House of Secrets (41 page)

Terrana objected, telling the judge at a bench conference, “Judge, now begins the trip into the land of collateral matters. This is where I would suggest the inflammatory nature outweighs any probative value it may have.” The jury was removed. Both attorneys argued for 10

minutes, citing case law. Then Mitcham ruled. “It’s the theory of the state that the deceased, Joel Good, was killed by Willie Sexton at the direction of the defendant. If I understand it correctly, the state is going to further try to show this jury that had it not been for the will and the exercise of the defendant’s will over Willie Sexton and the others, that Joel Good would not have been killed. The court, therefore, will overrule your objection.” Judge Mitcham let it all in, not only the physical beatings, but the sexual abuse, the robed rituals, the Jackson Township standoff, the flight from authorities, the military drills, the videotape, the video rehearsals, the order for Pixie to silence her crying baby, the makeshift burial. Then the incest, over Terrana’s objections. Pixie said she told her husband that Dawn and Shasta were her father’s after Skipper Lee’s death.

“Were you present in any conversation between Joel Good and your father where this subject came up?” Pruner asked. “When Joel asked my father about it.”

“What did your father tell Joel?”

“He told Joel he Joel] is still going to raise them even though they’re his.” Pixie talked about the trip to a library. She said she was curious whether her son had really died of crib death, as her father maintained. “At the library did your father lay hands on you in any fashion?”

“He grabbed me by the shoulders.”

“What were you doing at the time?”

“Trying to talk to the lady.” Then Pruner introduced the Clinton-Reno video. The jury watched an edited version, showing only Eddie Lee Sexton’s opening soliloquy and his closing remarks. Rick Terrana questioned Pixie relentlessly, not only pointing out her plea deal, but covering inconsistencies in her depositions. He introduced her threatening letter to Joel before Christmas of 1992. In her deposition she’d claimed it was written before they were married. Now she was saying it was after they were married. “That’s because I didn’t read the letter fin the deposition] to see what was said,” she explained.

The PA was turned up so loud to catch her voice, the system squealed after some answers. Judge Mitcham likened the feedback to a temperamental, screaming child. He ordered the bailiff to turn it down. Terrana set Pixie up for later testimony about the torture of her husband. “You’ve never physically abused Joel, have you?” he asked. “No.”

“Never even raised a hand to him?”

“No.”

“Didn’t accuse Joel of sexually molesting your daughter Shasta?”

“No.”

And later, “You ever beat Joel with a vacuum cleaner cord?”

“No.”

“..

. ever burn Joel with cigarettes?”

“No.”

“Did you ever direct Willie and Skipper to hold Joel down on the ground while you inserted a funnel into his rectum and poured hot sauces and salt into his anus?”

“No.”

“Isn’t it a fact that while that was going on you were laughing?”

“No.

“You loved Joel, didn’t you?” Terrana said sarcastically. “Yes, I did.” She seemed incapable of taking the bait, showing no emotion, save her brooding racoon eyes. She denied her father ever tried to mitigate marital problems. She denied she gave her baby the Nyquil. She denied she ever slapped little Skipper Lee. She denied she smothered it.

“When you found out the baby had stopped breathing, isn’t it true that your dad tried to administer CPR to the baby?”

“No, my brother Skipper did.” She denied the insurance plots and arguments and offering Skipper a million dollars to kill Joel. She denied her own testimony, saying there were no physical altercations in the Sarasota library. She denied ever talking to the librarian about the death of the baby. She denied ever having sex with Willie. Her only admission, Yes, she carried her husband’s ID. Terrana moved to the murder. “Isn’t it a fact … that you coaxed your husband into the woods?”

“No.”

“And when you went into the woods you got his attention while your brother Willie strangled him?”

“No. That’s not true.”

“Well, let me ask you when you were watching your husband strangled …

the husband that you loved so much, that you cared for, that you never had problems with, while he was being strangled by your brother with a rope around his neck, did you ever help?”

“No.” She said she ran back to the camper to get help.

