Dead Wrong?
Could the only woman
on Arizona's Death Row
be innocent?
Phoenix Magazine. July 1998
by Peter Aleshire
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In a small room, in a weary frenzy, at the thin, cracked edge of her life, Debbie Milke, 24, waited for Detective Armando Saldate and news of her missing son. All of her life had brought her to this moment and to the fatal half-hour that lay just ahead. Her son Christopher had left with her roommate that morning on an outing to see Santa Claus at the mall. She hadn't seen him since. Of course, Christopher had not seen Santa Claus. Instead, on December 2, 1989, James Styers, Milke's roommate and friend, first stopped by to pick up his own longtime friend Roger Scott. Then they took Christopher far out 99th Avenue near Happy Valley Road down into an empty desert wash just off the blacktop. There one of them shot three hypervelocity .22 caliber slugs into Christopher's head. They left him curled in the sand in his cowboy boots and triceratops sweatshirt, and drove back to the mall. Styers reported Christopher missing - triggering a long search. Finally, after hours of questioning, Saldate extracted from Scott a shifting confession that suggested Debra Milke had manipulated James Styers into executing her son. So Saldate took a short helicopter ride to Florence through a hailstorm of media attention and walked finally into the room where Debra Milke waited. Saldate asked Debbie's family friend to leave, then shut the door on the other officers who waited in the hall. He plucked up a chair, set it down inches from Milke, and began his interview. "Your son has been found in a desert area," said Saldate, leaning toward her, "and he has been found shot to death." "What? What?" screamed Milke. Saldate, in a report filed three days after the interview, wrote, she "started to make noises as if she was crying, but no tears were visible." "I won't tolerate this crying," said Saldate. "And you are under arrest for the murder of Christopher." She screamed again. "Why are you doing this?" she said. "Why are you doing this?" "Be quiet," Saldate snapped, fishing out the small card on which the Miranda Rights warning was written. He read from the card. "Do you understand these rights?" he asked. She "nodded her head up and down," according to his report. "Do you understand these rights?" he asked again. Listen to an excerpt from a tape interview that Debbie gave in prison! "Yes," she said. Then she broke down in sobs - still tearless, according to Saldate. "I won't tolerate this type of activity," repeated Saldate. "The only reason I am here is to get to the truth, and I won't tolerate any lies. I want you to tell me the truth, and do not minimize your involvement," he said. At this point, the two accounts of the half-hour conversation that almost single-handedly condemned Debra Milke to death for the murder of her son diverge irreconcilably. Saldate said that he asked her if he could tape record the conversation and that she said no. She recalls that question, but said that her answer was, "No, I want a lawyer." Saldate's account indicates that she eventually admitted that she had convinced James Styers to kill Christopher for a share of the $5,000 life insurance policy she had on Christopher through her job at an insurance company. Milke insists that she had no inkling that Styers would kill her son and that Saldate cleverly wove a series of outright lies into his five-page account of that interview. Saldate did not record her confession. He did not ask her to sign his summary of her statement. He did not call in other police officers to witness the conversation. He did not re-interview her with a witness or a tape recorder. He did, however, do most of those things when he obtained Roger Scott's confession hours earlier. Moreover Saldate destroyed his original handwritten notes of the conversation with Milke after he prepared his narrative account three days later. But the jury believed the 20-year veteran police detective. Milke was convicted and sentenced to death, although her unwitnessed, unsigned, unrecorded confession remains the only real evidence against her. Scott, a rambling, sometimes incoherent man with a medley of mental problems, did not testify at her trial. James Styers still insists that Milke had nothing to do with the murder. No physical evidence links her to the crime. But then, the jury didn't know about other confessions Saldate had obtained under questionable circumstances, which were later ruled inadmissible. And they didn't know that a disturbing number of counselors, psychologists, attorneys and law enforcement veterans have concluded that Debra Milke is innocent - and the confession was either misconstrued or fabricated. Veteran investigator and former Drug Enforcement Agency agent Kirk Fowler has spent the past six years of his own time trying to prove her innocence. "Almost everybody says they're innocent," he says, "but she is innocent. This is a horror story. I'm absolutely, 100 percent convinced." "It's very difficult to fool a bunch of observers for 14 months, 24 hours a day," says Dr. Leonardo Garcia Bunuel, the psychiatrist who runs the Durango jail unit in which Milke was confined throughout her trial. "As time went by, more and more of the staff started to believe that Debra was innocent and it was a shock to us when she was convicted. I did not feel - and no one on the staff felt - that she was scheming to convince us of anything." Milke also maintains - repeatedly, consistently, desperately - that she was not involved in the murder of her son. "It wipes me out to talk about it," she recently told PHOENIX Magazine in the first prison interview since her conviction in 1990. "I just keep everything to myself. I've never really dealt with any of this. I haven't been able to. And talking about it is like the wound is opened again. It is very hard. It's gut-wrenching." Milke has already lost all of her state appeals, but this month her