By Donald McDonald
Edited
by Natalie Smith Parra, JD Editor
Justice:Denied
magazine, Issue 26, page 3
My
name is Donald Charles McDonald, but my nickname since childhood has
been Mac. I have been wrongly imprisoned in the state of Alaska for
over 18 years for a murder I did not commit.
I
lived on Kodiak Island in 1986. That is where I was arrested along
with James (Jim) John Kerwin and Jack Anton Ibach, in the
disappearance of Jack’s ex-wife Laura Lee Ibach (Henderson) on
March 28, 1986. I met Jim Kerwin in 1985 and we became casual
friends. Laura Ibach was a woman friend of mine who was the ex-wife
of Jack Ibach, who I had seen several times around Kodiak, but didn’t
know.
As
you will see, the prosecution’s case hinged on the supposition
that Laura and I were strangers who hadn’t met prior to about 3
p.m. on March 28, 1986. However our friendship was attested to at my
trial (in Anchorage) by at least two witnesses, Laura’s friend
Debbie Lesser, and my friend Jack Buckalew. They both testified that
Laura and I had been introduced to each other prior to March 28th and
that Laura, several of her friends, and I, had socialized at Kodiak
bars on multiple occasions.
The
Events of March 28, 1986
On
the day of Laura’s disappearance, I went to see her at the
Kodiak Women’s Resource Center (KWRCC) around 3 p.m. That is
where Laura worked, and I asked her if she would be my date at a
street dance I was co-hosting the next day, to raise money for
Kodiak’s Hope House (a drug and alcohol rehabilitation
facility) where I was residing. Laura politely declined my
invitation, but said she might see me there. While I was at the
KWRCC, Laura asked me if I could find her some cocaine. She then told
me she would be on Shelikof Street to meet some people around 9 p.m.,
and asked me if I could come by and let her know whether or not I
could find her the drugs. I had been out of the world of illegal
drugs for quite some time so I never intended to look for any cocaine
for Laura. Since I had been clean and sober for months I wasn’t
going to find her any drugs, but I didn’t tell her that
outright because I didn’t want to tick her off. Although it was
the reason for me to see Laura for what would be the last time, and
it may have had something to do with her disappearance, the judge
barred any mention of Laura’s drug use at both my trial, and my
retrial.
On the evening of March 28, 1986, Jim and I ate dinner
at Reentry Dorms, and then went to McDonald’s restaurant for
dessert. The housemother where I lived, Gladys Baldwin, accompanied
us. We drove around for a short time and then took Gladys back to
Reentry Dorms because she was tired. Jim and I decided to continue
our Friday night cruise around the town of Kodiak. We drove south on
Shelikof Street to its southern terminus city dock. I must guess it
was about 9 p.m., since I did not have a clock in my van. Laura came
up to my van and got in. However she left after five minutes at the
most, when I told her I wasn’t going to find her any cocaine.
When she exited my van, Laura must have walked toward the B&B
Bar, opposite of the way my van was parked. I never saw her again.
After Laura left my van, Jim and I remained parked for several
minutes while I started the engine and warmed it up before leaving.
It was a Friday night and we cruised around town some more before I
went home around 10:00 p.m. I told Jim he could sleep in my van.
Matthew (Matt) D. Jamin was Laura’s divorce
lawyer. Jack Ibach and Laura Henderson, due to the bifurcated
divorce, shared custody of the couple’s daughters and Jack
approved of that arrangement. However Laura was seeking full custody
so she and the children could move to Oregon with her parents. With
shared custody she would be unable to move the children out of state.
Albert (Al) Huff Ruble was a private investigator who worked with
Jamin on cases such as Laura’s custody dispute.
Although
Laura said nothing to me about it when I saw her that afternoon, two
of Laura’s co-workers later told the police that she told them
she was planning to meet “Matt” at 9 p.m. near the B&B
Bar on Shelikof Street, down by the harbor. The B&B Bar and the
small boat harbor are about 20 yards apart at the opposite end of the
road from the King Crab Cannery. Suzanne Hinson, one of Laura’s
co-workers, wrote in her March 29th Kodiak Police Department (KPD)
statement that Laura told her “Matt had a tape.” There
has never been an adequate explanation about the 9 p.m. meeting that
Hinson said Laura was to have with Matt - after
she left my van - at what happened to be her last known whereabouts.
