Richard Arlin Walker
Special to ICT
A ballistics test could determine whether a handgun admitted as evidence in a 1978 California murder trial was the weapon used to commit the crime — or was a plant as critics have suggested.
At stake is the potential freedom of a Monache man who has spent more than 44 years at San Quentin Prison and was once sentenced to death for the murder.
Attorneys for Douglas R. “Chief” Stankewitz, of Big Sandy Rancheria, say they believe shell casings in evidence don’t match the gun presented as the murder weapon in the case. They also contend that the weapon was in police custody before the crime occurred and that Stankewitz’s fingerprints are not on the gun.
Stankewitz has maintained his innocence, and the lawyers’ contention are supported by a certified police procedures consultant who examined evidence that was used to convict Stankewitz and send him to California’s Death Row.
If the tests support their contentions, Stankewitz’s legal team plans to ask for his immediate release, said attorney Alexandra Cock of the San Francisco Bay Area. She said a civil lawsuit could follow.
James Ardaiz, a retired state appellate court judge and former Fresno County district attorney who prosecuted Stankewitz in 1978, dismisses suggestions that the gun was planted.
“It’s just ludicrous,” he told ICT recently.
Fresno County Superior Court Judge Arlan Harrell on Feb. 2 granted the request from Stankewitz’s legal team that the evidence be tested. Stankewitz’s attorneys have also asked for a resentencing hearing so they can introduce evidence not presented in earlier hearings. Harrell scheduled a status conference for May 4.
Among the evidence the legal team plans to introduce includes sworn statements by Stankewitz’s trial attorney, who said he failed to provide mitigating evidence of childhood abuse; by co-defendant Billy Brown, who recanted earlier testimony that he saw Stankewitz fire the gun; by an American Indian Movement official who said co-defendant Marlin Lewis admitted to her that he, not Stankewitz, fired the gun; and by the police procedures consultant, retired Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Office detective bureau commander Roger Clark, who stated that the trajectory of the bullet indicates that Stankewitz, at 6-foot-1 inch and the tallest of the co-defendants, was too tall to have been the gunman.
From carjacking to murder
Stankewitz was 19 years old on Feb. 9, 1978, when he was arrested and charged with the murder of Theresa Graybeal, 21, of Modesto, a Northern California city near Sacramento.
Stankewitz and three other young Native people — Brown, 14; Lewis, 22; and Teena Topping, 19 — were hitchhiking from Modesto to Fresno, where they lived, when they decided to steal a car. They saw Graybeal shopping in a K-Mart, followed her to her car, and pushed her inside.
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Stankewitz’s co-defendants said Graybeal relaxed, even talking with them and sharing cigarettes, after Stankewitz assured her nothing would happen to her, that they just needed a ride to Fresno and would let her go.
Topping drove the car to Fresno, where the four suspects picked up a friend, Christina Menchaca, 25, with the goal of making a drug score. Topping pulled the car over at a vacant lot in the Calwa neighborhood outside the Fresno city limits, presumably to drop Graybeal off.
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Lewis, who got out of the car with Stankewitz and Graybeal, said the young woman said, “At least you could have dropped me off where there was a restroom.”
Menchaca and Topping said they were in the car when they heard a gunshot but didn’t see who fired the gun. Testimony differs on what was said after Lewis and Stankewitz returned to the car, but the record shows that the group said little as they drove away from the scene.
No one in the group talked about motive during interviews with police. Cock speculates that whoever shot Graybeal did so “because she knew too much.”
But, Cock said, “It was Chief’s intention that she not be harmed.”
Stankewitz’s conviction hinged on the testimony of Brown, who was granted immunity in exchange for his testimony that he saw Stankewitz pull the trigger. He recanted that testimony in 1993. Menchaca and Topping were convicted of lesser charges, as was Lewis, who also said Stankewitz killed Graybeal.
Disputing the allegations
Ardaiz, the former prosecutor, rejected claims questioning the validity of the gun, saying authorities had a clear chain of custody for the weapon.
At least one of the co-defendants told investigators Stankewitz received a handgun from his mother earlier that day in Modesto, Ardaiz said, and a handgun was found by Fresno police in the car that night when it was pulled over.
