Cry Rape: The True Story of One Woman's Harrowing Quest for Justice (28 page)

At Bong’s sentencing, Frank was left grasping at such straws as,

“Mr. Bong has never committed a crime sober.” Bong also spoke on his own behalf. “I’m a good person. I’ve just done a couple of dumb things in my life. And I realize that I have a drinking problem,” he told the
Vindicated?

195

•

court. “I want help and I want to be part of my family’s life and I know that I need to do some time and it isn’t going to probably minimize this at all. Whatever you give me I will have deserved it because it is a horrible thing.” Bong’s eighteen-year term was more than three times what Elvord received but less than half the forty-three years the prosecution requested.

With the DNA results in hand, Feagles connected the dots. At five feet ten and 180 pounds, Bong was a bit taller and heavier than what Patty described but in other respects seemed to match. He was a light-skinned biracial man with short hair who would have been twenty-one at the time of the rape. He had committed a crime with Elvord, a known suspect in Patty’s rape. Besides the hotel robbery and abduction, Bong had previously been convicted of two counts of sex with a child age sixteen or older and one count of fourth-degree sexual assault, originally charged as second-degree sexual assault while armed. He also had felony convictions for car theft, receiving stolen property, and bail jumping.

In late June, Feagles obtained a search warrant authorizing her to take a swab from Bong’s inside cheek—known as a buccal sample—for additional DNA analysis. This she did at Dodge Correctional Institution, about an hour from Madison. Subsequent testing confirmed the match.

Reporters for Madison’s daily papers broke the story after they saw Feagles’s public application for a search warrant to obtain additional samples from Bong and recognized the particulars. The application said the victim, identified by initials only, had “at one point during the Madison Police Department investigation . . . recanted her report because she [felt] pressured to do so.” Feagles also set forth her belief that this victim was “credible and reliable in her account of the sexual assault.”

Both papers quoted Short as saying that Patty had been “vindicated.”

Police Chief Williams continued to insist his officers did everything right. He claimed the state Division of Criminal Investigation had conducted an investigation into how Patty’s case had been handled and cleared his detectives of any wrongdoing. “We accept their finding,” he said solemnly.

This was a complete fabrication. Despite Patty’s request that it do so, the state never investigated the conduct of Madison police, and it certainly never exonerated them of wrongdoing. The only such exoneration 196

Against All Odds

•

came from Williams’s own assistant and arguably from Judge Aulik, who lost his battle with cancer the same week Williams told this lie.

In response to Williams’s remark, the state Justice Department and Madison police were left trying to provide spin control. “We don’t
know
that they did anything inherently wrong or deliberately negligent,”

ventured Justice Department spokesperson Mitch Henck, before admitting that investigating police was not a focus of its probe, as Williams claimed: “He’s not correct there.” Madison Police Department spokesman Ben Vanden Belt (later forced to resign after being charged with giving cocaine to and having sex with a minor) said the state had been asked “to reinvestigate this case as a whole” and thus would have presumably pointed out if Madison police engaged in misconduct or even

“neglected to follow up on some great lead.”

Actually, there was one great lead the police may have neglected.

After Bong was identified as a result of the DNA match, Misty remembered a visit she’d had from a friend, John Quamme, shortly after the rape. (Patty remembered this too, as it was one of the first nights she spent back at the Fairmont apartment and she was startled by Quamme’s knock at the door.) Misty said she and Quamme went for a walk, during which he told her about the hotel robbery and suggested she mention Bong to the police. This she recalled doing in a phone conversation with Woodmansee. “I know that I brought Joey’s name up,” she told me. “I know that I told Tom.” Woodmansee would deny ever getting this tip.

Quamme, when I spoke to him, denied giving this information to Misty.

He said he was Bong’s cousin and “trying to stay out of this.”

