First Michael Willetts Interview

Now that I've filled you in on everything, you're probably very anxious to get to the first interview with Michael, and I am too. With me finally back here, there's not that much point in spending a lot of time setting up each section of material I've pulled together. Still, it would be a little strange at the start if I didn't say something about how Michael looked after all these years. If we went directly to the transcript, I'd give the impression of being insensitive, as if I only cared about showing off my access to Michael by presenting his actual words as rapidly as possible. I hope you can see by now I'm not that opportunistic. You probably don't care one bit how I appear here, but I see no reason to deliberately turn myself into an asshole when all I want to do is present this material properly. So give me one more moment and we'll get to the interview. I promise.

Michael might have looked a lot different from when I last saw him, but I couldn't really tell. He seemed about the same to me. Not exactly the same, but not so changed I wouldn't have known him. Seeing clips of him on television probably got me over the effect of the fifteen elapsed years already, so now it was more like spotting a media celebrity than recognizing an old friend.

The first thing I noticed was that part of a finger was missing. He was smoking a cigarette, and I could see right away that he was holding it with a thumb pressing the butt against a stump, about an inch of an index finger. Whatever had happened, I felt I probably didn't want to know. It was bound to be a gruesome story. I certainly wasn't going to say anything today unless he brought it up on his own.

Other than that little change, and trying to look at him objectively, I had to say (to myself) he didn't have the look of a mass murderer. He was without the intense stare, the nervous mannerisms, the disheveled hair, all those characteristics that make up one version of the stereotype. He also wasn't the Average Joe meek-looking nobody about five feet tall who would cap off a lifetime of repressed hostility by going nuts. I'm sure I looked that part much better than he did.

Instead of saying how he didn't look, I should report on what I did see. His most noticeable feature, which I remembered as soon as he displayed it again, was a disarmingly open grin, a Cheshire-like combination of continual surprise and bemused knowingness. He looked like he was smiling over some joke he was remembering or a thought he wasn't about to share. If not for those reasons, it felt like he was getting pleasure out of being several steps ahead of you, so he'd smirk as you figured things out in his wake. What do I know about why he was smiling? Just because I'm here doesn't make me more able to figure stuff out. All I know is he had a way of twisting his lip that was absolutely his own, and after the finger not being there, it was the most noticeable thing about him.

I said a moment ago he was without nervous mannerisms, but when I think about it, he was so relaxed and placid in demeanor it was practically as bad. He was smoking, but not out of apparent uneasiness. It was more the kind of smoking someone would do while watching television, just to have an activity, not the smoking of a condemned man about to face a firing squad. I'm not much better with smoking than I was with smiles, I guess. Anyway, he seemed more relaxed than I was, a lot more, as I was all fidgety and he was a real cool customer.

Physically he showed his age, but I do too. You can't make much of that. He has dark brown hair, and there's occasional flecks of gray. He didn't look like he'd put on much weight, but not like he had worked to stay that way very hard. It was just the way he was. He had the appearance of an accountant, I'm sorry to say, a pleasant looking enough guy of unassuming manner who spent a lot of his time in non-athletic sedentary pursuits.

You get the picture? Most of one finger missing, an enigmatic smile, a little gray, real relaxed, and average build. That's enough for what he looks like, wouldn't you say, as if it really mattered in the first place.

This interview was conducted on March 30, 1980, at about 2:15 P.M. I had arrived in Yuba City around midnight or so the night before. We had this peculiar chat in a small conference room adjoining the row of cells in Sutter County Jail. There was no glass barrier or wire mesh or any of that other movie stuff, but an extremely disinterested guard did remain in the corner. Permission to tape had previously been secured through a court magistrate at the request of Matthew Donovan.

Michael and I greeted each other, him smiling and smoking and calm and gray and all that stuff I mentioned. He instructed me to turn on the tape recorder right away.

A: Thank you for thinking to bring one of those, and I can't tell you how grateful I am you came back to this shit hole town because of me.

Q: You did make the L.A. papers too, and of course I was worried about you when I heard your name. I don't know why you asked for me, but if there's anything I can do, I'd like to help however I can.

