-Caveat Lector- http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2002/06/24/BADEPUTY.TMP
Former deputy faces murder, theft charges Ex-wife ties him to 1980 death of gold dealer Jim Herron Zamora, Chronicle Staff Writer Two decades ago, the decomposed body of a San Francisco gold dealer was found in a canal near Tracy. Six weeks later, a onetime rising star in the Alameda County Sheriff's Department was reported missing, and his abandoned, bloodstained car turned up in a BART parking lot. Now, Eric Wright, once the youngest sheriff's lieutenant in the county, is charged with murdering Lester Marks and stealing several gold bricks, faking his own death and starting a new life in Colorado under an assumed name, then fleeing to Mexico for five years to avoid prosecution. No one linked the two men or their cases until a woman who married Wright in Colorado called cops in Alameda County in 1993 with a tip that her husband had hidden gold bars in their toilet tank and might have murdered someone in the Bay Area. "For 12 years, I didn't know who I was married to," Wright's former wife, Kathi Spiars, said last week. "I thought I was married to Steven Marcum. It turns out he was someone completely different." The tale of Wright's disappearance, his resurfacing in Colorado with gold bars and using a deceased infant's name, and two decades of efforts to solve Marks' death are detailed in San Joaquin County court records. Wright is to be arraigned on murder charges July 8 after his arrest in Mexico last month. If convicted, he could face the death penalty. Wright, 53, who has not entered a plea, declined to be interviewed. His attorney acknowledges that Wright had "hurt people" when he left his wife and 3-year-old daughter in 1980, and misled Spiars. However, he said, his client -- a disabled Vietnam veteran -- is not a killer. "Eric Wright did not kill Lester Marks," said Keith Arthur. "It's totally circumstantial. There are dozens of people Marks knew in the Tenderloin who could have killed him for that gold." An investigator who spent nine years on the case calls Wright "cold and calculating." "He's a very smart guy," said San Joaquin County sheriff's Lt. John Huber. "He fooled lots of people over the years. It's like a game to him." The case began on Aug. 7, 1980, when a man fishing in the California Aqueduct found the clothed body of the 57-year-old Marks with his ankles and left wrist shackled to a large steel chain, according to court records. Investigators assumed the killer took his gold, but they had no leads. The year before, the metals dealer pleaded guilty to possession of $500,000 in stolen property, including jewelry taken during a robbery at a high-society party in a Sea Cliff mansion. Marks was suspected of melting stolen gold jewelry into ingots and selling them, but police could not prove it and gave him back seven 2 1/2-pound bars worth about $200,000. Because of his heart condition, Marks received no prison time. Wright, meanwhile, had quit law enforcement a year earlier, not long after the former Marine had become the youngest lieutenant ever in Alameda County. He told relatives he was bored with police work, according to court records, and joined a precious metals firm. About the time Marks' body was found, court records show, Wright got a friend to buy a copy of a birth certificate for Steven Marcum, a 6-month-old infant who died in 1951. Documents in Marcum's name were sent to a private mail drop Wright had rented, court records state. On Sept. 19, 1980, Wright was reported missing by his father-in-law, Robert Byers, then an Alameda County Municipal Court judge. A few days later, Wright's 1979 Honda Civic was found at the El Cerrito Plaza BART Station with a bullet hole in the door and blood -- which turned out to be from an animal -- on the seat. His wallet, minus cash and credit cards, was found by a station agent. Investigators found in Wright's office a copy of "The Paper Trip," a book that describes to how develop an alias by stealing a name off a grave marker, but little else to indicate what may have happened to Wright. Without anything linking Wright to other crimes -- including Marks death -- investigators closed the case two months later. Wright -- now Steven Marcum -- began working at a restaurant in Denver, where he met Spiars, a waitress, and married her. He told her his parents had died, and his family mementos and belongings were destroyed by fire, she said. The couple moved several times in the next dozens years, to other parts of Colorado and Mexico, and lived briefly in Southern California, where they worked at Disneyland. Wright once bought Spiars an expensive