Few who knew her could fathom a darker side of her life. One exception was a Vacaville police officer, for whom Sarah Dutra used to work as a babysitter. “He said she was the most self-centered, narcissistic bitch he’d ever met,” says one of the officers who ultimately investigated Larry’s death.

  Sarah had her troubles too. Her father had a checkered past with the law, which included embezzlement of church funds, according to prosecutor Tom Testa, but she didn’t seem to have a chip on her shoulder about it. Other than the comment about narcissism, the worst anyone else could offer about Sarah was that she appeared to be spoiled. Some say she was rude to her parents in public on occasion, but most who met her described her as a friendly young woman who had a cheery temperament and was very attractive—not unlike her soon-to-be boss, Elisa McNabney.

  “You wanna know who Sarah Dutra was, take a look at Elisa McNabney,” says Deborah Scheffel, a police officer who investigated the McNabney murder.

  Sarah’s friend Mike Sullivan couldn’t have disagreed more. He told a reporter, “When you think about Sarah, I think of a great student…she was an absolutely remarkable young lady. I’m frankly floored. You know how sometimes you think something’s not happening? This is it. You can’t imagine this happening, not even in your wildest dreams.”

  Her high school music director, John Phillips, said the same thing, and so did another childhood friend, Elie Debevec, who told local reporters that Sarah Dutra was always a cut above most other people: “She’s always been great; a great friend, a great person. She never had a mean bone in her body…. She’s always been the leader type. She’s always enjoyed people, meeting everyone, [being] creative.” Debevec knew Sarah in elementary school and served on the student council with her in high school. “The last two years of school, we planned all the floats and the prom,” Debevec recalls. “We planned the decorations and getting everything organized, and the winter ball. She was an awesome friend to me. When I had a hard time in high school, she was there. She was dedicated and honest.”

  Later, upon her arrest, Sarah told police that she “never had an enemy in my life; never had anyone who hated me. Never felt threatened before by another person—ever.” As for what type of person she was, Sarah told police she “felt like I didn’t fit in. I started liking myself more in high school. I was neither a leader nor a follower. I was nice to everyone. I liked to stay to myself.”

  Her life after high school hardly seems to be that of an honest person—especially after she met and began working for Larry and Elisa McNabney. Those around her during that time said Sarah was as adept at lying and manipulating as Elisa, and she did it “almost more” convincingly.

  In the office environment where she worked, others noticed that Elisa and Sarah looked to be attached at the hip. Joe McNabney didn’t like it and said as much. “I only met her two or three times,” he says. “She was weird. She talked about marijuana constantly.” The secret of life was pot, according to Sarah. It made you smarter and you could “think beyond other realms.” Joe didn’t fathom nor like the philosophy of marijuana according to Sarah Dutra. “She was like a weird hippie chick, but worse,” he said. “Not that there’s anything wrong with being a hippie.”

  Whatever it was Joe didn’t like about Sarah—her preaching the gospel according to cannabis sativa, or her forward nature, or her seeming infatuation with Elisa—Larry liked her even less, and told several of his friends that Sarah was horning her way into his life and he wanted it to stop.

  The question was, why didn’t he fire her? The answer was Elisa. When people had seen her upset in the past, they’d used descriptive terms like “out of control” or a raging “volcano of emotion” to describe the displays they’d witnessed. It was no great stretch to see that Larry wanted to avoid that confrontation and all its ramifications.

  All Larry wanted was to relax and enjoy the golf course and his horses. But Sarah and Elisa weren’t going to even let him do that. The situation became unbearable for him, and Larry became increasingly lonely, isolated, and bitter. There was a good reason for this. Early in their relationship, Elisa had diverted any and all attention and affection from Larry that was given by anyone she thought was too close to him, or anyone she determined who could be a rival for his affections. Elisa engineered the isolation that would contribute to his spiraling infatuation with alcohol that would indirectly lead to his death.

  His son Joe, with whom Larry longed to have a good relationship, appeared to be a notable exception to the control Elisa had over Larry’s involvement with other people. Elisa permitted this, according to Joe’s mother, Jodee, because Elisa had it in the back of her mind to seduce Joe if she got the chance.

