The Last Chapter

From here on, I have to switch entirely to the past tense, because this does have an end which I now know. Up to this point, as I have said several times, you've been reading things pretty much as they happened to me. I haven't gone back through and done any rewriting with the benefit of information discovered later It's a record of those eight days and what I found out, in the order it all took place. I've done that deliberately, quite obviously, because I still think my most valuable function has been to record the interviews with Michael and the others, which I have to admit I've read over again and find extremely revealing. I have not forced my opinions about this case to the fore front, instead continuing to hope my additional material, the interview transcripts and other pieces of evidence, stand on their own. I'm not making that big a deal out of it, because it's also been easier for me not to have to go back and rewrite for the sake of telling a smoother story, but I've at least managed to persuade myself it's better left in the raw state you've been trying to digest.

Should you have come to doubt my ability to recount a linear series of events, however, this is my opportunity to dispel such uncertainty. I'm sorry I have to resort to a simple telling of a story here, rather than stick to my old ways, but it's how I plan to finish up. I wasn't around while this bast part took place and there's no point in allowing other people to tell what they know. Here at least, just telling what happened is all that's needed, and I can handle the reporting of that myself more than adequately.

For those of you who are already familiar with the outcome I shall relate, and are tempted to move along, I should say there is some important new material included I am not entirely ready to abandon old ways, even here. I speak mainly about a letter which appears in print for the first time, but I shall tell about that in due course. I just wanted to have it known now that there are still unexpected rewards to come in what is otherwise so straightforward a retelling of events now completed.

I say completed because I refuse to go back and start over. I could have returned to Yuba City and pushed my Promethean rock back up again, that is, I could have recycled my never ending uncertainty about my connection to these events, and started into a whole new round of investigating and speculating and whatever else I have done here to this point. Forget it. I'm ready to acknowledge my failures and call it over. I will have done enough already, or more than expected I'd be able to, so I'll get out when that part is complete. I'm through. Anybody sufficiently crazy to continue studying what happened in Yuba City, good luck. I'll read your stuff with a combination of intense interest and great relief I wasn't there doing it myself.

I should say, while on this subject, that I will be more than happy to cooperate with any serious researchers looking further into these events. I don't really mean more than happy, but I do recognize that I take on certain responsibilities to history at the moment I go public with the material you now have before you. I do have further documents, transcripts, clippings, notes and other miscellaneous material I can make available under appropriate circumstances. I am also quite prepared to discuss my knowledge of all these events should anyone want to interview me for their own work. I can be reached through my publisher if you are really somebody paying serious attention to what happened there. Don't write me if you are just an average reader out to satisfy some trivial curiosity about a minor detail I might have left out. I speak here only of being cooperative with substantive scholarly research. If you don't feel you are doing a more thorough job than I have, then I don't want to talk to you. I realize that might leave out very few, but I do have some standards in this regard.

So, to pick up the frayed thread where we last had a grip upon it, I saw that after the interview with Michael you've just read, there wasn't much more I could do I felt he had said to me everything he would say, and I had pretty much done all there was to be done in Yuba City. There was no one left to talk to, with the possible exception of Michael's family, his parents and sister, and I couldn't bring myself to invade their privacy. I don't care how curious the public might be to hear from his mother's lips about what Michael was like when he was a baby. I have drawn the line at exactly this point. Let others spread their apocryphal tales of sandbox tantrums and Little League displays of hostility interpreted to prefigure deeds to come. I intend to have none of that. I leave reductive psychologizing to the many who make it a constant practice. As I was saying, then, I had done about all I felt able to do in Yuba City at that point I intended to go back for any judicial proceedings or if I got wind of other goings-on I ought to be present for. I now had a few people who promised they'd keep me informed, so there was no reason to hang around.

