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Murder Was Another Matter
April's body was flown to a mortuary in Hennessey. Justin, seeming withdrawn, shrugged when asked to make decisions about the funeral. He asked Patti if she would front for burial expenses. "What about the $2 million?" she responded. Startled, he said, "Did April tell you?" He told her he thought the policy had lapsed. Patti did some digging and learned that it hadn't.
At the funeral, in Hennessey's First Baptist Church, a crowd of 300 overflowed the pews. Several attendees were struck by Justin's failure to cry, though he appeared to be trying. The next day, Patti called Detective Cole. She told him what she knew and put him in touch with Amber.
During a search of Justin's condo, Cole found the insurance policy in a filing cabinet. Brought in for questioning, Justin denied his affair with Shannon Kennedy until he was told she was in the next room; then he insisted that his marriage had been generally placid.
Cole knew he was dealing with a liar, but arresting Justin for murder was another matter. There were no witnesses; no weapon had been found. Even the motive remained fuzzy. Justin was a rising professional with a base salary in the $70,000s; his wife earned nearly as much. Living apart from her, he could cheat with relative impunity. Did he kill her -- and shoot himself -- simply to upgrade his lifestyle a few notches?
Cole and his team traveled to Georgia and Oklahoma to interview people who had known or met Justin and April. They probed the couple's financial records and Justin's computer files. They analyzed bloodstains, ballistics and the abrasions on April's body. By July 2004, they had enough evidence to take Justin into custody, but it took another two years of spadework -- and, crucially, advancements in computer forensics -- before they were ready to go to trial.
The proceedings began on June 12, 2006, in a pink stucco courthouse in St. Augustine, Florida. Cole took the stand only briefly. Much of what the sleuths had dug up was ruled inadmissible: April's conversations with Nair, for example, and Justin's purchase of a bulletproof chest plate on eBay before the killing. Instead, the case turned on a few stark facts.
First, there were the trysts: Justin, it emerged, had carried on at least five during his three-year marriage. The fling with Shannon Kennedy seemed the most serious. Shortly before the killing, he asked her to travel with him to California; two days afterward, he stopped by her office and demanded to see her. He pursued her for several more weeks before transferring to Portland, Oregon, where he quickly got involved with another woman.
Then there was the money. Unbeknown to his wife, Justin had run up $58,000 in credit card debt, mostly through online stock trading. "The adage is true, even if it's corny," Assistant District Attorney Matt Foxman told the jury. "The defendant has two million reasons to commit this crime."
That took care of motive. As to method, prosecutors argued that Justin had spent a year planning the crime. The most damning evidence came from his laptop. On February 9, 2002, Justin Googled the phrase "medical trauma right chest." On Valentine's Day, he tried "gunshot wound right chest." The prosecutor asked, "What are the odds of somebody researching 'gunshot wound to the right chest,' getting a gunshot wound to the right chest six months later?"
On July 19, Justin Googled "Florida divorce" and doubtless discovered that if April dumped him, he could no longer be her beneficiary. And on August 17, an hour before the fatal outing, he downloaded 16 songs. Among them was "Knockin' on Heaven's Door" by Guns N' Roses. Another Guns N' Roses number pinpointed his intentions: "Used to Love Her (But I Had to Kill Her)." Foxman played the track in court. Justin, he said, had been psyching himself up for murder.
Finally, there was the crime-scene evidence. Justin claimed he hauled April from the water after she was shot, carrying her in at least nine different positions. Yet the blood on her face all flowed in one direction, suggesting she had been shot on the walkway and left there to die. Foam at her nose and mouth indicated that she'd suffered a "near-drowning episode" before the shooting.
Foxman laid out his theory: Justin intended to shoot April, load her corpse in the car and drive off in search of "help." The scheme went awry when she tried to run. He held her underwater until she stopped struggling, then dragged her to the walkway, where he shot her and himself. The plan derailed again when his pain kept him from carrying her farther. Justin had to modify his tactics, Foxman said, but his strategy never changed: "He wanted the $2 million, he wanted sympathy for being shot, and he wanted to look like a hero who tried to save his wife. He wanted it all."
Justin's attorney, Robert Willis, gamely offered alternative interpretations for each scrap of evidence. But Justin's behavior in a different courtroom three years earlier may ultimately have swayed the jury as much as any lawyer's arguments.
Midway through the first-degree premeditated murder trial, prosecutors played a video deposition Justin gave in 2003 as part of a civil case concerning insurance proceeds. (Those matters remain unresolved.) On the tape, the plaintiffs' attorney grills Justin on the attack, his affairs, his sex life with April. He claims not to remember some key details but answers even the most disturbing questions with uncanny calm. His mouth is set in a downward curve, and he dabs his eyes once. Otherwise, he shows little emotion. When the lawyer asks him to recall the high points of his marriage, Justin says tersely, "We were in love." Pressed for details, he says, "I don't recall specifically."
He seemed equally unmoved when the jurors of the criminal trial, after 33 hours of deliberation, announced their verdict: guilty. His supporters wept, as did April's mourners. Justin barely blinked, even when the jury recommended the death penalty a week later. (Judge Edward Hedstrom later sentenced him to life without parole, and Willis vowed to appeal.) Such detachment is a classic symptom of sociopathy, says University of Texas psychologist Shari Julian, a well-known expert on the disorder.
"The true mark of a sociopath is that he always wears a mask," Julian observes. Unable to connect emotionally, sociopaths learn to gratify their desires without getting caught. They tend to be intelligent, charismatic and monstrously manipulative.
"He's a very gentle person," says Justin's mother, Linda, who still believes in his innocence. "A good guy."
But Amber Mitchell rejoices that the mask is off at last. "This has been a long, horrible chapter in our lives," she says. "I want the jury to know they got it right."
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