Prelude

Mariet Ford won a place in sports history on Nov. 20, 1982, for his role in one of the most unforgettable moments in athletics. Mariet's Cal Berkeley Bears trailed their arch rivals, the Stanford Cardinal, 19-20. The Bears received the kickoff, pitched the ball five times, and -- with no time on the clock -- evaded the Cardinal's tacklers as well as the marching band to score the winning touchdown. The kickoff return has been ranked one of the most memorable replays of all time. It is so famous, it is known simply as "The Play." CNN and SportsIllustrated ranked it among "Our Favorite Games."

Mariet's life took a turn for the worse 20 years later when his pregnant wife and 3-year-old son were murdered and their bodies set on fire. Mariet was convicted of the crime. He has always proclaimed he was innocent. And the details of the case leave Monday morning quarterbacks room to wonder: Did he do it?

1. Loss of Innocents

As time goes on,

 new and remoter aspects 

 of truth are discovered. 

 -Clarence Day

Mariet Ford left home early on the morning his 8-month-pregnant wife, Tess, and their 3-year-old son, MoMo, were murdered.

A lot of things Mariet would later say about this day are suspect, but there's no reason to doubt that he called home a little before 8 a.m.

In the Fords' one-story, two-bedroom, two-bathroom home in Elk Grove, the phone rang and rang, but Tess and Momo couldn't come to the phone.

They were dead.

It was Thursday, Jan. 16, 1997.

Mariet was no ordinary man. In sports circles, Mariet was was famous, especially in the Bay Area's high concentration of Stanford and Berkeley grads.

Fifteen years earlier, Mariet had secured his footing in collegiate football history in 1982 when, with no time left on the clock and the opposing band already on the field, he pitched the ball so a teammate could score the winning touchdown in a kickoff return so spectacular sports fans would know it simply as “The Play.”

But “The Play” was 15 years behind him and his football career long gone from Mariet’s life by that morning in 1997 when his 8-month pregnant wife and 3-year-old son were murdered, set on fire and left to burn.

2. Tess & MoMo

Thrice happy state again to be

 The trustful infant on the knew,

 Who lets his rosy fingers play

 About his mother’s neck, and knows

 Nothing beyond his mother’s eyes!

 -Lord Alfred Tennyson

After his family didn’t answer the phone, Mariet Ford called and asked his brother to drive the few miles to his house and check on Tess, Mariet's 8-month-pregnant wife, and their 3-year-old son, MoMo.

Orrin Ford lived in unincorporated southern Sacramento County in a new development called Laguna that would incorporate in 2000 as part of the city of Elk Grove. Mariet’s house was on Silver Hawk Way.

With his wife and kids in the family car on the way to the family dentist appointment, Orrin parked outside his brother’s house.

It was about 8:55 a.m.

Orrin rang the bell. Tess didn’t answer.

Orrin knocked. He knocked louder. He peaked in the window.

They, the windows, were dark … as though blacked with some sort of film. Orrin cupped his hands and looked closer. He saw a light. An orange light. On the floor.

Fire!

Orrin tried the door.

Locked.

He ran to the side door.

Unlocked.

He ran past the lawn mower. He seized the knob of the garage door. Not hot from the fire. Unlocked as well. He pushed it open. Smoke rolled out.

It stung his eyes. It stank a toxic stink that was a combination of something synthetic and something he wasn’t sure what – but this stink was instinctually unsettling. Blinded by this noxious cloud, he felt his way past the laundry machine.

He ran down the hall.

“Tess!” he shouted. “MoMo.”

The smoke was so thick he could hardly see.

In the master bedroom, he patted the king-sized bed. He felt the covers and the mattress.

No Tess.

No MoMo.

Where could they be?

Running back up the hall and past the kitchen-dining room, he tripped.

Suddenly, from this vantage point beneath the lethal cloud of smoke, he saw … Tess … and MoMo.

Air.

Air.

He needed air.

He rushed to and opened the front door. Locked. He unlocked it, twisted the knob. Outside, he gasped.

Someone called 9-1-1.

3. The Polaroid

We know the truth,

not only by the reason,

but also by the heart.

