Cry Rape: The True Story of One Woman's Harrowing Quest for Justice (6 page)

Detective Woodmansee

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Patty reiterated that the man who raped her seemed to know she had a daughter and kept money from her business in the apartment.

And she said something that aroused Woodmansee’s suspicion: “He didn’t want to hurt me. He was somewhat sensitive, even when we were having sex.” What kind of rape victim refers to what happened as “having sex”? And why would Patty give her assailant credit for being sensitive? In fact, while Patty’s rapist
did
hurt and injure her, he did not seem to go out of his way to do so. Patty’s comment may have also reflected her history of childhood sexual abuse, and her resulting tendency to internalize and minimize.

That evening, Woodmansee ran a criminal background check on Patty, pulling in reports of every police contact on file with Madison police and the Dane County Sheriff ’s Department. These records showed that Patty had a juvenile theft charge and adult noncriminal citations for trespassing and disorderly conduct. There was also a record regarding a past suicide attempt, in 1986. Detective Woodmansee’s investigation was underway.

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One on One

It’s common knowledge that visually impaired people tend to have more highly developed other senses. Because they can’t rely on sight, they’re often better at processing other input—sounds, smells, sensations. In Patty’s case it wasn’t so much that her other senses were sharper as that she was more attuned to nonvisual cues, like the inflection of a person’s voice. For instance, on the day before the rape she had known, more clearly than a sighted person may have, that the Business Enterprise representatives with whom she met were frustrated and annoyed. Os-tensibly they had the same goal—helping Patty straighten out her business woes—as Connie Kilmark, the financial counselor brought in for this meeting. But in terms of attitude, they were coming from different places, and Patty picked up on it.

Likewise it didn’t take Patty long to realize that Detective Woodmansee was coming from a different place than the officer, sexual assault nurse, and police photographer she had met five days before. He arrived at her apartment as promised at 3 p.m. on September 9. Patty had gotten a cab ride home from her job at the coffee shop, after putting in a full day’s work. Misty and Patty’s brother Bobby were also present.

Woodmansee introduced himself, asking Patty to call him “Tom.” She was struck by how tall he was, a towering presence compared with her five-feet-four-inch frame, and how young, although at age thirty-four he was only four years younger than herself.

Woodmansee asked to talk with Patty in private, one on one. As her guests exited, the detective explained that he was going to ask some of the same questions as the other officer, only he would do it “better.” She 36

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perceived him as arrogant, an impression that would not change over time.

The detective asked Patty to escort him through the residence and identify the bedroom where the rape occurred. He said it wasn’t necessary that she come into the room—he understood this might be difficult—but she said it was okay, and followed him in. Right away Woodmansee noticed something strange. The closet Patty had allegedly been forced into was extremely full, with items protruding. He asked if the closet was in this condition the night of the assault and she said it was. Woodmansee saw the bloodied pillow, still on the bed. He peeked into Misty’s bedroom, a few feet across the hall from Patty’s.

Then they returned to the front room to talk.

Woodmansee ascertained that Patty and Misty had been living at the Fairmont Avenue duplex for three years. Patty and her boyfriend Mark had been dating off and on for a year and a half. The detective asked about Dominic. Patty had known him since that spring, when he dated her sister Brenda. They broke up after about three months, not amicably, and Misty and Dominic hooked up a month after that, in July. Brenda was “very bitter” that Dominic was now seeing her niece.

Patty was also not thrilled with this relationship, because she knew that Dominic had genital herpes.

Patty estimated that Dominic had been to her apartment five to ten times and had stayed overnight on several occasions. They had spoken only a handful of times, and Patty had never gotten close enough to discern his facial features, although he seemed about the same size and had the same color skin as her assailant. She knew he drank a lot of beer, because he sometimes left it in her refrigerator. She also told Woodmansee, “He gets jealous of Misty talking to men. He hates black men.”

As Woodmansee requested, Patty had drawn up a list of suspects, with Misty’s help. It named a half dozen of Misty’s friends and acquaintances, including Dominic; his roommate David W., who went by the nickname “Slim”; and “Lonnie Alvord, eighteen years old.” While Patty had been careful not to share her suspicions with Misty, it was obvious that Dominic fit the physical description and had to be included.