lawyer will complete his request that the federal courts consider her case and order a new trial. Attorney Anders Rosenquist has invested about $50,000 of his own time and money in her appeal since a jail counselor got him interested in the case. Rosenquist hopes that the federal courts will rule that Arizona should not accept unsupported, unsigned, unwitnessed and unrecorded confessions solely on the word of a single police officer. Such a confession would not be admissible in federal courts or many state courts. "I believe she's innocent. You see the person - and she doesn't fit the profile," Rosenquist says. "Then you get to the evidence, and you say, 'My God, they don't have any hard, cold evidence against her, just a statement from a guy who is basically insane and this so-called confession.'" Saldate declined comment on Milke's appeal efforts, and refused to discuss why he didn't bring in a witness or a tape recorder and never had her sign his summary of her confession. "I did my job, and I'm very satisfied with that," says Saldate, who retired and was elected a county constable in the immediate aftermath of the nationally publicized Milke trial. "Her lawyers can raise any questions they want to - that's their job. And if a judge gives her a new trial, then I'll go back and answer any questions they've got. I'm not the one who put her on death row - she did that. If she doesn't like being there, maybe she shouldn't have killed her kid." In the meantime, Debra Milke waits in her Perryville cell - a ghost of herself, haunting us all. Is she an indication of the moral collapse of a violent, self-centered culture - one of a string of sensational cases involving Valley women who kill their children? Or is she an example of the terrible vagaries of the death penalty, which studies suggest results in the execution of one or two innocent people each year? Certainly, the death penalty is a capricious and controversial tool - substantial evidence attests to its uneven application. Every year, dozens of women in Arizona kill their children in direct and brutal ways. None of those women, in all of state history, has received the death penalty - except Debra Milke, who was not present when her child died. She's only the second woman in state history to land on death row. Of course, many remain firmly convinced Milke is where she should be. Attorney General Grant Woods, for one, has no doubt. "I think I can honestly say that if I had to choose somebody on Arizona death row to go next, I'd choose her, given what she did. Debra Milke's crime was just unspeakable." "I have no emotional qualms about asking the state to put her to death," say's Assistant Attorney General Randall Howe, who has battled Milke's efforts to win a new trial. "She had her 4-year-old son executed at Christmas time on the pretense of taking him to see Santa Claus. If we were to decide not to execute her, I think the public outcry against not doing it would be substantial. She does not engender much sympathy." Some 360 people have been executed in this country since executions resumed in 1977, and at least 3,200 men and women await execution on death rows across the country. One Harvard study documented the execution of 100 people later found innocent, and dozens of other falsely convicted prisoners have been released from death row with the development of DNA evidence. Nationwide, women comprise 1 percent of the people on death row and about 15 percent of the murderers. The murder of 4-year-old Christopher Milke on his way to see Santa Claus remains a tragedy of Greek proportions. But now, the final twist of tragedy remains unclear. Is she the murderer - or will it be us? Did she do it? And should we execute a prisoner on what amounts to the unsupported word of one police officer? Are these the rules by which we want to mete out life and death in Arizona? |
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Everything turns on the half-hour Deb Milke spent in a room alone with Detective Armando Saldate. Saldate rushed to that fateful interview as soon as he had extracted a confession from Roger Scott, who cracked after twelve hours of questioning when Saldate threatened to search his ailing mother's house. Scott led police to the body and provided key physical evidence. He then told Saldate that Milke knew all about the plan to kill her son. Saldate's report says that after he informed Milke that Christopher was dead and read her her rights, Debra launched into a long complaint about Mark Milke and her life with him. She said that Christopher was a mistake, and that she knew she would not be a good mother. She told him, "I'm not a malicious person, I just wanted God to take care of him." She said that a month earlier she had contemplated suicide, but realized that then Mark would end up with Christopher. She then talked to Jim, who agreed to help her. She said that the only agreement they made was that Jim would not tell her the specifics of the killing," according to Saldate's report. She denied killing her son for the insurance money and denied having a policy on Chris' life - although she said her father had a policy. "Debra denied having a policy but said she may have told Jim about her father's policy and said that may have been Jim and Roger's motivation for the killing, but that it was definitely not hers," says Saldate's statement. "She said that she and Jim spoke about it several times and she believes that she, Jim and Roger only spoke about it on one occasion" and that on one occasion she went out with Jim to "do it" but they couldn't. "... I asked Debra if that morning when her son left, if she gave him a special hug or kiss and she told me that she did not have to. She told me that approximately one week ago, she told her son that God was coming down and going to take him and that he was going to Heaven ..." Saldate's report contained only a few direct quotes from Debra, but those were damning- At one point, Saldate asked her if she thought