The contents of the mysterious tape - or if it ever existed - is
likewise unknown.
Another one of Laura’s co-workers told a little
different version of Laura’s planned meeting. She said Laura
told her that Ruble and Matt Jamin would be “watching on”
at 9 p.m. on Shelikof Street, because she never met and didn’t
know the man who was supposedly going to give her a tape to use
against her ex-husband in their custody dispute.
Although some of Laura’s actions and words after 3
p.m on March 28th are open for interpretation, one thing is certain:
It is impossible that Laura was referring to me, because I not only
knew Laura, but I had seen and talked with her for 10-15 minutes at
the KWRCC that very afternoon, and there were witnesses to verify it.
Yet after Laura’s disappearance, the police and prosecutors
choose this as the version they wanted to accept as true, perhaps
because the other version directly implicated Matt Jamin and Al Ruble
in Laura’s disappearance. However the only way I could be
implicated as the mysterious stranger was for the police and
prosecutors to claim that I had never met her - which is exactly what
they did.
Jamin’s version of the events of March 28th, is
that he met with Laura at his office around 4 p.m. He says she told
him she was going to meet “this fellow” later that
evening to get information to use against her ex-husband. Jamin said
he called Ruble to get his opinion on the situation, and that they
decided Ruble would conduct surveillance of Laura that night.
Ruble testified he was alone on Shelikof Street, and
even though he was supposedly there to conduct surveillance, he
doesn’t have a photo log of the events around 9 p.m. He says
that around 9:08 p.m. he drove north on Shelikof since Laura was
late, and he noticed Laura sitting in a white van. Ruble claims he
continued on about 100 yards, parked, and then walked toward the van
before turning and going around a building. Ruble says that when he
emerged from behind the north side of the Cannery dorm building the
white van was gone, and although the car she had been driving was
parked there, he didn’t see Laura.
Jamin
and Ruble both testified that at around 9:20 p.m. they simultaneously
reached the parking lot of Jamin’s law office building for an
arranged 9:30 meeting with Laura. (To demonstrate how contrived this
story is, ask yourself, when was the last time your
lawyer met you at his office
to discuss business at 9:30 on a Friday night
- likely never.) Their story is that Ruble told Jamin what had
happened. Yet it wasn’t until about 10 p.m., around an hour or
more after Ruble alleged he saw Laura in my van and 40 minutes after
they said they met, that Ruble and Jamin began informing her family
members and friends that she was missing. They provided them with a
description of me and my van. Laura’s stepfather Gib Munro said
that around 11:30 p.m. he saw my white van in the parking lot of my
residence. Yet even though it had been parked there for 1-1/2 hours,
Ruble and Jamin, both so terribly concerned about Laura, hadn’t
bothered to drive by Hope House, even though later that night they
told the police they knew my van was the last place Ruble saw her!
However it has been established that my van was at Hope House by at
least 10:30 p.m., because that is when it was seen in the parking lot
by Barbara Yara, the managing supervisor of the facility.
Ruble was at the KPD during the midnight shift change
and convinced Cpl. Michael H. Andre to drive to my address. Shortly
after midnight Andre arrived at my residence and documented that he
saw my parked van. When he looked inside he could see the outline of
a person, who he learned was Jim sleeping when he investigated.
Search of McDonald’s 1966 Dodge van turns up
zip
My
1966 white Dodge window van with side cargo doors was seized the next
morning, March 29th, and transported to the KPD’s secure
impound garage. The next day two KPD detectives spent 12 man-hours
conducting a minute criminal inspection of my van to collect any and
all possible evidence that might indicate a connection between the
van and Laura’s disappearance. One of those detectives was
William A. Walton, who said in a 1999 interview, that his conclusion
after the search was that nothing of a violent nature took
place in my van. No
incriminating blood, skin, hair or fingerprints were found. The
fingerprints of 59 people were found in my van, but not the prints of
either Laura or Jack. Neither was there any indication that a
struggle or violence had occurred in my van.