Even Dominic, in a conversation with Misty, agreed this should be done, to rule him out.

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Before discussing the alleged assault, Woodmansee asked Patty for a detailed account of the week leading up to it, an area of inquiry she had not expected. She described the previous week in terms of her normal routine: going to bed Monday around 8 p.m., getting up Tuesday at 4:30 a.m. and arriving to her coffee shop by 6 a.m., returning home around 3:30 p.m. and promptly heading to her second job, stocking and retrieving money from vending machines. That would take until 7 p.m.

and she’d be in bed an hour later, usually falling asleep with the television on and waking up around 2 or 3 a.m., when she’d watch a little “Nick at Nite.” She was starting to describe Wednesday when she realized the previous Monday, September 1, had been Labor Day, and her recollection was out of whack. “I’m screwing everything up,” she said apologeti-cally. “I was thinking of the week before.” Curiously it was the same mistake Susan Pankow had made.

Actually, Patty now recalled, she had stayed at Mark’s that Monday night. The Green Bay Packers were on
Monday Night Football
and he had some people over to watch the game. That evening, after Patty had gone to bed but before she fell asleep, Misty and Dominic stopped by. Misty popped into the bedroom to give Patty some cigarettes, and Dominic had a beer. The next day Patty took the day off from her job at the coffee shop but still made her vending machine run.

At this point in the interview—Woodmansee recorded the time as

“approximately 3:50 p.m.”—Misty returned briefly to the apartment before heading out to fill in for her mom on that day’s vending run. She mentioned Dominic, in connection with her cleaning job, and Woodmansee intuited that Misty did not consider him a suspect in her mother’s rape.

Patty continued her chronology. On Wednesday, the day before the assault, she left for work in the early morning. She did not notice that Dominic was there, but learned later he had been. Patty got home about 5 p.m., watched a little TV, and fell asleep between 7 and 8 p.m. She had not had any alcohol, drugs, or medication. The television was on ABC, the volume at a “normal” level. Patty was still wearing her knit pants and purple shirt when she fell asleep, which was unusual: “I’m such a routine person, but this is different, I fell asleep with my clothes on.”

This also struck Woodmansee as strange, as did the fact that Patty did not on this night wake up at 2 or 3 a.m., which, he later put in his report,

“she stated she always does.”

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Patty recounted the events of the rape, beginning with hearing a male voice warn her to do as he said so no one would get hurt. He spoke into her left ear as she lay on her stomach. He had a knife. “I felt the knife and saw a knife,” she told him. “It seems like I’d seen it but maybe not at that point.” Woodmansee wanted her to be more precise. Patty said she felt the blade against her left cheek and thought she saw that it was a knife but wasn’t sure. “I felt something sharp-edged laying on me.

I knew it was serrated.”

Woodmansee pressed on. Wasn’t the man very close to her? Yes.

Wasn’t his face within six inches of her own? Yes. Didn’t she notice anything prior to hearing his voice? No: “The second I woke up, he was already in bed.” Weren’t they nose-to-nose, just six inches apart? “He was a little higher,” she corrected. “I smelled alcohol on his breath, a strong smell.” What kind of alcohol was it? She wasn’t sure. Was the door to her room open or closed when the suspect was lying next to her? She wasn’t sure. Did he have facial hair? She didn’t think so, but wasn’t sure.

The detective asked what, if anything, Patty had been able to see. “I could see there was a guy there, but not what he looked like,” she answered. The room was dark when he entered, except for light from the TV, which he turned off right away. And she was lying face down on the bed, her face pressed into a pillow. Patty had already explained that she was legally blind. Woodmansee would later state in his report that he “did not note anything distinctive about her vision being impaired.”

In fact, he never determined the nature of her visual disability or what it meant. People with macular degeneration are often adept at discerning larger objects. It’s much harder for them to distinguish detail, especially in poor lighting, because peripheral vision is nowhere near as good as central vision. A common complaint among people with macular degeneration is that they cannot recognize faces.

