce’s Model 75 has an 18-inch barrel, Caratachea’s Model 60 has a barrel four inches longer.
It was a fortuitous time for the sheriff’s office to have suspects in custody. The Thai ambassador to the United States was in the Phoenix area, and international attention was still focused on the case. Though investigators believed there were others who might be involved in the crime still at large, they apparently had nabbed the core conspirators and the triggerman. A supper for the ambassador at the Spicy Thai restaurant, hosted by Smith Thongkam and attended by Sheriff Tom Agnos and County Attorney Rick Romley, went well. For all intents and purposes, the case was solvedall that remained was collecting physical evidence to buttress the suspects’ statements.
Then things got complicated. Science couldn’t match Bruce’s .22 Marlin to the shell casings found at the scene. On October 24, however, six weeks after Sinsabaugh’s spooky confrontation with Doody and Garcia, the Arizona Department of Public Safety’s crime lab informed the temple task force they had matched a weapon to the crime-Rolando Caratachea’s weapon.
Sources on the task force say Johnathon Doody and Alex Garcia made inculpatory statements to friends and classmates after the arrest of the Tucson suspects-that they laughed about the arrests, and that one of the youthful suspects told a friend that the Tucson suspects were in jail for a crime they did not commit.
Alex Garcia and Johnathon Doody were arrested before an Agua Fria football game on Friday, October 25. That same evening, detectives took Rolando Caratachea into custody at the Suneagle Apartments. Michael Myers was present at the apartment when Caratachea was arrested, and he immediately telephoned Caratachea’s mother, Sheila, and several other of the popular Rolando’s friends.
By Saturday afternoon, most of the members of the A.M. Posse knew about the arrests. Search warrants were executed on Alex Garcia’s parents’ house (by this time, Doody was also living there), the Caratachea apartment and various vehicles.
Investigators began to question the juveniles. Doody and Garcia gave statements. Caratachea did not. Doody and Garcia were detained. Caratachea was released.
Doody’s statement, extracted over 14 hours of questioning, is at times nearly incoherent. Sometimes he barely responds to the detectives’ questions. At times, the detectives retreat, asking him familiar questions, like his name and age, apparently trying to drain off some of the pressure. Eventually, however, Doody narrates a nightmarish story about a prank gone awry.
Doody says he, Garcia, Caratachea and George Gonzales-an acquaintance he knew from Whataburger-went to the temple to challenge the motion sensors on the floodlights. He admits that he and Garcia were dressed in their BDUs, armed with knives and that Caratachea and Gonzales carried firearms.
Doody says that when he entered the temple, other men-people he could not identify-had already broken in and had the nine victims kneeling on the floor with their hands up. Doody said he did not participate in the killings, but that he did help ransack the residents’ rooms, taking cameras, electronic stereo equipment and currency.
On the tape, Doody claims the shooting started after one of the monks called George Gonzales by name. He says he heard three shotgun blasts, followed by a series of rifle shots.
“Somebody panicked or something and started firing, and then constant .22 fire,” he says on tape.
Alex Garcia’s statement is chillingly dissimilar. Though Garcia also names Caratachea and Gonzales as accomplices, he names Doody as the triggerman who executed the nine victims. He says the robbery of the temple was planned weeks in advance and that Doody insisted -we can’t have no witnesses-just go in and shoot everybody.”
Garcia also made vague references to Dante Parker and Leo Bruce-two of the Tucson suspectsbut only after repeatedly denying that any of the Tucson suspects were involved. Sources say that after Garcia talked briefly with his father, he told investigators he thought he “saw Parker” at the scene. Garcia also said he heard “names being called or something like George… Or Bruce, maybe Bruce.”
Investigators picked up George Gonzales the next day. Like Rolando Caratachea, he refused to talk to investigators and was released. Eventually, after more than 70 days in jail with the task force digging to find physical evidence linking them to the temple slaughter, the four Tucson suspects were released.
Later this month, a transfer hearing is scheduled to determine whether 16-year-old Alex Garcia will stand trial as an adult for the temple killings.
PETER BALKAN IS Johnathon Doody’s court-appointed attorney. He is boyish, meticulous and pragmatic. Though his client is nearly 18 and will be tried as an adult, Doody is still a boy-but one in chrome shackles who may have plotted and executed nine people in a holy place. It’s Balkan’s duty to protect Doody’s interest and ensure that his client gets the best defense he can muster. There are seams in the state’s case that can be attacked.
Most important, it is possible that Doody’s statement will be suppressed. The trial judge could rule that the detectives interviewing Doody made promises they couldn’t keep, promises that render the statement inadmissible.
“We’ve already raised several key points about how Johnathon was questioned, especially as a juvenile, and not only some of the tactics that were used but also some of the express promises made by the officers to get him to say what he was going to say,” Balkan says. “If you listen to the entire sequence of the interrogation of Johnathon, you’ll see it’s very obvious that the officers who were interrogating him had no present intention, at least at that time, of ever using the statements that Johnathon made.”
Instead, Balkan believes they were trying to get Johnathon to give them information about the Tucson defendants, and perhaps at some point make him a state’s witness. And so they were “very very sloppy” in producing an admissible statement from Johnathon.
“Their purpose was to get information on the Tucson defendants,” Balkan says. Now, with the Tucson suspects alleging their confessions were “coerced” (three Tucson men have filed suit against Maricopa County and the sheriff’s office, alleging improper conduct on behalf of interrogators), Balkan says it may be difficult for the state to argue that Doody’s statement is either reliable or voluntary.
“It’s going to take some ingenuity on the part of the state, the prosecutor- I don’t know how you get [Doody’s statement] admitted,” Balkan says. “Especially when you have basically the same officers, you have Sinsabaugh and [Pat] Riley and [Captain Jerry] White, questioning Johnathon that you have questioning the Tucson people. How does the state say, `Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, don’t believe the Tucson people did it, don’t believe their confessions, because they were coerced’?
“Do they ask these officers to take the witness stand and admit to the jury that they coerced confessions in a death-penalty case?” Balkan queries. “I don’t think we’re ever going to have the sheriffs get up there and say, `Yeah, we knew they were innocent but we made them confess anyway.’ Had it not been for the fortuitous finding of this firearm, the state would have pursued the Tucson suspects all the way to the gas chamber. That’s almost governmental murder-if it’s true.”
part 3 of 4
TEENAGE WASTELAND DEATH AND BOREDOM IN T… v2-19-92