she was insane : "No, I'm just an emotionally troubled 24-year- old girl who needs help dealing with her problems" she'd said, according to his write-up. She expressed relief that she had finally found someone to talk to in Saldate. The detective also asked her why she didn't simply let her father or sister take care of Chris. "Well, I guess I made a bad judgment call," she replied, according to his report. Today, Milke still insists that confession is a clever lace work of lies and distortions. But the way in which she agreed with portions of the summary, adjusted the context of others, and denied altogether some statements evidently didn't play well with the jury. "I told him I didn't want it recorded because I wanted a lawyer," she testified at her trial. She said that Saldate took many things she'd said out of context - weaving them together into a motive for murder. Other things were outright fabrications, she said. "I was explaining to him that I'm not capable of that. I told him I wouldn't hurt anybody. I don't think he understood what I was saying to him. Then I talked to him about when I was married to Mark; prior to being married, I was taking birth control pills. I didn't want any children. I didn't feel I was mature enough to have children at that time." She said at one point she explained that Mark was a malicious person, and that when Chris came back she often had to correct him. "So I said, 'I'm not a malicious person. God, I just wanted to take care of him.' I didn't say it the other way around, the way that it's written in here," she testified. She also gave a different account of the incident in which Saldate said she didn't need to say good-bye to Christopher because she'd already told him God would come to gather him up. She said Saldate asked her what she was thinking and she said that two weeks earlier Chris had come into her room with a picture of Jesus he'd gotten at church with Styers. "I have a question," said Christopher, according to Debra's recollection. "Okay," she remembered replying. "Who is God?" "There is a God and he loves everybody. He's in everyone's heart." "Can I see him'?" "No, you can't see him," she replied. "Well, when can you see him?" "There's a time when people die and, if you are good, then you get to go to a place called Heaven and that's where he's at," she said. "Well, what if you're bad?" "Then there's this place called Hell." "Will I ever go there?" "NO," she said. "Will you ever go there?" "NO," she said. "Well, when can we see God?" "Whenever a person dies, then they get a chance to see him." "Well, will I get to see him?" "No. You are a young boy. You have a long ways to go because you are getting to grow up. I wouldn't even worry about it," she testified. |
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The prosecution had a problem in its quest for a conviction. Debra Milke wasn't at the deserted wash on December 2 1989. They had no direct evidence she knew anything about the murder. James Styers insisted she had nothing to do with the murder. Roger Scott had implicated her in sometimes confusing tape recorded statements to police, but he refused to testify against Styers and Milke. Prosecutors did have her statement to Saldate, but she had vehemently disavowed that alleged confession. Clearly, the prosecution had to demonstrate that Debra Milke was such a terrible, selfish, self-centered mother that she was capable of such an act. In effect, she wound up on trial for poor mothering. Milke's complex, sometimes abusive, often bitter family relationships provided the prosecution with plenty of ammunition. Alcoholism, instability, poverty, divorce, revenge, disruption, loathing and a long, sad, yearning mark the complex dynamics of the family in which she learned about love, motherhood and loss. Her parents, Richard Sadeik and Renate Janka, met and married in Germany when her mother became pregnant. He was a soldier and their marriage was a long, bitter struggle due to his alcoholism, according to Janka. They wound up finally in Phoenix, where he was stationed at Luke Air Force Base and where they bought their first house. According to Janka, the marriage eventually floundered on Richard's drinking, intractable money problems and the long hardening of feelings. Sadeik never forgave Janka for leaving him, she says. "His last words of our conversation in the kitchen are burnt into my mind forever, 'I cannot make you stay, but I will never forget. Nobody leaves Sam Sadeik. Some day, you will have to pay the price for it all.'" She believes that his eventual testimony against their daughter Debbie was part of that price. Sadeik moved to Florence, where he later became a prison guard and remarried. Janka entered another relationship and wound up moving to Germany to pursue a career. The decision proved fateful, leaving her two teen-age daughters behind - although she sent Debra money for rent and living expenses while Sandy lived with their father. Debra and her sister, Sandy had a complex, love-hate relationship, which played itself out at the trial. Janka recalls that Debra was "easygoing, healthy and happy," eager to please and never any trouble. "Debbie placed great emphasis on her appearance and manners. She had an easygoing, charming manner about her mixed with a great deal of naiveté." Debra earned a 3.9 grade point average, and made Sandy look bad by comparison. Sandy, often sick as a child, had a more outgoing, rebellious nature. "We were on a constant roller coaster with her. The same applied to Sandy's relationship with Debbie - she adored her one minute and wanted nothing to do with her the next," says Janka. Debra and Sandy were both intoxicated by their freedom, and angry about their abandonment - a dangerous combination. "I felt anger toward my Mom for leaving," recalls Milke. "I don't know why. She didn't abandon me. I was clearly old enough to be on my own. But I didn't know how to cope with my feelings of emptiness and loss." So she found a terrible