The Cutting Room. Jilliane Hoffman
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by Coral Gables and, pursuant to that investigation, surveillance video from the nightclub was pulled, which records Holly leaving Menace at 4:16 a.m. with an, at the time, unknown white male. Coral Gables Detective John Coffey obtained additional video footage from a nearby traffic cam, which shows Holly getting into the passenger side of a dark-colored, late-model Mercedes. Visible in the video is the last digit of the plate. It was “Z”, as in Zulu.
‘Holly was entered into NCIC — the National Crime Information Center — as a missing person. Her photo, along with a still photo of the vehicle from the traffic cam and a still photo of the individual seen leaving Menace with Holly were distributed in the community and broadcast on several local television news stations.’
Daria held up a poster. ‘Are these the photographs you’re referring to?’
‘Yes. That’s a Crime Stoppers reward poster. A thousand-dollar reward was set up requesting information on Holly’s disappearance.’
She moved the poster into evidence and continued. ‘After Holly was entered into NCIC, what happened?’
‘Holly’s body was subsequently discovered on April twenty-fifth and her death was classified a homicide. A couple of weeks later I was contacted by a Ms Marie Modic of Hallendale, Florida. She told me that she’d been in Menace on Saturday night, May seventh, and in the club’s bathroom she’d seen the Crime Stoppers poster. She recognized the male in the surveillance photo and called me. I interviewed her at the nail salon where she works and she identified the man in the Crime Stoppers’ photo as “T”, a guy she’d talked to in Menace on the night of April sixteenth, which was the same night Holly Skole had been in the club and disappeared. “T” was the name he went by, but Ms Modic didn’t know his full name. He flashed a lot of cash, was dressed real nice. Said he was, quote, “slumming it down in Miami”, endquote. Said he came from the land of the Trumps and Kennedys, where the real money is.
‘So this “T” bought Marie Modic a couple of drinks and then asked her if she wanted to come back to his suite at the Mandarin. She initially said yes, at which time he placed his keys on the bar to pay the bar tab and she saw a car key with the Mercedes logo. Attached to the key was a metal plate that said, ‘Automotive Expert’. Ms Modic then excused herself to go to the bathroom, where she said she had second thoughts about going with “T”. Something just didn’t sit right with her about him and she was not feeling well physically, so she texted her girlfriend, who was also in the club, and asked her to get the car and meet her outside. She snuck out the back entrance. Stepping into the car is the last thing she remembers that night. She blanked out until the next morning, when she woke up in her apartment some seventeen hours later. Her girlfriend told her that as soon as she’d gotten into the car she’d pretty much passed out. She now believes she was drugged by the defendant.’
‘Objection! How much leniency are you gonna give this prosecutor, Judge? Hearsay upon hearsay, and now we have a medical opinion being offered up from a nail tech who downed one too many free drinks,’ barked Varlack. He threw his hands up in frustration.
‘Sustained,’ replied the judge. ‘Move on, Ms DeBianchi.’
‘How did you come to identify this “T” as being the defendant, Talbot Lunders?’
‘I contacted a company called Automotive Experts, a high-end car dealership with offices in Palm Beach and Stuart. I spoke with the owner and had him pull records for late-model Mercedes sales within the past two years. Then I did a records check on all of the Mercedes sold by Automotive Experts for plates ending in “Z”, and I found a black 2010 S-class registered to Abigail Charmaine Lunders, age forty-six. A background check on her revealed that she was the wife of Frederick Alastair Lunders, age sixty-seven. An insurance check on the vehicle listed Talbot Alastair Lunders, age twenty-eight, as an additional authorized driver of the vehicle. I pulled Mr Lunders’s driver’s license and identified him as the guy captured on the surveillance video leaving Menace with Holly Skole. Marie Modic also identified him through his DL — his driver’s license photo. A search warrant for the Mercedes was obtained and executed on May thirteenth.’
‘What did you find?’
‘A lipstick compact was recovered under the front passenger seat of the car, along with three long blonde hairs that the lab subsequently confirmed matched the chemical composition of Ms Skole’s hair dye. Fingerprints were also lifted from the lipstick case, which matched both the index and thumbprints on Ms Skole’s right hand. DNA analysis of the lipstick is pending. Fingerprints matching Ms Skole’s right thumb and right palm were also found on the inside door handle of the passenger side of the vehicle. So we know she was in that car.’
‘Objection.’
‘Overruled.’
‘Was the defendant present when the Mercedes was seized?’
‘Yes. It was seized from the parking lot of Flower & Honey Bath Products in Palm Beach, where Mr Lunders works. He appeared very agitated and upset, pacing the lot, threatening to call his attorney. His mother accompanied him. She wasn’t very happy, either. At that time I asked him if he wanted to talk about the disappearance of Holly Skole. He declined.
‘Three days later, while lab results were pending, I learned that the very afternoon the Benz was seized, Mr Lunders had gone and listed his 2008 Cigarette High-Performance Top Gun for sale through a broker in Coconut Grove, Miami. The racing boat was being offered for thirty percent less than other Cigarettes listed for sale of the same year and style. That raised my eyebrows way up. So I ran a system search of airline flights and learned that one T. Lunders was booked on a one-way JetBlue flight out of Palm Beach International to New York’s JFK the following afternoon. And a T. Lunders and A. Lunders were also booked on a Lufthansa flight to Zurich the day after that. His mother’s name is Abigail Lunders. Based on that, Mr Lunders was asked to come down to his boat broker to provide additional paperwork to facilitate the pending sale of his boat. When he arrived at the marina, I approached the defendant, identified myself once again, and told him his boat was being searched pursuant to a homicide investigation. Mr Lunders didn’t like that; he again declined to talk to us.’
‘Objection!’ Varlack barked. ‘The defendant has a right against self-incrimination! He doesn’t have to talk to the police if he doesn’t want to and that can’t be used against him. That’s Criminal Law 101!’
Steyn frowned. ‘Was the defendant free to go at that time?’
‘I had not yet taken him into custody,’ Manny replied.
‘That, I’m thinking, is going to be up for debate in a future motion,’ the judge replied with a cocked eyebrow. ‘Sustained.’
‘The fingerprint analysis of both the lipstick and the prints left on the interior passenger door of the Mercedes confirmed Ms Skole had been in Abigail Lunders’s vehicle,’ Manny continued. ‘Based on the prints and hair of the victim being found in his car, the video surveillance of her getting into the defendant’s car, and then the quick sell-off of his worldly possessions and his impending flight from the jurisdiction to a country that doesn’t have an extradition treaty with the US, a decision was made to arrest him for the murder of Holly Anne Skole.’
That was enough for the judge. Particularly the Switzerland flight. As much as Joe Varlack and his well-heeled sidekick tried for the next twenty minutes to downplay the evidence as circumstantial and unreliable, and discredit Manny as biased, sloppy, lazy — and a zillion other disingenuous adjectives — there was no way that even liberal, let-’em-go, Slow Steyn was going to give Talbot Lunders a bond. Enough dots had been connected to keep him behind bars pending trial. And the truth be told, it was an election year. If Steyn did let Talbot Alastair Lunders of the Palm Beach Lunders buy his way out of the pokey with $150,000 in cold, hard cash, the press would start screaming favorable treatment for the rich and it would be difficult for anyone to argue otherwise come the August primaries.
Harmony called up the next case and a fresh set of attorneys approached the podiums, ready to do battle. The lurid transfixion that had held the audience captive during Talbot Lunders’s Arthur finally broke, and the