Dead By Dawn (12 page)

Edmunds was a lanky man. At six feet tall and one hundred and ninety pounds, he was solid muscle from working out in the yard everyday. His head was shaved. The lack of hair accentuated his piercing blue eyes. He had a pleasant smile that he used infrequently. He had been in prison for thirty two years for a crime that he claimed he did not commit. From his perspective, there wasn’t much to smile about.

Shelly and David Davenport had been murdered on their farm in Shandon, California in 1977. Dayna was found later, murdered at a different location. Edmunds had come to work in the morning and found the bodies. His boss, David Davenport, was usually out working in the barn when the hired help arrived at 6 a.m. every morning.

On September 3, 1977, the farm was quiet when Edmunds arrived. There were two other ranch hands that worked for the Davenports, but Edmunds was low man on the totem pole and ended up working the holiday weekend, while the others took it off.

On this morning, Edmunds observed that the Davenports’ car was in the driveway, but there were no signs of life. He went into the barn and started the daily routine of feeding the chickens and horses. When he finished with the horses, he decided to knock at the back door and find out what his boss had for him to do. There was no answer. Edmunds started to get a bad feeling. The Davenport household was usually in full swing by 6:30 a.m. Shelly would bring the men coffee and the girls would be following their mother or playing on the swing set in the back yard. Today there was silence.

Edmunds walked to the front door and knocked. To his surprise, there was no answer again. He thought he could hear the baby, Jeremy, crying. He knocked again. He went to the window where Jeremy’s room was. He could definitely hear the baby wailing. He ran back to the front porch and peered inside the large plate glass window that adorned the front of the farm house. He could see what looked like a leg and a foot sticking out from behind the chair in the living room. He tried the door. It was locked, so he tried to use his shoulder to break the door down. He wasn’t strong enough. He ran to the barn and got a hammer from the tool bin. Edmunds then beat on the doorknob at the front door until it came loose. He forced his way into the house and found David face down on the living room floor, covered in blood. Edmunds called out to Shelly and the girls. There was no answer. He went to the kitchen and saw Shelly’s body lying on the kitchen floor. Part of her head was missing. He knew she was dead. He ran back through the living room and down the hall to the baby’s room. He hadn’t realized that he had run through the blood on the floor from David Davenport’s body and tracked it down the hall. He found the baby and checked the other rooms. The girls were gone and no one else was in the house. Edmunds tried the telephone in the kitchen. It was dead.

Edmunds took Jeremy and drove to the property nearest the Davenports’ house. Anita Carlson answered the door and gasped at the man with blood on his shirt. She immediately saw that he had Jeremy Davenport in his arms. He told her to call the police. The Davenports had been murdered.

When the police showed up to the crime scene at the Davenports, the lead detective, Andy Small took charge of the scene. Andy had been a homicide detective for four years. Detective Small was balding slightly and about ten pounds overweight for his five-foot-ten frame. Detective Small surveyed the crime scene and zeroed in on Barton Edmunds.

He immediately had Edmunds transported to the Paso Robles city jail for questioning. Edmunds was left there for hours while Small and Detective Paul Davis looked over the scene. The two detectives concurred that there were four sets of distinct footprints at the scene. The bag of marijuana was processed. They also put an APB out for the two missing girls. Small noted that the front door of the home had been broken into.

Back at the station, Edmunds’ clothes and shoes were taken for processing. Edmunds was questioned for hours without the presence of an attorney or the notification of his detention to his parents. Barton Edmunds, age 17, explained that he had gotten to the property at 6:00 a.m. for work. He told the police that he looked through the front window and saw a leg and foot sticking out from behind the chair. Edmunds told them that the house was locked so he broke in. He also told them that he found Jeremy in the bedroom and tried the phone, but it was dead, so he went to the neighbor’s house.

Detective Small didn’t believe Edmunds’ story. He pressed him through out the night about the whereabouts of Edmunds’ accomplices and the two missing girls. Edmunds insisted that he didn’t know what Small was talking about. Finally, at 5:00 a.m. the following morning, Barton Edmunds was allowed to call his mother and let her know that he was under arrest.

Small put Edmunds in a cell with another prisoner until his parents arrived. Samuel Mitchell, also known as Singing Sammy the Snitch was in the jail cell with Edmunds. Singing Sammy would later testify that Edmunds confessed the whole thing to him. Of course, he did this with a promise from the police that his drug charge would disappear.

Melba and Charles Edmunds were shocked. Charles Edmunds was a prominent doctor in Paso Robles. His wife, Melba, was a homemaker. They had been having problems with Bart since he was about 14 years old. He had been drinking and doing drugs. It was finally decided when he turned 17, that he could move into an apartment on his own since he wasn’t getting along with either of his parents. His parents subsidized this move and had felt that Bart was becoming more responsible. He had gotten a job and was making some money of his own. He had been arrested when he was sixteen for public drunkenness and drug possession. He had a small quantity of marijuana on him when he was arrested. Since that time, he had stayed out of trouble.

The Edmunds’ hired a prominent attorney to represent their son. Victor Commons, had never handled a murder case, but told them that there was not enough evidence to hold their son. He didn’t think that they would get past the preliminary hearing. He was wrong. Andrew Small testified at the preliminary hearing that the bloody shoe prints at the scene matched those of the defendant. He also testified that the blood on the defendant’s shirt belonged to the victim. The judge held Barton Edmunds over for trial.

