Lesley Gosch, 1985

At approx­i­mate­ly 2:30 on the after­noon of September 18, 1985, Frank Patton, pres­i­dent of Castle Hills National Bank in San Antonio, Texas, received a tele­phone call at the bank from his wife, Rebecca Patton. When he answered the phone his wife said, ​“Hi, Frank, there is some­one here who wants to talk to you,” and then a male voice, unfa­mil­iar to Mr. Patton, took over the line. The unknown male instruct­ed Mr. Patton to gath­er cash in a brief­case, in $50 and $100 bills, and go direct­ly to the pay tele­phones at the food court at the North Star Mall in San Antonio and await fur­ther instruc­tions. The caller told Mr. Patton that he had pre­cise­ly 45 min­utes to com­ply with these direc­tions, or it would be ​“all over.”

After hang­ing up the phone, Mr. Patton imme­di­ate­ly direct­ed a bank cashier to begin gath­er­ing the mon­ey, while his sec­re­tary called the F.B.I. Seven min­utes after the ini­tial extor­tion call, offi­cers from the Alamo Heights Police Department arrived at the Patton home to find the body of Rebecca Patton lying on the floor. She had been shot fatal­ly in the head.

After being informed of his wife’s death, and accom­pa­nied by sev­er­al agents from the F.B.I., Mr. Patton pro­ceed­ed, brief­case in hand, to the North Star Mall. While plain­clothes agents sta­tioned them­selves near­by, Mr. Patton wait­ed by the pay tele­phones at the food court des­ig­nat­ed by the caller. After 40 min­utes, how­ev­er, no one had called or come to col­lect the mon­ey, and Mr. Patton was advised by the F.B.I. to return to the bank.

State and fed­er­al law enforce­ment agen­cies swift­ly ini­ti­at­ed an inten­sive inves­ti­ga­tion of Mrs. Patton’s mur­der. The crime scene was secured, and the home was thor­ough­ly searched for evi­dence. Seven .22 cal­iber car­tridge cas­ings, believed to be man­u­fac­tured by an English com­pa­ny called the Eley Ammunition Company, were found in the home. In addi­tion, at least one for­eign hair and sev­er­al unknown fin­ger­prints were found in the res­i­dence and processed for identification.

The police also con­duct­ed a house-to-house can­vass of the Pattons’ neigh­bor­hood to deter­mine if any­one had noticed any­thing unusu­al on the day of the crime. However, despite the impres­sive law enforce­ment resources devot­ed to inves­ti­gat­ing the case, the police were with­out sig­nif­i­cant leads sev­er­al days after the crime.

On September 23, 1985, a group of San Antonio-area bankers held a press con­fer­ence to announce that they were offer­ing a $100,000 reward for infor­ma­tion lead­ing to the arrest and con­vic­tion of those respon­si­ble for the mur­der of Mrs. Patton. Less than two days lat­er, 21-year-old Stephen Hurst was brought to the Alamo Heights Police Department by his uncle, claim­ing that he had infor­ma­tion that would lead to the arrest of the indi­vid­u­als respon­si­ble for the crime.

At the police sta­tion, Hurst pro­duced a brief­case which he claimed had been giv­en to him for safe­keep­ing by his friend and house­mate, John Rogers. Inside police found a Ruger .22 cal­iber auto­mat­ic hand­gun, sev­er­al full box­es and one par­tial­ly full box of Eley pis­tol ammu­ni­tion, and two silencers which fit the weapon. A sub­se­quent firearms com­par­i­son by the Bexar County Firearms Examiner con­clud­ed that this hand­gun was the murder weapon.

Hurst gave a writ­ten state­ment to the Alamo Heights police impli­cat­ing his room­mate Rogers and a man named Lesley Gosch in the failed extor­tion plot and sub­se­quent mur­der of Mrs. Patton.

According to Hurst’s state­ment, Rogers told him of a plan to obtain ran­som mon­ey but that the plan had ​“gone sour” and that ​“Skipper (Gosch) emp­tied a clip into her.” Rogers told Hurst that ​“Skipper went to the house with a big flower box with a gun inside it, he rang the door bell, she opened the door and he forced his way in.”

After Hurst turned the brief­case over to the author­i­ties, offi­cers from sev­er­al law enforce­ment agen­cies act­ed quick­ly to secure war­rants for the arrests of Rogers and Gosch, and for the search of the apart­ment of Rogers and Hurst.

Following a change in the venue for the tri­al, the first phase (to deter­mine guilt or inno­cence) of Gosch’s tri­al began in Victoria, Texas on August 26, 1986. The State’s evi­dence was large­ly cir­cum­stan­tial. The fin­ger­prints found at the crime scene did not match Gosch. Two wit­ness­es tes­ti­fied that Gosch had told them that he owned a .22 cal­iber pis­tol. Other wit­ness­es tes­ti­fied to con­ver­sa­tions with Gosch indi­cat­ing his fear of serv­ing time on a pend­ing fed­er­al firearms charge, and one wit­ness said that he had bought the .22 Ruger for Gosch approx­i­mate­ly a year before the murder.

