Richmond Hill trial: 'I did everything to make him happy'

SOUTH BEND — Monserrate Shirley was in love with Mark Leonard, desperate to do whatever it took to keep him, even if it meant going along with his "crazy" plan to collect the insurance money from what was described to her as "a small fire" in her Richmond Hill home.

Yet Shirley, in her testimony Wednesday in Leonard's trial in St. Joseph County, admitted she was the person who went along with three arson attempts, each time making the effort to line up a babysitter for her daughter, make hotel reservations out of town and even find places to board Snowball, the family cat.

During a full day on the witness stand, Shirley, 49, was weepy, as she had been in her now infamous media interviews after the explosion. And she was again tearless — explaining that her tear ducts never fully developed and thus she was a dry crier.

But she insisted that the massive 2012 Richmond Hill explosion that killed two people and damaged or destroyed more than 80 homes was nothing she expected and nothing like what Leonard had promised her. Her first clue that it wasn't a small fire came in the hours after the blast, when she spoke to neighbors on the phone, one of them telling her not to bother coming back to Richmond Hill that night.

"There's nothing for you to come home to," the neighbor told her.

Shirley is the star witness for the prosecution in Leonard's epic trial. She arrived in the courtroom in shackles and a blue jail jumpsuit. Under questioning by public defender David Shircliff, Shirley said she is in court to "tell the truth and only the truth."

On the witness stand, she cried as she talked about the two people who were killed in the November 2012 explosion. Her voice seemed to tremble as she spoke of how much she loved Leonard, a man who moved in with her less than a month after they met. A man she said she could not say "no" to.

Above all, Shirley outlined the development of an arson plot that she said Leonard suggested as early as 10 months before the blast. She said he was the one who recruited their confederates and who wouldn't give up on the idea — not after two failed attempts, not even after she offered him all the money in her 401(k) to give it up.

"He never took no for an answer," Shirley said.

Leonard sat stoically as she testified, usually with his fingers pressed into his left cheek. The two made extended eye contact across the courtroom during breaks but never made an attempt to exchange words.

Leonard, 46, faces 53 charges, including arson, conspiracy to commit arson and two counts of murder. Prosecutors are seeking a life sentence without parole.

Shirley, meanwhile, has a plea deal. Prosecutors addressed the arrangement immediately, asking her what she'd been promised. In exchange for her cooperation, she said, the state agreed not to seek life without parole and to drop the murder and arson charges. Shirley pleaded guilty to two arson conspiracy counts. Under the deal, she might not have to spend a day in prison, or she could face 50 years.

'He was handsome, very handsome'

Shirley began by talking about how she met Leonard at Krazy Street, a bar on Indianapolis' Southside. She and Leonard saw each other the moment she entered the bar and locked eyes. She liked his clothes, his white shoes, his looks and his bleached-blond hair. That he was driving a Hummer and pulled out a wad of bills to pay for their drinks didn't matter, she insisted.

"He was handsome, very handsome," Shirley said.

Shirley, previously divorced, had come to the bar with a girlfriend but left with Leonard, heading back to her home in Richmond Hill, where they spent the night together. It was almost a year to the day before the explosion.

Within a month of their first encounter, Leonard moved in with Shirley.

For about five months, Shirley said, it was a good relationship. They cooked out a lot, went out to dinner and rode his Harley. She said he also introduced her to gambling. She began playing slot machines, spending only a few dollars here and there.

Leonard, she said, was an eager, if unsuccessful, gambler. Although he worked as a roofer and restored cars for resale, she said he gambled as much as $10,000 in a single night. In one sitting, he lost $7,000. On her first trip to a casino, he spotted her $3,000 that she quickly lost playing blackjack, Leonard's favorite game.

Talks of arson

Just two weeks after Leonard moved in, Shirley said, he began asking about her home insurance, and he eventually persuaded her to double her coverage to $300,000.

Then he began talking about arson — "a small fire" is how Shirley said Leonard described it — as early as February 2012. Leonard introduced the idea, she said, saying "it was very easy" and that a friend of his, Glenn Hults, had successfully burned his own house for insurance money. He brought it up again in July and again in October.

At first, Shirley said, she dismissed the idea: "That's crazy. I'm not going to do that."

Eventually, though, she said she would agree to allow Leonard and his friends to destroy the house she had built with her former husband in 2003. Repeatedly, she said, Leonard assured her that everything was going to be fine and no one would get hurt.

Shirley said she was often in earshot but didn't fully understand the arson plans being made around her. That, she said, was the province of Leonard and the other men who would later be charged as co-conspirators: Hults, Gary Thompson and Leonard's half brother, Bob Leonard. She knew there was talk of a thermostat and something about a gas valve. But she maintains that she left the details to Mark Leonard.

