A Death in Canaan (29 page)

Sgt. Richard Chapman, who had taken the pictures, was on the witness stand as the photographs were passed around. At one point, Catherine Roraback tried to stem the flow. “He's just trying to pile up the record with inflammatory material,” she told the court, referring to the prosecutor. Mr. Bianchi looked solemn. “They show the crime scene, which I have a duty and obligation to show,” he intoned, and her objection was overruled.

Sergeant Chapman had brought the slides of Barbara's autopsy, and Catherine Roraback objected to those too. There was considerable discussion as to whether they needed to be shown. “We can run through them quickly, like a movie, unless Catherine has some objections,” Sergeant Chapman said helpfully. “Do you mean Miss Roraback?” asked the judge sternly. He spoke in a rebuking tone, but Sergeant Chapman looked unabashed. He had been a police photographer for more than two decades, and he knew the lawyers and the sheriffs very well. And he knew Barbara Fenn very well, whose husband was a state trooper.

Finally, after much discussion, the autopsy slides were shown. Judge Speziale called a recess while the screen was brought out, the shades drawn, and tables and chairs rearranged. The screen was set up facing the judge's bench, so that he and the lawyers might see the pictures. During the preview, the jury would be kept out while the judge decided whether or not the jurors would have a showing, too. Those of us in the gallery were not sent out, but since the screen was set up in front of us, facing the judge, we could only watch him watching the pictures.

“This is the face of the victim,” Sergeant Chapman said in a detached, professional way, his own face faintly glowing in the light of the projector he was operating from the witness stand. The room was very still, very dark, and in the darkness, most of the sheriffs stationed around the courtroom, including some from downstairs, had moved quietly past the bar rail and lined up along the wall. Some secretaries had come from downstairs and were lined up along the wall, too.

The photographer went through the autopsy slides quickly, as he had said he could: the elbow; the abdomen; the right leg; the left leg; the vaginal region; the interior examination of stomach tissue; the vaginal region with surgical clips; a slide described as “an exploratory operation,” with “the pathologist's right hand up in through the vaginal region.” Then there was a slide showing “the vagina as exposed after resection.”

Altogether, there were nineteen color slides. When the last slide was shown and the projector stopped humming, Robert Wall flicked on the bright overhead lights, and the secretaries and sheriffs standing along the wall quickly dispersed.

Miss Roraback objected, especially, to the interior pictures, pointing out that the vaginal injuries had not caused Barbara's death. “The picture of the so-called exploratory operation of the section of the vagina are highly inflammatory,” she said, “especially for the women on the jury.” But Mr. Bianchi called the slides “vital to the proof of this case.”

The judge looked at Mr. Bianchi in a kind of stern appeal. “Is there a purpose for each one of the slides?” the judge asked, looking as though he hoped the answer would be no.

“Yes, there is,” Mr. Bianchi insisted. “I claim them, your honor. Dr. Izumi informs me that the slides were taken for this particular purpose.”

“I quite specifically object to the photographs relative to the vagina,” Catherine Roraback persisted. “I am a woman, after all,” she said, “and I must say that some of these pictures of the vagina and the so-called exploratory operation are the most disgusting and violative of my own sense of dignity as a woman as I can think of. That is not the area where the fatal injury occurred. These are additional injuries that were sustained, and I submit that they would be so inflammatory that it would be unfair, to put it mildly.”

Mr. Bianchi took the floor then, his hands clasped behind his back, rocking back and forth slightly, in a classic orator's stance. He frowned. “Counsel is here as an attorney,” he declared. “They are not very desirable for anyone to see,” he said, and paused dramatically. “Murder never is.”

Dr. Ernest Izumi had a gray, silvery crew cut and wore horn-rims. He was short, stocky, and prosperous looking, with bushy black eyebrows and bright eyes. He smiled at Mickey, and he blinked and smiled at the judge too.

“Are these slides essential?” Judge Speziale asked him, still seeming to look for an out.

“Yes, sir, your honor, they are,” Dr. Izumi said, without hesitating. “I think the slides depict much more than I could present in writing.”

“Do you need all the nineteen slides?” Judge Speziale asked, his voice sounding strained, almost desperate.