A: I asked Donovan to look for you, hoping that would be your reaction. I needed somebody I could trust, and frankly, I don't know if there's anybody in this whole place I can count on anymore. That's one thing you really find out in a hurry when you're in trouble. There's so many people you thought you knew, then they show sides of themselves you had no idea they had, and every side wants nothing to do with you. So I'm glad you're here, and I won't keep saying it, but I really mean it. Thanks. As for the tape recorder and why I needed you, that part is pretty simple. Things are going to happen fast around here in the next few days, and what scares me more than anything else is that the real story will never come out. It's all gotten so distorted already, and there's no point to any of this if only their version is accepted as true. If you can just help me to get some of my thoughts down about what's happened and go out and talk to anybody you think can add to this, I promise you within a week it will all be over and you'll understand why your role is so crucial. That's what I'm asking for and why I need you. Before it's finished, you may do more, but that will be your idea and your decision. I won't ask.

Q: I can't say I do understand, but I'm more than ready to help however I can. When a good friend from high school is charged with murder, hell, I always thought you were a great guy, even if I haven't seen you for, what is it, nearly fifteen years? I know you'd have done the same thing for me.

A: Then let's get on with this, because I'm sure they won't give us much time. Certainly the only reason they let me see you is in the hope that I'll admit to some things they'd like to hear me admit. Don't think your recorder is the only one going right now, That's the kind of mentality they have here. They'd much rather try to trick a story out of you than listen to you directly. So for now, I can't get too specific about the details of the case, except the parts that are public already anyway about why they think I did it and my feelings about what happened and things like that. Since this is only our first meeting, it will be plenty if I can just get a few ideas clear, suggest some other people to talk to, mainly make you see what's at stake here, that it's not just me and some so-called murders, but a lot more.

I was thinking all last night and this morning what to say when you got here, and I was remembering a lot of things. I keep remembering and remembering. I can't shut it off. I'm glad I can picture things real clearly, but it feels like I'm the only one who can. This whole place, this town, this country, would rather start clean every day. I never could be like that.

It's always the wierd things that stick in your mind. When you think back, you don't recall a real normal ordinary day. It's got to be times that bother you a lot. Too bad it works that way. It makes remembering hard sometimes. How much nicer it would be only to pull out the past at random, so there'd at least be a chance to come up with a memory that's not too upsetting. The way it is, the game is rigged against you.

Take when we were in high school. If you try to be objective, probably 90% of the time we were pretty well off. Even when we knew we were growing up in the middle of nowhere and we'd drive around and around from one burger stand to another, there's nothing so horrible about that. I wouldn't mind running some of those nights over. We probably had a lot of fun. There was good music on the radio, we had very nice girlfriends, we must have talked about a lot of interesting things. If we did, I can't remember. It's a haze I can't see through. Instead, I remember times that made me angry, things we went through and were too young or stupid or both to realize what was going on.

Q: Are you thinking of anything specific? I'm having trouble seeing your point.

A: I guess I am sounding a little loony. I was leading into a couple of incidents worth recalling. You can always edit the tape later if you think I'm too boring. But give me a chance. You can see if you're as good at remembering these. They probably both went right by you. They still might.

You know, you used to be that way a lot. A teacher would be explaining something to you, and before they could get three sentences out of their mouth, you'd be jumping in and not letting them finish. It may have made you look smart, but it never impressed me. Interrupting isn't a tremendous talent.

Q: I'm not real anxious to have my assets or shortcomings assessed by you. We ought to have better things to discuss.

A: You're right, of course. I was about to tell you of a time, I can't give you the exact date, but it was in the week of the Cuban missile crisis, and we were in fourth period history class. I remember it was fourth period because it was just before lunch and by then I was too upset to eat. Our regular teacher had to take some group on a bus trip, and this other teacher who usually taught civics and English, I think, was brought in as a substitute. The guy talked the whole period about the Russians and atom bombs and being soft on communism, and I guess I had heard it all before and this wasn't much different, but then he started talking about what we here in Yuba City could do to prepare ourselves for any eventuality. That was a new way of looking at things for me. His first hot tip was to tell our parents never to let their gas tanks get less than half full, because we had to be ready to move in a hurry during a mass panic if we needed to.

