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Monday, April 06, 2009
Confessions of a killer: Second of Two Parts
By T.J. Wilham
Of the Journal
Second of Two Parts
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.
Clifton Bloomfield won't say who his first murder victim was.
Detectives believe he committed more homicides than the five to which he has confessed.
What they do know is that his first victim in Albuquerque was Carlos Esquibel.
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.
Bloomfield had moved to New Mexico in March 2004, and, from outward appearances, his life seemed to be going well. He made decent money working at a hotel and for a roofing company. He met a woman who was taking him to church and helping him learn how to live out of prison.
At the same time, Bloomfield was killing.
His first known homicide here occurred on the night of Oct. 24, 2005.
Bloomfield came out of Fuddruckers off Interstate 25. About the same time, Esquibel, a 37-year-old interior designer, came out of Big Eye, an adult video store next door.
As Bloomfield tells the story to detectives, Esquibel hit on him — and Bloomfield got angry.
Bloomfield told police he played along and went to Esquibel's apartment on Walter SE. There, he got Esquibel to take off his clothes, then grabbed a piece of clothing and strangled him.
The next day, Esquibel's landlord found his tenant in the bedroom. Police found a box of condoms by his head, an object stuffed in his mouth and adult videos all over the bedroom.
Two days later, Bloomfield decided he needed to blow off some steam after arguing with his girlfriend. He parked his Explorer by a Smith's grocery store near Montgomery and Louisiana and walked down a nearby arroyo.
"I started trying to walk it off," he told detectives during one of his three confessions. "I don't know what I was thinking, but, at the time, it didn't seem like I didn't belong there."
He hopped a fence and started walking through backyards.
He saw a door open at the home of Josephine Selvage, an 81-year-old retired teacher. Selvage was asleep inside.
"There wasn't anybody moving, so I went in," he said.
At some point, he put on latex gloves.
He saw a purse in the kitchen.
"I didn't really need the money, but I looked through the purse," he said. "There wasn't any money in there."
As he walked out of the kitchen and into the recessed living room, he stumbled and nearly fell.
He started to get angry.
Bloomfield went down the hallway toward the bedrooms. In the first bedroom, he saw jewelry.
Selvage was in the room asleep. She woke up, started screaming and "came after him," he said.
He threw her to the floor.
Bloomfield found a piece of clothing and wrapped it around her neck. She got up.
"I just panicked, and she kept trying to scream, and I just wanted her to shut up," he said.
One of his gloves broke. He put it in his pocket and took out another one.
He continued to strangle her with the clothing.
"She just kept kicking and screaming," he said. "I just held on until she didn't make any noise."
With Selvage dead, he looked through her jewelry boxes, dresser drawers and closets.
"Nothing interested me," he said.
He left the house with nothing. He turned on his cell phone. His girlfriend had been calling.
The anger
Why Selvage was killed remains somewhat a mystery. The only explanation Bloomfield has offered is that he was angry at the time.
"He is a product of having been raised in our prison system from an early age," Bernalillo County District Attorney Kari Brandenburg said. "He had a different upbringing, where he never learned the value of human life, was not able to emotionally attach to human beings on a significant level. He has described himself as a homicidal maniac who can just kill on whim."
Albuquerque Police Detective Michael Fox spent more than 80 hours interviewing Bloomfield. By the time he was done, the detective knew the type of cigarettes he smoked and his favorite order at McDonald's.
Fox quickly learned that Bloomfield was not the average suspect. He was smart and articulate, but little things would set him off.
Fox never let his guard down.
If Bloomfield could control his anger, Fox said, "I think more people would still be alive.
"He is an adult, and he is responsible for his actions. By no means am I giving him an excuse for how he acted.
"He is definitely a man you don't want to meet in your living room in the middle of the night after he broke into your house, because he will kill you."
The proposal
Two months after killing Selvage, Bloomfield says, he spent several hours walking around Sister Cities Park near San Mateo and Interstate 25. He wanted to marry his girlfriend. He wondered how he was going to ask. He worried what she would say.
At the time he claims he was in the park, someone posed as a potential buyer to gain access to an elderly Los Ranchos couple's home, made small talk, drew a large handgun, ordered the couple in the house to a storage area and took their cash.
Police believe it was Bloomfield and don't buy his alibi.
In any case, Bloomfield says he proposed to his girlfriend later that day and left town when she turned him down.
U.S. Marshals caught him in Texas several months later, where he was working for another roofing company. He was brought back to Albuquerque and spent 18 months in jail before reaching a plea agreement that allowed him out on a program in which he was required to go to work and wear an ankle bracelet for 201 days.
Although he pleaded guilty, Bloomfield swears he wasn't involved in the Los Ranchos home invasion.
"That's not my style — middle of the day, no homicides," he said in a prison interview in December. "According to the court, I am a convicted murderer now. If I was murdering people, why didn't I just kill them? I didn't do it."
Most of the people he knew believed him. His old roommate gave him his room back. He started roofing again.
His girlfriend let him back into her life, and he started using his bad guy prison image to land roles in local films as an extra. He appeared as a prison inmate in the Val Kilmer film "Felon" and again in "To Live and Die."
