People v. Toland
| Decision Date | 26 March 2001 |
| Citation | 284 AD2d 798,728 N.Y.S.2d 538 |
| Parties | (A.D. 3 Dept. 2001) THE PEOPLE OF THE STATE OF NEW YORK, Respondent, v CHARLES TOLAND JR., Appellant. 12298 78021 : THIRD JUDICIAL DEPARTMENT Calendar Date: |
| Court | New York Supreme Court — Appellate Division |
Harding Law Firm (Adam G. Parisi of counsel), Glenville, for appellant.
Robert M. Carney, District Attorney (Philip W. Mueller of counsel), Schenectady, for respondent.
Before: Mercure, J.P., Crew III, Spain, Carpinello and Mugglin, JJ.
Mercure, J.P.
Appeals (1) from a judgment of the County Court of Schenectady County (Eidens, J.), rendered August 19, 1996, upon a verdict convicting defendant of the crimes of murder in the second degree (two counts), kidnapping in the first degree, assault in the first degree (two counts) and unlawful imprisonment in the first degree, and (2) by permission, from an order of said court, entered June 20, 2000, which denied defendant's motion pursuant to CPL 440.10 to vacate the judgment of conviction.
On August 4, 1995 at approximately 2:00 P.M., Wanda Gonzales left her apartment at 101 Brandywine in the City of Schenectady, Schenectady County, to go to a friend's house. She had made tentative plans to meet her roommate (hereinafter the victim) at an area night spot later that evening if the victim was not going to be doing anything else with her boyfriend, Marty McCollum. At approximately 6:30 P.M., Gonzales called her apartment and talked with the victim, who stated that she was in the process of ironing her clothes and getting ready to meet McCollum. The victim also stated that defendant was with her at the apartment, and she put him on the phone to speak with Gonzales. Then, the victim got back on the phone and told Gonzales that she was going to finish her ironing and get into the shower and that Gonzales should call her later. Gonzales did call on two subsequent occasions but got no answer either time. In addition, calls McCollum made to the apartment at 6:38 P.M., 7:11 P.M., 7:30 P.M. and 8:30 P.M. went unanswered.
Gonzales arrived home at approximately 11:00 P.M. and found the victim's car parked out front, just where it had been when she left. Gonzales entered the apartment through the side entrance and found the lights to the apartment off, the front door unlocked, the love seat moved away from the wall and the victim's watch, earrings, rings, and keys on the coffee table, which surprised Gonzales because she stated that the victim would never go out without them. She also found a crystal candle holder on its side on the coffee table. Gonzales then went into her bedroom and discovered that her bed (the only bed in the apartment) had been pushed over toward the wall, the bedspread had been removed from the bed and had dirt or leaves on it and her stethoscope (she worked as a nurse's aide) was on the bed. The new outfit that the victim had planned to wear that night was pressed and laid out on a love seat in the victim's bedroom. Shortly after Gonzales returned to the apartment, McCollum arrived, looking for the victim. At his suggestion, Gonzales called the victim's mother as well as area hospitals, but they were unable to locate the victim.
The next morning, Gonzales was sitting in her living room looking at the victim's jewelry and she got "a weird feeling" that caused her to walk downstairs to look in the basement of the apartment building. In the basement laundry room, Gonzales saw a piece of the sash from her silk bathrobe on the floor in front of the fuse box, next to a door in the paneled wall to the right. Gonzales opened the door, which accessed an unfinished area between the paneled laundry room wall and the building foundation, and found the victim dead, lying face down on the floor, with her hands tied behind her back with a brown work boot shoelace. The victim was still wearing the clothes she had been wearing when Gonzales last saw her the day before. Further examination of the victim's body disclosed that she had been gagged with a sock and bound with shoelaces at both her wrists and ankles, that her hands and feet had been "hogtied" behind her back, and that her skull had been crushed from behind, most likely by a 56-pound rock that was found nearby and had traces of the victim's blood on it.
The ensuing police investigation initially focused on McCollum, who was extensively questioned and who consented to a search of his house and voluntarily provided samples of his fingerprints, hair and blood. A search of his house disclosed nothing suspicious and the police made note of the fact that none of McCollum's shoes had missing shoelaces. In addition, McCollum was able to give a thorough account of his activities on August 4, 1995, which essentially eliminated him as a suspect.