I've been telling myself lately, in light of what happened, that maybe I should have realized I had developed leads I ought to have followed up in a more diligent fashion, but I can't get myself to believe that. I'm a bit proud, in fact, how much material does appear here which clearly anticipates the outcome. I got close enough not to want to go further, At least that's how I can try to excuse myself.

Anyway, to get on with it, realizing I was at a proverbial impasse, I went back to Los Angeles, returning to the semblance of what I called a normal life. A few weeks later, on April 24 to be exact, the Los Angeles Times carried the story that Michael had now been charged with two more of the murders, those of George Dryden and Randall White, whom we have affectionately called Victims #1 and #5. The story made page 4, a thin column next to an ad for I. Magnin's that covered 90% of the page. Like the Times, I didn't think it was such big news, although I tried to call Michael and find out what he had to say about it, I wasn't able to get through to him and he never tried to call me, so I hoped this was no significant development, I was sorry we couldn't talk on the phone, though. I guess I didn't have the pull of David Berkowitz.

Through the rest of April and then May there were no new developments. I wrote to Michael twice without reply. I didn't have much to say either time, but I was trying to keep a channel open, should he want to contact me. I did let him know I was willing to come back anytime he thought I should, which wasn't totally the truth, but it sounded like what I ought to say. I mean I couldn't go running back there whenever he felt like talking. It turned out to be an unneeded offer anyway, as he never contacted me again, much less asked to have me back. Still, I did offer, if anyone feels I wasn't doing as much as I could to stay connected.

While Michael was now charged with three murders, nobody seemed to be in any hurry to have the cases brought to trial. Matthew Donovan, Michael's lawyer, got continuances on pre-trial hearings, with no prosecution objection, and there wasn't supposed to be any further judicial activity until early September, barring further indictments on the other murder counts. There were so many jurisdictional and procedural questions, it sounded like the thing could go on forever. The murder charges were filed in U.S. District Court, rather than the county complaint more customary in murder cases, because of a reported intention to file conspiracy-to-murder charges, which didn't mean that a number of people would be arrested for the murders, but that the murders themselves were criminally linked. I don't know if you follow that. I barely do. The point, I believe, is that the crimes become a Federal Offense because of the ocnnection between the murders. Also, I presume, their all being Draft Board members, sort of government officials themselves, that made it more of a Federal case. I didn't really follow these legal ins and outs, if you really want to know. He was in jail for lots of murders That was as clear as it needed to be for me.

So, I expected a quiet summer on this front. I was planning on taking time off in September to go to the beginning of the trial. I had already put in the written request with my supervisor I didn't expect to go to the whole thing. It was sure to last for months and would already be loaded with reporters, so I didn't see what the need for my hanging around would be. I mainly wanted a sense of the event, for what reason I wasn't entirely certain Those were the plans.

I guess I've put off saying what happened as long as I can. On July 6, Michael Willetts was killed in an apparent escape attempt. Also dead in the attempt was Jack Finley, who had been visiting Michael. I'll give you more information on Finley in a minute, and remind you of what you've read about him here already, but first I'd like to describe further the events leading to their deaths I will ignore the emotional effect this has had upon me, or at least put that off awhile too, and I won't cover the sources for the material to follow I'll just tell what happened.

At 3:20 P.M. on the 6th, Finley arrived for a scheduled visit with Michael, passing the routine inspection without incident. At 3:35, the room where they spoke was filled with some kind of thick tear gas which Finley had managed to smuggle in, hidden in a flat plastic pouch below his belt. He overpowered the guard posted in the room with a military stranglehold, and with his gun Finley and Willetts tried to make a run for it. They were out a side door of the sheriff's station-jail before all hell broke loose, cops and guns everywhere. Finley was supposed to have fired first as they ran towards his car, and both were killed immediately, shot by police in the station and on the parking lot. They were dead at 3:40.