-Pascal

Detective Elaine Stevenson kept a Polaroid on her desk in the homicide unit of the Sacramento County Sheriff’s Department.

Inside the Polaroid’s white plastic frame, a 31-year-old mother knelt beside a 3-year-old son. The clipped style of her black hair accentuated her eyes. Her red lips curved over her white teeth as she smiled. The boy was an irresistibly cute mix of her Filipino features and those of his African-American father. The boy’s dark eyes beamed with curiosity and innocence.

The woman’s name had been Tess Ford. The boy’s name had been Mariet Ford, after his father, the man who made collegiate football history in 1982 when with no time left on the clock and the opposing band already on the field he pitched the ball so a teammate could score the winning touchdown in a kickoff return so spectacular it would forever be known as “The Play.”

The family had called the boy MoMo.

Seeing how intensely Stevenson was determined to catch whoever had killed this mother and child, her partner gave voice to the force driving Stevenson. On the white border around the Polaroid, he wrote, “Get the person who killed me and mommy.”

Elaine interviewed everyone who had known Tess -- co-workers, friends, family. Elaine checked out their stories with others she interviewed, credit card statements, calling logs. They places that failed to match up, were clues pointing toward lying. Lying was a sign of guilt. Elaine noticed a pattern. She grew suspicious.

She and her partner requested a third interview with the grieved husband-father, Mariet Ford.

4. Adultery

If you tell the truth,

you don’t have to remember anything.

- Mark Twain

Mariet’s most recent extra-marital affair had been with Lisa.

All the while, he was leaving a trail -- phone records here, credit card bills there.

Elaine picked up his trail soon after she started investigating the murder of Tess and MoMo. Mariet didn't cop to it.

Some detectives had a joke: How do you know when suspects are lying?

The punch line: Their lips are moving.

The truth was that regardless of race, religion or socio-economic bracket – Stevenson knows this much to be true: Everyone withholds information, especially after a murder. The innocent almost as often as the guilty flat-out lie.

Their reasons for lying varied. Some lied to deny an embarrassing detail they considered irrelevant to the murder. Others lied to protect their privacy … or to safeguard a loved one. But sometimes lies indicated something far more culpable. Sometimes the lies indicated guilt.

It was Elaine's job to find out why.

Five months after the murder, she called and requested a third interview with Mariet

On June 12, 1997, a Thursday with a high temperature of 82 degrees, Mariet brought defense attorney, William Gagen, to the Sacramento County Sheriff’s building on I Street. Both men wore somber dark suits.

Detective Elaine Stevenson had a lot of questions for Mariet. They would include some tough questions. If she asked them in the right manner and order, the defense attorney would let her build up to and leverage the most potentially damaging accusations. They wouldn’t be fun questions to ask. But Stevenson knew she would ask them. She had to ask them. Like the message scrawled on the Polaroid, she had to know who killed Mariet's son MoMo and the 3-year-old boy's mommy, Tess.

To figure it out, she needed to ask more questions, to ferret out the lies.

In a previous interview, she asked Mariet about an Oakland woman named Lisa George. Mariet said he had known Lisa for almost 20 years. They had grown up in the same city. When Mariet had been a teenage football sensation, they had attended rival schools. They had remained friends, nothing more.

Confrontation wasn't the answer. Some detectives may still beat confessions out of suspects. But that was never Elaine's style. Her method of interview was more subtle.

From all those years working sex crimes, she knew that one key to getting confessions was sounding understanding, never to voice to voice judgments in tone or so many words. She sounded world-wise and understanding enough to recognize that transgressions like adultery didn’t necessarily make anyone a murderer.

Elaine asked Mariet about his most recent extra-marital affair, with an Oakland woman named Lisa George.

She was someone I dated,” Mariet said. “But I wouldn’t say she was a girlfriend.” He said the last 10 years or so he and Lisa had been just friends.

From five months of investigating this case, Stevenson knew that to be another lie. “Do you remember the last time you saw Lisa?” Stevenson asked.

In the interrogation room, on the video tape, Mariet sat there, looking down. The hidden camera’s timer showed that about five seconds had passed.

The question hung in the silence: “Do you remember the last time you saw Lisa?”

“Mmm,” Mariet said. He confessed that he had last seen Lisa in December.

