Triple M Podcast: Mystery, Murder & the Macabre
Ep. 2 - The Crotchless Killing of Jane Doe, Part 2
Are you ready to unravel the twisted threads of a complex murder case with us? Come aboard this thrilling exploration of the puzzling case of The Crotchless Killing of Jane Doe. Laverne Pavlinac and John Sosnovsky incriminate themselves and give detectives story after inconsistent story. Listen to the shifting narratives and hear us examine the influence of detective personalities and strategic legal decisions in the case.
We'll transport you to the heart of the courtroom for Laverne Pavlinac's trial, where we'll illuminate the strategies used by both the prosecutor and defense attorney. Learn with us about the legal implications of courtroom rules, the potential risks of a defendant testifying in their own trial, and scrutinizing all the evidence, or lack thereof. Brace yourself, there's more, including barred evidence not allowed to be given to the jury, which could have changed everything.
You are in for a ride in this captivating real-life crime narrative! With each revelation and inconsistency, we'll challenge the reliability of key players and the efficacy of the criminal justice system. We aim to offer you unparalleled insight into the murder case and its trial, intertwined with comprehensive legal insights and riveting storytelling. This case will surely prompt you to probe deeply into crime, justice, and the shades of truth that reside within.
Are you ready to unravel the twisted threads of a complex murder case with us? Come aboard this thrilling exploration of the puzzling case of The Crotchless Killing of Jane Doe. Laverne Pavlinac and John Sosnovsky incriminate themselves and give detectives story after inconsistent story. Listen to the shifting narratives and hear us examine the influence of detective personalities and strategic legal decisions in the case.
We'll transport you to the heart of the courtroom for Laverne Pavlinac's trial, where we'll illuminate the strategies used by both the prosecutor and defense attorney. Learn with us about the legal implications of courtroom rules, the potential risks of a defendant testifying in their own trial, and scrutinizing all the evidence, or lack thereof. Brace yourself, there's more, including barred evidence not allowed to be given to the jury, which could have changed everything.
You are in for a ride in this captivating real-life crime narrative! With each revelation and inconsistency, we'll challenge the reliability of key players and the efficacy of the criminal justice system. We aim to offer you unparalleled insight into the murder case and its trial, intertwined with comprehensive legal insights and riveting storytelling. This case will surely prompt you to probe deeply into crime, justice, and the shades of truth that reside within.
I am JK Richards, the founder, creator and host of your beloved True Crime series, where we treat crimes seriously as your mysterious, murderous and macabre podcast In the past and still to this day. I am a criminal defense attorney, where I view, assess, investigate, analyze and reassess evidence again and again. If you are one looking for true stories of mystery, intrigue, vice, corruption, may him, violent malevolence, jealousy, greed, assault, insult, murder and the macabre, well, you are in the right place. Like, subscribe and support the channel. If you can spare a buck or two per month, that would be much appreciated so that we can continue doing our work here and provide interesting stories and content for you. But beyond that, i�m not an attorney that is trying to get away from my profession by podcasting. One of the main reasons I have created this podcast is that the United States is the most incarcerating country in the world. Yes, we have a criminal defense system that appoints attorneys if someone can't afford one, but those resources are just not up to the task of what is needed. So one of my hopes with this podcast is to be able to take income from the podcast and hire attorneys and staff to provide pro-modo, in other words, free criminal defense legal services. So again, I'm not an attorney trying to get away from my profession. Rather, I want to be able to provide more services and more help where help is needed, and if you think that that's a worthwhile cause, then please support us.
Speaker 1:Okay, on to episode two. Okay, before I can launch into new content, I really feel that it's important that I provide a recap of episode one. There's just so much that goes on there and it just very importantly interrelates with everything that I'm going to go through on episode two. Here. I am really excited to get into this, can't wait. Here we go.
Speaker 1:So on January 22, 1990, law enforcement got an investigate, a body that was found in the Columbia Gorge, 17 miles east of Portland. It's a young woman, later identified as Tonya Bennett. She's 23 years old, she lives with her mother and because of the timeframe again 1990 law enforcement was very concerned that they're not going to be able to find the identity of this woman. There's no identification on her, with her body. They have no idea who she is. So law enforcement commissions a very rough and I talk about this a little bit in detail in episode one a very rough pencil sketch of this woman's face. They put it out through the media, and shortly after that, a woman calls Detective Ingram, stating that she believes that the woman in the sketch is her daughter. A male relative of the female caller meets Detective Ingram at the medical examiner's office and this male relative positively identifies the body as being that of Tonya Bennett. Shortly after this, the sheriff's office receives an anonymous phone call indicating that one, john Sosnovsky, is the person who killed Tonya Bennett. The officer that takes the call doesn't get the name or number. So Detective Ingram starts running various iterations of the spelling of the last name Sosnovsky through the police databases, hoping that John Sosnovsky is somewhere in the police database and luckily he's on probation. So Detective Ingram calls the probation officer and the probation officer tells him that he also received a phone call from John Sosnovsky's girlfriend, laverne Pavlenak, telling him the same thing that John Sosnovsky is the man, the person who murdered Tonya Bennett.
