59 Hours Read online

  However, Hoeflinger wasn’t home at the time the white van pulled up around three p.m. His friend Gabriel Ibarra was, smoking out front. After Rugge walked up, Gabriel informed him that Hoeflinger wasn’t home yet, so Rugge waited across the street for his friend to return.

  Hoeflinger had planned to attend a barbecue close by when he briefly returned and saw Rugge.

  Rugge told him he had a few friends who “wanted to come in and kick it.” Hoeflinger was just running in and out but said that it would be fine for Rugge and his friends to hang. At some point Nick’s wrists were bound with duct tape inside the van.

  What happened next was something Hoeflinger wasn’t expecting. Nick had a shirt thrown over his hands to hide the fact that his wrists were bound. Hoeflinger’s roommate, Hoeflinger’s cousin, his cousin’s friend, and another friend were also present. Hollywood’s crew escorted Nick into a back bedroom. About twenty minutes later Hoeflinger went to check up on them.

  Ibarra didn’t think anything was wrong when Hollywood’s crew went into Hoeflinger’s room. But then he saw Hoeflinger come out by himself with a shocked look on his face.

  Hoeflinger had seen the tape being removed from Nick’s wrists at the same time Nick was being offered a water bong. Hoeflinger threw Skidmore a look: What are you guys doing with this kid? He then confided in Skidmore that his guests were tripping out and that Hollywood’s crew had to get Nick out of there. And for good reason. Ibarra had also seen into the room, where Nick was bound at the feet and wrists by duct tape and had a sock over his eyes like a temporary blindfold.

  Hoeflinger and Ibarra didn’t want to cause any trouble after seeing a bulge, which they presumed to be a gun, under Hollywood’s shirt. Ibarra then surmised that Nick was being held against his will. Ibarra felt somebody had to be armed to be able to pull this kidnapping off.

  A short time later, Ibarra watched as Hollywood smoked while pacing out back. Rugge told Ibarra that Hollywood was freaking out because “he took this kid.”

  Hollywood then walked up to Ibarra and whispered to him, his hand on the bulge in his waistband. “Keep your fucking mouth shut, you don’t say nothing.”

  Hoeflinger had met Hollywood six months earlier at Hollywood’s home, where Ryan Hoyt was pointing a Mac-10 in his direction to intimidate him. He had already had one gun pointed in his face. He wanted to do anything he could to avoid repeating the experience. Maybe that was why he accepted a bribe from Hollywood to use his place to hold Nick in the short term.

  * * *

  It wasn’t just Hoeflinger who didn’t want to be involved. Another friend of Hoeflinger’s who was also at his apartment felt that Hollywood was “on a mission,” but she also decided not to go to the police.

  Hoeflinger’s cousin was freaked out when she initially saw Nick duct-taped. That didn’t stop her from still using the bathroom in the bedroom to put on her makeup. She also chose not to go to the police, fearing repercussions for anyone involved.

  In one version or another, it would be explained to all the witnesses that Nick’s brother owed Hollywood money.

  Twenty minutes after that white van arrived, Hoeflinger, his cousin, and his cousin’s friend left to attend the barbecue. Hollywood was “barking orders” at his crew. Hoeflinger, though frightened, chose not to report the kidnapping to police because he was afraid of Hollywood. He hoped Hollywood would be gone by the time he returned.

  At the same time, Ibarra headed to work as the manager-supervisor of Kentucky Fried Chicken. Once there, he didn’t tell anyone about what he had just witnessed. He was also fearful and scared. He thought to himself, If I say something and these guys find out, what will happen if they then come for me? He felt Hollywood was not right in the head, and that if he had kidnapped Nick, what would stop Hollywood from doing the same to him?

  * * *

  After Hoeflinger and his crew left, Brian Affronti had seen enough. He had seen Nick duct-taped and given a “bong hit.” He turned to Skidmore. He wanted out. He had no intention of staying a minute longer. He quickly made up an excuse—he forgot he had a date. Hollywood gave him shit for it, then begrudgingly said he could take the van, but only after Hollywood used it so he could go to Rugge’s to shower.