way to assert her independence. His name was Mark Milke. And her long, complex, abusive, angry., twisted relationship with him spawned all the tragedy to come. She met him in a "biker bar" where she had gone to experiment with life on the wild side. Debbie's relationship with Mark became the fault line of her life, and still figures largely in her lonely musings on death row. "Looking back on it all now," she says, "I connected with Mark in a way that I didn't understand at the time. I felt a sense of belonging. He was clearly not my type but there was something about him that I was deeply attracted to. He had this bad boy image about him that was kind of exciting to me, although at the time I had no knowledge of his drug use." They moved in together, and initially life was an exciting swirl of bars, parties and friends. But soon, Debbie's life veered toward chaos. Mark and a friend were arrested when police found drug paraphernalia in their house. Debbie moved out that day and went to stay with friends in Colorado. But she and Mark soon got in touch again and she returned - drawn by the remorse and promises to change so familiar in relationships dominated by alcohol and drugs. "He apologized profusely for the position he had placed me in. Of course, my heart gave in, couldn't say no, because I was crazy about him. I said, 'I'll come back if you promise you'll change.'" So they got married. Shortly after that, Debbie quit taking her birth control pills - and quickly became pregnant. "My pregnancy was not a mistake - it wasn't planned by the two of us - it was more like a plan by me," she explains. "In my mind and heart, I really wanted a baby. I believed that if I had a child, that feeling of loneliness and emptiness in my heart would be filled," she says, her voice breaking. "I also believed in my heart that if I did have a child, it would make Mark straighten up." Mark's drug use soon spun out of control again. "Today, I realize that Mark had an addiction and I didn't understand addiction," she says. Debbie now maintains that Christopher transformed her world. "I spent most of my pregnancy alone and worked two jobs to keep the bills paid. It was very hard, but it was okay because I had that child inside of me. Nothing else mattered." Mark's testimony offers a self-pitying, contrasting view. "From the conception, life became hell on earth for me, and Chris as well if I wasn't around to take the abuse. From that time, I had to quit drinking and start fresh. She did everything in her power to keep me from it. She feared the loss of control that alcohol gave her over me. I had become a machine to her. Take abuse. Take care of Chris both father and mother roles. I worked to buy her things." Mark spent nine months in prison on drug and drinking charges during which time Debbie and Christopher visited him on weekends. Debbie continued to work steadily, sometimes holding down two jobs. She relied on family and friends and roommates to help care for Chris when she was working. The couple lurched through a seemingly unending series of disasters - breaking up, reconciling, fighting, blaming, but somehow never quite severing the twisted chord that bound them. In one incident, Mark took Christopher to a reputed crack house. When Debbie heard about that through Sandy, she called the police and stormed down to the crack house - only to learn that Mark had already left. On another occasion, a drunken Mark returned with Christopher clothed only in a diaper and not strapped into his car seat. Mark staggered into the house, collapsed on the bed, and passed out. Such incidents eventually prompted Debbie to file for a divorce and press for sole custody and a stipulation that Mark's visitations be supervised. Mark raged against those conditions. The chaos and turmoil in her life that swirled around Mark took its toll on her already warped relationships with the rest of her family. The bitter divisions yielded witnesses for the prosecution. Sandy later testified at the trial that Debbie often left Chris with her and disappeared for long periods of time - insisting that she actually cared for Christopher for perhaps half of his brief life. "Debbie didn't have time in her life for Christopher," testified Sandy, who also said that Debbie was angry and harsh with her son. Sandy said that on several occasions Debbie asked her to assume guardianship over Christopher, but that Mark objected. Debbie denied she left Christopher with Sandy for extended periods or considered giving her guardianship - attributing Sandy's testimony to the old family resentments. Debbie's stepmother Maureen Sadeik, testified, "Christopher was hyperactive, into everything, always busy. Debbie never had a lot of patience with Christopher." Dorothy Markwell, a longtime friend and sometime roommate of Debra's, testified, "Her biggest fear was Chris growing up to be like Mark and having the addictions he had. Chris was very confused. Very mixed up. He would hang on her. He would hang on me. He was starving for affection." Markwell testified that Debbie frequently yelled, screamed and slapped Christopher - including one incident when she "threw him across the room." She noted that Debbie worked all day and was gone most evenings - sometimes overnight or for the weekend - and usually left Markwell to care for Christopher 10 or 12 hours a day. Debbie responded that Markwell's version was exaggerated and distorted. She said that during that period in 1989, Christopher was actually suffering from a thyroid condition that made him hyperactive and caused behavior problems that went away when the condition was treated. However, other people, both in trial testimony and in sworn statements filed since, depict Debbie as a good mother, struggling to deal with assorted problems. "She has never been ugly in any way, shape or form with Chris," says Janka. "You know Chris had that thyroid condition - and he calmed down some after that was treated." Carmen Santana, a coworker described