Deadly Charm: The Story of a Deaf Serial Killer

25. The Myer Case: Trial and Sentencing

25 The Myer Case: Trial and Sentencing As there is much beast and some devil in man, so there is some angel and some good in him. The beast and the devil may be conquered, But in this life never wholly destroyed. Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Rime of the Ancient Mariner You’re an individual. Start living like one. Advertisement for Yamaha motorcycles There had been no witnesses to John Myer’s murder. As police and prosecutors prepared for trial, they faced the complex task of building a case based primarily on circumstantial evidence. A major hurdle involved establishing a motive for the crime. Robbery was one possibility they explored, although the weakness of this argument was that it seemed unlikely Patrick would have planned a robbery knowing it would yield little money, and that it might require killing a man he had befriended and whom he seemed to like. A second possible motive for the crime was that Patrick killed Myer in order to take over his job. Support for this theory was the fact that he had applied for the job at the park176 ing garage and was hired immediately after the killing, actually starting work the following day. If this were proven to be the motive, a case could be made for premeditated murder. It was also hypothesized that Patrick and Myer argued over Patrick’s being hired and a fight ensued in which Patrick’s extraordinary strength and tendency toward rage led to lethal blows. If the crime occurred in this fashion, it would not have involved premeditation and therefore would be considered manslaughter rather than murder. The prosecutor, Deputy State’s Attorney Gerald Anders, and detectives Barr and Cordel felt that the most viable motive was tied to Patrick’s obsessive attachment to his motorcycle. At the time of the murder, the vehicle had been impounded at the parking garage, pending payment of accumulated traffic tickets totaling six hundred dollars. The prosecutors speculated that when Patrick attempted to remove the vehicle from the garage, Myer refused to let him have it. Given Patrick’s temper and his strong bond to his motorcycle, this could easily have precipitated a fight. In a brawl, the frail, timid Myer would have been no match for Patrick’s superior strength. Baltimore Sun reporter Dennis O’Brien offered the following scenario: John Myer and Patrick were alone at the parking garage. It was late at night, Patrick wanted his motorcycle. Myer said he couldn’t have it. And that was it. To reinforce their case, prosecutors looked to the case in which, three years earlier, an argument over Patrick’s motorcycle had led to Clinton Riley’s demise. Both deaths had resulted from a series of brutal blows to the head, and both reflected a degree of overkill characteristic of murders committed as a result of uncontrollable rage. But an even more serious flaw than the lack of eyewitnesses and the uncertainty about motive faced Prosecutor Anders: It Deadly Charm 177 178 McCay Vernon and Marie Vernon was possible that Patrick had not been properly advised of his rights when he received the Miranda warning. This brought up the sticky and controversial legal point that if the Miranda were improperly given, any evidence obtained thereafter could be declared inadmissible. By coincidence, Harold Wilson, the interpreter who administered the Miranda warning to McCullough, had, seven years earlier, interpreted in the case of another deaf defendant charged with murder. In that case, the State of Maryland versus Barker, the defendant, like Patrick, could read at only about a third-grade level. When Barker’s defense team had the Miranda waiver analyzed by a reading authority using objective tests, it was determined that an eighth-grade reading level was necessary to read and understand the document. It was also demonstrated that there were no signs for certain key words in the Miranda waiver, and several of these terms had been fingerspelled because of Barker’s reading level. This meant that he had not been administered his rights in a manner comprehensible to him. Consequently, the confession and evidence obtained during Barker’s interrogation was not admissible . Barker, who was clearly guilty of the murder, could not be convicted and was released. In both Barker’s case and Patrick’s, the police were probably not aware that the defendants were incapable of reading the waiver or that it most likely could not be...