  Unlike Affronti, who lied to Hollywood, Skidmore actually did have a date with his girlfriend. Would Skidmore decide to ride this kidnapping out, staying loyal to Hollywood, or would he respect Affronti’s request to leave? Just exactly what type of guy was Skidmore?

  Years before he would be recognized by his street name, Capone, William Skidmore went by the Blanket, a name given to him in Little League by his coach, Jack Hollywood, whom he played for under the elite Westhills Mustang and Bronco Divisions. William “covered the whole field.” He didn’t care if he got hurt diving for balls. Hence, the Blanket was born.

  For Skidmore, this was the endgame—making a name for yourself. And that name started changing early in the party scene. The Blanket soon faded into a haze of bong hits and acid trips. By sixth grade he was drinking beer and smoking weed. By seventh it was on to cocaine, and by eighth, LSD was the fashionable escape. By ninth grade, he was best friends with the local cocaine dealer. The best place to hang was at a friend’s whose parents were divorced. That meant Skidmore and his friends usually had the house to themselves until a parent arrived home from work.

  Being cool wasn’t enough for Skidmore. He thought that to fit in he would also need to cultivate an intimidation factor. He wanted to prove himself. He wanted to be the guy. And that guy joined one of the most notorious and ruthless Asian gangs in the San Fernando Valley. And he would do it twice. Same Asian gang, two locations.

  Skidmore wasn’t Asian, but because his hood was in constant battle with its rival, his gang dropped the race requisite and allowed blacks and whites to join without repercussions.

  In eleventh grade, the Blanket gave way to his new hood name, Scrappy, because of his love for fighting. His motto was “Punch first, talk later.”

  Because he had friends who were affiliated with the gang from Long Beach, he was jumped in to that clique first. But since some of his friends didn’t reside in Long Beach, they started their own satellite branch in San Fernando. Hence, why Skidmore was jumped in twice.

  Being put on a gang is a rite of passage. There are no interviews or letters of recommendation. No, your résumé is written for you in right hooks and how well you handle the fusillade of fists for sixty seconds, courtesy of current members. He was jumped in by eight members the first time around. The second time, it was seven.

  Scrappy finally stepped aside for Capone. It wasn’t after the infamous gangster as some members of law enforcement assumed. Capone means “brown” in Tagalog, which some of his Filipino crew used in tribute to Skidmore being part Mexican.

  Skidmore held his first gun at age fifteen. He acquired it during the summer of 1995, when he used to rob houses. Ten a day. That was where he would find a new gun every month.

  He was first incarcerated at age seventeen in Barry J. Nidorf Juvenile Hall in Sylmar, California, about forty minutes northeast of West Hills. He was being prosecuted for more than twenty-four residential burglaries. He spent ten months fighting his case. There was one witness, a housekeeper who saw him climb through a window into a residence. When they made eye contact, he jumped out and ran. He was with two other friends. The housekeeper, who was the only witness, never showed. She was from Guatemala and didn’t have a green card. Fearing deportation, she never testified. The judge threw out the case.

  Skidmore had SFV—San Fernando Valley—tattooed across his chest. It was commissioned at age sixteen. He was Hollywood’s muscle and never sold marijuana. He was Hollywood’s friend “who was from a gang.” And if Hollywood had an issue with someone, Skidmore would take care of it. That was what Hollywood did—he paid everyone to take care of his problems.

  Skidmore decided that things were getting too heavy at Hoeflinger’s, that this kidnapping might not be over anytime soon. After al
l, Hollywood still hadn’t made an attempt to contact Ben Markowitz, even though he was busy making phone calls on Hoeflinger’s phone. Who was he speaking to? Had the situation now reached the point of no return? Was Hollywood compartmentalizing the information or his plan, delegating on a need-to-know or reaching out to outside sources for their input? No. He was looking for a separate ride home.

  This entire time, Susan Markowitz was still frantically paging Nick, having no idea where her son was or that his pager had been tossed on the side of the 101 freeway. She spent her nervous energy cleaning his room.

