Death Sentence (24 page)

She went on to describe being summoned to the hospital on the night of her father’s death. “When I got there and ran into the room where he was, the first thing I saw were his two feet out of the cover, like halfway up his leg. They were bluish-green-looking to me. I went on up and he was pale—an ashen color is what I would say, and I called him, ‘Daddy, Daddy,’ and the third time I said, ‘Daddy,’ I started crying and I turned around and walked out.”

“Did he recognize you?”

“He did not. I went back out to the hall and Velma was standing in the hall. I said, ‘Velma, Daddy is dying. Daddy is dying.’ Well, they went on and put him in ICU and, of course, we saw him later on and he was—he couldn’t be still. He was all over the bed. His legs were going this way and that.”

Britt got her to describe her father’s death and tell how Velma had sat with her mother at the funeral. Then he handed her a check made out to Bo’s Supermarket and signed Record B. Lee.

“Is that your mother’s signature?” he asked.

“No, sir, it is not.”

Jacobson moved that all the testimony about John Henry Lee be stricken.

“Denied,” said McKinnon, who then instructed the jury that the testimony had been allowed solely to show intent and could only be considered for that purpose. “The evidence of her commission of some other crime is not evidence of her guilt of the crime with which she is charged here,” he said.

Britt now called Frieda Monroe, another of John Henry Lee’s daughters, to tell about an incident at the hospital on the night of her father’s death.

“The doctor told us that he would have to admit him to intensive care. He was critical. When Velma went to leave the hospital, she looked at me and said, ‘Frieda, I do not believe your daddy will go home alive.’ I said, ‘I don’t think so either, but why do you say this?’”

“Object,” said Jacobson. “Move to strike.”

“Motion denied,” said the judge.

“She said, ‘I have seen it happen too many times.’”

“Your witness,” said Britt.

“No questions.”

Joe B. Alexander, a Lumberton physician for more than twenty-five years, took the stand to describe his treatment of Lee. He was familiar with arsenic poisoning, he said, and Lee had the symptoms.

“Did that occur to you at that time?” Britt asked.

“No. I knew Mr. Lee and his family quite well. His recovery from the illness in April was good, and the diagnosis of gastroenteritis seemed perfectly logical. No one came forward with a suspicion that poisoning might have occurred.”

Alexander said that he’d seen Lee again when he was brought to the hospital June 3 and that he was deeply cyanotic and unresponsive.

“The skin was cold, sweaty,” he said. “The sheet beneath him was wet with sweat. His blood pressure was fifty over twenty, which would not support cerebral circulation.”

“Dr. Alexander, do you know this defendant?” Jacobson asked on cross-examination.

“Yes.”

“She has been a patient of yours, hasn’t she?”

“Yes.”

He’d first seen her on January 13, 1977, he said. She’d complained of ulcers, and he had prescribed Maalox, Robinul, which cuts acid secretions, and Valium.

“How much Valium?” asked Jacobson.

“She was given one hundred tablets, five-milligram, to take one three times a day with the Robinul.”

She returned a month later complaining of severe headaches with nausea and told him that other doctors had given her shots for it. He prescribed a potent painkiller, Mepergan, and Equagesic, which contained the tranquilizer Equanil. At the end of March, she had been seen by his assistant and given more Mepergan. Four times after that, Alexander said, he had prescribed Valium at telephone request, each time for a hundred tablets, the last on the day that Velma had first been brought in for questioning about Stuart Taylor’s death.

Jacobson went on to inquire about other drugs and how they affect the brain, then asked if Alexander had known that Velma was seeing other doctors.

“She referred only to Dr. McCormick.”

“What is your practice with regard to represcribing drugs such as Valium?”

“If the request is legitimate, I will refill them up to one year as a standard procedure, if I have no reason to suspect that there is some unusual circumstance about it.”

Jacobson named other doctors Velma had been seeing at the same time, asking Alexander if he had known that she was seeing them.

“No, she referred only to one physician, which satisfied my mind.”

Would he have prescribed Valium if he’d known Velma had been on other drugs?

“No.”

Britt had a few more questions.

“Whether or not she was receiving any other medications, you don’t know, do you?”

“No. I had no warning or reason to suspect that something unusual was behind her request.”

“Do you know what BAL, British antilewisite, is?”

“I sure do. It counteracts poison by heavy metal.”

“In your opinion, how much lead time does a physician need before the terminal onset of arsenic poisoning in order to save a human being by administering BAL?”

“Not to be vague, but in acute arsenic poisoning, death will occur within six to forty-eight hours … so the physician is pressed for time. It should be started as soon as the diagnosis is even legitimately suspected.”

After lunch, Velma’s twenty-year-old niece, Robin Bullard, told about going to her grandmother’s house on the day of her death and finding her sitting on a stool in her bedroom wearing only a shirt and retching while Velma was putting plastic sheets over her bed.

Had she ever seen Velma under the influence of drugs? Jacobson asked.

“Yes. I couldn’t begin to tell you how many times.” “How did she act on these occasions?”

“She would respond to some things you would say to her, and then again she would act like she didn’t know you were in the room.”

Weldon Jordan, Lillie Bullard’s physician, spoke of her symptoms and how puzzled he was about her death.

“Did you call for an autopsy after she died?” Jacobson asked.

He did, he said, and it was Velma who granted permission.

Edward Fonvielle, Jr., who had been a loan manager with Commercial Credit in Lumberton in 1974, would be the last witness the jury would hear this day. He testified that on November 12, 1974, Velma had taken out a loan for $1,048 under the name of Lillie M. Bullard. No payment was ever made, he said, and a delinquency notice was sent on December 27, just four days before Lillie’s death. The loan was repaid by life insurance.