Q: You know, now that you mention it, I do remember that. What a memory you have!

A: Didn't I just tell you not to interrupt? I knew you'd remember. He also said that while he couldn't advise people to get guns to protect their property, we had to realize that we here in rural areas were going to be overrun by city people escaping from nuclear attack. He said if Beale Air Force Base weren't hit by an atom bomb, in which case we didn't have a prayer, then we'd have trouble just as serious from all the people coming for our food and to get away from their wrecked cities. What got me about all this was that this nut was a high school teacher, and that none of us in his class would dare to say what an idiot he was. It was my first real experience, I guess, with how people here view the whole world in terms of how it affects their day. If there's an international crisis, the way to deal with it is to put more gas in your car.

The other time I remember that I think is really important I'll tell more briefly because I'm sure it's not that unusual. In fact, the point is how absolutely typical of Yuba City this is The date is much easier to remember, November 22, 1963. We were in the start of our senior year. We were in English and a messenger comes in who whispers something to our teacher, Mr. Friedlander, and then leaves. Mr. Friedlander announces that word has just reached him that the President may have been shot, and the Principal is waiting to see what develops before deciding whether school will be let out for the rest of the day. The bell rang to end the period then, and I went out to my car to listen to news reports on the radio. You weren't supposed to go to the parking lot between periods because of what you might be doing in your car, but I went anyway. I was the only one out there. I don't know if no one else cared or if the messenger hadn't reached the other classrooms yet, but I got there in time to hear a CBS reporter talking about having just spoken to a priest who had administered last rites to the President and was sure he was dead, but there had been no official word yet. He kept repeating this same story over and over, obviously hoping it wasn't true. Then about ten minutes later he said that the President's death had been officially announced.

I realized I was late to my next class, which was Spanish, and when I got there I announced to the class what I had heard. Miss Roberts, the teacher, looked flustered at this interruption, and said that until she heard otherwise, class could continue as it's supposed to. So for the next fifty-four minutes, there we sat, reading passages from Don Quixote out loud, on the day President Kennedy was shot.

Q: That was also the week-end when everything but everything was closed for mourning, except the Beach Boys still gave a concert that Saturday night in Marysville.

A: That's too bizarre to get into, but I remember that also, although I doubt anyone would believe either of us if we told them that. It certainly is true, though.

Q: I have to say, of your stories, I like the first one much better. The Kennedy thing is no big deal, honestly. Everybody old enough remembers what they did then. You're making this sound like "Whatever Happened to the Class of '65". There's a whole chapter of crap like that in there. It's good, but enough is enough.

A: I really don't want your opinion as we talk of what you like and don't like. That's another of your less endearing qualities. You can talk with a friend without having to pass judgement every minute or so.

Q: Then explain to me the point of those stories.

A: If you need every dot connected, this is going to be harder than it ought to be. But I'll try to be patient, since if you can't understand what I'm getting at, there's likely a lot of other average minds that would have similar difficulties.

I was just trying to make clear how the attitudes that surrounded us as we grew up could be a little hard to adjust to. If there's a world beyond the city limits, they'd rather it waited until the day's chores were done. The rest of the world was an aggravation to be kept in perspective. People here seem to have been born a certain way, and no matter what happens in the world, they're set on it not interfering with the plans for their lives. Maybe that is pretty typical, but I never got used to it. It's not a major insight to call this place pretty intent on not being bothered by the outside world.

Q: Does this have anything at all to do with the murders or your arrest?

A: Obviously, or I wouldn't have brought it up. I can tell that the main thing everybody is after now is a simple explanation of what happened so they can get back to worrying about whether there will be time to have the pick-up lubed before the start of duck season or what happens if the almond orchards freeze over at night. Here we are in 1980 and the entire local Draft Board his been napalmed and shot and blown out of existence, and you can still tell nobody around here really wants to think about what that means. Just find the nut that did it is about as far as the thinking goes.

