A Writer's Life (52 page)

But after Erickson had listened to John Bobbitt's side of the story—and had spent time as well with other people who were familiar with the couple during their four-year marriage—Erickson concluded that Lorena's version was self-serving and far from the whole truth. Erickson then got in touch with a female attorney in Alexandria who had been among his classmates in law school; she, in turn, introduced him to a partner in her firm, a soft-spoken slender and tweedy man of forty-six named Gregory Murphy, who had also earned his law degree at the University of Virginia. Murphy was a litigator with broad experience in both criminal and civil matters—international drug trafficking, defense contractor frauds, patent infringements, bankruptcies, divorces, and real estate closings, and he had once successfully defended a bull-breeding farm engaged in a legal dispute over the sperm rights to a dead animal that had been touted as a potentially valuable progenitor. After the judicial ruling, Gregory Murphy's clients presented him with a memento of his victory—a brown walking stick formed from the lacquered skin of a bull's penis. Murphy kept it in his office and, when Erickson came to see him, Murphy amusingly explained what it was; both men agreed that it might represent a favorable omen
if
Murphy decided to take on John Bobbitt as a client.

Murphy was initially hesitant. In the past he had compiled a fine record in court defending women against husbands described as abusive; but now Murphy wondered if he could be equally effective in seeking justice for a husband so described, especially one depicted in the media as a barhopping ex-marine. However, after Murphy had accepted Erickson's suggestion and had gone to meet with Bobbitt in person, he came to believe, as had Erickson before him, that Bobbitt's version had legal merit and might well lead to an acquittal. John Bobbitt had insisted convincingly that he had not raped his wife prior to the maiming, and the doctor who had examined Lorena's body at the hospital after the incident had reported finding no sign of physical trauma or recent intercourse. Lorena had also remained calm during the examination, the doctor stated in his
report, demonstrating none of the hysteria that he usually observed when in the presence of women complaining of rape. Lorena's grievances at that time seemed to have focused more on what she described as John Bobbitt's deficiencies as a lover—“… he doesn't wait for me to have an orgasm,” she had said in that tape-recorded interview with Detective Peter Weintz after surrendering to the police. “He's selfish.… I don't think it's fair. So I pulled back [the] sheets. Then I did it.”

Gregory Murphy and others on his legal staff worked throughout the summer and fall of 1993 to prepare for John Bobbitt's defense. They verified the facts that would be offered in court. They deposed several people who might be summoned to testify. They also coached Bobbitt as much as possible, in the hope of improving his communication skills before he was required to speak in the presence of a jury. Paul Erickson, meanwhile, continued to serve as Bobbitt's media consultant, although neither Erickson nor Murphy believed they could do much before the trial to offset what they judged to be Lorena's public-relations advantage. They saw the press as overly receptive to publishing articles containing feminists' statements linking Lorena's case to the national campaign on behalf of battered wives, and Lorena had additional backing from well-organized groups of Latin Americans in Virginia, Maryland, and Washington, D.C.—many of whom had been encouraged to rally behind her by the region's Spanish-language radio station WILC, whose manager had been petitioned by Alan Hauge at the suggestion of Lorena. (Lorena also had an idea on who might play her in the movies if Hauge could get their film project produced: Marisa Tomei, the dark-haired actress whom Lorena saw as closely resembling herself, and whose lively performance in the recently released
My Cousin Vinny
Lorena had seen and admired.)

The fact that Hauge had arranged for Lorena's forthcoming appearance on
20/20
and in the pages of
Vanity Fair
did not preclude Paul Erickson from seeking similar outlets for his client. The television show and the magazine writer would have welcomed giving John Bobbitt a chance to present his viewpoint; but Erickson had ruled against it. After I had called his office and had left a message questioning his decision, Erickson faxed me with his explanation: “John lacks the verbal or mental skills to become either an articulate champion or a martyr. And if he attempted either role and failed, he would almost certainly doom his criminal defense in the process. We as outsiders have no right to require of John that he spend ten to twenty years of his life in a futile attempt to write ‘Letters from a Manassas Jail' about a struggle that is beyond his comprehension, though symbolically connected to his anatomy.” Erickson went
on to say that while Alan Hauge might aspire to transforming Lorena Bobbitt's image into that of Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm, Erickson himself believed that she was motivated by a “psychopathic personality.” “Psychopathic behavior is extremely rare among women,” Erickson conceded.

Erickson theorized further that Lorena's South American temperament combined with her cultural folklore suggested to her that penis severing is an appropriate response to male abandonment or infidelity.