The jury remained out of the courtroom after a fifteen-minute recess because Jacobson told the judge that he anticipated evidence of a confession and was moving to suppress it.

“Do you propose to offer a confession, Mr. Britt?” the judge asked.

“We propose to offer several statements of the defendant.”

The judge wanted to preview the evidence, and Britt called Wilbur Lovett to describe his two interviews with Velma and the four signed statements she had given.

“No promises were made to her in any way?” asked Britt.

“No, sir.”

Velma nodded affirmatively at Lovett’s answer and silently mouthed, “There were.”

“Didn’t you tell her that it would go easier on her if she made the statement?” Jacobson asked.

“No, sir. I did not.”

Jacobson called Velma to give her version of the interviews and followed with Ronnie, who told what had happened when he brought his mother to the sheriff’s department.

Jacobson maintained that Velma’s statements were not voluntary because Velma was under the influence of drugs and couldn’t understand her rights at the time. He asked that they not be admitted.

McKinnon was quick in his decision. “The Court finds the facts to be as testified by Mr. Lovett, and not as by the defendant and her witness. Motion denied.”

The hearing had gone longer than anticipated, and the judge brought the jury back and dismissed them. They would have to wait another day to hear Velma’s admissions of murder.

The first witness Thursday morning, the fourth day of the trial, was Jennings Barfield’s eldest daughter, Ellen Mintz, who told of being summoned to the hospital because of her father’s illness, only to learn when she got there that he was dead.

“I said to Velma that I was really sorry he had died and not one of his children could be there. She told me that she had stayed with him and done everything she could for him and I shouldn’t feel bad about not being there, that Daddy had said not to leave him, that he did not want to die alone and she had not left him but had taken his hand and held it and stayed with him until he died.

“She told me that Daddy had gotten real sick, that he thought he had the flu and she thought it was something like a stomach virus, that he had gotten sick after supper and vomited and couldn’t breathe and was very cold. He had chills and he seemed to be in a great deal of pain. She said he had a rough night.”

“What was the general condition of your father’s health prior to his death?” Jacobson asked.

“Very bad. He suffered from emphysema. He had diabetes. He had an awfully strong constitution and was always able to rally and stay going, but he was not in good health.”

Neil Worden, Jennings’ physician, described his symptoms, and his puzzlement over Jennings’ death. On cross-examination, he acknowledged treating Velma for dizziness and headaches.

“She called me on several occasions for medications, but after I had prescribed for her on one or two occasions, I told her I would not be able to treat her any longer,” he said.

William Hamilton, a Duke University pathologist, who performed second autopsies on both Jennings and Lillie, testified that both had consumed enough arsenic to cause death. And Page Hudson, the state medical examiner, confirmed that John Henry Lee and Dollie Edwards had also died from arsenic poisoning.

Next Britt called Wilbur Lovett to tell about his two interviews with Velma and the confessions she had made. Britt produced the four statements Velma had signed, and all were admitted as evidence. Lovett read aloud the statement about Stuart’s death.

Britt then produced an empty brown bottle with a label faded by weather and asked Lovett to identify it. The detectives had found the Singletary’s Rat Poison bottle in a field behind Dollie Edwards’ house after Velma told them she’d thrown it there, Lovett said. It, too, was admitted, as was a bottle of Terro that Alf Parnell had bought and shown to Velma during questioning.

After a recess, Alf Parnell told the jury that Velma had denied poisoning Stuart or forging checks on his account during her first interview, but that she changed her story after Ronnie brought her to the sheriff’s department three days later.

“She said that she just intended to make him sick, that she didn’t intend to kill him,” he said.

Asked what she’d said about the other cases, Parnell replied, “She said in each of them she knew what the results would be. She said she knew what she poisoned them with, that the result had been death before.”

He then read the remaining statements to the jury.

Britt recalled Page Hudson and handed him the two-ounce bottle of Terro that had been introduced into evidence.

“Can you state whether or not that bottle contains sufficient arsenic to kill a human being?”

“Yes, it does.”

“Approximately how much dosage would have to be administered to kill a human being?”

“Oh, half of it would be extremely dangerous.”

Britt now handed him the larger, empty Singletary’s bottle and asked about that.

“As with Terro,” Hudson said, “I believe an ounce or so could be lethal.”

“Let me ask you about arsenic poisoning. Is it the type of poisoning that accumulates or can you recover from it?”

“Oh, one can certainly recover from it. I have had experience with several nonfatal cases, but it is usually the effect of one or two or several doses over fairly short periods. For example, having one now after having one six months ago, neither one would have much effect on the other. It would really be the effect of the last dose when they are that far apart.”

“But if you had one today and one, say, Saturday or Sunday, they would accumulate, would they not?”

“Yes, sir. There would be an additive effect then.”

“Could half an ounce kill?”

“Depending on the person. I certainly wouldn’t take half an ounce of it.”

How long would it take for an ounce of Terro to kill somebody? Jacobson wanted to know.

Some could survive it, he said. Others might die within a day or so. But there could be considerable variation, depending on how much was held down after vomiting began, how much was absorbed into the bloodstream, and how healthy the person was.

Britt came back to get Hudson to describe the effects of arsenic on a human body, then asked about BAL. Was it effective if given in time?

“Yes sir, it is the one fairly specific antidote to arsenic poisoning.”

“No further questions.”