Murder over buy-in to the Bellagio World Poker Tour's World Championship
Wife's note offers possible motive in husband's slaying
Woman says gambling, drugs led to demise of their relationship
By Roman Gokhman, STAFF WRITER
Article Last Updated: 04/22/2007 02:40:21 AM PDT
SAN RAMON This is the story of Bill and Jill. It has all the elements of a classic film noir. Set in Las Vegas, it involves a professional poker player down on his luck, drug use, the illusion of wealth, a hit man, grand theft, murder and a botched suicide.
We know this story, as told by accused killer Jill Rockcastle, because she wrote a 10-page suicide note and e-mailed it to friends, family and others before she was found unconscious from a suicide attempt in a central California bed-and-breakfast.
"If for some reason I fail in this," the note concluded, "at least this will guarantee my conviction and I will have to pay everyday for my disgusting life."
Rockcastle's story is not over yet. The courts can take months to years. But to tell it, one should start with facts, the most important of which is the alleged murder of her 44-year-old poker player husband, William Gustafik, on April 13.
The scene
The Panorama Towers is a high-rise condo building just off the Vegas Strip. It is the home of celebrities Pamela Anderson, Leonardo DiCaprio and Tobey Maguire.
At 7:30 p.m. on April 13, Las Vegas police received an anonymous tip they would find a body in a condo on the 23rd floor.
When they arrived, they found Gustafik dead in the master bedroom, Homicide Lt. Lew Roberts said.
A kitchen knife was found in a trash bin. Based on evidence found at the scene, they immediately suspected 49-year-old Rockcastle as the suspect. Investigators determined that during an argument Rockcastle stabbed Gustafik to death, cleaned up after herself and left.
The next day, police were contacted by her attorney and they hoped Rockcastle would come back to Las Vegas to turn herself in. But "it didn't happen that way," Roberts said.
On Monday, the suspect e-mailed a suicide note to family members and business associates. Police also got a copy.
Rockcastle and Gustafik own a house, reportedly one of several, in San Ramon. Acting on the note, Las Vegas police called San Ramon police and asked them to go to the house on Britannia Drive and either arrest her or transport her to the hospital, if necessary.
San Ramon Sgt. Eric Webb said police broke down the door to the house. But she was not even there.
Then, Las Vegas Police received another call telling them that Rockcastle was staying at Petit Soleil Bed and Breakfast in San Luis Obispo. Police from that city went to her room and found her unconscious from an apparent suicide attempt. She was taken to a hospital, where she remained for several days before being arrested Wednesday. She is now awaiting extradition to Las Vegas.
But before Rockcastle attempted suicide, she sent an e-mail to various people, and this is confirmed by police, with the big explanation. And if one really wants to understand what happened, one needs to go to the beginning, according to the note.
Bill and Jill
In what appears to be a splice from an e-mail from Rockcastle's attorney, whose name was redacted out on the note, to police that was included in the note, the writer says that sometime after 2000, Gustafik graduated from chiropractor school. During this time, he divorced his previous wife, Joanne.
He met Rockcastle six months after his divorce and the two were friends for a couple of years and married in 2005.
"This is my final statement done to help all the people affected by (our) actions," begins the suicide note. "When Bill and I met, we discovered that we both had the ability to get pretty much anything we wanted out of people."
From the beginning of their relationship, she wrote, Gustafik wanted to be the best, richest and most popular person in the room. Although he made a good living, that wasn't enough.
From the time Rockcastle knew Gustafik, he was involved in a hotly contested custody battle with his ex-wife over their daughter, now 9.
People who know the suspect, meanwhile, said she was well off financially because of an inheritance. She worked in the real estate business, according to the note and people who know her. It is not clear if she was licensed.
When Gustafik was going through a custody evaluation and was required to provide two years of tax returns, he allegedly asked Rockcastle to lower his income in the books so he would have to pay less child support.
Rockcastle said in the note that at first she refused, but he threatened her and she finally gave in. It worked, and his child support was set at $1,800 instead of $4,000, the note said.
"This when our partnership in crime was launched. Our first act of joint deception. We began living without rules and not afraid of consequence. Bill told me if we were ever caught, he would have enough money to buy us out of trouble."
She wrote that Gustafik opened an office in Antioch and had her fix the books to increase their profit. She said he also began to have her finance real estate deals for some of his patients so the income would go to her instead of him.
They made a lot of money this way and that's when they began going to Las Vegas together and he began to play poker, the note says.
In February 2004, the note said, she helped her husband purchase an office building in San Ramon as a limited liability corporation, which did not affect his personal credit.
"He viewed this as such a coo (sic) and was so impressed with my ability to 'pull one off.'"
The note said that her husband would often get off the phone with a client or patient and be proud of "how much he got out of that guy."
"He was so impressed with his self net worth and began spending excessively. He wanted to live his status. He wanted to be visibly rich. ... He wanted to live the high rollers life and become a professional player on TV. Getting on TV was an obsession. He wanted to be recognized publicly."
They had the money, so they both had plastic surgery and "physical enhancements" done, she wrote.
"I did so many things to my body to be his 'trophy.' ... I liked it. I wanted it."
The poker player
Gustafik decided to play poker full time, she wrote, so he gave control of his offices to other chiropractors.
In his first professional poker tournament, he allegedly lost $10,000 in four hours.
"But the rush of doing it was now what he needed. Bill began flying through money. He played online, he played constantly and he played as if there was no end to the money."
All the while, the note says, he continued the custody battle with his ex-wife. In the portion of the note that is an e-mail between an attorney and police, the writer says "there is an extensive paper trail of the problems, threats and issues."
