PART FIVE
April, 2015 – Deputy District Attorney Emily Hanks stepped into the center of the courtroom with an unenviable task. Not only was this her first felony trial, but it was a murder case from an era before DNA evidence, computer databases and cell phones, back when police reports were written with typewriters and fingerprints were kept on index cards.
The killing had happened six years before Hanks was even born.
“For 40 years, Michael Hayes thought he got away with murder,” Hanks told the jury. “It was 1972 when the defendant picked up Mary Costa, drove her out in the desert, robbed her, murdered her and then dumped her body by the side of the road, left her like trash hoping she would never be found.”
The week-long trial began like that, just as the murder investigation had done decades prior, with the grisly image of a tossed corpse. Jurors were shown faded photographs of Costa, first as a smiley young woman with a beehive haircut, then as a decaying body, scorched by the sun and gnawed on by animals. Three detectives – David Dupree, Ron Dye and Brett Seckinger – testified about chasing the killer.
And Diana Walker, now an ailing 65-year-old woman, flew in from Kansas to testify. Attorneys argued over almost everything, but if there was one they agreed upon, it was that Walker's testimony was the foundation of the entire trial.
“This case lives or dies on the word of Diana Walker,” said Douglas Redden, a public defender who represented Hayes. “Everything else is secondary.”
In the days that followed, Redden attacked the prosecution’s case at its core, insisting that Walker was not actually a battered woman who had escaped her abuser, but instead a scorned ex who had gone to extreme lengths to frame an innocent man. Hayes was “a perfect fall guy,” Redden said.
His theory went like this: Walker had gathered a dozen newspaper articles about Costa’s killing, memorizing every detail she could from descriptions and photos of the crime scene. Then she called the police in 1976, fabricating a tale that matched the facts she had gleaned from the paper. After that, Walker didn’t actually lead police back to the crime scene – they led her. And the detectives were so desperate to confirm what Walker was saying they ignored all the facts she got wrong, Redden argued.
Walker said she saw black shoes at the crime scene. They were white.
Walker had said the body had blonde hair. Costa was a brunette.
Walker said the body was petite. Costa was not.
“How do we know it’s a story now?” Redden asked the jury. “We know it’s a story because virtually every detail that she has right was in the paper. The location, the way the body looked, but every other detail she has inconsistent with the actual crime scene.”
The case against Hayes had other flaws too. First, the charges had originally been thrown out by a county judge, who said law enforcement had no justification for the 40-year gap between crime and arrest. The case was revived on appeal, but then the first trial ended in a hung jury, split 9 to 3 in favor of conviction.
Now, at the second trial, prosecutors tiptoed around the timeline issue. They had no satisfying explanation for why Hayes hadn’t been busted back in the ‘70s, when the sheriff's department let the case languish. Nobody wanted to admit that to a jury.
A key piece of evidence was missing also. In the four decades since the murder, police had somehow lost the blood-stained rock that was believed to be the murder weapon. It was last seen at an Indio police station, where it had been kept on the floor behind the door of an evidence room. Redden questioned if police were using the rock “as a door stop.” He never got a straight answer.
In other ways, however, the passage of time had actually strengthened the case against Hayes.
Years after the killing, Hayes had begun to blab about the body in the desert. Another prosecutor, Deputy District Attorney Christopher Cook, said Hayes was “so sure that he had gotten away with this murder than he had been bragging about it.”
One of the first people he told was Ann Bahm, another wife, whom Hayes met while working at a Holiday Inn in New Jersey in the early ‘80s. They dated for about 18 months before getting married.
“He told me that I would do what he told me to do, and if not, he would kill me. And I was told it would not be the first time.”
- Ann Bahm, ex-wife of Michael Jerome Hayes
But on their wedding night, Hayes changed. He assaulted Bahm for the first time that night, then told her he planned to pimp her out for profit.
He pointed to their marriage vows – “to love, cherish and obey.” He was only interested in the last part.
“He told me that I would do what he told me to do, and if not, he would kill me,” Bahm, 58, testified at Hayes’ trial. “And I was told it would not be the first time.”
“Did he tell you anything else?” Cook asked.
