Blood Will Tell: A Shocking True Story of Marriage, Murder, and Fatal Family Secrets

by Carlton Smith

Overview

They Were The Perfect Family. . .

For twenty years, Ken and Kristine Fitzhugh and their two sons had lived lives of comfortable middle-class normality in the university town of Palo Alto, California. Then came the shocking news that Kristine Fitzhugh was dead, the victim of a terrible accident... By the time the Palo Alto Police Department looked closer at the death of Kristine Fitzhugh, there could be only one conclusion. Someone had murdered Kristine in her own home, inflicting a series of horrific blows to the back of her head, and then cleaned up the mess to make it look like an accident. Who would do such a thing? Protesting his innocence, Kenneth Fitzhugh was arrested and tried for the murder of his wife. And as the case progressed, one by one, the hidden secrets of the Fitzhugh family came spilling out. . .

Blood Will Tell is the shocking true story of a seemingly happy family and the deadly secrets that led to murder.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781429908870
Publisher:	St. Martin's Publishing Group
Publication date:	02/17/2003
Sold by:	Macmillan
Format:	eBook
Pages:	336
Sales rank:	734,429
File size:	987 KB

About the Author

Carlton Smith was an award-winning journalist for The Los Angeles Times and The Seattle Times in the 1970s and 1980s. A finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in investigative reporting in 1988, he now works full-time as a true crime author. He lives in San Francisco.

Carlton Smith (1947-2011) was the coauthor of the New York Times bestseller The Search for the Green River Killer: The True Story of America’s Most Prolific Serial Killer with Tomás Guillén, about the crimes of Gary Ridgway. They were Pulitzer Prize finalists in 1988 for their investigative reporting on the case.

An award-winning journalist for The Los Angeles Times and The Seattle Times during the 1970s and 1980s, Carlton was also the author of the true crime books Blood Money: The Du Pont Heir and the Murder of an Olympic Athlete and Reckless: Millionaire Record Producer Phil Spector and the Violent Death of Lana Clarkson, among many others.

Read an Excerpt

CHAPTER 1

MULE CREEK

JUST outside of lone, California, a small town nestled in the foothills of the old gold-mining country of the Sierra Nevada, atop a small rise, lies Mule Creek State Prison — a series of low buildings, an unattended guardhouse, a parking lot, an administration building, and, behind tall chain-link fences topped with barbed wire, three "yards," or cellblocks, each of them containing involuntary guests of the State of California.

A visitor to these precincts, which were erected in 1985 by then — California Governor George Deukmejian — a former State Attorney General and a law-and-order man of storied repute — must gain access through a closely scrutinized portal. No wallets may be taken through; no writing implements of any kind; no papers; no portable telephones, no tapes, no recorders, and of course, no weapons. Only a single key is permitted, and no more than thirty dollars, and that only in one-dollar bills — — change machines on the left before you enter.

Shoes off before stepping through the magnetometer, followed by a wave of the wand to make sure one is sans metal. Then into the sally port through a rolling electronic gate. Wait until all is clear, then through a similar rolling barrier at the far end of the sally port.

Through the sunny interior courtyard to the "C" Yard, where a pass is checked by a guard in front of a sturdy, locked door. The pass is given to another guard, and after some delay, the man you have come to see finally emerges from the interior of the prison.

He is small, this man, and friendly. His once dark hair is now almost completely white. It looks as though he's lost weight, as he approaches, hand held out in greeting.

Sit down at table number 13 in the cacophonous visiting area, surrounded by other inmates with their children, wives and parents — all under the watchful eye of the guards.

How do you feel? — that's the question of the day.

"I feel cheated," says Kenneth Carroll Fitzhugh, Jr. "I'm not guilty and I'm in here."

CHAPTER 2

THE HOUSE ON ESCOBITA AVENUE

MAY 5, the year of Our Lord, 2000. Cinco de Mayo, as some would have it. The 138th anniversary of the defeat of Emperor Maximilian by the peasant army of Benito Juarez. Puebla, Mexico, that was. A cause for celebration then, as now.

Time for a party.

A party, all right, but not for the victory of the fifth of May. Instead, a party for Gaelyn Mason's birthday, which wasn't on the fifth of May, but close enough to it so it didn't really matter. A party was a party, no matter what the occasion. And this would be a teachers' night out: the Big Casino. A craps table. Roulette wheel. The Wheel of Fortune. Bets in funny scrip. Gaiety. Shrieks of laughter. Chances taken, won and lost. A Saturday night's detour to the slightly risqué green felt jungle, a little harmless fun — all right there in staid, buttoned-down Palo Alto, home of "The Farm," Leland Stanford Junior University, one of the country's top ten institutions of higher learning, according to anyone's list.

