Saturday, August 2, 2008

Double homicide in Budville leads to a dramatic trial in Valencia County

La Historia del Rio Abajo is a monthly column about Valencia County history written by members of the Valencia County Historical Society. It is now in its 10th year, without interruption.

This month's article, the second in a two-part series, is based on information gathered from interviews, contemporary newspaper articles, Don Bullis's fictionalized account, "Bloodville," and Billy Wayne Sinclair's autobiography, "A Life in the Balance."

This month's author is a professor of History at the University of New Mexico-Valencia Campus, the vice president of the Valencia County Historical Society and the president of the Historical Society of New Mexico.

Opinions expressed in this and all columns of La Historia del Rio Abajo are the author's alone and not necessarily those of the Valencia County Historical Society or any other group or individual.

Last week's edition of La Historia del Rio Abajo described one of the most sensational murder mysteries in all of Valencia County history.

Bud Rice and his elderly employee, Blanche Brown, had been murdered during a robbery of Rice's trading post in isolated Budville, N.M., on Saturday evening, Nov. 18, 1967.

Despite a massive manhunt, lawmen were frustrated in their efforts to find the killer by early 1968. A young sailor had been arrested and accused of the crime, but had been released for lack of evidence after 18 days in custody.

Then the police got lucky. Three felons, accused of other crimes, offered to share what they knew about the Budville murders in exchange for reduced charges. Both men identified 26-year-old Billy Ray White as the gunman who had eluded detection and arrest for the last three months.

Born in Jasper, Ala., White had been orphaned at an early age and had spent most of his adult life drifting from place to place. With as many as eight aliases (from Rudy Hill to Eric Lee Kendrick), Billy Ray White was a professional criminal with a string of convictions in states across the country. He once told an attorney that prison time was "just the cost of doing business" in his chosen "profession."

As of March 1968, Billy Ray White had become the No. 1 suspect in the brutal slaying of 54-year-old Bud Rice and 82-year-old Blanche Brown.

Unable to find, no less arrest White, the FBI went so far as to place the suspect on its 10 most wanted list in the summer of 1968. The gambit paid off. Within weeks, White was spotted in Springfield, Ill. He was apprehended on Aug. 17, 1968, surrendering to police without incident.

Waiving extradition, White was brought back to New Mexico and arraigned on two counts of first-degree murder. A slim youth with a small goatee, White appeared for his Sept. 28 arraignment at the Valencia County courthouse wearing an old sweatshirt, untied sneakers and no socks.

Made to shave so that he might look more like he would have appeared on the night of the murders, White stood in a line-up to face Aurora "Flossie" Rice, Bud Rice's widow. Flossie identified him as the killer without hesitation.

White was kept under heavy guard at the Albuquerque city jail and, later, at the state penitentiary in Santa Fe until his trial was scheduled to begin in Los Lunas.

In an era before public defenders, the court assigned two Valencia County attorneys to defend White at his upcoming trial. H. Vern Payne of Los Lunas and Mayo T. "Terry" Boucher of Belen were given the legal task.

Vern Payne remembers the first time he met his new client. Considered an escape risk, White was being held in solitary confinement at the Albuquerque city jail. Payne could only talk to White through a small window in White's cell door and with a guard present at all times.

Looking through the cell's window, Payne saw a young man dressed in a jail uniform and wearing sneakers without shoelaces, for security reasons. White was courteous and respectful, always calling his attorney "Mr. Payne." According to Payne, White reminded him of a "Sunday School boy" rather than a hardened criminal.

Having had bad experiences with lawyers in his past, White did not trust Payne initially, especially with a jail guard present to hear his every word. But White eventually opened up to Payne as he saw his court-appointed lawyer consistently work in his behalf in the coming weeks.

In one of several motions, Payne arranged for a psychological evaluation of White, including a truth serum test. The truth serum test revealed that White had been abused as a child. Most relevantly, the test indicated that White was not responsible for the robbery and murders at Budville in November 1967.

Billy Ray White's trial began at the old Valencia County courthouse in Los Lunas on Monday, March 3, 1969. Fifty-five county residents were called for jury selection. Eight women, four men and one alternate were chosen in less than two hours on the trial's first morning.

