Paul Alexander - Accused

ACCUSED

Paul Alexander

Copyright

ACCUSED

Copyright 2013 by Paul Alexander

Cover art, special contents, and Electronic Edition 2013 by RosettaBooks LLC

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the publisher, except by a reviewer who may quote brief passages in a review.

Cover jacket design by Terrence Tymon

ISBN ePub edition: 9780795333910

All of the information in this work of nonfiction is true. My reporting is based on primary and secondary sources. No dialogue has been invented.

Contents

It was one oclock in the morning, and the bar was dead.

New owners had reopened the old Sports Resort as the supposedly trendier Studio 59. In the parking lot near the main street, a white neon sign atop a 30-foot pole featured a subtitle for the placeLa Clubas well as a tagline spelled out in black plastic letters: Where the Music Moves You. Tonight, business was particularly bad. It was the night before the Fourth of July, always a slow night in the bar trade.

The new owners had tried to spruce up the club, but there remained nothing unique about Studio 59, no reason for customers to make it a point of destination. Located near the Southwest Freeway in Stafford, one of the numerous bedroom communities surrounding the ever-expanding city of Houston, the nondescript establishment was like any other bar in any other strip mall in the greater metropolitan area. This year, 2009, there were some 9,000 bars in or around Houston. This was just another one of them.

In the clubs cavernous main room, as the well-advertised but canned music played over the stereo system, Tommy Harris, an off-duty officer with the Houston Police Department, sat at the counter with his friend, John Szallai. They were visiting Beau Ferguson, the clubs general manager, whom Tommy had known for 15 years, and Beaus girlfriend, Jessica. Tommy was drinking Crown Royal and 7-Up; John was knocking back Crown as well, while Jessica nursed a Captain Morgan. Tommy reminisced about old times with Beau, since he had worked for Beau as a security supervisor when Beau managed The Whiskey, a popular nightspot in downtown Houston, and later Sams Boat, on Richmond Avenue near the Galleria.

At 6' 4" and 245 pounds, the 35-year-old cop cut the very image of a Houston police officermuscular, athletic, imposing. Beau was just as substantial; he not only held a black belt in Brazilian Jujitsu, but also practiced various types of mixed martial arts, among them Muay Thai, a combat sport similar to kickboxing popular in Thailand. Beau had a wild streak, as revealed by the tattoos on his arms. He was known to tell peopleperhaps for shock effectthat he had once spent two years in a Thai prison for getting into a bar fight. These days, Beau fancied himself as a martial arts instructor, and Tommy had thought about taking lessons from him. On four occasions the two men had punched on the heavy bag in the gym in Beaus apartment complex. But in the end, Tommy decided he was content to watch the sport on television, not to practice it even on an amateur level.

Tommy had been a police officer for more than 14 years. He wanted to be a cop for as long as he could remember. Even growing up in Alief, another Houston bedroom community on the West Side, he dreamed of becoming a policeman, no matter how much his mother, Mary Frances, tried to convince him to pursue a less dangerous line of work. As a boy, he would sometimes lie awake in bed and picture himself wearing a police uniform. I pretty much always wanted to be a police officer, Tommy would say. Ive always liked the idea of helping people. If something were to happen to my mom, Id want someone like me to be there.

An only child, Tommy hoped becoming a cop would make his family proud, particularly his father, Roger, with whom he had an unshakable father-son bond. A football coach at Sam Houston and Sterling high schools before becoming an administrator with the Alief school system, Roger had a strong moral compass. He was not big on shades of grey, a friend says. To him, something was either right or wrong. He instilled that moral awareness in his son. Tommy attended Alief Hastings High School, where he excelled in footballnot surprising considering he and his father had been tossing the football in the back yard since he was old enough to catch. After graduation, Tommy took classes at the University of Texas, and later Wharton County Junior College, but mostly he was putting in time until he turned 21, the minimum age for entrance in the Houston Police Academy. As soon as he applied in 1994, he was accepted. It was obvious: Tommy Harris was meant to be a cop.

In 1995, he graduated from the Academywith flying colors, according to a family memberand served his six-month trial period as a probation officer. After that, he was assigned to the Westside Patrol Division where he remained for most of his career, except for an 18-month stint he put in on a tactical team, which ended when he suffered a knee injury on duty. He was returned to Westside to be a patrol officer, and that was fine with him. It was precisely the kind of police work he enjoyed. He was like his father, the family member says, who was a solid, steady person.

His parents had moved to Richmond, a neighborhood not far from Stafford, while Tommy remained in Alief, where he bought a townhouse. His father died two days before Christmas in 2007. When Roger died, Tommy would not let his mother stay by herself, a friend says. So she would stay with him at his townhouse in Alief or he would stay with her at her house in Richmond. This arrangement did not change when Tommy married his girlfriend, Kristian, around Thanksgiving in 2008. That was part of his relationship with Kristian, the friend says. She had to understand he was not going to leave his mother by herself. Hes very protective of his mother.

Tonight, Tommy was planning on ending up at his mothers house after he and John finished at Studio 59; she did not live far away. Because Kristian, an assistant manager with Amegy Bank of Texas, was working late, Tommy and Johnsuch close friends that John was best man in Tommys weddinghad decided to make an evening of it. It was a boys-night-out. They had dinner at 8:00 p.m. at Razzoos Cajun Caf at The Fountains, a restaurant-shopping complex near Stafford, before heading to Studio 59, arriving around 10:30. Because they knew they would be drinking, they were taking taxis from place to place. At dinner, Tommy had one or two drinks; at Studio 59, he had two Crown and 7s. He drank water when he wasnt having a mixed drink.

Then, around 1 a.m., a new customer walked in to the near-empty bar. He appeared to be about 30. At 5' 7" or so and approximately 200 pounds he wasnt small, but aside from his size he didnt call undue attention to himself. He took a stool at the opposite end of the counter from where Tommy sat with his friends. The new customer was so unassuming Tommy barely noticed him. It certainly never occurred to Tommy that this mans arrival in the bar would change his life forever.

Welcome back, Lauren Chapman said, as the man took a seat at the bar.

Lauren and April Sbrusch were on duty as bartenders. Both womenyoung, pretty, and outgoinghad worked at the club for a month. Tonights shift had not been good for Lauren. She hadnt made much money, not unlike most shifts, and earlier in the night she had a run-in with management. She had served Beaus girlfriend a Captain Morgan, but didnt ring it up on the computer behind the counter because she thought she saw Beau ring it up. Lilly Proba, who owned the bar with her husband, Eric, had dropped in around this time, saw the exchange, and called Lauren over.