Kyle Zoellner, Without Prejudice Pt. 5

Tales from the Grand Jury

Reporter: Steven Saint

Sources: Kyle Zoellner, criminal grand jury transcripts

Crowds gathered at the Humboldt County Courthouse in 2019, three days after a criminal grand jury declined to indict Kyle Zoellner in the stabbing death of David Josiah Lawson.

This is the fifth in a series of articles on Kyle Zoellner, the only suspect – to date uncharged – in the stabbing death of David Josiah Lawson. Previous installments can be found here:

Part 1, “The Untold Story,” in which Kyle Zoellner gives his first press interview ever

Part 2, “An Innocent Man,” where we find Kyle in jail and beyond

Part 3, “Hate Crimes,” in which members of the HSU community frame the incident as racially motivated

Part 4, “On the Trail of the Knife,” where mysteries abound and Kyle gets a new day in court

The judge dismissed the murder charges and banged his gavel. The five days of testimony in early May 2017, had not convinced him there was sufficient evidence to hold Kyle Zoellner over for trial. Prosecutors needed to show probable cause that in the middle of a drunken, wee-hours melée, Zoellner was the one wielding the knife that cut down the life of David Josiah Lawson. He was free to go “without prejudice” – meaning the case was still open and Zoellner could be re-charged any time prosecutors amassed sufficient evidence.

Facing calls for “Justice for Josiah,” allegations of racism, vigil rallies, angry protests at Arcata City Council meetings and battering on social media, police probed the homicide for almost two years. In March 2019, Deputy District Attorney Joel Buckingham convened a criminal grand jury to investigate and consider an indictment of Zoellner for murder or voluntary manslaughter.

“The standard of proof applied by a criminal grand jury for purposes of indictment is the same standard as applied by a judge conducting a preliminary hearing,” Buckingham told the 18 grand jurors the first day. “Is there probable cause to believe that a crime has been committed and the defendant committed that crime?”

Grand jury proceedings are secret. Jurors are identified only by number and admonished not to discuss the proceedings with anyone. Hearings are conducted by prosecutors with neither judge nor defense attorney present. Buckingham had to wear all the hats, presenting his best evidence as well as the existence of “exculpatory evidence” (evidence pointing to a defendant's potential innocence rather than guilt).

The jury can ask questions directly, decide whether or not to hear exculpatory evidence or subpoena additional witnesses. If 12 members of the jury vote to indict, the case moves to trial and the relevant evidence becomes public. If the jury declines to indict – with even as few as seven holdouts – the records are kept sealed. The deliberations of the jury are not recorded or public.

The Humboldt Zag has obtained transcripts from the grand jury hearings held over eight days between March 1-12, 2019. According to our friends at the First Amendment Coalition, journalists have the First Amendment right to publish information of public concern “even if the information is ordinarily confidential and was inadvertently disclosed, or the source of that information acted illegally in disclosing it, as long as the journalist did not act unlawfully in obtaining it.”

We did not lie, steal or hack to obtain the documents, which we have every reason to believe are authentic. We will not reveal our source. In some spirit of privacy, we will not indiscriminately publish the names of witnesses who testified. “Arcata Dad” or “Marysville Mom” will suffice. On the other hand, it's public record that Dr. Mark Super conducted the autopsy on Josiah Lawson.

Twenty-six witnesses testified, including key witnesses at the 2017 preliminary hearing. New forensic evidence was presented by Super and lab technicians who conducted blood, fiber and DNA analysis. Also new sworn testimony was given by Angelica McFarland (and her mother, Maria), Quinten, Arcata Dad and Marysville Mom. Finally, the grand jury watched a video interview of an eyewitness who was traveling abroad at the time of the hearings.

Here are some of their tales.

Six Knife Wounds

Mark Super was a forensic pathologist from Fairfield, Calif. working under contract for Humboldt County. He conducted Josiah Lawson's autopsy three days after the stabbing, determined the cause of death to be “a stab wound to the chest” and then took almost a year to file the complete report.

He told the grand jury he observed six stab wounds to Josiah's left chest, only one deep enough to slice through the heart and kill him.

“Assuming that this is just one knife, they (the six wounds) all appear to have happened fairly quickly because they're all in the same area,” Super said. “So if the decedent's moving and the assailant's moving, you would think that we would find knife wounds farther spread apart ... I'm thinking they all happened in somewhat rapid succession.”

The pathologist painted a different picture than previously presented by witnesses who reported two major stab wounds. A caller told 911 dispatch at 3:01 a.m. that someone had been stabbed twice, once in the chest and once under his ribs. Preliminary hearing witness Jason Martinez testified in 2017 that he saw a man make two quick jabs to Josiah's left side. He described to the grand jury only a single “stabbing motion.”

Super tried to explain the difference between forensic science and “television stuff.” He said an autopsy does not reveal the length of the blade, the height or position of the assailant, whether the assailant is right- or left-handed, if the attack was from the front or behind, or if the victim was standing or lying on the ground.