The only time it was different here, and you were already gone then, was by ' 67 or ' 68. When the war was going full steam, that did have people involved, but not in the ways you'd think. It was like, well, I don't know entirely how to explain it. Remember all the jokes we used to make in high school about how little had to happen here to make the paper? Stories about the gum ball machine at the gas station being broken into or some farmer's fence post getting knocked over, stuff like that. During Vietnam, you didn't get those as often. Instead it would be about Mrs. Carlisle's son Jeff being made Second Lieutenant, or PFC William Selkirk writing home to Mom and Dad that he just completed a month of r&r in Thailand. The war was chatty news here, and people loved that part of it, believe me.

For the guys our age, it was like another set of chores being demanded of them by their parents. A lot of them wanted to go, sure, maybe for adventure or because they really thought they believed in it or whatever, but I know a lot of them went because they were told they had to. If they didn't want to, well, I don't think they could even consider they had any choice, they just went. It would have been like refusing to plow the south forty or milk the cows. Nobody here was anti-war, or even thought about anything like that. It was too out of the question.

I'm trying not to give my feelings about this, only remembering how it was, because everybody's memory now is that there were a whole lot of different things someone could do, go or not go, and that there was a lot of divided opinion. Here, the only divided opinion was between whether you went in because it was a good opportunity to serve your country or you went in because it was a chance to learn a trade. Even during the war that's how people talked. Remember Roger Templeman? He said to me the week before he left he was glad to be going because he'd rather learn something useful while being paid than by writing away for a correspondence course, whether he had to be in a war to learn it or not. He came back and got a jab with the phone company, so I guess his dream came true.

I know I'm going on too long about this and I haven't said anything you'd think was too enlightening, so let me just say this one more thing and then we'll get back to the matters at hand. I know a lot of people are doubting my sanity, and from what I've been saying to you now, after not seeing you for so long and while I'm in jail for murder, you may be wondering too. That's another reason to have you here, so you could listen to me and people who know me and eventually be able to give your own opinion if you're ever asked. You were here for awhile and you were smart enough to leave, so I respect your ability to have some perspective which I may certainly lack on all this.

Q: Then let me ask you something. Did you know the Draft Board members who were killed?

A: I do acknowledge, as I have told the police and the FBI and everybody else who has asked me, I admit to knowing who they are and remembering only too well circumstances which could suggest that I might have some motivation to take action against them. I said that in a dumb, twisted around way, but that's what long interrogations by cops who talk in gobbledygook do to you. It hasn't helped one bit that nearly every last one of these characters who have been interrogating me is a former Marine or a former Army guy or a former something military that makes him wish like hell he could command a little unit that could take me out behind this building and tie me to a post and stick a blindfold on me and give the command to fire. They lick their lips in a funny kind of way, like at's either that or they stomp the shit out of me. And every question they ask sounds like a quote from a technical manual. Talk to them yourself, you'll see what I mean. I'm glad they're eavesdropping right now, so they can hear how unimpressed I am by their feeble attempts to coerce information from me. If that's the other side, the military and police way of doing things, I've got more reason not to feel bad about where I've wound up. Whatever I'm accused of, at least I'm not them.

Q: Do you remember my question?

A: Sure, about the five so-called victims. Yes I did know them. Not in the sense of having a great deal of personal knowledge about each of them individually, but I know them as faces I have seen in the night repeatedly over nearly half my life, as voiced who said things in my presence on several occasions that I can play back for myself without the need for an electronic device. If you had been subjected to the same experiences I've gone through, I'm sure your answer would be much the same.

Q: It may be out of place for me to make this comment right now, but you are talking as if you could be responsible for these killings. Even if you are, already I can understand why you might feel you had some justification, and to be honest, the things you're telling me you should be saying to Donovan, so he can help prepare your defense. I'm still eager to talk to you, and I find this whole situation, both what's happened and my being here talking to you, pretty incredible, but I don't know if it's irresponsible of me to be used by you as an outlet for discussing things that could help you if they were told to Donovan instead. Also, as you said, couldn't any of this be used against you by the other side? This isn't a lawyer-client kind of relationship here. I didn't want to interrupt again, but you should know how uncomfortable this is for me.

