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Sunday, April 05, 2009
Confessions of A Killer
By Story By T.J. Wilham
Copyright © 2009 Albuquerque Journal
Journal Staff Writer
Shortly after 3 a.m. on a Saturday last summer, Clifton Duane Bloomfield murdered his last victim, a newlywed, married only six days, and the only one of five innocents Bloomfield feels sympathy for.
He doesn't mention the other people he killed — only the newlywed, a nurse named Scott Pierce. It was a case of mistaken identity, and it troubles him. If the others do, he won't say.
"That was a tragedy," he said of Pierce. "That one really screws me up."
In the early morning hours of June 28, Clifton Bloomfield was in pursuit of his own warped sense of justice.
By T.J. Wilham
Copyright © 2009 Albuquerque Journal
Journal Staff Writer
Last October, Clifton Bloomfield was sentenced to 195 years in prison for killing five people. This profile of a man police call one of Albuquerque's most notorious killers is based on two wide-ranging prison interviews, detailed transcripts of his confessions, court documents and interviews with friends and family.
As it often had, it involved violence.
As Bloomfield tells his life story, it is a litany of violence — both given and received. Guns, knives, baseball bats, fists. It's a life in which "justice" came swiftly and violently.
The roar of Bloomfield's Ford Explorer near the Pierce home that morning got the attention of a few neighbors. They gave it no particular thought, rolling over and trying to sleep while some inconsiderate driver disturbed the peace of the neighborhood.
Bloomfield hopped out of the passenger seat. He wore black jeans, a denim shirt, a white tank top and tan work boots. He grabbed a long black duffel bag with a sawed-off shotgun inside and put on a bulletproof vest, a black mask and a hood.
His buddy Jason Skaggs waited in the driver's seat of the gold sport utility vehicle.
In Bloomfield's world, perceived wrongs were righted quickly and violently, capital punishment being a viable alternative for any number of offenses, perceived or real. The night he killed the newlywed, he intended to kill a man who had wronged a friend's wife.
He killed the wrong man.
It was this killing that put him in the basement of New Mexico's Level 6 maximum security prison in Santa Fe, where he was interviewed by the Journal. He has since been transferred to a prison in Connecticut.
After Bloomfield was arrested last summer by officers investigating the Pierce case, his DNA told police he had killed before. It was found under the fingernail of 79-year-old victim Tak Yi.
Within days of the DNA match, Bloomfield confessed to killing five people in Albuquerque during the past three years: an interior decorator, a retired teacher, two elderly Korean immigrants and Pierce.
Wanting to avoid the death penalty and a long trial, and because he wanted to be sent to a prison out of state, Bloomfield reached a plea deal that put him behind bars for 195 years.
"I am not the monster people make me out to be. I am not perfect either. I have done my share of wrong. I have done plenty of dirt," Bloomfield said in an interview six months after his final killing. "People who knew me will even say the same, that I was a pretty decent person. But if somebody did something wrong to me, I didn't let it go unchecked. That's how I grew up."
Now, Bloomfield is trying to get out of the plea deal because he was not sent to one of the prisons he had requested. That's why he agreed to an interview with the Journal.
'A very bad person'
Police have called Bloomfield one of Albuquerque's most notorious killers. He has admitted killing five, but investigators believe there may be more.
"Someone who gets as angry as he does, I think the odds are he has killed more people," homicide Detective Michael Fox said. "He swears he has not killed someone else in this state, but his story changes more and more as you continue to interview him."
District Attorney Kari Brandenburg said Bloomfield has "informally" admitted killing others, and she wouldn't be surprised if he had.
"He seems to relish murdering people. Relish the details, relish having the power over people's lives, not only by taking it, but by taking their loved ones away," Brandenburg said. "To us, that is a very bad person (who) needs to be removed from the streets — and he has been for 195 years."
A life of crime
It's a few days after Christmas. Journal videographer Troy Simpson and I are ushered into a visitation room with a large table. Kids' artwork and Disney characters are on the walls.
Guards bring in Bloomfield. He is dressed in a yellow jumpsuit, hands cuffed to a chain around his waist. He hasn't shaved for days. A ponytail stretches down his back to his waist.
When he talks, he whispers between long pauses. When he makes a point, he lunges forward, putting his cuffed hands on the table and startling everyone in the room. When he speaks of his crimes, he leans back and tilts his head and acts as though his victims were nothing.
He explains how he became a killer.
Since age 10, Bloomfield has spent his life behind bars or on probation. He pointed a gun at a police officer that year. He broke into a church and stole a motorcycle a few years later. And, at age 18, he graduated to robberies.
Every explanation he offers points to what he claims is a history of abuse. His sister says mental illness is the culprit.
"It would be more apt and appropriate to ask me how often I wasn't (abused)," he snaps while leaning back in his chair, cuffed hands folded. "One day, I was locked in a trailer for a so-called minor infraction."
