One of the casualties of legacy media’s decline is court reporting: reporting on gripping cases such as the People v. Christopher Holland, a double murder case in San Joaquin County Superior Court.
Holland, 57, was accused of murdering — of butchering, then executing — an elderly Lodi married couple, “pillars of the Portuguese community,” leaving what one expert called the bloodiest crime scene he ever saw.
“A person who spent his life looking at dead bodies couldn’t count the fractures to the skull” of James Reiswig, 77, who, along with his wife, Mary, 76, were murdered on Dec. 16, 2020, Deputy District Attorney Elton Grau said during closing arguments Tuesday.
Holland’s Deputy Public Defender, Lois Keenan, was quick to counter that the case against Holland was entirely circumstantial— there were no eyewitnesses, no fingerprints, the murder weapons were never found — and there was more than one way to interpret the evidence.
“If you can draw more than one reasonable conclusion based on the evidence, then you must find Mr. Holland innocent,” Keenan told jurors who, over the course of the month-long trial, heard grisly, even barbaric, details.
On the evening of Dec. 16, an intruder let themselves in the back door of the Reiswig’s rural Lodi home on Kingdon Road using, significantly, a hidden key. The Reiswigs were home.
The intruder struck James repeatedly with a weapon that left “chop-like” marks all over the elderly man’s body. James was struck 29 times in the head and body. He suffered skull fractures too numerous to count. Two of his fingers were virtually amputated.
The copious blood pools and spatters found around the house suggest the intruder bludgeoned James while dragging him from room to room. James’ head was bashed against the wall so hard it dented the wall.
The intruder ultimately shot James in the head point blank, killing him.
Mary too received brutal treatment. She suffered nine “chop-like” marks. The gun was held so close to her head when it fired that she had powder marks on her eye.
The intruder stole jewelry, a .22 revolver, Mary’s cellphone and fled.
The Reiswig’s bodies were discovered the next day by their son, Stephen, of Lodi who, along with his sister, April, who lives on the Central Coast, became concerned when their parents did not answer calls. Stephen’s 15-year-old daughter was with him when he found the bodies.
The backstory of this case involves Stephen’s divorce. He was married to Gabriela “Gabby” Vallejo. Vallejo was reportedly angry when she did not get the house and more assets in their split.
At one point she asked to move in with the Reiswigs and work to save her marriage. The Reiswigs took her in for a couple weeks. Vallejo learned of the hidden key, Grau said.
When the reconciliation failed, Vallejo got herself a new boyfriend — Christopher Holland.
A jobless ex-con on probation, A jobless ex-con on probation, Holland threatened Stephen Reiswig. saying he had “disrespected” Vallejo. He sent a message: “Me and my boys are going to come to Kingdon Road and teach you what’s right and what’s left.”
Rattled, a member of the Reiswig family applied for a restraining order. A judge denied it. There has been no violence, he said.
After the murders, detectives quickly zeroed in on Holland.
The tracking system in Holland’s Chrysler 300 put his car near the crime scene.
Video from Flag City, a truck stop a quarter-mile south of the Reiswig’s home, showed the car parked in the lot on the night of the murders.
Mudprints from the lot led across a field to the Reiswig’s home and back. They matched Holland’s tennis shoes. Holland owned three pairs of these shoes. Two pair were clean. One pair was missing.
Mary’s iPhone showed she tried to call 911. She never finished placing the call. Records from a nearby cell tower show her phone, which was stolen in the robbery, traveled away from the house, then disappeared.
The Chrysler 300 drove away from Flag City at 7:04 p.m., meandering all around Lodi in an apparently aimless “serpentine manner.” It stopped at a Home Depot for 17 minutes. Then it drove to a car wash between 8 p.m. and 9 p.m. It was at the car wash for 40 minutes.
Holland went to Vallejo’s School Street apartment in Lodi, which he shared, between 9 p.m. and 10 p.m. He got in bed with Vallejo. But, she testified, he was restive. He rose a short time later, dressing.
“I have to clean up my mess,” he said.
When Vallejo asked where he was going, she testified, he replied, “I don’t want you to be an accomplice.”
Around midnight, the Chrysler’s tracking system recorded the Chrysler 300 driving on Flag City Boulevard and very slowly past the Reiswig home.
A friend of Holland’s, Chevoliet “Chevy” Graves, testified that earlier that month Holland asked him if he wanted to participate in a “lick,” a theft. Graves further testified that after the murder Holland visited his house in the wee hours, disheveled and agitated, and talked of a robbery gone bad.
“I knew they’d been murdered,” Graves said.
Holland gave Graves a bracelet as a thank-you for gas money Graves had given him. The bracelet, which had ‘XO’ on it, was identical to one stolen from the Reiswigs.
Cops found Holland’s Chrysler and impounded it. They did not find Holland. Cops found and arrested him at 2 a.m. loitering in a Lodi park. He bore bruises and scratches all over his body.
Another piece of background was the safe. The Reiswigs owned a small one, which they kept in the house. In it were guns and money. This, the prosecutor, argued, was Holland’s motive for the home invasion: to steal jewelry or money.
“He wanted a quick score,” Grau said.
But April recently had dollied the safe into the garage. The intruder never found it.
San Joaquin County Sheriff’s detectives called in state Department of Justice experts to dust for latent prints and examine blood spatters and DNA. A ballistics expert examined the .22 bullets taken from the Reiswig’s bodies.