Speaker 1:Detective Ingram and his partner get in touch with Laverne Pavlenak. They go out and interview her and the story that she tells them is that she dropped John off at JB's lounge at 9.30pm and that she then went home. And John came home very late in the evening, between 1.30am and 2.00am, that he took a shower immediately, that he had a bruise on his left hip and that the next morning he was complaining about his hands and wrists hurting. The officers search the house with Pavlenak's permission. They find an envelope addressed to John Sosnovsky. On the back of it is printed, quote T-Puried Bennett Good Peace end. Quote peace spelled P-I-E-C-E. John Sosnovsky then arrives at the home, the officers introduce themselves and John volunteers to go willingly with the officers to be questioned. In that interview with John Sosnovsky he claims that he does not know and has never known Tonya Bennett and knows nothing about her murder.
Speaker 1:At a later point in time, laverne Pavlenak contacts the detectives and states that she found some items in the house that she believed would be of interest to the investigation. They go back out to her house and she gives them a brown paper grocery sack, inside of which is a purse, and inside the purse is a cut out crotch section of acid washed jeans. In case you weren't aware, when the body was found in the Columbia Gorge, the crotch section of Tonya Bennett's jeans had in fact been cut out. This was a detail that law enforcement believed that they never put into the media and that people other than the killer could not know At this point in time, prosecutors get involved in the case and start trying to push the investigation forward. They were really wanting to get to moving this case along.
Speaker 1:Shortly after this, the state crime lab's results come back on the crotch section of acid washed jeans that Laverne Pavlenak had given to the detectives, and it was not a match to the jeans found on Tonya Bennett during the investigation of the body. So Detective Ingram and his partner go out and confront Laverne about this and she immediately caves, admitting that she fabricated this evidence and planted it, and her reasoning and excuse for this was that John Zasnowski is such a horrible person, so evil had hurt her so badly and that she wants him to be caught for the murder that he actually committed, meeting the murder of Tonya Bennett. Pavlenak is still maintaining that John Zasnowski is in fact the killer of Tonya Bennett. The detectives, buying her sob story, basically let her off the hook for fabricating and falsifying evidence and they interviewed Laverne again, and at this point Laverne changes her story to John, calling her that night after she had dropped him off, telling her to come to JB's lounge or wherever he was, and to come quickly. She goes to him and when she arrives, tanya Bennett is dead. Upon her arrival, laverne supposedly tells John that she thinks that they need to take the body to a hospital and report this, with John then threatening to kill her, her family and her grandchildren if she tries to force that result or if she tells on him because he would go to death row for Tanya Bennett's death. And finally, in this version of the story, john goes off into the woods with the body. He's gone for about 15 minutes and then he returns alone.
Speaker 1:Sometime after this point, or close in time to this point, the detectives have a meeting with the prosecution and it's determined that they still don't have enough evidence to pin this murder on John Sosnowski. And they come up with a plan to test Laverne Pavleneck's actual knowledge of events relative to the case that were never disclosed to the public. And they put this plan into effect. The detectives took Laverne with them in a car up the Columbia Gorge onto the road that Tanya Bennett's body was found on when they asked Laverne Pavleneck to point out where on the road the body had been dumped by John Sosnowski with, according to this newest story, laverne Pavleneck present. So they drive, and they drive up this road. It's again in a secluded area, it's on a dirt road, it's a windy road and it's in the forest. So, windy turn after windy turn through the forest and, according to Detective Ingram, laverne Pavleneck correctly ID'd the location of where the body had been found by law enforcement within no more than 10 feet of where they found the body. This is where we had left off, with the exception of just a few more details.
Speaker 1:Five days after John Sosnowski was arrested, because Laverne correctly pointed out where the body had been found by law enforcement, on a particular evening, at about 3 am in the morning, detective Ingram received a phone call from Laverne Pavleneck on his pager, and for those of you that are too young to know what a pager is, it was a device that predated cell phones. Someone called the number and this device would let you know that that phone number had contacted you. Later versions of beepers would send text. Look it up on Google. Beepers and pagers used to be a thing. God, I feel old. I had a pager in high school. It was really cool back then.
