Escape (36 page)

Karp answered none of the questions yelled out to him, but he smiled and wished a "good morning" to those in the media horde he knew. When the elevator door opened, several members of the press stepped forward in an attempt to get on with the prosecution team, but Murrow pushed them back. "Sorry, we're full."

In a demonstration of complete impartiality, he didn't let his girlfriend Stupenagel aboard either. "Sorry babe, join the rest of the vultures."

"Yeah? Well, maybe we'll see who's sleeping with the pigeons when you get home tonight, buster," she yelled as the doors slid shut.

"You're going to pay for that one," Karp told his aide, who pressed the button for the twelfth floor.

"Just remember who took the bullet for you," Murrow replied sadly. Obviously, he'd had bigger plans than sleeping on the roof that evening. He perked up though when the doors slid open again to a whole new gaggle of journalists, all elbowing each other and shouting the same questions.

The press followed Karp and Katz into the courtroom, scurrying like rats in a maze to find the few remaining seats in the pews on either side of the aisle. A shouting match ensued when the unlucky ones were told they would have to watch the trial on a monitor in another room. Those who had seats looked smug.

A low buzz permeated the air of the courtroom, over a hundred people speaking quietly but excitedly to each other—a sort of white noise that increased in volume anytime someone of note, such as the prosecutors, entered.

As Karp and Katz made their way to the prosecution table, Karp saw that the defendant and her lawyer were already seated at the defense table. Over the objection of her attorney, Linda Lewis, who never minded a little press, Karp had won a motion to have Jessica Campbell brought to the courtroom early to avoid the crush of reporters and the off-chance that some nut-job in the crowd would try to hurt her.

Lewis had been busy filing last-minute motions, including one to have the case thrown out, and another to have witnesses excluded. One she had not filed was to allow Campbell to dress in civilian clothes for the trial instead of the jumpsuit worn by psychiatric patients at Bellevue. Normally, a defense attorney worried that jail garb would make their client look guilty in the eyes of the jurors, but Lewis wanted Campbell clearly identified as a psych patient.

Another trick of the defense trade was to clean up the appearance of defendants. That's why murderers who'd previously dressed like Hell's Angels bikers appeared at trial in sweater vests and horn-rimmed glasses with their hair cut and looking like frat boys. For the same reason, a female defendant arrested in a bikini top and shorts exposing her butt cheeks would most likely be brought to court in a dress so conservative that she would look like a turn-of-the-twentieth-century missionary to Africa.

Here again, Lewis had opted for a different strategy. Campbell's hair, which at a pre-trial hearing only a week before had been long and neatly trimmed, now looked like someone had hacked at it with a dull knife. She was pale as milk, which was to be somewhat expected, as she had spent nearly all of her time indoors, but the lack of color was emphasized by the dark circles under her eyes.

Karp wondered if Lewis had used makeup to enhance the bedraggled appearance or had simply told her client to avoid getting any sleep. The look certainly fit the stereotype of a "crazy woman."

Campbell glanced over at him, but her eyes filled with tears; she looked back down at a large sketch pad on which she was drawing with a pencil. But Lewis was watching him.

He'd expected her to be more flamboyant in dress, having seen her in action before; however, she looked like an assistant district attorney in her off-the-rack gray dress suit. She gave Karp a curt nod—the sort an antagonist might use before choosing a dueling pistol, then turned her back to him to say something to her client.

Karp turned in his seat to look at the spectator section of the court. Sitting directly behind the defense table were Liza and Benjamin Gupperstein. On the other side of Ben Gupperstein, but a world apart otherwise, was Charlie Campbell. After the
Off the Hook Show,
his ranking in the polls had fallen like the New Year's Eve globe at Times Square and he'd disappeared from public view for a while.

When he reappeared, he was back in the defense camp, apparently having worked out a deal. Publicly and frequently, he blamed himself "for not taking the psychiatrist's warning seriously enough." At the same time, Lewis stopped demanding that he be prosecuted for conspiracy to commit murder. His poll numbers had since stabilized, a trend Karp figured would continue as long as Charlie behaved.