  Otherwise, she often played the same game with Joe that she played with everyone else. Elisa would refuse to take his call, or wouldn’t return the call, or wouldn’t pass along vital information to Larry about his only son. John Kelly, coauthor of the book Warning Signs, about avoiding problems with children, is fond of saying that boys need fathers. But Elisa, if she was aware of the philosophy, couldn’t have cared less. Boys may need fathers, but Elisa needed control. So sometimes she would tell Joe that Larry wasn’t available to talk to him when in fact Larry was around.

  For Tavia Williams it was even worse. Her dad had been by her side when she got married, but Elisa had been so successful in keeping her out of Larry’s life that Tavia never even met Haylei, and she didn’t see Elisa more than a handful of times in six years.

  “She was sweet as butter to me the first time we met,” Tavia says of Elisa. Then after that, “I couldn’t get ahold of my dad. He was never around. On Father’s Day in 1996, I tried to get a present to him.”

  But she was unable to do it. Elisa told Larry that the young woman was stalking her.

  Meanwhile, Sarah got a car, in Elisa’s name—which caused problems with Haylei, who became jealous of her mother’s closeness with her new friend. Taking Sarah under her wing, Elisa taught her how to spend clients’ money while putting them off and how to squeeze as much money as legally or illegally possible from insurance companies. Sarah happily engaged in the subterfuge, eventually graduating into Elisa’s class by bragging to others that she’d even managed to con Elisa.

  Elisa, for her part, saw Sarah as a soulmate. The relationship even allegedly took on a sexual flavor, with Larry telling a friend of his that he caught Sarah “fucking” his wife. Others who knew them said it couldn’t have been more than experimentation, if in fact they actually ever did sleep together. Ginger Miller, a secretary in the McNabney office, said the two women were too homophobic and liked men too much to be serious lovers. Still, Ginger and others say the two women were as close as “husband and wife” after Sarah had been working at the firm a little more than two months. Those who saw them said Sarah definitely “wore the pants” in the relationship, controlling and influencing Elisa far more effectively than Larry could.

  It now appeared that Sarah dominated Elisa, and Larry was cut out. “I think Sarah wanted Elisa to herself,” says a close friend. Larry’s inability to deal with Elisa had given the keys to his kingdom to her, and eventually to Sarah, and they both proved to have the hearts of pirates.

  “I cannot put into words how I feel about Sarah,” Tavia says. “If Elisa hadn’t met Sarah, my dad would be alive today.”

  “I really think Sarah was the biggest part of the murder,” Larry’s son Joe adds. “I saw Dad and Elisa together before Sarah came around. They laughed together and had fun. I believe Elisa really loved my dad. There’s no way you could say they didn’t love each other.”

  Successfully pushing Larry away from Elisa may have been Sarah’s goal, but Sarah and Elisa still wanted Larry as a meal ticket, and that had became problematic. Larry had been reprimanded once by the bar, and he had no intention of going through that pain again. He’d already moved to Sacramento to avoid problems in Nevada, and probably should have notified the state about his previous problems. But the California state bar noted after his death that he had no problems there.

  In the end, perhaps Larry simply couldn’t turn over the keys to the kingdom to the extent that Elisa or Sarah wanted. His reputation couldn’t afford it, nor could his pocketbook. He could be content hanging out on the back nine of his favorite golf course, or hitting the road with his favorite quarter horse, but only if he had a source of income—and more important, only if his reputation was intact. His wife was supposed to take care of that, but she had needed a secretary. The secretary was supposed to take care of it, but she needed Elisa. Larry had to fight back just for survival’s sake, and that led to some loud arguments between him and Elisa. She would later characterize his behavior as he fought against her control as “evil.”

  Elisa was running the firm, but wanted to spend time with Sarah. Larry wanted his wife and his secretary to do their work. They just wanted his money, and became convinced they could do without him. It was a disaster waiting to happen.

