If You Only Knew (33 page)

CHAPTER 81

VONLEE WAS GROWING IMPATIENT
while waiting to hear her fate. On second thought, maybe “scared” was more accurate. She sat in court, watching, listening, wondering, unable to stop herself from holding on to a slight glimmer of hope that one juror would see she had made a terrible mistake in not stopping her aunt from hurting her uncle, which was her fear at the time, and also not turning Billie Jean in when she had the chance. Vonlee was willing to pay for her mistakes with years behind bars. She had no trouble taking responsibility. She wanted to stand up and shout this to the jury.

But decades in a male prison? No. That wouldn't be fair.

Vonlee could not fathom the possibility of twenty years or more in state prison, especially considering her transgender situation.

“What I had learned by then,” Vonlee said later, “was that the abuse from guards was going to be far worse than what I feared by my fellow inmates. And I had seen some of that abuse firsthand by then already.”

There can be nothing worse—except death, perhaps— than living in fear, especially when your oppressor is your keeper.

Don Tullock, Dr. Dragovic and two more witnesses sat in the witness chair next for the state and went over the same testimony they had during Billie Jean's trial. Only, here it meant a hell of a lot more because of the tape recording and transcript from that conversation Vonlee had with Danny, which seemed to back up what these witnesses were saying.

Friday, March 15, 2002, consisted of much the same, with Don Zimmerman and other familiar players casting a wider guilty net upon Vonlee, who began to believe that her only chance at this stage was to get up there and tell her own story.

“What do you think?” Cataldo asked Vonlee during a break that afternoon. For the attorney, there was no hesitation, no question, no doubt, what his client needed to do.

“Looks like I might have to,” Vonlee said.

“I think so.”

* * *

By the end of that day, the state had rested its case and Bill Cataldo called his first witness, the ME office's investigator. Cataldo wanted to point out through the investigator that this professional really did not see much out of the norm. The Rogers house was not even determined to be a crime scene until much later, when the investigator was asked about his Polaroid photographs by the TPD and the medical examiner. Cataldo was trying to make it clear that the ME office's investigation, as well as the TPD's, was flawed from the get-go. There was nothing here that indicated a homicide until sometime later, when Danny came forward and the TPD decided it was going to dig into Billie Jean's life and look at it all differently.

The midmorning session proved to be interesting when Cataldo brought in his own medical examiner to claim, for the most part, exactly what Dr. Baden had testified to during Billie Jean Rogers's trial. There was no murder, so how could there be murder charges?

And then, at 11:49
A.M.
, Bill Cataldo looked at his client. “You ready?”

Vonlee nodded.

* * *

Settled into the witness chair after taking the oath, Vonlee looked nervous and on edge. Cataldo told his client to “take a deep breath.”

In and out.

Breathe.

Vonlee explained that she was eighteen when she changed her name to Vonlee Nicole Titlow from Harry Vonlee Titlow.

“Are you a female?” Cataldo asked.

“No.”

“You are a . . . ?”

“I'm a transsexual.”

Vonlee was having trouble breathing. A panic attack was slowly creeping up on her, because Cataldo repeatedly told her to “breathe deeply . . . relax a little bit.”

After Vonlee took a sip of water, a few deep breaths and found her bearings, she and Cataldo talked about where she was born, when she realized she was a “female,” school, her time in Nashville, Denver, Chicago, her employment, the escort business, exotic dancing, meeting Danny at the casino, gambling, drinking, as well as her days leading up to living with Billie Jean and Don. They stayed on the topic of Vonlee's escort service for quite some time. Vonlee was unafraid to be open and honest about how much money she made and how long she had been in business. She testified that moving to the Troy/Detroit area put a welcomed damper on it all.

When they arrived at the topic of Billie Jean, Vonlee had a look of melancholy about her that she had not shown throughout the trial thus far. She cared for her aunt; there could be no argument there. It was clear to those who knew Billie Jean was in the throes of cancer and was facing her last days. Vonlee felt this. While growing up in Tennessee, and even after she moved to Nashville and Denver, Vonlee had not heard much from her aunt. It wasn't until they connected at the Waffle House, and Billie Jean convinced Vonlee to follow her to North Carolina and then to Michigan, that their relationship began in earnest. From there, they were inseparable. Aunt Billie Jean needed a friend, Vonlee said, and she provided that companionship.

Vonlee talked about how her aunt would “give” her money to gamble. Vonlee didn't have much. Her aunt wanted Vonlee by her side at the casino, so she'd provide Vonlee with funds to have a good time.

