Second in a series

Nov. 20, 2005: Leo Wayne Tokarz Rapp, 20, was found dead in the trunk of a car that was leaving town but took a wrong turn and landed in a ditch. He was dead — stabbed in the throat, wrapped in a tarp and suffocated.

Victoria Rose Sherman, 18, and five other young people were charged with conspiracy and murder.

Was Sherman the cold, manipulative, mastermind of a plot to ambush and kill a man she said repeatedly raped and abused her?

Or was she a hapless, strung-out teenager with birth-defect brain damage and zero coping skills — made worse by her choice to abuse drugs and alcohol?

Or both?

Did she get caught up in a revenge fantasy only to realize too late that it was coming true? Could she have stopped it? Did she want to? In the end, was she sorry it happened, or just sorry they got caught?

Does any of it matter?  Maybe.  Often, what makes people sick is what makes them tick.

Fetal Alchohol Effects

Of individuals between 12 and 51

• 95% will have mental health problems;
• 60% will have “disrupted school experience”;
• 60% will experience trouble with the law;
• 55% will be confined in prison, drug or alcohol treatment centre or mental institution;
• 52% will exhibit inappropriate sexual behaviour.

Of individuals between 21 and 51

• more than 50% of males and 70% of females will have alcohol and drug problems;
• 82% will not be able to live independently;
• 70% will have problems with employment.

Victoria Sherman wouldn’t stand trial until spring of 2008. That’s two and a half years of defendants, attorneys, conflicting testimony, conflicting court dates, multiple trials and various confusion. Then her attorney died. The new one took a while to gear up.

In 2007, two of the group, Alan Edenfield and Breanne Eldredge, pleaded guilty to first-degree murder on the condition that if they testified against the others, they’d serve time only for voluntary manslaughter.

In early 2008, two others, Christopher Medina and Joseph Krauter, pleaded guilty to second-degree murder.

Finally, in May 2008, Sherman and Aaron Atencio went to trial. After almost a month of testimoney, the verdict against them both was swift, sure and terrible: guilty, guilty, guilty.

Eldredge, who said she’d set up the incident, got six years in prison.
Edenfield got three years.
Krauter, 15 to life.
Medina, 15 to life.

Yet Krauter and Medina’s testimony might have cleared their daughter, Rick and Diane Sherman say, if they’d testified on her behalf.

From Joseph Krauter’s two 20-page statements to investigators on June 4-5 (slightly cleaned up):

“I was approached in this whole insane circus carnival that became a murder by Aaron Atencio. … Atencio told me that, you know, he had a job for me and, it was brought up to him by his friend, Breanne Eldredge. No one else never knew Victoria’s name. Didn’t know who she was, never got a description … told that it was a … maiden in distress.”

On the day of the murder, Krauter says, they met up [beforehand] at a garage, and Victoria was crying.

“This isn’t like your standard weeping, she’s crying like she survived some kind of, ya know, horrific event. … like she can barely think or barely breathe. … She kept on saying I can’t, I can’t do this, I can’t. Ya know? … It was a sobbing, breathless, like if when a young child gets spanked and they cry so hard that they’ll hiccup and lose their breath? She’s hysterical.”

The investigator asks: “When she was sobbing and trying to stop this, were all of you present? Mr. Medina, Atencio, yourself, Edenfield… Breanne?”

Krauter: “Every single one of us.”

Investigator: “Is there anything you think is really important that you know for a fact or observed for a fact that I haven’t asked you?”

Krauter: “I never saw Victoria organize anything. I never saw her initiate anything. I never saw Victoria try and do a damn thing except cry a lot and chain smoke a lot, cry a lot some more… and be generally pale and afraid.”

Investigator: “Who organized and set this thing up?”

Krauter: “Breanne Eldredge, all the way. A hundred percent. I never heard Victoria’s name.”

Investigator: “Did somebody come talk to you to see what you had to say?

Krauter: “Not until it was too late.”

Investigator: “But… you gave this to the private investigator long before [the verdict]?”

Krauter: “At least a week and a half to two weeks before.”

Investigator: “I can tell you I never received this information and the fact that you wanted to talk to us. All right, I’m gonna go ahead and stop the tape then, if that’s all right with you.”

From Christopher Medina’s 18-page statement on July 2:

Investigator: “What was your understanding what was going to occur?”

Medina: I thought we were gonna come up here and Aaron was gonna be like the tough-guy kind of hero, ya know? Stand there, and me and Krauter were going to be in the background, you know? Hey, he’s got big friends, you don’t want to mess with Atencio, you know? It’s happened before where someone stands out there, and then the two big friends are in the background, you know, to make him more intimidating, and Aaron was gonna go up there and act like the big guy and, ya know, scare the guy away and, ya know, intimidate him and be a little hero for, uh, Eldredge. ‘Cause I know he liked her, so I thought that was the whole situation that was gonna go down.”

Later, the investigator asks: “From your statement, she [Sherman] had no part in the physical subduing and eventual harming of Leo Rapp?”

Medina: “No.”

And later: Investigator: “So to your knowledge, Breanne was the contact person with Atencio…”

Medina: “From what I know, she was the first contact and the main contact with Atencio.”

Investigator: “She’s the one that set this up?”

Medina: “From what I heard, the first call that Atencio received about all this was from Eldredge.”

On July 27, a few days after Sherman died, Medina wrote Diane Sherman a three-page letter from his prison cell in Susanville, that said, in part: “I really wish we could have made it to a retrial because I believe there was a very good chance, I really do.”

That same night Krauter also wrote her an apologetic, five-page letter: “I’m releasing my testimony to Frank [O'Connor, Sherman's lawyer]… It’s the truth and deserves to be heard. People will know your baby wasn’t a monster.”

Check back soon for A Death in Custody, Part 3: Life in custody

The story so far…
Part 1: Where did it go wrong?

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