What was the circumstance?” Stevenson asked.

Rather than wait another five seconds for Mariet to answer, Elaine supplied the answer. Mariet was away from home, in Pleasant Hill at the Residence Inn for “business training.” Lisa George had come to see him at the hotel.

On the hidden camera in the interrogation room, Mariet’s left hand reached for his left eye, Mariet fiddled with his brow, just above where he had had the scratch on the day of the murder.

Mariet remembered that night. His life had been so much different back then, 16 months earlier, two months before the murders, 10 days before Christmas. Tess had been pregnant with the baby they'd planned to name Marcellus. She was home alone their 3-year-old son, MoMo, when Mariet had welcomed Lisa into his hotel room. This was not something Mariet was eager to discuss.

“She came by,” he said. “Yes.”

“Did you guys just visit in the lobby,” Stevenson asked.

No,” Mariet said. “We went up to my room.”

He told Stevenson nothing serious had happened between him and Lisa in the hotel room.

Another lie.

5. Another Affair

Those who are faithful

know only the trivial side of love;

it is the faithless who know love’s tragedies.

- Oscar Wilde

Detective Elaine Stevenson knew that the affair with Lisa George was not Mariet Ford’s first.

She knew he had had a previous affair three years earlier, back in 1994, when his son had been almost a year old, with his boss at Sedgwick James in San Francisco. When that affair had fallen apart and he had lost his job, Mariet had punched a wall.

Now Stevenson would ask about it not only to get an explanation, but also to observe his reaction. Stevenson asked, “Have you ever been angry enough to punch out at a wall?”

Like the rest of the questions, Mariet showed no emotion. He said he might have gotten that mad in college, but he didn’t take out his anger that way.

At that point, only Stevenson, a few other investigators and the murderer had any idea how the killer had killed Tess and MoMo. If Mariet was innocent, he couldn’t know this as the cause of death.

Stevenson asked, “Have you ever kicked anything in anger?”

“Not that I can remember,” Mariet said. He paused as though thinking. He said, “No.”

Mariet admitted that he had been in fights as a boy, in middle school or junior high. He and his brother Orrin had grown up the only two African-American boys in their school. It had been the 1970s. Walnut Creek wasn’t anything like Mississippi, but Mariet had recognized he was different from the other kids. His parents hadn’t raised him to start fights, but they hadn't taught him to run from his problems either.

The male detective spoke up for the first time now. Back in high school, he had been a wrestler. He asked if Mariet wasn’t violent on the football field.

“No,” Mariet said. “I was kind of small.”

That was the truth. At 5’9, 160 pounds, he didn’t have a football player’s body, but he had been fast enough and had watched the ball into his hands and not let go even when the most intimidating defenders hit him.

“I tried to run away from them,” Mariet said.

Since the death of his family, he had not been able to work. At first, his boss had understood about the situation, but after time, he had had to let Mariet go. Out of work, he didn’t have any income. Debts were accruing. He couldn’t sell the house. For one, no one wanted to buy the site of such a recent homicide. Plus, smoke and fire damage had left the house unmarketable in its current condition. The Elk Grove Fire Department also had ripped out all his carpet as evidence.

Mariet sat forward in his chair. He asked when he could have back his files, the deed to his house, his insurance papers, his marriage certificate and family pictures.

“I can probably give you a better answer to that in the next couple months,” Stevenson said.

Mariet asked if Stevenson had gotten any results on the DNA testing.

Stevenson said the results might be awhile. DNA testing took so much time it was almost a joke.

It was 1:49 p.m.

6. The Accident

How often have I said to you that

when you have eliminated the impossible,

whatever remains, however improbable,

must be the truth?

- Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

“I really don’t want to talk about this,” Mariet said. He paused, then he said he had heard from Tess’s family and friends that the police were investigating some “rumors.” He wanted to know what exactly were these “rumors.”

Detective Elaine Stevenson said that so far none of the rumors had panned out.

Sounding pained for the first time in the interview, Mariet complained. “Why are they doing this?”

“It happens in every case I’ve had,” Stevenson said. She sounded as though she felt Mariet’s pain, as if she wasn’t talking as a detective to a possible, but as one person to another, a woman to a man. “It’s not just this case. It’s not just you. It’s not just Tess,” she said. “Every case I’ve investigated.”

