Visibility Through the Rear Windows of the House
On the morning of March 10, 1983, I arrived at my parents’ home around 11:00 A.M. to work on my car. The dog was barking inside, but my mother did not come to the door as she always did, and did not answer when I knocked. I moved to the rear of the house and began checking windows. Through the living room window I thought I could make out her feet. Unsure, I ran to the dining room window, where I saw her unmistakably—her head, resting on the entry hall floor. I broke in through the kitchen window, found her severely beaten and stabbed, and called for help. I stayed beside her, in hysterics, until paramedics arrived.
Detective Monsue challenged every aspect of that account, arguing I could not have seen anything through the rear windows. On each of his six specific challenges, the evidence—often Monsue’s own admissions—contradicts him.
Monsue testified that sunlight glare against the glass made it impossible to see inside. 1 Two independent witnesses say otherwise. On March 11, the day after the murder, attorney Robert Johnson accompanied my father to the rear yard. With my father lying on the entry hall floor in the position where I had seen my mother, Johnson saw him through the rear windows without difficulty. 2, 3, 4
On March 23, LAPD photographer Michael Wilson reported the same: he could see in without difficulty. 5 Monsue’s glare claim stands alone.
- Monsue testified that atmospheric conditions on March 10 and March 23 were “VERY SIMILAR,” 7 and offered his March 23 reconstruction photos as proof of what I could have seen. The reconstruction fails on four independent grounds.
- Weather. Monsue testified March 10 was bright, cloudless, and sunny. 9 NOAA data from Van Nuys directly contradicts him: between 10:45 and 11:45 A.M.—the window spanning my views—skies were Broken to Overcast with three miles visibility. 10 The March 23 reconstruction 6 was run under Scattered skies 11 with twenty-five miles visibility. 12 More sun on March 23 meant more glare against the windows than I actually faced. GOES-5 satellite imagery from 11 A.M. on each morning shows the difference at a glance 720: a continuous overcast shroud sitting over the San Fernando Valley on March 10, broken-to-clear skies on March 23. Monsue and his LAPD photographer Wilson did not reconstruct my views — they restaged them on a sunnier day, under conditions the police theory required, and called it the same.
- The awning. The white metal sun shade above the living room window was raised more than a foot higher for the reconstruction than it had been on March 10—Monsue admitted as much on the stand. 13 Photographer Wilson confirmed that a lowered awning would have afforded a substantially better view, particularly with a hand cupped against reflection. 14
- The body position. Monsue placed his model where he claimed I had told him my mother was lying, 15 then admitted he had actually placed her where he remembered seeing bloodstains on a large area rug—a rug he himself discarded the evening of the murder and which was not present at the reconstruction. My mother had been removed to the hospital before he arrived, so he never personally observed where she lay. 17 Paramedic Jay Lovato could have told him; 16 Monsue did not ask. By setting the model behind the flagstone planter, he obscured her from my exact vantage point.
- The model. Monsue said he “DID SOME RESEARCH” 18 and chose a Van Nuys employee resembling my mother. He chose Doreen K. Music—at “110, MAYBE 120 POUNDS,” 21 considerably smaller than my 170-pound mother 22—and a member of the Van Nuys SID team assigned to this very investigation. 19 It was Music who claimed to have observed blood spatters on my clothing. 20 The State’s own bloodstain expert, Ronald R. Linhart, later testified that the inculpatory patterns Music and Monsue described were not present. 70 [Cf. § III above] Monsue chose a colleague directly involved in the case—one whose own findings could not survive peer review.
- In his Follow-Up report Monsue stated flatly that he could not see into the house through the rear windows “WITHOUT PLACING HIS FACE UP AGAINST THE GLASS,” 23 the clear implication being that I could not have either, and was therefore lying. On the stand he conceded that if I had gotten close to the window—close enough to touch it, without touching it—I could “CONCEIVABLY” have seen inside. 24 The categorical written claim collapsed under his own sworn concession.
- Monsue testified that glare and interior obstructions made it impossible to see my mother through the dining room window, 25 a conclusion that presupposed a specific position for her body. He admitted he and I had never discussed exact measurements during interrogation, 672 and that his position came from a “VERY ROUGH” diagram I sketched during ninety minutes of stressed questioning. 208
His own partner refuted him. Detective Howard W. Landgren clearly saw the section of hardwood floor beside the planter 28—exactly where I told Monsue my mother’s head had been, and exactly where paramedic Lovato found her on arrival. Monsue himself wrote in his report that I had “OBSERVED THE TOP OF HIS MOTHER’S HEAD AND HAIR LAYING ON THE FLOOR OF THE HALLWAY.” 30 My account, Lovato’s testimony, and Landgren’s observation converge on the same spot.
- Monsue wrote and testified that the position of the sun shade required “SOMEONE LOOKING INTO THE WINDOW TO BEND DOWN AND CLIMB UNDER IT TO LOOK INTO THE WIDOW [sic].” 31 Landgren agreed the awning was broken and hanging low. 33 But Monsue then admitted he could look through that window simply by bending down on the sidewalk 32—without entering the five-foot planter and without climbing beneath the awning. Landgren could squat on the sidewalk and see in as well. “Climb under it” was rhetoric, not description.
