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11 SuInG MarIcopa counTy Soon after their ordeal at the hands of the MCSO and its task force, three of the original Tucson suspects were reunited in a joint effort— suing Maricopa County. The false-arrest lawsuits were both predictable and inevitable. Predictable because the county attorney did his job, dismissing all charges against the Tucson defendants. Inevitable because the sheriff insisted his men had done nothing wrong and continued to search for a link between the Tucson Four and the Avondale boys. Leo Bruce was the first to file suit, on November 27, 1991—five days after his release from jail. Bruce’s $10 million civil claim alleged that the sheriff’s deputies had violated his civil rights and defamed him. Ten days later Mark Nunez filed the second claim, asking for $15 million; his mother-slash-sister, Romelia Duarte, sought an additional $1 million. Duarte told the press, “What Sheriff Agnos and his men did to my son was a planned execution,to try and convict him without a trial.” Marky, she said, “doesn’t leave home anymore. He’s confused often and scared.” Before his arrest he had attended Pima Community College, but he had dropped his premedical studies after being shown “gruesome pictures of the temple victims.” At the end of December, Victor Zarate, who had been released from jail after six days because he had refused to confess, topped both his friends, suing for $20 million to make county officials pay for “the hell they put me through.” “People shouldn’t have to go through what I had to go through,” he declared. “They should have evidence before they take people in.” Zarate’s claim asserted that his interrogators had denied two requests for a lawyer, kept him awake for forty-four hours, and forced him to urinate into empty soda cans. The claim acknowledged that money could not buy back his self-esteem, reputation, or peace of mind but stated, “money is the only thing the law allows him to recover.” By 1993, the Bruce, Nunez, Duarte, and Zarate complaints were combined in a lawsuit known, for short, as Bruce et al. v. Agnos et al. The list of defendants named in the suit began with “Tom Agnos, both individually 272 chapter 11 and in his official capacity as Maricopa County Sheriff, and Jane Doe Agnos, husband and wife.” It continued with fifteen of Agnos’s deputies (and their wives), Maricopa County itself, County Attorney Rick Romley, and four of Romley’s deputy county attorneys (and spouses). The defendants, according to the complaint, had entered into a conspiracy to violate the plaintiffs’ rights. Specific offenses included illegal searches, physical assaults, emotional distress, illegal arrest and detention , and “oppressive, coercive, suggestive and forced interrogation.” Dante Parker, preoccupied with his California legal problems after the dismissal of Maricopa County’s charges against him, later filed a separate false-arrest suit. By the time the county was ready to settle, Parker’s suit was being considered along with Bruce et al. The one member of the Tucson Four who did not sue for wrongful arrest was Mike McGraw. That made sense, given that McGraw had practically begged to be arrested, and that long after the civil suits were filed, he was still elaborating on his confession.In July 1992, Sheriff Agnos and detectives Riley and Lewis—still trying to link Tucson with Avondale— flew to Colorado Springs to reinterview McGraw. He told the sheriff that on the day of the murders, Victor Zarate had photographed him standing in front of the temple with Bruce, Parker, and Nunez. He claimed he had held up a newspaper (to show the date) while the others held their guns. Later, he said, they buried the picture on a mountain in Tucson, along with some ammunition and a bag of rice. He provided detailed instructions about where to dig to find this stash. But the day of his release from jail, McGraw fantasized to a reporter that he’d get $15 million as a settlement. “Hell,” he added, “I’d take $10 million. I don’t need that much. But I could spend $1 million so fast, I could spend it in my dreams.”“First thing,” he went on, “I’d buy a really fine car and tint all the windows. You know what my license plate is going to say? T-H-X-T-A.” Then he gave the puzzled reporter the punch line: “Thank you, Tom Agnos.” Apparently McGraw tried...

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