Posted on 03/06/2004 2:04:27 PM PST by cinnathepoet
Glenn Taylor Helzer said the word 18 times Friday as he admitted to plotting a conspiracy that crossed three counties and cost five lives.
In a courtroom bombshell, Helzer pleaded guilty to killing five people, including his girlfriend and a retired Concord couple whose bodies were found dismembered in duffel bags in the Delta in August 2000.
The announcement, through his attorney, that he wanted to plead guilty to 18 felony charges stunned everyone in the courtroom and left the judge speechless.
There is no deal with prosecutors; the 33-year-old still faces the death penalty.
"He understands that this does nothing in terms of sentencing," his attorney, Suzanne Chapot, said in court. "He is still facing a possible death sentence, but that (plea) is still what he would like to do."
Authorities had long painted Helzer as the mastermind of a plan to fund a start-up self-awareness program that would spread peace and love to the world by any means necessary -- extortion, prostitution, drug dealing, even murder.
Helzer had long cast himself as a prophet of God. And he was a mesmerizing presence -- tall, dark, handsome, charming and with a knack for picking the right kind of people to do his bidding.
One of them was Selina Bishop, the quiet 22-year-old daughter of blues guitarist Elvin Bishop, whom he met at a rave. He told Selina Bishop he needed her to help hide an inheritance from his estranged wife.
What he really wanted was for her to hide money he planned to extort from a retired Concord couple who had once been his brokerage clients. Then he kidnapped Ivan and Annette Stineman, extorted $100,000 from them, then killed and dismembered them and Bishop.
It was part of a plan prosecutors say he hatched with his younger brother, Justin Helzer, and Dawn Godman, a woman they met at a church social.
Taylor Helzer also shot Bishop's mother, Jennifer Villarin, because of what Bishop might have told her. He then killed her mother's friend, who happened to be present during the nighttime attack.
Learning that he finally admitted to the crimes brought tears to Olga Land's eyes.
"It felt good to hear," Villarin's sister said after court Friday. "We already knew it, but it felt good to hear him say it."
Helzer insisted there were no tactical maneuverings behind his plea, but the ramifications of it go far beyond him.
His brother, 32-year-old Justin, still is charged with the murders and other crimes and faces the death penalty. Justin has pleaded not guilty by reason of insanity.
Jury selection in their trial was to have started Monday. That is now on hold as attorneys and the judge struggle with an odd scenario: Taylor Helzer still is entitled to a penalty-phase trial, where a jury decides his punishment -- either life in prison without parole or the death penalty. Justin Helzer, on the other hand, still must receive a full trial. If he is found guilty, the trial will have phases determining whether he was sane at the time and, if so, what his punishment should be.
Should the same jury decide all of those things?
"I have never been involved in or heard of a case like that," said Justin Helzer's attorney, Dan Cook, who argued for separate trials for the brothers. If kept together, the danger to his client of "guilt by association" is too great, he said.
The attorneys will meet Tuesday to hash out the myriad legal and logistical issues caused by Taylor Helzer's plea.
"This is a monumental change in the landscape," Cook said.
That upheaval made prosecutor Harold Jewett suspicious. He does not want Taylor Helzer's plea to be a "tactical decision on behalf of his brother, (where) he is willing to sacrifice his life."
Chapot responded that her client simply had no defense to the charges. She said he had wanted to plead guilty from the beginning and she had kept him from doing so.
They had thought to do it last summer, Chapot said, but then the third suspect in the case cut a deal with prosecutors and herself pleaded guilty. Dawn Godman, the woman the Helzers met at a church social, will testify in exchange for Jewett not pursuing the death penalty against her.
They then thought to do it in the fall, but did not when Justin Helzer decided to enter his insanity plea.
Then came the request to separate the trials. After O'Malley decided that issue, Chapot said, they acted.
"The timing is just unfortunate and fortuitous," she said.
Jewett did not let up in court Friday.
While questioning Taylor Helzer about the rights he was giving up by pleading guilty, the prosecutor asked if Taylor was doing it to assist his brother.
Helzer said no.
Was he doing it to influence the order of trial?
"I have no expectation of that," Taylor Helzer said.
Helzer did balk before admitting to the conspiracy charge, which also names his brother and Godman in many of the allegations.
"It's just not OK for me to implicate someone else," he said. "I'm not necessarily trying to help my brother. I also have no interest in harming him."
Taylor Helzer began talking with friends years before the killings about drug dealing and running an escort service for prostitution. And he described a moral philosophy that went far outside the lines drawn by society.
"I am already perfect, and therefor (sic) can do nothing wrong," he wrote on a poster given to a friend that listed "12 Principles of Magic."
Taylor coupled his philosophy with a powerful presence, a knack for preaching and the ability, he said, to have God or "Spirit" speak through him.
He and Justin were raised as Mormons. They met Dawn Godman, now 30, at a church social.
Godman became a part of the Helzers' circle of friends. In the spring of 2000, the three moved into a small, nondescript house on the fringes of Concord.
And the conspiracy began.
Over the next few months they bought a gun, shackles, duffel bags and a reciprocating saw.
Then, on July 30, neighbors saw the Stinemans for the last time.
During the next several days, Godman allegedly went into banks trying to deposit checks drawn on the Stinemans' accounts.
Over those days, investigators say, the Stinemans and Bishop were beaten and stabbed to death. A rented personal watercraft carried duffel bags with their remains into the Sacramento County Delta.
On Aug. 3, 2000, Villarin and her friend James Gamble were shot to death in Bishop's apartment.
Days later, a Marin sheriff's detective figured out that the mysterious "Jordan" whom Bishop was dating was in fact Taylor Helzer.
Police arrested him, his brother and Godman on Aug. 7 -- the same day that the first duffel bag floated to the surface of the Delta and the threads of the conspiracy began to unravel.
Glenn Taylor Helzer
You keep pushing those lines and end up somewhere like here.
Darn Democrats.
Then was killed and dismembered and had her body parts strewn about.
How tragic for Elvin.
we cannot make this stuff up
it is a pity that such evil
would be attempted
in the name of doing good
love, devil
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