Freezing People is (Not) Easy (24 page)

That seemed to work. Winterbotham switched back to normal and spoke calmly to Frank. “So you've actually seen these frozen human beings?”

“I sure have, and Mr. Nelson took care of them as if they were his own family.”

“May I ask you, Mr. Farrell, what does a frozen person look like after years of being frozen?”

“Compared to what? I mean, they certainly don't look alive, but they look like they could be revived if we only knew how to revive them. I guess that's what the CSC is all about. I don't know anyone else in the world who could've done the job that Mr. Nelson has done, and done it with hardly any money. I have a great respect for him and his effort. That's why I have always been there for him, and that's why I'm here for him today.”

“Is there anything you can think of that Mr. Nelson could have done to prevent this tragedy at the cemetery?”

Frank fidgeted and tugged at his tie, uncomfortable in his court duds. “Sure, in hindsight I could think of a lot of things; you could do that about almost anything. Bob was running this operation by the seat of his pants. Always hoping someone would come along and provide some help in the form of money. Hell, he had a beautiful thirty-man capsule sitting up on that hill in Chatsworth manufactured by real cryogenic fabricators. That unit cost one hundred thousand dollars retail and sat on those grounds for three years. All he needed was the money to purchase a bigger vault and then get that capsule up and running. CSC would have been solvent for many years if they had not frozen a dozen people for free. We worked our butts off and gave it everything we had. We did a job we can be proud of.”

“I thank you, Mr. Farrell. I have no more questions.”

As Nothern made his way to the witness box on his crutches, he asked, “While Mr. Nelson was back East for two weeks, why did he not leave you in charge of checking those capsules every day, as he had typically done?”

“I guess you'd have to ask him that, but I venture to guess that since I live in Santa Monica and have no automobile, it would be a real chore and expense for me to go back and forth to the cemetery every day. It was about fifty miles and a drive through Topanga Canyon. Mr. Nelson always picked me up, and that was one hell of a trek. I wouldn't want to do it solo.”

“Were you, Mr. Farrell, aware that the first capsule placed in the vault had failed and was no longer being filled with liquid nitrogen?”

“I was.”

“What did Mr. Nelson say about that?”

“As I understood it, Mr. Nelson had been filling that capsule for a year or two. The capsule became less and less efficient, until it was just impossible to find the money to continue filling it. These Cryo-Care units were just not holding up like they needed to. It was a learning curve. We were just hanging in there until we could get that big beauty of a capsule up and running. Had that happened, none of us would be here today.”

“Did you know when the second capsule containing the seven-year-old child and my clients' mother failed?”

“Yep, but I never heard from Bob after that loss. I think he just reached his breaking point and gave up. Then you guys came running after him for money. I guess that was the last straw.”

“Thank you, Mr. Farrell.”

That was the end of testimony.

In Summation

Nothern gave his closing argument first. He made even more of a performance than usual of getting himself up on his crutches and moving over to the front of the jury box.

Before he began, he first made eye contact with each jury member. “Good morning, ladies and gentlemen; it's a pleasure to see your bright and smiling faces this morning. I'm sure each of you is pleased to see the end of this case so that you can return to your family and your regular daily activities. I promise I will not keep you very long, and I sincerely thank you for being such an attentive group. Well, my friends, what we have here is a TV repairman posing as a great scientist. He was able to scam Terry and Dennis Harrington out of their entire inheritance left to them by their beloved mother.

“There is nothing else you can call what Mr. Nelson did to these two brothers that had just lost their mother, their most precious treasure, to cancer. Mr. Nelson descends on bereft, grief-stricken families and promises to take away their pain and loss.”

He paused—wanting that little tidbit to sink in. I saw a few jurors exchange glances and raise their eyebrows. “This miracle group's leader set himself up as the General and claimed he could save the Harrington brothers' mother from death. Yes, the General had the power to bring back the dead! Now the only other person I know who could bring people back from the dead was Jesus Christ, and he doesn't look anything like Jesus Christ to me. Does he to you?”

Nothern raised his voice, and from his tone, he reminded me of one of those TV preachers. He pointed his forefinger at me, accusing me, smiting me. I could feel the stares from the jury. “As a matter of fact, he was better than Jesus Christ. He could bring everyone back from the dead—all he needed was your money.”

Nothern stopped to let that little gem, the cornerstone statement of his entire case, sink into the jury's psyches. My blood went cold. I finally glimpsed their strategy—how every question, every fabrication, had built up to this deduction.

“Mr. Nelson not only promised he could bring Mrs. Harrington back from death, he said he could make her young again. Yes, can you imagine that he was going to make Mrs. Harrington twenty-one again?

“So they gave the General their last penny, all their trust, and their precious mother to care for until, the General promised, he would bring her back alive as a twenty-one-year-old beauty. He promised he could do all that for ten thousand dollars. The problem is, my friends, this is the biggest bunch of nonsense I ever heard in my life.”

No,
I thought, this
is the biggest bunch of nonsense ever.

“I mean it. I could never even imagine that anyone would stoop so low as to fabricate such a preposterous pile of crap and then dupe grief-stricken survivors into buying it. The General was starting a new kind of religion, with himself as the leader and with the power to decree who shall live and who shall die. Just let your money do the talking. What do you think, ladies and gentlemen, do you think the General was, as Sandra Stanley put it, sincere?” Nothern slowly shook his head, answering his own question.

“So, my friends, what do we do here today? Do we give the General a pat on the back and say, ‘Good job, General; go get some more poor fools' money'? Do we encourage this kind of treatment of our fellow Americans across the country? Because that's where these folks will take this insanity; they have even started cryonics societies in England, France, and several Latin American countries.”

