Michelle Amacone
Appearances
Anatomy of Murder
A Tangled Web - Part 1 (Kevin James & George Taylor)
And the car belongs to George Taylor, who is best friends with next-door neighbor Shelby Harris. And George is often at Shelby's house, and he knows George, and he knows this car.
Anatomy of Murder
A Tangled Web - Part 1 (Kevin James & George Taylor)
So we get to the neighbors and Lisa is sitting in a chair. She was kind of in this, what I can only describe as a catatonic state where she was just staring straight ahead, sitting in a chair and just staring straight ahead with this blank look on her face. And I kind of knelt down in front of her so I could get eye to eye. And I said, Lisa. She just kept staring.
Anatomy of Murder
A Tangled Web - Part 1 (Kevin James & George Taylor)
Lisa, you know, this went on for a minute. And then she finally like made eye contact, immediately started screaming and crying hysterically.
Anatomy of Murder
A Tangled Web - Part 1 (Kevin James & George Taylor)
I get it. Everybody reacts differently. But the interesting thing was not a tear was coming out of her eyes. during all this screaming and kind of crying hysterically. My gut feeling at this point is no. She is acting how she's supposed to be acting. This isn't real trauma. This isn't real bereavement. And I'd seen a lot. And I know everybody reacts differently. It wasn't real to me.
Anatomy of Murder
A Tangled Web - Part 1 (Kevin James & George Taylor)
Lisa was holding him down on the floor and telling him, stay on the floor, stay on the floor, don't get up. Now you could take that one of two ways. Is she being a protective mother or does she not want him to see something?
Anatomy of Murder
A Tangled Web - Part 1 (Kevin James & George Taylor)
And so Detective Fernandez and I, he was my second. Detective Thompson stayed at the scene. And as we're walking outside, we both looked at each other, and I immediately said... Okay, she's involved. I knew there was a long way to go, but it immediately centered my focus on her.
Anatomy of Murder
A Tangled Web - Part 1 (Kevin James & George Taylor)
This was truly detective work to me. This is what an investigation should have been. You know, it wasn't send some DNA swabs off. send some foot impressions off. It was myself and my partners working together and just keeping at it like every single day until we solved it.
Anatomy of Murder
A Tangled Web - Part 1 (Kevin James & George Taylor)
I asked the deputy to contact Shelby and bring her to the station because now we want to talk to her about George. And so Shelby is at the station, fully cooperative.
Anatomy of Murder
A Tangled Web - Part 1 (Kevin James & George Taylor)
She knew of no trouble in the marriage. They seemed like the happiest, happiest couple. She's just shocked by this. George's car being there, well, she doesn't know about that, but George is her best friend, and she can get George down to the station, and she'll make that happen for us. We went over that. Oh, she was happy to help, and she would get George down here to talk to us.
Anatomy of Murder
A Tangled Web - Part 1 (Kevin James & George Taylor)
Up to his kid's room? Never? Ever? He kept wanting me to know that he was very gangster. And those are his words, that he was very gangster and he had some gangster times. And that I didn't know anything about his life, but it was very dangerous for him to be at this police station. And his life could be on the line.
Anatomy of Murder
A Tangled Web - Part 1 (Kevin James & George Taylor)
There were some people out, a Mexican gang, out to steal George's car, and he had been followed that day, and he was afraid for himself and for Shelby. And so he and Shelby decided to go stay in a motel for the night. And according to Shelby, it was just her and George alone. In the motel, no one else was there.
Anatomy of Murder
A Tangled Web - Part 1 (Kevin James & George Taylor)
How can you explain that? And he said, oh, yeah. At one point, he had been afraid that the Mexican gang had shown up at Shelby's anyway. And so he wanted to just go check Shelby's house and make sure nothing was going on at Shelby's house.
Anatomy of Murder
A Tangled Web - Part 1 (Kevin James & George Taylor)
When I went to homicide in 1994, I was the only female homicide detective in the whole county.
