Jonathan Kellerman - The Best American Crime Reporting 2008

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Thieves, liars, killers, and conspirators – it's a criminal world out there, and someone has got to write about it. An eclectic collection of the year's best reportage, The Best American Crime Reporting 2008 brings together the murderers and the masterminds, the mysteries and missteps that make for brilliant stories, told by the aces of the true-crime genre. This latest addition to the highly acclaimed series features guest editor Jonathan Kellerman, bestselling author of more than twenty crime novels, most recently Compulsion and the forthcoming Bones.

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In July 2006 the new (and so far only) issue of El Puente magazine was published. That same month Volz moved to Managua, and he and Jimenez broke up. They were separated for about a month, according to friends, but then he began to visit and they would be seen hanging out together. But Volz’s main focus was in Managua, where he had an increasingly complex business. On Tuesday afternoon, November 21, 2006, Volz was working in El Puente ’s Managua office with more than a half dozen others when he says he got the call from Jon Thompson’s wife. Doris Jimenez had been murdered.

THE FIRST PERSON to discover the crime was Jimenez’s cousin Oscar Blandón, who told the court he went to Sol Fashion around two in the afternoon and found her body in the back room. She had been gagged and strangled, her wrists and ankles tied. Blandón ran to get Gabriela Sobalvarro, who worked down the street. “When I entered the store, it was a mess,” she says. “Doris was wrapped up in sheets like a mummy.”

Sobalvarro called Volz. “He told me not to let anyone go into the crime scene, including the police, until he got there,” she says. It was too late. A crowd had gathered, and at least 20 people traipsed in and out of the store, touching the body and possibly even moving it, before the police arrived about 20 minutes later and finally roped off the scene.

Although Jimenez was found fully clothed, the police removed her jeans and her shirt and took pictures of her. Marks on her body led them to conclude that she’d been raped, vaginally and anally, an explosive claim that soon found its way into print but was never substantiated. Jimenez wasn’t known as a drinker, but she had a blood alcohol level of 0.30 percent-three times the DUI limit in most U.S. states. The coroner estimated the time of death between 11 AM and 1:45 PM, right during lunchtime, while people were eating at sidewalk restaurants.

“We didn’t see or hear a thing,” says Bob Merrill, whose pizza shop is directly across the street. “It just doesn’t make any sense to me.”

Meanwhile, Volz rented a car in Managua and set out for San Juan del Sur, stopping in Rivas to pick up Jimenez’s father Ivan. When they arrived at the scene at around 6 PM there was still a crowd in front of the store, but police had the entrance blocked off. A take-charge sort of person, Volz demanded to be let in. The police refused; when Volz kept asking questions, he says, they turned hostile.

“I know the rules,” says Volz. “You’re not supposed to get involved here, you’re not supposed to get hands-on with a police investigation. But Doris’s family wasn’t doing anything, the police weren’t giving them any answers.”

From this point on his actions would be carefully scrutinized. Spying Sobalvarro, he gave her a brief hug. “He was very cold, very unemotional,” she says. “He didn’t even cry. He asked me if I had eaten, if I was hungry. I thought that was strange.”

The next day, Volz says he was in Rivas when a friend called, saying he’d received a threatening text message: “Your girlfriend, is next.” Alarmed, Volz, his friend, and the girlfriend went into the police station to report it and spoke to a commissioner of investigations named Emilio Reyes. The meeting quickly turned sour. “You drink a lot, don’t you Eric?” Reyes asked, according to Volz. “Do you get violent when you drink? How many times have you hit Doris? Are you a jealous guy? Are you jealous enough to kill someone if they cheated on you?”

Reyes also wondered aloud, “Why don’t Americans take showers very often?”

That set Volz off. “I know my rights, and I stood up for them,” he says. “I was like, ‘I don’t like the way you’re talking to me. If you’re going to accuse me of something, if you’re implying something, do it directly. I’ll get an attorney if I need to.’” He left in a huff, refusing to sign a statement Reyes had given him.

At Jimenez’s funeral on Thursday, Volz helped carry the casket and cried at the grave site. Afterward the police asked him to come back to the station to resume his conversation with Reyes. Volz realized he was in trouble when the police put him in their pickup truck and paraded him slowly through the center of San Juan del Sur, as his friends and acquaintances gaped.

“It was a strategy to immediately build support [against me] and have people start spreading rumors,” Volz says now. The police brought him to the Rivas station and charged him with murder. “I was totally shocked,” says Volz. “I was not expecting that at all.”

The police also charged three other men, including a wealthy student named Armando Llanes, whose father owns a nearby hotel, and who Doris had dated after she and Volz broke up. They also picked up two local hangabouts, Nelson Lopez Dangla, a known drug user, and Martin Chamorro, who had a long-standing crush on Jimenez and who had chided her publicly for dating Americans. Chamorro had scratches on his face, while Lopez had marks all over his body, including his penis. According to the police, the four had allegedly raped and killed her together, led by Volz. In a statement to police, Chamorro alleged that Volz and Llanes had paid him $5,000 to help them do the deed.

It wasn’t long before all of the attention settled on Volz, especially, he says, after a local police official told Jimenez’s mother that Volz had confessed to the crime (which he hadn’t). A few days later the Sandinista paper El Nuevo Diario published a front-page story accusing Volz of leading a brutal gang-rape and murder of “this ‘sirenita’ of San Juan del Sur.” The newspaper’s version was accepted as gospel.

Jimenez’s mother Mercedes Alvarado, 45, appeared often on TV, appearing to sob exaggeratedly-despite the fact that she and Jimenez had been estranged and rarely talked. A volunteer Sandinista organizer, she lives in a small house on a dirt street with a huge picture of President Ortega on the wall. She had met Volz only a few times, but that didn’t stop her from relaying lurid tales of his disrespectful treatment of her daughter, from midnight booty calls to supposed beatings. (Jimenez in fact spent most nights at Volz’s place when they were together, and roommates say they got along well.) Alvarado organized the truckloads of protesters who were brought in for Volz’s preliminary hearing.

“This is my town, and these are my people,” she says. “It was a show of solidarity and support from the people. We knew if the judge found him innocent, he would go free.”

He ended up in El Chipote, the Sandinistas’ notorious underground torture prison in Managua. Clad only in boxers and a tank top, Volz was thrown into a tiny, windowless concrete cell, which he shared with two scorpions and a tarantula. The lights stayed on 24 hours a day, and the dripping moisture bred mosquitoes that feasted on his exposed flesh.

Volz believes Emilio Reyes, commissioner of investigation for the Rivas police-the same man he thinks ordered his arrest and leaked his “confession”-may have sent him there.

MORE AKIN TO A FOURTH-GRADE classroom than a house of law, the Rivas courtroom seats about 25 people, on metal chairs, and testifying witnesses are within arm’s length from both the judge and the court reporter. A large, colorful poster tacked on the courtroom door depicts a hand offering money to a faceless judge, with a stop sign in between. According to the U.S. State Department, judicial corruption is rampant in Nicaragua.

On February 14, the first day of his trial, Volz entered the courtroom wearing a brown long-sleeved parka zipped up to his chin that concealed a bulletproof vest. After the mayhem following the preliminary hearing, Volz and the police weren’t taking any chances. The police took the further precaution of blocking off the streets around the courthouse.

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