Before He Wakes (38 page)

“Years ago, her grandmother died. On the day of the funeral she supposedly had to go somewhere to do something. I took one of the cars to wash it. When I was coming back through after washing the car and getting it filled up, I saw our other car sitting at the county stadium out there in the parking lot all by itself, nobody around. So I went across to the armory and sat in that parking lot waiting to see who came up.

“She came up with some guy. I couldn’t see great, but I did see that they were in the car making out and stuff like this. When I went over there in my car, he took off and then she tried to put it off on me that uh, uh, I wasn’t giving her affection and all this kind of stuff. Now that’s pretty strange, to be doing it on the day that they’re gonna put your grandmother in the ground, in my opinion.

“Barbara’s second husband—the first one—I don’t know what happened, but according to his parents there was some foul play going on. He supposedly accidentally shot himself in their bedroom with a pistol. Now, I have no idea what really went on, what really happened. She was there when it happened and so were the boys. My question is
did
her husband, Larry Ford, accidentally shoot himself?”

There was a brief break in the recording, a sudden loud squawk, as if the person speaking had been taping over music and had paused, backed up to listen, then advanced the tape a bit past the point where he had stopped talking. The voice returned in midsentence.

“… I’m just being paranoid about all this stuff. Sometimes I wonder.

“When we lived on Falkirk Drive, numerous times policemen were coming over there supposedly to serve some kind of warrant on her for some bill she didn’t pay. Now that’s, uh, pretty tough considering that you’re hiding that from your husband and everything, which it would be hard to hide from the law.

“She also took money from WTIK when she worked there and didn’t do with it what she was supposed to do with it. It was like payment, but she never did the work, which I had to turn around and try and reimburse them for some of that.

“Also, at, uh, I think it’s, uh, one of the banks here in town that we tried to get a loan from knew her and because of that wouldn’t even give us the loan, wouldn’t give me the reason why but would not give us the loan. The bank was NCNB over on, uh, Duke Street. I still to this day don’t know the reason, what she had done when she supposedly had worked there for a short time. But her parents were sitting right in there with me and they wouldn’t give us any … any answer why.

“Also at CCB and First Union at one time she had flip-flopped some money that she supposedly had covered in the bank. But what she was doing was taking … writing a check from one bank, taking the money out of the other bank to cover that and vice versa, which obviously did not work.

“Uh, jiggling this money back and forth was done for some car payments which really weren’t being made, and I had to come up with the money to pay the car off because the bank was ready to raise all kinds of cain.

“She supposedly signed my name on one of the bank cards … but really was not my name….”

Another brief squawk followed before the voice returned.

“Back to Wednesday night, January the twenty-seventh. Barbara had given me something that was supposedly for sinuses and some, uh, and some aspirin that supposedly was Nuprin and about, uh, five that morning I woke up and I was feeling terrible. I was hurting real bad around my eyes, under my eyes, my temple and I really wonder if what she gave me was sinus medicine and Nuprin. She also … I also had a real bad case of the cottonmouth. Even after all this, when she woke up and saw I was in pain, she actually tried to give me some more stuff, which I wouldn’t take.

“What I would really … I really hope that I’m being paranoid about all this stuff that’s going on, but I really wonder.”

Another quick break.

“This is, uh, Russ Stager, uh, this is January 29, 1988, ten minutes of two.”

Nobody in the silent courtroom had to be told that three days later at that hour Russ would be dead with a bullet in his head.

Only shuffling could be heard as Robertson stopped the tape with more music playing. Judge Allen broke the spell that the haunting recorded voice had cast over the old courtroom, noting that it was well past time for the lunch break. Court would be recessed, he said, until two o’clock.

31

Testimony resumed with the jury still out and Cotter cross-examining Mike Robertson, who admitted that there was no way to tell if Russ had made the entire recording at one sitting. “I count eleven pauses that appear to be caused by manual function, either with the pause button or cutting it completely off and back on,” he said.

Could the recording have been made over a period of months? Cotter asked.

“No way of telling,” said Robertson. “I can’t put a chronology on the tape. It’s a voice recording. It’s a free-air-type recording. It’s not a patch-cord recording.”

Cotter brought up background sounds that he had interpreted as pages being turned.

“There are points where I think he backs up, listens and then talks again,” said Robertson. That would explain the music between voice segments.

Cotter got Robertson to play the tape again, listening for the background noise.

“I hear the noise you’re talking about,” Robertson said. “I don’t know. The click is the pause switch on the tape recorder.”

“But do you hear the other?” Cotter got him to play a section of the tape again. “Could that be a page turning from a notebook or pad?”

“I really don’t know.”

Cotter requested that more of the tape be replayed, interrupting to say, “Do you hear that noise?”

“I heard the noise you’re talking about, but I can’t tell you what it is.”

Every move near the recorder would be picked up, Robertson pointed out, “a button on a coat brushing a tabletop.”

The tape played on, until Cotter again called to stop it.

“Now, does that sound like a page turning? Does that sound like possibly not knowing what the next word is and turning the page and deciding what the next word is?”

Now Cotter’s strategy was obvious. He wanted to make it appear that someone was impersonating Russ’s voice and reading from a script, a plot possibly concocted by the police or prosecutors.

“I don’t think I’m qualified to make that assumption,” Robertson said.

When Cotter had finished, Evenson began calling witnesses to corroborate the information on the tape. Preston Adams admitted that he had been at Durham County Stadium with Barbara. Harry Welch confirmed that Barbara once had worked for him and had left owing his radio station money that she had been advanced against commissions.