Anatomy of Murder
A Tangled Web - Part 1 (Kevin James & George Taylor)
He's really trying to explain why his car is in front of Kevin James' house at the time of the shooting. And he's coming up with all kinds of stuff. Might have gone back a second time. He knows for sure he didn't go back to the motel right away. He went to the Orange Groves and slept for a while. Didn't have a real explanation for that. He just went all over the place with where he was that night.
Anatomy of Murder
A Tangled Web - Part 1 (Kevin James & George Taylor)
And I want to say it was like a three-hour interview and nothing was consistent from the beginning to the end. He changed his story two, three times. I mean, nothing was consistent.
Anatomy of Murder
A Tangled Web - Part 1 (Kevin James & George Taylor)
I actually arrest George that night. Now, I know that I can hold him for 48 hours, and then I know when he's getting out of jail, and we can set up a surveillance and follow him and see where he goes and what he does.
Anatomy of Murder
A Tangled Web - Part 1 (Kevin James & George Taylor)
Because I'm also thinking he knows that I think he's lying. I mean, we were clear in the interview. And if someone put him up to this, if he's the one who did it, if he was the one running out of the house, now give him a night to sleep on this. And maybe in the morning, he'll come to his senses and want to tell us what happened if other people are involved, which at this point is my theory.
Anatomy of Murder
A Tangled Web - Part 1 (Kevin James & George Taylor)
But fairly quickly, he says, you know, I've already talked to an attorney and I think I should talk to him before I talk to you guys anymore. So we stopped the interview. Didn't know you had an attorney. Yeah. So we leave. So that interview goes nowhere.
Anatomy of Murder
A Tangled Web - Part 1 (Kevin James & George Taylor)
We follow him. He goes directly to his mother's house, also lived in Moreno Valley. And we watch him go into the house. And we're sitting in a van outside, quite a ways down the cul-de-sac.
Anatomy of Murder
A Tangled Web - Part 1 (Kevin James & George Taylor)
His mom, Tina, comes out of the house and makes a beeline for the van and starts pounding on the windows and telling us she knows we're the cops and she knows we're in there and, oh, my God, and get out of here.
Anatomy of Murder
A Tangled Web - Part 1 (Kevin James & George Taylor)
I mean, we're two days in, we're 48 hours in, and I know that unless we get someone to talk, I don't think this is going anywhere.
Anatomy of Murder
A Tangled Web - Part 1 (Kevin James & George Taylor)
And then February 2nd, I get a call from George's girlfriend and mother of his child who tells me that George is missing.
Anatomy of Murder
A Tangled Web - Part 1 (Kevin James & George Taylor)
Now these are new characters that we haven't heard about. So now we start getting information on Terrence Bledsoe and Joe Jensen, who live together, who are very, very good friends with George and Shelby. And the four of them hang out all the time together. at Shelby's house. So now, okay, let's talk to Terrence and Joe.
Anatomy of Murder
A Tangled Web - Part 1 (Kevin James & George Taylor)
They are part of what Tina, George's mom, refers to as Shelby's gang. And so Tina is the one who puts George, Terrence, Joe, and Shelby as this little gang that are doing criminal activities together.
Anatomy of Murder
A Tangled Web - Part 1 (Kevin James & George Taylor)
George came in with all this bravado about being a gang member. And so I don't know if this is what his mom has picked up from him, what he's told her, or if it's actually true. But the one thing I do know is the four of these people are hanging out together and someone else was driving that car. that took George away from Kevin's house. And so good possibility it's Selby, Terrence, or Joe.
Anatomy of Murder
A Tangled Web - Part 1 (Kevin James & George Taylor)
Now I've got two more people that are possibly involved.
Anatomy of Murder
A Tangled Web - Part 1 (Kevin James & George Taylor)
There was a time where Tina told me that George went to Florida for a year or so. She thought that might have had something to do with some criminal involvement that he had to get out of California for a while. And so I kept saying to her, you know, maybe he's just left the state. And she was adamant. I'm telling you, Michelle, Selby had him killed. Selby had him killed.