The e-mail listed five people, including therapists and counselors, who reportedly witnessed him behaving violently toward his ex-wife or Rockcastle.
The names included Oakland therapist Erica Meyers and Gustafik's former attorney, Vera Hartford of Pleasanton. The Tri-Valley Herald could not reach any of the five on Thursday.
One of the climaxes in this battle, Rockcastle wrote, occurred just before Christmas in 2005, when Gustafik told her he had hired a hit man to kill his ex-wife and her mother.
"Two years ago, he did plan to have you and your mom killed," said a portion of the note addressed to the ex-wife. "He paid a guy to do it while we had (the daughter) in Las Vegas for our Christmas time."
Apparently, the hit man took the money and ran.
Through gambling, the couple was losing most of their money. "We were living this fake life of millionaires. But we weren't. We were going broke. This is when some of the schemes were hatched."
The note said the scams usually involved selling fake real estate deals. Several people interviewed said they were victims of these deals, but that they believe Gustafik was not directly involved with them.
The victims
A south Peninsula resident who asked for anonymity said he was one of the victims. He and his wife met the couple on the poker circuit more than a year ago. "We became good friends with them, and did things with them, got to know them really well," the man said. "They met our families. She was really nice."
He said they came across as very wealthy, and three months ago offered him a deal he couldn't refuse on a condo at Panorama Towers. Rockcastle told him she and Gustafik already owned one condo and were buying another. In reality, they were guests at the condo where they were staying.
"She says, 'Would you like to go in halves with us? We'll hold on to (the money), we'll sign a contract,' which I did," he said. "I have the contract. I wrote her a check for ... $60,000."
He said he continued to speak to the couple regularly up until a couple of weeks ago. He was not worried when his check was cashed because he knew the condos had not been completed at the time.
The first sign he saw that something was wrong came Monday morning in the e-mail from Rockcastle.
The man said the couple also cheated his brother and Rockcastle's best friend.
He said that he has never seen Gustafik be violent or controlling with Rockcastle, for all he knows, he said, she ran the scams without him, but, he said, at least one of her allegations is correct.
"I do know the husband was on cocaine," he said. "I know that for a fact. He went to poker tournaments wired and coke'd out."
Another friend of both the victim and suspect of many years who did not want her friends to know she was talking to the press, said Rockcastle was the sole scammer in the family, although Gustafik probably knew what she was doing.
"He was a good guy," the woman said. "Even if he did bad things with money, he did not deserve this."
The woman, along with longtime family friend Jim Rivera, portrayed an unfavorable picture of the suspect, saying she also had a cocaine habit and was very aggressive.
Everyone in their circle of friends has been talking about the murder, and Rockcastle's confession, the woman said. People keep coming forward saying they were cheated. The most costly scam she has heard of was for $300,000.
"She's been doing this for a long time," the woman said. "Everyone knew it, but they just tried to steer clear of her. No one did anything about it.
"Her cons started a long time before (Gustafik) got into the picture," she said. "She lured him into the relationship with money and he enjoyed the lifestyle."
She said she had never seen the victim acting violently.
Rivera, who said he was Gustafik's closest friend since the two were 18, said the suspect's story was inconsistent with the man he knew.
"It's pretty disturbing that people are having this impression of Bill," he said.
He said the fighting Gustafik had been doing with his ex-wife was not over the custody of his daughter, but how much child support he had to pay. That's why hiring a hit man to kill her did not make sense.
"Bill was drawn into the vacations, nice cars, expensive watches, all the houses," Rivera said. "He was her puppet."
The confrontation
Gustafik continued to lose money playing poker, Rockcastle wrote. He had won a total of $165,597 since he became a pro. But according to the suicide note, he lost $200,000 between January and April 2007.
The note says their checks began to bounce and the bills for their "toys" went to collections. Among those toys, Rivera said, were a $6.5 million house and $2.5 million yacht in Florida.
"They were defaulting on everything," he said.
One day, Gustafik allegedly told her that a friend who had given him money to hold needed it back, but it was gone.
"I went into shock," Rockcastle wrote. "I don't know what happened to me but I changed. I became convinced I had to stop him somehow."
The homicide suspect wrote in the suicide note that Gustafik left for the Bellagio Hotel in Las Vegas the day before he was stabbed to death. Before he left, he instructed Rockcastle, allegedly, to pay his buy-ins for a tournament. She was also supposed to bring $30,000 for him to play with, according to the e-mail between the attorney and police.
She was unsuccessful in prepaying the buy-in and he had not had enough money either, the note said. When she arrived at their condo, he was upset at her.
They went to sleep after a fight.
Her attorney said in his statement to police that Gustafik continued his demand in the morning that Rockcastle give him $7,500, but she said she would not. He became aggressive, threatening to kill both his ex-wife and her, and she decided to leave.
According to the attorney, Gustafik blocked the exit and forced her into the kitchen, where she grabbed a knife and maneuvered into the bedroom. She was afraid he would kill her, the note said.
"Unable to retreat, (she) began striking at him with both hands. He went down, and she realized, for the first time, that she still had the knife in her hand, and that she had inflicted 3 (to) 4 wounds in his upper chest area."
In a panic, she cleaned up the apartment, washed the sheets, "cleaned around so no one had to" and she left the apartment.
"I fully intend at this time to end this entire tragic string of events by ending my life as well," Rockcastle wrote.
Las Vegas Lt. Roberts said his department has started to receive reports of fraud by the couple, but has yet to open up a separate investigations. The murder investigation comes first, he said.
"We have not looked at the fraud angle," he said. "We have to take a serious look."
Roman Gokhman can be reached at (925) 416-4849 or at rgokhman@trivalleyherald.com.
Artist/Author: Roman Gokhman May 4, 2007 |
