Her testimony put ax murderer on death row, kept her out of jail
PattyC
sense. Should this woman be free today? And she doesn't think about the
murder every day? That alone tells me a lot.
PattyC
"Feminism is the radical notion that women are people."
Tillman's Ex-Lover Speaks Out
Her testimony put ax murderer on death row, kept her out of jail
Sunday, May 6, 2001
BY KEVIN CANTERA
© 2001, THE SALT LAKE TRIBUNE
One night in 1982, Carla Sagers and Elroy Tillman crept into a Salt Lake
City man's home and Tillman fatally bludgeoned him with an ax before setting
fire to his bed.
At least that is the account Sagers gave a jury. And for that, Sagers
walked away free into a new life of marriage and motherhood.
Tillman, who denied murdering Mark Allen Schoenfeld in a fit of jealous
rage, was sent to death row.
For 18 years, Sagers has been free -- but not free to forget what
happened that night. Those events long ago remain painfully etched in her
present.
"People think I got off scot-free. I didn't serve any time, but I didn't
get off scot-free," Sagers said in an interview with The Salt Lake Tribune.
"Could that [memory] ever go away? Could you get something like that out of
your mind?"
Today, the 48-year-old Sagers speaks reluctantly and guardedly about her
role in the killing of Schoenfeld. "I don't think about [the murder] every
day, but it is there. It bothers me a lot," she said.
She is fearful the anonymity of her new life is about to be stripped
away as Tillman makes a final plea to escape a June 24 execution by lethal
injection. Possible intrusion by the news media or retaliation by friends of
Tillman, now 66, fills Sagers with dread.
The fight for Tillman's life also is likely to reignite debate about the
sharply conflicting stories jurors heard years ago. His attorneys submitted
a petition to the state Board of Pardons last week, asking that Tillman's
death sentence be commuted. They plan to call Sagers to testify at a
yet-to-be-scheduled clemency hearing.
The attorneys, Loni DeLand and Michael Sikora, want to demonstrate
Sagers' "intimate involvement" in the murder. They argue it was her idea to
set Schoenfeld's bed afire. And they point out that after the crime, she
initially lied to police, trying to provide Tillman with an alibi.
At the 1983 trial, Tillman's defense went even further, accusing Sagers
of committing the ax murder alone in a gesture of love for Tillman.
SchoenÂfeld was dating Tillman's ex-girlfriend, Lori Groneman, and
prosecutors argued Tillman's attack was motivated by jealousy. alibi.
Sagers told jurors she had helped Tillman plan the murder and admitted
she had lied to police. But she said she participated only after Tillman
threatened her life.
Sagers doesn't blame herself that her former lover was sentenced to
death. "It was his peers that put him away," she said. "I just told the
truth."
She declines to say whether she believes the sentence is justified.
Sagers agreed to talk to The Tribune on the condition that her current
surname and address not be revealed. Even then, she struggled with
recounting painful memories.
"It's hard. I really don't want to get into that all over again," she
said.
Born in Tooele in 1952, Sagers was raised in nearby St. John, one of
five children in her family. She met Tillman in August 1980, when she was 28
and he was 46. At the time, Sagers lived in Salt Lake City and worked as a
secretary in a federal parole office.
Within two months, Sagers developed a romantic relationship with
Tillman, a federal parolee. In less than two years, she was helping him plan
Schoenfeld's murder.
Sagers hesitates today to discuss her relationship with Tillman but
doesn't flinch from blaming him for the murder.
"He threatened to kill me," Sagers said. "I was there for an alibi. He
thought I would stick up for him."
Speaking from the witness stand in 1983, Sagers said that Tillman was
the first man she ever had sex with.
"Did you love Elroy?" asked Deputy Salt Lake County District Attorney
Michael Christ- ensen.
"Yes, at one time," Sagers responded.
She told the jury that in the months leading up to the murder, she made
harassing phone calls to Groneman, Tillman's ex-girlfriend, at Tillman's
urging.
She also testified that she took out a loan to give Tillman $3,000 and
bought three handguns for him. Tillman, convicted in 1978 in California for
possession of 558 pounds of marijuana, could not lawfully purchase the
weapons himself, she said.
On the night of the murder, Sagers testified, she was packing for a
business trip to San Francisco when Tillman came over and asked her to go
for a ride. By 1:30 a.m. May 26, the pair wound up outside Schoenfeld's
house at 1560 S. 1300 East.
"I didn't know what he was going to do," Sagers said.
Sneaking in through an unlocked door, Tillman and Sagers waited in the
dark of Schoenfeld's house for close to two hours until they were sure he
was asleep. Then, Sagers said, Tillman moved silently into the bedroom.