- Monsue testified to seeing the reflection of the rear-yard storage shed in People’s 19—a photograph looking into the living room window. 320 From a position where that shed’s reflection appeared in the glass, the photographer’s sight line to the entry hall was at least partially blocked by the central fireplace island dividing living room, dining room, and entry hall. That was not where I was standing when I thought I saw my mother’s feet.
By shifting slightly west along the outside of the living room window—as I had on March 10, working for the best view—I could see all the way through the house and, with the front door open, out onto the front porch. 321 From that vantage the front door was about ten feet 310 beyond where I thought I had seen her feet, and flanking the door on either side were seven-foot-tall frosted glass panes 322 that poured light onto the entry hall floor—back-lighting her and making her more, not less, visible from the rear yard. From the People’s 19 photographer’s position, at least one of those panes was hidden behind the fireplace island. The photograph did not show what I saw. It showed a different vantage—chosen, deliberately or carelessly, to maximize the appearance of obstruction.
The weather was wrong, the awning was wrong, the model was wrong, the vantage point was wrong, the measurements were guessed, and Monsue’s categorical written statements collapsed under his own sworn admissions. No single failure is dispositive. Six failures pointing in the same direction—toward a conclusion reached before the evidence was gathered—is something else.
Footnotes
My father's longtime friend and fellow attorney appeared at our home the day after my arrest. His arrival was natural, almost inevitable—he had been my father's closest confidant for years. But he came with purpose: to help my father find answers to the questions that now haunted him. With quiet authority, he steadied my father, pointing him toward the clarity we all needed.
These data, if cryptic, plainly reveal the police assertion of March 10 being "A VERY BRIGHT, SUNNY DAY, CLEAR SKIES," "VERY BRIGHT, VERY, VERY BRIGHT" with "NO CLOUDS IN THE SKY" as inaccurate. Police lied about the weather conditions on this Broken/Overcast day to manufacture inconsistencies in my account.
These NOAA Surface Weather Observations were never obtained by anyone involved in this case until I did so myself, on February 25, 1998.
↩These observations were made on the day of the police photo "reconstruction," March 23, 1983, at the Van Nuys Airport, FAA Station ("FAA Van Nuys"), 3.16 statute miles NNW of the Lisker residence.
Again, cryptic data — but plainly showing that a good deal more sunshine and visibility existed on March 23 (when police took their crucial photographs supposedly portraying my "impossible" views) than on the Broken/Overcast March 10, when I did in fact see my mother through the rear living and dining room windows.
↩That is, he laid the model in relation to where he'd remembered seeing blood on the entry hall rug — a rug that he assisted my dad in throwing away thirteen days prior, as my dad's testimony confirmed:
Summarizing Linhart's findings [Notes #53, 57, 61, 62, 63], he found: On my flannel shirt, six droplets; On my right Pacer tennis shoe, one droplet approximately 1 x 2 millimeters in diameter; and on the left Pacer tennis shoe, one droplet approximately 2 x 3 millimeters.
↩LAPD Officer's Statement (Prado)
"... VICT WAS APPROX. 10' FROM N/FRT DOOR ON THE HALLWAY FLOOR."
My mom was on the entry hall floor, inside the house, approximately ten feet from the front door separating the indoors entry hall from the outdoors porch and driveway
↩Throughout the Lisker Case Analysis (LCA),' I use the term 'interrogation', rather than 'interview' to describe my questioning at the hands of detective Monsue on March 10, 1983. This phrasing makes the necessary distinction between a police officer asking questions of a witness (an interview), and their questioning of a suspect (an interrogation). It is clear from the actions of police, and the result of those actions -- my accusation, arrest, set-up and conviction for this crime -- that I was an interrogated suspect from the first moments of police contact. [Cf. § IV., Introduction]
The Appellate Court later found that I was indeed in custody before I was taken to Van Nuys police station and questioned, and had been entitled to my Miranda warnings before questioning began [Note #268].
Monsue testified under oath that March 10, 1983 was "A VERY BRIGHT, SUNNY DAY, CLEAR SKIES; VERY BRIGHT, VERY, VERY BRIGHT... A VERY CLEAR DAY ALL DAY LONG" and "...IT WAS A VERY BRIGHT SUNNY DAY, NO CLOUDS IN THE SKY" and "...THEY DID HAVE BRIGHT, BRIGHT SUNLIGHT THAT PARTICULAR DAY."
Did he lie? Here are the satellite images from the morning he was describing. March 10 is on the left. You be the judge.
He also claimed March 23, 1983 — the day he and LAPD photographer Wilson came back to stage a photo “reconstruction” of my views — was "VERY SIMILAR" to March 10 in the condition of the sun.
Again, here's the slider. You be the judge.
March 10, 1983 — my views
March 23, 1983 — police photos
About the satellite. GOES-5 was a NASA weather satellite parked 22,300 miles above the Pacific, photographing the Western Hemisphere every thirty minutes from 1981 to 1990 — too high to falsify, too automated to bribe. The two frames above are its 11:00 A.M. captures from March 10 and March 23, 1983.
↩