The nation had suffered through this with the O. J. Simpson case. On smaller scales, Stevenson and Wright had seen it on their own cases. Now Mariet was living it.

“People sit back with the limited information they have,” Stevenson said. “A lot of the times from the TV and newspapers – and that’s not accurate.”

Stevenson recollected her thoughts.

“They sit and speculate on the limited information they have. They draw conclusions and then they tell someone – and off goes the rumor. It happens in every case we have.”

Mariet breathed. He said, “It’s hell.”

“Yeah,” Stevenson said. “It’s hell for you… It’s hell for us, believe it or not. Because rather than being able to focus on this case and try and solve-,” she did not finish the thought. “We’re running around and trying to figure out the rumors.”

“It makes it a little bit worse when it’s your family,” Mariet said.

It was 1:51 p.m.

“In the second interview,” Stevenson said, “you called it an accident.”

“I always referred to it as an accident,” Mariet said. “Because…” He trailed off.

He put a hand to his forehead. He held it with his palm over his eye. Ten months and 10 days later, he would repeat this gesture at the end of his trial on charges of second-degree murder.

“When it first happened, and I was on some of the medication I was on, I became very depressed when I would refer to it as a murder,” Mariet said.

A State Board of Health doctor had prescribed him Prozac and other pharmaceuticals to help him deal with the stress.

“And so I just used the word ‘accident’ because it was easier on myself,” Mariet said. “But now I have to face the facts. I tell people: my wife and my kids were murdered.”

“So, you don’t believe it was an accident?”

“No. I never did.”

7. Conflicting Stories

Would that I could discover truth

as easily as I can uncover falsehood.

-Cicero

When Detective Elaine Stevenson heard conflicting stories, she knew that one version was not true. The rest of the story could be sound, or a killer could weave a whole web of lies to obscure something incriminating.

As Mark Twain had said, “If you tell the truth, you don’t have to remember anything.”

Now, it was time to see if Mariet could untangle his story and tell it straight.

“One last set of questions,” Stevenson said. “I’m going to ask them. I don’t know how you’re going to feel about them.”

She returned all attention to the missing 45 minutes in the story he had given her about the morning of the murder. If he could prove he had been anywhere else, even having one of his affairs, it would give him an alibi.

“Can you explain the time gap from the time you left your house at 5:45 until you were at the gas station at 6:30?”

“No, I can’t,” Mariet said. “I don’t know what time I left my house… But I know I didn’t go anywhere else.”

He said that at the time of the murders he had not been “feeling any frustration or stress” in his life. “In fact, I was kind of anxious about Tess going into labor,” he said. “I was going to be spending a lot more time at home.”

Having searched Mariet’s house and seized his financial records, Stevenson asked Mariet if he and his wife hadn’t felt any frustration or stress about their finances.

Mariet protested that his family was not having “financial problems.”

“So,” Stevenson said. “Five past due notices in a couple weeks to you isn’t any problem?” Stevenson recounted his debts – the mortgage, the two cars, $40,000 in outstanding debt. She asked, “Did you and Tess ever have arguments over the finances?”

“No,” Mariet said. He sounded wound up for the first time in the interview. He said they “never” argued over the finances.

Mariet’s demeanor even amidst Stevenson’s barbed questions now was polite and gentle, not at all given to violence.

Mariet’s story relied on such an improbable set of coincidences – everything he had supposedly done that morning had been out of character. He had left the house earlier than usual, deviated from his usual path to the office, and visited a public place that would give him, coincidentally, something of an alibi.

Plus everything he claimed about his wife’s actions that morning conflicted with everything impartial witnesses had said about Tess.

In this third interview with Mariet, Stevenson watched him sitting beside his defense attorney in the hard plastic seat.

She directed his attention to the Franchise Tax Board, where Tess had worked up to the time of the murders. All of her co-workers there said it was out of character for Tess to have stayed home from work. She had been tracking her vacation, sick and comp time as well as her maternity leave so she would have time after the delivery with the baby. The co-workers said Tess had been very adamant about not taking any time off work – no matter how tired or even sick – until the birth of baby Marcellus.

