The two seven-digit numbers were the same except for the final digit. The Ventura County area code had not been dialed. Nevertheless, it appeared that someone had tried to call Ryan's mother around the time of the murder.
"I finally found it," Lisker wrote to one of his lawyers. "It just fits."
Lisker spent the next two years working on another legal appeal -- the longest of long shots. In 2003, he filed a habeas corpus petition, contending that he was wrongfully convicted. He included the new information about the phone call and Monsue's letter. The petition is now before a federal magistrate.
Bruce also filed a complaint against Monsue with the LAPD. He accused the detective of lying to the parole board, failing to investigate Ryan's potential culpability and soliciting perjured testimony from Hughes.
"I was pretty sure they'd blow it off," he said.
Comparing Footprints
Lisker's complaint landed on the desk of Sgt. Jim Gavin, a barrel-chested Irishman with a ruddy complexion and thinning reddish hair. He was skeptical at first. But he was not the sort to ignore a complaint, even one from a prisoner.
During the Rampart corruption scandal, when many officers' recollections were conveniently hazy, Gavin came forward with information suggesting that a colleague was lying about a shooting. As a peer mentor for the LAPD, he has taught leadership skills to junior officers.
Gavin, 39, read the transcript of Lisker's trial and listened to Monsue's taped interviews with Bruce and with Ryan. He spent hours poring over documents compiled by Lisker's defense team. He twice went to Mule Creek Prison to interview Lisker.
He was troubled by Monsue's claim that the long-missing grocery money had been found in the attic above Lisker's old bedroom. A homicide detective would be expected to document such a development in writing. Gavin could find no evidence that Monsue had done so.
Gavin contacted Borenstein, who again said he could not remember finding any money in the attic, much less contacting Monsue about it.
Gavin dug deeper. He asked an LAPD criminalist to compare footprints from the crime scene with the shoes Lisker wore that day.
No such analysis had been done during the original investigation. At the trial, Rabichow relied on Monsue's testimony that the bloody footprints "resembled quite closely" the treads of Lisker's size-8 sport shoes.
