Everything She Ever Wanted (75 page)

arguments.

Deborah Taylor Cole was the next witness for the defense.

She was Pat's second daughter, the one who had married at fifteen and

never left Georgia.
 
At twenty-one, she was a slender young woman with

brown hair, pretty-but without a vestige of the regal carriage of her

mother and grandmother.
 
Debbie spoke so softly that it was hard to

hear her beyond the first row of the gallery.
 
She answered with as few

words as possible.
 
In Debbie, Dunham McAllister had yet another

witness who had spent time in Walter and Nona Allanson's home, and who

could verify Pat's statements.

"I worked for them .
 
. . [for] three weeks."
 
Debbie wasn't sure just

when she had worked for Nona and Paw Allanson.
 
"It was summer.
 
It had

to have been June-somewhere around there."
 
She remembered that she had

been there the day before Paw was taken to the hospital.
 
Yes, she had

had several conversations with Nona.

"Did she say anything about Mr.
 
Walter Allanson?"

"About which incident?"
 
Debbie asked.
 
"I mean there is a lot of

things she told me about her husband."

"Did she say anything on that day about anything that he had done to

her?"
 
McAllister encouraged.

"Well, she's-I came in and she was crying .
 
. . and you have to get up

real close to listen to her because she has-she can't talk very well.

So I went real close and asked her what was wrong.

She said, 'Paw tried to smother me."And I said, 'Well, how did he do

that?"
 
She says, 'He just did."

Debbie's recall was remarkably similar to her mother's, her

grandparents', and Fanny Kate Cash's.

When Andy Weathers approached to cross-examine Debbie, she watched him

the way a possum watches a hunting dog.
 
He asked her about Nona's

condition.
 
Was she not very weak, capable of using only one hand?

And wasn't Walter very strong, able to carry his wife from room to

room?

Debbie insisted that the old woman was "very strong as far as her side

that she could move.
 
She was very strong on that side."

"She would be unable-if she was on the bed-to get up?"

"She was also able to answer the phone if it rang," Debbie added,

without answering the question.

"She would be unable to get out of bed?"

"No, she can't get out of bed."

"Don't you really think that if that man wanted to do something to hurt

that woman-a man of his strength, a woman 'd suffered weighing less

than a hundred pounds, a woman who something to harm her, he a massive

stroke-if he wanted to do so could have done it with the greatest of

ease?"
 
an't answer Debbie looked trapped, and she ducked.
 
"I really c

that question Weathers didn't push her.
 
His point was made.
 
In

response to further questions, Debbie Cole described the people present

in the Washington Road home on June 12, the day before Paw was

hospitalized.

"I think I was with my mother .
 
. . Mrs. Al anson and Mr. Allanson

.

. . my little girl."

"Any other people there?"

"No."

"Are you positive?"
 
giving the standard Rad "Not to my knowledge," she

replied cliffe answer.

Amazingly, Debbie had forgotten the bombastic presence of Fanny Kate

Cash, who had sworn right in that courtroom that she had been there

that day to protect Pat and "Grandma."

"No further questions."

There was redirect and recross, but it was apparent that Debbie was not

a very good witness.
 
She often answered, "Huh?"
 
or "I don't

remember."

Debbie Cole was the last witness.
 
The defense rested without calling

Tom Allanson to the stand.
 
Although the gallery had held stubbornly

onto their seats in the expectation of seeing Tom, he had long since

been returned to Jackson Prison.
 
Dunham McAllister wanted nothing or

no one who could tie his client, however tenuously, to the 1974 double

murders on Norman Berry Drive.
 
If Tom had appeared on the stand, Andy

Weathers would have had a field day on cross-examination.

To the defense team's chagrin, Weathers did the next best thing by

calling a former Fulton County assistant district attorney to the stand

on rebuttal.
 
Tom would not be in the courtroom to relive the night of

July 3-but William Weller, the D.A. who had prosecuted Tom, was.

Weller had recently left the D.A."s office for private practice and was

currently the chairman of the criminal law section for the Atlanta Bar

Association.

