Empty Promises

try on a black skirt. At the time, I was very small. Obviously, after having a child, I am not anymore. But I remember it was snug.”
    “What size were you wearing then?”
    “Between a three and a five. I would bounce back and forth between a hundred pounds to a hundred and five.”
    “And how tall are you?”
    “Five-four.”
    Marilyn Brenneman showed Connie Jami’s tiny black leather miniskirt, which they had found in the blue suitcase. “Do you recognize this?”
    “Yes, I do. He actually bought me one that was very similar. Mine was suede.” Connie Duncan testified that Steve kept the blue suitcase under his bed and that he pulled it out to get the skirt.
    “Were there any other items in there?”
    “I remember a dress that he said Jami had worn on some special occasion. I thought he also had me try on a jean shirt.”
    Connie recalled also that he had put a necklace around her neck. “He pulled it out of his closet. He had a safe in the closet.”
    “What was your response to putting these items on?”
    “At first, I didn’t think much about it. I was sixteen. I thought I was invincible. I did have a friend with me. She was sitting in the living room and I remember her remarks were something along the line of ‘That’s gross that you have got her clothes on.’ I went and took them off.”
    “Did you have any further conversations with the defendant in the house about things that happened between him and Jami?”
    “There is a spot by the stairs at the very top of the stairs where the kitchen is. There is a wall right here”—Connie pointed to the floor plan of the house on Education Hill—“and then a little wall right there, and the walkway. He told me he had gotten into an argument, fight, with Jami. And I don’t know how he did it, but he had given her a bloody nose. I don’t know if he punched her or if he was trying to restrain her or elbowed her. He said he didn’t mean to do it, but that he was sorry he did it, but that it had happened.”
    From her testimony, it was clear that Steve had confided many things to Connie Duncan, a thirty-year-old man telling secrets to a high school junior. He told her about the insurance scam in California and how he had taken things from his house and pretended they were stolen.
    “I think he did it while [Jami] was at work. But anyway, one of the things he said was that with the [insurance] money he got her a boob job.”
    “Did you ever go on a trip with the defendant?” Marilyn Brenneman asked.
    “There was one to Canada, and then there was one to California where he drove his truck down…. We stayed at a motel.
    “He asked if he could go out with some of his friends because I wasn’t twenty-one at the time. And I said, ‘Sure.’ And he was supposed to be back that night. And he never showed up. He never showed up. He finally showed up late the next afternoon, and he had been up the whole night. He was higher than a kite. He was very agitated, yelling at me. He wanted to go to sleep.
    “When his mom came in, his attitude changed. He was totally nice, cordial. And we went to Disneyland with his mother and his son. And as we were getting on the little trolly train to go to Disneyland, Chris called me Mommy.”
    Marilyn Brennaman had asked Connie Duncan to bring a photograph of herself as she looked in 1991. Brenneman offered it as evidence that Connie had been a dead ringer for Jami. Little Chris Sherer had been confused. He continued to call Connie Mommy throughout their Disneyland trip. Steve didn’t correct him, but Sherri Schielke was upset. “Steve’s mom jumped in right away,” Connie testified, “to say, ‘No, she is just a nice young lady.’ ”
    By the end of the day, Steve had finally said, “No, Chris, she is not your mom.”
    Connie told the jurors that Steve had suggested some bizarre sexual arrangements. “He asked if one of my fantasies was to have two guys. He said that he had a friend that could fulfill it. I shot that down. I was sixteen, seventeen—that was inconceivable to me. And then he suggested about having sex with another woman while he watched. And I shot that one down too.”
    The trip to California only got worse. Steve was so “agitated,” Connie testified, that she had to drive his truck home.
    “When you got back, what was your state of mind as far as being with the defendant any longer?”
    “I never wanted to see the man ever again. This is probably the first time I have seen him