A Mother's Trial (23 page)

Ted had been to the San Francisco coroner’s office before: The Hall of Justice on Bryant Street also housed the city jail. The gray utilitarian sprawl of building was in an unappetizing section of town made even less appealing by the freeway overpass which shadowed it. But Boyd Stephens’s was cheerful enough. It was large and cluttered with tagged exhibits from various cases. Ted noticed a shotgun and some spent shell casings, boxes of photographs, a model of a skull.

The coroner himself, at thirty-eight one of the youngest chief medical examiners of a major city in the country, was on the phone when Ted arrived. He waved Ted to a seat in front of his large desk. He was a tall man, well over six feet, with a head full of bushy dark hair and black-rimmed glasses.

“Sorry,” he said as he hung up. “It seems like I’m on the phone all day long.” The phone rang again and he frowned at it. In a moment someone in an outer office picked it up. “I’ve told them to hold the calls—otherwise I’d never get to talk to you.” Stephens smiled.

“Uh-huh. I know how that is,” Ted said. “Well, what have you got?”

“It’s an interesting case. As you know, when you first brought this stuff over, I was pretty sure we wouldn’t find anything incriminating against the mother.”

“What changed your mind?”

Stephens sat back and folded his hands on his desk. “A number of things. These children showed such clinical swings, swings that are incompatible with any known disease. We did a computer search and could find no disease that fit the pattern of the electrolyte changes.

“But it turned out there were a number of significant findings,” he went on. “You have to understand something about cell and body physiology, Ted. The bowel is a semi-permeable membrane across which certain things can pass, and the body always tries to maintain equilibrium on both sides of the membrane. If a very large concentration of sodium is placed into the bowel—on one side of the membrane, that is—the body will try to equalize the charge by shifting sodium away from the bowel and into the body as well as by simultaneously increasing the amount of water going into the bowel to try to dilute the sodium. Now that water goes into the gut very rapidly and causes the diarrhea.”

“Would the diarrhea itself be very watery?”

“Yes. And it would contain a high amount of sodium. That’s the way the body tries to equilibrate the sodium load.”

“How much sodium would you have to give to a child?”

“Not very much. To raise the amount of sodium in the stool three hundred milliequivalents would only take about two or maybe three teaspoons of sodium—either concentrated or in diluted form.”

“What would happen if you put sodium into an IV? Would that cause diarrhea?”

“No. But it would cause an increased volume of urine and an increased amount of sodium in the urine. And in fact it is the correlation of the sodium in Tia’s blood, stool, and urine that can allow us to conclude that she was deliberately poisoned. There were not many times when all three sodiums were tested relatively simultaneously, but when you see that there were places where the sodium in the stool was greater than that in the blood, you know you’ve got an ingestion of sodium. And Dr. Holliday over at UCSF—and he’s one of the top two specialists in the field in the country—agrees. I presented it to him in as unbiased a fashion as I could.”

“So it’s pretty obvious?”

“Looking back on it, it is.”

“Then why didn’t the Kaiser doctors spot it?” Ted asked.

 “Because it never occurred to them. They were hung up on secretory diarrhea as a diagnosis, and they were like horses with blinders on. Anything that didn’t fit the diagnosis was set aside, I imagine, while anything that did was added to the fuel that supported it. Doctors do that all the time.”

“Will you testify?”

“Yes, of course. And I’m sure Holliday will, too. And you can’t get an expert with any better knowledge of the field than him. Meanwhile, you’ve got your work cut out for you, Ted. You’re taking on God, motherhood, and apple pie, you know. It’s not going to be easy.”

“Yeah, I know. But there’s little Tia buried out in Novato who’s got nobody else to defend her at this point. I’ll do whatever it takes.”

Ted left soon after. As far as he was concerned, there was no time to play around with. Priscilla Phillips was a murderer. And she was a murderer sitting at home with two other children. The sooner she was in custody, the better. Ted went to work.

“You’d better chart the sodium levels,” Stephens had suggested. That had taken Ted days, as had the charting of the presence or absence of the mother at the hospital and their correlation with the children’s illnesses. The only way he had discovered to chart Priscilla’s presence was through the nurses’ notes. The nurses were supposed to note down when the parents were in attendance during their shift, and many of them did. But some nurses just indicated the general presence of the family whereas others wrote down exact hours. It was hard for Ted to tell exactly when and for how long Mrs. Phillips had been present at the hospital.