“If the investigators say, ‘our witnesses say such and such happened – could that be the explanation of these injuries?’ I would say, Yes or I would say, No, that doesn't make sense not based on these injuries,” Super said. “You can't do it the other way around. I can't very often look at injuries and say, I know that a left-handed person with a limp and red hair stabbed someone.”

What Angelica Didn't Say

Four girls attended the fateful party, invited by Kyle Zoellner's girlfriend at the time, Lila Ortega. Ortega, Casey Gleaton and Naiya Wilkins all testified at both the preliminary hearing and to the grand jury. The fourth friend, Angelica McFarland, spoke to police but was not called to the 2017 hearing – her statements certainly did not support the prosecution and/or they may have found her inconsistent with some details.

Her testimony to the grand jury was similar to her previous unsworn statements. Kyle Zoellner was jumped by several people after inquiring about Ortega's missing cellphone. McFarland was assaulted as well and used pepper spray to disperse the crowd. She handed the pepper spray off to Wilkins and walked out to Spear Avenue to call her parents and 911.

Returning to the party house, she saw Kyle on the ground, unconscious. She did not see him with a knife anytime that night nor did she witness a stabbing. There were a few things McFarland had told the police, however, that she did not include in her grand jury testimony. She simply wasn't asked.

• Soon after police arrived at the party, McFarland was interviewed by Officer Jacob McKenzie. She insisted that Kyle did not have a knife with him. “You're saying the guy in the back of the car did not stab the kid?” McKenzie asked, referring to Zoellner sitting across the street in an Arcata Police SUV. “Right,” Angelica confirmed. “The guy who stabbed him (Lawson) walked off. It was the guy who tried to stab Kyle. It was a black guy who stabbed him.”

• She told Detective Todd Dokweiler that Kyle had one of his assailants in a choke hold. “He's like, 'Okay, are we done or are we done?'” she told Dokweiler. “He lets him go, and then Kyle gets up. He doesn't even have time to get up, and then bunch of people just kick him and then just more and more people came (out of the house).” Angelica also told Dokweiler “then there's like gang members saying, we're gonna shoot you and ... we're bringing out the real guns.”

• In an interview with Detective Eric Losey, McFarland said she heard someone say, “Oh, he's got a knife, he's got a knife.” (This corroborates Jason Martinez's testimony that an unidentified male screamed out, “He has a knife.”) That's when Angelica headed for the roundabout to call the cops.

Arcata Dad

Arcata Dad could still hear the ruckus from the frat party down Ross Street at 1:30 in the morning. It was Jan. 16, 2017 – his birthday – but on a crazy night like this, he needed to sit up in the livingroom to keep the watch. Outside, the shouting and laughing drew closer as people were breaking glass bottles out in the street and on the sidewalk. Barefoot, he went out, down two steps to the yard where a group of shadowy figures had dumped some garbage and an empty beer case box.

“Take your fucking shit with you!” he yelled. Then a tall, young black man turned and marched into the yard. That probably wasn't a very smart thing to say, he thought, even with a rusty blue belt in Brazilian jiu-jitsu. As the kid reared back to take a swing, Arcata Dad tackled him down into a guard position. On his back with legs wrapped around the kid, ankles crossed, he grappled for head and arm control. Others came into the yard to punch and kick, a female held him by his hippie hair and started smacking. The kid was up again and starting a second round. Another tackle and Arcata Dad tried using a guillotine choke to cut off the kid's air supply. The others followed and punched him in the head several more times.

Thank God the neighbor had called 911 and sirens were coming. The group jumped into a red sedan parked on the street and roared off. Arcata Dad went to the hospital, gave police a statement and returned home.

The next morning, the tough kid and the female were back in the yard, looking for his lost earrings. They fought again in broad daylight as Arcata Dad tried to take cellphone pictures of the assailants. This time, police showed him photos of possible suspects, but he didn't recognize anyone and the case eventually hit ice.

Until April, when he recognized his assailant. A Humboldt student had been stabbed at a party about a mile away from his house. The victim’s face was all over the newspapers and TV. “It was Josiah Lawson,” Arcata Dad told the grand jury. “Her (the female assailant's) name is Ren Bobadilla. I think I've actually seen her in the courthouse the last couple times I've been here. I also came to know the identity of Elijah Chandler, who was there.”

If the tale sounds familiar, the same story was posted after charges against Kyle Zoellner were dropped in May, 2017. A man with the handle “Arcata Dad” commented on a Lost Coast Outpost story.

“I was assaulted by Lawson, Chandler, Bobadilla and others January 16 this year. I filed a police report at the time, but learned the identity of my assailants as a result of media coverage of the stabbing.”

Deciphering DNA

Day 4 and 5 of the grand jury hearings were thick with squints – Mark Super and then four techs from DOJ labs in Eureka, Redding and Richmond. Each analyzed different parts of the forensic evidence in the months following the stabbing, and each tried to dispel Hollywood notions that scientists are miracle workers.