When asked, each of the 13 jury members had responded that, yes, he or she would be able to serve on a jury in a case that might end with the death penalty. Prosecutors sought nothing less than two first-degree murder convictions.

The young man who appeared in court that Monday morning did not resemble the scruffy-looking youth that had been arraigned the previous September. Gone were his dirty clothes, replaced by a white shirt, a tie and a plaid sports jacket. White's improved image would have a positive impact on the perception of the press, the jury and many in attendance.

The courtroom was packed on March 3, as it would be each day of this sensational trial. In addition to the press, Flossie Rice, her new husband, 33-year-old Max Atkinson, Bud's two daughters from a previous marriage, the daughters' husbands and students from a Los Lunas High School civics class attended daily. Each of these individuals and groups would play an important role in the ensuing drama.

District Court Judge Frank Zinn opened proceedings in an uncomfortably cold courtroom. The courthouse's heating system had broken over the weekend. Zinn ordered his bailiff to install enough portable heaters to assure that the temperature in his courtroom was more comfortable by the afternoon.

Zinn expected some heated moments in Billy Ray White's trial, but the judge could not rely on sparks of controversy to sufficiently heat the cold March days ahead.

After opening statements, the prosecution, led by Assistant District Attorneys Don Wilson and Frederick "Ted" Howden, called its first witness. Not surprisingly, they called Flossie Rice to the stand.

Asked by the prosecution to identify her husband's killer, Flossie answered with a shaky voice. "That's him, right there," she asserted, pointing at the accused. Asked if she had any doubt about her identification, Flossie's voice became firmer, replying, "No doubt whatsoever."

Knowing that Flossie's identification of their client was the most damaging evidence against him, White's defense team cross-examined the widow carefully. The attorneys made much of the fact that Flossie had, in fact, identified two men as the killer: Larry Bunten, the falsely accused sailor, as well as Billy Ray White, the newly accused defendant. How could Flossie have been so positive in her identification of both men? If she had been wrong about Bunten, couldn't she be just as wrong in her identification of White?

White's attorneys also questioned the veracity of Flossie's identification of White because the police had had Flossie hypnotized several times in order to learn more details about the murders. Had Flossie's identification of White been compromised by a post-hypnotic condition? Should White be found guilty, and perhaps be executed in the gas chamber, based on such a questionable identification?

Next, the prosecution called three witnesses who gave increasingly damaging testimony against young Billy Ray White.

Joseph V. Dean, a 33-year-old ex-convict, testified that he had sold White information about three possible targets for a robbery in the Albuquerque area: a bank, a loan company and Bud Rice's Trading Post in Budville. The latter business seemed like a particularly easy mark because it was so isolated on old Route 66, after the recent construction of I-40. It was also rumored that Rice kept a lot of cash on hand from his towing business, from his store and from the high fines he imposed on speeders in his role as the local justice of the peace.

Dean testified that he had also helped White by "test driving" (stealing) a 1966 or 1967 blue Chevrolet at the Lloyd McKee car dealership in Albuquerque. Dean told the court that he had left the stolen vehicle for White to use in his anticipated crime.

Thirty-year-old David L. Patterson was called to the witness stand next. Patterson testified that he saw bloodstained clothes in White's bathroom when he went to Billy Ray White's apartment on the morning after the murder-robbery. Most damagingly, the heavily tattooed felon recalled White saying that things had gone badly with the robbery and that he had had to "wipe a couple of people out."

A third felon, Joe Cruz, testified for the prosecution that he had provided the gun White had used in Budville on Nov. 18, 1967. David Patterson added that he and White had disposed of the weapon after the crime by throwing it in an irrigation ditch off Rio Bravo Boulevard in Albuquerque's South Valley. The police had recovered the gun, which was entered as the main piece of evidence against White.

White's attorneys cross-examined Dean, Patterson and Cruz, focusing on their credibility as felons eager to make deals with the district attorney to have charges against them dismissed, even at the price of framing their friend and putting his life at risk in a capital crime.

