Cry Rape: The True Story of One Woman's Harrowing Quest for Justice (12 page)

The duplex on Fairmont Avenue, in a crime-scene photo taken September 4, 1997.

Patty’s stripped-down bed and bloody pillows.

Above:
The cut phone cord along right side of bed.

Left:
The bottle of Body Splash in the clothes hamper as police

found it, covered with a sock.

Madison Police Department

photos of Patty’s scratched

neck and cut finger.

Left:
Detective

Tom Woodmansee.

Below left:
Detective

Linda Draeger.

Below right:
Detective

Lauri Schwartz.

The police interrogation room where Patty’s “confession” was obtained. (2005 photo by Linda Falkenstein.)

Left:
Attorney

Hal Harlowe.

Below left:
Judge

Jack Aulik.

Below center:
Police Chief

Richard Williams.

Below right:
Mayor

Sue Bauman.

t h e n e e d

t o b e b e l i e v e d

10

A Story to Tell

At first, Connie Kilmark wouldn’t even tell me the woman’s name, only that she was a client. “She’s had a hard life,” Kilmark related in a phone call on January 8, 1998. “Lots of family trauma, very low self-esteem.

She’s legally blind. Works for a state blind industries program.” The day before, this client had told Kilmark that she had been raped by a knife-wielding intruder, and then badgered by police into recanting. The detective had said no one believed she was telling the truth, including the nurse who examined her. But this nurse later told the woman she had no reason to disbelieve her. Neither did Kilmark: “After twenty-two years in practice, I have a pretty good crap detector. The idea that she could be making this up flies completely in the face of my instincts about her. She has enough trouble in her life.”

From what Kilmark knew of this client—and she knew a good deal, including her history of childhood sexual abuse—it made perfect sense that, when confronted by the police, she would back down.

I was acquainted with Kilmark from her appearances on Wisconsin Public Radio and because she’d been a source on stories about personal finance and consumer debt for
Isthmus,
the weekly newspaper at which I had worked for more than a decade. Kilmark decided to contact me because this woman, she understood, had tried to complain about the detective in a letter to his supervisor. This was, for
Isthmus,
a familiar subject.

It began in 1994, when I learned about a complaint filed the previous year by Madison Police Sergeant Mark Bradley against another officer, 83

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Detective Linda Draeger. A federal prosecutor had reported that Draeger had expressed her disgust with the methods used by Bradley and a federal drug agent during the 1991 arrest of a small-time marijuana dealer. She said the pair had questioned the dealer, John Steele, with guns drawn and even held to his head, warning that he would never see his wife and children again unless he cooperated, which he did. Steele, a bit player in a large marijuana supply ring, had accused the police of this conduct at trial and ended up getting at least an extra year in prison for

“lying.” Indeed, Steele’s eighty-seven-month sentence was far harsher than that given the ring’s major players, despite undisputed testimony that he didn’t use drugs himself and actually lost money in his bungled efforts to sell pot. This he did to pay medical bills for his infant son, who was born with spina bifida, hydrocephalus, and bilateral clubfeet.

When the prosecutor revealed Draeger’s remarks, Steele’s attorney filed a motion seeking a new trial, and Bradley lodged his complaint against Draeger. As a result, she was under investigation by the Madison Police Department and facing possible disciplinary action when an evidentiary hearing on the matter was held in December 1993. Draeger testified that Bradley had in fact held a gun to Steele’s head but denied saying other things the prosecutor reported. Bradley’s complaint against Draeger was “not sustained.”

Madison Police Chief Richard Williams, who had overseen the department’s internal investigation, told me that Draeger had merely accused Bradley of
pointing
his weapon. This was not true. Draeger, at the hearing, testified that what upset her was Bradley “putting a gun to somebody’s head,” not merely pointing it, adding, “there is a difference.” I was struck by two things: first, that Williams apparently fudged facts to cover for an underling who allegedly held a loaded gun to a suspect’s head, and second, that the department’s complaint apparatus may have been used to make Draeger repudiate the statements the prosecutor reported.