One
feather was found on the floor of the passenger side and there was a
cracked window on one of the side cargo doors. The Kodiak Police
Department called for FBI expertise. The examination of the feather
was inconclusive. While it was not excluded as originating from
feather filled items I had in my van, including a blanket, a sleeping
bag and a jacket, neither was it excluded as being consistent with
the filling in the coat Laura allegedly wore the night of her
disappearance. However even if it did come from her coat, it doesn’t
mean anything, because she was
in my van for about five minutes that night.
Although the prosecution speculated that my van’s
window was cracked during a struggle about 12 hours before the van
was impounded, there was no tissue or blood residue, or any other
evidence that a human body part had cracked the window. The truth is
the window was cracked months before by a sliding tool box.
There was an issue of hair samples recovered from my
van; however, KPD declined to submit any hair samples for comparison.
Their explanation was that there was no way they could know which
hairs recovered from Laura’s apartment would be hers for
certain, so trying to compare hairs found at the apartment to the
ones they sucked up in their police vacuuming of my van would be a
futile effort. However that is contradicted by the record of a Kodiak
police investigator entering Laura’s apartment after March 30,
for the purpose of recovering hair samples from Laura’s comb,
and a bandana that she wore when she played racquetball. A question
that has not been answered is did the KPD attempt, but fail to match
hairs found in my van with hair from Laura’s comb and bandana?
Although testing of cigarette butts found in my van’s
ashtray were deemed inconclusive as to whether they could be linked
to Laura, there is no record that any of her brand of cigarettes was
found in the van.
The police also compared soil samples from the place
they said I drove that night with Laura, with soil samples from all
over the van, including under the frame, in the tire grooves, under
the bumpers, and inside the van. Although none of soil matched, that
fact was not brought up at the trial.
On Monday, March 31, 1986, my van had been thoroughly
gone through by KPD with a fine toothed comb. There was nothing found
in it to indicate I had anything to do with Laura’s
disappearance. On March 31, two days after my arrest, records show
that my van was released and towed to a Kodiak wrecking yard owned by
Bruce St. Pierre. The yard had a covered Quonset-style warehouse and
Kodiak contracted with Bruce to retain vehicles. However unlike the
KPD’s secure impound yard, where my van was stored at Bruce’s
wrecking yard is not secure, and Bruce St. Pierre testified to that
fact at my trial. That lack of security became an important issue in
my case.
Oops! Someone put a Band-Aid in the wrong pink shoe!
Laura’s
mother mentioned to KPD investigator William E. Rhodes that she was
wearing designer jeans, a belt with a heart shaped buckle, a mauve
down-filled coat, pinkish tennis shoes, and white porcelain earrings
with a purple flower painted on them. Clothing items consistent with
her description were later found over a period of months along a two
mile stretch of Monashka Bay below the cliff from which the
prosecution alleged Jim and I tossed Laura into the water. However
Kitty Munro also mentioned Laura was wearing a type and color of
shirt that was never recovered, and she didn’t mention a purse
that was recovered. Considering the discrepancies between Kitty
Munro’s description of Laura’s attire and what was and
wasn’t found, it is possible that none of the recovered items
were Laura’s, particularly since none of the items were
positively identified as hers. However the purse did have something
in it that is rather curious - Laura’s old
identification, and it is also curious that nothing in the purse
indicated she had it the night of her disappearance. The questions
raised by the clothing found on the beach were compounded by the
bizarre circumstance of how a “pinkish tennis shoe” was
discovered, and what was found inside of it.
One of the most interesting details that Kitty described
was the shoes. In the latter pages of the April 3, 1986 KPD Rhodes
interview, Kitty describes them as women’s size 9, pinkish
suede with gray swatch reinforcements. She says they were Velcro tie
tennis shoes. Without being asked Kitty volunteers that Laura had
planter wart surgery and wore Band-Aids until her wounds healed. No
one asked or determined from which foot the warts had been removed.
On
April 13, 1986, a beachcomber, Dennis Pederson, was wandering the
shores of Monashka Bay near Pillar Point. He noticed a tennis shoe in
the tidal wash and felt that it might be significant. It was sodden
pink and had a Band-Aid in it. He threw the shoe into an area above
the high tide line. Kitty Munro learned of the shoe and on Sunday,
April 21, 1986 she and her friend went to the location where Dennis
had thrown it. The Band-Aid was still in it. Kitty and her friend
picked up the shoe and drove to KPD to report their find. KPD Timothy
Lowry took the report. All agreed that the shoe is consistent with
footwear that Laura left home wearing on March 28. However, there are
a couple of questions that were neither asked nor answered. It was
proven at the trial that the shoe was to be worn on the left foot.