Speaker 1:Detective Ingram called Laverne Pavleneck back and she told Detective Ingram that she has something she needs to discuss with him and his partner and that they needed to come out to her house again. So they go back out to her house again and Laverne Pavleneck changes the story once again Now, stating that Tanya Bennett was alive when she arrived at where John and Tanya Bennett were, that Tanya had agreed to have sex with John and that they drove up to Vista Point in Columbia Gorge, that John and Tanya had kind of gone off by themselves. And at one point John comes back to the car. Laverne asks him why he came back to the car and he goes to the trunk and says he's going to get some rope that's in the trunk. And Laverne asked him why are you getting rope? And John's answer was in essence that it's more exciting this way. That's where I left you hanging in episode one and I do apologize for that, but I do have a little bit of a confession to make. I didn't share the entirety of what Laverne Pavleneck told the detectives in that last interaction, so I will now play the entirety of that recording for you.
Speaker 1:When you drove over to JD's from your daughter's house and you pulled into the lot, what did you see, if anything? I see John sat with the young lady and they appeared to be undrinked in a playing way. He said to her get in the car, it's cold. And she continued to drive. There was a point that Tonya Bennett apparently agreed to have sex with John. Yes, she did. When we arrived at car point, they got out of car. I really looked over the car. I just understand this work from the time. We went by and John came back to the car. Is that true? That's true. He went to the trunk and there was rope in there and he took the rope. I asked him why he had the rope and he said I'm going to tie her up or throw this way.
Speaker 1:So at that point you walked with John to where Tonya was. Where did you see Tonya? She was laying in a doorway and she was laughing, and he told me to take the rope and put it around her neck. What happened then? Did John have sex with her? Yes, and I shut because I knew what he was doing and I didn't want to observe it. And he kept saying hang on, hang on. I must have tightened it as I was hanging on getting her in the basement. What was he hanging on to In the basement? And then she became a little.
Speaker 1:Did you realize that Tonya Bennett had expired? Yes, miss Kavanaugh, let me ask you a question Do you believe that here today that by pulling that rope tight did you cause the death of Tonya and Bennett? Yeah, you do. I feel like it's my fault. So where, previously, the feeling that I had was that everybody in this case is just completely stupid the investigators, the detectives, in other words the prosecution John Sosnovsky and Laverne Pavlenak. Not only do I now think that intellectual deficiency is very much a part of this case all around, as if it's something in the water that everyone is drinking, I also feel sad because the types of changes in the story from Laverne Pavlenak are very, very indicative of well, obviously you can't trust anything.
Speaker 1:We've had three different stories. She dropped John off and then went home. That's story one. Story two is that John called her, asked her to come. She came. When she arrived at where John was, tonya Bennett had already expired and at that point, according to Laverne Pavlenak's second story, supposedly John threatens Laverne that he will kill her, he will kill her family and her grandchildren, and so she does what he wants out of compulsion and out of fear for herself and her family and her grandchildren Again, all supposedly according to story number two. Then we get story number three, which you just heard, which is that Tonya Bennett is still alive when Laverne Pavlenak shows up, the John has sex with her, the John gets rope, that Laverne supposedly is OK or John is OK in inviting Laverne to be part of this menage tois, and that during the course of this, laverne Pavlenak again a 58-year-old woman is holding onto a rope that is around Tonya Bennett's neck and she's tightening it and tightening it, which supposedly kills Tonya Bennett. It's like the story of John Sasnowski getting a ride home from Chuck and there being a dead body in the back seat of the car, and yet John still gets ride home and it's no big deal. I find this farcical, and especially so after the story has changed so many times. But this is the story that law enforcement runs with, and while it's farcical and stupid, I feel sad because I'm now foreseeing in my mind that this unfortunate series of events in how John positioned himself and especially in how Laverne Pavlenak has now positioned herself and John, that some real injustice could possibly occur here.
Speaker 1:My assessment of Laverne is just like I said in episode one. I think she is a masterful people reader. I think she had the ability to be very charming. However, I also think that Laverne is simple, that she really doesn't have the ability to think things through to the end and what is going to come of her actions. I think she is a short-sighted individual and only assesses things in the here and now. Okay, so here's where the real fun of this episode begins.
Speaker 1:I felt that it was necessary to provide that recap and I hope that wasn't too hard to sit through. Hopefully it was still entertaining. But I have done a metric, as me and my friends say bleep-ton I won't say the actual word, but bleep-ton of research for you for this episode, and you're going to get the benefit of that now. And this is where, as I've alluded to in the past and said to a degree in the past, this is where the story just really starts to get crazy and it just snowballs and snowballs and snowballs and gets crazier and crazier and crazier. Now, a decent amount of that research that I've done, that bleep-ton of research that I've done for this episode, does relate to episode one and I'm going to provide especially two categories, two classifications of additional information relating to episode one and what I covered in episode one, those two categories being things that relate to the time period between Laverne's second version of the story and her third version of the story. So, beginning after she's changed the story once, in other words changing it to the story where John calls her, asks her to come quickly, he comes quickly and Tonya Bennett is dead when she arrives. Going to the time period of the third story, and then the second category of additional information I'm going to provide to you here relates to after Laverne is confronted about the falsification of the evidence and her third version of the story which she gives detectives once they confront her. So let me set the scene here.