Anatomy of Murder
A Tangled Web - Part 1 (Kevin James & George Taylor)
I get a phone call from Joe, who just would go by Joe. It was by telephone, wasn't coming to the station, wasn't giving me any other information other than his name was Joe.
Anatomy of Murder
A Tangled Web - Part 1 (Kevin James & George Taylor)
He knew nothing, you know, run everything by him on the phone. He knows nothing. He doesn't know what I'm talking about. Yeah, he hung out with Shelby and George, but not that much. And it just really went kind of nowhere.
Anatomy of Murder
A Tangled Web - Part 1 (Kevin James & George Taylor)
And so then also on the 10th, deputies respond out to the very east end of Moreno Valley to a dead body that's found.
Anatomy of Murder
A Tangled Web - Part 1 (Kevin James & George Taylor)
Dave Fernandez says, so, you know, you booked George. Did he have any tattoos or any identifying? Because the victim is face down. We can't see his face. So I said, he had a tattoo of a great big genie on his back. And so Fernandez says, we got George.
Anatomy of Murder
A Tangled Web - Part 1 (Kevin James & George Taylor)
George is laying on his stomach. His hands are out fully extended and above his head. His legs are fully extended behind him and kind of, not straight down, like kind of in a triangle, right, from his body. I mean, it looks like he was dragged there and then left exactly how he had been dragged there and laid.
Anatomy of Murder
A Tangled Web - Part 1 (Kevin James & George Taylor)
It was a call out. I was sleeping. It was like, I don't know, two in the morning or something. The first responding deputies were already there. And the information that I had was that there was a lone male who had been shot three times in the head while he was sleeping. He was still in his bed.
Anatomy of Murder
A Tangled Web - Part 1 (Kevin James & George Taylor)
The first things that ran through my mind were, you know, home invasion, the wife. And now those were really my two main thoughts, I think, when I was heading to the scene was, okay, home invasion or, you know, the wife. The wife's the only one in the house.
Anatomy of Murder
A Tangled Web - Part 1 (Kevin James & George Taylor)
That was your typical trapped home neighborhood. Pretty dense. I mean, the houses were close together. It was raining that night. There was a large amount of people, already gathered neighbors, family members of Kevin James, the victim.
Anatomy of Murder
A Tangled Web - Part 1 (Kevin James & George Taylor)
The scene was taped off, as usual, and the deputies walked us through the scene. So it was a two-story house. You walk into a pretty big living room. There was nothing in the living room, kitchen, dining room, or anything. At least no evidence that anything happened down there as far as blood or disturbance or anything like that.
Anatomy of Murder
A Tangled Web - Part 1 (Kevin James & George Taylor)
So when we walked in there, the bed was immediately to the right of the door. He was in bed. He was laying on his right side, still covered up. He had like a couple blankets on him. There was a pillow laying next to his head and then a pillow under his head.
Anatomy of Murder
A Tangled Web - Part 1 (Kevin James & George Taylor)
And the pillow next to his head, a lot of blood on it, and you could tell that there were what appeared to be at the time bullet holes in that pillow.
Anatomy of Murder
A Tangled Web - Part 1 (Kevin James & George Taylor)
When we took the blanket off of his head, it was clear that there were three gunshot wounds right in the temple area. They were very close to each other. A lot of blood.
Anatomy of Murder
A Tangled Web - Part 1 (Kevin James & George Taylor)
It was very execution style. He was on his right side. His right hand, my memory is, was like under his head like he would sleep. And then the other arm was just like, his left arm was like thrown across his body. Like his position in bed looked very relaxed.
Anatomy of Murder
A Tangled Web - Part 1 (Kevin James & George Taylor)
His eyes were shut. It just looked like he was sleeping. I mean, until you got close to the bed and saw what was happening, it just looked like he was still asleep in bed.
Anatomy of Murder
A Tangled Web - Part 1 (Kevin James & George Taylor)
We did check the front door for any signs of forced entry. None. Nothing looked like it had been touched. Same in the kitchen. TV's still, you know, where it appeared they belonged. You know, anything of value that you could immediately see just seemed to be in its place. And they also found, I want to say like $800, I believe, in Lisa's purse. So not a burglary, not a robbery.