All agreed that it was a left shoe and that it was remarkably similar
to shoes that Laura was wearing. There is a glitch however. After my
trial records were received from Laura’s podiatrist stating
that Laura’s wart surgery was on her right foot, not
her left. In either case, it
leaves the question of how the sock disappeared, leaving a Band-Aid
in the wrong shoe. It is beyond ridiculous to seriously consider
waves and currents did it - since it was something only possible by
human intervention. The obvious planting of the shoe as evidence to
support the prosecution’s theory that Laura died by being
tossed off a cliff into the ocean was so badly bungled that it would
be laughable if the bogus evidence hadn’t been used to help
convince the jury to convict me.
Another obvious but unanswered question is how did the
various items of clothing that Laura supposedly wore that night
happened to be removed from her body after she was allegedly tossed
into the water?
Truly magical psychic evidence discovered in
McDonald’s van
In
August 1986, five months after my arrest and two months before my
first trial began in October 1986, KPD Cpl. Andre said he saw in a
police associated magazine an advertisement for a Chicago area
psychic, William Ward. Andre called him on an “urge.” The
psychic told him to “look for something in the van.”
To
see if the previous fine tooth comb searches of the van had missed
some piece of evidence, KPD Cpl. Paris went alone
to inspect my unsecured van at Bruce’s wrecking yard. He did
this on October 19, 1986, just nine days before the start of my
trial. He testified at my trial that he looked through the driver’s
side window and saw something glistening in plain sight near the gas
pedal. Officer Paris then called his subordinates, detectives Rhodes
and Walton on their day off. He instructed the two detectives to take
another look in my van. While visually inspecting the van KPD Rhodes
and KPD Walton spotted the object. Laying in plain sight on the van’s
floor near the gas pedal was a white porcelain earring front with a
purple flower painted on it. This earring was magically
discovered in plain sight after all the months of the van being
searched, torn apart, illuminated throughout for blood, and available
for public inspection. Detective Rhodes took a triangulation of
photos to accurately determine the earring’s position.
With the fortuitous finding days before my trial of an
earring consistent with the one described by Laura’s mom, the
prosecution could at least argue there was something tangible
indicating Laura was in my van, and she may have encountered violence
sufficient to cause an earring to “fall off” her ear.
The
spotting of the earring in plain sight was not the only thing
suspicious about the October 19th search of my van: It was conducted
under the very unusual circumstance of being the first time during
Bruce St. Pierre’s ownership of the wrecking yard that he or an
employee was not
allowed to be present - which was a stipulation of his contract with
Kodiak - while the search of a vehicle took place.
The KPD’s reliance on a psychic vision as
justification for their third search of my van is as ridiculous as
their official explanation of why the earring front wasn’t
found in previous searches: The KPD had my van towed to a gas station
to see how much gas was needed to fill it to determine how far the
van had been driven. That is a farcical explanation, because the KPD
didn’t know if my van was full of gas around 9 p.m. on March
28, or if I might have had a gas can to add gas, or if my van’s
gas tank had been siphoned. The earring front, according to the
prosecution speculation, had been knocked off an ear violently and
gone down the front window defroster slot. They then speculated the
jarring motion of towing the van enabled the earring to fall through
the heater/defroster system to the floor. It was never investigated,
much less proven, that such a journey could occur through my
heater/defroster system.
The
earring found on the floor of my van during its third
search was the prosecution’s only alleged evidence tying Laura
Ibach to a possible struggle in the van. Thus I am including for your
consideration an abbreviated version of a report by an investigator
who has worked on my case.
I have analyzed the issue
concerning the earring found on the floor of Mr. McDonald’s
(Mac’s) 1966 Dodge van on October 19, 1986, and the possibility
it travelled completely through the van’s
Heater/Defroster/Fresh Air (flow) system. The prosecution did not
present any evidence or otherwise speculate at Mac’s trial as
to whether the earring went down the defroster vent on the driver or
the passenger side of the van. If the earring went down either
defroster vent the next thing to account for would be its return to
the driver’s side heating delivery system. A flap closes,
opens, or mixes the warmed air that is delivered to either the heater
or defroster. Even granting that the earring could have passed by the
defroster/heater flap, the blower motor powers a fan that conducts
the air in the flow system. It is undetermined how many blades that
fan has, or the position the blades were stopped at in the blower
motor housing when the van was impounded. In addition it is unknown
if Mac’s van was started after it was impounded, if the
defroster/heater motor was turned on or off, or if any of the
defroster or heater control settings were changed after it was
impounded.