I heard a clatter of whispering behind me, but Judge Shelby didn't raise his gavel.

“This is your opportunity to send a message to these swindlers, these cold-blooded liars. I beg you, my friends. Don't send them back into the world with your blessing, but rather send them back into the streets with a sound thrashing they will never forget.” He paused and flashed a smile. “I thank you for your kind consideration.”

What an incredible crock of deceptive garbage.
I felt nauseated. Nothern had given a brilliant summation—a stunning delivery by a man possessing an uncanny ability to almost caress the jury in his arms. This was a master attorney, and I knew I had just had my ass kicked.

What he said was nowhere close to the truth, but I conceded that he won the battle. I remembered the women's conversation I had overheard in the hallway and knew we were going to lose—and were going to lose big. I looked at Joseph Klockgether to check his reaction, which was pretty much the same as it had been through the trial. He looked at me with a slight smile on his face and shrugged.

It was now Winterbotham's turn to address the jury. I gave him a sideways glance, checking his mood and hoping his lithium was working.

He also warmly greeted the jury, thanking them for their kind attention. He said he hoped they would look at more than the excellent lawyering of Mr. Nothern's presentation, because this was not about calling me “the General,” it was about facts.

“And the facts stack up fully on my client's side,” he said. “The first point is that Mr. Harrington called Mr. Nelson. The most important issue of this entire case is whether this was a donation of the body and money to the CSC or a cloak-and-dagger clandestine business deal between Mr. Nelson and the Harrington brothers. If you find it was a donation, then of course you must find for the defendants, and that's why the plaintiffs have worked so hard to obscure that legal foundation by calling it a business deal. You swore an oath, and your responsibility requires that you confirm a legal judgment, not pass judgment on Mr. Nelson's beliefs.

“On the Harrington side we have their word, no evidence. On Mr. Nelson's side we have his word and documents signed by both the Harrington brothers. We also have the history of the CSC and CSNY, as well as CS Michigan's policy of refusing to accept a cryonic suspension without the body being donated to the society research program. With every freezing performed in the United States, there has never been a cryonic suspension without a donation of the body—including, I might add, this one.”

I looked at the jury, hoping that Winterbotham was undoing some of Nothern's damage, but their faces were inscrutable. “It would be insane to do otherwise—you could be sued for it. We then examine the years of service donated by Mr. Nelson without salary or payment of any sort. He is a true believer, and it is not unusual to find true believers who spend their entire life fighting for their cause.

“You have seen where Mr. Nelson froze a number of friends and strangers at his own expense and took personal responsibility for their freezing for as long as he possibly could. We have seen where Mr. Nelson has given countless radio and television interviews, as well as lectures at colleges, hospitals, and national conferences.

“Mr. Nelson, along with the scientists and doctors he assembled, froze the world's first human being, Dr. James Bedford, on January 12, 1967. He wrote a book about cryonics and the freezing of Dr. Bedford. He built the world's first long-term storage vault on cemetery grounds, and he maintained several suspended cryonics patients by himself for years.

“What more can you ask of him? Was he sincere? You're damn right he was sincere. He gave this work his entire life and lost his wife and family because of his devout faith in cryonics.”

Winterbotham paused and leaned against the jury box. He stopped for so long, I worried he had fallen asleep again. “He accepts the responsibility for the accidental failure and the loss of Mrs. Harrington, Genevieve de la Poterie, and Steven Mandell. Have you noticed that no one else is suing over the other patients lost in that same capsule, not Pauline Mandell or the de la Poterie family? They know Mr. Nelson gave it a 100 percent effort. And the biggest evidence of Mr. Nelson's character is his response to the capsule failure. He could have just hid it and not told anyone. Who would have known? He could have filled the capsule up with liquid nitrogen and pretended as if nothing had happened.

“That's what Mr. de la Poterie and Terry Harrington suggested. Just fill it up again and carry on as though it never happened. Mr. Nelson flew, at his own expense, to look Mr. de la Poterie and Mr. Harrington in the eye and explain the loss of the capsule. He then flew to Michigan and told the father of the cryonics movement, Professor Robert Ettinger, that there had been a failure at the cryonics facility.

“Without a doubt some mistakes were made, but, ladies and gentlemen, when you look at the enormity of Mr. Nelson's challenge, how could there not be setbacks? Mr. Nelson went to Iowa at Mr. Harrington's request and made the arrangements for placing Mrs. Harrington in suspension. He had the brothers sign all the proper legal forms for a donation, and here they are.”

Winterbotham pointed at Terry Harrington, who immediately looked wide-eyed and innocent. “They claim they don't remember what they signed. It was enormously difficult to complete a suspension in Iowa; Mr. Nelson made that happen. And Mr. Nelson did not get the ten thousand dollars personally. That money was a donation to the CSC. Just look at the Harringtons' tax returns and I guarantee they show that both brothers took that ten thousand dollars as a tax deduction.

“The CSC kept Mrs. Harrington in temporary storage for two and a half years and then made it possible for the Harrington brothers to conduct a service and a two-hour viewing. This is no General, my friends; this is no man masquerading as Jesus Christ. This is a man who became caught up in something so big, it was like a tornado, and it threw him and his frozen friends through a storm.

“I think we must recognize that Bob Nelson picked up the cryo-ball and ran a long way with it. In some ways he made a touchdown, and in other ways he didn't. But one thing he never did was to make a secret deal outside of the cryonics circle with Terry and Dennis Harrington. That is why the ten-thousand-dollar check was sent to CSC offices and deposited into the CSC bank account. That money was used for dry ice replacement over the next thirty months.