Doc: The Rape of the Town of Lovell (47 page)

The cross-examination bore down on discrepancies between her

JUDI CASHEL

testimony and her earlier statements, notably on whether she'd realized instantly that the fluid running down her leg was semen or only reached that conclusion later. Her anxiety showed in attempts to rush her answers, sometimes before the lawyer had finished his question. But Aarestad seemed gentler toward her than he'd been toward the others. From her front-row seat, Judi suspected that the North Dakota lawyer didn't want the jury to perceive him as a bully who browbeat old ladies. An image like that might rub off on his client.

Tharp took Mrs. Bradbury on redirect examination and wrapped up the questioning.

Q I am going to hand you what is being marked State's Exhibit No. 15. Can you identify that?

A Yes, I can.

Q What is it?

A It is my calendar for 1980.

Q And calling your attention to the date September 23, is that the day you went to Dr. Story?

A Yes. I had "Dr. Story, 3 o'clock" written on there.

Q Is there anything else on that date?

A I put a big red "R" . . .

Q What does the red "R" on your calendar stand for?

A Rape.

It

TERRI TIMMONS

All through Easter weekend, she hadn't been able to get Julia Bradbury out of her mind. Terri had been waiting in the witness room with her husband Loyd when the elderly woman picked up her coat after testifying. Her face was as white as her hair. Terri had said to herself, What are they
doing
up in that courtroom?

Now it was 9:30 Monday morning and she was climbing the long staircase on her spindly legs. Judi Cashel clutched her thin arm and whispered that she was going to be fine, she was going to do just great, they were all so
proud
of her.

No sooner had she settled into the witness chair than her mind began to race.
Look at the jurors! They're so close I could almost touch them.
She wondered why two of the women wouldn't return her smile.
Are they against me already?

While Terry Tharp shuffled some papers, she stole a glance at the audience. Every seat was taken and eight or ten people watched from the back wall. She thought, Why are all these people here? What business is this of theirs?
O Father in heaven, where's Loyd?

She spotted his red hair in the middle of the standees. He'd given her a priesthood blessing the night before—such a comfort. She looked for more red hair and sighed when she found it. Judi was smiling.

"Would you please state your name and address?"

She opened her mouth to answer and barely made a sound. A clerk brought her a glass of water and she blurted out, "My name is Terri Lee Timmons I live at six fifty-eight North Bent Powell Wyoming."

Terry Tharp seemed unnecessarily grim as he guided her through a set of biographical questions while she gulped and tried to relax. She wished he would stop addressing her as "Mrs. Timmons." His tension was aggravating hers. She'd never felt as comfortable with Tharp as she had with Judi or the other women.

When he asked if she saw the defendant in the courtroom, she said, "Yes, I do," and pointed. Story looked antsy, as though he didn't know how to react. She had a momentary feeling of satisfaction. Let the little jerk squirm, she said to herself. She hoped that wasn't too awful of her.

As she was telling her story, the defense attorney kept jumping up to interrupt. He complained about her "narrative answers." She wondered how you could describe a specific happening without narrating. Then he griped that she wasn't being "responsive," or "he's assuming facts not in evidence," or "that's a leading question."

She thought, How am I supposed to concentrate? The other victims referred to Story's lawyer as "the devil's advocate." It sure seemed to fit. She wished he didn't have to be so rude.

After each objection, Tharp had to back up and start over. It seemed like boys playing word games. Her nervousness soon turned to pique. The judge gave her a good feeling, but both lawyers annoyed her. Tharp almost made her cry when he asked if she'd told her parents what Story had done.

"No," she answered. "I did not."

She hoped he had enough sense to drop
that
particular hot potato. The truth was that she hadn't told her parents about the rape because they'd been having awful fights and her father had been on the warpath and she didn't want to aggravate the situation. But the farm boy-prosecutor plowed ahead. "Why didn't you?" he asked.

"Because of how things were in our family," she said.

She blinked back tears as Tharp asked, "Were you concerned about what your father or mother's reaction might be?"

She gasped, "Yes," and started crying. He asked her if she would like a few minutes, and she said no. She thought, I'll have to go through this again when the defense lawyer questions me. He'll try to punish me with Mom and Dad's problems.

At last Tharp turned to Aarestad and said, "You may cross-examine." Within a few minutes the two lawyers were toe to toe over another technicality. They gathered around the judge and argued back and forth and finally took a fifteen-minute break to cool their heads.

When they returned, Aarestad pumped her about Story's office layout, where the waiting room was, whether she had to pass the receptionist's desk, who ushered her in, a whole bunch of dumb questions that had nothing to do with whether she'd been raped. But his style gradually became more congenial, and she found herself relaxing. She thought, How strange. This blond guy's out to get me and yet he's being nice about it. But then he tried to trip her up and she disliked him more than ever:

i

Q Okay. The object that you describe now as very, very warm when it entered you—was it hotter or colder, if you recall, than when he had his finger inside of your vagina?

A Hotter.

Q Hotter?

A Hotter.

Q Much hotter?

A Much hotter.

Q Now perhaps I'm a bit confused. You have described this object as stiff and soft.

A Skin.

Q It felt like skin?

A It was skin. Bare skin.

Q You never saw that skin, though. Did you?

A No.