her as a loving mother. So did several neighbors, including Karen and John Ciulla and Patrick Murphy. Dr. Kevin Zuerlein, in an affidavit filed for her appeal noted that during the 19 days. Christopher spent in the hospital for treatment of suppurative thyroiditis, the boy and his mother were "well bonded." She was constantly at the hospital; she was genuinely concerned and helpful; and he observed no signs of physical or mental abuse. Donald and Josephine Jones, parents of one of Debbie's first boyfriends, also submitted an affidavit, saying : "Debbie was a good mother. Christopher was very hyper. Christopher was a handful. Debbie was real diplomatic with him. She was stern, but appropriate. Neither one of us ever saw her strike him. We always felt that Debbie was an excellent mother. She seemed to be happy with him and he obviously loved her. Knowing her the way we do, we've never believed she was involved in this." Debbie, herself, cannot talk about Christopher without pausing frequently to compose herself. She sounds for all the world like a woman tormented by the memories of a lost child. "He brought so much joy to me - I can't even describe it. He did everything early, he learned pretty quick. I had one of those books you go by as they get older. I had this rocking chair, and I used to hold him and just rock with him all the time. When he got older, like when he was a toddler he ... he ... he used to ask me to play some George Strait - so I put George Strait on the stereo and we'd dance, and I'd pick him up. And he'd like it when I'd just hold him, hold him close, and very slowly sway." "He was very inquisitive. Very curious. He was a picky eater - but he ate very well. He had favorite things. He loved Slurpees. He loved gummy bears. He loved M&Ms, although I didn't allow him to eat much candy. He used to love broccoli. I could never keep any broccoli in the refrigerator because by the time I went to use it, all the little buds were torn off because he would sneak into the refrigerator. When people saw Christopher's energy, they used to say he was a handful - but it wasn't a handful in a bad way. He was just like a little Curious George. One of the things I remember so vividly - I can hear it and I can feel it - is his laughter. He had a certain kind of giggle. He used to love to whisper things in my ear, most of the time just, 'I love you, Mommy'." She offered few of these memories on the stand in her trial - in part because her defense attorney didn't ask, in part because talking about Chris on the stand would shatter her composure. But the memories throng her now: the trail of the laundry soap to the laundry room, the day he made the fireman in the checkout line at the grocery store show him the fire truck, the way he insisted on holding the pump at the gas station, panning for gold, roasting marshmallows, snow angels, and his first time at the beach - the small-change memories that totaled his brief life. In fact, none of the testimony on Milke's mothering connected directly to the murder. It merely made it possible for the jury to take Saldate's word against hers. Rachel Roth, a jail counselor who worked with Debbie, observed that Debbie was devastated by a severe grief reaction. "It's my opinion that Debra is a young woman who has been judged in a way that signifies something to do with how we view women in our society. There have been behaviors that in the general course of events one may expect from a single parent that in a way have been falsely interpreted as being some form of evil." But the chaos of Debbie Milke's life, and the long, self-destructive effort to reconcile with Mark Milke, did finally lead to disaster on the day she turned finally to James Styers for help. |
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The final, terrible calculus of tragedy began one night in 1989 when Mark Milke repossessed Debbie's car because she had allegedly fallen behind on payments due to his mother. They were living separately; but had spent some time together and had just arrived at Mark's apartment. He took the keys and insisted that Debbie get out of the car and leave Christopher with him. They argued - cursing and screaming. He finally let her leave - with Christopher. She ran down the street, and hid in an alley until she felt safe enough to walk with Christopher down the darkened street to the nearest pay phone. She called James Styers, her sister's good friend. Styers had been loitering at the outskirts of Debbie's life for the past year or more doing stray favors like providing a ride back from the airport. Now, he came to pick her up and offered her a place to stay. It proved a fatal favor. Debbie Milke said she only learned James Styers' full history later - in the throes of a murder trial. Born in 1947, James was the sixth of seven children - the son of a maintenance man. He quit high school in the 11th grade, struggling as a result of a learning disability, obtained his G.E.D. and earned an AA degree in general studies at a community college. His service with the Marines in Vietnam from 1968 to 1971 changed him profoundly. He drove a truck back and forth through those invisible front lines of a guerrilla war. One afternoon, an 8 year-old, unarmed Vietnamese boy ran up behind Styers' truck and tried to climb in the back. Perhaps he wanted a candy bar. Styers shot and killed him, saying that he was "not willing to take a chance" that the child was wired with explosives. He later told investigators that he killed women and children in Vietnam, and that ever since, in the waking nightmare of his life, he has heard their ghostly calls - screams, cries and pleadings that can never be assuaged. In 1971, he was thrown from a jeep in Yuma, landing on his head and suffering significant brain damage. He spent months in a coma, then awoke to find that he'd forgotten most of his life - and even how to walk and talk. He spent months in rehabilitation, but never did recover large chunks of his life. After