  To the outside observer, it would have seemed an odd triangle. Sarah and Larry never got along. Friends and acquaintances say Sarah actually avoided Larry because he would often get upset with her. It is possible that he didn’t know himself how often Elisa and Sarah were together, but Larry made it clear on many occasions that he didn’t like her around. And despite his concern about his wife’s histrionics, he finally screwed up his courage and indignations enough to more than once urge Elisa to fire Sarah: But it never happened. Instead, the women grew even closer. They very much saw their situation as “you and me against the world,” and when Sarah landed a coveted exchange student posting in Italy, Elisa went so far as to pay for several of her flights home to California so she could visit Elisa and, if she got the time, her parents. Once, according to Tom Testa, Elisa went so far as to pay for trips home on back-to-back weekends from Italy. The cost was no problem. Elisa controlled the cash flow into Larry’s office. She had no trouble cooking the books to get what she wanted, even if cost Larry or his clients.

  It drove Larry crazy. Not only wouldn’t Elisa fire the lazy secretary, but after Sarah took off for Italy, Larry still had to see her because Elisa kept bringing her back.

  Italy was a comfort for Sarah, but a nightmare for her landlady. According to Testa, Sarah was selling marijuana from the room she rented in Florence, and ripping off the elderly landlady who needed the money she was supposed to get from Sarah just to survive. Sarah apparently didn’t care and, while on this trip—with frequent return visits paid for by Elisa—she bragged to college friends she was even ripping off her best friend.

  When she got back from Italy, Daniel Nordas, who had two art classes with Sarah before she traveled abroad, told the college newspaper: “Before she went to Italy, I talked to her about the trip and her drawings. When she came back, I heard about how great the trip was, how great living in Florence was.”

  When Sarah got back from Italy, she and Elisa spent almost all their waking hours together. Elisa complained bitterly about Larry, saying he was unstable and often drunk. Her behavior may have driven him to it, but in her mind it was entirely his fault, and she was angry about it. Many of the couple’s friends backed away as Elisa displayed her venomous anger by ranting and raving, but Sarah didn’t mind. She drew closer to Elisa, so close that in the summer of 2001, Elisa leased an apartment for Sarah and her daughter Haylei near Larry’s business and home. This did little to mollify the feelings of isolation Haylei was beginning to feel, since Sarah demanded more and more of her mother’s time.

  Later testimony showed that after Sarah and Elisa murdered Larry, all three women would sleep in the same bed in the McNabney house, while Larry’s body was stuffed in the garage refrigerator, but Haylei was no more comfortable around Sarah than she was around Larry. Joe McNabney saw it and felt sorry for Haylei. “I hope she has it better now,” he says, “because she didn’t have it so good when she was with her mother.”

  Meanwhile, Joe’s mother, JoDee, heard her son talking about Haylei and Elisa and became increasingly concerned for Joe. “I told him never be alone with either of those two,” she says. Ironically, Larry—who would be killed when alone with his wife and Sarah—told his son the same thing.

  For Haylei, life had become a bitter pill. It hadn’t been good growing up on the lam with her fugitive mother, but her heartwrenching postcard to her brother Cole in Florida—found by Ken Redelsperger—in which she dreamed of a normal life, was just the tip of the iceberg of her pain. She didn’t get along well with her mother at times, nor with Sarah, and most especially not with Larry.

  He called her a spoiled brat on several occasions, which didn’t endear him to her. He told Elisa her daughter was out of control and that Haylei was a whiner and “all about herself.” Elisa’s only response was to ship Haylei away to boarding school. In some ways, Haylei had become a roadblock for her mother, and it was convenient for Elisa to blame all of the mother-daughter problems on Larry, whose open hostility to the young lady was easily manipulated by Elisa’s masterfully deceptive nature.

  “Haylei never had it easy,” Joe says.

  JoDee adds, “I think in some ways she raised her mother more than Elisa raised her.”