Although Paw Allanson's confession had already been fairly well

discredited, Weathers wanted the jury to see that he could not possibly

have shot his son and daughter-in-law, and that Pat had tried to

sacrifice the old man to free her husband.
 
Over McAllister's vigorous

objections, Weller sketched a rough depiction of the basement on Norman

Berry Drive, pointing out the kitchen steps and the "hole."
 
He

recalled examining the interior of that aperture and seeing the bullet

marks all over the inside.

Bill Weller said that the "window" into the hole was at least as high

as his own waist.
 
"It wasn't an easy chore for me-as a young man-to

lift myself up and get inside that hole," Weller said.
 
"The basement

was very difficult to walk around in-just so much debris.
 
About the

only area where you could walk, there were rugs and kinds of planks and

things all over the floor."

He had made his point.
 
There was no way that Paw, close to eighty,

could have physically done what the confession saidrun around that

basement jammed with junk and then lift himself on the weight of his

arms and jump nimbly in and out of the hole.
 
As an expert in criminal

law, Weller testified that he "did not buy" the document purported to

be Paw Allanson's confession.

"Could this [confession] possibly be used to get a new trial?"

McAllister asked him on recross.

"Yes, sir."

"Your answer was yes.
 
It's your opinion that this could be used to get

a new trial?"

"Almost anything can be used to get a new trial."

McAllister tried again; he didn't want to leave the jury with the

impression that Paw's confession would really have helped Tom get out

of prison.
 
He needed desperately to remove this motive from Pat's

case."If the person who made this were dead," he asked Weller, "would

this be admissible at that new tried ?

ar it," Weller said implacably, dash"If the judge wants to he ing

McAllister's thrust that a dead Paw Allanson would be usekss to Pat.

"He [the judge] has full discretion to do what he wants to do in a new

trial."
 
her.
 
"If a Weathers stepped forward to box the defense in

furt trial judge wished to accept this document as being true, Mr. not

there to object, 's it Weller, and Mr. Walter Allanson was not a fact

that all charges could have been dismissed that day, and he [Tom] could

walk out of the penitentiary the next day, if the trial court judge saw

fit to do it?"

"If he wanted to do it," Weller agreed.

I not give up.
 
"What you're saying then is McAllister wou that, under

the law in Georgia, a Superior Court judge has infinite power in the

trial of a case?"

"Yes, sir Weller agreed "But such a statement as this is inadmissible,

is it not?"
 
"As a general principle of law," Weller said, "it's

inadmissible.
 
But it depends on what you're using it for.
 
If you are

using it for dmissible.
 
If you are using it as direct impeachment, it

may be a evidence, it would probably be inadmissible, depending on the

circumstances."

Testimony in Pat Allanson's trial ended near 7:00

P.M. on Thursday, Maying with Andy Weathers Final arguments began

Friday morn n who painting a devastating picture of a conscienceless

woma murder deliberately.
 
He offered no eyehad planned a double when

somebody plans a witnesses.

"Ladies and gentlemen .
 
. .

murder and is cold enough to put arsenic in people's food and drink,

the state can never bring in someone who watched them do it.
 
They are

far too careful Weathers listed the outright hest the evasions, the

omissions that permeated Pat Allanson's explanations for everything.
 
A

prosecutor who usually argued only for "about five minuter" he talked

much longer.
 
So many segments of the defense case didn't match up.

Dunham McAllister argued that the state had not proved its case beyond

a reasonable doubt.
 
Why had Nona not testified?
 
Where were the tests

of Paw's gastric juices?
 
Why weren't they saved?

Was Walter Allanson weak or strong?
 
Since Tom's cousins still got

one-sixth of the elderly Allansons, estate, albeit with Pat as the

executor, didn't that prove she wasn't behind changing their wills

three times?

McAllister fought hard, striking at relatively minor points to deflect

attention from the glaring gaps in Pat's testimony.
 
He even went so

far as to suggest that, according to the experts, no one knew if

arsenic was a poison or a drug, and that it was possible that the

poisoning of the Allansons "was just a pure and simple accident."
 
He

enlarged on that bizarre theory: and then he [Paw] takes an overdose of

drugs and does strange things and tries to feed Mrs. Allanson