that, he depended on anti-seizure medication, plus lithium and the anti-psychotic Navane to sustain his grip on the frayed fringe of a normal life. The psychiatrists who examined him after the murder agreed that he suffered from post-traumatic stress disorder, auditory and visual hallucinations, extreme depression and suicidal ideations. The doctors commented on his "dependent and passive aggressive personality traits, short temper with angry outbursts, and easy frustration, dreams of nightly combat situations, poor sleep and survivor guilt." They also noted that his IQ stood at about 84, the "low range" of normal. In retrospect, it seems clear that Styers was wrestling with his demons behind a polite facade. He attended church several times a week, quoted the Bible, ushered at church, cared for neighborhood children and also took in another child he'd had with another woman. Jim and Debbie established an odd friendship, based on mutual need and use. Initially, Styers provided the room and the transportation, but he was unemployed, broke and disabled. Styers' car broke down, but Debbie's mother helped her buy another car. After that he would drive Milke to work every morning, and then keep the car for the day. He also often provided child care for Christopher. Debbie stayed in one bedroom with Christopher and Jim's daughter, but kept her clothes in his closet. Styers also urged her with increasing vehemence to stop letting Christopher see Mark, who repeatedly came by the apartment complex and staged angry scenes. Mark wanted joint custody of Christopher and phony receipts to show that he had paid the court-ordered $199 a month in child support, according to Milke. She eventually obtained a restraining order to keep him away from the apartment. Other witnesses commented on the roommates' relationship : "Jim would do anything for her," testified Sandy. One neighbor said that Jim had once tried to get into bed with Debbie but she had rebuffed him. |
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Debra Milke says she was finally pulling her life together after living with Styers for about four months. She got her "dream job" at an insurance company. The job included good benefits - including health insurance and an optional $5,000 life insurance policy for Christopher that cost about $2 per paycheck. She decided that she could now afford to go out on her own, so she found a new apartment near her new job. She also located nearby child care she could afford, so that she would no longer have to live with Jim and rely on him for child care. She also had a boyfriend - of sorts. Ernie Sweat, a coworker at her previous job, was a young, polite, career-minded man - handsome and well-spoken. She said that they never discussed marriage and that although she spent weekends with him, she had no long-range plans for the relationship. They had largely cooled their relationship before the terrible events of December 2. She put off telling Styers that she was moving out until she had everything arranged. But she was surprised by the vehemence of his reaction when in late November she told him she would be moving out within two or three weeks. "When I told him the day after Thanksgiving that Chris and I were moving out," Debbie explains. "He begged me not to. I think that he did what he did out of desperation, as a way to keep me from moving out of that apartment. I don't know if he was in love with me. Maybe he was, but if he was, he certainly never hinted at that to me." Debbie mother, Janka, confirmed that Styers had developed a strange attitude toward her daughter. She visited Debbie several months before the murder, and at one point Styers took her aside in the kitchen and in a fierce and threatening way insisted that he was Debbie's protector. He warned Janka not to interfere. |
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On December 1, Styers took his daughter and Christopher to the mall to run some errands. Christopher returned brimming with enthusiasm about the mall Santa, and excited about a remote-controlled racing car Jim bought for him. The next morning Jim borrowed Debbie's car again, intending to return to the mall. Christopher begged to go along to see Santa again. Debbie told Christopher to go dress himself - he chose imitation lizard-skin cowboy boots his father had given him, jeans and the yellow sweatshirt with a green triceratops on it his grandmother had made for him. Debbie fixed him a bowl of cereal, but he didn't drink his milk. After Styers and Christopher left in her car, Debbie dawdled through her Saturday morning - doing laundry, cleaning the apartment and chatting with her neighbors. Meanwhile, Jim drove to his old friend Roger Scott's house, arriving at about 11 a.m. The three then drove to Walgreen's and Osco to pick up some prescriptions for Scott's ailing mother. They swung by Peter Piper Pizza, where Christopher had his last meal and played some video games. They climbed into the car again, and were noticed once more at about 1 p.m. at a Basha's grocery store, where they took Christopher to the bathroom. Finally, they drove out 99th Avenue just north of Happy Valley Road, about 20 miles north of Metrocenter. They told Christopher that they would go out into the desert to look for snakes or maybe gliders. The two men have offered contradictory accounts of what happened in the wash. Scott said he waited in the car, until he heard three shots. Styers emerged from the wash a short time later and said, "That little bastard won't ever bother me again." Scott said he didn't realize Styers was going to kill Christopher. Styers, at his trial, testified that they were all walking back to the car from the wash when Scott, for no apparent reason, shot Christopher. "After I went a ways, almost back to the car I heard shots. I turned around and said, 'Hey, Roger, when did you get the gun and what are you shooting at?' Then I seen him standing there. He had the gun pointed at me. He said, 'I took care