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.”