The president of NOF and a phalanx of angry women sat in the row directly behind Charlie. A couple of token men sat near the president, too, but they had the look of worker drones attending to a queen bee.

Karp had heard from the court security chief that many of the spectators had shown up outside the building during the night and slept on the sidewalk to assure themselves a seat in the courtroom. "It's like a damn rock concert," the man had complained. Those who outfought the media for a seat were now eagerly waiting for the show to begin; several apparently even brought snacks.

The crowding in the courtroom prevented spectators and the press from "choosing sides" the way they often did when attending a trial—that is, sitting behind either the prosecution table or the defense table. He'd even seen people switch from one side to the other during the course of a trial as their opinions changed. This morning, however, they'd taken seats wherever they could find them, and he noticed that some of the women sitting on the prosecution side of the aisle looked uncomfortable. One in particular was shooting him dirty looks and mouthing something that he didn't care to translate.

The Jessica Campbell murder trial had become a national story. The
Off the Hook Show
had been the first to latch on to it, but it hadn't been the last. Every major network had done a piece along the lines of "Moms Who Kill," with special emphasis on the "growing phenomena" of postpartum depression as a cause of homicide.

Karp began to say something to Katz when there was a sudden commotion behind him. The woman who had been glaring at him and mouthing slurs apparently couldn't take it anymore. She stood up and tried to spit on him.

Fortunately for Karp—but not for a well-known television newscaster two rows in front of her—the lubricious projectile lacked sufficient velocity and trajectory. It struck the man in the forehead as he turned to see what the fuss was about. He screamed shrilly, as if her spit consisted of hydrochloric acid. The woman pointed at Karp and shouted. "Satan! Get thee gone! How dare you persecute a woman who hears and obeys the word of God. Who are you to judge her, except one of those accursed people who killed Jesus!"

Security guards rushed down the aisle and into the row to grab her. She kicked and screamed and tried to sit back down; the guards tugged from one direction and her friends held on in the other. All three women were eventually pulled from the courtroom and their seats filled with the next three in line.

"I'll never question the need for metal detectors at the front doors again," Kenny said in a low voice.

Karp chuckled. "All in a day's work." He'd been worried that the distractions would have an effect on his protégé, but Katz was handling the scene like a seasoned veteran.

Glancing at his legal pad, Karp recalled his discussion with Katz about how to begin the trial. "I'm just going to lay it out—simply, clearly. I'll leave the theatrics for the other side. If we let them make this a trial based on emotions, we'll lose."

"I hear what you're saying," Katz had responded, "but isn't that kind of tough? Every time I see a photograph of those kids' bodies and think about what they went through, I just want to snap that woman's neck."

"Precisely my point," Karp had replied. "You've looked at the evidence, and the evidence told you that Jessica Campbell knew what she was doing and deserves to be punished. So what makes you think the jury won't have the same reaction when they see what you've seen, heard what you've heard, and know what you know? This has got to be about the vicious, off-the-charts brutal acts of murder committed against these defenseless children by their caretaker-in-chief, and not about the defendant's mental defect."

Voices fell silent and everyone scrambled to their feet when the court clerk announced the arrival of New York Supreme Court Judge Timothy Dermondy. Unlike almost all other state supreme courts, the New York Supreme Court is not the highest appellate court in the state judicial system; instead, it is the actual trial court. This anomaly has a tendency to drive first-year law students to drink when they make the mistake of believing they have appellate precedent when they cite a decision by a New York Supreme Court judge.

Five foot ten, slim, and balding, Dermondy had graduated at the top of his class from Fordham Law School and then joined the New York DAO, where he served for many years before becoming a judge. At the time he had joined the staff, the DAO was headed by Francis Garrahy, and Karp wasn't even out of high school.

The Dermondy family had a long history of serving the citizens of Manhattan. His dad and uncles had been big-time brass with the NYPD, and Timothy had become Garrahy's top ADA, the eventual chief of the homicide bureau and one of the top trial lawyers ever to walk into a New York City courtroom. On the bench, he was considered by attorneys on both sides of the aisle to be fair-minded and even-handed; but he did not suffer well any ADA who was not prepared. Painstaking, thorough preparation was the bedrock of success. Karp considered himself fortunate to have been mentored by Dermondy, just as he was now tutoring Katz.