Since Edmunds was 17, Commons negotiated a deal to have him tried as a juvenile. The D.A. concurred and offered him a deal. The D.A. offered him five years in a juvenile detention facility in exchange for a guilty plea. Edmunds insisted that he didn’t commit the crime. His parents and his attorney believed him but plead with him to take the five years, since the alternative would be life in prison if he was convicted. Finally, Barton Edmunds agreed. He took the deal and was sent to two court appointed psychiatrists for evaluation.

The day that Barton Edmunds appeared before the judge to complete the plea agreement, the judge surprised them all. The psychiatrists had both determined that Barton Edmunds did not feel an adequate amount of remorse for his crimes. The judge rejected the plea agreement. In the end, the confession was used against him at his trial. The prosecution contended that Edmunds was there to steal money from the Davenports’ pot business. Andrew Small testified that there was one hundred and fifty dollars missing from the home. Singing Sammy also concurred with the confession that had been admitted into evidence. The jury convicted Barton Edmunds of all three murders and he was sentenced to three consecutive life prison terms.

Edmunds’ parents continued to support their only child. The proper appeals were initiated and exhausted. Then, the parole hearings followed. Andrew Small appeared at the first hearing to testify. Under oath, he testified that he had found the hidden one hundred and fifty dollars in the attic of the home. He said that the new owners of the home had found the money and contacted him.

The parole board denied him. While Bart was in prison, both of his parents died. First, his father in 1995; then, his mother died in 2004. Edmunds was devastated by both of their deaths. His mother left him an estate of over three hundred thousand dollars. Edmunds used the money to hire a private detective to review the evidence in his case. That is where Jim Alberts came in. Jim was a burly guy. At 6’5 and 300 pounds, he was a giant of a man. He had dark curly hair and a beard and mustache. He was an ex-homicide detective with the Los Angeles Police Department. He met with Edmunds in prison and listened to his story. Alberts told Edmunds that he believed there were some inconsistencies and he would look into it. He also told him that if he determined Edmunds was guilty, he would let him rot in prison.

Jim Alberts expected to find a guilty man. After looking through the evidence, he thought his client was innocent. Proving this as fact became Jim Alberts’ obsession.

He went back through the evidence meticulously. There were four sets of footprints inside the home. None of them had been analyzed. A cursory match had been made of the shoes that Barton Edmunds had been wearing at the time he was arrested. The pattern of footprints matched his story exactly. The footprints were in the living room and the hallway leading to the bedrooms. The shirt Barton Edmunds was wearing when he was arrested did not have any blood on it as Detective Small had claimed at the preliminary hearing. Not a single drop. There were fingerprints on the bag of dope, but they did not match Edmunds’. The lynchpin in the prosecution’s case was the assertion that Barton Edmunds would not have been able to see the body of David Davenport on the floor in the living room because of the glare on the plate glass window of the morning sun. The police asserted that Edmunds had broken into the house to steal drug money. They had never been able to produce the money that was stolen.

Jim Alberts talked to Paul Davis about the discrepancies. Davis told him that he was skeptical, but his partner had done most of the testifying at the trial. Davis told him that the victims were from a prominent family and there was political pressure to arrest and convict. On a couple of occasions, Davis had tried to take the investigation in a different direction. Davis had always thought that the missing ranch hand, Bing Taylor, had something to do with it. Every time he went in that direction with the investigation, he was shut down by his superiors. He was told repeatedly that they had their man.

So, it was with some trepidation when Alberts received a phone call from his client telling him that another private investigator wanted to question him about the murders. Alberts wanted to be in on the questioning. He called Lindsay Carter and explained his position.

“You can be a part of this,” she said. “But, you must understand. I haven’t been hired to solve this crime. I have been hired to see if Kelly Davenport is alive.”

“I understand,” Alberts said. “Look, you were with the Sheriff ’s Department and I was with the L.A.P.D. We have worked big, ugly cases. These were small town cops who did a shoddy investigation.

They rushed to judgment and succumbed to political pressure.”

“So, what do you want from me?” she asked.

“I want you to look at the evidence,” he said.

“How do you think that can help me?” she answered.

“I think you’ll see that you are looking in the wrong direction,” he said.

“I’ll take a look but, I’m not making you any promises. If I think the evidence supports his conviction, I will tell you so,” Lindsay stated.

“I understand.” Alberts said. “I’m hoping that you’ll find that you’re not going to find out what happened to Kelly Davenport by going down this road.”

The two of them set up a meeting in Paso Robles.

Alberts met Lindsay at the Paso Robles Inn for a working lunch. He shared the discrepancies in the case with her.

“You’ve shown this to the D.A?” she asked.

“I did about two years ago. I was told that the only way that we could get a new trial is to find new evidence. The D.A.’s office strongly believes that the evidence is good,” Alberts said.

“I noticed that you talked to Paul Davis.”

“He says that Small was the lead detective and made the decisions with the D.A.” Alberts said.

“I talked to him also. He indicated that he tried to investigate in a different direction and was shut down,” Lindsay said. “Have you ever heard the name Bing Taylor?”

“I saw that he was mentioned in the police report, but never questioned. He was another ranch hand I believe,” Alberts said.

“That’s right. He was never questioned and was found murdered in Tehachapi ten days after the Davenport murders,” Lindsay said.

“Why wasn’t this brought up at the trial?” Alberts questioned.

“I’m not sure that the D.A. knew about it since it happened in a different county,” Lindsay said.

“Do you know anything about him?” Alberts asked.

“More bodies were found at the Davenport ranch in Shandon recently. His name came up as a long time acquaintance of the Davenport family.”

“Have you uncovered anything that directly points to him for the Davenport murders?” Alberts asked.

“No, but there were four sets of footprints in the house,” she said.

“I am trying to get my client out of jail. You are making it sound like he may be an accomplice,” Alberts said defensively.