“If the sequence of the autopsy is to be asked for, I would say yes,” Dr. Izumi replied. “For the sequence of the various factors to determine the cause of death, I would say yes.”

Judge Speziale asked Catherine Roraback whether she wished to inquire again, and once more she brought up the interior body photographs. She looked hard at Dr. Izumi. “What is the purpose of these photographs?”

He looked back at her.

“The purpose is to show things as they were at the time the autopsy was done,” he replied.

“Do I understand these photographs do not show the injury to the vagina?” she asked.

“There are multiple injuries to the vagina,” Dr. Izumi said softly. “Two or more.”

“But do the photographs refer to the injuries?” Catherine Roraback asked him, in a strong voice.

“Yes,” he said.

“All of them do?”

“Yes,” he said.

“Do all four show those injuries?” she repeated.

“Yes, ma'am, they do show the various injuries,” he said again.

“All four?”

“Yes ma'am.”

Catherine Roraback looked truly angry and asked Sergeant Chapman to show the slides again. Now it was Mr. Bianchi's turn to object. He said it was unnecessary. “Just the vaginal area,” Catherine Roraback said briskly.

The lights were turned out again. Dr. Izumi leaned his elbow on the jury rail. Joe Battistoni moved up again, so he could see. The judge blinked sadly at the screen. “What does this depict?” he asked.

“This depicts the inner portion, as we are looking down into the pelvic area,” Dr. Izumi said.

“Does this depict a specific injury?” Judge Speziale asked.

“Yes, sir, it does,” the doctor said. “This would be very pertinent. I think this may be the picture that Attorney Roraback may question. I believe it's very pertinent.”

“This is a specific injury?” the judge asked again.

“It is part of the injury,” Dr. Izumi said.

“This has not been shown in great detail on the other slides?” the judge asked, almost hopefully.

“No, sir,” said Dr. Izumi. There was a note of finality in his voice, and Judge Speziale gave in. The man who tipped his hat to women went by the book, too, and when he had to choose, the book came first. “Objection overruled,” the judge said, and told Mr. Murdick to bring the jury back.

They filed back in, some of them smiling. They seemed to have got over the photographs. They seemed glad to be up and moving, even though in a minute they were seated again, three of the women bunched together in the top row. Mrs. Ayre was smiling.

Mr. Bianchi stood up and introduced the slides as evidence then, State's Exhibits 0-1 through 0-19. Now the jury knew what was coming, and Mrs. Ayre stopped smiling. Peter Reilly got up from the counsel table and moved behind the screen, where he could not see. The judge looked at the jury, then he looked at the clock. It was not yet five; there was time. He looked back at the jury again, his gaze seeming to linger on the women in the top row.

“I think we're going to wrap it up for the day,” Judge Speziale said quietly, and some of the jurors smiled gratefully at him. Even people who went by the book could stretch a point and could give other people a little more time to prepare themselves. There was never a court session on Monday, so the jurors had a few more days.

“Have a good weekend,” Judge Speziale said to them and to the courtroom in general, and quickly left the room.

The next day, Peter Reilly celebrated his nineteenth birthday. Beverly King baked him a cake and drove over to the Madows with it. She didn't completely understand the judge's order about “extrajudicial statements,” but she was frightened by it, and she thought if she spoke to Peter she might somehow, someway, get him in trouble, so to be on the safe side she stayed in the car while her children took the cake in to Peter. There were a lot of people inside, the boys playing guitars, and the King children got so interested they stayed a while. They didn't tell anybody their mother was outside, so Beverly sat in the Madows' driveway for forty minutes. In the evening, the Madows and the Dickinsons took Peter out to dinner at the Blackberry River Inn.

Roger Cohn telephoned. “Did Peter have a happy birthday?” he asked Marion. “I'm not allowed to say,” Marion told Roger, laughing a little, though she didn't mean it entirely as a joke.

“This is the face of the victim,” Dr. Izumi said in a detached, professional way, as Sergeant Chapman had done. It was Tuesday, March 5. The jurors were in their box, and even though the spectators couldn't see the screen, the gallery was packed, with only a few scattered single seats empty here and there. Most of the secretaries and sheriffs were back.

