Everything She Ever Wanted (27 page)

shotgun in the Allanson basement, one hitting Carolyn and one striking

Walter.
 
He had test-fired the gun and found that a cartridge would

eject directly back about six to eight inches and fall at the feet of

the shooter.
 
Reconstructing from the physical evidence, he could

speculate with accuracy what had happened.
 
Someone had fired the

shotgun from the hole or just in front of the hole.
 
Someone had fired

a pistol into the hole, not once but six or seven times.
 
Someone had

fired the Marlin oncefrom an area near the stairs.
 
Rite had determined

that the empty casing found near Walter and Carolyn was from the Marlin

.45/70the "elephant gun"-but the slug itself had never been found.

It appeared that there had been at least two shooters in the basement

that night.
 
There could have been three.
 
But if Tom was that third

shooter, would he be capable of murdering his own parents?

To establish a pattern of vindictive behavior, Prosecutor Weller

continued to focus on the harassment of Walter Allanson principally the

Lake Lanier ambush-before the fatal night, and Ed Garland fought like a

tiger to keep it out.
 
Connecting Tom to all those bullet holes in his

parents'station wagon would only bury him deeper.
 
Weller, of course,

insisted that the ambush shooting was only part of a "total continuous

transaction" from June 29 to July 3. And countless hours would be spent

arguing over when the Morgan Kentwood seal had been removed from Tom

Allanson's pickup truck.
 
In fact, it had not been there since May, but

witnesses from Jones's store still claimed to have seen Tom driving a

truck with that seal on the morning of the ambush.
 
Garland wanted that

false identification excluded from the jury's consideration, but Judge

Wofford ruled against him.

And he lost again when he attempted to keep word of Walter and

Carolyn's rancorous wills from the ury's ears.
 
The jury heard of them

in Mary McBride's testimony as Walter Allanson's secretary.

"They have accomplished their motive," Garland complained to Judge

Wofford.
 
"They wanted to hit the jury over the head with a

sledgehammer and then tell them, 'Now you ignore the headache."

That's what we have here.
 
We have thrown horse manure in the jury box

and want to ask them not to smell it.

We have flashed wills here and said, 'Oh, there were wills.

There must be motive.
 
He must have killed for financial gain."

Perhaps the biggest defense loss of all was Ed Garland's attempt to

have a mistrial declared over Carolyn Allanson's altered recollections

of what she had heard the night of the murders.
 
Her firm voice

testifying that she remembered hearing screams of "Tommy!
 
Tommy!

Tommy!"
 
before the fatal shots might well be a death knell for his

client.

The state rested, and Ed Garland rose to present the case for the

defense.
 
It would be an arduous uphill climb and he knew it, but he

gave no sign of that as he questioned his first witness.

Garland and his investigators had located a number of people who knew

Tom Allanson well, and who had seen him on Saturday, June 29.
 
The

shots had hit his parents' car a little after I 1:00 A.m. as it headed

up Truman Mountain Road.
 
If Garland could show that Tom was someplace

else at that time, it would neutralize the continual testimony about

the man in the blue pickup with a canopy attached and with the Kentwood

seal on the door.
 
In the best of all possible worlds, he might even

produce someone who had seen Tom on the night of July 3, far, far away

from his parents'home.

Garland began with the Saturday before.

James Strickland, a Kayo Oil gas station attendant, saw Tom and Pat

Allanson in his station in Barnesville-some ninety miles south of Lake

Lanier-on the twenty-ninth between 10: 15 and 10:30

A.m. They were driving a blue truck with a green horseshoeing trailer

on the back.
 
Strickland remembered no emblem on the truck's door.

Bobby Jackson, a man who had been "rodeoing" with Tom for a dozen

years, saw him on June 29.
 
Jackson was on his way to a "jackpot steer

roping" in Madison, and heading east on 1-20, just east of Atlanta,

when he recognized Tom's shoeing rig pass him.

He testified it was between noon and 12:30, and Tom had exited at the

Lithonia off ramp.

Edgar Milton Smith, president of Voice Communications, Inc of Atlanta,

had horses pastured in Lithonia, and Tom had arrived shortly after

12:30 the afternoon of June 29 to shoe them.
 