Anatomy of Murder
A Tangled Web - Part 1 (Kevin James & George Taylor)
So Kevin James, he was a mechanic. He and Lisa had been together for a long time. Their oldest boy was 12. So it was over 12 years. And then they had a younger son, seven. So he was a dad. He was a mechanic. From all accounts, a really nice guy. Super nice, really friendly. Everybody in the neighborhood liked him. He was just a really nice guy, according to everybody.
Anatomy of Murder
A Tangled Web - Part 1 (Kevin James & George Taylor)
Other than the shell casings, there is absolutely no physical evidence in the house. None. I mean, we have the shell casings and we have Kevin's body and the blood. And that's about it. They're not seeing any like shoe impressions in the carpet. No mud trapped in. No. I mean, anything that you would. There's no there's no forced entry. There's like nothing.
Anatomy of Murder
A Tangled Web - Part 1 (Kevin James & George Taylor)
We were told that the deputies had spoken briefly with Lisa James, the wife, and she told them that She had been sleeping in her oldest son's room because she had lupus. Kevin James Sr., the victim, had a cold, flu kind of thing. So she didn't want to sleep with him that night because she didn't want to catch anything because her immune system was compromised.
Anatomy of Murder
A Tangled Web - Part 1 (Kevin James & George Taylor)
She had also told deputies that when she was sleeping, what woke her up was she heard what she felt was someone breaking into the house through the slider in the master bedroom. And then she heard three gunshots.
Anatomy of Murder
A Tangled Web - Part 1 (Kevin James & George Taylor)
No fingerprints, no handprints, nothing on it that would indicate that someone touched it. None. It was clear that no one came in through that slider.
Anatomy of Murder
A Tangled Web - Part 1 (Kevin James & George Taylor)
It was raining, and their backyard had no grass. It was all mud, and they had a Rottweiler in the backyard. So we went over and looked over the balcony. There's no ladder. There is nothing that you could have gotten up to the balcony and into the slider with that's still either attached to the balcony, leaning against the balcony, or even laying in the yard. It's just mud.
Anatomy of Murder
A Tangled Web - Part 1 (Kevin James & George Taylor)
And the only prints in the mud are dog prints. There's no footprints, nothing. That would indicate that anyone came through there to get up to the balcony to go through the slider. So those were the two main red flags right there. Like no one came through that slider or the backyard.
Anatomy of Murder
A Tangled Web - Part 1 (Kevin James & George Taylor)
He clearly was upset. And he had bits of crying and true crying and clearly was upset. But he really handled himself amazingly well. and was able to talk to me and answer my questions and really stepped up. And like I said, really well-spoken, really mature for 12 years old, I thought.
Anatomy of Murder
A Tangled Web - Part 1 (Kevin James & George Taylor)
While they were sleeping, she woke him up and said that she thought she heard someone coming in the slider in the master bedroom. and that someone was breaking into the house. She told him to get on the floor.
Anatomy of Murder
A Tangled Web - Part 1 (Kevin James & George Taylor)
He then began struggling because he wanted to get up and look out the window and see if he could see anyone coming or going. Lisa was holding him down on the floor and telling him, stay on the floor, stay on the floor, don't get up.
Anatomy of Murder
A Tangled Web - Part 1 (Kevin James & George Taylor)
And he goes to the window, is looking over the front, and he sees a guy running from the direction of his front door, across the lawn, getting into a car. He can't say for sure who this guy is, but he knows the car.
Anatomy of Murder
A Tangled Web - Part 1 (Kevin James & George Taylor)
He knows George, and he knows this car. And when I asked him, you know, could you say who it was for sure running out of the house, he said, could have been George, but he said, I can't 100% say who it was.
Anatomy of Murder
A Tangled Web - Part 1 (Kevin James & George Taylor)
There was a driver because this person running out of the house got into the passenger seat and the car took off. But he couldn't see the driver. He couldn't see if anyone else was in the car.