Terrana demanded, from who? The little kids? The attorney wanted to know who she heard Joel yell for when he was being attacked. “Ed,” she said. Closing, Terrana asked, “Pixie, you hate your father, don’t you?”

“For what he did to me, yeah.”

“And that is abusing you way back, right?”

“For abusing me and taking my family away,” she said. After he’d interviewed her in a deposition, Jay Pruner described librarian Gail Novak as a “quivering bowl of jelly.” She looked as if she were about to pass out from fear at times. Rick Terrana tried to get her to admit in her deposition that she was under psychiatric care, but she said she’d only had some counseling for everyday problems. More dangerously for the state, elements of her story about the Sextons in the University of South Florida library simply did not add up. What were they doing with a baby at the library? It was nearly six weeks after Skipper Lee’s death. There was no evidence Joel had money to fly back to Ohio. Eddie Lee Sexton burying something in the vacant field-on campus didn’t match the facts. Skipper Lee was unearthe in Hillsborough State Park, on the other end of the county, not nearby Manatee. The librarian sometimes sounded outright paranoid in the dep.

She claimed strangers visited her at work after the Sextons arrest, including Sherri Sexton, who said, “What have you got on Pixie?” The flip side was that the family’s behavior in the library matched, particularly Eddie Lee Sexton’s control. Gail Novak was his only independent witness, with no apparent stake in the trial’s outcome. He scheduled her near the end of the trial, but before a couple more witnesses. Pruner hoped that if she did fall apart, the jury would diminish her testimony as the trial went on. Gail Novak took the stand in a beige suit, her glasses secured high on her nose. Pruner introduced photographs of the library. He kept her story simple, the visit, the Sexton’s appearance, their names, the apparently drugged Joel Good, their requests for information on crib death, Sexton’s subtle hand grips on Willie and Joel. “At any point in time in the library did you observe … Pixie or Willie tell Mr. Sexton that Joel wanted to go back to Ohio?”

“Yes.”

“And who was that?”

“Willie. “

“And what did the defendant say?” Terrana objected. He knew what was coming. The jury was taken out while the attorneys argued the objection before the judge. He was overruled. When the jury came back, Pruner resumed. “Could you tell us, please … what Willie told the defendant.”

“That Joel wanted to go back to Ohio.”

“And what was the defendant’s response?”

“There’s no way that boy is going back to Ohio. The only way I that boy’s going back to Ohio is in a body locker.” I Through much of her testimony, the librarian appeared terrified. She was out of breath.

Her eyes darted to Sexton. She needed water.

Pruner took her through the library photographs, showing her proximity to the family’s actions and statements. Pruner wondered about Sexton’s behavior with Pixie. She told the jury how he’d pushed her into the computer table. Gail Novak began to break down. She was blurting out the story now, getting ahead of the questions as she’d done frequently in the deposition. “You better get your story straight,” she sobbed.

“That’s what he was saying to her.”

“Okay,” Pruner said, trying to regain control. “I’m sorry,” she whimpered. Judge Mitcham stepped in, saying, “That’s all right, ma’am.

You just relax. All right?” The judge decided she needed a rest. He broke early for lunch. When they returned, Mitcham said, “Now, I want you just to relax. All right?”

“Yes,” Novak said timidly. “And if you need a break, you let me know and we’ll give you whatever time you need to compose yourself.” As Terrana began to cross-examine, he was in somewhat of a nowin situation. If he went after the librarian too hard and she cracked up, the jury might hold it against his client. Terrana solicited material Pruner had avoided. The migrant clinic. The search for a funeral home.

The pleas to see the dead baby in the car. He wondered why if this family was so bad, she hadn’t gotten campus police involved. She tried to explain that her emergency calls weren’t being taken seriously. He got her to describe the digging in the vacant lot. The Indian ritual.

She gave the date of the visit, November 30. But Terrana failed to point out the time span between then and the baby’s death. Still, the testimony sounded disjointed, almost fantastic. What was Eddie Lee Sexton doing revealing so many secrets in the presence of a stranger?