Speaker 1:John Ingram and Al Corson, the detectives Al Corson is John Ingram's partner Come back to report to the prosecutor, jim McIntyre, and they've just told Jim McIntyre about Laverne Pavlin-Ack's first change in the story, in other words, going from Laverne dropped John Sosnowski off and then went home and John Sosnowski comes back between 1.30 and 2.00 am in the morning to now the new story, the first new story, where John Sosnowski calls Laverne Pavlin-Ack to come quickly to bring something with her that's watertight. She does so. When she gets there, to where John is, tonya Bennett is already dead, etc. Etc. So they've just informed Jim McIntyre about this change in story and Jim's looking back and forth at them trying to judge their words, and the two detectives are very different.
Speaker 1:Corson is with the Oregon State Police. He's more hard-nosed than Detective Ingram. Some attorneys in the District Attorney's Office even called him or had a nickname for him of Wright Winger, and Corson believed very strongly that people should go to jail. He was a sniper on the state SWAT team and he was known for pursuing his suspects relentlessly. On the other hand, detective Ingram was looking forward to taking early retirement. He wanted to start a new life as a fishing guide on the East Coast. He wasn't that experienced in homicide cases compared to Corson, but he was very amenable and very easy to get along with and to get a feel for other people.
Speaker 1:Mcintyre got the strong impression and clear impression, which I believe was correct that Detective Ingram really truly believed in Laverne Pavlenak and that she's trustworthy. Detective Ingram explained at one point to Jim McIntyre that Laverne Pavlenak's house is different than most homes they go into interview People. Where most other homes, according to Ingram, were disheveled and dirty, pavlenak's house was very different. It was nice, neat, kept very clean. She was extremely hospitable, not the typical type of person that they interviewed who was cynical against police. She was older, candid, very convincing, and McIntyre could tell that Detective Ingram saw Pavlenak as a victim herself. Ingram stated to McIntyre quote I'd trust her to babysit my own daughter, end quote. So they've just told McIntyre that the Crime Lab's report had just come back. It showed that the crotch section provided by Laverne Pavlenak did not match the crotch section on the body of Tonya Bennett found by law enforcement and also that they went out and confronted Laverne about this and that she immediately caved, confessed that she had planted that evidence, that it was false evidence, and gave her explanation as to why she had done that and that the story has now changed to the second story when John Sosnowski forced Laverne Pavlenak, essentially against her will, to assist him in getting rid of Tonya Bennett's body Almost immediately.
Speaker 1:Jim McIntyre authorizes a polygraph exam and within an hour the detectives had John Sosnowski hooked up to a polygraph machine. By 6 pm that evening the examiner had concluded that he quote had direct knowledge of or was responsible for end quote the murder of Tonya Bennett. By 8 pm and after a second test, the examiner put it unequivocally to the detectives that John Sosnowski killed Tonya Bennett. In response to this, john Sosnowski, in the Sheriff's Office, is decrying no, no, that's not true. So at that point, detective Corson the more hard-nosed of the two detectives chides at John Sosnowski and says okay, tell us how you think it happened. And then by 10 pm, john Sosnowski was writing out a seven-page personal confessional statement.
Speaker 1:Now, at this point, I would just like to point out that a lot of more hard-nosed law enforcement officers kind of have this attitude, and what I'm speaking to right now is Detective Corson saying to Sosnowski sarcastically okay, how do you think it happened? Well, obviously, someone who's not involved in a murder has no idea how it happened. Now, at this point, in saying that, for purposes of saying that, I'm assuming again just for purposes of making that observation, I'm assuming that John Sosnowski did not actually commit the murder. And if in fact he did not commit the murder, he would have no idea how the murder happened. He wasn't there. And yet that's the attitude that law enforcement, certain law enforcement officers, have toward this kind of thing In essence, guilty and self-proven, innocent. And nothing you say or explain to me unless it's absolutely unequivocal evidence of your innocence will satisfy me. And up until that point you're actually going to be swinging upstream with me. The officer, even if you provide rational or logical explanations, and the detective in this case and mind you, he's a detective, he's not a street cop, he's a detective. And his logical fallacy response, supposedly to someone who doesn't know because they weren't there, is OK, tell me how it happened Impossible and it shows a certain mentality. So the second section of information that I want to impart to you that relates to episode one that came from my metric bleep ton of research that I've done for you, relates to the period of time when Laverne changes the story to the third story.