Sagers waited in the hall as Tillman hit Schoenfeld at least twice with
the blunt end of the ax, she testified. Then, with Schoenfeld still
breathing, Tillman ignited the bed with a small disposable lighter,
scattering cigarettes around the room to make the fire look accidental,
Sagers told the jury.
Because Tillman shut Schoenfeld's bedroom door before the two fled, the
fire died from lack of oxygen and did not spread throughout the house. A
young family of three were living in a basement apartment.
"We easily could have had three or four murders that night," remembers
Christensen, who prosecuted Tillman.
An autopsy determined Schoenfeld died of head trauma as well as
asphyxiation. The only physical evidence in the case was a pair of bloody
gloves Sagers said belonged to Tillman and the burned remnants of a cloth
she said Tillman put over Schoenfeld's head before striking him.
Sagers continued with her business trip, flying to California just hours
after the murder. When she returned, two Salt Lake City police detectives
met her at the airport and took her in for questioning.
Sagers stuck to a story contrived with Tillman -- that the pair had
driven to Ogden Canyon on the night of the murder -- until the investigators
caught her in a lie. She had denied calling Groneman, but the detectives had
a tape of her voice.
Only then did she agree to testify against Tillman. The deal extended to
her by the prosecution has been called "patently unfair" by Tillman's
lawyers.
Even Christensen says today that Sagers was an accessory to the murder
and broke the law by failing to report the crime. But prosecutors never
considered charging her with a lesser crime in exchange for her testimony,
Christensen said.
"We felt that even though she was involved, [Tillman] had already done
enough to destroy her life," Christensen said. "In exchange for her truthful
testimony, we let her go."
Tillman's lawyers have called the immunity deal racist because
prosecutors charged Tillman, who is black, with a capital crime, while
Sagers, who is white, walked free.
"It wasn't about race. It was about telling the truth," Sagers says now.
In more than six hours on the stand, she offered the only evidence tying
Tillman to the crime.
"She was on the stand literally aging before your eyes," Christensen
told the jury of six men and six women during closing arguments. "Sometimes
hell is worse than burning."
Tillman, who continues to maintain his innocence, chose not to testify
at his trial and has refused numerous interview requests. After Judge Ernest
Baldwin signed his original death warrant, Tillman called his conviction "a
racial Mormon conspiracy" in a brief statement to the court.
Attorney Earl Xaiz, appointed by the court to represent Sagers during
her testimony, said that if she had not cooperated, she probably would have
been charged with capital murder.
"They convinced her that if she didn't give them what they wanted, she
could be given the death penalty herself," Xaiz said.
During the trial, Tillman's attorney, James Barber, tried to blame the
murder solely on Sagers. He said she committed the murder alone to "prove
the strength of her feelings" for Tillman, who had tried to break off their
relationship earlier that night.
"Sagers' story is a lie," Barber said. "Carla Sagers struck
[Schoenfeld], Elroy Tillman didn't. . . . Sagers had the motive and she
acted on it. The facts are consistent with her having committed the crime."
Barber also pointed out that in a polygraph test before Tillman's trial,
Sagers appeared to be lying when she said she did not strike Schoenfeld with
the ax. Although the results of the test were not admitted at trial --
despite Barber's protests -- the police officer who administered the lie
detector did testify.
Sgt. Kenneth Thirsk said Sagers told him that she herself struck
Schoenfeld in the head but she later recanted the statement.
Christensen scoffed at the idea that Sagers committed the crime alone.
"It's a crime of passion, and Carla Sagers had no passion whatsoever towards
Mark Schoenfeld," he said.
To The Tribune, Sagers adamantly denied ever striking Schoenfeld. "Elroy
knows he did it," she said.
Sagers calls her immunity deal "fair" but said she will never escape the
gnawing guilt for having participated in the crime.
And if Tillman ultimately keeps his date in the death chamber at the
Utah State Prison?
"I don't know how I'll feel when he dies."
kcan...@sltrib.com
Maggie
>sense. Should this woman be free today? And she doesn't think about the
>murder every day? That alone tells me a lot.
>
>PattyC
***Other than the fact that I'm surprised that her testimony alone could put
him on death row, I don't see anything too unusual about this. I strongly
suspect the cops have the correct perp. But the woman is clearly an idiot--if
not a murderer.
Maggie
"Many students react to ideas they don´t like as though they were apprentice
members of the Chinese Politburo."--Nat Hentoff on reactions to David
Horowitz's Ad Opposing Slave Reparations