Cinco de Mayo, the fifth of May. Time to go pick up the gambling apparati — might as well be literally precise — from the rental outfit in San Jose. Gaelyn waits in the little house she shares with her friend and roommate, Carol Piraino, not far from the Caltrain tracks that bisect the university town. Gaelyn is a fifth-grade teacher for the Palo Alto Unified School District, while Carol is an elementary school principal. Today, though, they're taking the day off — to get ready for the party. They're waiting for their friend, Ken Fitzhugh, Jr., to come in his Chevrolet Suburban truck — or is it a van? — with his two dogs, Boots the standard-bred poodle and tiny Reina the Pomeranian. So the five of them, Ken, Gaelyn, Carol and the two dogs, can drive to San Jose in the Suburban to pick up the gambling equipment for Gaelyn's birthday party on Saturday night, the sixth of May, which is nobody's national holiday, but it is a Saturday, thank God, no school.

One-thirty P.M., and there he is, right on time, just as expected, little Ken in his big truck, with dogs as promised, ready to be of service. Ken is always as punctual as he is helpful, Gaelyn knows. After all, he is an adult, she thinks, momentarily forgetting that she is an adult too, even if Ken is almost old enough to be her father. But Ken is — what's the word? — responsible, Galen thinks, which means if Ken says he'll do something, he will do it.

Ken pulls the Suburban to a stop at the curb a couple of doors away from the front of Gaelyn and Carol's house, not far from the abundant shade trees that make Palo Alto one of the leafiest cities in America. He gets out of the truck, dressed in black jeans, a plaid shirt, white sweat socks, leather loafers — White socks and leather loafers! Gaelyn thinks — his prematurely gray hair slightly too long, his eyes calm behind his large, wire-framed glasses. Gaelyn will remember for a long time how Ken looks this day, she just doesn't know it yet.

Ken comes up to her while she's putting an ice cooler into the front seat of her car.

"You'll never be able to drive with that thing in there," he advises her. That was typical of Ken: a fount of expert advice, at least to women, whether wanted or not. Ken's observation is so sensible it's almost irritating. Carol bites back the tart retort that bubbles up, and mildly tells Ken that it will be all right.

They head for the boxy blue Suburban, but not before Carol goes back into the house; she's forgotten something. Ken gets behind the wheel. Gaelyn gets in the front passenger seat. She has no way of knowing that any of this will be important later. They say nothing to each other for the few minutes that pass until Carol comes out of the house and locks the front door behind her. She'd forgotten her purse, Carol explains, as she gets into the second seat of the Suburban, behind Gaelyn, with the dogs.

Ken starts the truck.

Oh, by the way, he says, pulling away from the curb, do they mind if they stop at the Fitzhugh house first? He wants to check on Kristine, his wife, and Gaelyn and Carol's friend, also a school teacher. He just had a call from the school district, Ken says, and it looks like Kristine missed her 12:50 P.M. class. A brief stop at the Fitzhugh house, some three minutes away, and then they will be on their way to get the gambling stuff for the party.

Ken guides the Suburban north on Alma, next to the tracks, on his way to the Fitzhugh home on Escobita Avenue. Gaelyn, Carol and Ken all try to remember what Kristine's class schedule is, but nobody can keep it straight because it always seems to be changing. Maybe Kristine just got confused and went to the wrong school, someone suggests. But it isn't really like Kristine, who is so organized as to be almost obsessive.

Ken turns left on Churchill Avenue, crosses the tracks, and makes another quick left to the small side street in the Southgate neighborhood of Palo Alto, Castilleja Avenue, then a quick right onto Manzanita, another left onto Escobita. The streets here are extremely narrow, so skinny that cars have to take turns to pass each other. Ken swerves the Suburban to a stop in front of the Fitzhugh house without bothering to park, shuts off the engine and heads for the front door, which appears to be partially open.

Gaelyn and Carol watch as Ken goes inside, leaving the front door open wider, and runs up the stairs to the second floor of the house. Both of them have been in the house many, many times over the years; they consider Kristine and Ken Fitzhugh among their very best friends.