Speaker 1:So again, laverne Pavlenac paged Detective Ingram early the night, before 3 am or so. The detectives then go to her house again the following morning. She ushers them into the house and as always, she's very accommodating, very nice, friendly, and after she invites them in and she turns to the kitchen and begins walking toward the kitchen, she turns her head and over her shoulders she says it's correction time and Corson and Ingram relate to Jim McIntyre that at first Pavlenac didn't say much. She made a pot of hot coffee, talked about her family. Corson finally interrupted, asked if she wanted them to leave, with her previous statement remaining unchanged, in response to which Pavlenac shook her head, no, and she stated no, I want to correct it. She then gives her recorded statement, which you've heard, which Ingram and Corson played for McIntyre.
Speaker 1:When the tape ended, detective Ingram cleared his throat and is reported to have said quote Mac. The thing is she didn't just say all of that to us. She told her daughter the exact same story just minutes later, right in front of us. End quote. So, because of the concerns about the changing of the stories and obvious inconsistencies, the detectives, as a test of Laverne Pavlenac's honesty, told her they weren't going to do anything with this new story and they weren't going to believe her unless she confessed to the exact same thing to her own daughter, who was there at the house but was not in the room as Pavlenac was relaying the third story to the officers. And Ingram went on to say to McIntyre quote how could this not be true? Her own daughter? She tells her own daughter, end quote.
Speaker 1:Later on, ingram says quote Mac, I know it's screwy, but she's still credible. So nice, so open, come on in fresh pot of coffee like a grandmother. How could she possibly not be telling the truth? End quote. And McIntyre bought that. Okay, we've reached a point in this episode where really everything is going to become a myth, extremely chronological. From this point on, the sequence of events is very important. That's good and that's bad. Hopefully I'll be able to keep a straight, linear story Pretty interesting, but I don't think it'll be too hard actually. So again, the killer, whoever they are, meet Tanya Bennett on January 21st 1990. It is believed that Tanya Bennett died on that night and officers began investigating the dead body a day or two later. The investigation took about exactly one year Because of Laverne Pavlinaak's confession implicating herself as being the actual, in fact cause of Tanya Bennett's death by tightening the rope around Tanya's neck until she died while John Sasnowski was having sex with her.
Speaker 1:Laverne Pavlinaak's trial came first. There were other reasons for this as well. From what I could glean from my research, I also believe that there were strategic reasons for John Sasnowski, probably fueled by his defense attorney, to push off trial. To see what happened in Laverne Pavlinaak's case and trial first, consider for a moment the difference in positioning of personalities and what each person represented to humanity generally, between Laverne Pavlinaak and John Sasnowski.
Speaker 1:Laverne is kind, neat, clean, unassuming and respectful. She's charming, she's a caregiver, she's an enabler and she's an elderly, grandmotherly woman who even law enforcement saw as a victim of sorts in all of this. In comparison, john Sasnowski is a mean alcoholic, physically and emotionally abusive drunk. A younger man compared to Laverne she's 39 to 40, she's 58, who, for no understandable reason, was and had been for 10 years sexually with a grandmotherly woman. Now I'm not judging this, but people judge people and a jury is going to consider that. They're gonna think about that and wonder why. And it wouldn't surprise me if a jury thought, yeah, this makes sense. Someone who is with a woman that is that much as senior and he's to a degree in his prime and she's a grandmotherly type, seems really odd, seems really strange and that opens the door to thinking that that kind of person possibly could be a murderer, just because they're different.
Speaker 1:Imagine yourself being at a social function or at a church barbecue or at a summer pool party and seeing John Sasnowski with Laverne Pavlenak, him kissing her or her kissing him, them holding hands, guaranteed. A jury would make horribly negative assumptions and suppositions about John Sasnowski based solely on the fact that Sasnowski was sexually with Pavlenak. And that doesn't even include the negative view that would be cast on John Sasnowski by a jury in their minds, based on his actual own negative character traits being mean, being an alcoholic, being abusive, etc. Etc. So Pavlenak's trial comes first.
Speaker 1:Her trial began on Thursday, january 24th 1991, nearly exactly a year from the time when Tonya Bennett was murdered. Pavlenak was convicted on Thursday, january 31st 1991. According to a book by William Phelps called Dangerous Ground my Friendship with a Serial Killer, published by Kensington in 2018, pavlenak's jury deliberated for three days. The trial began on the previous week's Thursday and if the jury deliberated for three days, this means that, excluding the possibility of the trial being conducted at all during the weekend, which I have actually experienced in a criminal trial before and also excluding jury deliberations and any sentencing, if sentencing occurred immediately after the trial, the trial concluded either on the previous Friday, one day after trial began, or sometime on Monday. In other words, the evidentiary portion, which is called the Prosecutions Case-in-Chief and the Defenses Case-in-Chief, lasted only two or three days, either Thursday, friday and Monday, or only Thursday and Friday. Again, this is assuming the trial was not conducted at all on the intervening Saturday and Sunday, in other words, the 26th and 27th of January 1991.