At what point, asked Woodmansee, did Patty suspect Dominic was her assailant? “I know it was early on when I thought it was him.” What aroused her suspicions? That was hard to say. “I think it was the short hair.” When did she notice the intruder had short hair? “It was later,”

she admitted.

Things got worse as the questions grew increasingly explicit. Patty told Woodmansee her assailant reached up and pulled her pants down to her knees. How had he done this? “Quickly,” she replied. Was he still lying next to her? Patty thought so. Were her legs together or 40

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apart? Together. Was she still lying on her stomach? Yes. Woodmansee was perplexed. “When you’re lying on your stomach, and he’s pulling your pants down, did you stay on your stomach or did you scrunch up with your butt?” Patty thought for a moment, then replied, “I guess I scrunched up to help him get the pants down, then I was back flat again.” So her claim about being on her stomach when he removed her pants wasn’t true after all.

The pattern was set: Woodmansee got frustrated and Patty got frazzled. She had been so sure she would be able to recall details of the assault, having gone over it in her head during the last five days. But in short order, Woodmansee’s barrage of questions had her befuddled, un-sure of what had happened. She sensed his irritation and impatience, heard his sighs when she was unable to provide details. She felt that she was under suspicion—not of lying but of being a bad rape victim, one who made the cops’ job more difficult by being unable to answer the simplest questions. At one point, Patty later recalled, Woodmansee was so displeased with her answers he pointed to the bedroom where the assault occurred and said, “If we have to go in there and role-play this thing, we will.”

Patty described how the intruder had difficulty entering her vaginally from behind and asked whether she could “take it here,” meaning her anus. Woodmansee noted that Patty had not yet said anything about the man taking off his own pants. She couldn’t remember him doing this but agreed it must have happened. Then he was behind her, pushing himself inside. “The way I was laying, he couldn’t get it in that far,” she said. “He must have been short.” She said this with a little laugh, a reaction Woodmansee would flag in his report and later include on his list of reasons for believing she was lying about being raped.

Woodmansee asked whether the intruder penetrated her completely, whether he used a condom or lubricant, whether Patty had ever before had anal sex. He was struck that she described the man’s voice as “almost sympathetic” when she said she couldn’t see and he answered, “I know.” He thought it strange that she referred to the fellatio as “giving him oral sex.”

Was the suspect’s penis fully erect? Yes. Could she describe it? “It seemed fatter than it was long.” How long was it? “Maybe five inches.”

This would later emerge as one of Woodmansee’s key reasons for
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doubting Patty. That saying the penis seemed “fatter than it was long”

was an exaggeration, like saying the assault “seemed to last forever,” did not occur to him. Instead, he took it to be a literal description of an im-probable penis, one he eventually concluded did not exist.

Other details flowed forth, like how the man had pulled off her shirt so that she was completely naked. How he was startled and accusatory when she tried removing her bunched-up pants. How after five or six minutes of oral gratification he produced a rubber and instructed her to put it on. How there was a moment, between the oral and vaginal part of the assault, where she could have looked up and maybe gotten a good look but didn’t. “I really should have looked at him,” she said, with another laugh.

Woodmansee asked whether or not she was naturally lubricated in her vaginal area. No, Patty answered, she was dry. This was the only knowingly untrue statement she made to Woodmansee during his investigation. There were other things she guessed at, because the detective wanted precise answers and seemed irritated when she wasn’t sure.

But when asked this question, Patty didn’t want to admit, and then explain, that her body had lubricated itself. And so she said she was dry.

Ironically, this one actual lie was never among the things that caused Woodmansee to doubt her account. She did tell him, truthfully, that the man used a lubricated condom and that when he entered her it was not painful.

Patty described the rest of the assault, which ended when the man seemed to climax. “I could feel the rubber almost coming loose,” she said. “I could feel it filling.” This, too, aroused Woodmansee’s suspicions. Later, he purportedly asked “several women” of his acquaintance whether it was possible to feel a condom fill when a man ejaculated.