Police booked the gun into evidence and found, via the California Law Enforcement Telecommunications System, that it had been reported stolen in Sacramento several years before. When Graybeal’s body was found in unincorporated Calwa, within the Fresno County Sheriff’s Department’s jurisdiction, the sheriff took over the murder investigation and police turned the gun over to sheriff’s investigators.
“I understand the allegation that is being made, and frankly, I don’t think there’s any merit whatsoever to any of it,” Ardaiz told ICT. “It’s kind of a combination of wishful thinking, I suppose, and putting together a lot of inferences that fail to consider the entire circumstance.
“Their argument is that this gun was not used to kill the victim; that this gun was planted. That’s the essence of their argument.”
He said the evidence is clear.
“All co-defendants indicated the gun was received from Douglas Stankewitz’s mother,” he said. “There was only one gun, they said Stankewitz had the gun, and Stankewitz killed Theresa Graybeal.”
Clark, the police procedures consultant, analyzed the gun in 2019. He said a police report stated that the serial number on the murder weapon had been removed, but that when he inspected the weapon in evidence the serial number on the gun was still clearly visible. That led him to conclude that the gun in evidence was not the gun used to kill Graybeal.
Ardaiz called Clark’s conclusion “ridiculous.”
“The gun was carefully documented as having been received from Fresno PD,” Ardaiz said. “There’s no question that that was the weapon they seized. The gun was clearly stolen in Sacramento, the serial number is the serial number of the gun that was stolen. The gun seized by Fresno PD was the gun stolen in Sacramento.”
‘They just wanted any Stankewitz’
Stankewitz, who was resentenced to life without the possibility of parole in 2019, has always maintained his innocence.
“I was the target because I’m Indian and because of my family and my family name,” he told ICT in an earlier interview. “My family was known for violence, was known for trouble, was known to start trouble and to be at the wrong place at the wrong time. But police knew I didn’t do it. They just wanted any Stankewitz.”
Ardaiz, who had prosecuted other Stankewitz family members by 1978 when Douglas Stankewitz was arrested for Graybeal’s murder, told an investigator assisting Stankewitz’s legal team in March 2020 that he seemed a logical suspect.
“He came from a very poor background and it was predictable that he would be, you know, he would be a person that was disposed to violence in order to solve whatever thing he was confronted with,” Ardaiz said. “I have no question in my mind.”
Thomas Lean III, one of the lead detectives in the 1978 case, told the legal team’s investigators in 2020 that Stankewitz’s family was well-known.
“They had a reputation in the community,” Lean said. “Several of them had gone to prison. So they were known in the law enforcement community.”
Stankewitz doesn’t deny his past, saying his mother was an abusive alcoholic and that his father and siblings spent time in prison. Stankewitz alternated between foster homes, a state hospital and juvenile hall. At age 15, he was the driver of a car fleeing the scene of an alleged robbery and assault when a passenger in the car was killed in a shootout between Stankewitz’s brother and a pursuing police officer.
But Stankewitz denies killing Graybeal and said he thinks he was low-hanging fruit for investigators and the prosecutor.
“If I could talk to [the Graybeal family] today, I would tell them I feel bad that they lost their daughter, their wife, whoever she was to them,” he told ICT on Nov. 16, 2021. “She was only 22 years old. That was a devastating loss to everybody. I hold her in my prayers every morning, her and her family. I wish it hadn’t happened, but I didn’t do it.”
David Graybeal, who later remarried and started a family after several years of struggling to cope with his wife’s death, told ICT in February 2022 that Stankewitz deserves to spend the rest of his life in prison.
“It doesn’t matter who pulled the trigger. They were all guilty of kidnapping and murdering Theresa,” he told ICT. “She was a beautiful young woman who had her whole life ahead of her. They didn’t need to kill her.”
Recanted testimony
Brown, who recanted his testimony and told two lawyers and an investigator that Lewis, not Stankewitz, killed Graybeal, said in 1993 that his earlier testimony was coerced.
Brown was 14 years old and facing a murder charge at the time, and was questioned several times without a parent or attorney present, according to court records. That practice is now banned in California.
Ardaiz said Brown was initially questioned with his mother present, and that his mother was aware at all other times that he was being questioned by investigators.
“At no time was Billy interviewed without his mother’s awareness,” Ardaiz wrote in an email after his initial interview with ICT, adding, “I did not conduct interviews with Billy without an investigator present.”
Ardaiz said Brown’s statements to investigators were always consistent.