Two described extracting DNA from Kyle Zoellner's clothing and the J.A. Henckels knife found at the scene (pictured above), developing DNA profiles and then comparing them to DNA profiles from Zoellner, Lawson, key witnesses and the cops. Words like “complex mixtures,” “major contributors” and “deconvolution” were dropped like flash-bang grenades before the jurors. One squint had to spell the number “quattuordecillion” for the court reporter and there was an indepth discussion about the difference between “included” and “cannot be excluded.”

The techs made it clear there are numerous ways for DNA to get on an item, including blood, sweat, snot, skin cells and transference – when someone touching blood, sweat, snot or skin then touches the item.

One juror asked Rebecca Gaxiola, a DOJ criminalist from Redding, if they could say with certainty that the Henckels knife was, indeed, the murder weapon. She replied: “No. If it was in the vicinity of the fight where blood was deposited, I can't say either way if it was used or if it was just there.”

Eric Halsing, a criminalist supervisor, ran Gaxiola's data through a state-of-the-art probabilistic genotyping software at his DOJ lab in Richmond. He concluded that the DNA mix had four “contributors,” with one 72-percent contributor (consistent with Lawson's profile), one 26-percent contributor (best fit Zoellner's profile) and two contributors representing just 2 percent. The jury wanted plain English.

“You indicate that Kyle Zoellner's DNA best fit,” asked Juror 3. “Does that mean that it is his DNA?”

“That is not something we can say,” Halsing replied. “What you want to know is who's DNA is it? I can't tell you that. I can tell you the probability of getting the mixture if it were these people, compared to the probability of getting it if it's a different set of people.”

Marysville Mom

Marysville is a small town about midway between Sacramento and Chico, Calif. Marysville Mom loved watching her two-year-old daughter play in the park and make friends. In early October 2017, she met another mom with toddler, a woman named Casey Gleaton who had recently moved to her grandmother's place after several years living in Humboldt.

After their second play date, the budding relationship swerved southward. Walking back from the park, they passed a young black man on the street. “Casey said, 'Black people don't like me. Black Lives Matter don't like me, Hells Angels don't like me. The police don't like me and that the whole town banished me,'” Marysville Mom recalled. “I immediately thought that she was just not okay, just like a crazy person or something. I asked her, What are you talking about?”

Marysville Mom told the grand jury that Gleaton ranted about a party in Humboldt where someone was stabbed to death over a lost cellphone. There had been a lot of drinking and cocaine. Her friend and her friend's boyfriend were involved and they had been exonerated. Marysville Mom went home and cried before calling the police.

“It was, like, a bragging thing. She was laughing at some points,” Marysville Mom said. “She told me about pretty much getting away with murder.”

The call to police eventually wound up in Detective Todd Dokweiler's inbox. He drove to Marysville to interview the mom. In describing that interview to the grand jury, Dokweiler said it was Marysville Mom's impression that Gleaton claimed she cleaned the knife. Gleaton told her she “tried to help her friend, but it only ended up making things worse,” Dokweiler said.

When questioned by the grand jury, Gleaton testified she vaguely remembered the Marysville Mom and denied telling her any sordid details about the Lawson stabbing. “I did not see a knife. I did not see anybody with a knife. And I did not see anybody use a knife to stab anyone,” she insisted. “I didn't see anybody use a knife at all.”

The Mystery Juror

Less than a month after the grand jury declined to indict Zoellner, one of the grand jurors broke ranks and gave an interview to KCRC North Coast News. Backlit and fuzzy, the juror spoke with an electronically altered voice about how the grand jury had let Lawson's killer go free.

“First we needed to make a decision as to the who of the case: Who stabbed Mr. Lawson?” the juror said. “Fifteen out of 18 voted that Mr. Zoellner committed the stabbing of Mr. Lawson.”

The transcripts confirm that Buckingham did task the jury with the who – and second, deciding the what of the case: Did Zoellner act in lawful self-defense or did he commit a crime – manslaughter (heat of passion) or murder (malice expressed or implied)? The mystery juror said the majority voted for self-defense. In another round, “several voted for manslaughter, four or five voted for murder.”

Six months later, a grand juror was interviewed for a SoCal Connected episode, “Who Killed Josiah?” Since we don't know the identity of the North Coast News source, this could have been the same juror or a second one coming forward (if you know this source, please contact The Humboldt Zag). This time, a white male in backlit silhouette described how both Zoellner's and Lawson's DNA were found on the knife. He confirmed (or repeated) the claim that 15 jurors believed Zoellner wielded the knife.

But in the end, 12 jurors could not agree to charge Zoellner with murder or manslaughter.

Fast forward to October 2022, when a civil jury in San Francisco voted that Arcata Police Detective Eric Losey maliciously fabricated evidence leading to Zoellner’s arrest as the primary suspect. The presiding federal judge overturned that verdict and the appeals court sided with the judge. Zoellner is preparing his appeal to the California Supreme Court. “There is a whole lot of evidence that people still have no idea about,” he said.