of Christopher. I'm going to tell you what you're going to do.' I went into solid fear." Styers testified that the sight of the gun paralyzed him with fear, triggering memories of Vietnam. "That kind of experiences?" asked the defense attorney. "Killing women and children," Styers said. "I'll see people that aren't there, Vietnamese people or soldiers, some women and children." "How do you know they're not there?" "Because nobody else around me sees them." "Did those conditions affect you after Christopher was shot?" "Yes, it did." "How?" "With fear. I could see other children's bodies laying there. I never saw Christopher." "You never saw Christopher's?" "I never saw Christopher. But I can imagine what he was like laying there. That he was with other bodies." Scott and Styers drove back to the mall at about 2:15 p.m. Scott said that Styers handed him the gun and the black Nike tennis shoes Styers had been wearing, and told him to dispose of them. Then Styers went into the mall and reported Christopher missing. About 2:45 p.m. Styers called Milke, saying that Christopher was missing, and that there was a security guard beside him. Debbie became nearly hysterical although the prosecution later described it as "making hysterical overtones." Her neighbors said that she seemed genuinely upset. "She was upset, really bad, just hysterical. She was just beside herself. I don't know - shaking, almost continuous crying," testified John Ciulla. Debbie immediately called her father, who testified that she was so upset he couldn't understand her. "What is the problem?" he snapped. "Spit it out." Sobbing, she explained. He told her to stay by the phone, and call him back in 30 minutes. She testified later that Chris knew the phone number, and she wanted to stay by the phone in case he called. She then called police and reported Christopher missing. Meanwhile, Styers feigned bumping into Scott again and enlisted him in the sham search. Styers and Scott then went out into the parking lot, and Scott took the bus home. He had stashed the black Nike tennis shoes in a planter at the mall and then hid the gun in his closet. At 5:15 p.m., Styers contacted Phoenix police to report Christopher missing. Once the police arrived, Styers' story began to unravel. Detective Charlie Masino noted that the toilet Jim claimed to have been using when Christopher disappeared had a broken seat - and that the heavy bathroom door was jimmied and that a 4-year-old couldn't have opened it on his own. At about midnight, Styers, for the first time, volunteered that Roger Scott had been with him for most of the day. Throughout the evening, Styers repeatedly called Milke. Her behavior during that long evening became an issue at her trial. Detective Masino reported that she emphatically refused to come to the mall. Detective Russell Davis, who interviewed her at her apartment testified that "her first question was how long it would take. She got a drink, put her feet up, got comfortable. She started out discussing her husband," who was in Texas apparently trying to get a driver's license to replace the Arizona license revoked for drunk driving. The neighbors who spent the night with her described her as agonized, tearful and intermittently hysterical - in a frenzy of concern. They supported her suggestion that she stay in the apartment in hopes that Christopher would somehow call. "She took a sleeping pill and lay down for half an hour," reported Karen Ciulla. "The phone rang and I have never seen anybody dash so quick to the phone. She made it before the people sitting beside the phone and said, 'Did you find him?'" Her father dispatched his wife, Maureen, and Debbie's stepsister, Karen, to her apartment from their home in Florence. Later Debbie would agree to return with them to Florence. Meanwhile, the case was about to split open. Detectives spent hours interrogating both Styers and Scott. Styers never wavered from his story. But after 12 hours of hard questioning, portions of which were taped, Scott was ready to break. Saldate was called in from home early Sunday morning and took over the questioning. Saldate bore down on his story, dismissing it then threatening to send police to Scott's mother's residence to ransack the apartment. That broke Scott, who had been unemployed since 1977 and lived with his ailing mother, cooking, cleaning - rendering devoted care, by all accounts. Scott had accumulated a long list of petty crimes and arrests during the previous 20 years. He feared the police showing up would kill his mother. He told Saldate that Styers had murdered the little boy. They drove out to the wash, where they found Christopher's body; Scott, who claimed many physical ailments for which he took a variety of medications, gave several contradictory statements, changing his story repeatedly. He told police that Styers told him, "More or less the kid has to go, I just can't stand him any more." He also said that Styers offered him the $250 he needed to appeal a Social Security Administration decision if he would drive the car. "About how long ago did you talk to Debbie face to face about this?", asked the detective. "Um, within the last week it was brought up at least twice from her," said Scott. "I'm not sure, there's more, at least twice, and uh, ..." "What did she say, as best you can recall?", asked the detective. "That she just had to get away from him and she just wasn't cut out to be a mother and that she wanted us to take care of it." Scott said that at first Styers planned to kill Mark Milke also, but changed the plan when Mark left for Texas, "They decided they couldn't wait, that Christopher would just have to disappear, I don't remember if that's the exact words but that's ..." "That's the idea," interjected the detective. "Yes." Scott also made one confused reference to going into the desert prior to the murder. "A child had rode along with us," he said. "I believe he was with us. No. He wasn't there. I don't think so." Scott was later examined