That would have been out of character enough, but her co-workers said Tess had never – never – missed work without calling in.

“Her co-workers didn’t live with her,” Mariet said.

He remained planted in that hard plastic chair. He had nowhere else to go. He appeared more wound up. “They didn’t know me,” he said.

The defense attorney put his hand on his client’s arm.

Mariet calmed.

Stevenson said the morning Mariet had described was not fitting Tess’s patterns.

“One day, as I kept explaining to her, was not going to hurt her,” Mariet said.

8. Accusations

The innocent is the person who

explains nothing.

-Albert Camus

A few of Tess’s fingernails had been broken, as though she had clawed at her attacker before being murdered. On the day of the murders, Detective Elaine Stevenson had noticed a scratch on Mariet’s left cheek, just below his eye. She had asked him about this scratch in her two previous interviews with him. It was now time to see how he squared what he had said with what had been said by Veronica Fontes, the woman he had bumped into at the La Bou the morning of the murders.

“You had told me in the first interview you got the scratch on your face on Tuesday,” Stevenson said. But Veronica had told the detective Mariet said he had gotten it the night before.

“That’s how I remembered it,” Mariet said.

“So,” Stevenson said. “That morning when you were getting ready for work, did you have a scab on your face?”

Five months had passed since that horrific morning. Mariet did not know what to say.

The defense attorney told Mariet to tell the detective just what he remembered.

“What might help you remember?” Stevenson asked.

Mariet wiped his forehead.

Stevenson recounted the story Mariet had previously given about what had happened the night before the murder:

He came home from the driving range. Tess and MoMo were finishing dinner. He had done the dishes, as he was the family’s cleaner.

“It was the day before,” Mariet said. “Because …”

He did not have an immediate explanation.

“The day before what?” Stevenson asked.

“The day before the umm,” Mariet stopped in search of the right word. He said, “The accident.”

He had done it again. He had called the murder of his family “the accident.”

He hurriedly corrected himself, “-errrr the day before the murder.”

Stevenson said several people had commented that Mariet had seemed less concerned about his family on the day of the massacre than about the fire department’s dog sniffing for flammable liquids inside his Honda Del Sol.

Mariet said that he had been afraid that the dog would damage the $2,500 Power Book in his car. It belonged to his employer.

He touched his forehead. He touched his right cheek.

“In most of the cases that I’ve had so far, we have relatives of the victims of homicides calling us regularly or pretty regularly,” Stevenson said. “Is there any reason you don’t call?”

Mariet said he heard updates from Tess's family and friends.

The defense attorney said, “And also I’ve advised him not to call you.”

Stevenson needed to ask a few final questions to help her gauge Mariet’s guilt or innocence. These would be accusations phrased as questions. If she asked her questions in the right order, she would get to ask them all before the defense attorney stopped the interview.

“On January sixteenth, nineteen-ninety-seven, did you cause injury to Tess and MoMo, resulting in their death?”

“No,” Mariet said. “I did not.”

“On January sixteenth, nineteen-ninety-seven, did you start the fire in your house?”

“No, I did not.”

He clasped his hands before him, as though he was praying or as though the detectives had him cuffed.

“My last question,” Stevenson said. “Would you be willing to take a truth verification test to clear yourself?”

Before Mariet could open his mouth, the defense attorney answered. “That’s something I will deal with.”

He said he doesn’t generally allow his clients to take truth verification tests. He doesn’t believe they are accurate.

9. On the Tracks

Truth is what stands

the test of experience. uote

-Albert Einstein

Mariet quietly stood and left the interrogation room.

“I’ll be right out,” the defense attorney said.

Mariet opened the door and passed from the interrogation room into the hallway of the Sacramento County Sheriff’s Department. He was destined for a lot more time in the justice system’s corridors.

The veteran defense attorney was on the other side of the closed door, in the interrogation room with the two detectives, alone.

Six years later the detectives would remember like yesterday what defense attorney William Gagen said ne`t.

“I kind of see the train running,” the defense attorney said, “And I think we’re on the tracks.”

What did he mean by that train analogy?

Stevenson had no idea of this at that time, but when it was time to celebrate this case her partner would buy her a toy train.