“I would have to beg her to leave the casino,” Vonlee said.

Cataldo asked Vonlee about something she said on the recording to Danny regarding Billie Jean being sick. He wanted to know how sick her aunt actually was.

“She had a liver problem from years of drinking,” Vonlee testified.

Cataldo asked Vonlee about how “sexually aggressive” Don was toward her when Billie Jean wasn't around. Through this line of questioning, Vonlee talked about how much Don drank on a regular basis, claiming that he was wasted all the time and passed out often, and kept his vodka in the freezer—a place where cops and the ME's investigator never checked, Cataldo had gotten this on the record.

Vonlee next spoke of how Billie Jean witnessed Don grabbing her breasts one night and her aunt snapped, screaming at him that she now “had something on him” if he ever tried to divorce her.

According to Billie Jean, Vonlee explained, “she had the perfect marriage—that he didn't mind how much money she spent or how much time she spent away from home” at the casino.

Vonlee said Don drank about “half a gallon” of vodka every day.

Cataldo then got into some of what Danny had testified to and asked Vonlee to explain, beginning with, “So they did fight over her gambling?”

“Yes, they did.”

“Were you involved in the argument?”

“No. I called Danny to come and get me.”

“Why did you do that?”

“Because I . . . just didn't want to be around it.”

“Danny testified that you told him that during the time [Don] was allegedly being smothered, that he was playing with your breasts?”

“That is not—” Vonlee started to say.

“Did Don touch your breasts that evening?”

Finishing, Vonlee added, “. . . That is not true. No, he did not.”

“Did you say to Danny Chahine . . . ‘At least [Don] died happy'?”

“No, I did not.”

“Did you tell Danny Chahine that [Don] had touched your breasts?”

“I told him . . . about the incident [of Don] getting in bed with me. . . .” Vonlee later explained that Danny must have mixed up the two occasions: when Billie Jean and Vonlee were with Don in the kitchen, and that night when Billie Jean was away and Don came on to her. Danny had taken one story and merged with the other and told the cops that Don was trying to touch her breasts while they were trying to pour vodka down his throat. This seemed to be backed up by the simple fact that both Billie Jean and Vonlee, separately, had said Don was completely passed out during that time in the kitchen, and the toxicology results would indicate as much.

There was another discrepancy in Danny's testimony.

“Did you ever tell Danny Chahine that you were a transsexual?”

“Yes, I did.”

“When did you tell him that?”

“I told him the first week I met him.”

Danny would sometimes pay for Vonlee's gambling, she said. He was very aggressive when they first met, she told jurors. Within a week of knowing him, he had taken her back to his home, broke out a bottle of expensive wine, and then put his hand on her knee while they sat on the couch. He began massaging her thigh, indicating he wanted to do something. Vonlee said she told him no and he brought her home on that night.

Cataldo asked Vonlee to talk about the sex. He knew this was vitally important to bring up again, based entirely on what he knew Vonlee was about to say.

CHAPTER 82

BILL CATALDO UNDERSTOOD HE
could take the scandalous tale of a straight man supposedly
unknowingly
having sex with a transsexual only so far without coming across as a defense attorney simply looking to embarrass a witness even further than he had been already. There was a fine line in there somewhere and the attorney had teetered on walking over it when he had cross-examined Danny Chahine. What would probing deeper into that same salacious content do for Vonlee's defense?

Vonlee deserved the opportunity to tell her side of the sexual story, Cataldo believed. Regardless of what anyone else thought, providing an opportunity for his client to do just that was the job he had signed up for.

“When you were having sex, were the lights on?” he asked.

“Yes,” Vonlee answered.

“[Danny] said he didn't
see
that you were a male. He didn't
see
an erection. Were you hiding it from him?”

“No.”

Cataldo mentioned how the APA had shown some rather racy photographs of Vonlee wearing skimpy lingerie. He wanted to know if she had ever dressed “that way” for Danny.

“I would wear lingerie underneath my clothing,” she said.

“Lingerie that hid a penis?” the attorney queried.

“I was . . .” Vonlee started to say, but then stopped herself. Rethinking, she continued, “When we had sex, I was
completely
nude.”

“Were you erect?”

“I would say semi.”

“Was it obvious that you had male equipment?”

“Yeah.”

A few questions later: “Did you place your penis between your legs and walk around like that so, like, he wouldn't see it?”

“No. But I just didn't . . . flaunt it, either. I mean . . . I don't hide it. I don't use it, I guess [you] could say.”

“Were you
ever
drunk in front of Danny?”

“Yes.”

“How often?”