“That he had murdered a girl in Riverside, California … And then he dumped her body in the desert.”
A decade later, Hayes would meet another wife. This time, he was working at a carnival in South Florida when a Catholic single’s group ducked into his tent to get out of the rain. Hayes began to flirt with a young woman. She said she worked at Delta Airlines, but wouldn’t tell him her name.
Three days later, a dozen roses showed up at the Delta ticket counter.
Denise Minissale was wooed. They were married for two years before she left him.
“He said ‘Let’s just put it this way. Two of us went out and only one of us came back.'”
- Denise Minissale, ex-wife of Michael Jerome Hayes.
“He lived off of women,” Minissale would later tell police. “But I didn’t know all of this back then.”
Minissale also heard about Hayes’ violent past, although she wasn’t sure if she believed it at the time. On a date night in the early ‘90s, as they swapped stories about people whom had wronged them, Hayes hinted at a murder. Minissale assumed he was making up stories to sound tough.
But in 2015, as she testified at his trial for murder, Hayes’ words held a whole new meaning.
“He mentioned he went out in the desert,” testified Minissale, then 57. “He said ‘Let’s just put it this way. Two of us went out and only one of us came back.’”
To the prosecutors, these witnesses were a deathblow to Hayes’ defense, which was based entirely on portraying Walker as a liar who had framed her ex.
For those claims to be true, these other ex-wives would have to be part of her plot. Walker must have started her scheme back in ‘76, when she first spoke to police, then waited 30 years and tracked down Hayes’ ex-wives and convinced them both to join her scheme. Three women, who didn’t know each other and lived on opposite ends of the country, had connected across the decades to enact a meticulous, devious and exceedingly patient plan of revenge on their ex-husband. It was a “grand conspiracy,” said Cook, the prosecutor.
“That’s ridiculous,” he said at the end of his closing arguments. “This is not a conspiracy.”
It took the jury one day to agree. Hayes was convicted of murder on May 7, 2015.
A month later, Judge Charles Koosed sentenced Hayes to life in prison with the possibility of parole in seven years. The judge made it clear he would have preferred a harsher sentence, but Hayes had to be punished based upon the applicable laws in 1972, when he committed the murder.
"Mr. Hayes is simply no better than the animals that were eating away at Ms. Costa's body," Koosed said as he ordered Hayes to prison.
Stellflug, Costa’s son, traveled more than 1,000 miles for the sentencing hearing. Weeping in the witness box, Stellflug described how, at only 7 years old, he was told of his mother's death by his grandmother. She gave him a photo of Costa, which he has kept in his wallet ever since.
Stellflug looked Hayes in the eye and made him a promise.
“I told him if he ever gets a chance at parole, I will be there with a picture of my mother. I’ll do everything in my power to make sure he doesn’t get out,” Stellflug said in an interview.
Soon, Stellflug will get his chance.
Today, Hayes, now 68, is held at Solano State Prison, a medium-security facility in Vacaville that wasn't even built until 12 years after he killed Costa.
His first parole hearing is scheduled for July 27. If approved, Hayes could be released as early as summer 2018, after six and a half years in prison.
But opposition will be fierce. Cook will attend the hearing to argue against parole in person, according to the District Attorney’s Office.
And Stellflug, as promised, will be there. He has already signed up to speak.
“I’m going to tell them exactly what I think of Michael Jerome Hayes,” Stellflug said. “And exactly why I think he should spend his last dying days behind bars. My mother’s life was worth more than just five years in prison and the seven dollars he killed her for.”
Michael Jerome Hayes, who is currently incarcerated, did not respond to multiple letters asking him to comment for this series. His attorney, Douglas Redden, declined an interview.
Diana Walker could not be reached for comment. Detective David Dupree, who led the murder investigation in 1972, declined to be interviewed. The Riverside County Sheriff’s Department declined to make Sgt. Brett Seckinger available for interview. The District Attorney’s Office declined to make case prosecutors available for an interview also. Redden, the sheriff’s department and the DA’s office each said they would not discuss the case because Hayes is currently appealing his conviction.
26-07-2017, 11:48 AM
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Coldest Case: The murder of Mary Costa - the oldest solved murder in Riverside County
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