Michael Fleeman - Better Off Dead: A Sordid True Story Of Sex, Sin and Murder

BETTER

OFF

DEAD

A SORDID TRUE STORY OF

SEX , SIN AND MURDER

BY MICHAEL FLEEMAN

WildBluePress.com

BETTER OFF DEAD published by:

WILDBLUE PRESS

P.O. Box 102440

Denver, Colorado 80250

Publisher Disclaimer: Any opinions, statements of fact or fiction, descriptions, dialogue, and citations found in this book were provided by the author, and are solely those of the author. The publisher makes no claim as to their veracity or accuracy, and assumes no liability for the content.

Copyright 2017 by Michael Fleeman

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means without the prior written consent of the Publisher, excepting brief quotes used in reviews.

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ISBN 978-1-947290-43-3 Trade Paperback

ISBN 978-1-947290-42-6 eBook

Interior Formatting/Book Cover Design by Elijah Toten

www.totencreative.com

An hour before sunset, Shaun Ware swung his white work truck right off Goodrick Drive into the Summit Industrial Park, a complex of metal buildings with tall garage doors. It was Sunday, Aug. 17, 2014, a warm summer evening in the high desert. Shadows enveloped the Tehachapi Pass, the mighty turbines in the windmill farm standing still in the light western breeze. Traffic roared by on Highway 58, cars and trucks shuttling between Bakersfield and the Mojave Desert. Every half hour, a long freight train from Burlington Northern Santa Fe Railway would rumble behind the complex.

Arriving for his overnight shift, Shaun pulled his truck up to a space with BNSF stenciled on the concrete parking block and immediately felt something was wrong. The metal door to the work area was closed. The day-shift responder, Robert Limon, would have kept it open to ventilate the stuffy garage during the 89-degree afternoon. Robert would have told him if he were out on a service call or making a food run.

Shaun raised the door with a remote opener. Roberts BNSF utility truck was parked next to his personal car, a silver Honda. Shaun walked into the garage along the right side of the truck. He nearly stepped on broken glass that appeared to have come from one of the fluorescent fixtures hanging from the 18-foot ceiling.

To his right, the door to the small office was wide open. That was wrong, too. The office door always stayed closed. The office appeared to have been ransacked. File drawers had been yanked open and papers strewn across the floor. A BNSF-issued Toshiba laptop was missing.

Shaun walked around the front of the work truck, which pointed toward the kitchenette against the back wall. The door of the small refrigerator was flung open. So was the door to the bathroom.

Thats when he saw him.

Robert Limon was on the floor, his back slumped against the drivers side tire of the truck.

Shaun kneeled.

Rob, what happened? Shaun said. Wake up, buddy.

Robert had a vacant look on his face, one eye closed, the other half opened. Blood had pooled beneath him. He didnt respond.

Panic gripped Shaun. He called 911 on his cell phone. He told the operator that he had found his coworker on the ground around a lot of blood and that he wasnt moving.

The operator asked if Shaun was willing to try CPR. He said yes. Following the operators instructions, Shaun pulled Robert down flat on his back. He put his face close to Roberts. There was no breath. The operator asked Shaun to push his hands against Roberts chest to begin compressions.

One push and blood oozed out of Roberts mouth.

The operator told Shaun to get out of the building, now. He did, in a daze. The cell phone still to his ear with the 911 operator on the line, he wandered out to the asphalt parking area.

A man approachedsomebody who worked in a neighboring unitand asked Shaun what was going on.

I think Robs dead, Shaun told him.

Then it hit him. Shaun dropped to his knees and his body convulsed. He felt tears coming.

How long he was like this, he couldnt remember. The next thing he knew, he heard cars approaching. Sirens. Lights. He looked up and saw a woman in a sheriffs uniform.

Shaun pointed to the garage and said, He has two kids.

Two deputies from the Kern County Sheriffs Office fielded the 911 call at 6:46 p.m. for a male found bleeding and not breathing at 1582 Goodrick Drive, Tehachapi, Calif. They arrived in separate one-deputy patrol cars. Both had often seen the facility from the 58, but had never been on call there.

Goodrick Drive took them to a cul-de-sac with a driveway leading into the five buildings of the complex. Since it was a Sunday night, all of the garage doors were shutsave for oneand the place empty, except for the man crouched on the pavement.

Kern County Senior Deputy Marcus Moncur got there first. The 10-year veteran cop approached the man, who was shaking but saying nothing. A second, deputy, Anna Alvarez, a rookie patrol officer, arrived in her patrol car. Moncur asked her to stay with the man and talk to him while he checked out the garage 50 yards away.

There, the deputy saw the silver Honda and the white Chevy work pickup with the utility bed. On the ground next to the drivers side door, he spotted a man flat on his back. He was a big, strong man, about 6 feet tall, with a shaved head and tuft of beard on his chin. He wore an orange safety shirt, black tank undershirt, gray pants and black shoes.

Moncur could see that the man had a lump on his eye and blood around his mouth and right cheek. A large pool of blood congealed beneath his head and upper body. His right arm extended from his body as if hailing a cab. The body showed signs of lividity, the purple discoloration caused by blood pooling under gravity at low points in the body after the heart stops. Just behind the man, red spots were splattered on an open refrigerator door. A sign on the wall read: A culture of commitment to safety to each other.

Moncur radioed for a paramedic and walked carefully out of the garage so as not to step on any evidence. He asked Alvarez to cordon off the area as a crime scene.

Within minutes, an ambulance and a paramedic truck raced into the complex. Two emergency medical technicians took the mans vital signs and ran a field EKG reading. No signs of life. The EMTs called a physician at the Kern Medical Center in Bakersfield, recited their findings.

At 7:06 p.m., the man was officially declared dead. Over the next half hour, phone calls went out to supervisors and investigators, plus crime scene technicians and the coroner. Moncur started a crime-scene log to keep track of what would be a small invasion of law enforcement personnel overnight.

He then waited an hour and a half.

Covering more than 8,000 square miles, Kern County is just smaller than the entire state of New Jersey. But with 880,000 people, it has only a tenth of its population. Kern County is vast and in most places, empty. The rectangular-shaped county is made up of sprawling farmland, rugged mountains and wide swaths of desert.

The closest detective was more than an hours drive away in the county seat of Bakersfield. Randall Meyer of the robbery homicide division got the call at home from the Kern County Sheriffs Office Communication Center at about 7:30 p.m. A former patrol deputy, training supervisor and investigator in the sex crimes unit, Meyer had been transferred to robbery-homicide six months earlier. He put on a suit and tie and headed east for Tehachapi.