Dance of Death (31 page)

Bollow further testified the Saturday before the trip at the beach, he had seen the black Blazer at the house on that day for a couple of hours somewhere around nine in the morning. He also made a big deal about a check Brent had received in the mail the day after he had been murdered.

Renee never took notes, nor did she whisper anything to her defense team. She just sat there and looked straight ahead as Bollow continued dropping his pearls of wisdom.

“Renee was really concerned about finding a check in the mail. She was standing there rifling through the mail looking for this check, and when she came across it, she was very delighted. She immediately opened it up. I saw that there was a handwritten note with the check in the envelope, and she kind of crumpled everything up and took the check.”

Under cross-examination by West, Jim Bollow said the check was, he thought, in the amount of $750. He believed it had been one of the side jobs Brent had done repairing an eighteen-wheeler. For some reason, the truth was never published to the jury that the check was not written for $750, as Bollow had estimated, but for $110. This incident supported the prosecution's theory that Renee was using Brent and his money to support her wicked lifestyle.

Renee Bollow followed her husband to the stand and testified that she had talked with Renee Poole two weeks before they had gone to the beach and the topic of the conversation was John Boyd Frazier.

“She told me that she was in a relationship with John. She was having an affair, and that . . . she was real, real head over heels over him. She said he treated her real nice, that he would paint her nails and he would let her lie down while he watched Katie.”

“Just generally speaking,” Hembree advised, “we don't have to go into all the blow by blow.”

Renee Bollow shook her head. “Every time, I'd talk about something else, usually it wound back to being about John.”

“Did she indicate to you that she was teaching her daughter something?”

“Yeah,” Renee Bollow answered. “She was teaching her daughter to say, ‘I love you' to John.”

Bollow also explained that she had purchased her kids a blow-up swimming pool for the backyard during the summer. Renee Poole had brought Katie and her portable phone over to their backyard. She had heard her trying to call the baby-sitting service in Myrtle Beach. It was maybe eight to ten times, and she was upset when she couldn't get through.

“Did she receive any calls?” Hembree asked.

“Yes, she did. John called her while she was sitting on my deck with me.”

“And she's the one who told you this?”

“Yes. She said that was John, when she got off the phone.”

Bollow said Poole had had a discussion with John sitting on her back porch. She didn't hear any of that conversation, that she was holding her hand over the phone and talking real low. But toward the very end she had said, “I love you. I miss you. Won't you please come over?”

Bollow talked about speaking with Poole after her husband had been killed and when she came over to get her mail on Wednesday night and again on Thursday.

Hembree looked toward the jury, then asked, “And did you have a conversation with her out on your front porch?”

“Yes, sir.”

Hembree took a few steps in line with the jury so the witness would be looking directly at them when she answered. “What did she say? Tell this jury what the defendant said.”

Renee Bollow paused, then looked directly in the eyes of the jurors. “She said, ‘He was a shit. But I feel bad anyhow.' ”

An ominous feeling crept across the floors of the courtroom. Once again, Renee's words had come back to haunt her. Only this time, the prosecution used them to drive the final wooden stake through what they wanted the jury to believe was a calloused heart.

On cross-examination, the defense attempted to downplay Renee Bollow's last statement by asking if this was the only time she had ever heard Renee Poole say anything derogatory about her husband.

“No,” Bollow simply replied. “She griped a lot. That wasn't the only time I had ever heard it.” For good reason, West didn't get into any further discussion with Bollow about what else Poole had said about her husband.

After three days of testimony, solicitor Hembree announced to the judge, “The prosecution rests.” The television news reporter Adam Shapiro, who had jokingly bet at the beginning of the trial that Renee would be found innocent, had now changed his mind. He admitted that the defense had to present a very strong case if they were going to overcome the odds.

No one in the courtroom wanted Bill Diggs's job. What hat trick could he possibly score that would refute the damning testimony against his client—the most damaging, perhaps, being her own words?

With the jury out of the courtroom, Bill Diggs entered a motion for a directed verdict on the charge of murder. Diggs carefully led the judge through what he thought was the prosecution's problems. He was adamant that the state had failed to establish their theory that John Boyd Frazier was Brent's killer and Renee conspired to accomplish that, and at this point, a decision from the judge would set Renee free.

“There's not any evidence in the record that shows that this defendant had the intent or shared the intent with Frazier to carry out that murder,” Diggs insisted. “Over and over again, she indicates that she didn't believe [him]. Even if there was some discussion by him of that act, she didn't ever take him seriously. It never entered her mind that he was actually gonna do it. . . .”

Renee sat stone-faced and listened as her attorney presented a detailed explanation of her actions the night of her husband's murder.

“She may have known. He may have asked her to take him down on the beach. He may have asked her to take him to Fast Eddie's, to do those things earlier in the evening, but how does it relate to this case? Even doing those things, she didn't take him seriously and understand that he was gonna be out there to take Brent Poole's life. There's not any evidence that she took her husband out to the beach for that purpose.”

Judge Cottingham was not sympathetic. His white hair fell across his forehead and he stared down from the bench in small-framed glasses with an annoyed expression.