By now Ted had ruled out Steve’s involvement in the case. He simply hadn’t been there enough or as consistently as his wife. If he knew about it, or was in on it, he wasn’t the main perpetrator and they would never pin it on him.

Ted had also been able to rule out any involvement by Priscilla in the other infant deaths in the community. He had been to see William Dacus about the death of his daughter. And he had visited the Searways about their daughter, Cindy. Priscilla Phillips had not been anywhere near the infants during their illnesses or death, it turned out, although she had paid a condolence call on the Searways following Cindy’s death. But there hadn’t been anything else to tie Priscilla into the deaths, and Ted had let that part of the investigation drop as unfruitful.

Ted had also run up a blind alley pursuing a possible motive of financial gain in the death of Tia. There had been a small insurance policy—actually three different policies—which totaled three thousand dollars, about double what it had cost to adopt her. It didn’t amount to a motive, he decided.

But the medical data was totally damning. And he wasn’t going to let Priscilla’s standing in the community influence him. Her background and good works weren’t evidence. Just like the background material on Munchausen Syndrome by Proxy wasn’t evidence. One of the Kaiser doctors had sent him an article on that, and it was interesting and he believed that it might turn out to be useful for establishing motive in a courtroom. But that wasn’t what made her guilty. The medical results made it plain that Tia and Mindy had been poisoned. Realistically he knew there was no one else who could have done it. Hell, even she saw that.

Now it was a question of persuading the DA’s office to act; that was the latest problem. Ted was on his way over to the chief’s office now to talk with Benaderet again about how to approach the difficulty. The district attorney didn’t want to issue a warrant. Ted had been out to the Civic Center repeatedly to talk with district attorneys Ernie Zunino and Bruce Bales, who kept stalling, insisting that the standing of the suspect demanded a more complete case. Each time he reported his progress, they asked Ted to go back and talk to others, or wait until a computer check Stephens had mentioned was completed, or finish another chart. Each time he had done what they asked, only to find they had thought of another task for him.

“I think it’s ready,” he had told them the last time. “The more time we take, the more likely she’ll find out we’re zeroing in on her, and the more likely she’ll do something to hurt somebody. The lady’s a murderer. She’s unstable.”

“The case has to be iron-clad,” Zunino said. “After you arrest her we have to be ready to go to the preliminary hearing in ten days, if she wants it. You know that. We can’t have any loose ends.”

Ted had sighed in frustration. He could arrest her without a warrant, of course. Accepted procedure called for the DA to first file a criminal complaint; then Ted could obtain an arrest warrant from a judge. But he could arrest suspects without a warrant as long as he abided by the technicality in the law that he must arrest them in public or at their place of business, not at home. He didn’t want to take that route if he didn’t need to. The police were supposed to work with the district attorney, not go behind his back. It was a problem Ted hoped the chief could solve. When he knocked now on the chief’s door, Frank ordered him in and waved him to a chair.

“What’s the problem?” he asked.

“The DA again.”

“Look, Ted, you may have to force their hands over there,” Chief Benaderet said, looking across his desk at Ted. “I know I’ve been telling you to go back and do what the DA asked. You’re going to need all those charts, and the computer information, whatever,” Benaderet continued. Ted watched as the big man eased himself back in his chair.

“But you may be reaching the end of the rope. I know you’re worried about her state of mind—”

“Yeah, exactly. I wouldn’t want to have that on my conscience. The thing is, there’s no doubt anymore. She’s guilty as hell.”

“Are you sure you’ve followed up on everything? What did the FBI lab have to say about the contaminated formula?”

“I just talked to the guy over there last week. He came up with the same results as the Kaiser lab.”

“Good. Is there anything else needs looking into?”

“Not really. I’ve talked to the doctors at Kaiser-San Rafael and San Francisco; Dr. Stephens and Dr. Holliday; a doctor at SF General; numerous nurses. I’ve got a couple more nurses to see, and the doctor who did the autopsy on Tia—who turns out to be the wife of Dr. Applebaum—and another doctor who ran a cardiac exam on Mindy. But essentially we’re ready to go.”