However it is clear from KPD
photographs of the van and the heater on/off pull knob, that the
heater, and not the defroster, was on when Mac was last in his van.
If the earring rolled right or left and down past the
heater/defroster diverter flap, it would descend into the
electrically motorized fan system. It does appear that an earring, by
passing all the other blocks and variables, could end up on the floor
of the heater housing delivery system. There it would likely rest,
since there are ¼ inch high lips that the earring would have
to somehow jump over to end up on the floor of the van.
While there is a fresh air system
integrated in Mac’s van model, an earring would have to make a
very long and highly improbable, if not impossible trip, to end up on
the floor of the van where it was found. It appears to me that there
would have to be much more than violent travel over brick roads and
railroad tracks to cause such an occurrence. It appears to me that
the van would have had to be critically angled to one side or the
other for an earring to fall into the heating system after having
entered the defroster system. There is no evidence that such an event
occurred, and the prosecution did not contend that it did. The most
likely scenario is that the earring was placed at the location it was
found during the search of the van by a person or person’s
unknown.
The prosecution’s theory
of Laura Ibach’s disappearance
The
prosecution’s theory of Laura’s disappearance was Jim
Kerwin and I allegedly killed her in my van, drove to the other end
of Kodiak Island and threw her dead body off a cliff into Monashka
Bay, and that she was washed away, never to be seen again. When I
knew Laura she weighed about 150 pounds. It is impossible that Jim
Kerwin and I could toss a 150 pound body, dead or alive, over 50 feet
straight out to clear the rock outcroppings below so it would reach
the high tide line. That not only did not happen - it can not be
done. In an attempt to prove the impossibility of the prosecution’s
theory, prior to my trial my attorney arranged for two men to toss a
sack filled with 150 pounds of material off the cliff where Laura was
allegedly tossed. They were unable to even remotely come close to
reaching the high tide line. However my trial judge ruled testimony
related to the demonstration was inadmissible – so my jury
heard nothing about it. Yet the crucial relevance of that testimony
was confirmed years later when the national television program Inside
Edition did a segment on my
case. They recreated the prosecution’s scenario at the cliff
where Laura was allegedly tossed into the ocean, with the same result
– it is impossible
for two men the size of Jim Kerwin and me to toss a bag with a 150
pound body far enough away from the face of the cliff to reach the
high tide line at Monashka Bay.
Yet
the prosecution’s case substantiating that preposterous
“theory” wasn’t what I would call circumstantial -
it was more like pure fabrication. No dead body was ever produced. No
means nor motive for me to have killed my friend Laura was proven. No
weapon was proven to have been used, nor was any
method of Laura’s alleged death proven, precisely because it
was unknown if she was in fact dead. No fingerprints, no hair, no
blood, no skin, no physical evidence of any kind was found to prove
that any crime was committed by me (or anyone else) related to
Laura’s disappearance.
Prosecutors said that Jack Ibach
hired Jim Kerwin and me to do away with Laura. There was no testimony
by anyone showing, much less proving, that I was involved in any such
scheme. For almost two decades, I have steadfastly maintained that I
had nothing to do with, nor was I aware of any plans for Laura’s
disappearance.
The prosecution’s
speculation that a man I only knew only on sight talked Jim Kerwin
and me into killing his ex-wife for no financial gain is ludicrous.
Jim Kerwin didn’t know Laura, while I considered her to be a
friend. Yet the prosecution contended that Laura did not know me, and
had never seen me before. Only one prosecution witness, Al Ruble,
testified we did not know each other. As I explained previously, he
is one of two people (along with Matt Jamin) who are likely to know
what actually happened to Laura. My frame-up consisted of the
prosecution’s creation of so-called “facts and evidence”
to fit a fairytale scenario neatly closing the book on Laura’s
mysterious disappearance.