Days after this new DNA evidence was revealed, former District Attorney Diane Nicks contacted Hal Harlowe. Nicks, who had since become a judge, asked him to pass a letter to Patty. It was brief and cautiously worded: “I write to express my sincere regret for the period during which charges were pending against you. Clearly, it was an extremely difficult time for you. I am sorry for the pain that you experienced.” She hoped recent developments and the prospect of charges against the newly identified suspect “lead to a measure of closure and comfort for you.”

Harlowe, in forwarding this to Patty, attached a note of his own.

“Although the letter is not labeled an apology, it is clearly intended as one,” he wrote, adding that this was not enough. “Before this is over, I
Vindicated?

197

•

intend that you receive an unambiguous public apology. You certainly deserve one.”

From Patty’s point of view, the new DNA evidence was nothing short of miraculous. She had thought, not without justification, that her case had been forgotten. Now, she assumed, the system would be forced to admit that she had told the truth. “I’m ecstatic,” she said at the time.

“It’s absolutely the best news I could hope for.”

But the identification of a suspect also meant that, even after almost four years, Patty’s ordeal was not yet over. If the case went to trial, it would get ugly. The efforts of police and others to discredit her—to peg her as mentally ill, alcoholic, promiscuous, and untrustworthy—could and probably would be used against her. And all of the material collected by the lawyers from Axley would be potentially available for use in Bong’s defense.

There was another complication: Misty, it turned out, had not only known Bong slightly, she knew him slightly in the Biblical sense. “I fucked him,” is how she broke the news to her mom. This did not happen at the duplex on Fairmont, and certainly not in Patty’s bedroom, which according to everyone was always kept locked. But after this information was reported to Feagles, people in the police department and district attorney’s office began speculating about what “really” happened: Bong had used Patty’s bedroom to have sex with her daughter and left semen on the sheet, an act purely coincidental to Patty’s false claim that she was raped by an intruder matching his description. Short was angered by such speculation but knew it could provide the basis for reasonable doubt. “As a criminal defense attorney,” he mused, “I’d
love
to try this case.”

Harlowe also grasped how the defense could use Patty’s momentary

“confession” to argue that no rape occurred. It could highlight discrepancies in her account, real or imagined, as evidence that nothing she said could be believed. It might even get Woodmansee and Draeger to testify as defense witnesses. Harlowe wanted to make sure Patty was aware of these risks and that she was involved in deciding whether to press charges.

Dane County, by this time, had a new district attorney: Brian Blanchard, a former newspaper reporter, assistant U.S. attorney, and business litigator. He had defeated incumbent Brian Brophy, who was appointed 198

Against All Odds

•

to the post after Nicks was appointed judge. Brophy, despite being endorsed by nearly every prosecutor in the office, had the misfortune of running as a Republican in a Democratic-leaning county on the same ballot as a presidential election so hotly contested it took more than a month to call. (Afterward, Brophy became a defense attorney; his campaign treasurer, Jill Karofsky, also left the office, landing a job with the Madison-based National Conference of Bar Examiners, which sets professional standards for lawyers.) Blanchard was bright, thoughtful, and personable, but he lacked experience in Dane County’s criminal court system. He was seen as an outsider, and he needed to win the trust of his staff—which had, after all, overwhelmingly favored his opponent.

In late July Harlowe met with Patty in his office. Feagles’s case file, he had learned, had gone to Deputy District Attorney Judy Schwaemle.

Harlowe had known Schwaemle for many years, going back to when he was district attorney and hired her as a prosecutor. He saw the choice before her as a double-edged sword: while charging Bong would be tan-tamount to admitting the office was wrong in prosecuting Patty, not charging him might look as though it would rather let a rape go unpunished than admit error.

Whether Patty wanted the case to proceed was another question.

“My job is to keep you in control of what happens,” Harlowe told her.

“The rape, that was a loss of control. And that’s what the system did—

they took that and compounded it.” Now she was at risk of further

“public embarrassment and humiliation”—unless she declined prosecution. Harlowe urged her to consider this option. She could just say she was tired, she lacked faith in the system, she didn’t want to keep fighting. It didn’t matter, he said, what people in the police department or district attorney’s office thought: “They weren’t with you when it mattered.” And there was nothing more Patty needed to do to be vindicated. “You’ve won already,” he told her. “They now know you were telling the truth. You were raped, and the police screwed up.”