With Mariet out of earshot, she gave the defense attorney a more accurate timeline. She said, “I’ll know something probably in July…”

“I’ve been doing this long enough to know probabilities…,” the defense attorney said. “And this is a very unusual case… He has had ample opportunity to split … It almost surprised me … There’s no inclination to do that.”

But, Stevenson pointed out, Mariet had never been to jail.

Wright spoke up for one of the few times in the entire interview. He said they had to face the possibility that Mariet could run at any minute to South America. Or, God forbid, they could face their own little “O. J.” chase.

The defense attorney reiterated that Mariet would not run from justice.

It was 2:32 p.m.

Stevenson took her vacation. When she returned, she called the defense attorney and said it was time to arrest Mariet on three counts of murder and arson. He did not try to run. He voluntarily turned himself in, turning his fate over to judge and jury.

The next time Stevenson returned to her desk and looked at that Polaroid of Tess and her son, she could look at the caption her partner had written on the white border and say to herself with confidence that she had found that monster who had killed MoMo and his mommy.

10. Urgent Letter

Every truth has two sides;

it is well to look at both,

before we commit ourselves to either.

-Aesop

Between Mariet Ford's conviction and his sentencing, someone wrote him an urgent letter.

A mailman delivered the letter to the Sacramento County Jail. It would delay Mariet Ford’s sentencing, if not set him free. But before Mariet knew it arrived, a corrections officer at the Sacramento County Jail intercepted the letter.

The corrections officer recognized the letter’s significance and hand delivered it to the Sacramento County District Attorney’s office and gave it to Deputy District Attorney Mark Curry.

The district attorney could not suppress the evidence, but he appreciated the jump on the defense. He dispatched an investigator to be the first to track down the letter’s author.

The letter writer’s return address was the Sierra Conservation Center – jail. The man’s name was Rockland Riggs.

Riggs had a rap sheet. Police had nabbed him for stealing from Kmart and Sam’s Club. Plus – get this – he’d robbed his own mother not once but on multiple occasions. She’d told the police he had a drug problem. In Riggs family, that wouldn’t be anything new. Riggs claimed his two brothers had died of overdoses.

Riggs’ most recent crime … or was it the one before that? Anyway, he had been popped so often, it was hard to keep his bungled robberies straight.

A jury had recently convicted him of going to the El Dorado Country Club and stealing a bag and set of clubs while the golfer was inside the pro shop. That same day, he had taken the clubs to Play It Again Sports in Folsom and Sacramento where he sold the clubs using his own driver’s license.

The cops had tracked him down a few weeks later. His defense was that no one – not even he – was stupid enough to sell stolen goods using his own ID.

He had testified that a friend had given him the clubs.

What was the name of this friend?

Uhhh… Mmmmm… Rob, Riggs said.

Did Rob have a last name?

Riggs told the investigators he didn’t know Rob that well.

Hearing about Riggs’ letter, Detective Elaine Detective Elaine Stevenson – homicide for the Sacramento County Sheriff’s Department who made the case against Mariet – said she thought Riggs was just a desperate man begging for attention. The small-time burglar wasn’t saying anything he couldn’t have read in the papers or seen on TV.

But for Mariet and his attorney, Riggs represented hope. If Riggs could give even a few details of the crime that no one else would know, if he could tell anything that might cast a shadow of a doubt on Mariet’s guilt, the father could clear his name of the massacre of his three-year-old son Mariet Junior, his eight-month-pregnant wife Tess and their unborn son Marcellus.

The judge delayed Mariet’s sentencing so both sides – the prosecution and the defense – could explore these new leads.

Riggs had a few visitors in jail. Private Investigators Richard Wood and Robert Austin of Sacramento made the drive to interview Mariet. The prosecution’s investigator was there, too.

The district attorney’s office read Riggs his rights. That basically told Riggs that anything he said can and would be used against him in the court of law.

Riggs said he wanted to clear another man’s name, not save himself, but he didn’t want to hurt himself in the process. He wanted protection, immunity.

The district attorney’s office wasn’t making any deals.

After three delays, it was finally time for Ford’s sentencing. Riggs was being brought in to testify. It still looked like it could go either way depending on what Riggs would say or if – advised of his rights – he would say anything at all.

