Mackey’s earlier years. He went to the back of the file with the idea of moving forward in time.
Mackey’s first arrest as an adult came only a month after he turned eighteen. In August 1987 he was picked up for car theft in what the follow-up reports classified as a joyriding incident. Mackey had been living at home at the time and stole a neighbor’s Corvette. He had jumped in the car and taken off after the neighbor had left it running in the driveway and gone back inside his house for a forgotten pair of sunglasses.
Mackey pleaded guilty and the presentencing report contained in the file cited his juvenile record but made no mention of the Chatsworth Eights. In September 1987 the young car thief was placed on one year probation by a superior court judge, who tried to talk Mackey out of a life of crime.
The transcript of the sentencing hearing was in the file. Bosch read the judge’s two-page lecture, in which he told Mackey he had seen young men like him a hundred times before. He told Mackey he was standing at the same precipice as the others. One simple crime could be a life lesson, or it could be the first step down a spiral. He urged Mackey not to go down the wrong path. He told him to think hard and make the right decision on which way to go.
The words of warning had obviously fallen on deaf ears. Six weeks later Mackey was arrested for burglarizing a neighborhood home while the husband and wife who lived there were at work. Mackey had cut an alarm, but the break in current had registered with the alarm company and a patrol car was dispatched. When Mackey came out the back door carrying a video camera and assorted other electronics and jewelry, two officers were waiting with guns drawn.
Because Mackey had been on probation for the car theft he was held in the county jail while awaiting disposition of the case. After thirty-six days in stir he stood before the same judge again and, according to the transcript, begged forgiveness and for one more chance. This time the presentencing report noted that drug testing indicated that Mackey was a marijuana user and that he had begun hanging around an unsavory group of young men from the Chatsworth area.
Bosch knew that these men were likely the Chatsworth Eights. It was early December and their plan of terror and symbolic homage to Adolf Hitler was just a few weeks away. But none of this was in the PSR. The report simply stated that Mackey was hanging with the wrong crowd. As he sentenced Mackey, the judge would not have known how wrong that crowd was.
Mackey was sentenced to three years of prison reduced to time served. He was also placed on two years probation. The judge, knowing that prison would be just a finishing school for a young criminal like Mackey, was giving him a break and attempting to break him at the same time. Mackey walked out of court free, but the judge had placed a series of heavy restrictions on his probation. They included weekly drug tests, maintaining gainful employment and a requirement that the high school dropout get his general education degree within nine months. The judge told Mackey that if he failed in any part of the probation order he would be sent to a state prison to complete his three-year sentence.
“You may consider this harsh, Mr. Mackey,” the judge said in the transcript. “But I consider it quite kind. I am giving you a last chance here. If you fail me on this, you will without a doubt be going to prison. Society will be through with trying to help you at that point. It will simply throw you away. Do you understand this?”
“Yes, Your Honor,” Mackey said.
The file came with copies of the court-requested completion reports from Chatsworth High. Mackey got his GED in August 1988, a little more than a month after Rebecca Verloren was taken from her bed and murdered.
Despite the judge’s admirable efforts to steer Mackey from a life of crime, Bosch had to wonder if those efforts had cost Rebecca Verloren her life. Whether Mackey was the actual triggerman or not, he’d had possession of the gun that killed her. Was it reasonable to think that the chain of events leading to the murder would have been broken if Mackey had been behind bars? Bosch wasn’t sure. It