Police attention turned to defendant when they learned that he was the last person known to have been with the victim prior to her death. A consent search of the home of defendant's girlfriend, Cheryl Lontrato, revealed a pair of work boots with missing laces and the police found three broken videotapes in the trash outside Lontrato's house. When repaired, those tapes depicted defendant and Lontrato engaged in sexual activity while Lontrato was tied up. In some of the scenes, Lontrato was "hogtied" in the same fashion as the victim was when her body was found. The police also discovered that within a few hours after defendant left the victim, he called his father in St. Louis, Missouri, and arranged to have his father purchase him a one-way bus ticket from Schenectady to St. Louis. Defendant left for St. Louis on the day immediately following the victim's murder.
State Police Investigators traveled to St. Louis to interview defendant. They located defendant at his brother's house and defendant voluntarily accompanied them to the police station. Initially, when asked about the victim, defendant took the position that "[he] didn't even know the bitch". He then acknowledged that he had met her once a few months before and talked to her on the phone a few times. A few moments later, when asked when he had last seen the victim, he admitted that he had seen her at Gonzales' apartment on August 4, 1995, but gave the time as 3:00 P.M. Later, he said that he arrived at 4:00 P.M. and that the "Ricki Lake" show was on. In fact, the evidence showed that the "Ricki Lake" show ran from 5:00 P.M. to 6:00 P.M.
Defendant was similarly inconsistent in his reasons for going to Gonzales' apartment in the first place. There is no question that defendant had been thrown out of Lontrato's apartment and that an order of protection prohibited his return. Lontrato had removed defendant's clothes from her apartment and put them in defendant's disabled car, which had been left in her driveway. As of August 4, 1995, defendant had been "on the streets" for three days. Defendant first stated that he had called Gonzales to seek the victim's assistance in moving his clothes and that the victim answered the phone but declined to help him. According to defendant, he nonetheless walked to Gonzales' home; the victim let him in and he remained for no more than 20 minutes. In response to later questioning, defendant indicated that after his initial call to Gonzales' apartment, the victim paged him four or five times and he did not respond to the pages but walked to the apartment instead. Later yet, defendant stated that he had responded to the victim's page and that she had asked him to get her some marihuana. Notably, the trial evidence showed that Gonzales and the victim already had an ample supply of marihuana at their apartment.
Finally, defendant gave yet another version of the critical events of August 4, 1995. He stated that he was on the way to some friends' house when the victim paged him. He called her back and she wanted to know if he had any "weed". He said that he did not. She then paged him again with the same request and he gave the same response. At that time, he asked her if she could give him a ride to Lontrato's house in a nearby community to get his clothes and then return to Schenectady. She said that she could not do that because she had to go on a date. Defendant was now in the area of the victim's apartment, so he stopped in.
After defendant arrived, he and the victim smoked some marihuana, he drank a beer that he had brought with him, and they watched the "Ricki Lake" show. They started to "make love" on the couch and progressed into the bedroom. When they got into the bedroom, he tied the victim up with his sneaker laces and a lace he had in his pocket. He removed a sock and a bathrobe "rope" from the bathroom, put the sock in the victim's mouth and put the rope around her neck. They started "making love" while the victim was trying to get loose. The victim did not like it, however, and she started "bitching". He told her to stop the "bitching" but she would not. Defendant was "losing it * * * and got pissed off". He therefore gave up on the sexual encounter and left the apartment, leaving the victim gagged and hogtied on the bed. According to defendant, somebody else -- perhaps McCollum or the upstairs tenants -- must have come along and found and killed the victim.
During the course of their investigation, the police noticed striking parallels between the victim's murder and the unsolved disappearance of Paulette Dempster in September 1994. Notably, Dempster and the victim had a strong physical similarity to one another, defendant was the last one to have seen either of them alive and, when questioned by the police about his role in the disappearances, defendant gave very similar contradictory and implausible accounts of his activities with those women at the time of their disappearances. Ironically, Dempster's body was found during the pendency of the present action.
Ultimately, the People presented their evidence to a Grand Jury, which returned an indictment charging defendant with,...
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