It’s never a good idea to get in a car with a stranger, but especially if you’re a teenage girl and the driver is an illiterate, angry skinhead who drives a car he calls The Thunder Chicken, and he’s tossed into the hatch a twelve-gauge shotgun with an eight shot magazine tube, an AR-15 assault rifle with a thirty round magazine and a machete.
In November 1997 a young woman from Colorado named Lisl Auman had just left her boyfriend, an abusive man named Shawn Cheever, and went to spend the night with a girlfriend named Demetria Soriano. Soriano was also about to break up with her own boyfriend, Dion Gerze, a man who once stole her mother’s car. But first the two young women, not wanting to face Cheever alone, needed Gerze to drive them back to Cheever’s place so Lisl could get some of her things. Gerze invited along a man named Matthaeus (Tao) Jaehnig, the skinhead and owner of the Thunder Chicken. They drove approximately forty miles from Denver in two cars. Auman and Tao Jaehnig in the Thunder Chicken and Soriano, Gerze and another person named Stephen Duprey in Soriano’s Chevy Cavalier. By the end of the day Tao Jaehnig killed a police officer and then turned the gun on himself. Auman was already in police custody when Jaehnig killed Officer Bruce VanderJagt and then himself, but under the Murder Felony law she was convicted of murder and sentenced to life in prison without parole. While in jail she wrote a letter to Gonzo journalist Hunter S. Thompson who then waged a campaign to free her. Celebrities like Warren Zevon, Johnny Depp, Benecio Del Toro, Sean Penn and Jack Nicholson joined The National Committee to Free Lisl Auman. Eight years later, thanks to that campaign, Lisl Auman walked out of prison, freed for time served and was given twenty years probation. Matt Moseley was the campaign strategist and has written a book titled Dear Dr. Thompson about the whole ugly story. He reads at The Monthly Rumpus, Monday July 12 at the Make Out Room. Here’s what he had to say about celebrities, guns, Hunter S. Thompson and the Murder Felony law.
Avakian: Can you talk about the Felony Murder law?
Moseley: Felony Murder is a leftover of British Common Law and was abolished by most all common law countries in the world except the US. Think of it as the Bonnie and Clyde law. That Bonnie is held just as liable when Clyde goes into a bank and shoots a cop. Except now, prosecutors use the law to cast the widest possible net around a crime and hold people accountable for crimes they had no intent or desire to commit—like Lisl.
In Colorado, a person commits murder in the first degree if: Acting either along or with one or more persons he commits or attempts to commit arson, robbery, burglary, kidnapping, sexual assault in the first or second degree or a class 3 felony for sexual assault on a child, or crime of escape, and in the course or in the furtherance of the crime that he is committing or attempting to commit, or of immediate flight there from, the death of a person, other than one of the participants, is caused by anyone. (Colorado Revised Statute)
S.A. Tell me about the road to publication. Why did you decide to go with Ghost Road Press?
M.M. I had some good interest from New York agents and the Wylie Agency specifically, but it was a long and grinding process. I also had a lot of interest from another Denver publisher, I won’t say which, but they felt it was too controversial because the CEO was friends with Governor Bill Ritter, who was the Denver District Attorney who prosecuted Lisl and sent her to jail for life and the book is highly critical of the way they framed her case. So I had some challenges because of the highly sensitive nature of the subject. Two years ago, I met Matt Davis from Ghost Road at a publisher’s workshop and he and, within 48 hours of reading my proposal and the first three chapters, he called me wanted to publish it. I was impressed because he really believed in the book from the get-go. I knew he believed in the power of the story. To me that was more important than a bigger publisher who may have not put the same heart and soul into book and may have not taken the same risks at Ghost Road. Matt Davis also had some very good ideas about how I should tell the story through my own journey. When I started writing the book, it was about Lisl and her story. Matt Davis helped me to rewrite it as my own journey and the book is much stronger for it.
S.A. How exactly did you get involved with the campaign? You say in the book that you sent Hunter Thompson a memo after reading about Lisl’s story and Thompson’s involvement in the Rocky Mountain News, but can you be specific? You sent Hunter the memo, basically, and I know you worked pro-bono, but you basically, asked for a job?
M.M. I got involved because I was struck by the injustice of the case. One day after reading an article about Hunter’s involvement, I faxed him a strategy document outlining a course of action and prescribed tactics of a public information campaign. The centerpiece of the memo was to hold a public event on the West Steps of the Colorado State Capitol where Warren Zevon played “Lawyers, Guns and Money.” The campaign completely changed the narrative in Lisl Auman’s case.
S.A. So many things about this story are disturbing but one really disturbing thing is that neither of Lisl's parents went down to the jail after they knew Lisl had been arrested. Do you have any idea why that is? I really saw this lack of parental involvement as something that further enabled the cops to pin the crime on Lisl. Nobody (it must’ve seemed to them) cared about her.