And even though it was her home that was to go up in smoke, she said, Leonard was insistent that he would be the one to collect the insurance money.

'Nobody said no to him'

Shirley described her own preparations as well. In addition to the hotel reservations, the babysitter and the cat kennel, Shirley said, she removed "sentimental" items from the house, including a portrait of her daughter.

When Marion County Deputy Prosecutor Mark Hollingsworth asked her why they were going to the casino, Shirley said because "we were trying to get the house on fire."

Shirley said it was Mark Leonard who directed things.

"He told everybody what they had to do. Nobody said no to him. It was not an answer," a sobbing Shirley said on the stand.

The first two arson failures — in late October and early November — made Leonard "very angry" at Thompson and later at Bob Leonard, who was brought on board after the first attempt failed and was to receive $10,000 for his effort.

"You can't even do a fire. You're a piece of (expletive). You can't do anything," Shirley recalled Mark Leonard telling Thompson after the first failed attempt.

After the second attempt, Leonard stuffed cardboard in the chimney to prevent gas from escaping. Shirley also said she saw two extra gasoline cans in her garage.

At that point, Shirley said, she offered her 401(k), which contained $10,000 to $12,000, to Leonard. But he told her that wasn't enough, she said. He wanted $300,000.

Co-defendant Hults told her that Mark Leonard and Thompson would "destroy the whole neighborhood," Shirley said.

"Don't make that kind of joke," Shirley told Hults, according to her testimony.

Desperate to pay mounting gambling, credit card and mortgage debts, prosecutors say, Leonard and Shirley released natural gas into her Richmond Hill home at 8349 Fieldfare Way and ignited it with a timing device on a microwave.

'It was done'

The night of Nov. 10, 2012 — the third and successful attempt to destroy her house — Shirley received a phone call from a friend. They had been staying at Hollywood Casino in Lawrenceburg that weekend, as they did the two weekends of the failed arson attempts.

Gina Salas told her that there had been a serious explosion and her house was gone, Shirley said. The couple left the casino and drove back to Indianapolis shortly afterward.

She was distraught, she said on the stand, and confronted Mark Leonard that night.

"I said, 'It's not what you told me. It's an explosion in there,' " Shirley testified she told Leonard.

"I don't want nothing. Two innocent people died," Shirley said on the stand.

But Leonard, she testified, remained calm about the whole matter. His only comment as they retrieved their car from the hotel was: "It was done."

In the days that followed, Shirley said, she told Leonard and his brother that she didn't want any money.

Mark Leonard assured her everything was going to be fine, Shirley said, because he took the "stepdown valve" and threw it away so nobody would find it. She said she didn't know what a stepdown valve was.

Earlier witnesses had testified that the stepdown regulator in the gas manifold of Shirley's house was removed and replaced with a black pipe. The fireplace shutoff valve also had been removed, causing gas to flow into the house. Witnesses also testified that an excessive amount of natural gas was pumped into Shirley's house.

Shortly after the explosion, Shirley did several media interviews, telling reporters that she was innocent. She said Leonard's attorney and friend, Randy Cable, arranged all her interviews after the explosion. Mark Leonard, Shirley said, didn't want to do any interviews.

Leonard's defense team asked to play one of the TV interviews. St. Joseph Superior Court Judge John Marnocha didn't allow the video to be played.

'Nobody deserved what happened'

When Hollingsworth asked Shirley why she went along with the arson scheme, she said:

"I was scared. I did everything to make him happy. I love him so much that I would do anything to make him happy," Shirley said.

After Shirley's testimony, Marion County Deputy Prosecutor Denise Robinson said she thinks Shirley gave the jurors information that "we felt they needed to hear."

Shircliff, on the other hand, said Shirley's testimony was not credible.

"She tells the truth as easy as she tells a lie," Shircliff said.

Both attorneys, however, acknowledged that Shirley's credibility is up to the jury of six men and six women to decide.

Shirley's next-door neighbors, John Dion and Jennifer Longworth, were killed in the blast. Dion Longworth's family — his parents, two sisters and aunts — sat in the second row of the courtroom gallery as Shirley testified.

Shirley said the Longworth couple had been her neighbors since she moved to the neighborhood with her then-husband, John Shirley. She didn't talk to them much, but John Shirley did. She said they were good neighbors who didn't deserve what happened to them.

"Nobody deserved what happened," Shirley said on the stand. "Nobody."

Call Star reporter Kristine Guerra at (317) 444-6209. Follow her on Twitter:@kristine_guerra.