That changed on Aug. 8, 1999, when a car swerved off a street in suburban Herndon, Va., jumped the curb, barreled 45 feet across a lawn and slammed into Marquez, crushing him against a tree. The driver then jammed the vehicle into reverse and sped away. For weeks afterward police had no leads or suspects. Now, thanks to a bizarre twist, they do. Accident investigator Cheryl Crawford had just begun collecting information about the case when, she says, she and a colleague heard a confession—from Crawford's own close friend, suburban mom Susan Plunkett.
Although police, stymied by a lack of supporting evidence, have not charged Plunkett, Marquez's widow has taken up the fight. She is suing Plunkett, 41, for $6 million in damages for the wrongful death of her common-law husband. A civil trial is scheduled to begin in March. "My husband was a good man, an honorable man," says Maria Ermelinda Lemus Hernandez, 35, who left their children—Jose Ruben, 18, Dinora, who turns 16 on Dec. 12, and Yacquelin, 4—in her mother's care earlier this year and came to the U.S. to help press the case. Someone, she says, "was responsible" for his death. That someone, she firmly believes, is Plunkett.
On the fateful Sunday, after a week of 10-hour shifts busing tables at the China Star restaurant in Reston, Va.—where Marquez's boss says "Frank" was his best worker—Efrain headed to nearby Herndon to watch a pickup soccer match with friends. After the game Marquez couldn't find his house keys, so he, his cousin and a friend bought beer and went to wait on a stranger's lawn near the soccer field for the half brother with whom Marquez lived. About 9:45 p.m. they saw the headlights of a white car veer toward them. "There wasn't time for anything," says his cousin Baudilio Marquez, 21. "We saw the lights, and we were hurt."
Seeing Efrain pinned against the tree, Baudilio, who was also injured, struggled to his feet and limped across the road to phone police. From there, he heard the screeching tires as they spun in the dirt near the tree, and when Baudilio returned, the car was gone. Confounded by the seemingly intentional way the vehicle had swerved—and further hampered by translation difficulties—local police began to investigate Marquez's death as a murder. Two weeks later, when it began to look like a hit-and-run, Fairfax County cops—who have an accident-reconstruction unit—took over the probe. By then Marquez's family was growing impatient with the investigation, which they contend was neither prompt nor thorough. The family's lawyers hired Crawford, an independent accident investigator for law firms, to help get some answers.
It was a lucky choice. In mid-August Crawford, who lives in Bethesda, Md., drove to Herndon to take pictures of the spot where Marquez was struck. A week later she phoned longtime friend Susan Plunkett and told her that she had been in her neighborhood to investigate a fatal accident. Plunkett, a divorced former administrator Crawford met in the early 1990s, when both worked for a computer software firm, didn't ask about the case, says the investigator. "She was having a rough time with her ex-boyfriend," says Crawford. "She was relying on my support."
But Crawford would soon discover that Plunkett had more on her mind. On Sunday, Aug. 29, the two women met for lunch. "We kissed, then I saw she was visibly distraught," recalls Crawford, adding that Plunkett kept looking over her shoulder and began speaking in disjointed sentences. In particular, the investigator recalls her friend asking an odd question: " 'If you ran over a bunny rabbit, would you know?' " Later, says Crawford, Plunkett said something even more baffling: " 'You're on the other side.' "
As Crawford drove home, she had a sudden thought: Perhaps her friend had witnessed the accident. She picked up Jared Stern, a fellow investigator, and headed to Plunkett's house—hoping, says Crawford, both to console her and to find out more. Shortly after they arrived, Crawford says, Plunkett, sitting at her kitchen table, began sobbing. Then she confessed. "I did it," said Plunkett, according to a police affidavit. Plunkett's civil lawyer Charles F. Geschickter denies she said any such thing. "We dispute that," he says.