  Skidmore agreed with Affronti that things were getting out of hand. Even though he smoked a bong with Nick and drank Tanqueray, the mood was anything but festive. Skidmore would express his concerns to Affronti. “Dude, this is crazy, fuck man.” He thought, If Ben hadn’t broken out those windows, none of this would have happened. “That was the spark,” he said, “that lit the fuse.” And now Skidmore was wrapped up in something he desperately wanted to distance himself from.

  Hollywood finally left for Rugge’s. Nick remained. Affronti and Skidmore could have freed him. But instead they anxiously waited for Hollywood to return. They wanted out.

  Affronti knew one thing: there was no chance he was going to the police. He felt that if he said something to Hollywood about kidnapping Nick, or turned to the authorities, Jesse could come back for him. Affronti reasoned, He’s already done this to somebody that his crew didn’t have a problem with. Affronti didn’t know if Hollywood would turn around and do the same to him if he expressed his opinion that they should let Nick go.

  When the van returned, Skidmore and Affronti left Hoeflinger’s. That was when Affronti realized he’d forgotten his cell phone. When they returned to Hoeflinger’s to pick it up, Nick was untied. In fact, he was smoking weed and playing video games with Rugge. This time, Hollywood was nowhere to be found. He had gotten a separate ride back home to West Hills.

  Was this the point when Nick went from feeling helpless to feeling empowered by his abduction? Was his rationale, Fuck it, let’s just ride this sucker out? Did he get a rush from believing his capture was more alluring than alarming?

  Four hours later, around seven p.m., Hoeflinger returned from the barbecue. Rugge and Nick were still playing video games. At least Nick wasn’t tied up. Hoeflinger might have felt a small sense of relief.

  The same couldn’t be said for Susan Markowitz, still frantically paging her son.

  Chapter 10

  Buying Time

  NORMALLY, IT TOOK APPROXIMATELY THIRTY-THREE minutes to walk the 1.7 miles from Modoc Road to 780 Casiano Drive. But running on Tanqueray and bong hits? That added considerable time. Rugge had nowhere else to take Nick. And Hollywood? Was nowhere to be found.

  It was now Rugge’s job to watch Nick, something he wasn’t too pleased about having to do. Why didn’t Hollywood take Nick back to Los Angeles? Ben was the one with whom he had issues. Out of options, Rugge and Nick headed out from Richard Hoeflinger’s apartment to Rugge’s father’s house in the Hidden Valley area of Santa Barbara.

  When Rugge and Nick finally made it to Jesse Rugge’s house, they entered to cigarette smoke wafting from the kitchen. Jesse introduced Nick to his father, his stepmother, and a family friend. Nick was just a friend visiting from Los Angeles who was going to spend the night.

  Rugge grabbed a beer and even offered one to Nick. They watched some TV. He gave Nick some options—his bed, the floor, or the couch downstairs. Nick took the floor. Jesse provided blankets and a pillow.

  * * *

  Back at the Markowitzes’, Susan had also grabbed a pillow—Nick’s. Her mind racing a million miles per hour, she tried to make sense of where he could have gone and why he hadn’t contacted her. In the past, he had always let her know where he was, or Ben would call to let her know that Nick was with him. Ben would let Nick spend the night, then take him home in the morning. Was he safe? Where was he sleeping? Was he hurt? It seemed like yesterday that she was singing Nick to sleep as a small boy.

  Not only did Susan conclude her journal entries to Nick with, I love you so much. This phrase was also the name of a 1984 children’s song by Barbara Milne:

  I love you so much, I love you so much

  I can’t even tell you how much I love you . . .

  And when she wasn’t singing, she was reading to Nick: Once there was a tree . . . and she loved a little boy. This was a line from Shel Silverstein’s The Giving Tree. Out of the six hundred books in her library, two hundred belonged to Nick.

  Forget baseball, where he broke his wrist at age seven after being pinged by a wild pitch. His favorite pastime was reading. And before he could read, Susan would play cassettes and let him listen to stories or Gymboree music as he fell asleep.

  Susan pored over the journal again. They had a system to writing new entries. When he was ready to share, he would place the journal on her pillow. She would then follow up and place it on his. There was never any pressure to write, because she didn’t want it to seem like more homework.