Once again, though, Evenson knew who would make the strongest impression. “Doris Stager,” he called, and once more Russ’s mother made her resolute way to the stand.

“Would you tell the judge whose voice that is?”

“That is my son, Russell Stager.”

Evenson then asked about the family meeting Doris had organized when Barbara and Russ found themselves in deep financial trouble.

“I said, ‘Son, call Mr. and Mrs. Terry,’ ” she said, going on to tell about the gathering she had arranged to deal with the problem and of getting the post office box for his bills. She said, too, that Russ had told her about the incident at the stadium.

Evenson also called Russ’s father to identify his son’s voice and talk about the financial problems.

“Barbara had gotten them in debt,” Al said. Russ had told him about all the overdue notices that kept coming and of giving Barbara money to pay bills, then discovering that she hadn’t paid them. “He found bills under the chairs and in certain places and became real disturbed,” Al said. But he never mentioned anything about officers coming to serve warrants on Barbara, he added.

“Call Cindy Thomas,” Evenson said after Al had stepped down. Russ’s sister had heard the tape for the first time only a short time earlier.

“It was Russ,” she said firmly, and Cotter chose not to challenge her on it.

“Yes, it was Russell Stager,” Jo Lynn Snow told Evenson, as if to say he had been her husband, she should know. She went on to inform them that Russ had spoken to her twice of his fears for his life.

Court recessed for the weekend after Jo Lynn left the stand, and on Monday morning, with the jury still out, Cotter began putting on witnesses to question the authenticity of the tape. Bryan Stager, the tall, thin, serious-looking son of Larry Ford, came to the stand to say he had known Russ as his father and had lived with him for ten years. He also had heard the tape that had been played in court Friday.

“In your opinion, is that your father’s voice?” Cotter asked.

“No, sir.”

“No further questions,” said Cotter.

“Is that the only time you have heard that tape?” Evenson asked, his voice soft and gentle.

“No, sir.” He had heard it at Cotter’s office with his mother, brother and his mother’s family, he said.

“And after you listened to it, did anybody say anything?”

“They just said it wasn’t my dad.”

“Who said that?”

“Everybody.”

“Who said it first?”

“I can’t recall.”

“Was it you?”

“I don’t think it was me, but I knew it wasn’t him from the first couple of sentences.”

“Was it your mom who said, ‘That’s not Russ’?”

“I can’t recall who said it first.”

“Has your mom also told you that wasn’t him?”

“Well, we have all—we all know it’s not him.”

“Do you have any idea who it might be?”

“No, sir.”

“Do you have any idea who might have all that information?”

“No, sir.”

“I believe that’s all I have.”

Cotter had more questions of his witness, though.

“When was the first time you heard that, the very first time?”

“In your car.”

“Was that Friday morning?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Who was in the car besides you and me?”

“My brother Jason.”

“And did I ask you before I asked Jason whether or not that was his voice?”

“Yes, sir.”

“What did you say?”

“I said no, it wasn’t.”

Cotter went on to get Bryan to explain that he’d heard the tape for the second time in court, and for the third time at Cotter’s office.

“And you still determined that was not your dad’s voice?”

“Yes, sir.”

The judge wanted to know how much of the tape Bryan had heard in Cotter’s car—only a part of it—and when he had heard it at Cotter’s office—just the day before.

“How soon after you started hearing that voice the first time in my car did you conclude it was not your father?” Cotter asked.

“Probably after the first couple of words.”

Keith Belcher, Barbara’s second cousin, said he had heard the tape on the TV news at home on Friday night.

“I picked up the telephone and called my mother,” he said.

“What did you tell her?” Cotter asked.

“That I did not believe it was Russ’s voice.”

Bryant Webster, a student at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, had been in Russ’s and Barbara’s Sunday school class and knew Russ’s voice. He was not related to Barbara, he said, and had not heard the tape before it was played in court on Friday.

“I do not believe to the best of my knowledge that that is his voice on the tape,” he said.

Judge Allen had been reading cases for three weeks in preparation for the lawyers’ arguments over the tape, and he was ready to fend with them. Cotter maintained that the authenticity of the tape was in doubt, that it was hearsay and irrelevant, that it had cropped up so late that he hadn’t had time to defend adequately against it. Evenson admitted that the tape was hearsay but countered that it was extremely relevant to show Russ’s state of mind. He was willing to exempt parts of the tape that would reflect unfairly on Barbara’s character—the affair, the money owed the radio station—but the rest should be admitted as an exception under the hearsay rules, he argued.

The judge wanted time to think about his decision and declared a twenty-minute recess. He returned looking solemn. He never had been a waffler, and he didn’t fear being overturned by a higher court. He knew that he already had broken new legal ground in this trial by allowing the evidence of Larry Ford’s death and he was not hesitant to do it again. Nobody had to guess that he had made up his mind. He spoke in a measured tone.

“In considering all of the evidence and arguments of counsel, the Court … finds as a fact that the voice on the tape is in fact the deceased, Russell Stager.”

The tape, he said, would be allowed.

When the jury had returned, Fred Evans, the basketball player who had found the tape, again took the stand to tell his story to the jury. His mother followed to tell of the call she had received from her son after he heard the tape. He was upset, she said.

“I asked him, ‘Do you know who he is?’ and he told me. I asked him was he sure, and he told me he was.”