Dermondy left everybody standing while he looked out at them like a loving father whose unruly children were beginning to try his patience. "Now, good people," he said firmly. "I've been told by my clerk that there has already been an unseemly outburst. I must let you know right now that I won't tolerate another. You'll conduct yourselves in a manner both respectful and orderly, or you will be taken to The Tombs and left there to contemplate the error of your ways. This goes for lawyers, spectators, and the media. Am I clear?"

The crowd nodded as one. "All right then," the judge said, "you may take your seats."

Judge Dermondy asked that the jury be brought in and seated, and once they were in place he made a short speech about the history of the jury system in the United States. "It is a sacred duty," he warned the jurors. "And you must do nothing that abridges that duty, including talking to the media or discussing the case with anyone until I have given you leave to do so. Am I clear?"

This time it was the jurors' turn to nod. "Good," the judge said. "I'm sure we'll get along famously, and thank you for taking on this very important task." He looked at the prosecution team. "Are you ready with your opening statement?"

"Yes, your honor," Karp said, rising.

"Then let's have it, Mr. Karp."

Karp approached the podium, which was placed between and slightly ahead of the defense and prosecution tables, and put down his legal pad. He took a final look at what he'd written.

"On the morning of March 17, Jessica Campbell went to the below-street-level parking garage of her home on Central Park West to run a few errands. She got in the family's Volvo station wagon and left the garage, driving south until she reached the Holland Tunnel, which she took to New Jersey. In Newark, Mrs. Campbell drove to the O'Hara's Hardware Store on London Road, where she purchased a large footlocker and a stainless steel combination padlock. She then drove 3.8 miles farther to Bucky's Sporting Goods, where she purchased an Old Timer hunting knife with a nine-inch blade. Any of these same items could have been bought much closer to home, but Jessica Campbell didn't want to be recognized. Why? Because she knew what she intended to use these items for."

On the morning of the murders, Karp told the jurors, Jessica Campbell rose from her bed, fixed her husband a large breakfast, "which he did not eat and left on the counter," and then waited for him to leave for a meeting. "A meeting, he told her, which might last well into the evening," he added.

Karp paused to emphasize his next point. "Not until after he left, and could ask no questions, did Mrs. Campbell then call the nanny, Rebecca, and tell her not to come to work that day. As Rebecca will testify, her boss said she was going to 'take care of the children herself.' Mrs. Campbell then proceeded to the main floor bathroom of the family brownstone and filled the tub with water.

"We will learn from the evidence that Jessica Campbell brought her children into the bathroom and placed them in the tub. But she wasn't there to bathe them, or play with them; she put them there in order to kill them." Karp walked over to the side of the prosecution table where he picked out a poster-sized photograph of the Campbell family fixed to a Styrofoam board. He crossed the floor and placed the photograph on an easel near the jury box, and went back to the podium.

"This was the Campbell family in January of this year," Karp continued. "That's Charlie Campbell on the left and Jessica Campbell on the right holding the infant, Benjamin, who was only a few weeks old; standing in front of them is seven-year-old Hillary and her four-year-old sister, Chelsea." Karp paused to let the jurors get a good look at the photograph before he resumed. "The Campbell children did not go easily. The evidence will show that it took several minutes to drown each child as they kicked, scratched, and fought with their mother, the defendant, to stay alive."

A sudden sob broke the stillness of the courtroom. All heads turned to the source of the sound, Jessica Campbell, and waited to see what she would do next. But she kept her head down and returned to drawing on her sketch pad.

"In fact, one of the children, Hillary, fought bravely. She scratched and even managed to bite her mother hard enough to leave a clear set of teeth marks on Jessica Campbell's arm. She struggled to stay alive so hard that when drowning failed to kill her, Jessica Campbell had to resort to Plan B, the hunting knife she purchased at Bucky's. You will hear testimony that she plunged that knife into her daughter's body at least six times, each time painful and brutal, until the life bled out of Hillary into the waters of that bathtub."