Isthmus
sought, under the state’s open records law, copies of all complaints against Madison police officers during an eighteen-month period, as well as records showing what action was taken. Concurrently, the
Wisconsin State Journal
requested complaints against police made by members of the public—that is, not including internal complaints like the one Bradley filed against Draeger. Williams denied both requests,
A Story to Tell

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expressing his concern that “highly trained police officers and qualified applicants for such positions would choose other employment or make fewer arrests in order to avoid the potential invasion of privacy if they knew the contents of complaints and resolutions might be made public.” Both papers sued, charging the department with violating the records law. When the cases were consolidated, the focus was narrowed to just citizen-initiated complaints.

People began contacting me with related stories. One example: A local man named Thomas Frutiger said drug task force members executing a search warrant on his apartment broke into his bathroom, threw him down, and kicked him, including one kick to the back of his head that resulted in a broken nose. No drugs were found. Frutiger lodged a complaint, which Williams ultimately deemed baseless. “I do not believe they kicked you,” he wrote. “I believe your sunburned nose was bruised when you were initially placed on the floor.” Williams even denied that Frutiger’s nose was broken. But two physicians who treated him confirmed to me that his cartilage was fractured and he had “multiple body abrasions and contusions.” In a photo taken at the time, Frutiger’s face looked as though he had been pelted with rocks.

In November 1995 Dane County Judge Sarah O’Brien strongly affirmed the newspapers’ right to obtain citizen complaints: “Usually police officers behave in appropriate ways. But without a doubt there are officers who exceed their powers and take advantage of individuals. In order to minimize abuses of police power, society needs to have a great deal of scrutiny and oversight into any allegations of police misconduct.

The alternative is to risk that police agencies go, in effect, unpoliced, and become the masters rather than the servants of society.” The judge ordered the complaints released and the papers reimbursed for the $37,000 in legal costs they incurred due to the department’s failure to obey the open records law.

The released records—several years’ worth in one batch—showed that complaints by citizens against police were almost always resolved in favor of police. There were signs that police investigators were inclined to discount complainants’ versions of events while giving accused officers the benefit of every doubt. On the other hand, some complaints were apparent attempts by citizens to shift culpability for their own bad behavior to the officers who were called on to respond.

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According to the police department, the complaints most likely to be “sustained” were those filed by other officers. This became the next legal battleground.
Isthmus,
the
State Journal,
and
The Capital Times
made requests for these “internal” complaints, which would include the one from Bradley against Draeger. Chief Williams again refused, and all three papers filed another lawsuit. The police were outspoken in their opposition, and the resulting political pressure forced then Mayor Paul Soglin to retreat from statements he had made in favor of open-ness. His successor, Sue Bauman, promised during the campaign that she would seek to settle the lawsuit. But after the election she sided with police in their determination to keep these records secret.

The papers ultimately won this second lawsuit, although the judge ruled that the names of officers could in most cases be blacked out.

Again, the city was ordered to reimburse the papers for their legal costs, which this time totaled more than $59,000. Bradley’s complaint against Draeger proved threadbare and vague, and the judge’s ruling did not apply to other documents, like transcripts of interviews from the police department’s internal probe. The records Steele hoped would substantiate the claims for which he received an enhanced sentence were never released. His infant son would be seven by the time he got out of prison.

Sure, I told Kilmark, I would be glad to meet with this client of hers.

But privately, I considered it unlikely that her story would check out. It wasn’t the sort of thing I thought could possibly happen in Madison.

Several days later, Kilmark called to say the client was receptive:

“She’s very pleased that somebody’s going to listen.” Kilmark told me the woman’s first name, Patty, and the detective’s last one, Woodmansee, which I recognized from his study on alcohol-related police calls. We left it up to Patty to make the contact.

It was nearly the end of the month—January 27, the day newspapers across the country reported President Bill Clinton’s unequivocal denial of a sexual relationship with a White House intern—before Patty called. She had deliberated for days whether this was something she wanted to do. She was still angry about what had happened, and Kilmark had impressed on her the importance of her story being told, for the sake of other women. But she was worried, with good reason, that I wouldn’t believe her.