M.M. I questioned in the book why her parents did not go down to the police station or send a lawyer. Lisl thought she was innocent and thus spoke with police for many hours without an attorney. Her parents also thought that there was just no way Lisl could be implicated in murder and it would all be cleared up. Both Lisl and her parents thought she would be home that night. Instead she was sentenced to spend the rest of her life in prison for felony murder.
S.A. Right. But it still seems odd. So what if they thought she’d be home that night or not be implicated. How about just to comfort her?
M.M. Their relationship was a contradiction, [and] that is just the way I had to write it. I know that she has expressed regret about not going there, but it still doesn’t change that neither of them did. I don’t really know their inner motivations, except for what they have already said. I agree with you, but I can’t make assumptions about what was going on underneath. [I just reported what happened.] And yes, it was strange.
One of the central lessons of the book is: Don’t let your daughter climb in the car with a skinhead. Many of us at one time or another have climbed in a car with someone we didn’t know or a friend of a friend. If that person does something or kills someone, then under the felony murder law, you are just as liable whether you intended it or not. That is wrong.
Another lesson is that one should never talk to police without a lawyer. Once you explain yourself, then you have given them information to use against you—and they have shown time and time again that they will. I’m not a lawyer, but I’ve played one on TV and even I know that the first rule when you see a cop is to shut up. Rule number two is to shut the hell up. Rule number three is to refer back to number one and two.
S.A. You write in the Author’s Note that you met Lisl in June 2007 at the Flying Dog Brewery over dinner and she and her family had just attended your semi-yearly crawfish boil. How far apart were these two events? You write that she’s nervous at dinner. Was she more relaxed at the crawfish boil?
M.M. My birthday is on May 12 [crawfish boil], and I had dinner with Lisl a few months later—after I started writing the book. I had already spent many weeks holed up in Doug Brinkley’s suite offices at Tulane University putting the book together. The train had left the station on the book.
I don’t believe I characterized her as nervous about the dinner, But that she was living a very different kind of freedom that the rest of us. She couldn’t even drink a beer over dinner and she lives in fear that she might be set up by police and sent back to jail—and rightfully so. I would be as well. She truly believes, and I believe the accounts of the book will support her fears, that the Denver Police wouldn’t mind seeing her back in jail. She has moved on with her life. At the Flying Dog she fully supported the book and encouraged me to tell my own story of how I saw how I saw what happened. She, however, wanted to put all of this behind her and move on with her life.
As Lisl wrote to me from prison that, “our lives were inextricably linked,” but the crawfish boil was the first time we had ever met over the course of about 5 years. We embraced and both of us cried a little and hugged again. It was a great moment. She was free and in my backyard and we were having a grand time. She was just another normal girl and at a friendly gathering. Then again, after what she has been through, maybe she can never be that normal girl. She might be forever caught in the tragic events of November 12, 1997, when she climbed in the Thunder Chicken and two people died.
S.A. You mention the role of celebrity and that people wrongly accused shouldn’t have to have a celebrity to achieve justice and I agree. Did Hunter Thompson ever express mixed feelings about what he was doing?
M.M. Hunter Thompson was crystal clear about what he was doing. He was clear that he was using his celebrity even though wrongly accused should [not] have to have a celebrity intervene on their behalf. In fact, in some sort of post-Gonzo way, he recognized his unique impact on the situation and then planned for it. For all of his strange and savage behavior, Hunter kept very distinguished company. We surrounded our campaign with very powerful messengers, such as Douglas Brinkley, astrophysicist Timothy Ferris, the head of the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers Gerald Goldstein, Johnny Depp, Benecio Del Toro, Warren Zevon and many others who called for the release of Lisl Auman.
S.A. Neither Lisl nor her family were interviewed for your book. Do you or did you ever feel in some small way that you’re hindering her moving on process? I’m sure something like that is something you move away from in your life continually—and that you’re never totally free from it. Do you ever feel that the book, is or could be, disabling Lisl to move away from the incident? Do you know if she’s read it? How did she react when you told her you were going to write the book?
M.M. Lisl emerged from prison fresh, clean and ready to prove herself. She has moved on with her life in admirable ways. She is now free to live the life she only dreamed about in prison. She truly wants to put this ordeal behind her and go quietly in the good night.
I felt this was an important story to tell on a number of fronts. I thought it would more clearly expose a farcical trial. No one had put together the entire journey of Lisl Auman in a story and because of my unique role in the campaign, I believed I was the perfect person to write this book. I already had three boxes of ready-made research before I wrote the first word. I also wrote the book as a testament to Hunter as a master campaign strategist and wanted to add something more to his legacy beyond the guns and drugs. Jann Wenner at Rolling Stone said it would “prove to be an extraordinarily valuable addition to the Hunter S. Thompson record.” I’ll let readers be the judge of that.
S.A. Even though Lisl was released, the Felony Murder law is still on the books, so in some ways, Lisl’s release from prison is a bittersweet victory. Have you or anyone in the Thompson camp continued to work to get the law removed?