car. He told people his income was supplemented by $80,000 from his deceased father's estate, according to court records. Wright also gradually sold off several gold bars in 1981, which he had kept in his toilet tank, Spiars and other witnesses later told investigators. She became more suspicious in 1991, when she tracked down a copy of her husband's old yearbook from Exeter Union High in Tulare County as a surprise gift -- since his original had been lost in the fire. She found that he was class president in 1967 and voted most dependable. But his name wasn't Steve Marcum -- it was Eric Wright, and no one had heard from him in years. The couple split up the next year, and she later had the marriage invalidated. During the breakup, he told her some details about his Bay Area past and made vague references about a possible violent history. According to court records, he wrote her a letter saying that looking into his past would cause him "great harm, perhaps get him killed, and certainly put him in prison." "I could not bear the terror the truth might bring back into my life," the letter states. In April 1993, she called the Alameda County Sheriff's Department and told investigators about Wright's identity change and said he might be responsible for a murder in California. Two months later, while he was being questioned by a police officer in Colorado about an unrelated possible forgery, Wright asked, "Is California investigating me for a homicide? What, did they find some bones in the water?" court records state. Huber got interested in Wright in the Marks' killing because of the references to gold bars. When he looked over the missing person's case, he found that "Eric Wright" and the name of his metal trading firm had been scrawled on a notepad in Marks' home office. When Huber began reinterviewing witnesses in 1993, he found a connection. Marks' son, Ronnie, charged with burglary in Alameda County in August 1980, said a "dirty" ex-lieutenant named Eric Wright had tried to negotiate a deal with Lester Marks: If Marks sold Wright the gold bars, the charges would be dropped, or he would be given probation. The sale was supposed to take place a short time before Marks disappeared. Byers, who declined to be interviewed for this story, told Huber he had refused his son-in law's request to cut a deal. Byers, his daughter and Wright's former business partners in the Bay Area all said they had no idea how the ex-deputy would have gotten the money to buy the gold bars. In 1994, when Huber visited Wright in Colorado, Wright denied knowing either of the Markses or anything about the killing. Wright said the months before arriving in Colorado were a "big black hole" and that he suffered "a psychotic fugue" brought on by post-traumatic stress syndrome, according to court records. Wright could not explain to Huber why he had adopted the new name and deserted his family or how he had gotten the gold bars, according to court records. In 1997, a San Joaquin County grand jury was convened to look into Marks' death. Wright left for Mexico just after receiving an invitation to appear. The grand jury did not issue an indictment. But Huber, feeling he had enough evidence for an arrest, pressed on. With the help of the FBI, they tracked Wright to Guaymas, a city on the Sea of Cortez. He had resumed going by his real name and lived off $2,000-a-month disability payments, his attorney said. Mexican authorities would not help the FBI arrest Wright until April, when he was arrested and taken across the border that same day. Wright's attorney said mental illness -- not criminal intent -- explained his client's years of erratic actions. Wright is severely haunted by Vietnam War demons, Arthur said, and didn't kill Marks. "You don't walk away from a great career because you are bored," Arthur said. "You walk away because you realize that you just can't do it anymore. He just felt that life had gone flat. He needed to get a clean break." <A HREF="http://www.ctrl.org/";>www.ctrl.org</A> DECLARATION & DISCLAIMER ========== CTRL is a discussion & informational exchange list. Proselytizing propagandic screeds are unwelcomed. Substance—not soap-boxing—please! These are sordid matters and 'conspiracy theory'—with its many half-truths, mis- directions and outright frauds—is used politically by different groups with major and minor effects spread throughout the spectrum of time and thought. That being said, CTRLgives no endorsement to the validity of posts, and always suggests to readers; be wary of what you read. CTRL gives no credence to Holocaust denial and nazi's need not apply. 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