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Our initial phone conversation lasted only a few minutes. Patty mentioned the letter she had sent to Woodmansee’s supervisor, and I asked for copies. I had just reviewed the first of two batches of citizen complaints released by the department in response to my request for all such records from the previous year, and hadn’t seen anything that re-sembled it. We arranged to talk more that afternoon, at the office of
Isthmus,
across the street from the Capitol.

Patty took a cab from her workplace to mine. We used the glass conference room in the front of the office. I noticed she had no trouble getting into the room or finding the chair. This didn’t surprise me, since I knew from experience—including having a legally blind brother—that people with even small amounts of eyesight can often get around well.

Patty said she could see peripherally, and I noticed that she looked off to the side as we spoke. She was nervous—this was clearly something she was making herself do—but she struck me as guileless. Now and then she let out a rat-a-tat nervous laugh. While we were talking, a Madison police car pulled up on the street directly in front of the office—a coincidence, no doubt. Patty didn’t see it, and I didn’t point it out.

The version of events that Patty provided that day was my first exposure to the facts of the case, other than Kilmark’s brief synopsis.

But everything she said, I would later realize, was consistent with every other account she had given up to that time, or would give, in the months and years ahead. She described how she had given in to the intruder’s demands, in fear for her life and that of her then-pregnant daughter, now the nineteen-year-old mother of a newborn baby boy.

How she called 911, talked to the responding officers, and went to the hospital for an exam: “I did everything I was supposed to do.” How the investigating detective, Tom Woodmansee, seemed frustrated and impatient, but she never suspected he doubted her. How he and Detective Draeger had confronted her and applied all kinds of pressure to get her to recant. How she found out later that there wasn’t even such a thing as a test for rubber residue.

“He just made that shit up,” Patty told me. “I just fell for it.” She said that as horrifying as the rape had been, the events of October 2

were worse: “Nothing could compare to what Tom did to me.” She produced copies of the letters she sent to the
State Journal
and 88

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Woodmansee’s supervisor, whose name she could not remember and had not written down, except on the envelope she had used to send it.

As Patty discussed the assault and its aftermath, she would pause to remember, adding details she forgot to mention earlier. I knew from years of reporting that people who are applying spin or trying to deceive often come across as slick and practiced, while people who are trying to stick to the truth are more likely to correct themselves as they go along.

But I also knew that even if Patty was telling the truth, as she saw it, her version of events might not hold up under scrutiny. At the end of our interview, I looked at her, indirectly in the eye, and asked a very important question: “Is everything you’ve told me true?”

“Yes,” she answered. I decided to check it out.

11

Checking It Out

As I began looking into Patty’s story, my first and most crucial interview was with her therapist, Linda Moston. I believed that if Patty were delusional, or prone to making false accusations, or had a tendency to exaggerate, these things would have likely been noticed by a trained psychologist who had known her for years.

Patty gave Moston permission to talk with me. We met in Moston’s tiny office in a labyrinthine complex on the city’s east side. She had worked with other members of Patty’s family and knew well her “long history of sexual abuse as a kid growing up.” She recalled that when Patty contacted her the day after her meeting with police, she was

“more hysterical about that than the rape.” Several days later Moston spoke briefly to Detective Woodmansee, who had left messages for her.

Moston said Woodmansee told her straight off he didn’t believe Patty was raped and was eager to close the case. His attitude gave her the creeps. “I didn’t trust him,” she told me. “I just intuitively got the sense about this guy that it was dangerous for me to talk to him.” And so she didn’t.

Moston produced pads of yellow legal paper filled with detailed notes of her sessions with Patty. She had also listened to and taken notes on Patty’s taped session with hypnotist Charlene Ackerman. These notes conveyed intimate details of the assault, including a reference to the passing of gas. Moston even told me the one thing about which Patty, in talking with Woodmansee, had been untruthful—saying she was dry in the vaginal area. “She did this out of fear that if she told Tom 89

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she was wet this would indicate a willingness to participate in the assault,” she said, reading from her yellow pads. The lubrication was her body’s attempt “to diminish the amount of pain involved in the rape.”