Detectives found no sign of forced entry. The hidden key was gone.
The experts found no prints of Holland’s. They did find two “glove-like prints,” one on a bedroom jewelry box. On the stand Holland admitted he wore gloves when burgling.
Almost all blood in the blood-soaked scene was James’ — except for a tiny daub on an inside doorknob. DNA analysis showed that blood was partly Holland’s. That was the only DNA of Holland’s they found.
The case took so long to come to trial because a key detective suffered a stroke. Proceedings were delayed until he recovered.
“This case is simple,” Grau said, summing up. “You have the car. You have the DNA. You have the bracelet. You have the statement from Chevy Graves. You have the cellphone. When you combine these basic points of evidence, it proves beyond a reasonable doubt that Mr. Hall murdered James and Mary Reiswig.”
Through much of Grau’s closing, Holland sat slouched sideways in his chair, a stocky, shave-headed man whose dress shirt covered the tattoos on his collar area and torso.
Defense attorney Keenan rose to make her closing argument. “I am not asking you to excuse this crime,” she said, but to weigh whether the prosecution had proved Holland’s guilt beyond a reasonable doubt.
There were no eyewitnesses, Keenan reminded jurors, no direct evidence, no fingerprints.
The crime scene was so extremely bloody that the perpetrator must have been covered in blood, she argued. Yet no blood was found on Holland’s body, or his clothes, or on his car, or on any item in his car, or in the apartment he shared with Vallejo, on things such as the furniture or towels.
Detectives declared the mudprints a match without ever taking the shoes to the field for comparison or taking impressions, Keenan said, adding, “We have no idea when these footprints were made.”
Cell towers mark a cellphone’s location only within a sector; they do not pinpoint locations, Keenan went on.
No weapon was ever found, nor was Holland known to own such a weapon. Yes, James’ .22 revolver is missing, but that means there’s no ballistic proof it was the murder weapon. “Merely matching the caliber isn’t enough to match a bullet and a gun.”
Yes, Vallejo, hence possibly Holland, knew the location of the hidden key, but so did family members and trusted neighbors. “A trusted neighbor may have taken advantage of the knowledge of the key to commit robbery,” Keenan argued, trying to create doubt.
Detectives did not find Holland’s gloves, she said.
Yes, Holland gave Graves an ‘XO’ bracelet, but XO bracelets are common; the bracelet in evidence bore no engraving, there’s no photo of Mary wearing it, and no DNA traces on it.
Yes, Holland sat in his vehicle for long stretches the night of the murder, but sitting in your vehicle is not illegal. Supreme Court Justice Katanji Brown Jackson sits in her vehicle, Keenan said.
And the tiny blood swab from the inside door was 77% James, 16% Stephen, only 6% Holland, and 1% unknown. That could have happened through “DNA transfer.” Stephen handled Holland’s phone days before the murders; he could have gotten Holland’s DNA on his hands and transferred it to the doorknob, Keenan argued.
Keenan threw more shade on Vallejo, saying when she took the stand, “She lied about very significant facts.”
Earlier in the trial, Keenan had mused whether Vallejo could be the mastermind. Going through a bitter divorce, she was angry she hadn’t gotten more from the settlement. She was living in a cramped studio apartment. The day of the murder she turned her phone off.
“What would cause the parent of a 15-year-old girl to turn off her phone for 13 hours?” Keenan asked.
The upshot: “We don’t know where she was that night.”
Keenan also delved into the law. “You must be convinced of every element of every charge. Or you must bring back a verdict of not guilty on all charges.”
Grau got the last word. As for Vallejo, “Whether she actually did something other than tell him about the safe, there is no evidence of that.”
Holland dragged James from room to room, bludgeoning him, trying to force him to divulge the safe’s location, Grau said.
Holland killed the Reiswigs to cover his tracks. “Even though they are no longer a threat. They are out, they are lying on the ground … he decides to kill them. Why? You don’t want eyewitnesses.”
Grau repeated a damning fact introduced earlier: when detectives hauled Holland in for questioning, no one knew the exact day of the murders. But when a detective uttered the wrong day, Holland corrected him. And did it on video, which Grau played in court.
“He said something only the murderer would know,” Grau said. “That that’s the time Mary and James had died. With that statement, the truth peeps out.”
Grau’s spoke the last words of his summation directly to Holland. “We know you did it. And you’re not going to get away with it.”
On Thursday morning the jury came back with a verdict. Stephen Reiswig sat forward with his hands clenched. April cried.
The courtroom was hushed as the clerk rose to read the verdict: Guilty.
Guilty of two counts of 1st degree murder. Guilty of numerous special circumstances: multiple murders, murders committed during the commission of a robbery, murder committed during commission of a burglary. Guilty of other charges, too.
Bailiffs led Holland away, probably forever. During his pre-trial jail stay, he was beaten so badly he had to be hospitalized twice. Prison may be less friendly.
The judge scheduled Holland’s sentencing for Oct. 28.
“Members of the jury, you are free to go,” he said. Jurors filed out.
When I caught up with April and Stephen Reiswig in the elevator bay, they were both crying and hugging their friends.
Fitzgerald’s column runs on Wednesdays. On Twitter and Instagram as Stocktonopolis. Email: mfitzgeraldstockton@gmail.com
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