Excerpts from an Interview with James Rodden
Getting to Know the Human Being
Beyond the Headlines
(Missouri Set to Kill James Rodden Feb. 23)
Q: How did you hear the word that the MO Supreme Court had set an execution date and what were your feelings upon hearing it.
A: I've just been numb.
Q: Please talk about what happened the night of the killings?
A: .....I picked up Terry Trunnel at the bar that night and took her back to the apartment. ..I say this not to hurt her family, but she had the reputation of being a barroom whore...I brought her back for my housemate, Joe Arnold.
Q: Why was that?
A: Joe never got out much. He was an alcoholic. He never had any lady friends. I knew she would take care of him. Matter of fact they got along real well.... She started taking off her shirt, that's when I left.
Q: Had Joe asked you to do that? And what did you do after you left?
A: No......After leaving, I went across town to a girlfriend's house, but her house lights were off so I didn't stop...that probably was at about 2:00 in the morning...If I had rang the doorbell, she would have let me in....But I went back to our apartment.... It was completely dark....I got a beer out of the refrigerator and watched a bull-riding event on TV.
Q: How long was it before you realized something else, a violent action was going on in the apartment?
A: I don't know,.I drank some beer and smoked half a joint.and decided it was time for bed. I walked down the hallway, (the bathroom was on the left, James' bedroom was directly across from it and Joe's bedroom was at the end of the hallway)...When I got home I noticed the glass table top was broken. It happened a few times during the (several) months we were roommates, well I didn't think anything of it.... After using the bathroom, .When I opened up the bathroom door that's when I saw the blood...The only light that was on in the house was the red light in my bedroom...I looked in my bedroom and saw he was on top of her on my bed. And I asked him, 'What the fuck are you doing?' cause I was fixing to get mad....
He looked at her, then he looked up at me. He jumped up off the bed. He probably wasn't as far as you are from me (about 2-3 feet)-- when I caught the knife in my hand. I happened to reach out and just grab it. That's how I got that cut across here (shows his right hand and a several-inch long scar). We wrestled, around the corner of my room, into his room... during the course of the fight I managed to get his hand turned over I pressed against him (forcing the knife into his chest)..He went down. I reached down and pulled the knife out...that's when I made a mistake...I should have left then...I sat on the dog carrier...
"I heard him wheezing, realized his lung was punctured.....I asked him, 'What in the fuck are you doing?' He got up and said 'With what went on here today, can't be but one of us leave here.' I told.him, 'Look man, I've got the knife, I'll cut you.. I'll use it.' He came at me in a bulldog stance, he lowered his head, opened his arms and he ran at me. I caught him in a headlock, I stabbed him three or more times....during one of these time, he came straight up like this (stands and looks up). I came on down and the knife hit him here (points to his forehead).... My hand slid down the blade (making another scar).. . He collapsed....
(James says he picked up Terry Trunnell-- who had rolled off the bed onto the floor where she died-- and placed the body on his bed. He acknowledges pouring lamp oil about the apartment, then setting on fire. Realizing that was a mistake though, he says put out that fire and left the apartment, driving away without a specific destination. Out of habit he says he got onto Highway 5 and drove north, finally passing out from a loss of blood-- then crashing the car into a home in northern Missouri.)
Q: Why would you leave the scene of the crime? Did you have a violent criminal record and reason to be concerned about authorities being suspect of your story?
A: I had a few DWI's, a few misdemeanor marijuana charges and had been involved in a few fights. In fact at the trial (for Arnold's murder), they only brought up a single misdemeanor marijuana charge, a single DWI, a single minor assault. I got life plus fifty.
Q: How long had you known Joseph? And had you known him to violent before?
A: Less than a year. Joe was an alcoholic. His idea of breakfast was to take out some vodka and some orange juice and take a big drink of each. He was on lithium.
I had seen Joe raise his temper...Usually I'd laugh at him.... I heard he had been in a psychiatric center....and am unsure what he was on medications for... Angel Duffy was one person who could speak of his possible violence. However, he didn't testify at either trial-- she finally testified at his 2726 appeal hearing about his violence.
At the time of the murder, we were preparing to move to California. I just quit a job at the Golden Coral, where I worked as a line cook. I had never been there (out west) before,...I was tired of the Missouri winters.
Q: Has your family been supportive and can they be contacted?
A: They've been extremely supportive. My mother is not in the best of health (He asked us not to contact his family, fearing that it would further compound their suffering.)
Q: How do you feel about Gov. Carnahan honoring the request of Pope John Paul II and commuting his death sentence? Does it strike you as unfair that the governor spares one life,but not all sentenced to be killed?
A: I like Darrell Mease. He's a good person. But what the governor did was a farce. Carnahnba knew damn well that he if he didn't honor the Pope's request-- especially meeting face to face, that he'd lose the Catholic vote come next Senate election.
Carnahan also knew that Mease had two other murder charges. You know he made this grand gesture of freeing this poor soul.,,, He (Mease) is likely to have another death sentence within a year to 18 months.
Q: Please tell us about how the state Attorney General's office has helped pursue death sentences.