“Billy Brown initially told his mother what happened, including that Stankewitz had killed the victim,” Ardaiz wrote in an email. “She called the Fresno Police Department who sent officers and detectives to the Brown home. They interviewed Billy in the presence of his mother where he repeated his story in more detail, including details about the murder consistent with what his testimony was. Based on his statements, an [All Points Bulletin] was issued and Billy assisted FPD officers in the ultimate stop on the car with Stankewitz and others in it, including the gun in question. Ultimately, Billy’s explanations, etc. led officers to the victim’s body.”
Brown was interviewed by investigators as additional evidence was discovered.
“His explanation remained consistent and was also essentially consistent with the evidence and statements of other participants,” Ardaiz said.
Ardaiz remains convinced of Stankewitz’s guilt.
“He is guilty of this crime,” Ardaiz told ICT. “All of it was and is consistent with his background and previous violent criminal conduct.”
Stankewitz, meanwhile, is now 64 and is California’s longest-living Death Row inmate. He remains housed there despite his reduced sentence and the fact that California no longer has the death penalty.
Marlin Lewis died in 2000, Cock said. Billy Brown died in 2006. Teena Topping died in 2015 or 2016. ICT could not confirm Christina Menchaca’s whereabouts.
TIMELINE
1978: Douglas “Chief” Stankewitz, then 20, is convicted of the murder of Theresa Kay Graybeal and is sentenced to die in the gas chamber at San Quentin Prison.
1982: Stankewitz’s sentence is overturned because of doubts he had been competent to assist in his own defense. He remains in San Quentin pending retrial.
1983: Stankewitz is again found guilty and sentenced to death.
1989: Stankewitz’s retrial attorney, Hugh Goodwin, acknowledges in the first of two sworn written statements that he failed to introduce Stankewitz’s mental health history, including psychiatric and psychological evaluations, that might have spared him the death penalty.
1993: Billy Brown recants his testimony as a minor that Stankewitz killed Graybeal, saying it was coerced.
2000: Marlin Lewis tells Laura Wass, a regional director of the American Indian Movement, that he, not Stankewitz, shot Graybeal. She recounts her conversation with Lewis in 2020 during an interview with an investigator assisting Stankewitz’s legal team, and signs a sworn statement.
2012: Based partly on Goodwin’s sworn written statements, the penalty phase of Stankewitz’s sentence is reversed.
2018: Several prison guards and prison chaplains write letters of support for Stankewitz, describing him as courteous, helpful and respectful to prison staff and other inmates. “When Chief is released, he will be a positive contributing member of society,” retired San Quentin Chaplain Earl A. Smith Sr. writes. Prison Rabbi Paul Schleffar writes that Stankewitz “demonstrates maturity, a commitment to personal growth and if released to a life outside prison, will be a positive force in his family, community and hopefully the workforce moving forward.”
2019: Roger Clark, a certified police procedures consultant and retired Los Angeles County sheriff’s detective, examines the evidence and determines that it was carelessly handled and not verified according to procedure.
2019: Stankewitz’s death sentence is reduced, without a hearing, to life without parole. Stankewitz chooses to stay in his cell on Death Row, saying it’s safer there than among the general population.
2021: Stankewitz petitions for a resentencing hearing, contending he was entitled to one when his death sentence was reduced. Had the court heard mitigating evidence at that hearing, he might have received a sentence of life with the possibility of parole, attorney Alexandra Cock said. With time served, he would have been immediately eligible for release.
June 28, 2022: California’s 5th District Court of Appeal rules that Stankewitz is entitled to a hearing. The appellate court vacates Stankewitz’s sentence of life without possibility of parole – he is still convicted of murder – but he remains in San Quentin pending resentencing.
Sept. 29, 2022: Fresno County Superior Court Judge Arlan Harrell schedules a resentencing hearing for Jan. 20, 2023; it is postponed because of scheduling conflicts and a status hearing is later scheduled for May 4. Stankewitz’s legal team will present evidence, including an updated probation officer’s report, that they believe will warrant a lesser sentence and immediate eligibility for parole.
Feb. 2, 2023: Harrell grants Stankewitz’s legal team’s request that certain evidence be tested. The legal team believes the tests will show that the gun in evidence is not the gun used to commit the crime. Should that be proven, Cock said the team will petition for Stankewitz’s immediate release.
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