  Had Nick made a whole new set of friends she hadn’t known about? Occasionally Jeff Markowitz would add his own thoughts to the journal. In one entry he encouraged his son to make the right decisions:

  In the future, be sure you think of the consequences of your actions before you decide to do things. One thing you have to be very careful of in your life is not to let anybody convince you to do something you don’t feel is right. Be good, I love you, Dad. PS—next week will be better.

  Susan left one last voice mail for Nick before trying to get some sleep. Even though he was missing and she was upset, she didn’t berate him. “Nick, it’s Mom. Call me back. I love you.” Every time she called, she would leave the same message and express her love.

  But tonight, there was no Nick. Or singing or reading. Just his pillow tightly clasped in a worried mother’s arms.

  * * *

  As much as Susan worried about her son’s disappearance, Nick’s close friend Carey Evans wasn’t as concerned.

  Carey, who was a year older, met Nick in art class during his junior year and Nick’s sophomore year of high school. Their friendship started off like most high school friendships do: they sat next to each other and found out they had some friends in common, and that they could easily make the other laugh.

  For Carey, it was the first time that he had started up a friendship with a random person. Up until then, he had made most of his friends through sports, family friendships, or other classes he had attended with them for many years.

  Carey and Nick had sparked a closer friendship during the summer. They were two teenagers without much to do, spending most days just killing time, testing the limits of their boundaries in what Carey described as “a pretty boring, suburban part of the Valley.”

  They were sometimes up to no good, but it was “never serious: loitering, small-time vandalism, smoking cigarettes and some pot here and there.”

  Carey thought Nick was “trying to grow into an image that he had of himself as a bit of the ‘cool guy’—in a James Dean, Rebel Without a Cause type of way.” For Carey, “it was that time of life when you try to be who you think you want to be, rather than who you actually are.” They hadn’t yet realized it wasn’t worth the trouble trying to be someone you’re not.

  Carey and Nick never spoke much about dreams or girls. This was the summer before Nick was to turn sixteen, and they were “full of late-teenage angst—more concerned with looking cool in front of each other than really sharing any type of deep emotions.”

  It wasn’t a big deal when Carey found out Nick was missing. Carey—like everyone—thought he had just run away for a little bit. “Not run away in the real sense that some people run away from really difficult home situations as kids—more the run away in the teenage drama-queen sense, where you go stay with some friends you have that your parents don’t know about.”

  Carey knew that Nick always bragged that he had older friends—mostly
through Ben, so it “kind of made the whole running away for a couple days a bit less alarming.” Carey mostly thought, Man, he’s going to be in trouble when he gets back. Not, I hope he’s safe and okay.

  * * *

  Rugge and Nick were falling asleep in Rugge’s room with the television on. Did either wish that this odyssey would all be over? Was Rugge more annoyed than frightened? Did he look at this fifteen-year-old and wonder if his parents were scared shitless? What kept him from picking up the phone and calling them, or anyone? Like Skidmore’s thinking, this was all just supposed to blow over. Ben Markowitz would be found. Things would be squared. Nick would be returned. Easy, right?

  Rugge and Nick would wake the next morning as if nothing was out of the ordinary. Rugge would sweep one part of the house, Nick, the other. A friend would stop by. But he was more than a friend. He was the great-grandson of the founder of Old Spanish Days. His name was Graham Pressley, and he was about to be enveloped in something more than just a casual summer-morning hang, something that would lead to the foothills above Goleta and Lizard’s Mouth.

  Chapter 11

  Witnesses

  NATASHA ADAMS WAS A SEVENTEEN-YEAR-OLD working at Riley’s Flowers and attending Santa Barbara City College. She lived in the lower Riviera section of Santa Barbara.

  That Monday, August 7, 2000, she was with three friends, Jesse Rugge, Graham Pressley, age seventeen, and Kelly Carpenter, sixteen, at Rugge’s father’s home. They were close to being an everyday quartet. Today, though, there was someone new she had never seen or met before—a fifteen-year-old with scrapes on his elbow, Nicholas Markowitz.

  Curious, she asked him how old he was and where he went to high school. They talked music and skateboarding. Nick told her he liked to do tae kwon do, even though he wasn’t very good at it. To Kelly, Nick was very sweet and friendly. He seemed calm like everyone else.