When I heard about it, my immediate reaction was that it must have been some kind of set-up, fulfilling Michael's prophecy about the police wanting to fake a suicide An apparent escape attempt under these circumstances would have to be seen as suicidal. Success was too unlikely. You don't throw visible gas around a jail and expect business to continue as usual. Security was very heavy anyway, and Michael could not have gotten far, gas or no gas. It was a wonder they made it outside at all, even if death came within a few feet of the door. Had Michael done it alone and died alone, the whole thing would have smelled badly. Jack Finley, however, made the plan entirely plausible, He fit the role of accomplice to Michael too perfectly. It's a wonder I never realized what a likely candidate he was. Together, the two might have tried anything.

Jack Finley appeared once in these pages, getting passing mention from Roger Templeman. Finley was the vet with psychological problems who Roger mentioned visiting on a number of occasions, and he also gave a little of his Army history. Finley's problems, it turns out, were even more complicated than they first appeared, which was already quite a mess.

Finley was a precise fit for the description Michael had given of veterans who were in far worse shape than he was. Because of his mental problems while still in the service, his reenlistment was denied, and he returned here with a bad conduct discharge for medical reasons. He still wanted very much to be in the Army and did not stop seeking ways to return to their good graces. He was treated for his continuing psychiatric problems at Courtland Army Hospital, a Veterans Administration facility near Sacramento During this period, he repeatedly told friends and family that his problems were simply the result of intense concern that the Vietnam War be successfully completed as soon as possible and feelings of guilt he experienced by being home when close friends of his had died. He insisted he'd be better if allowed to return.

Jack's condition, which Roger Templeman did describe briefly, was more extensive and severe than Roger indicated The problems observed by friends who were later interviewed by reporters partly sound predictable - fear of loud noises, inability to sleep, an inclination to flare up for no visible reason. Worse, and I hope less typical, were symptoms of considerable disorientation. He would lose his way during simple errands and be found several hours later driving aimlessly. He'd be unpredictable in his keeping of appointments, not only late but sometimes turning up days early. He refused to watch television or read newspapers, although he would listen to the radio. He was reluctant to buy clothes, and he either wore Army work clothes or things from his pre-Army days. He didn't actively seek out companionship, although he was receptive to visits from other vets. These were the symptoms observed in him during the early period of his return. He will describe in his letter other medical problems which developed later.

Finley's psychiatric treatment led him to accept the Army's finding of his unsuitability to return to combat, although by 1973, no new forces were being committed to combat roles, this being the period of so-called "Vietnamization", so there wasn't much he could have returned to by then. Jack continued to have readjustment problems anyway. In Fall 1973 he enrolled at Yuba College, but dropped out the second week of his first semester He put in an application to become a sheriff's deputy, not realizing the circumstances of his Army discharge would stand in his way. He did find a job as a night security guard at the Del Monte Cannery near Colusa, and over the next several years, it looked like he might have been making headway at successful readjustment He was promoted to a day guard position at the cannery, and by this year he had risen to be assistant to the Chief of Security. In 1974 he was married, but divorced a year and a half later.

At the time of his death, Jack was still a patient at Courtland, even though eight years had gone by since his Army discharge. A number of people who knew him, however, did feel that he was now living a normal life despite his continued treatment (as Roger Templeman said). He also belonged to the American Legion, which to its credit does not have a policy of refusing membership to veterans with unfavorable medical discharges, although this policy might be done more as a consideration of encouraging membership than out of any sense of obligation or principle. At any rate, Finley regularly attended meetings of the Marysville Post.

The extent of his involvement with Michael Willetts continues to be an open question. I can only shed partial light on this issue, not clarifying it as well as I wish it could be. What seems clear is that Jack was a likely participant straight down the line. What's still not known, at least by me, is the specific part he may have played in the killings, or whether there were just the two of them involved and no others. In both Jack's and Michael's cases, I think it's accurate to say we know more about their motives than the precise nature of their acts. I guess being certain which of them pulled which trigger or sharpened which pole is not of crucial import, but it's still funny not to be certain what happened, after all the attention this case has received. The FBI continues to promise a report on its investigation, but as of now hasn't revealed anything.