11. Forgotten Detail

Memory is a net; one finds it full of fish

when he takes it from the brook;

but a dozen miles of water have run

through it without sticking.

- Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr.

Six months after the jury convicted Mariet Ford of kicking to death and burning his eight-month-pregnant wife and 3-year-old son, the handsome African-American former-collegiate-football star entered courtroom 61 dressed in a dark suit and harboring a new hope.

Once again, a crowd was watching Mariet. Once again, there was no time left for him on the clock. Instead of a ball, he had a murder conviction and his life was on the line.

After three delays, Judge John V. Stroud was ready to hear testimony in light of which the defense claimed Mariet deserved a new trial. Unless these witnesses could convince the judge otherwise, he was ready to sentence Mariet.

It was Friday, October 9, 1999.

On the same day three years earlier, a jury had deliberated just four hours in Southern California before finding a much more rich and famous football player – none other than O. J. Simpson – not guilty of murder.

Mariet was not about to be so lucky.

His defense attorney, William Gagen, planned to call three witnesses in support of his motion for a new trial: Mariet’s mother, Mariet and a previously unheard witness.

Deputy District Attorney Mark Curry had no witness lined up for rebuttal.

The black-robed judge took his seat on the bench. The court was called to order.

The attorneys said good morning “your honor.”

“All right,” the judge said.

He granted a place in his courtroom for cameras from The Bee and four TV stations. But the judge would not allow them to record the evidentiary portion of the hearing. That was the judge’s right.

A bailiff swore in Mariet’s mother, Carrie Ford.

She told the court that in the first days after the murders, she and her husband had flown from Mississippi to be with their son in his time of need. Several times while Mariet was staying at his brother Orrin’s, Mariet’s mother had talked with her son.

“In the course of those conversations, did he tell you anything about suspicious activity in the neighborhood within a week or a few weeks of the happening of the death of his family?” the defense attorney asked.

“Yes,” the mother said. “He did.”

“I’m going to object,” said the district attorney. “Hearsay."

“Objection sustained,” the judge said.

“And did you ever discuss that same subject with me?” the defense attorney asked.

“No,” Mariet’s mother said.

“With anyone connected with the defense of your son?” the attorney asked.

“No.”

“Why?”

“Because,” Mariet’s mother said. “I thought Mariet was going to talk with you about it.”

This implied that in all of the emotional turmoil of the police treating him like a suspect in his family’s murder, Mariet had forgotten and his family had not thought to mention this key detail.

Was it as likely that he had massacred his family, doused their carcasses with gasoline and set them ablaze?

The mother’s testimony did not illuminate a clear answer. If the defense didn’t have any more than that, Gagen had been right in the third and final interview with the detectives; his client was on the tracks, headed for a lengthy prison sentence.

12. Noises on the Roof

A liar will not be believed

even when he speaks the truth.

– Aesop

Mariet took the stand.

He swore to tell the truth.

His defense attorney prompted him to recall a morning about a week before the massacre.

Mariet recalled that at about 5:45 a.m. that morning he took the family’s blue Nissan Passport. Driving the four-wheel-drive utility vehicle up the street, he saw an unfamiliar yellow truck, parked on the side of the road. As Mariet drove the Passport past the truck. he saw that the driver and the passenger were white. He hadn’t thought much about it.

He had never suspected that the driver, a big fellow, was Rockland Riggs, a professional criminal, there snorting or smoking cocaine at the unnaturally early hour while casing the Ford family’s house for a burglary. Was it possible that Mariet was not guilty, that two white cocaine-addicted criminals had in fact murdered his family?

The defense attorney finished his question, turning Mariet over to the prosecution.

The deputy district attorney set out to undermine Mariet Ford’s story. That wouldn’t be hard. Mariet had given police some bogus leads.

“You told them that your wife had been getting phone calls in the past,” Deputy District Attorney Mark Curry. “Hang-up phone calls. Correct?”

“Yes,” Mariet said. He stammered. Then he spoke about the interview with the Detective Elaine Stevenson and her partner. “I was answering questions that they were asking me.”

“You told them that there had been noises up on the roof,” the prosecuting attorney said. “Correct?”