A: Believe me, I've gone over this more than adequately with Donovan, and I'm not talking to you just to repeat myself. And I'm not spouting off as a form of elaborate confession, or trying to justify myself in any way. I'm not confessing to these murders, no way, though I believe I can help explain why and how they occurred. I know that sounds strange, and that's what I'm trying to explain.

Q: For now I'll accept that as an answer, but I'm going to have to get assurance from other people that I'm not hurting you by doing this, or helping you to hurt yourself.

A: Sure, ask anybody. I'd expect you to. I hope you realize also that offers have already come in for me to sell some of the things I'm telling you about. This isn't exactly a "Son of Sam" or Gary Gilmore case, but I do realize I'm in the middle of a story involving the gruesome symbolic murders of five people, and there are people out there willing to shell out some reasonably large sums of money to gain exclusive rights to my version. They're ready to gamble the money right now, even before the full nature of the charges is made public, if at's ever made public. They'd do it just to get the jump on their competition, and out of fear that the price could go up later. I know that situation. Donovan's been working with me on that end too. I just want you to be aware that I chose you, and you're not my sole option. I've given you my reasons already why I'd rather it be you I talk to, and I do hope you'll help me, but if you don't, I'll find somebody who will.

Q: OK, I see what you're saying.

A: Then let's get on with it. Why don't we discuss what happened. A few things about the murders should be noticed. By the way, the Independent-Herald was unusually thorough in reporting this, much better than they were with the Juan Corona killings, which a lot of people around here never took that seriously anyway, since they saw it as just a farm labor problem and a big public expense because of the lengthy trial. But this time, real townspeople, important citizens, were involved, and they were hungry for details. You should be sure and take a look at the clippings if all you've read so far have been wire service reports or what you think you heard on Walter Cronkite. There's some grisly details you have to look forward to that I'd just as soon not be the one to tell. But let me point out a few items that can lead to further reflection, For one, given the elaborate means of killing in each case, everyone has remarked at how unusual it is that all five murders were accomplished within so short a time, at the most, one hour. It has been suggested that one person could never have been able to execute, hah, execute, such complex plans undetected in broad daylight, and yet the nature of these crimes has been judged so deranged that the possibility of a group of people doing this has been considered even more unlikely. Either way, this is a pretty unusual situation. If one person, why did he kill all of them so quickly, especially when much more publicity might have been gained by doing them one at a time and writing to newspapers about why the killings were committed? The symbolic nature of the murders would be important here, the ways they were killed certainly suggest that the killer cared about the public perception of the crimes. And he certainly gauged that fairly accurately. These deaths have been noticed. Why, then, take the considerable risk of doing it all at once? If it was a conspiracy, maybe some political group, for one it's odd that no anonymous calls came afterward to take responsibility for it. And even I would admit this thing sounds pretty loony to have been planned by a number of people, that they could sit together in a room and decide who to napalm and who to blow up with a hand grenade, and so on.

Q: I hate to say again that I don't want to interrupt, but it really surprises me how dispassionately and analytically you can sit here and talk about these things, when you're the one in jail charged so far with one of the murders, and likely to be indicted for all the rest. It's not as if we were two guys in a bar on Main Street discussing an item on the six o'clock news. You're right in the middle of this, and I can't believe you can be so cool about it.

A: It's funny you should react like that, because in all the time I've spent thinking back over my Draft Board experiences, that's what I realize most surprised me about them. That way they could sit in a room and see person after person, and be completely cool about who should go to the war or not. I might add that the cases of exemption recommended by those five were pretty damn rare, if there were any at all. I never heard of anybody classified CO from here, or classified anything but 1-A without solid documentation to back them up, and that didn't always help. So there they'd sit, day after day, wrapped in the flag, signing death warrants And you think I'm cool now.

Q: These things you're bringing up happened a long time ago. I can remember things from when we were high school juniors too, and I even had some trouble with the Draft Board until the papers about my asthma were straightened out. But you're talking about circumstances that are very different now and things that people did way, way in the past. There's no Vietnam now, no Draft Board now, nothing for nearly ten years. Why be so obsessed with this?