Prosecutor Howden knew that this would be a problem for the prosecution's case. Years later, he still insists "you can't always call a bank president or a church leader as witnesses. You simply have to go with what you've got, for better or for worse."

The defense's first witness was hardly more credible. When the prosecution rested on Wednesday, March 5, attorneys Payne and Boucher called Richard Wehmeir to prove White's alibi that he was hundreds of miles away in East St. Louis on the night that Bud Rice and Blanche Brown were killed.

Richard Wehmeir was Billy Ray White's former cellmate in a federal prison in Terre Haute, Ind. Wehmeir's criminal record was as long, if not longer than his jailhouse friend's. Wehmeir testified that he and White had spent Saturday, Nov. 18, 1967, in an East St. Louis motel room, drinking and carousing with two women.

But who could believe Wehmeir's story, especially when he could not remember the name or address of the East St. Louis motel he and White supposedly stayed in? And who could believe Wehmeir when he had been heard in the hall outside the courtroom claiming that his sole interest in coming to New Mexico was to "spring Billy Ray"?

Despite these glaring problems with Richard Wehmeir's testimony and behavior, defense attorney Payne had great faith in his star witness, 35-year-old Lyle Craig Boren. Payne says that Boren "clinched it for us" when he testified that he had seen Billy Ray White in Missouri, where White had sold him a bottle of good whiskey for just $4 a week before Thanksgiving in 1967.

Boren seemed believable because he was a disabled Korean War veteran whose only conviction had been for disturbing the peace. Boren seemed far too innocent to lie for a friend or for anyone else.

Relying on Boren's testimony, questioning the prosecution's witnesses and doubting Flossie's ability to identify the killer, Vern Payne told the jury, "It is beyond my comprehension how the state can ask the death penalty on such flimsy evidence, full of inconsistencies, the evidence of scoundrels and a woman who, however well intentioned, put another man (wrongly accused sailor Larry Bunten) in jail for three weeks."

The defense never called White to the stand to testify in his own behalf. His attorneys knew that if White appeared on the stand the prosecution could ask him anything they wanted about his past, including several previous crimes that sounded very much like the modus operandi used in the Budville robbery and murder.

As White later told a reporter, he agreed not to testify because he knew "the state would make me look like the lowest thing that ever crawled." Such testimony would surely compromise White's "Sunday school" image and undoubtedly seal his fate.

In a real sense, the defense had let White testify for himself by simply having him sit in court looking as clean-cut and innocent as possible. Even assistant D.A. Ted Howden recalls how White's appearance helped his defense, noting that "to look at him you couldn't help but like him."

The presence of the Los Lunas High School class only reinforced White's image as an innocent looking, wrongly accused youth. Although at least eight years their senior, White looked young enough to be their high school classmate rather than a hardened criminal who could have robbed a business and cold-bloodedly killed two people, including Blanche Brown, an 82-year-old retired schoolteacher.

The defense rested on Thursday, March 6. Following a rebuttal and closing arguments, the case was handed to the jury at 4:12 that afternoon. The jury deliberated for less than two hours before announcing that they had reached a verdict at 6:06 p.m.

The crowded courtroom fell silent as the jury foreman stood to read the verdict. To the surprise of many, the jury declared Billy Ray White innocent of all charges against him.

Many in the courtroom cheered, especially the students from the Los Lunas High School civics class. A jubilant White shook hands and accepted congratulations. A woman in the crowd reportedly rushed forward to tell White, "God bless you, Billy Ray."

But the drama was not over. Flossie sobbed uncontrollably when she heard the verdict. Expressing his outrage in a different way, Flossie's new husband, Max Atkinson, jumped over the railing that separated the defendant's table from the rest of the courtroom. Wielding a knife, Atkinson attacked White, seeking the justice he and Flossie believed the young man deserved.

Vern Payne remembers Atkinson's attack like it was yesterday. Standing next to White, Payne recalls seeing Bud Rice's son-in-law rush forward to stop the assault. A policeman from Arizona, the son-in-law probably saved White's life, not to mention attorney Payne's.