Plunkett's stunned visitors say they repeatedly urged her to go to the police. "Reluctantly, she did agree she needed counsel and [said she would] not try to hide," remembers Stern. That evening the two women, both rattled by the day's events, attended a birthday party for Plunkett's son Kyle, now 13. Afterward Crawford—concerned, she says, about Plunkett's state of mind—took her friend home to Maryland to spend the night. The next day Plunkett went to see a lawyer, and Crawford called the police. "It was a very difficult thing," says Crawford, but "I had to do it. I had no alternative."
Fairfax County police obtained a search warrant and went to Plunkett's townhouse in Reston. She answered the door and, according to a police affidavit, told them, "I'm not talking to anybody until I talk to a lawyer." While there, they examined Plunkett's white 1998 900S Saab and noticed what appeared to be a minor dent on the bumper and what they believed were "numerous spatters of blood" on the grille area. Police seized the grille, mud flaps, undercarriage, headlights and license plate and sent them to the state crime lab for analysis.
After news accounts identified Plunkett as a suspect, police say they received a disturbing call from a neighbor of Pat Plunkett, 56, a computer software developer from whom Susan was divorced in 1998. The neighbor told police that late one night, about the time of the accident, his wife had been awakened by a noise outside their Reston home and saw Plunkett in her ex's driveway, hosing down her Saab by flashlight and drying it off with paper towels. "What does that tell you?" asks Fairfax County Det. Jeff Thompson. "It's very compelling, but not enough to get a conviction in criminal court."
With no charges pending, police say the crime lab—badly backlogged from a surge in DNA testing—took months analyzing the various parts of the car for blood, DNA, traces of clothing and matching tire treads. When all the test results finally arrived in June, they indicated that the lab had not gotten enough material to come to any conclusion about the presence of DNA; that there was no identifiable human blood or tissue or matching fibers on the car; and that the tire tracks did not match the tires that were on Plunkett's car three weeks after the accident. In Virginia, where confessions must be corroborated by evidence, Fairfax County prosecutors say the results have thus far kept them from bringing charges against Plunkett. "My heart fell on my knees," says Detective Thompson. "I thought we had her."
Since the crash, life has changed dramatically for everyone involved. Plunkett, whom an acquaintance says initially chatted freely about her "little accident," now won't discuss the case nor what, according to the acquaintance, Plunkett said would be her defense—that she fell asleep at the wheel. Last spring Plunkett, a 1981 graduate of Virginia Tech who majored in finance, moved back in with her ex and their son. Says one neighbor: "I think she's in her own private prison."
At an October deposition Plunkett asserted her Fifth Amendment rights and declined to answer questions from Maria Ermelinda's lawyer Joseph Cammarata—answers that could be used against her if a criminal case ever goes to court. In Virginia, where there is no statute of limitations on felonies, prosecutors say they will review the civil trial for new evidence.
Crawford says she and Plunkett have spoken twice in the past year and that they assiduously avoided mentioning the case. According to Crawford, however, Plunkett has made it clear that she doesn't hold the investigator's decision to go to the police against her. Because of her choice, Crawford adds, "I can sleep at night."
When he heard his father had died, Marquez's teenage son Jose Ruben, who hopes to become an accountant, initially thought about quitting school and finding a job to help support the family. Instead, his three uncles in the U.S. began working longer shifts so that they could send money to Marquez's widow and children. "We wanted to continue the dream that Efrain had for his children," explains Jose Adan, one of Marquez's brothers, even though "it's not quite the dream we came here looking for."
The family's support has also enabled Maria Ermelinda to pursue her quest, painful though it is at times. "I'm happy the children are fine. I miss them, especially at night when they go to sleep," she says. "But I'm not leaving until I have justice."
Bruce Frankel
Lisa Newman in Herndon and Thomas Long in Chapeltique
- Contributors:
- Lisa Newman,
- Thomas Long.
Saved by the Bell Reunion
The hookups, the meltdowns, the memoires
The case reveals what was really going on what they think of each other now!
