"It seemed the best way to bring some closure, and if he makes the ten years, the books are closed," says Thomas Randle. "That's what led us to accept that direction. But, then again, we believed in the system."
But closure, as much as it's ever been possible in the murder of Paul Broussard, was still some time away. A month after Randle, Spake, Attard, Gonzalez and Valentine pleaded guilty, Nancy Rodriguez filed a wrongful death lawsuit against eight of the defendants and their families. Oddly enough, her attorney, Larry Lee, employed the trial strategy that Mike Anderson never got the chance to use. Lee argued that Broussard was killed by ten hopped-up, out-of-control teenagers from the suburbs, and if not for the discriminating fury of "the gang, so to speak," Buice would not have carried out the fatal stabbing.
The suit alleged that the parents of the ten defendants were equally responsible for what happened to Broussard and asked for the awarding of substantial damages to Rodriguez. Rodriguez also named Numbers as a defendant, claiming that the youths had gotten drunk there before assaulting Broussard. That claim was dropped before trial.
In his April 4, 1994, deposition testimony for the civil case, Spake confirmed the earlier suspicions of defense attorneys -- and contradicted statements he had made to the police -- by implicating almost everyone, directly and indirectly, in Broussard's death. After a day of drinking with Buice, he said, they had gone to meet Ralph Gonzalez and Derrick Attard "to go gay-bashing." Spake also said he'd taken similar excursions before, though he insisted that he hadn't participated. Others, however, had thrown rocks at people they suspected were gay, he said, and on one occasion Chance Dillon swung open a car door and hit a gay man walking along a Montrose street.
One can assume that Spake didn't plan on having to testify at the civil trial, but by the time it rolled around on May 8, 1995, almost all of the other defendants and their families had either been dismissed from the lawsuit or had settled out of court with Rodriguez. The case against Thomas and Ruby Randle was dismissed by summary judgment after state District Judge Harriet O'Neill determined that Gayland's parents had done everything they could to control their willful son.
Spake was noticeably uncomfortable on the witness stand. He admitted he got his licks in that morning by kicking Broussard. He also fingered Leo Ramirez -- who had already been sentenced to prison -- as an assailant, saying that he saw Ramirez punch Broussard in the face.
But Spake and Rodriguez's attorney, Larry Lee, proceeded with much less assurance on the issue of who among his companions had actually done this sort of thing before. Spake did not name names, as he had in his deposition testimony. Instead, looking almost ill, he said he knew "certain people" who cruised Montrose looking to hassle homosexuals, but that he was never of the opinion that they constituted "a group."
Lee never pushed for a positive identification of those "certain people," and, in fact, Spake fell far short of naming his co-defendants as partners in those previous forays into Montrose.
"Was it the intent of the group on July 3 [to harass gay men]?" Lee asked him at one point.
Spake responded, "Of our group?" His eyes moved up, then down, then all around, and after moistening his lips, Spake replied, "Uh ... uh ... yeah."
"I have nothing to go on but an educated guess after 24 years of practicing law," says Terry Gaiser, who represented Jeffrey Valentine in both the criminal and civil proceedings, "but I think Brian probably cut a deal with the D.A., that if the criminal cases went to trial, he was going to testify, and that's why he ended up getting the deferred.
"When it came to civil trial he had to eat those words, because it was already known that he had told the D.A. that he would testify and probably give the D.A. a story that the D.A. wanted to hear."
Jon Buice's testimony at the civil trial suggested that he had given prosecutors some not altogether reliable testimony as well. The most damaging statements came in January 1993, at the punishment phase for Leo Ramirez and Jaime and Javier Aguirre. That day, Buice lent credence to the notion of a conspiracy by telling Rains that all ten defendants knew before they left The Woodlands that night that they would eventually be harassing gays.
At the civil proceeding, however, Buice destroyed that earlier testimony by saying that he remembered "very, very little" of July 3 and 4, 1991, stoned as he was on pot, three and a half six-packs of beer and a half-tab of acid. "I don't even remember the parking lot," he said, referring to the place near West Drew and Montrose where Paul Broussard died.
By the time the First Court of Appeals rejected Rodriguez's appeal of the summary judgment awarded to Thomas Randle, the Randles' insurance carrier had already agreed to pay her $50,000.
It was not a settlement the Randles wanted to make. In December 1994, their civil attorney, John Venzke, rejected offers by Larry Lee to settle the case or agree to mediation.
