Smoke, Mirrors, and Murder

and a T-shirt. My hair was in individual braids—about midback length. I had removed all my jewelry. I had removed all my makeup—so I kind of looked plain.”
    “Do you think it’s fair to say you’re someone who maybe looks younger with makeup off ?”
    “Yes, I do.”
    Stevens identified photographs of the jail’s visiting area, pointing out the booths with single stools and speaker phones with which to communicate with the prisoner on the other side of the glass.
    She testified that Bill Jensen had seemed relieved when he saw her. “He seemed like he had been expecting me. He was very comfortable. He spoke with me freely—wasn’t hesitant to talk to me.”
    She explained that she wasn’t familiar with this area of the jail and that the jail staff had no idea who she was. She’d been nervous when she held the note from Yancy Carrothers up to the glass so Jensen could read it. “I assumed that probably would have been against the rules.”
    Sharon Stevens told the jury that she had been careful to have Bill Jensen repeat his list of instructions several times. She wanted to be positive she had heard him correctly, and have it firmly in her mind when she reported back to Cloyd Steiger.
    “Can you describe Mr. Jensen’s mood or demeanor when he told you to tell him [Yancy] good luck?” Snow asked.
    “I would characterize him as being very excited, more like giddy, in the way of having me there, knowing that his plans are still going through. He smiled at me while we were speaking…very, very comfortable with me. We were talking like old friends.”
    When Sharon Stevens returned for her second visit with Jensen, she couldn’t go incognito. The DEA agents would have to be there to record this visit, and the corrections sergeant needed to know who Sharon was.
    This time, Jensen wasn’t surprised to see her. She held up another note from Yancy, and he read it quickly before she shredded it, put it back in its envelope, and tucked it into the waistband of her jeans.
    At this point, Cheryl Snow delivered the coup de grâce of the state’s case into evidence: each juror was given a transcript to follow as he or she listened to the defendant’s voice ordering the murder of four people.
    The courtroom was hushed as Bill Jensen’s and Sharon Stevens’s voices came over the sound system. What was said had been shocking even to the detectives and prosecutors, who were all too familiar with the depths that some conscienceless minds will sink to; and now the words and thoughts that played out on this afternoon struck both the gallery and the jurors like blows to the heart.
    One juror wiped the tears that coursed down her face, and a fellow juror handed her a tissue. The defense would later ask to have her dismissed. Judge Richard Jones didn’t acquiesce. Honest emotion is no reason to dismiss jurors. “The types of cases that we try in King County are difficult, trying cases,” Judge Jones said. “If we were to try every single case in a vacuum without any juror having any degree of sensitivity, it would be a far cry from reality. That’s not what we are experiencing today. The Court finds there is no basis to exclude the juror.”
    How on earth could Bill Jensen explain away this gruesome evidence? And it was gruesome—not in the sense that bloody clothing might be, but because it was a husband and a father willing to sacrifice his own family in the hope of gaining a fortune.
     
    James Conroy wanted to bring Jenny and Scott Jensen into the courtroom to show that his client had been a good father. Marilyn Brenneman argued vehemently against that, knowing it would be an excruciating ordeal for them.
    The defense also asserted that Bill Jensen had no reputation for inflicting excessive force during his two decades as a deputy. Brenneman pointed out that there was a vast difference between what happened on the job and what happened in the home.
    Marilyn Brenneman was a tough opponent, always maintaining grace under pressure, probably because she knew the law backward and forward and she had a keen sense of humor that defused courtroom battles. She saw no humor at all, however, in cases where women or children were victimized.
    She needed now to show that Yancy Carrothers was not known in the King County Jail as a snitch. Corrections officers testified that Yancy didn’t wear a “snitch jacket.” There are many complicated layers determining jail reputations. Yancy enjoyed, indeed, his position as a