“Yes,” Mariet said.

“Um… now,” the prosecuting attorney began. “At the time that you were talking to that detective, did you remember at that time about seeing this yellowish pick-up the week before on the street?”

“No, I did not,” Mariet said.

The prosecuting attorney didn’t see how that could possibly be true.

“Completely skipped your mind when these detectives are questioning you about the murder of your family that you had seen this pick-up?”

Ford said he and the detectives had concentrated on the few days before the murders, not the previous few weeks.

When the prosecuting attorney had no further questions he let Mariet step down from the stand and slunk back to the defense table.

13. The 5th Injustice

One point is certain.

That truth is one and immutable;

until the jurors all agree,

they cannot be all right.

- Washington Irving

Mariet Ford’s motion for a new trail now depended on the defense’s final witness.

It would take a few minutes to get him. The judge called a short recess and left the bench.

Mariet’s mother sat clutching her Bible in the back of the courtroom. The in-laws who believed he was guilty sat in another row.

No one knew much about this final witness. Supposedly, this guy could possibly be able to identify the real killer, not Mariet, a white guy.

After taking the stand, would he invoke his Fifth Amendment right to remain silent or testify?

No one seemed to know. But the word was that the district attorney had refused to extend him immunity. Every word the guy uttered could and would be used against him in a court of law.

The bailiff brought in the final witness.

All six-foot and four-inches of this 200 pounder walked into the courtroom. The guy was white. He swore to tell the truth and said, “My name is Rockland Riggs.”

The defense attorney asked questions, establishing Riggs’ character.

Like Mariet, Riggs had a college degree – unlike the majority of less educated suspects in criminal trials. Riggs had graduated from Sacramento State with a degree in marketing. Mariet had studied sociology and played football for the Bears at the University of California at Berkeley.

Their similarities ended with their education level.

Mariet was black, five inches shorter and had weighed no more than 160 pounds even while playing college football. With Mariet’s determination, he might have taken a body Riggs’ size to the National Football League’s Hall of Fame.

The state had convicted Riggs of several burglaries and once arrested him for assault with a deadly weapon – some sort of knife.

Mariet had no prior convictions.

Even Riggs’ own mother considered her son a criminal. She had accused Riggs of stealing from her not once, but on multiple occasions.

Even charged with the murder of her daughter-in-law and grandsons, Mariet’s mother still had testified on behalf of her son.

But the burden of proof had long since shifted from the prosecution to the defense.

Knowing full well that Riggs was an inmate at the Sierra Correctional Center, the defense attorney asked Riggs his current address.

“At this time I refuse to answer the question,” Riggs said. “My answer would tend to incriminate me.”

To Mariet’s supporters, this sounded almost like an admission of guilt or at least enough of a shadow of a doubt to garner Mariet a new trial.

The defense attorney asked if Riggs was a licensed driver.

“I refuse to answer based on the self-incriminating nature of the answer,” Riggs said.

The defense attorney handed Riggs exhibit E-1 and E-2 – two pictures of a yellowish truck.

Riggs had previously told investigators that he was getting gas for this truck when another professional burglar, Will, whose last name Riggs never learned, had approached him with a stolen gold ring, which Riggs traded so they could share some crack.

Riggs then had driven Will to unincorporated south Sacramento County to smoke crack while casing a house that looked awfully similar to the Ford family’s for a burglary. This had been about the time of the Ford murders.

Rockland Riggs had seen it on TV.

“Do you recognize that vehicle?” the defense attorney asked.

“I refuse to answer,” Riggs said.

“Same grounds?” the defense attorney asked.

“Same grounds.”

The judge interrupted.

“And Mr. Riggs,” the judge asked, “is that your intention? To refuse to answer any questions pertaining to the Mariet Ford incident?”

“At this time,” Riggs said. “That is correct.”

“All right,” the judge said. “Mr. Riggs is exercising his right to remain silent.”

The U.S. Constitution guaranteed this right, of course, but to Ford it felt like he had suffered an injustice.

An activist group called the Innocence Project wants crime analysts to test potential DNA found at the crime scene against Mariet Ford's to determine whether he is, in fact, innocent or guilty.

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