We come finally to the letter. I better say a few things about it first I'll start by acknowledging that no one realizes more than I how melodramatic it is to pull out a letter from a dead man right here near the end. I wish I didn't have it because it looks like such a cheap device I can worry about that only so much, however, because the letter itself is so important. Also, after my frequent complaining about not having the vaguest notion whether all this would eventually look like it fit together, I shouldn't now gripe because devices for convenient conclusion get dropped in my lap. As for the authenticity of the letter, I'd first assure you as I just said that I'd rather the letter didn't exist. I don't need it here, so I certainly wouldn't make it up. Also, if by now you still trust my integrity with regard to my scrupulous fidelity to the truth, then I expect you to continue to have faith in me as far as the letter goes. Should you be naturally skeptical, however, which I could certainly understand, I might add that verification that the letter was indeed in Jack Finley's handwriting was made by a firm referred to in my acknowledgements, and they are nationally known authorities in this field They only charged me $350 for a quite thorough investigation and report, a service that usually costs a couple of thousand, I was told. So, I think while it might be possible to question some of the things Jack says in his letter, I don't believe his authorship of the letter or its authenticity is at all in dispute. In the photo section, I have also reproduced a page of the letter, which even to an untrained eye clearly shows an entirely distinctive style of handwriting. If, after all this, you still think I could have pulled a Howard Hughes-Melvin Dummar kind of trick, then go ahead and think it. This is the real stuff.

One last thing on the letter. Not wanting to be accused of withholding possible evidence in a criminal investigation, I have turned over my original copy to the FBI office here in Los Angeles, for forwarding back to the special detail in Yuba City. They have failed to provide further verification of authenticity, and by the way, they haven't returned the letter. At least I can say I haven't broken the law.

I received this letter on July 8th. The envelope bore a postmark of the 5th, the day before Jack and Michael died. It is reproduced here in its entirety.

Dear Stephen,

You don't know me, but I am writing at the instruction of Michael Willetts, who you do know. By the time this letter reaches you, he or I or both could be dead, as you may have heard by now. This is not a suicide note. I am not going to explain why we are going to do what we will do. As Michael says, we don't need explanations, we need actions. He told me to write, so I have.

I do not need to commit suicide because I have a lot to live for. There are many people I plan to kill, and I cannot do that if I am dead myself. It is too early to end my own life, as painful as continuing to live is for me.

My pain is the result of poison in my body. The exact name of it is dioxin, a by-product of the formula 2,4,5-T, a component of the chemical herbicide Agent Orange. I know what is killing me, I know it well. And I know what it is doing to my body and mind. And I know what I will do to all the people responsible.

It hurts me to write because the joints in my fingers ache a lot. I am 29 years old, and I have the bones of a 60 year old. I also have the sexual ability of an old man too, and that is also the fault of Agent Orange. That maybe doesn't matter, because I do not see women anymore, not since my darling Debbie left me for another man because I could not perform. I don't blame her, It was not her fault.

I used to have a lot of psychiatric problems. I wanted to stay in the Army so bad. I never understood why they made me leave Vietnam before the war was over. I went in to fight and they wanted me to quit before the fight was finished, That was crazy, not me, I had close buddies over there, and I was supposed to walk away. Dennis Reicher, Jim Salkow, Bobby Fallon, Rich Cutler, there are so many I can't write them all down without starting to cry. There is no reason they are dead and I am alive, no reason at all, I could be in a grave over there right now and they could be here, It would make no difference, no difference at all.