A few seconds later they see Ken come down the stairs, then make a right turn to go down the hallway deeper into the house. Less than a minute passes, and suddenly Ken is coming out of the front door, yelling something.

"Come help me!" he says. For just an instant, Gaelyn thinks maybe Ken is playing a practical joke on her for her birthday. She thinks Ken and Kristine have planned this all out, and there's some sort of birthday surprise inside the house.

"Is he kidding?" Gaelyn asks Carol, but Carol doesn't think he is; this is serious. They get out of the car, head for the front door. Ken has already disappeared back inside the house. They push open the front door in time to see Ken turn right into a doorway that leads to the basement landing. Gaelyn and Carol follow, and as they come onto the small landing, they look down and see Ken standing over Kristine, whose head is at the bottom landing of the stairs, feet trailing back up the steps toward them. She's face-down and isn't moving, and neither is Ken ...

"Oh my God, there's blood everywhere," Ken says. "I can't get a pulse, call 911."

Gaelyn and Carol back out of the landing into the hallway, across the hallway and into the kitchen. Carol picks up the Fitzhughs' cordless phone and dials the emergency center while Gaelyn hovers nearby. It's almost exactly 1:40 P.M. The emergency operator wants to know the address and suddenly Carol's mind is a blank. She runs down the hallway to the front door, Gaelyn trailing behind her, to see the numbers of the outside of the Fitzhugh house. Carol tells the emergency operator the address, and says that someone has fallen, is badly hurt, and that help is needed in a hurry. The emergency operator tells Carol that help is on the way. The call is ended. Carol and Gaelyn go back inside the house, back to the landing. They look down the steps, and there is Ken, still standing near Kristine's head, and Kristine still hasn't moved, and neither has Ken.

"Call 911," Ken says, again, and Carol tells him she already has. "Do either of you know CPR?" Ken asks.

Gaelyn and Carol look at one another. They're supposed to know CPR; it's part of their training as teachers. But Gaelyn is afraid. She's never done CPR for real. What if she makes a mistake? Still, Ken is insisting, and the next thing she knows, she's come down the stairs near Kristine's feet. Ken is saying something about turning Kristine over so they can start the CPR, and before Gaelyn knows it she and Ken are turning Kristine over so she's face-up. Ken has pulled Kristine off the lower landing onto the cement floor. He is still talking and vaguely Gaelyn hears him saying something about Kristine not breathing, that she may be dead, but that they have to try. He tells Gaelyn to begin chest compressions while he tries to blow air into Kristine's lungs. A gurgling noise comes from Kristine's throat or chest, Gaelyn isn't sure which, and now she sees a pool of red; it's blood, oozing from the back of Kristine's head, a pool that seems to grow larger as Gaelyn begins the compressions.

In between breaths, Ken looks up at Gaelyn.

"Those shoes, those God damn shoes," Ken tells Gaelyn between breaths. "She must have fallen in those shoes. I told her to throw them away a thousand times."

He nods at the stairs behind them, and Gaelyn sees a black sandal lying on its side on the left side of one of the stairs. Ken says something more about the shoe on the stairs, that Kristine must have fallen while she was taking the dry-cleaning down into the basement. Gaelyn realizes that Kristine is lying atop a plastic dry-cleaning bag, that she must have been carrying the bag down the steps when she slipped and fell. Ken is saying that Kristine must have knocked herself out in the fall and suffocated on the plastic.

Carol appears again at the top of the stairs.

"They're coming," she says, and Gaelyn and Ken can hear sirens in the distance. They continue with the CPR. Between his breaths, Ken and Gaelyn try to figure out how long Kristine might have been lying there before they discovered her. Still Kristine doesn't move, or breathe.

The sirens are getting louder now, and the next thing Gaelyn is aware of is the firemen coming down into the basement with their resuscitation equipment. They tell Gaelyn and Ken to stop, they will take over, and as they begin to set up their equipment, Gaelyn notices that a large brass ship's bell is on the lower landing near the dry-cleaning, and in a place where it seems likely that Kristine may have fallen into it, striking her head when she slipped. One of the three firemen shoves the bell and the dry-cleaning away from Kristine so they can have more room to work.

"You did a good job," one of the firemen tells Ken as he unpacks his gear.