A: I don't think I'm obsessed at all, but it's more surprising to me that none of these people have ever been held accountable in any way. We hear how wrong the war was, but you still try and ask about it, and those that even remember the 50,000 dead on our side and the hundreds of thousands of others, and nine and a half times out of ten you'll still be told our mistake was in not blowing the whole of North Vietnam into smithereens. One day America got bored with it and wanted to change channels, and the ones who took an active part were happy to have it all forgotten by everyone else. You ask me a question about being obsessed with this, and you make me wonder how long it should be before we say that terrible things that were once done should now be forgiven. For me, I can forgive after I see personal suffering and remorse. When all I see is determined smugness about the things that were done, it makes me madder than I was before. If one of those guys had ever so much as suggested that what they did might not have been right, they could all be alive today. I think their god-damned complacency killed them, and I can hate them more than enough to want to see them dead on that score alone. What they did could have been buried a long time ago, but they kept it alive themselves with the continuation of their pathetic pride. They were more obsessed than the people who killed them.

Q: You've been speaking in the plural about the motives of those who committed the murders. Are you in fact reporting from personal knowledge? What has been your role in these deaths?

A: The role I'm talking about now is one of completely understanding how this could have happened. I think the proper reaction to these deaths should be not to wonder why such men could still be hated enough to be killed so long after the end of the war, but to ask why it has only happened once. The time gone by doesn't mean a thing.

Q: That doesn't really answer my question.

A: Which was?

Q: You're evading answering whether you killed any of these men or had an active part in this in whatever manner.

A: As I told you earlier, I will not get very specific at this point, but don't take that in any way to mean if we were able to talk freely on the outside someplace, I would admit some kind of guilt to you. Don't take my silence at this point to mean any such thing.

Q: Then why ask me to come here and talk to you? So you can be evasive to me and get angry about supposed injustices from the past and talk about funny little things that happened to you in school that seem to you now to be dripping with significance? Who needs it?

A: It's a bit premature for you to be so snide with me. It's more important, don't you think, to understand what happened than to search for an easy answer to who did do it. I could have done it, sure, but so could plenty of others. It's not the big question. If I had been involved, I wouldn't be at all ashamed. I could also be innocent and trying to grab the glory. If I haven't said I'm involved, don't take my silence to mean guilt. You may find that evasive, but if your only purpose in coming here was to find out if an old friend is the murderer of five men, it's not my purpose to satisfy your curiosity. If you're another one who thinks it's all that simple, then maybe I have picked the wrong guy.

Q: Michael, I'm sorry I've been sounding hostile to you. This is so confusing. We talk about the murders you're in jail over and you drift off into childhood memories or speculations about motive. I just don't want to feel you're getting cute with me or using me. With the way you're talking, naturally I'm suspicious or curious or whatever you want to call it. And I don't think I've been out of line. But you shouldn't dance around what seem to me normal questions and act like you're fooling me with some marginal verbal distinction that only has meaning for you. Please try and talk straight with me.

A: I think we're getting too far off the path here. We've probably spoken enough for now. If you had a better idea of what's happened here, we wouldn't need to have these kinds of arguments. I know I'm going to be sent back to my cell soon. Take my word for it, it will be easier for us to talk and you'll trust me more after you've spoken to others. And if you do decide I'm too far off, I will understand if you don't want to talk to me again. Don't feel you have to come back if you don't want to. You've done more than I had a right to ask just by taking the trouble to come here today, and even if I never see you again, I will always be very grateful for that.

Q: Well, if I do go on with this, who should I talk to?

A: I'll leave that to you. Go read those newspaper stories I mentioned. You can ask the police about me, or my lawyer. I know my mother would be glad to see you, and of course there's my ex.

Q: Your ex? You and Sharon are divorced?

A: We have a boy named Alex, and yes, we are divorced. She still has the farm, though. We're close. We're just not together.

Q: Anybody else I should see?

A: Some of our old friends are still around. Check the phone book. It's a fast read.

Q: I could make this old home week.

A: Sure. All it took were a few murders to get your sentimental journey underway.

Q: No one could accuse you of turning morbid under pressure.

A: And that's about all I won't be accused of.