“Okay. Why don’t you get those, and then I’ll go with you to the DA and we’ll make another attempt at persuading him to issue the complaint. And if it doesn’t work, you’ll just have to arrest her without a warrant. Sound reasonable?”

“Yeah,” Ted said.

“By the way, you’re doing a terrific job on this. You’re thorough, you’ve handled people correctly and intelligently, and it’s all going to come together for you. Why don’t you try going home at a decent hour for a change?”

“Yeah, I will. It’s just that this thing’s become kind of an obsession with me.”

“We’ve noticed, Ted,” the chief said, smiling.

5

Three weeks later, Wednesday, April 26, 1978, the day started off brightly for Priscilla. On Sunday she had confided to her journal:

I woke up aching even more—went to the family room to lay down with the boys awhile. I love them so much and hurt so much for them that our family cannot be all together and happy like we should be. They don’t deserve to go through this! Sundays are such a horrible day for me—I think and think and worry. I think about what it will be like to get Mindy back, what I’ll do with her, etc. I can’t wait to fix her sandbox, take her to the pool, the park, etc., to expose her to sunshine and summertime, get out her summer clothes, buy her first pair of real walking shoes, etc., etc. But after those thoughts the fear of being charged and going to court reemerges. If that happens, even though we’ll be proven innocent and possibly get Mindy back, life will never be the same. The embarrassment, shame, etc. of such a horrible accusation has already begun to scar me, and I’m sure that after such an ordeal as being criminally charged, I’ll never be the same. I’m losing some of my basic trust in people, my love for my fellow man. I no longer accept everyone as basically good, trustworthy, etc. I can only pray that God and the judge will return Mindy to us.

It now appeared that Mindy might in fact be restored to them. Five days before they had filed a petition intended to force her return. A court hearing was scheduled for May fifth. Priscilla was already arranging with her friends to appear in court in case the judge would allow character witnesses to testify for her. Many of them had written letters on her behalf to be used at Mindy’s hearing.

Another positive thing had happened. Mary Vetter, the head of Catholic Social Service, reported a contact by Ted Lindquist of the San Rafael Police.

“He wanted to know how many of our Korean adoptees had been treated at Kaiser-San Rafael and how many had been hospitalized,” she told Priscilla, “I’m going through our records now.”

“I think that’s a good sign,” Priscilla said. “It means they’re focusing on Kaiser.”

“I agree. It looks like we’ll have this all straightened out in a few weeks.”

“I certainly hope so,” Priscilla said. “Up until the last few days I’ve just been so depressed—crying and worrying all the time, aimlessly going through Mindy’s things. I’ve neglected the boys, fought with Steve. For a while I could barely sleep. My stomach aches continually. I’ve worried so about what Sara and all the other doctors think—that consumes me. And there have been times when I was sure I’d be charged and never see Mindy again. You won’t believe what I’ve been doing: writing endless notes pointing out Tia’s real illnesses, reminding myself how her infections used to set off diarrhea episodes. Everything I can think of. I wake up every morning with my mind snowballing already. But I’m starting to feel we’ll get her back soon.”

“I’m sure you will,” Mary said.

This morning’s local newspaper, the
Terra Linda News,
had added to Priscilla’s new sense of well-being. It featured Priscilla’s picture and an article about her recent award. It had just been announced that she had received the American Association of University Women’s award for her general service to the Marin County branch, and today’s paper ran a short feature about her and her family. It mentioned that she resided in Terra Linda with her husband and three children. As she read the short article, Priscilla wondered if she really did have three children—or whether she ever would again. But she brushed the dark thought aside.

Gary Ragghianti seemed confident. He appeared to be pursuing the matter of Mindy’s return in a straightforward way. On the advice of Mary Kilgore, a social worker who had counseled Erik and Jason after Tia’s death, and with whom Priscilla herself had talked since Mindy’s removal to the foster home, Priscilla had consulted a local psychiatrist. With Ragghianti’s approval, she had gone once to Dr. Bernard Bradman at the end of March. Bradman’s report—which ruled out any psychosis—was intended to reassure the judge at Mindy’s custody hearing about Priscilla’s stability as a mother. As soon as the police gave up their investigation, there would no longer be any bar to returning Mindy. Priscilla was sure of that.