Gaelyn is backing away from Kristine now as the firemen insert a plastic intubation tube down her throat and cut away her clothing. As Gaelyn backs away, she sees it's too crowded to go back up the stairs. She sees Ken stepping around Kristine, and begin to climb anyway. He's holding his hands vertically, away from his body in a ninety-degree angle, almost as if he were a surgeon waiting to be gloved, and Gaelyn realizes his hands are dripping with blood, and so is his face and mouth. In fact, there is a large pool of blood now spreading from Kristine's head across the basement floor. Gaelyn is feeling trapped, stuck in a nightmare, but there's no exit. Then she remembers that there are two storm doors into the rear of the basement, so she goes to the doors, forces them open and emerges into the Fitzhugh back yard. The last thing she sees before leaving is Ken going up the stairs, bloody hands raised ...

Palo Alto Police Officer Sascha Priess gets the call at the same time as the firemen, but the firemen beat him to the house on Escobita Avenue. Still, it's only a matter of seconds. At 1:47 P.M. on May 5, Priess is already out of his patrol car and heading into the Fitzhugh house, on the heels of the fire department. As he walks into the house through the open door, Priess sees Carol Piraino. Carol is still holding the Fitzhughs' cordless phone. Priess asks Carol where the victim was, and Carol nods toward the basement door.

Priess goes to the head of the basement stairs and walks partway down. He sees two firemen bending over Kristine, but no one else. He notices a large pool of blood beneath Kristine's head on the concrete basement floor. Some sort of communication — whether a raised eyebrow, a shake of the head or actual words, it later isn't clear — but some sort of signal passes between one of the firemen and Priess. Priess turns around and returns to the ground floor hallway, and asks Carol what's happened.

Carol explains that they have just found Kristine lying at the bottom of the stairs, that the front door was open, that Kristine's husband Ken was the one who found her. As he listens to Carol, Priess is facing down the hallway toward the basement landing, so he now sees Ken when he comes up from the basement, bloody hands raised at the ninety-degree angle. Either Priess hasn't noticed him before or Ken was temporarily out of sight when Priess first went down. Ken doesn't say a word, but turns right and walks down the hallway, hands still raised in the vertical position. Priess watches as Ken disappears into another room at the end of the central hallway.

It's been less than two minutes since Priess' arrival just before 1:47 P.M. Priess sees a pair of paramedics go by, headed for the basement with their collapsible gurney. The next thing Priess knows, another Palo Alto police officer, Tom Pohl, is entering the house. It is 1:49 P.M. Priess tells Pohl the victim is in the basement. Pohl goes past Priess to the basement landing and disappears. As Priess talks to Carol, Ken emerges from the room at the end of the hallway and begins walking toward them. Pohl emerges from the door to the basement landing just as Ken begins to go back downstairs. Pohl stops him, and he and Ken come down the hallway toward Priess and Carol. Pohl is saying something to Ken, Priess isn't sure what. Priess takes the cordless telephone from Carol and walks past Ken and Pohl, looking into each of the rooms off the hallway. He realizes that the room Ken has just gone into and come out of is a bathroom, and that he has gone in there to wash the blood off his face and hands.

As he reaches the end of the hallway, Priess goes into another room, this one the Fitzhugh family room, and now that he's by himself, calls his station on his handheld radio. From his own observations, and from whatever passed between him and the firemen downstairs, Priess is pretty sure this is no accident. There's simply too much blood.

SOME of the smartest people in the world live in Palo Alto, California. There, in the reflected brain glow cast off by Stanford University, nearly 60,000 souls reside, the overwhelming majority of them white, wealthy, and extremely well-educated. Along its leafy narrow neighborhood streets, Mercedeses, BMWs, Audis and Lexuses abound, nestled securely in tidy driveways abutted by neatly edged lawns and carefully trimmed shrubs fronting shingled, two-story abodes symbolic of an earlier, saner era, when neighborhoods were sanctuaries, when everyone knew everyone else, when the idea of murder was something that only happened in the pages of delightful mystery novels, and even at that was almost always entirely fastidious.

(Continues…)

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Excerpted from "Blood Will Tell"
by .
Copyright © 2003 Carlton Smith.
Excerpted by permission of St. Martin's Press.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.

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Table of Contents

Title Page,
MULE CREEK,
THE HOUSE ON ESCOBITA AVENUE,
THE CASTLE,
THE TRIAL OF KENNETH CARROLL FITZHUGH, JR.,
DEL MAR, CALIFORNIA,
St. Martin's Paperbacks True Crime Library Titles by Carlton Smith,
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS,
Copyright Page,