Manifest Injustice by Barry Siegel Page A

newly arrived shift, already knew. He’d heard it on the radio. Macumber wondered if Carol had also heard ahead of him, and if his sons had learned the news. His cell seemed a whole lot brighter that evening, almost like a room. He hoped his divorce attorney was making the necessary arrangements for him to be with his boys. Right at that moment, he believed himself the happiest and richest man in the entire world.
    They came for him at 3:34 the next afternoon. After he signed his release papers, the guards led him outside through a final steel door. It felt like moving from nothing to everything. His dad and brother were waiting there for him. So, too, were a number of reporters and photographers. Bill had not been looking forward to them—he felt the journalists always seemed to put him in the poorest possible light. He’d seen shots of himself on TV the night before; he’d looked like a villain.
    That morning’s Arizona Republic had featured a particularly upsetting article. Under the headline “Estranged Wife Fears Release of Suspect in 1962 Murders,” it began, “The estranged wife of a man accused of killing a young Phoenix couple 12 years ago said Thursday she is extremely afraid for her life if her husband is freed on bond today as scheduled.… ‘I’m living right out in the open. I haven’t got the money to run and hide or anything, so I’ll just have to keep my fingers crossed and hope.’” Bill thought that funny. In their thirteen years of marriage he had never once seen his wife in a situation that scared her.
    From the county jail, Bill’s dad and brother drove him home to see his mother, then to his doctor for a thorough checkup. He called friends later that afternoon, and finally sat down with his family for a big steak dinner. He was tired but took comfort in knowing he’d go to bed that night a free man. When he thought about the coming days, his mind fixed on only one thing: Soon, he would see his sons. Soon he would be with his boys.

 
    CHAPTER 6
    Days of Freedom
    OCTOBER 1974–JANUARY 1975
    The countdown to Bill Macumber’s trial began. Living once again at his parents’ home, a small one-bedroom trailer in the Bethany Home Trailer Park, Macumber would have almost three months to think about what was to come. The first days there soothed his nerves. He ran errands with his dad and brother, among other things buying a tape recorder so they could record all phone calls—protection against anyone making claims about what he’d said. He also picked up flowers for his neighbor Shirley Bridgewater, it being her birthday. The young girl running the flower stand clearly recognized him—“Haven’t I seen you on TV?”—but smiled anyway, without judgment, and said, “I hope you have a very nice day.” Macumber hoped God would be especially kind to her.
    Late that first afternoon, he took the flowers to the Bridgewaters’ home and sat talking to Shirley and Paul over a beer. They’d met and grown close through the Deer Valley Little League, Shirley the head of the auxiliary when Bill served as league president. Until now, Paul had seen Bill upset about only one thing: his separation from Carol. This murder charge was something else, though. In their living room, Bill looked destroyed. He kept saying, “I can’t believe she’s doing this to me.” He also said, “This is a farce.… I’m not going to have a problem because I didn’t do it.”
    That appeared obvious to Paul. Bill’s arrest had shocked everyone in the neighborhood. Bill just wasn’t a killer—not the guy Paul knew. It seemed incomprehensible, impossible. Why would Bill go out and do something like that? One day so different from the entire rest of his life—what possible motive? And such irony: Carol knew he was a killer for years, then all of a sudden she’s scared for herself and the kids? No, things just didn’t fit. Pile of crap, Paul thought. He hadn’t hesitated to put up his house as bail collateral.