Speaker 1:Though you already know the outcome of her trial already, which I purposely chose to tell you at this time. I want to discuss the on-going's at the trial and the aftermath after the trial, because that is where the real story is. If I didn't do it this way, this would turn into three episodes, and I've already been yelled at by several people who are tired of waiting for episode two to come out. So Laverne Pavlenak had hired one of Oregon's top criminal trial attorneys at the time. His name was Wendell Berkland. He was feared by prosecutors and police officers as he generally left no stone and no legal theory unturned, and he was known for being quite convincing. Circumstance is pretrial. So McIntyre and a second-chair prosecutor in the case, keith Meissenheimer, had to contend with this very capable, very smart, very thorough and rather feared defense attorney. Mind you, mcintyre would still be carrying his normal managerial level prosecutor's case load, where I am guessing from personal experience that an attorney with reputation experience like Wendell Berkland's, laverne Pavlenak's case, was all he was focused on for good while just prior to trial. In contrast, though, I should share that, while this is likely the case here and often is in these types of circumstances, it is also the case that prosecutors' offices have the financial backing and resources of the government behind them, and that fact always gives the prosecution a massive advantage in criminal cases. There had been lots of attention on this case, with all sorts of bizarre elements in the case, many of which you already know about and some you don't.
Speaker 1:A trial in this case. In comparative terms for a high-profile capital murder case like this, the central presentation of this case, in other words the prosecutions and the defense's cases in chief to the court and to the jury, did not go very long Again. Trial began on Thursday and, if the jury deliberated for three days, both parties' cases in chief together lasted only two or three days. Given the nature of the case and what I know about who knew what as witnesses in Laverne Pavleneck's criminal case and trial, I somewhat expect that the only main and principal witnesses called were Detective John Ingram, detective Al Corson, a few other police officers who possibly saw the body dump location in the Columbia Gorge, and Laverne Pavleneck, if she testified at trial, as it is the defendant's right to not testify if they so choose. On this point I'd like to explain.
Speaker 1:Defense attorneys almost always very, very strongly advise their clients to not testify at their own criminal trial. This is because of the proverbial, very rich and horrendously explosive mixture of gases, the first being the nature of cross-examination by an opposing attorney, where the witness cannot expect their own attorney to save them from horribly difficult and cutting questions as long as the cross-examining attorney asks legal and appropriate questions in a legal manner. And secondarily, the near certainty, no matter how well an attorney prepares their defense client for trial, that their client will invariably say something totally off-mark and likely diametrically opposed to what was discussed and prepared during trial preparation. That blows the entire defense strategy to smithereens, then leaving the defendant with virtually no defense whatsoever because of the defendant's own testimony. If so much as a proverbial tiny static charge of electricity sparks amid these richly mixed, proverbial explosive gases, everything blows up and the defendant will lose their case, even if they are absolutely and unequivocally innocent. So again, defense attorneys almost always across the board, advise their clients to not testify at their own criminal defense trial.
Speaker 1:Despite these risks, laverne did testify at her trial For the reasons just discussed. This is surprising to me in one sense, but it is also not surprising in another. In one sense, it's not surprising the Palvinac testified in her own trial because she somewhat had nothing to lose the prosecution already had her convincing taped confession. Now, if you're really intelligent or have some legal education, you may be thinking to yourself hold on, isn't her taped confession hearsay? And this is where we get into a discussion, actually about what is hearsay. It's relevant to many aspects of this case, episode one, and many cases that we'll talk about in the future.
Speaker 1:So, simply put, hearsay, technically defined as a legal term of art, is an out of court statement offered in court by someone other than the person who made that statement for the purpose of proving the contents of the statement. So, though otherwise a statement might be hearsay, it is not hearsay under the legal definition if one of two things is true First, if they're not at all concerned with whether or not the contents of the statement were true, and that's not what they're trying to prove and that's not why they're using the statement at all. Or second, though they are hoping that the court or jury will pay attention to the statement, hoping that it does support the truth or the veracity of the contents of the statement, that they are actually offering that statement for some other purpose, for example, the state of mind of the person who made the statement, and the argument goes, in a situation like that, that the statement itself shows the state of their mind. So if either of those situations are the case, it is not hearsay and a witness can testify about what someone else said. Again, if one of those two exceptions applies, because by one of those exceptions applying, that means technically that it does not fall within the definition of hearsay.