Finally, the co-defen­dant, John Rogers, tes­ti­fied to many of the details out­lined above and alleged that Mr. Gosch was the one who had entered the Patton house­hold and shot Mrs. Patton, and that it was all part of a scheme to raise a large sum of mon­ey to finance Gosch’s escape to Belize. Rogers admit­ted giv­ing the brief­case con­tain­ing a num­ber of guns, includ­ing the .22 Ruger, to Stephen Hurst, and acknowl­edged that Hurst knew about, and at one time was going to par­tic­i­pate in, the extortion plan.

The defense pre­sent­ed no wit­ness­es at this phase of the tri­al. The jury returned a ver­dict of guilty against Mr. Gosch. The pun­ish­ment phase of the tri­al began the next day.

The pros­e­cu­tion pre­sent­ed tes­ti­mo­ny alleg­ing var­i­ous pri­or offens­es com­mit­ted by Gosch which had nev­er been sub­mit­ted to a tri­al, and offered judg­ments of his ear­li­er con­vic­tions. The defense pre­sent­ed only two wit­ness­es on Gosch’s behalf: his adop­tive father, Wesley Gosch, and a for­mer co-work­er, Preston Knodell, who had known Gosch for four years. Gosch, him­self, did not testify.

The jury found that Gosch act­ed delib­er­ate­ly and that he rep­re­sent­ed a future dan­ger to soci­ety. The court sen­tenced him to die.

Rebecca Patton lived with her hus­band, Frank Patton, and her two chil­dren. She had been mar­ried for 17 years. Mr. Patton was pres­i­dent of the Castle Hills National Bank in San Antonio. Mrs. Patton was very active and well-known in the local community.

Regarding the death penal­ty for Gosch, Mrs. Patton’s daugh­ter remarked that it was not about revenge, but about jus­tice. ​“This man took a life. He took a lot of things. My mom was a lot of things to a lot of peo­ple. He took her away from a lot of peo­ple and left a big hole in a lot of peo­ple’s lives as well as deprived her of the plea­sure of living.”

Lesley Gosch was a for­mer Eagle Scout. He was 29 years old at the time of the crime. Gosch had plead­ed guilty a month ear­li­er to charges of man­u­fac­tur­ing and sell­ing gun silencers. Gosch was fac­ing sen­tenc­ing for this ear­li­er fed­er­al firearms con­vic­tion and the pros­e­cu­tion main­tained that he sought the ran­som mon­ey for a flight to Belize, Central America, to avoid being incar­cer­at­ed. He also had pre­vi­ous con­vic­tions for a pair of phar­ma­cy rob­beries in San Antonio.

Due to injuries Gosch sus­tained in an acci­dent as a teenag­er, he would have had a hard time car­ry­ing out his role in the offense. As a result of the acci­dent, Gosch lost one of his eyes and his eye­sight was so poor in the oth­er eye that he was legal­ly blind. Given this dis­abil­i­ty, it would have been dif­fi­cult for Gosch to dri­ve the vic­tim from the crime scene. Moreover, Gosch also lost the dis­tal pha­langes of four of his fin­gers and the thumb on his left hand, as well as por­tions of the thumb and index fin­ger of his right hand, from the acci­dent. These dis­abil­i­ties would have made it extreme­ly dif­fi­cult for him to bran­dish a weapon with one hand while bind­ing Mrs. Patton with the other.

Although lit­tle was pre­sent­ed at the sen­tenc­ing phase of Gosch’s tri­al regard­ing his back­ground, the defense could have pre­sent­ed to the jury the pic­ture of a phys­i­cal­ly and emo­tion­al­ly abused child who nev­er­the­less attempt­ed to, and at times suc­ceed­ed in, achiev­ing in his aca­d­e­m­ic endeav­ors; of a boy who hat­ed vio­lence and see­ing ani­mals killed; of a young man who was not a leader but a fol­low­er, and who was strug­gling to over­come the effects of an over­bear­ing father and a trau­mat­ic injury; of an adult man who had the intel­lec­tu­al and spir­i­tu­al fac­ul­ties to make that strug­gle a suc­cess. The wit­ness­es who pro­vid­ed the infor­ma­tion nec­es­sary to put togeth­er that life his­to­ry include numer­ous mem­bers of Gosch’s extend­ed fam­i­ly who were nev­er con­tact­ed by the defense.

Moreover, it appears that coun­sel failed to review poten­tial­ly mit­i­gat­ing records. Records from the 1977 hos­pi­tal­iza­tion fol­low­ing the explo­sion in Gosch’s home offer sig­nif­i­cant infor­ma­tion about the strug­gles and suc­cess­es he expe­ri­enced while cop­ing with his injuries. Excerpts from those same records show Gosch’s con­sis­tent atten­dance at the ther­a­py ses­sions five, six and sev­en years after coun­sel­ing was ordered in con­junc­tion with a pro­ba­tion­ary sen­tence result­ing from his only pri­or con­vic­tion. Repeatedly, the nota­tions from those ses­sions show Gosch’s hon­est attempts to con­front the issues and dilem­mas pre­sent­ed to him and to reflect on his own life and behav­ior. For no appar­ent rea­son, how­ev­er, defense coun­sel failed to present this evi­dence to the jury.