Two trials in Anchorage
The
trial’s venue was changed to Anchorage from Kodiak. The three
of us were tried on kidnapping and murder charges in the same
courtroom before the same judge and jury. Our trial began on October
27, 1986 in the courtroom of Superior Court Judge Edmund Burke.
Although we were seated next to each other, we were legally
considered to be “tried separately, but together, before the
same courtroom in the interest of judicial economy.” The legal
reasoning was that a judge and jury could keep all the testimony
regarding each defendant separate, and that the jury would not infer
damaging testimony regarding one individual against the other two.
Common sense says that is impossible.
Jack retained an attorney to
represent him, and Jim and I had court-appointed attorneys. Acting on
advice from our attorneys, all three of us elected not to testify at
trial. The result of the trial was Jim Kerwin’s complete
acquittal, Jack Ibach received a hung jury on both charges, and I
received a hung jury on the murder charge but was found guilty of
kidnapping Laura. Jack Ibach and I remained in jail, and the Kodiak
prosecutor decided to re-try us.
The second trial, again in
Anchorage, began after mid-April, 1987 in Judge Mark Rowland’s
courtroom. Jack and I were tried together but separately, just as
before. My trial attorney, Louise Ma, was no longer able to represent
me through the public defender’s system; so, Pam Cravaz acted
as my counsel for the second trial. Scott Dattan was appointed as
Jack’s attorney.
My experience at the second trial
was worse than at the first. Pam Cravaz was inexperienced and
outmatched. Just as in the first trial, there was no cooperation
between Jack’s attorney and mine and the legal march toward my
wrongful conviction continued. I was convicted of Laura’s
murder and sentenced to life in prison.
At both trials there was much
uncorroborated and unchallenged testimony. The “Exceptions to
Barring Hearsay” rules, one of which is “Excited
Utterance” allowed five prosecution witnesses to make all sorts
of statements to the jury that went beyond Laura’s apparently
very “excited utterance” to a co-worker Suzanne Hinson
around 3:20 p.m. on the day she disappeared. If the prosecution’s
case is to be believed, Laura was emitting “excited utterances”
over a period of 1-1/2 hours and at two different locations about a
mile apart. In spite of the hearsay exceptions rule and limits on
the exception about ignoring what was said, and in spite of the
judge’s explanation that the jury should only use any “excited
utterance” statements to perceive Laura’s intention, the
attorneys asked numerous questions of each of the five witnesses. The
questioning went to the particulars of what Laura said.
Conclusion
After
18 years my state and federal appeals were exhausted in the spring of
2004 when the U.S. Supreme Court denied my writ of certiorari.
However there is some hope,
because the person or persons responsible for Laura’s
disappearance are still “out there,” and one or more
people may have critical information about the circumstances of her
disappearance, and who may have seen her after 9 p.m. on March 28,
1986.
One important lead that is still
hanging, is that given the statements by Laura’s friends, and
that I know she walked away from my van that night, to the best of my
knowledge two people who likely saw Laura Ibach before her
disappearance are Albert Ruble and Matthew Jamin. Although they are
the most likely people to have vital information regarding the fate
of Laura, they were never considered as suspects in her
disappearance, or investigated for their contacts with her on March
28, 1986.
Another possible lead is that
after my arrest I learned Laura was a sometimes drug dealer in Kodiak
who was a police informant. If one or more of Kodiak’s key drug
dealers learned that Laura was feeding the police information, that
certainly would be a motive for them to make her disappear.
The only certain thing about
Laura’s disappearance, is that no one has come forth to say
they have seen her since she left my van at approximately 9 p.m. on
March 28, 1986. If she is alive she must have had a very good reason
to keep herself successfully hidden for 18 years. More than anyone
else in the world I want to know what happened to Laura - because
that is the very information that will set me free.
I am thankful for my sister, Katha
McDonald, who has remained steadfast through my ordeal and for the
small group of people she has been able to alert and keep focused on
my predicament. I also thank you for reading about my plight.
I can be contacted at:
Don McDonald #112338
Spring Creek Correctional Center
PO Box 5001
Seward, AK 99664
My outside contact is my sister:
Katha McDonald
6730 Bayview Dr. N.W.
Marysville, WA 98271
Email: katham@netos.com
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