M.M. The fight continues on many levels at statehouses and courtrooms around the nation, but it is an uphill battle. The National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers has legal fund where they look for test cases to the felony murder. The Pendulum Foundation has continued the good fight to get juveniles out of jail who are spending life sentences for felony murder. My point at the end of the book, moreover, is that people shouldn’t need someone like Hunter as a champion to get them out of jail. The victory was bittersweet in many ways. The justice system should work on its own.
S.A. But are Johnny Depp, Benecio Del Toro, or anyone of the people who worked on Lisl’s case still working to get the law off the books?
M.M. Warren is dead, and no, they are not involved. They signed up to be on The National Committee to Free Lisl Auman, once she walked out of jail, the campaign ended.
S.A. Would you care to draw parallels between Tao’s suicide and Hunters’? Neither family seemed really surprised at their actions. How did Lisl take Hunters’ death?
M.M. Lisl got down on her knees and cried when she heard about the news that the Supreme Court had remanded her case back to the Denver District Court for a retrial, but she also said that it was in that moment that she thought about Hunter. She told documentarian Wayne Ewing that she thought of him as her “warrior for truth,” but now he was gone. And she cried about that, too. Lisl felt that he was watching over her and that even though he was gone, he still knew.
I believe that Hunter’s family was very surprised at his death, as were many of his closest friends and colleagues. It was not expected at all. He had many irons in the fire and several projects in the works, like Polo is My Life. Many people, including his family, were very shocked and saddened by his death.
S.A. But wasn’t Thompson chronically ill and in a lot of pain?
M.M. He was in a lot of pain from various medical procedures having to do with a hip and a broken leg, but regardless of the physical discomfort, he was in great spirits most of the time. As I write in the book, many friends noticed that when he leaped into the Lisl campaign, an old spark was back and he had “fire in the nuts.” Regardless of the physical discomfort, and he certainly understood better than most the finer subtleties of self-medicating, it was still a shock to me and others. I had just talked to him the night before and he said, “Come on up, we have a lot of work to do. We’ll blow something up. It won’t be just work.”—as though he had to add a little incentive for me. The next night he was gone into the ether.
In an early draft of the manuscript, I had a paragraph about the similarities of Hunter and Tao. Bald heads and raging personalities were something they both had in common. Both liked guns and drugs. Both had a strong distaste for authority. They were both drawn to a woman named Lisl. And both took their own lives.
S.A. Was Tao really drawn to her though? Seems like he just wanted to use her.
M.M. Perhaps a better word is influenced the life of Lisl Auman, for better or worse. But I still think, Tao was drawn to her, even if he only wanted to use her for sex.
The difference I believe was that Hunter was a true Southern Gentlemen at heart who could channel his tenacious energy into words and writing. Some would argue the very best writing that changed the face of journalism in the second half of the twentieth century. He was the masterful at inserting himself into a story. Tao had nothing and couldn’t even read. His sad life ended with a dead cop and a suicide and so any similarities were superficial. The comparison graph never made it into the book because there was nothing substantial to draw any conclusions from. There are a lot of bald people who like to shoot guns in America.
S.A. The night before the ill-fated ride in the Thunder Chicken Lisl is with her girlfriend Soriano. Lisl had just broken up with Cheever and Soriano says she's going to break up with Gerze and "the two girls raise their glasses and swear off deadbeats forever." But still, you write, that Lisl had a sinking feeling in her stomach. Is this because she knew she wasn’t really swearing off deadbeats forever if she was relying on them for a ride the next day? It seems plausible, that these two girls could be just that naïve that they really believed they were swearing off losers forever despite the favor they were asking of them---but not very.
M.M. I think your questions squarely hits upon the insecurities and contradictions in Lisl. She was a peace loving young woman who had many friends, but why was she drawn to such men? It would not be out of character at all for Lisl to be hoisting her glass with Soriano one minute, but then knowing in her gut that there was something amiss about the situation. I believe she felt that if she could just get her stuff back, then she would really get on with her life.
S.A. I’m also wondering if you’ve heard from Soriano or Cheever or Tao’s family since the publication of the book. Have you?
M.M. Nope.
S.A. You frame the book with two quotes from Mick Jagger lyrics—from "Under My Thumb" at the beginning, and then again toward the end of the book from “You Can’t Always Get What You Want.” Can you think of any other Jagger lyrics that are applicable to Lisl’s story?
M.M. "Just as every cop is a criminal, And all the sinners Saints."
S.A. How about any Jagger lyrics on the process of writing a book?
M.M. "Please allow me to introduce myself, I’m a man of wealth and taste. But what’s puzzling you is the nature of my game."
The next monthly Rumpus starts at 7 p.m on Monday, July 12. Tickets are ten dollars and can be purchased here. Other readers that night will be Justine Sharrock, Matt Stewart, Eli Horowitz with Mac Barnett, Lauren Wheeler and a hooping performance by Richard Porter, music by Ember Shrag, comedy by the hilarious Janine Brito, food by The Girl From Empanada and another chance at the porn raffle. Hosted by Rumpus editor, Stephen Elliott.
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