was among colleagues, trying to help resolve a perplexing matter. Macumber still had not eaten all day, consuming only cigarettes and coffee. His stomach ached, and he felt exhausted. He kept asking if he could leave when his children arrived.
Within half an hour, Sergeant Ford had compared Bill’s palm print with the latent prints lifted from the Chevy Impala. Bill’s right palm print, he reported, matched Latent Lift 1, taken from the chrome strip by the window, above the handle, on the driver’s door. At 5:00 P.M. , Sheriff Blubaum called Robert Stiteler, superintendent of the sheriff department’s Support Services Division, asking him to come down and confirm Sergeant Ford’s match. As an adjunct faculty member at Glendale Community College, Stiteler had been Carol’s teacher in her two courses—Evidence Technology I and II—that involved advanced instruction on how to take, lift, classify, develop, photograph, file and prepare fingerprints. He arrived at the sheriff’s department within twenty minutes. Diehl joined him in the lab, leaving Macumber with the other deputies in the internal investigations office. Fifteen minutes later, Diehl returned. “Bill,” he said, “I want to read your rights to you again.” Then Diehl informed Macumber that one of his palm prints matched a latent palm print from the victims’ car. At 5:35 P.M. , Diehl snapped handcuffs on Macumber and placed him under arrest on two counts of homicide. As they led him away, Macumber turned to one of the deputies, Jack Barnby, who’d worked with him as liaison to the Desert Survival Unit, and said, “Jack, I have never killed anybody in my life.” Barnby’s response, as Carl Pace would recall it: “I know Bill, I know.”
To Macumber, it would forever remain unclear how Sheriff Blubaum could call the newspapers and dispatch Carol around noon if the palm print didn’t match until 5:00 P.M. In his jail cell thirty-eight days after his arrest, writing in his journal well past midnight, Macumber asked, “How did Carol know five hours in advance of my being arrested?”
* * *
Macumber’s interrogation on August 28 did not end with his arrest at 5:35 P.M. In Room 10 of the Maricopa County sheriff’s department shortly before 7:00 P.M. , Sergeant Ed Calles, too, read him his rights. The two men would spend the next five hours alone together, Calles interrogating Macumber until midnight about Carol’s statement, the palm print match, his .45-caliber gun and his bloody fight with three boys beside the freeway. Bill still ate nothing, instead drinking cup after cup of coffee. His head was swimming, but he kept talking. Even now he thought they’d resolve this matter. He saw no need for a lawyer.
At some point late in the evening, rather than flatly deny the entire document, Macumber began to scribble corrections on a copy of Carol’s statement, what he saw as mistakes and discrepancies in her account. According to the brief, three-page report Calles wrote the next day, Macumber also again allowed that he “had made a statement to her reference the ‘kids on Scottsdale Road,’” but “only to keep her from leaving.” Once more, though, anyone poring through the documents later could only speculate, for Ed Calles—like his colleagues during the day—made no record of the five-hour interrogation: No shorthand transcriber, no tape recorder, no notes.
* * *
On August 30, two days after the marathon interrogation, Calles signed a murder complaint against Macumber. News that the sheriff’s department had finally cracked the haunting twelve-year-old Scottsdale murder case—“one of Arizona’s most inexplicable ever”—dominated banner headlines in the local newspapers and prime time on the local TV stations. Quotes from Sheriff Blubaum filled the stories, his comments about the “baffling lack of motive” and the “thousands of hours of investigative work.” So did shots of Macumber being led down
Within half an hour, Sergeant Ford had compared Bill’s palm print with the latent prints lifted from the Chevy Impala. Bill’s right palm print, he reported, matched Latent Lift 1, taken from the chrome strip by the window, above the handle, on the driver’s door. At 5:00 P.M. , Sheriff Blubaum called Robert Stiteler, superintendent of the sheriff department’s Support Services Division, asking him to come down and confirm Sergeant Ford’s match. As an adjunct faculty member at Glendale Community College, Stiteler had been Carol’s teacher in her two courses—Evidence Technology I and II—that involved advanced instruction on how to take, lift, classify, develop, photograph, file and prepare fingerprints. He arrived at the sheriff’s department within twenty minutes. Diehl joined him in the lab, leaving Macumber with the other deputies in the internal investigations office. Fifteen minutes later, Diehl returned. “Bill,” he said, “I want to read your rights to you again.” Then Diehl informed Macumber that one of his palm prints matched a latent palm print from the victims’ car. At 5:35 P.M. , Diehl snapped handcuffs on Macumber and placed him under arrest on two counts of homicide. As they led him away, Macumber turned to one of the deputies, Jack Barnby, who’d worked with him as liaison to the Desert Survival Unit, and said, “Jack, I have never killed anybody in my life.” Barnby’s response, as Carl Pace would recall it: “I know Bill, I know.”
To Macumber, it would forever remain unclear how Sheriff Blubaum could call the newspapers and dispatch Carol around noon if the palm print didn’t match until 5:00 P.M. In his jail cell thirty-eight days after his arrest, writing in his journal well past midnight, Macumber asked, “How did Carol know five hours in advance of my being arrested?”
* * *
Macumber’s interrogation on August 28 did not end with his arrest at 5:35 P.M. In Room 10 of the Maricopa County sheriff’s department shortly before 7:00 P.M. , Sergeant Ed Calles, too, read him his rights. The two men would spend the next five hours alone together, Calles interrogating Macumber until midnight about Carol’s statement, the palm print match, his .45-caliber gun and his bloody fight with three boys beside the freeway. Bill still ate nothing, instead drinking cup after cup of coffee. His head was swimming, but he kept talking. Even now he thought they’d resolve this matter. He saw no need for a lawyer.
At some point late in the evening, rather than flatly deny the entire document, Macumber began to scribble corrections on a copy of Carol’s statement, what he saw as mistakes and discrepancies in her account. According to the brief, three-page report Calles wrote the next day, Macumber also again allowed that he “had made a statement to her reference the ‘kids on Scottsdale Road,’” but “only to keep her from leaving.” Once more, though, anyone poring through the documents later could only speculate, for Ed Calles—like his colleagues during the day—made no record of the five-hour interrogation: No shorthand transcriber, no tape recorder, no notes.
* * *
On August 30, two days after the marathon interrogation, Calles signed a murder complaint against Macumber. News that the sheriff’s department had finally cracked the haunting twelve-year-old Scottsdale murder case—“one of Arizona’s most inexplicable ever”—dominated banner headlines in the local newspapers and prime time on the local TV stations. Quotes from Sheriff Blubaum filled the stories, his comments about the “baffling lack of motive” and the “thousands of hours of investigative work.” So did shots of Macumber being led down
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