“Well, he told her he was gonna give her an anniversary present, and he killed him,” the judge said wearily. “I mean, that's the assertion by the state.”

Diggs was getting nowhere, but he wouldn't give up.

The judge finally had to put an end to his argument. “Let me put this to rest very quickly. I don't say it's true or not true—that's for the jury to determine—but the jury well may, as finders of the facts, conclude that they conspired to kill him, that she took him to an isolated spot, that she, in fact, killed her [husband], that she's guilty of it under the doctrine of the hand of one is the hand of all. . . .”

The judge had already denied many of Diggs's motions, and was about to deny this one, but never without a reasonable explanation.

“And let me say one further thing under the doctrine of the hand of one is the hand of all,” he added. “Use of a deadly weapon in a violent crime gives rise to an inference of malice, which the jury may accept or reject.”

“Your Honor,” Diggs had more to say. “I don't recall there being evidence about a discussion [relating to the] use of a deadly weapon. Even in the state's exhibits that were introduced yesterday, there wasn't any indication.”

“You're telling me . . . the man is dead. He was shot twice. Surely, there was a use of a deadly weapon.”

“But there's not any evidence,” Diggs countered. “There's no evidence that the defendant shot him.”

“Under the hand of one, the hand of all, it may well be,” Cottingham ruled. Diggs offered up a protest, but he cut him off. He was ready to move forward with the trial. “No need in me and you arguing. The evidence is just simply overwhelming. The testimony is for the jury to decide. One, the hand of one, the hand of all. Two, the jury may well conclude they conspired together to take him to an isolated spot and kill him. I don't say that occurred. I'm saying that it's testimony for the jury.”

Diggs again argued there was uncontradicted evidence in the record that Renee asked Frazier not to do it, which would serve as her withdrawal from any kind of conspiracy.

The judge was not swayed by Diggs's argument and he let him know it. “Under the state's theory of the case, she took him to an isolated spot by a prearranged plan and he was there, waiting to accomplish the deadly deed. That's the state's version and there's some evidence that the jury can consider on that.”

Cottingham quashed the defense's motion, further stating, “This is a classic case involving the hand of one, hand of all.”

Diggs had fought an uphill battle all week. He seemed to stumble with nearly every move he made. His back was up against the wall and he needed to put on a good show for the jury. His first witness for the defense was Dr. James Thrasher, with a specialty in psychiatry and subspecialty in forensic psychiatry.

Thrasher had interviewed Renee six months after Brent's murder on December 15, 1998, at the J. Reuben Long Detention Center. He had been asked by the facility to visit her because she was having psychiatric problems. His was a standard-intake psychiatric interview with Renee's chief complaints being headaches, depression and a form of anxiety disorder he labeled post-traumatic stress disorder.

“She had some emotional complaints and was on medication,” he testified, “and probably needed more of the same or a change of medication. She was in prison because of some very serious charges.”

Diggs wanted the doctor to address a question that had been raised by the prosecution and something that many people in the courtroom wondered. Was Renee Poole as nonemotional and cold-blooded as the opposition had painted her?

Thrasher revealed Renee's past medical history and her physical illnesses. He talked about her social history, her background and development, where she grew up and those circumstances, and discussed a mental-status examination he had given her. Among those issues discussed was Renee having been raped by a friend of her father's when she was twelve years old and some history of her using marijuana at the time. The psychiatrist said he and Renee chatted about some possibilities for medication, he prescribed her some medications, and that was about it. The oral examination had related to her depression and her anxiety disorders, and he later determined she suffered from post-traumatic stress disorder.

“She wasn't sleeping well, she was sad and had despondent fatigue, low interest, low drive and energy, and a poor appetite,” Thrasher related in clinical terms. “Despondency and crying spells—all criteria for depression.”

Although Thrasher related to the jury that Renee suffered from adjustment disorder with depression, it didn't make as much of an impact as Diggs had hoped when he stated that condition had to be attributed to her response of “being in prison at the time and being under charges and being quite depressed in relationship to that.”

“The other condition,” he went on to say, “was post-traumatic stress disorder. She had a familiar tremor that has been there most of her life that makes her hands jitter. And she also had what amounted to migraine headaches. I gave her medication to address those issues and devise a suitable treatment plan.”

Diggs asked the psychiatrist to explain what he thought was the source of those conditions.

“Hyperalert and fearful,” he stated in his opinion. “She was reliving the event of the shooting. She was having nightmares of the blood on her deceased husband's face as she found him immediately after the shooting. All clearly symptoms of PTSD. She was prescribed Celexa and Doxepin—very safe, very well-tolerated and very effective. Celexa is taken during the day and the Doxepin is taken at night, which is very sedating. It allows her to sleep, which improves her condition significantly.”

“Doctor, is there any way that you would have of being able to determine the cause of depression to the context you would separate out her confinement from the traumatic events that had occurred in June of 1998?” Diggs asked.

“Well, I think they run together so much. The description of what happened is a tragic thing, was an awful thing. She was a witness at the scene, and as she couched it, she was intimidated by the shooter. Very frightening. Very depressing. You know, she heard her husband beg for his life, those sort of things, and there with the ultimate outcome—it's just shocking.”