A: Their job is to make sure the attorney general look good, so that when the standing governor goes out (of office), he goes in-- that's their whole function. (Current U.S. Senator) John Ashcroft was Attorney General and became governor. Bill Webster was AG, was going for the governor's office, but got caught (and got sentenced to prison for breaking state laws),...
My understanding of the law was very limited. I used to merely pay $25 or $50 in misdemeanor charges and be done with the cou8rts..... But after 16 years and being somewhat aware of the law, I know that all my (trial) attorney Lee Nations did was take my parents' money.
He didn't put Angel on the stand, he didn't check Joe's background-- did he have psychiatric history. He didn't put any witnesses or evidence on in the penalty phase of the second trial, when I was sentenced to death. In the first trial, he called my father and mother, my brothers and some other people to testify. At the second trial, he put nobody on... He said it was getting late and he wanted to get it over with... There was no testimony offered.
I should have been tried for both deaths in one single t4rial. All the evidence...I had already been judged for that murder in the first trial.
Q: What about Finnical's changed strategy with the change in the time of death?
A: Finnical said in the second trial that Terry Trunnel died hours later after Joe-- after I tortured her, to make it easier to have the jury sentence me to death.
Q: How has your treatment been here in prison?
A: I've become friends with a lot of guards down here. If you'd look at my institutional record while I've been here, you'd find that I have now qualified to be housed in the honor dorm. I haven't have any violations in years. Most of my violations in the past were for insulting behavior. I used to have a real problem with authority. I didn't like people to tell me what to do.... over the years, I've realized that they didn't put me here. I put me here. Over the years I've become a different person. You ask workers in the library or the custody workers, and they'd all tell you I've become a different bird.You'd be hard pressed to find a staff who could talk badly about me.
Q: How has this affected your family and friends?
A: I've had a few of my friends break down on the phone. I've tried to tell my family that this (my execution) isn't such a bad thing. I am getting out of this place. I want my family to have a wake, a party. I don't want it to be a sad occasion. It's not the way I would have wanted to get out of prison. But I don't want to spend the rest of my life here.either.
Q: How have you dealt with your death sentence and the reality, as you've contended, that you killed in self-defense. And that if you had only been convicted of that kind of killing, you would have been out of prison now?
A: In the early years, I raged against the staff , against inmates. I was bitter. One day I just realized that I had to accept this. It is the way it is. Whether I like it or not. And I'd have to prove it (the killings) were otherwise. Well, I've had 16 years to prove otherwise, and the courts being the way they are-- I've not been very successful.
I found out the other day that Terry (Trunnel')s brother doesn't mind me being killed. Well if he wants revenge or justice for the killing of his sister, I've already avenged the family for her death.
Q: What were your feelings on the death penalty before and after your death sentencing?
A. I never had an opinion on it before. Now I believe it is the most stupid thing this country has going. Let's say I did kill Terry and Joe that night in rage or whatever. That's bad. But I know a 100 guys here, even with second-degree murder, worse, more dangerous than I-- like one guy here who put his baby in a microwave oven. He got a second-degree murder conviction.
Q: What would you like to do if you were set free?
A: I'd just like to go home to be with my family and see my children, aged 19, 18 and 17. And get to know my gandchilden-- aged 3 and 6 weeks old.
I've matured a lot while I've been in prison....I think I'm going to be all right. I've pretty well accepted everything. I'm ready to go. I'm tired and old--38 years old.
Q: That's not that old.
A: It is after spending 16 years in prison. I've been telling all my kids good-bye... We both know the governor's not going to step in. Not after pardoning Darrell Mease and Roosevelt Pollard (whose death sentence was recently commuted to life because he was ruled incompetent to be executed).
Excerpts from a conversation with a neighbor
Angel Duffy, then 16 years old, lived in a house near Joseph Arnold and James Rodden, at the time of the killing. She told FOR she had known both for several months. Rodden's trial attorney neglected to call her to the witness stand. That failure was one of the issues one of Rodden's attorneys used to show he had incompetent representation. Her impressions of Arnold, especially that night-- support James Rodden's version of events, suggesting Arnold was the individual who had the psychotic break and committed murder.
Angel says she was became "half leery" of Arnold at their first encounter. He grabbed her wrist and wouldn't let go for a few minutes. James and others tried to reassure her that Arnold was just an alcoholic and didn't mean any harm.
Early in the evening, several hours before the killings, Angel says she went to their apartment and found just Joseph Arnold there. She stayed visiting with him for a few hours. "He acted crazy. He kind of spooked me. He was really lit up," having drank a lot of wine and taking some kind of drugs. She recalls early in the visit, wanting to leave his presence because he seemed threatening. But realizing he could likely catch her if she ran, she stayed and "eased her way out their apartment."
While there, she says, he slammed his fist on their coffee table, shattering the glass top. "For some reason he painted me a pretty picture (he was a talented artist), then he began streaking it like he didn't care." He also told her he "used to murder people in Germany" for pay and that "his kids put him in an insane asylum for killing other people."
In contrast, she says James Rodden "was a big teddy bear. I neve4r saw James be violent." On one occasion, she remembers seeing him getting upset, cursing while looking for a book. The extent of his anger "couldn't hold a candle to Joe Bob" Arnold. She says she had been willing to testify at the trial but that James' attorney changed his mind several times about whether she would offer testimony.
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