He also went to church and started to part ways with his Odinism beliefs. His roommate even persuaded him to stop wearing the black leather jacket with a Viking on the back.
"I don't think he was perfect," his roommate said. "But, he was trying hard to live a life out here that was a legal life. Cliff was trying to change his life around."
Less than five months later, Tak and Pung Yi were found beaten and strangled in their home.
The Yis
Days after the brutal murder of the Yis, police arrested two magazine salesmen who had been seen in the area.
One of them confessed. But months later, police were surprised when DNA collected under Tak Yi's fingernail matched Bloomfield.
By this time, Bloomfield was back in jail, awaiting trial for the killing of Scott Pierce, a newlywed nurse Bloomfield murdered by mistake.
Police were stunned. Bloomfield wasn't on their radar.
Fox and his partner, Detective Frank Flores, visited him in jail to ask for an explanation.
Within hours, the two veteran homicide cops realized they were talking to a person some would call a serial killer.
"You can call him a serial killer, because he killed so many people," Flores said. "It kind of fits. It is not like this guy sat there and planned these murders out and left notes. He didn't do any of that stuff. It was more like a crime of opportunity."
Over the course of several weeks, Bloomfield gave several versions of what happened to the Yis. One implicated the magazine salesmen, the others didn't.
Faced with conflicting stories, prosecutors eventually dismissed charges against the salesmen without prejudice, meaning they can refile.
But one thing was consistent about Bloomfield's stories: A friend of Bloomfield's was involved, and it was the friend's idea to kill the Yis.
That person has not been charged in the killings. Prosecutors have not found any physical evidence that links the friend to the killings.
Surrounded by his attorney, two police officers, a private investigator and a deputy district attorney, in his final statement to police, Bloomfield told the story of how the Yis needlessly died.
"It was firmly planted that when we walked away from that house, somebody was going to be dead," Bloomfield said in one of three confessions to police. "I don't know why. I don't know what for, and to be honest right now sitting in this chair, I don't give a (expletive)."
Bloomfield met the friend just before dark at the same park where he had spent time contemplating the proposal to his girlfriend.
He said his friend had told him there was a "job" he needed to get done, and if he helped him by being "backup," Bloomfield would get $2,000. He said there was a man he needed dead.
The two took off in the friend's work truck, parked it in a nearby neighborhood and walked toward a home on Avenida la Costa NE. There, Pung Yi was in the garage unloading groceries from her maroon Jaguar. Her husband, Tak, was inside.
Bloomfield opened a small, slatted gate to the west of the house. He entered the backyard and walked around the house to a sliding glass door. The door was cracked open. Bloomfield looked in. He saw nothing and made his way into the home.
"When I came through, Mr. Yi came out," Bloomfield said. "He must have heard it. And he came at me.
"I hit him and took him down."
Bloomfield struck Tak Yi in the throat, knocking him down to the hard wooden floor. At the same time, Tak Yi's hand grazed Bloomfield's cheek, cutting him. It was the self-defense attempt that left telltale signs of DNA.
"I killed Mr. Yi there before I even looked up at (the friend)," he said.
Bloomfield said he saw his friend with his hand over Pung Yi's mouth. She tried to scream, Bloomfield said, and his friend killed her "similar to what I did to Mr. Yi."
The two started searching the house to see if anyone else was inside. But when they went back to the bodies, they realized Pung Yi was alive.
The friend asked Bloomfield to find a belt. Bloomfield brought a black belt with a silver buckle from the back bedroom. Bloomfield said his friend tried to strangle her, but it was taking too long, so the friend went into the kitchen and pulled a white plastic grocery bag from under the sink.
"Have a nice day" was written on the bag in red letters.
They used it to suffocate her.
In other versions of his story, Bloomfield said he was the one who killed Pung Yi.
The two then rummaged through the house, pulling clothes out of drawers to make it look like a burglary gone bad.
Remorse for one
It wasn't hard for police to catch Bloomfield after his last killing, the shotgun slaying of Scott Pierce.
A neighbor had given detectives the name "Manny." When police found him, Manny told them about a dispute with Jason Skaggs, who was Bloomfield's co-conspirator in the final killing.
Skaggs quickly gave up Bloomfield, who was arrested at a motel near Coors and Interstate 40. Skaggs has been in custody since, awaiting trial in the murder of Scott Pierce.
Bloomfield claims that he confessed to all the killings because he is dying of a lung condition and hepatitis. He said he has less than a decade to live and admitted that he will likely be buried in a "hubcap graveyard" — prison slang for dying in prison and using hubcaps to mark the grave site.
As he sits in prison six months after killing Pierce, the newlywed's murder is the only one that gets him close to shedding a tear.
He won't talk about the other killings. In fact, he has threatened to withdraw his plea, because he is unhappy with the prison to which he was sent. He has come up with various stories, some implying that he didn't commit all the murders he has admitted to. He says he will offer the families answers once he is sent to a prison of his choosing.
So, for four of the victims, he shows no remorse and offers no explanations.
"Does it matter?" he said. "Does the true story need to be told?"
But, for some reason, killing Pierce was different.
"I learned in life you can never undo things that have been done," he said. "In many cases, especially something like that (Pierce's death) ... there is nothing you can say that can make it better."
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