and diagnosed by psychologist Donald Tatro as suffering from a mixed personality disorder, obsessive compulsive with histrionic traits plus a generalized anxiety disorder and passive aggressive personality traits. Tatro said that Scott is so fearful, uptight and uncertain that during the interview he repeatedly lapsed into incoherence. At Scott's trial Tatro testified : "When that happened, [Scott] feels as though his head is in a vice, like his head became a pressure cooker and he couldn't think straight." After he confessed, Scott showed police where he'd hidden the black tennis shoes and the gun. Officers searched Milke's car and found a box of .22 caliber stinger, hypervelocity bullets. Both the bullets and the gun were "consistent" with the weapon that killed. Christopher. Detectives also found footprints near Christopher's body that were "consistent" with the black Nike tennis shoes. Experts used Foot casts to conclude that Styers was the usual wearer of the black tennis shoes, although Styers maintained he had given the shoes to Scott. Police later found one spent shell and three bullets alongside Union Hills Road, where Scott said Styers had thrown them out the window after he unloaded the gun. Police called Richard Sadeik's home and said that they wanted to talk to Debbie at the Sheriff's Substation in Florence. Shaken awake from an exhausted sleep, she combed her hair, got dressed, and headed off for the half-hour that would ultimately condemn her to death. |
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Detective Saldate insists that Debra Milke told the truth for that one brief period they spent together in a medical exam room at the Sheriff's Substation in Florence. "I use my gut reaction," he testified. "I use my experience when I'm talking to that person. I look directly at that person. They find their way of deciding to tell the truth, that is my belief, that everyone, I don't care how heinous the crime is, will tell the truth. They want to tell the truth. You have just got to give them the opportunity. I'm there to listen to them. When someone is told that their child was murdered and they start to sob, and no tears come to their eyes, it's obviously a way to try to make me feel for her and I didn't buy it. I just didn't buy it. Just didn't buy it." Rosenquist maintains that Saldate believed Milke was guilty as a result of Scott's confession, but also knew that the meandering, contradictory Scott would make a terrible witness and that there was no other evidence linking Milke to the crime. Therefore, the defense attorney theorizes, the only way to convict her was to get a confession, or fabricate one if necessary. But why would Scott implicate Milke? "I don't think Roger did it [killed Christopher]," Milke says. "Why would he? I can't imagine what his motives would be; he hardly even knew me. I think that Jim is a coward and he didn't want to do this alone and I think he called his friend. I think in order to further convince Roger to go along, Jim said, 'Debbie's in on it : she knows.' So when the police questioned Roger I could see where he would tell the police, 'Yeah, she was involved.'" Milke says she now feels that her decision to move out triggered the crime. Jim, who had already "lost" Debbie's sister when she moved away previously, now felt that he would lose her. Initially, he considered killing Mark - thinking that she was moving to get away from him since he kept coming by the apartment. With Mark gone, she would be freed from her obsession with him - and perhaps turn to Jim. But Mark left for Texas for an indefinite stay, so Styers decided to kill Christopher - the chief link between Mark and Debbie, she speculated. Perhaps Styers hoped that in her grief, she would turn to him for support. "How could a person who was so polite, so kind, not only to me but to everybody - how could a guy like that do something like that? I have no comprehension how somebody who goes to church, who was always reading the Bible - how could someone like that do something so vicious and so cruel to my son? But I guess someone who is disturbed - who is disassociating - could do something like that." "When Jim killed Chris, he killed a big part of me. The pain I feel is indescribable and I'll never be the same again. I will never get over this, ever. My heart has been ripped to shreds and my life is completely shattered. I blame myself for giving in to Mark so much. Had I not made such an effort to encourage a father-son relationship and left Mark alone like my family advised, Chris would be alive today The scene that happened in July '89 that led me to call Jim wouldn't have occurred had I left Mark alone about his drug use. I also feel like I failed as a parent by not being able to protect my son from harm. From the moment of his birth, I made sure he was cared for and protected, but I couldn't protect him from Jim. Jim destroyed everything by murdering my son and turning my life into a complete nightmare. It's been black ever since." So she waits. Perhaps for a terrible justice. Caught in the coils of the case, you long for certainty for a tape recording, a signed statement, a witness in the room. Shouldn't an execution require at least that? Shouldn't the police? Shouldn't we? And then, perhaps we, like Debbie Milke, will be haunted by the thing closest to an explanation for his actions that Jim Styers offered. Writing from prison, where he and Roger Scott sit on death row, Styers asked Milke to read Psalm 51. It reads : "Have mercy upon me, 0 God, according to thy loving kindness : according to the multitude of thy tender Mercies blot out my transgressions." "For I acknowledge my transgressions : and my sin is ever before me." "Against thee, thee only have I sinned and done this evil in thy sight : that thou mightest be justified when thou speakest, and be clear when thou judgest." |
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This page was last modified: Monday, 03-Mar-2008 19:05:01 CST |