It's a story he tells to describe what he says was lifelong abuse. If so, it hasn't been documented in police reports or court records.
His parents won't give formal interviews. When contacted, his father didn't know his son was in prison for five murders.
"Maybe it was all my fault," his father said. "Maybe I should have kicked a little more ass."
His sister, Eva, said there was some abuse by family members, but said she didn't recall many of the incidents Bloomfield described. Instead, she believes her brother suffers from paranoid schizophrenia, which went largely untreated. Her brother frequently had seizures, was "not in control" and constantly argued with his parents.
"I have a lot of problems with what he has done in life," Eva said. "But I don't believe he needs to be in prison. He needs to be in a mental institution. I believe he needs help and he needed it a long time ago, and no one ever gave him the proper help."
Bloomfield speaks of shuffling from schools to mental hospitals to boys ranches. At one point, he spent three months in a boys ranch in Los Lunas while his parents lived in southern New Mexico.
He was just 10 when he had his first violent encounter with police in Golden Valley, Ariz.
As he tells the story, it began after he hit his mother with a baseball bat. With his mother down, Bloomfield grabbed his brother's BB gun, got Eva, who was 8, and took off running. He was gone for hours.
This is where the story gets sketchy.
His version has him being chased by helicopters and shooting at police while running for his freedom.
Police reports, court documents and a small story on Page 2 of the local newspaper are considerably less dramatic. Someone saw Clifton and Eva behind a local market near town. They wanted to rent a horse. They wanted to get away. One of the people who worked at the market thought they might be runaways and called police.
When Deputy Joe DeSalvo arrived, he saw young Bloomfield carrying a rifle. He thought it was a .22-caliber, not a BB gun. The 10-year-old pointed the gun at the deputy and said he was going to kill him. DeSalvo drew his service revolver. He called for help on his radio.
An Arizona State Police officer arrived. Now there were two guns pointed at the boy. The state cop told the boy to "drop the gun before someone got hurt."
Bloomfield agreed.
Wrong man dies
That June 2008 night in Albuquerque, after putting on his mask and vest and pulling the hood over his head, Bloomfield made his way over yards and fences to Pierce's house.
This killing was different. He brought a gun this time.
He normally used his hands. A gun depersonalized the matter, put distance between himself and the act.
He didn't plan to steal anything. He intended to kill someone named Manny for allegedly beating up and raping his buddy's wife. (The man he was looking for has never been charged in connection with that allegation.)
"I had been told that a man's wife had gotten drunk, taken advantage of, raped and beaten," Bloomfield said. "What would you do if you were told that?"
He was sober and meticulous that night. He hadn't had a drink in years.
He placed the bag with the shotgun next to the front door and went around to the backyard.
He moved a table against the kitchen window, pried open the screen and squeezed his 6-foot-4-inch frame through the narrow space and over the sink.
From there, he walked to the front door, opened it and took the shotgun from the bag. He saw a purse and took it outside to empty it — an attempt to make it look like a burglary gone bad.
A dog made a noise. He saw a woman in the hallway. He ran toward her. At first, she thought it was her husband pulling a prank, then realized an intruder was in the house.
He forced her face down on the floor and pointed the loaded shotgun at her back.
She screamed. He yelled, "Where's Manny?"
The woman said nothing. He yelled again, "Where's Manny?"
She looked up at him, and Bloomfield saw the shock on her face. Then, it hit him.
These were the wrong people. Manny didn't live here. He needed to get out.
"I told her to shut up and stop screaming," he said. "I asked her one question. I asked her where Manny was. ... She didn't click at first, and then I asked her a second time, and then she clicked. Her response, you could see it. It was shock as she realized the person I was after no longer lived in the house. My concern then was to walk out the door."
Suddenly, the shadow of a 6-foot-6, 300-pound "beast" came down the hallway. The man of the house, Scott Pierce, rushed Bloomfield, wanting to protect his wife of six days. Bloomfield grabbed the shotgun and pulled the trigger.
"Yeah, I pulled the trigger. I was the triggerman on that crime," he said. He hunched down, eyes turning red. "But it was an accident, because, in my mind, I just wanted out of that house, and I was already leaving when he came forward."
He ran out and through the yard, jumping over fences. He got to where the getaway car should have been. It was gone. Bloomfield hid the duffel bag and shotgun and walked several miles to where he thought his buddy might be.
Skaggs was there.
Bloomfield told him what happened: He had just killed the wrong guy.
Bloomfield didn't even know the man's name until he heard it on the news. It was Pierce. He had just moved to the house with his wife a few weeks earlier.
"The individual that was supposed to be there was gone," Bloomfield said. "I would not have regretted what I did to that person (Manny), knowing who he is and what he has done in his life. Even if he didn't do what was said in that case, there were many other cases. I could happily do the rest of my life for taking his."