He had stayed until

approximately 6:00 that evening.

Robert Wait, Tom and Pat's next-door neighbor in Zebulon, had seen them

come home at eleven o'clock on the night of June 29, driving the blue

pickup with the green horseshoeing rig on the back.

Donald Cooper, a potential horse buyer, had been to Kentwood on June 29

and found Tom and Pat gone.
 
He had seen the canopy of the blue truck

on blocks in the yard.

Liz Price, Pat and Tom's neighbor and friend, verified that the

Kentwood Morgan emblem had not been on their blue pickup since Pat's

accident just after their wedding.

Garland was doing the best he could with what he had, and yet he hadn't

even touched on Tom's whereabouts on the murder night.

Pat had brought Garland the next witness, and the defense attorney

approached him warily.

The witness's name was Bill Jones, and he was employed at a liquor

store located on Cleveland Avenue at the 1-75 freeway.
 
He recalled

that, yes indeed, he had met up with Tom Allanson at twelve minutes to

eight on the evening of July 3 when Tom came in to ask for change to

make a phone call.

"Some people want change for the telephone-which is outside on the

parking lot against the post," Jones testified, "but ever since I have

been there, no one has asked me for change to make a long-distance

call.
 
. . . He even added Zebulon, Georgia.
 
. . .

The only reason why I would have remembered thathis wife came in the

next night after and asked me was there a man in there that evening,

and I told her what had happened.
 
. . . See, when he said 'telephone,'

the light bulb went on in my mind because my wife goes to sleep on the

sofa at night roughly at eight o'clock.
 
I have to call her by eight.

. . .

When he said 'telephone,' I looked at my watch."

The voluble Mr. Jones estimated that his store was located about two

miles from Norman Berry Drive in East Point.

The state demolished Mr.
 
Jones as Weller took'over crossexamination.

Jones admitted that, while he had told Sergeant Callahan that Tom had

been in the store at 4:30

P.m he had later told a private investigator that he didn't know if Tom

had been in at seven or eight-or nine, for that matter.
 
Jones

recalled, after being prodded, that Pat Allanson had been in the liquor

store to see him at least three times, and after that he had been

visited by defense investigators on several occasions.
 
He denied

vigorously that he had seen a reward for information posted in the

Atlanta Yournal.

He was not a credible witness-undoubtedly one of "Pat's witnesses" that

Ed Garland had told Judge Wofford he did not want to put on the

stand.

But he was the only witness who placed Tom away from the slaying

scene.

And he was far from impressive.

Mrs. Clifford B. Radcliffe was.
 
Dressed impeccably, her beautiful

gray hair perfectly coiffed, she made her way gracefully to the

stand.

Ed Garland approached her, smiling.
 
"And what is your husband's

occupation?"

"My husband is with the federal government with-in a security support

branch.
 
He's a retired lieutenant colonel."

"He's here today, is he not?"

"Yes, he is."
 
She smiled serenely.

'Right there?"

"Yes."

"The man who just took his glasses off?"

"The most distinguished man in the courtroom," Margureitte replied

proudly.

Garland had let her go a bit too far.
 
He wanted the jury to see what

fine people the Radcliffes were, but he didn't want to leave them with

the impression that they were holier-than-thou.
 
He quickly changed the

subject.
 
"Now, Mrs. Radcliffe, is your daughter present in the

courtroom?"

"Yes, she is."

"She's the defendant's wife?"

"That is correct.
 
That is our daughter."

Garland hurried on before the witness could point out that Pat was the

"most beautiful woman in the courtroom."

Margureitte disputed the ridiculous idea that the Allansons' truck had

ever had an emblem like the one the Lake Lanier witnesses described.

Next, she verified that Pat and Tom had come for dinner on June 29, and

had been summoned from there to Nona and Paw's.

Garland leapt ahead to the evening of July 3. Margureitte testified

that Pat had called them, worried sick, around 7:30.
 
"I told her that

me and her father would meet her, to stay exactly where she was.
 
. .

.

I told her to stay at the King Professional Building at the parking

lot, to park away from the building.
 
. . .

We'd be there and we were there."

Garland moved into Margureitte's two strange and frighteninly

encounters with the late Walter Allanson.
 
Bill Weller objected.