But Patty was not inclined to walk away now. Earlier, she had asked for the rape investigation to be reopened, against Harlowe’s advice, because she wanted the man who assaulted her brought to justice. Now, even though Bong was in prison, she didn’t want him to get away with what he did to her, for fear this would embolden him, when he did get out, to assault someone else. She knew a trial might be brutal, but she
Vindicated?

199

•

couldn’t imagine it would be worse than what Armstrong had put her through.

One thing soon became clear: the Dane County District Attorney’s Office was in no hurry to make a decision and had little regard for Patty’s peace of mind. In August, Schwaemle contacted Short to obtain transcripts of Patty’s depositions. These he provided, knowing they contained nothing that damaged her credibility. But once again, it seemed as though the system was trying to find some reason to doubt Patty’s account.

The fourth anniversary of Patty’s rape came and went. The World Trade Center towers were obliterated by terrorists, and anthrax scares gripped the nation. Patty thought her ordeal suddenly seemed unim-portant, and the district attorney’s office seemed to agree.

On October 25 Harlowe accompanied Patty to a meeting with Blanchard, Schwaemle, and victim/witness advocate Mark Kerman. It was the first time anyone from the district attorney’s office had met Patty.

She said it was important to her that Bong be prosecuted and expressed surprise that charges were not already filed. Schwaemle and Blanchard said the case involved an inordinate amount of work, because of all the paper it generated. They did not commit to filing charges, saying this decision would be made within a month. If they did go forward, it would be a complicated and uncertain case.

In early November Cheri Maples of the Madison Police Department sent Patty a letter of apology. Earlier, when the new DNA evidence came to light, she had prepared a press release defending the police investigation but expressing regret; others in the department blocked its release. And so Maples, who now held the rank of captain, decided to act unilaterally. Her letter read in part: “I was wrong and your case will always serve as an important reminder to me that the police are not infallible and holding us accountable in a democratic society is extremely important. I can only imagine the additional trauma you were put through after being sexually assaulted and then having your story questioned, and then not being believed by the police officers and supervisors charged with investigating your case. Words will never be able to convey how sorry I am.”

Maples, who after her promotion was put in charge of police training, assured Patty that as a result of her case the department would 200

Against All Odds

•

“reexamine how we provide training to police officers and sensitive crimes detectives. We will attempt to convene a group associated with the initial investigation and charging decisions to discuss what went wrong to try to avoid making the same mistakes in the future.” In conclusion, she offered “my sincere apologies for any injustice that was done to you personally throughout this ordeal. The fact that it was a sincere and honest mistake does not and is not intended to diminish the pain and trauma that you were subjected to.”

Woodmansee was angered by this communication, feeling it exposed him to legal action. Williams and others in the department shared this sentiment and subjected Maples to a disciplinary investigation. Maples, who a few months earlier had gotten Williams in hot water by objecting to his joking about “women with big breasts,” indicated that she would not back down and would go public if discipline were imposed. None was.

Schwaemle summoned Patty and Harlowe to another meeting, on December 5. Kerman was also present. The district attorney’s office was willing to press charges but, given the difficulties the case presented, was leaving the decision in Patty’s hands. Schwaemle pressed Patty to explain why she had recanted to police despite having been raped. Patty said she thought it was the only way she would be allowed to leave.

Harlowe, as at the suppression hearing, tried to explain Patty’s disorientation and fear. Schwaemle warned that the defense might argue the sex was consensual, involving either Patty or her daughter, and that the police might not be on Patty’s side.

Patty, after taking a couple of days to think it over, left a voice-mail message for Schwaemle saying yes, she wanted to go ahead. She asked Schwaemle to call her back, but the prosecutor did not. Weeks passed.