Speaker 1:Now I really actually shouldn't be using the word exception, because even if something is hearsay, then there is a whole analysis that you have to go through regarding exceptions to hearsay. So it is possible for something to be hearsay but for an exception to apply, and the exceptions are very specific. One of the exceptions to hearsay that is most readily accepted is a statement against a party's own material legal interest. So, though something is hearsay and falls under hearsay under the legal definition of hearsay, if that statement is a material statement contrary to the legal interest of the person who made the statement, then that's an exception that's accepted by the courts and certainly and unarguably, laverne Pavlenak admitting to participating in murder is a statement materially against her own legal interest. Therefore, even if Laverne Pavlenak's taped confession is hearsay, there is a rock solid and airtight exception to the hearsay rule regarding her taped confession, the prosecution can bring it in all day long. Even if Laverne Pavlenak would not have testified in her own trial, they would have been able to lay foundation through the detectives that were part of that conversation where Laverne Pavlenak incriminated herself, and they would have been able to bring in the recording of Laverne Pavlenak's confession. Not only did they have Laverne Pavlenak's confession, she had voluntarily given it, and her confession came about because Laverne Pavlenak asked the officers to come back to her house so that she could correct her story. Remember, even at one point, after Laverne wasn't telling the detectives anything new or anything more, after they came back to her house, detective Al Corson asked Laverne if she wanted them to leave her house, with Laverne leaving her previous statement remaining unchanged. And just so you remember, that previous statement was story number two. But mainly to my point, laverne's taped confession did not come about due to any coercion or the police attempting to use any type of force to get her to tell them something new. In fact, I'm quite certain that especially Detective Al Corson wanted Laverne's previous statement, in other words story number two, to remain unchanged. I'm certain that this is why he asked Laverne if she wanted them to leave with her previous statement remaining unchanged. But despite Detective Corson's props to just let things lie the way they were, she objected and she then gave her taped confession.
Speaker 1:At trial, laverne testified that quote I started a lie and it snowballed on me, end quote. Her skilled defense attorney, wendell Berklin, elicited testimony from Laverne that she had made all of it up, every story, including her confession. She said that it was all in order to escape Sosnovsky. She had been trapped, battered, desperate and even suicidal. She explained that three times before making the anonymous call to Detective Ingram's office about John murdering Tanya Bennett, she had tried pinning other crimes and legal violations on Sosnovsky. For the same reason, she testified that in February 1987, she had called County Probation to report that he was drinking, which was a violation of his probation. In April 1989, she called the FBI and reported a bank robber's photo resembling John Sosnovsky. On January 10, 1990, laverne again called County Probation about his drinking, which again is a violation of his probation terms, and days after that she made her call to Detective Ingram's office about John Sosnovsky's murder of Tanya Bennett.
Speaker 1:This was a woman that, for whatever reason, she had decided that the best way to get out of this relationship was to misuse and abuse law enforcement and the legal judicial process, and I'm here to tell you, folks, that's not a good idea, as you'll see as the story goes on and how that worked out for Laverne Pavlenak and to the men out there, I would give the advice to not give women a reason to feel like their back is up against a wall so much that they have to do this sort of thing. Treat each other well. After this, pavlenak went on to testify that the story just snowballed that, and what she meant by that is that she just started offering the detectives whatever she thought she had to, whatever they wanted, whatever she thought in any given moment would make them believe her and would make them take John Sosnovsky out of her life In her defense. Another aspect of testimony that Laverne Pavlenak gave to the jury was how she got knowledge about facts that law enforcement thought that she couldn't possibly know about, and Laverne explained that she got many of her facts from the search warrant. This included, actually, the aspect of the existence of the murder cutting out a crotch section from Tanya Bennett's acid washed jeans, which detectives and law enforcement thought had never in any way, shape or form been made known publicly and couldn't have been known by someone other than Tanya Bennett's killer. But Laverne Pavlenak apparently is a resourceful person. She got and read and presumably any private citizen could have gotten and read a copy of the search warrant which included information about the cut out crotch section of acid washed jeans. And Laverne went on to testify that she inferred other information from the questions that the detectives themselves asked her. Just pretty smart actually.
Speaker 1:And at one point Laverne testified that quote even a baby could have found the location of the body in the gorge end quote. She said that this was because of news reports and the search warrant receipt stated that the body dump location was 1.5 miles east of Vista house, below an embankment. Quote in a loop between switchbacks and quote before lateral falls state park. And when she and detectives in the car passed that exact spot, she noticed the detectives unconscious body language and she saw two small orange markers placed by police so that they could precisely triangulate the location of where the body had originally been laying. Now this is where I have to pat myself just a little bit on the back. Okay, if you will remember from episode one I actually gave those two exact theories and I did not know that at the time. I only found this in my research for episode two, specifically her testimony at trial as to how she knew about certain things, specifically the body language of the officers, which makes total sense and doesn't really brand me a genius we all know that body language is 80% of communication but I also hypothesized that there probably was some kind of marker so that law enforcement themselves could know, and she was smart enough to look for that. In truth, I think law enforcement really underestimated Laverne Pavlenak and I think that helped her pull this off If from her perspective, you could call this pulling something off.