As the questioning intensified, she became aware of an occasional reaction from the audience. She thought, This is embarrassing enough without those folks acting ignorant. Some of the Story people seemed to think they were at a basketball game. She was relieved when the judge banged his gravel and said, "Ladies and gentlemen of the audience, I am going to have to admonish you. Please do not make any comments to each other during the course of the time the trial is in session. The remarks may be heard by the witnesses. They may be heard by members of the jury. ... If this continues I may have to remove some of you from the courtroom and that I don't want to do."

The cross-examination passed the one-hour mark and Terri felt weak and tired. The LDS victims had been fasting together; she wondered now if that was such a good idea. She kept anticipating an avalanche of embarrassing personal questions about her mother and father and the trouble at home; she wasn't sure she could handle it. But she had no trouble describing the rape. She'd had eighteen years of the same horror film reeling through her mind.

When she told how Story had wadded up the bloody paper under her body and thrown it into a wastebasket that was "silver, with a pedal to lift the lid," the lawyer pounced:

Q And from where you were lying on the table were you able to visualize that container?

A No.

Q This is a conclusion then?

A Not that I remember.

Q This is a conclusion then that you arrived at some time later than when he had allegedly ripped the paper off?

A What are you asking? Where the wastebasket was?

Q Yes.

A I don't understand. I'm sorry.

Q You just described a wastebasket that was silver in color, I believe?

A It might have been white. I don't remember.

Q Or it might have been black?

A No. It was either white or silver.

Q Did you—I guess what I am getting at, Mrs. Timmons, is at

"DOC"

what point, before or after the paper was torn off the table, that you observed the color of that container?

A I didn't see it. I couldn't see it when I was laying down. I mean my recollection would be from walking in the room.

Q Okay. As you sit here today, you are not sure?

A Not sure what? What color it was . . . ?

At last Terry Tharp came to her rescue. His high forehead looked boiled. "Your Honor," he said in a loud voice, "I am going to start objecting. We are plowing the same ground. He has already asked and that has been answered."

The judge said, "Sustained," and, a few minutes later, he added, "All right, Mrs. Timmons, you may step down." She was surprised. Aarestad hadn't tried to dredge out the details of her home life. She wondered if he'd forgotten, or if even defense lawyers had a little sensitivity. She cried with relief.

When she stood up, the courtroom went white. Someone grabbed her arm. "I'm gonna faint," she said. She was sobbing as Judi led her out the door.

72

WANDA HAMMOND

That little meatball Wanda, she looks like everybody's grandmother, like a little old farm woman. And she cried when she started her kinky little lie. . . . There was a gasp in the audience.

—Cheryl Nebel

All Wanda wanted to do was tell her story and get back to work. A few days before, she'd told the owner of the Rose City Food Farm, "If you want me to," she said, "I'll take a leave or quit." Poor Tom Cornwall was losing customers in droves, and Wanda was afraid she knew whose fault it was. Sometimes it seemed she'd been taking blame all her life. That was one reason she cried so much.

Jan Hillman wasn't the only Story supporter who'd been avoiding her checkout line, but she was certainly the loudest. For a while Tom checked the large-bodied woman out while Wanda bagged, but even that didn't satisfy Story's No. 1 backer. One day she wrenched the bag from Wanda's hands and said, "Don't you touch my groceries! I'll bag my own. I don't want you touching
anything
of mine."

Jan's sweet mother La Vera had turned just as ornery. Whenever a Story supporter entered the store, Wanda summoned Tom and busied herself in the back, sweeping. But customers were still drifting away to the Big Horn IGA.

Tom refused to let her quit. "It's my store," he said. "It's my business who works for me." Wanda needed the $3.50 an hour. For most of her life, she'd driven a school bus and grown beets, but at fifty-five she was feeling her age. She'd already shrunk an inch from her four feet eleven.

She was surprised at the strength her Celestial Father gave her for the trial. She'd halfway expected to pass out and have to testify from a stretcher, but the prayers and fasting and counseling had helped. After she got over her opening jitters, she managed to answer Terry Tharp's questions with only an occasional sob or hesitation. But she was puzzled by the long talks between lawyers and judge. Right after she testified that she hadn't told anyone about the rape because "I didn't think anyone would believe me," the blond defense lawyer went up to the judge with Terry Tharp:

M
r.
A
arestad
I would like to formally request that the Court remove from the courtroom one of the spectators who is sniffling and crying in response to the emotional statements or outbursts of the witness, simply because it is highly prejudicial, and the impact and detriment that it has towards the Defendant in this case has a potential of being considerable. And I might further state that when we have a courtroom that is apparently packed . . . that the Court is going to have to be extremely sensitive to comments coming from the spectators. And I would also note that there apparently is a young child in the courtroom . . . and I think that if this continues in any way that we are just going to have to simply ask that the courtroom be cleared. But I want the record to reflect what is occurring in the courtroom at this point.

M
r.
T
harp
Your Honor, the woman in question doesn't look particularly discomposed. I see no reason to admonish anybody. I didn't see anything. I never heard any remarks. And the witness has been able to continue. I don't think it is so disruptive as to be prejudicial. And I see no sense in calling attention to it.

T
he
C
ourt
The Court has not seen or observed any women sniffling or crying or talking out loud after its first admonishment this morning. As Counsel well knows in this case, this case is a very highly publicized case. The Court also suggested to Counsel that since this was to be a very highly public interest case that perhaps this case should be moved out of Big Horn County. To
date
the Court has not received a Motion for Change of Venue. I think Counsel anticipated that this would be a large, packed courtroom if it was tried here. The Court sees no reason for admonishment of the people at this point.