I did not want to come home, but I came home. I did not learn to forget, but I learned to do my crying alone, I learned to keep my shakes under control. I could be with people at work for my full shift and not get angry. That was a lot of improvement for me. Then I saw that not everything that was wrong with me was in my mind. When I started to get pains, when my eyes became sensitive to light so I kept thinking flashlights were being shined in my eyes, and my skin got little prickly brown spots on my back and on one of my thighs, when all that happened there was no way you could tell me I was entirely responsible for my own problems. The Army doctors would not tell me what was wrong. They said it was my head. I am sure they knew the truth and would not tell me. The VA office would not help me either, I learned from another vet who told me about Agent Orange. Then I found a magazine article about it. I am sure that is what happened to me because of my symptoms.

I will not lie down and die like a dog. I have been refused treatment. I know they would like me to be quiet. That is what the Army has wanted from me ever since they forced me to come back. They want my mouth shut. This is the only life I have. I have fucked it up very badly, but I will not lose it without a fight. I deserve more of a chance than they have given me. I should not be eaten away from inside by chemicals meant for the enemy. It was right to clear the forests, but they should not have used sprays which would hurt our men I know there are many of us now paying the price, and the government should at least admit what has happened. That is what I do not understand.

I have written to you because Michael said you could tell people because you are writing about Yuba City and the deaths I know people will listen now because of what has happened here. I am very grateful to Michael for that. Many people do not understand him and they have said terrible things about him, but they do not realize his motives. He has acted in the only way possible now, and I am very proud to be associated with him. I have helped him before and I will help him again, because he has done a lot for me. He did not tell me to tell you this I am saying it on my own. He has treated me with respect. He believes me completely about what is wrong with me, and when I tell him about the others who died over there and how I feel about it, I can see he understands, He is not a mad killer, no matter what they say.

Thank you for reading this letter, I hope you will be able to use it. I am sorry we did not get to meet. Michael says you are a good friend of his, so I would be proud to be your friend too.

Best regards,

Jack Finley

P.S. I told Michael I was almost finished with this letter. He said I should tell you thank you for coming here when he asked you. I thank you for that too.

That is the letter. I don't know what I have to add to it, or what I have to say about anything. By this point I should be brimming with conclusive insights and helpful perspectives, but mostly I just feel sad. Michael is dead and a poor guy I never met who wrote me a letter is dead too. I don't feel too great either, but I'm not going to complain.

Considering what has happened, I have come to feel pretty worthless. I would like to have figured out better what went on than I did, and I wish I could have done more than hang around and do some interviews. I know that just a little while ago I was defending myself, but that didn't convince me either. The bullshit there was unusually obvious, even for me.

My worst crime has been not realizing things until it is too late, which means not. realizing at all, not only over this but over most of my life. I have been passive and reflective in a world that demanded more, and now that time has gone. I have missed more opportunities than most people get. I have been in the right places at the right times, and still not understood what was happening. I have no past because I don't understand any part of it. I have no idea how I fit in, or what I ought to have attempted and risked failing. I have memories but no history, fragments without a controlling structure.

Michael was very likely right in seeing me as the proper person to get bits of this story down. His impatience with me was generally correct, but at least I have fulfilled his intention. I have tried to keep all this stuff in some readable order and not to intrude. I know I've stuck in big sections of questionable relevance, but I have always been honest about what I have done. Usually, I have let the facts speak for themselves, as much as these facts are able.

I should be happy to have done service for an old friend by reaching this point, where I sit in front of this pile of pages I have assembled because I was asked to help. The Yuba City Draft Board Murders were a calamitous event, and at the very most, I think all I might have done is show there was more going on than you may have read at the time or saw on television. I guess I ought to be glad to make a small contribution to our knowledge of a major event. I should be proud to have produced a work that touches upon issues of significance. Instead of feeling any such elevated emotions, I have only profound depression for a time that is over and lives that are ended. They are both wasted, and it may well be that collecting information about them is a waste too. I don't know. There is little to learn from this, except that the truth about terrible crimes and why they happened is ultimately unknowable It is enough to record with some fidelity that they did, in fact, take place, and ought to be remembered. Beyond that, I have nothing to add.