  Haylei recounted how, as a child, she helped her mother on many occasions, including making sure Elisa got up in the morning to go work. Haylei also became concerned with her mother’s nutrition and tried to get her to eat right. After her mom died, Haylei said she didn’t want to complain about those efforts. According to her, Elisa would do anything to help her out in times of need. She vividly recalled an event, for instance, that touched her, a time when her mother stayed up all night making a costume for Haylei that was needed at school. “I loved her very much and I knew what she was,” Haylei later said. There is little doubt that the two cared deeply for each other, and there is also little doubt that Sarah encroached on the relationship.

  Ultimately, Elisa would take Haylei on the run with her when she fled California after killing her husband, but before that, Sarah stole a lot of time away from mother and daughter. Part of it was because Elisa didn’t want Haylei to witness some of the more unsavory things she did. Smoking dope and taking drugs while plotting murder wasn’t the kind of wholesome mother-daughter activity Elisa had in mind with Haylei. She also might have kept her daughter at arm’s length, to maintain some parental control.

  Sarah’s demanding nature also made it next to impossible for anyone else to be involved with Elisa beyond a cursory level. Although Larry, Haylei, Tavia, Cristin, and Joe didn’t exactly see things eye-to-eye and sometimes fought among each other, they had a lot in common when it came to Elisa. They were all extremely dissatisfied with the relationship she had with Sarah. Elisa had been an effective roadblock in keeping people out of Larry’s life, and Sarah proved the old adage that what’s good for the goose is good for the gander by doing the same to Elisa.

  Sarah’s control could manifest itself in cruelty with Haylei. She and Sarah were sharing an apartment together, but whenever Sarah and Elisa wanted to be together without Haylei around, they told her that Sarah was going off to visit a “secret boyfriend,” according to Ginger Miller, a woman Elisa and Sarah both hired after Larry’s death to be their secretary.

  Ginger said that once Sarah left the apartment, Elisa, who was at her own home, would take off on a previously arranged rendezvous with Sarah, leaving Haylei alone in the apartment while the two best friends enjoyed a night of mayhem and debauchery. The two women apparently often enjoyed fooling Haylei with this or a similar story.

  As the relationship progressed between the two women, those who did not share in their special friendship began to express fear at being around them, especially after Larry disappeared, before his body was found. Ginger, whose first day on the job in the McNabney law firm working for Sarah and Elisa was the same day that Larry was killed, expressed discomfort being around them, as did Joe McNabney, who was invited to a party at his dad’s house by Sarah when Larry was missing. Joe didn’t know it at the time, but he was being invited to the house where his father had died.

  Shortly before Christmas of 2001, Sarah called and asked him to come by and party with her and Elisa. For reasons he says he doesn’t even fully understand to this day, he did not feel comfortable with the invitation, and remembering his mother’s admonition about spending time alone with Elisa, he turned down the request.

  At about the same time, Ginger Miller received an invitation to a nonexistent barbecue party that she quickly turned down. In both cases it was Sarah who extended the invitation, and she was the woman people say was the more fearful of the two.

  By the time Sarah and Elisa decided to kill Larry, everyone who knew the women said Sarah was the one firmly in control, giving orders to Elisa, setting up their social calendar, running the business, and eventually manipulating the events that led to Larry’s death.

  Joe, JoDee, Tavia, Cheryl, and everyone else who knew Larry say Sarah had a huge, negative impact on everyone around her. Her boldness and her own fearlessness were on display on the day before Larry’s death. Sitting at a dinner table with Greg Whalen, his daughter, and Elisa, when Larry came down and saw her having dinner with his closest friends and family, she just said “Fuck you” when he questioned her presence at the table. It was the same bravado with which she assisted in the plan to kill him. Sarah had become a cold, manipulating murderer whose metamorphosis came after answering a simple help wanted ad.

  Elisa had found the raw material in the young Sarah to create a Frankenstein she could never control.

  Don’t Talk About It

  By August 2001, long before Elisa and Sarah murdered Larry, things were so crazy in the McNabney law offices that little if any work was getting done. Larry was always golfing or spending time with the horses, and Elisa was either with him or with Sarah. Meanwhile, Larry was upset that Sarah, who was supposed to be doing the clerical work, was pulling down a paycheck but putting in fewer and fewer hours at the office and more and more hours out and about with Elisa.

 

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