Assistant D.A. Wilson was shaken by Atkinson's attack, but was even more shaken by the jury's verdict. Wilson called the verdict "a serious blow against law and order." He declared that he had "never prosecuted a case in which I had more evidence against a defendant."

But the jury clearly disagreed. Four members of the panel later told a reporter that "no member (of the jury) felt the state had presented concrete proof" of White's guilt. Circumstantial evidence just wasn't enough, they added, "when you have a man's life in your hands."

Thus ended one of the most dramatic trials in Valencia County history. But Billy Ray White's moment of victory was short-lived. Extradited to Louisiana, he faced trial for similar crimes committed just two months prior to the tragedy in Budville.

In sharp contrast to the outcome of his trial in New Mexico, Billy Ray White was found guilty of all charges brought against him in Louisiana. The court sentenced him to a long prison term in the Louisiana state penitentiary at Angola.

Despite his conviction in Louisiana, White was always grateful to his defense attorneys in Valencia County. Vern Payne recalls receiving Christmas cards from White with vague promises of "putting bread on your table someday." Payne always worried that White would keep this promise, showing up at the attorney's office bearing a TV or some other stolen goods as illicit tokens of his appreciation for saving him from the gas chamber in New Mexico.

To Payne's relief, White never appeared with a gift in hand. On the contrary, Billy Ray White died in the Louisiana state penitentiary on June 8, 1974. An apparent suicide, White had reportedly confessed to a fellow inmate that he was, in fact, guilty of the Budville robbery and murders.

Attorney Payne never believed the story of White's prison confession and suicide, especially because White was due to be paroled in just five months. According to Payne, who got to know White rather well before and during his trial, White simply wanted to do his time in prison so he could be released and continue his life of crime. When Payne had asked White what he intended to do if he was found innocent in 1969, White had told his lawyer that he had every intention of going back to his previous life as a pimp and a thief.

Vern Payne has defended hundreds of men and women in his long legal career. In the vast majority of cases, he's been able to conclude whether his clients have been innocent or guilty. But to this day he is not sure about Billy Ray White.

But if White didn't commit the Budville crimes, who did?

When interviewed, some jury members say they suspected that Flossie and Max Atkinson were somehow involved. How else to explain the fact that Flossie was spared by the robber, while Bud and Blanche were not?

Vern Payne remembers a rather mysterious visit by Nettie Buckley's sister to his office before White's 1969 trial had begun. Nettie Buckley, a Rice family employee who had hidden in the trading post's bathroom while the robbery and murders were taking place, had recently died of an apparent heart attack. Nettie's sister told Vern Payne that she was sure that Flossie and Max had kept Nettie in isolation since the murders and had denied her medical assistance when she most needed it because they feared that she would implicate Flossie and Max in court. Payne mentioned this accusation to the district attorney's office, but to no avail before or during Billy Ray White's trial.

Like Nettie Buckley's sister, some jury members were especially suspicious of Max Atkinson, a dark character who had married Flossie shortly after the murders took place. The jury could not have known that Atkinson could not have committed the murders because he had an airtight alibi of his own. A convicted felon, Atkinson had spent all of 1967 (including the night of the killings) in an Arizona state prison cell.

(Max Atkinson, who took over Bud's businesses and succeeded in alienating most of the Budville community, was killed during an argument on June 7, 1973. After marrying a third time, Flossie died of natural causes on April 10, 1994.)

Who else could have killed Bud Rice and Blanche Brown? Was it someone Bud had angered in his political life or business dealings in western Valencia County? Was it someone connected to a Texas drug trial in which Bud had testified just days before he was killed?

After so many years and with the deaths of so many key players, the crime will probably never be solved.

Perhaps the best we can say is that the decline of Route 66, the famous old route that had been Bud Rice's main source of income and power for so long, had as much to do with Rice's death as any living mortal. When the new super highway, I-40, had bypassed Route 66, the traffic that normally flowed by Bud's trading post dried up, leaving the store and its owner vulnerable to intrusion and murder on a dark Saturday night in November 1967.

Bud Rice had fought against the construction of I-40 to save his economic and political life in the mid 1960s. Little did he know at the time that he was also fighting against the increased isolation that would ultimately take his mortal life as well.

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