Johnny Kovatch - 59 Hours

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For the innocent lives lost to senseless violence...

and the redemption of those who committed it

Victim

Nick Markowitz: fifteen years old

Family

Susan Markowitz: forty years old, Nicks mother

Jeffrey Markowitz: Nicks father

Ben Markowitz: twenty-two years old, Nicks half brother

Jack Hollywood: father of Jesse Hollywood

Defendants

Jesse James Hollywood: twenty years old, marijuana dealer, ordered shooting, sentenced to life without parole, currently housed at Calipatria State Prison

Ryan Hoyt: twenty years old, shooter, sentenced to death, currently housed on death row at San Quentin State Prison

Graham Pressley: seventeen years old, sentenced to California Youth Authority until age 25

Jesse Rugge: twenty years old, served thirteen years, eleven in state prison

William Skidmore: twenty years old, served nine years in state prison

Law Enforcement

Detective Mark Valencia: Santa Barbara County Sheriffs Office, caught fugitive Jesse James Hollywood

Friends/Witnesses

Natasha Adams: friend of Graham Pressley and Jesse Rugge

Brian Affronti: friend of William Skidmore

Eddy Bachman* (pseudonym): drug dealer

Kelly Carpenter: friend of Graham Pressley and Jesse Rugge

Rosalia de la Cruz Gitau: witnessed Nicks abduction

Richard Dispenza: godfather of Jesse James Hollywood

Carey Evans: friend of Nick Markowitz, pallbearer

Richard Hoeflinger: friend of Jesse Rugge

Stephen Hogg: family attorney of Jesse Hollywood and Jack Hollywood

Jerry Hollywood: Jesse James Hollywoods cousin

Gabriel Ibarra: friend of Richard Hoeflinger

Michelle Lasher: girlfriend of Jesse James Hollywood

Pauline Mahoney: witnessed Nicks abduction

Kirk Miyashiro: Nicks dean of students

John Roberts: friend of Jack Hollywood

Chas Saulsbury: friend of Jesse James Hollywood

Casey Sheehan: friend of Jesse James Hollywood

Legal

Hans Almgren: prosecutor, Santa Barbara District Attorneys Office

Joshua Lynn: prosecutor, Santa Barbara District Attorneys Office

Ronald Zonen: prosecutor, Santa Barbara District Attorneys Office

James Blatt: defense attorney for Jesse James Hollywood

Alex Kessel: defense attorney for Jesse James Hollywood

THE CRIME SCENE WHERE NICHOLAS Markowitz was shot nine times by a TEC-9, then buried in a shallow grave, is known as Lizards Mouth rock in Goleta, California. In the near distance, a boulder bears his name as part of a carved memorial. Seven odd-shaped stones comprise a border. Branches with leaves have been placed as a tribute at the memorial.

Theres a small boulder with a knee-high tagging of a smiley face, which, after a closer look, isnt smiling at allits mouth is a single black slit, like a warning to all who enter. At its foot, Camel Crush cigarette butts and Lost Coast Brewery bottle caps. Hikers come here to walk among the massive sandstone outcroppings and watch a majestic sunset over the Pacific. A couple of teens are perched within the band shell of a boulder on the opposite side of where Nicholas was murdered.

Seven years ago, a fire cut a swath through this national forest. Afterward, planes flew over, trying to scatter seeds in an attempt to restore the brush. What couldnt be salvaged was at the mercy of the winds. Nicks memorial survived. His name and lifespan are carved into the base of sandstone, beaten down by time and elements trying to reclaim their most natural state or erase the memory of what even fire couldnt erase:

Nicholas

Samuel

Markowitz

9-19-84

8-8-2000

His actual death was on the ninth, but back then that detail was still being disputed. He was fifteen years old.

Over time, observers have paid respects in their own ways. Bottles of Manischewitz wine, soda, makeshift crosses, angel figurines, seashell necklaces. Unforgiving years have scoured raw the orange X investigators spray-painted on a different side of this rock to first mark this site. Now, spray-painted in black:

RIP

NSM

8-8-2000

This boulder recedes into the thicket below Lizards Mouth rock, a formation resembling a reptiles opened jaw, in the Santa Ynez Mountains. The amphitheater-shaped rock is forty feet high. Climbers choose this location for bouldering opportunities. Over the years, water and wind have carved an intricate maze of caves. Boulders are artistically namedone in particular is called Lord of the Flies, after the novel in which boys on a desert island turned savage and sacrificed one of their own.

Nearby, graffiti has been sprayed onto a ridge. The artwork resembles an eerie creature thats part fish with the antlers of a twelve-point buck. Next to it: What Have You Seen Today?

But Nicholas wasnt up there to take in the full moon or commemorate the panorama after a long day of climbing. He wasnt even there by choice. No, he was driven there just after midnight on a summer night in August 2000. His three assailants drove Highway 154 into the Los Padres National Forest to West Camino Cielo and weaved up the road until reaching an altitude of three thousand feet. From there, his six-foot frame and size-fourteen feet were marched to this burial site, a long way from the corner of his abduction at Platt Avenue and Ingomar Street in West Hills, California, just fifty-nine hours before.

AUGUST 9 HAS BEEN A memorable date throughout history.

In 1936 American track star Jesse Owens would add to his hundred-meter, two-hundred-meter, and long-jump gold medal performances by capturing his fourth gold medal as part of the United States 4 x 100 meter relay team at the Summer Olympic Games in Berlin, where a failed-painter-turned-Fhrer named Adolf Hitler was in attendance.

In 1945 American forces would drop a second atomic bomb on Nagasaki in Japan.

In 1969 five individuals, including actress Sharon Tate, who was eight and a half months pregnant, would be found murdered in the wealthy suburb of Benedict Canyon in Los Angeles. Cult leader Charles Manson, who was not present during the slaughter, and several of his followers were later convicted of the killings.

And on August 9, 2000? While South African president Thabo Mbeki unveiled a Womens Monument commemorating the role of women in the antiapartheid struggle, Ryan Hoyt, at the command of Jesse James Hollywood, would shoot fifteen-year-old Nicholas Markowitz with a gun converted from semi to fully automatic. The official report: Nicholas was kidnapped a little after one p.m. on August 6, 2000. He was murdered sometime after midnight on August 9 of the same year.

There would be an August 10. Yet it would not be until August 14 that several men in dark suits arrived at the home of Susan and Jeff Markowitz to inform them that they had found their sons body. It was bullet riddled.