Dr. Izumi took the wooden pointer Mr. Bianchi offered him and stepped up very close to the screen. “This is the lesion in the neck … this is more a front view, a remnant of skin.” He pointed out what he termed “a defense wound,” the hole in Barbara's hand. “This is a laceration or deep cut which penetrates through the palm of the hand, the exit point being the back of the hand,” he said, very much as though he were giving a medical lesson. Several times he referred to “the patient.”

Judge Speziale interrupted. “The two hands on either side of the screen, whose are those?” he asked.

“These are mine,” Dr. Izumi said.

“This is another view of the right hand, the same defense wound, with probe, to show the deep penetration,” Dr. Izumi continued, and the slides clicked past. “This is the right elbow … this is a close-up view of a cut wound located in the left lower abdomen.” Juror William Jennings puffed out his cheeks and blew out a breath, like a long, deep sigh.

Slide 10 was upside down, but nobody laughed or even smiled. Slide 11, Dr. Izumi said, showed “in the region of the genital organs, outside of the vagina, a laceration here.” Edward Ives glanced at Mrs. Wald, sitting beside him in the first row of the jury box. Sarah Waldron's face puckered slightly.

“This area depicts, from here to here, the deep pelvis.” Dr. Izumi's pointer swung across the screen. “Inside the pelvis is the skin, and the soft tissues are open. These areas are shown to indicate the absence of the female genital organs because approximately one year before, these were removed, leaving an empty pelvis, but there are metallic sutures which remain after the operation.” Slide 16 showed “external genitalia in the region of the vaginal opening where there are tears or lacerations in what is identified as the vestibule, that is, the opening areas.”

Dr. Izumi asked for the next slide, 17. “This represents an inside view of the pelvis in the region where the genital organs had been removed. The purpose here is to demonstrate the penetration and breaking.… My finger had access into the pelvic cavity which normally is closed off.”

The reporters, having nothing else to watch, watched the judge and the jury, and mostly the women on the jury. Even in the darkness, Mrs. Ayre's eyes looked pained. Of all the women on the jury, she was the closest to Barbara's age. She had a fixed half-smile on her face, a kind of grimace, as though she were commanding her face to stay in that position.

The last slide showed the neck again, “the voice box in the region of the deep cut wounds in the neck. The purpose here is to show that one of the bones in the left side of the neck has been either fractured or cut.”

Altogether the slide showing took twenty-seven minutes. When the projector stopped whirring and the fluorescent light flashed whitely in the ceiling, Dr. Izumi smiled slightly and handed the pointer to Patsy Alfano. The jurors stared at the doctor as he went back to the witness stand, sat down, and looked at Mr. Bianchi. Mr. Ives looked at Mrs. Wald again, then looked back to the doctor. Gary Lewis, at the end of the row, suddenly turned to Mr. Murdick and gestured abruptly to him. Mr. Murdick obediently went over to the tall window nearest the jury box and opened it wide.

Before Dr. Izumi resumed his testimony, Catherine Roraback stood up and objected, this time in the presence of the jury, to the slides of the vaginal injuries. Her objection was overruled, once again, and Peter Reilly returned to his seat at the table.

Reading from notes he'd brought with him, Dr. Izumi described how he'd been called at home that Friday night, September 28, 1973, at 11:15. He arrived at Barbara's house and waited as long as he could for his boss, Dr. Elliott Gross, the Chief Medical Examiner. But Dr. Gross did not appear, and finally Dr. Izumi felt he should go in. “I didn't wait for Dr. Gross because as a medical examiner, I should go in and pronounce the patient dead,” he explained.

“How did you determine that Barbara Gibbons was dead?” Mr. Bianchi asked. “Will you tell the ladies and gentlemen of the jury how you went about that?”

Dr. Izumi told, then, how he'd felt for Barbara's left pulse and had a hard time doing it, the room was so small. The wrist was cold. He said he'd taken off the white cotton blanket the man from the ambulance had used and felt Barbara's stomach. “There was very minimal heat, but the body was still warm.”

“What was your determination after checking her life signs?” Mr. Bianchi asked. “Did you form an opinion at that time, doctor?”