“Do you have a medical opinion as to when this depression that she suffered might have commenced?” Diggs asked.

“Oh, I think it began at the unfolding of this whole event. There were troubles in the marriage and alleged paramour, things like that. Those are very troubling things and disturbing things and people can certainly get anxious and upset and depressed over those, but the majority of her symptoms seemed to have appeared after the shooting.”

Diggs wanted to make sure he hit all the defense's key points.

“If I wanted to be cynical about this,” he continued, “could it reasonably be said that all she's doing is suffering depression because she's locked up?”

“The diagnosis was an adjustment disorder with a very serious crime,” Thrasher responded. “Serious potential outcomes on these things, being locked away, away from her child. They're all depressing events.” In relation to Renee's incarceration as a source of her post-traumatic stress disorder, he said it could have been. “I think people who lead very protective lives in very genteel settings, suddenly thrown into a prison setting where things can be pretty bleak, with a lot of noise, there's a lot of turmoil. They're out from their families, that sort of thing.”

Diggs wanted to nail it down for the jury. “Do you have an opinion as to what the source of a post-traumatic stress disorder is with this particular defendant?”

Looking straight at the jury, Thrasher answered, “In this particular instance, I think it was the shooting of her husband.”

“And why is that, Doctor?” Diggs asked further.

“Because that's when she began to have the symptomatology.”

For the benefit of the jury, Diggs asked Doctor Thrasher to explain why PTSD was a mental disorder.

“It falls in the general category of an anxiety disorder and it's manifest by specific symptoms, hyperalertness, jumpiness, jitteriness, having nightmares of a traumatic event and reliving the traumatic event.” Thrasher stated Renee had all those symptoms and testified they were linked to the shooting and not merely the incarceration. “They oftentimes have nightmares and relive the traumatic event rather vividly as very disturbing. They get lost in it. They have the whole emotional response well enough in them again and they oftentimes believe in exactly the same way as it's being repeated on the spot.” Renee had told him she had those symptoms, but the symptoms were diminishing because she was under treatment.

Thrasher added that he had varied experiences with men in combat doing bad things and suffering from PTSD, and his experience had led him to believe it would be less common for someone to be suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder because of an intentional act that they had committed. He didn't believe Renee Poole's was the result of an intentional act. He thought the post-traumatic stress disorder started in this particular defendant at the time of the shooting, the exposure to that trauma.

Diggs never could get a definite answer on whether the doctor believed Renee's trauma was a delayed onset of the post-traumatic stress disorder or something that would have occurred under a normal time sequence. But Thrasher did conclude that by the time he saw her in December 1998, she had had an acute reaction or an acute illness that was partially treated and lingering.

Fran Humphries wanted the jury to know that Renee had reasons enough to be depressed and that all information the psychiatrist had received was “self-reported.”

“The majority of the information provided from which you ultimately have to make a diagnosis is self-reported from the defendant?” he asked. “And that is the only source, other than your observations and your assessment of what she had told you and what you have seen in the interview?”

Thrasher answered yes to both questions.

Humphries also got Thrasher to admit that most of the folks, outside of the psychopathic and antisocial personality, if they're in prison, they're depressed.

“It's a depressing place,” Thrasher acknowledged.

“Well, it certainly is to me and you,” Humphries divulged. “I wouldn't want to be there and I would be depressed over it. There is, however, no way, Doctor, to a degree of medical certainty that you can tell this jury that these diagnoses, post-traumatic stress disorder and this adjustment disorder, depression, were not the result of one, her intentional act, and two, her subsequent incarceration, is there?”

“I've already answered that,” Thrasher owned up. “I think it was a result of her being present at the time of the shooting of her husband.”

“You cannot acknowledge the possibility that, in fact, it's just as I described it?” Humphries posed the question.

“The only picture that I have of it is as she described it and it was not couched in a willful-act terminology. [I] haven't heard the other side of that, no. I don't have the material in which to go make a different conclusion.”

Humphries pressed harder. “And, in fact, you haven't had the benefit of all the other information in regard to her guilt in this case, have you, Doctor?”

“No, I haven't.”

“You've had, just as you told this jury,” Humphries concluded, “things as she described it.”

“That's right,” Thrasher agreed.

In an effort to prove the police had misinterpreted Renee's demeanor, and that someone would make incriminating statements against themselves when those statements weren't true, the defense called Dr. Bernard A. “Tony” Albiniak, a psychology professor, to the stand.

Albiniak had an impressive curriculum vitae. He had been employed with Coastal Carolina University for twenty-three years and had been studying about false confessions since they appeared in literature about twelve to fifteen years ago. He had completed fifty or so scientific reports relating to false confessions, attended three conferences of forensic psychology in which that was a major topic and taught this in “Psychology in the Law.” He had taught two classes on that subject for five years, with false confessions as a major component. His premise was, given certain circumstantial arrangements, a third of the population would probably admit to something that they hadn't done because of the various pressures and psychological coercion that could be brought to bear.