Although I had never visited Lorena's native country of Ecuador and was certainly unqualified to comment on the “penis-severing” tendencies of its women, I believed that Erickson's last statement was absurd—and yet months later, from the Ecuadorean capital of Quito, the Associated Press reported:

Unrelated to the Bobbitt episode—but how could I be sure?—would be a later remark made by Nobel Prize-winning author Gabriel García Márquez, who, while in Mexico attending an international congress on the Spanish language, pointed out that in Ecuador there were no fewer than 105 words for the male sexual organ, many of which were unknown in Spain. His statement, reported in the
New York Times
, offered no explanation as to why.

W
HEN
I F
IRST WENT TO
M
ANASSAS FOR
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HE
N
EW
Y
ORKER
IN
July 1993, it was understood that the “marital sexual abuse” case against John Bobbitt would go before a jury in September and the “malicious wounding” case against Lorena Bobbitt would be heard in November. Although nearly two hundred members of the media hoped to attend these two events in a building where the largest courtroom could accommodate only forty-two spectators, I had been promised a good seat by an important county official whom I had cultivated shortly after my arrival in Virginia—an individual who claimed to have read and admired my book about the Mafia (
Honor Thy Father
) and who soon became my frequent dinner guest at the most expensive restaurant in Manassas.

But a few days before the first trial was supposed to begin, the judge announced a delay, doing so at the request of the prosecutor's office. It seemed that a key witness for the prosecution, a forensic scientist who had been asked to analyze microscopically some of the evidence that the police had collected earlier in the Bobbitt couple's bedroom, would be unable to testify during the period set aside for the first trial; and so the judge postponed this trial until November, and moved Lorena's trial to January 1994.

I was not happy with this, for it changed my approach to the article that was due in September. I had thought of beginning my piece with a description of the crowded courtroom on the opening day of the first trial, and I had foreseen my lead concentrating on Lorena Bobbitt as she took the witness stand and began testifying against her husband, who would be seated at the defense table just ten feet away. Among the spectators in court would be members of his family from Niagara Falls who had stal-wartly assisted him since the incident: his foster parents, his brothers and sisters-in-law, his uncles, his aunts, and his twenty-six-year-old cousin, Todd Biro, who had been in the recovery room in June on the day after
the cutting, and had asked aloud, “What do you want us to do, John?” Todd Biro had already let some family members know what
he
had in mind. He had favored personal retaliation. He had seen himself stalking Lorena through the streets of Manassas and, as quickly and privately as possible, doing away with her. But John Bobbitt, lying on his back in the hospital bed, had turned toward his cousin and said, “Todd, don't do anything.”

I had learned of this exchange during one of my midsummer interviews with John Bobbitt, and I had been surprised that he had favored restraint rather than revenge against his wife after what she had done to him on the previous day. But a week before his scheduled trial in September, his comments to me about Lorena were decidedly hostile, and I guessed that he was aggravated as well by the possibility that the jury might decide the case in her favor. If found guilty, John Bobbitt could be sentenced to prison for as many as twenty years.

But no matter what the jury might conclude, nor how the trial itself might proceed, I was looking forward to writing about it, centering my entire story within the courtroom, the one place that would draw to it all the individuals who were involved in the trial tangentially or directly—the feuding couple, their attorneys, their consultants, their supporters, their debunkers, their deliberators, the judge, and the media. I was particularly eager to hear in person the testimony of Lorena, whom Alan Hauge had prevented me from interviewing, but whose appearance in court would provide me with my first view of her in the same room with her husband. I would be able to observe and report upon whatever discomfort they brought to each other, and they would both undoubtedly be pressured by each other's attorneys during cross-examination. If all went according to plan, I would get my article in print days before Lorena's appearance on
20/20
(to be aired on Friday night, September 24) and the soon-to-follow interview with Lorena in
Vanity Fair
.

However, the judge's postponement of the first trial meant that I could not use the courtroom as my locale
if
I was to meet my deadline and deliver the piece to Tina Brown's office in time to be included within the issue that would be on the newsstands on Monday, September 20. And so I worked long hours in my motel room organizing my notes and then began writing what would be a ten-thousand-word article entitled: “Incident in Virginia.” It began with an excerpt from a French novel that I had read years ago (the aforementioned
Germinal
by Emile Zola), and this was followed by a quotation from the statement that Lorena Bobbitt had made to Detective Peter Weintz on the day of the cutting.