Survivor Turns Grief Into Rage Over Drunken-Driving Deaths

New Mexico’s most infamous drunken-driving case did more than shatter the lives of the Navajo driver and the woman and three young daughters he killed.

In six years marked by survivors’ grief and hung juries, it has changed the way people think about drinking and driving in a state that has ranked for years as one of the worst in the nation for DWI fatalities.

Last year, the state closed all 234 drive-up liquor windows. This year, it required drivers with more than one drunken driving conviction to install “ignition interlocks,” which measure a driver’s blood alcohol and prevent a vehicle from starting if he or she has been drinking. In 1994, it lowered the legal blood-alcohol limit from 0.10 to 0.08.

Lawmakers who championed the changes credit the crusading perseverance of Nadine Milford, whose midlife serenity was ripped apart on Christmas Eve 1992. She cannot forget that, while others opened presents that Christmas Day, she was planning a funeral.

“I was a warm, fuzzy grandma with a job at a Christian school,” Milford says. “I was happiest when I had a child to hold. That’s what my whole life consisted of.”

The warm fuzziness vanished that Christmas Eve, along with the legal career of Gordon House, then 32, a criminal justice graduate who worked with troubled Indian teens.

House, the father of two, spent the day in Albuquerque, shopping and drinking. He would later testify he consumed 7 1/2 beers. That night, his red pickup truck ended up on the wrong side of Interstate 40--heading east in the westbound lanes.

House drove the wrong way for 12 miles, sometimes at speeds up to 90 mph, before colliding head-on with a car carrying Milford’s daughter, Melanie Cravens, 31, and three granddaughters--Kandyce, 9, Erin, 8, and Kacee, 5--killing all four. Cravens’ husband, Paul Woodard, was seriously injured.

House, who claimed that a migraine headache, not beer, caused his disorientation, was tried three times in 1994 and 1995 on vehicular homicide and other charges.

Two trials at Taos ended in hung juries on the homicide charges, although House was convicted at the first trial of driving while intoxicated.

At the third trial, moved 300 miles away to Las Cruces, he was convicted on four counts of vehicular homicide and sentenced to 22 years in prison.

House spent 291 days in prison, then was released in 1996 on appeal. A year later, the state appeals court tossed out his convictions on grounds that the trial should not have been moved.

But the state Supreme Court reinstated the convictions in March, and House returned to prison in April. His attorney, Ray Twohig, plans to ask the U.S. Supreme Court to review the case.

Milford began lobbying for tougher DWI laws within two weeks of the tragedy.

Although a novice, she soon became a participant at legislative hearings, public meetings and rallies where drunken driving was the issue. Today she heads the state’s Mothers Against Drunk Driving group and is among the most visible lobbyists at the Legislature.

State Rep. Mimi Stewart of Albuquerque says Milford was a major factor in getting lawmakers to close the state’s drive-up windows.

“She is a constant presence. She won’t let people forget what a heartbreak it was to lose almost her entire family,” Stewart says. “If there had not been a Nadine Milford, I don’t think this case would have received so much continuing attention.”

Others say the timing of the crash and who was involved contributed immense notoriety.

“It’s Christmas Eve. It’s an Indian driving the wrong way on the highway, and the people in the other vehicle that died are four whites,” says Dr. Paul Guerin, a criminologist with the University of New Mexico Institute for Social Research. Guerin’s doctoral dissertation examined fatal motor-vehicle accidents in New Mexico from 1982 to 1991.

“It gathers much more press because it’s an Indian killing whites,” Guerin says. “There have been other cases where Indians kill Indians, but it occurs in a rural area and it doesn’t get as much publicity.”

Race has been an issue throughout the case, subtly or otherwise. Twohig says House was made a scapegoat for the state’s DWI problem.

New Mexico ranked first in DWI fatalities in 1996 and second in 1995. In 1997, the last year for which statistics are available, New Mexico had dropped to No. 3.

Twohig restated his thesis after House was returned to prison.

“A lot of people seem to think that sending Gordon to prison or seeing him taken away has a beneficial effect--that it has something to do with ending the case or it has a healing effect,” Twohig says. “I don’t think people get healed by inflicting pain on others. Those who are looking at this incarceration as a way to help themselves had better look elsewhere.”

Some feel House and his family--wife, Sue, son Ryan, 12, and daughter Leatricia, 9--have suffered enough and criticize Milford’s work to keep him behind bars. Milford responds that her crusade is about justice, not racism.

“You walk in my shoes and tell me his pain is deeper than mine,” she says.

Asked if the changes her campaign wrought have provided any solace, Milford answers, “You bet.”

“That’s exactly what I live for. For being visible about this issue. The year my children died there were 274 people killed in DWI crashes [in New Mexico]. Last year there were 169.”