Speaker 1:Wendell Birkeland's defensive Laverne Pavlenak was very thorough and very elaborate. Some of it involved tangible evidence, like the Kram lab hadn't found any physical trace of Tonya Bennett's presence in Laverne Pavlenak's car. Some of it involved practical limitations. For example, birkeland argued it was absurd to imagine or believe that John Sosnowski, a known and documented frail drunk with horrible knees, could carry a dead body down a steep embankment, consistent with the state's story and the state's theory of the case. Also a practical limitation it's absurd to believe that Laverne Pavlenak had the strength to tighten a rope sufficiently to murder a 23-year-old girl. Most crucially, though, the logistics weren't right regarding who was where when.
Speaker 1:According to law enforcement's investigation and their testimony at trial from their witnesses, tonya Bennett had been seen at the B&I Tavern. I know I haven't mentioned this prior to now, but this is where it pops up at trial. So witnesses testified that Tonya Bennett had been seen at the B&I Tavern on the night in question and that she had not been seen. No witness could place her at JB's lounge on the night in question. Likewise, john Sosnowski had been seen at JB's lounge on the night in question and he had not been seen. No witness could place him at the B&I Tavern on the night of the murder. Both Laverne and John had only ever stated or claimed at any time that John had been at JB's lounge on the night of the murder. Neither of them had ever mentioned the B&I Tavern. The B&I Tavern and JB's lounge are 26 miles apart, and neither John Sosnowski nor Tonya Bennett had vehicles or driver's licenses. Laverne Pavlenak drove John Sosnowski everywhere that he went In a seemingly impossible situation.
Speaker 1:Wendell Berkland put on this very strong defense. He's working with a client who did everything in her power in the end to incriminate herself and her partner. Wendell Berkland's closing argument was seven hours long. He took the jury back through all of the doubt that exists in this case the lack of evidence the lack of any evidence tying Pavlenak to Bennett's murder and to Bennett's body and pleading with the jury to see that there are holes in the state's case against Laverne Pavlenak that you could fly an A380 Airbus airplane through. That's an airplane that holds 853 passengers. This is my characterization of Wendell Berkland's defense. No one else's. Now, before I get into Jim McIntyre's closing statement, that is the closing statement of the attorneys for the prosecution.
Speaker 1:There are few pieces of information that I haven't given to you yet that I need to tell you about the trial, some things that came up kind of an awkward moment during trial. Want you to imagine this in your mind, that what I'm about to tell you comes up literally in the middle of trial. There's this very awkward moment midway through Pavlenak's trial where authorities in Livingston Montana, which I've actually visited many times, had called Detective Ingram to describe a scrawled message that they had just found on a bus station's restroom wall. The message said, quote I killed Tonya Bennett January 21st 1990, in Portland Oregon. I beat her to death, raped her and loved it. Yes, I'm sick, but I enjoy myself too. People took the blame and I'm free. End quote.
Speaker 1:To their credit, the prosecution disclosed this to the judge and to Wendell Berkland, the defense attorney. Berkland and his team strenuously argued that the jury should be allowed to hear about this evidence and the prosecution obviously objected. But this came to a amount to nothing, despite the defense's ardent pleas with the judge, because the judge barred the message from being given to or even mentioned in any way, shape or form to the jury. The judge ruled that the writing on the restroom wall was inadmissible hearsay with no indication of reliability. Well, lucky for us, we've already discussed hearsay. We're going to discuss it again right now, but first I'm going to share that, years later, various news reports that I found stated that years later, mcintyre had stated that at that time he believed that the judge's decision was proper, which is obvious. He had objected, supposedly to explain this position. Mcintyre stated that quote you can't drop a case just because someone writes on a bathroom wall. End quote. Interestingly, this same news report stated that Jim McIntyre felt the same way a week after Pavlanak's trial when authorities discovered a second message scrawled on a restroom wall in Umatilla, oregon. That stated quote, killed Tanya Bennett in Portland. Two people got the blame, so I can kill again. End quote.
Speaker 1:I'm sure that your brain right now is exploding from this totally new revelation and I'm certain that you want me to thoroughly discuss this and address this right now, but I'm not going to. But I will come back to it, I promise. Also, this episode is already too long. This is going to have to end episode two, but I'm going to drop episode three simultaneously with episode two or very shortly after dropping episode two, just for you. Just listen to both. It just keeps getting crazier and crazier. I promise it gets so much more crazy. Stick with me. It's good. I'm your host, jk Richards. Thank you so much for being here with me today. I hope you enjoyed yourself. I know that I did. Please stay safe out there and I hope to never be telling your story.