The guy Bloomfield wanted to kill had moved out weeks earlier.
Vikings and snakes
In 1997, less than a decade before he became one of Albuquerque's most notorious killers, Bloomfield sat on a prison bed, writing in a yellow notebook with a black pen. He was 28 years old and had grown his hair long. He had a swastika tattooed on his hand, three triangles on his chest, a Viking on his shoulder. He said the swastika is a symbol of luck, not of hate.
The tattoos came from his new religion, Odinism, a pagan belief that worships Viking gods. The religion is commonly associated with the Aryan Brotherhood, a white supremacist gang.
His tattoos and beliefs have prompted police to label him a racist, but Bloomfield swears he is not.
"Everyone thinks (the swastika) is a symbol of hate. How ironic," he said. "People are brainwashed."
While in prison, he wrote seven hours a day, mostly letters to his father.
The cursive is meticulous, every word legible and spelled correctly, every sentence complete.
He wrote to his father about his religion: "Though you might think me a fool, I have accepted the 'organic' religion of the Northern Europeans as my own for it is more than just religion, it encompasses the Norse culture and lifestyle. Though I am in prison, my mind is still quite free to absorb knowledge and interact with any intelligent being I choose to."
He accompanied his letters with drawings of naked women, Vikings, snakes, eagles and lions. One was of his sister, Eva.
Bloomfield had been in prison since 1989, when he and his sister went on a crime spree in Phoenix in which they robbed a convenience store clerk and several pizza delivery men. Both were convicted. Bloomfield got 12 years, Eva 10.
Two years were added to his sentence after Bloomfield attacked a prison guard with a mop handle.
"When people try to treat someone like an animal, two things happen," he said in a December interview. "That person is forced to live under those circumstances of being an animal, or that person starts fighting back. I learned lessons nobody should have to learn. How to make weapons out of almost nothing. You can put me butt naked into a cell and inside of five minutes, I am going to have a piece of steel. That's all there is to it. I will never be without my mental faculties."
Anger and rage
After the BB gun incident, a judge in 1979 ordered Bloomfield to be placed on probation until his 18th birthday and enrolled in a children's home in Tucson, where he spent the following three years.
After completing his "treatment," Bloomfield went back to his parents' home in Kingman, Ariz., and enrolled in junior high school. It was 1982. Things didn't get better. He constantly picked on his brother and sister and fought with his father.
According to school records, Bloomfield was enrolled in the local public school system twice. Once in elementary, he was there for only a couple of days. In the eighth grade, he nearly completed an entire school year. That year, he was in class nearly every day and got five A's, two B's and a C.
But at home, his parents made him go every day to a mental health clinic, where they gave the 13-year-old boy Serentil, a drug designed to treat schizophrenia.
He was pulled out of school after he attacked his brother and sister.
Bloomfield ended up in court again after prank-calling an airline, stealing a motorcycle and breaking into a church, according to court records.
Bloomfield said everything he got in trouble for was "minor infractions." He said he was trying to live on his own.
"I wasn't home long enough to do anything," he said. "The anger and rage I had built up in me. ... When I came home, it was an excuse for my dad to break out the baseball bat."
Still, a judge had enough, and, at age 16, Bloomfield was placed in detention for the rest of his childhood.
'Scum of the Earth'
Bloomfield tried to find something to do with his life after being released at age 18.
He went to Silver City and applied to every branch of the armed services. He was turned down, so he went into making "collections" for drug dealers back in Arizona.
He won't say if he killed anyone.
"The people who got hurt were the scum of the Earth," he said. "They dealt drugs indiscriminately. I was young enough to where I didn't care. I drank a lot at that time. I drank hard liquor, usually Bacardi. Most often straight. There was a gun in every room of my residence. There was a gun in my (expletive) refrigerator."
That gun was found after police in Phoenix stormed his apartment, intent on taking him and his sister into custody for the string of robberies.
As he explains it, Bloomfield took the rap for his sister. He says he was looking out for her while he was doing collections and decided to give her a place to stay.
"I put a roof over her head. Bad move for me," he said, grinning. "What I was doing was illegal maybe. Immoral, as well. But you know what, it suited me. My sister, she didn't realize what I did. She robbed a convenience store near our apartment. Not once but multiple times. I didn't realize that until she asked me to get something for her someday."
While serving the time in Arizona for the robberies, he wrote dozens of letters to his father back in Kingman. He wrote his sister, too, but those letters went unanswered.
"I am one of the very few exceptions to the rules in here," he wrote, "because I don't fit the profile of a convict unless you know me from inside of these walls."
He educated himself, earning an associate degree with the help of his aunt, who was a corrections officer in California.
He was released from prison in 2002. Two years later, Bloomfield moved to a small home in Rio Rancho.
His first known victim was found dead a year later.
Next: Bloomfield brings his violence to Albuquerque.
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