Terrana tried to suggest she’d pulled her story from newspaper clippings. She admitted she’d saved three stories on the murder after seeing Sexton on TV, which prompted her to contact police. Terrana walked back to the defense table. He whispered to his co-counsel Robert Fraser that he had a few more points he could cover. What did he think? “God, no,” Fraser said. “You’ve destroyed her already. Quit while you’re ahead.” Later he said, “If I had to pick the most non-credible witness of all, it would have been the librarian.” Later, Terrana didn’t even bother to address her testimony in his closing argument. Neither did Jay Pruner in his. Gail Novak, they both thought, was a wash. Over five days of testimony, they came to court in clean dresses, sport shirts, and slacks. They looked like all-American kids, until they took the stand. Flatliners in hardly audible voices. Christopher, Matt, Shelly, and Sherri. None of them looking at their dad. The testimony was hit-and-miss. Christopher told how his father called Joel a”snitch” the night of his death. Matt put Pixie right in the middle of the gasoline parties and the abuse of Joel. Then Pruner culled some important testimony from the boy who’d shared little during the investigation. Matthe said his father didn’t want Joel beaten because it would draw attention to the family, he said. “Whose physical well-being was your father looking out for when he told you not to beat Joel, Joel’s or his?” Pruner asked.

“Himself,” Matt said. An objection was sustained, but the point was already made. Shelly, the daughter who began it all, locked her eyes on Ohio DHS social worker Joanne Shankel in the audience. She fought terror through her entire testimony. Shelly detailed the horrors in the house on Caroline. “I thought maybe my father would be in chains,”

she later recalled. “But he wasn’t. I thought, he has nothing to lose. I thought he was going to jump from that table and kill me right there.” Local news organizations couldn’t report some of Shelly’s disclosures simply because there was no way to address them in a family format. When she revealed that her father had measured her brother’s penises with a ruler, Terrana’s co-counsel Robert Fraser moved for a mistrial. “All this stuff about measuring penises and all the rest of this evidence, all it’s doing is throwing mud on our client,” he boomed. Pruner responded, “Judge, it’s part of the pattern of this defendant to use every means possible, social, sexual, emotional, and physical to exercise dominion and control. And one way to do that was to keep the kids under his feet by belittling them to keep him elevated.” The trial went on. Skipper Sexton was not the same reliable witness of the conspiracy trial. He tried to invoke the fifth. Mitcham appointed him an attorney who tried to explain to Skipper that because the state had granted him immunity, the right not to incriminate himself didn’t apply. When he took the stand the next day, he was little help to Pixie’s credibility. “Mr. Sexton, whose idea was it to kill Joel Good?” Pruner asked. “Estella and my dad’s.”

Later, “Have you ever told anybody that your dad was involved in the plan?”

“Yeah, a couple of times.”

“Was that the truth?”

“It wasn’t.” He was a package of contradictions. Sometimes he implicated Pixie, exonerating his father. Then he’d turn around, say the opposite. He distanced himself, and sometimes Pixie, from the abuse of Joel. Terrana had a field day, wondering about all the stories in his depositions.

“Well, are you telling me today everything you told in the deposition is not true?” Terrana asked. “I told you some of the truth.” He went to the August deposition, where Skipper had also changed his story.

“And I said you’ve told me so many stories, what makes this the true story and you said because now this is for me.”

“. “Yeah.”

“And I asked you what do you mean, this is for me … And you said, well, the other stories weren’t for me and this one I’m telling you today is for me. This is the truth. Do you remember that?”

“Yeah.” And later, “So your deposition was another half-and-half, is that right?”

“Yeah.”

“Well, today are you testifying for you, Mr. Sexton?”

“I’m testifying for the family.”

“So today is the truth?”

“Yeah.”

“Nothing else you said before is the truth?”

“You know, just whatever,” Skipper Sexton said. Pruner tried to put his vacillations in context, getting Skipper to admit his father had offered him money from talk shows, offers that never would materialize.