“Every time I would go to the casino.”

It was apparent from Vonlee's testimony that she and Danny disagreed on several different levels. Their stories were polar opposites in some places. Cataldo thought this was significant because it explained the possibility that Danny Chahine had an ax to grind and was sharpening it every time he said something about the relationship. It was plausible that he was taking various parts of a narrative Vonlee had given him and was twisting and turning each component to fit a story that painted Vonlee in a guilty light. This way, he could get back at her for deceiving him.

When they landed on August 12, 2000, Vonlee told her story of the vodka and cranberry breakfast she had at Danny's on Friday, August 11, before heading off to the Rogers household that morning, and then drinking all day with Billie Jean.

Don came home at 4:00
P.M.
, or thereabout, Vonlee told jurors.

She spoke of a plan the three of them had to go to the racetrack and how it had been curtailed by Don's becoming too drunk—which made Billie Jean mad. Not angry, but a “here-we-go-again” annoyed.

Then she spoke of how they all ate dinner together and . . .

Don was sitting at the kitchen table after dinner and drinking himself into oblivion, which was something, Vonlee explained, he often did.

Don passed out and Vonlee heard “a chair flip over” and a loud thud (
“plop”
) as Don hit the floor.

Vonlee pointed it out to her aunt, who didn't seem to care much.

“He wouldn't respond,” Vonlee said after describing how she walked into the kitchen to check up on Don. “I was pretty inebriated.”

Billie Jean then said she'd get him up and put him to bed; this was after Vonlee had tried and failed to wake Don by herself.

Vonlee told how Don's legs were “crossed,” just like they were in the Polaroid photos.

She talked about checking to see how Don was doing and believed he was totally out of it, unconscious from too much booze. However, she had no idea if he was breathing at that moment. She assumed he was because she felt over his mouth and breath was coming out later on.

“What happened when Billie came into the kitchen?” Cataldo asked.

“She told me to hold his mouth and hold his nose and that would wake him up. And I told her no, that I was
not
going to do that. I was not going to do that because I was afraid I would hurt him.”

“What did she do
after
you told her?”

“After that, she said, ‘Well, you hold his mouth and I'll hold his nose.' And I did.... My judgment was very poor and I shouldn't have, but I put my hand over his mouth . . . [while] keeping my fingers apart.... He was breathing. And I kept letting go.... I told her, ‘I'm not doing that. I can't do it. I just
can't
do that.'”

“Did you ever put your hand over his mouth so it was clasped?” the attorney asked, making sure the jury knew that Vonlee had never cut off his airway completely.

“Never. I never held his mouth to where he couldn't breathe. I would
never
hurt anybody.
Ever.
”

From this “fact” forward, Vonlee placed the entire onus of what happened next upon her aunt, telling jurors that Billie Jean poured the booze down her husband's throat and up his nose and “it came out and went on the floor.” Vonlee admitted she had “poured just a little” bit of the alcohol into Don's mouth, but then she stopped when she realized it was wrong.

They argued a bit, Vonlee said. She told her aunt to leave Don alone before she hurt him. Her aunt, she claimed, got mad and yelled at her.

Vonlee then took the bottle of vodka Billie Jean had been using and poured herself a glass of straight booze. As Vonlee did that, her aunt “walked away from him. . . .”

Not once during this period of time did Vonlee ever think that Billie Jean was trying to kill her husband. She thought her aunt was messing with Don.

“Playing with him.”

Then Vonlee said she walked into the bathroom to freshen up and finish her drink. It was about 9:00 or 9:30
P.M.
, she thought.

She spent “five minutes” in the bathroom, teasing her hair, “peeing” and applying some lipstick. She thought they were still going out to the casino—only now without Don. She believed Billie Jean would, at some point, get Don up to his room, or Don would wake up himself after sleeping off part of his bender and then make his way up there himself.

Cataldo asked Vonlee to describe for the jury what happened next.

“I came out of the bathroom . . . and I seen her squatted down.... I was going to go upstairs, because I thought that's where she would be.... And when I seen her, I walked over toward her and I said, ‘What are you doing?' I saw she had a pillow on his face. . . .”

The rest of Vonlee's narrative was, basically, mechanics, various pieces of the puzzle: Which way was Billie Jean facing, and which way was Vonlee standing? Was Billie Jean on her knees or not on her knees? Vonlee said as soon as she realized what was happening, she asked Billie Jean “what the fuck” she was doing as she realized her aunt was smothering Don.

Cataldo wanted to know if at any time prior to that moment, had Vonlee ever asked Billie Jean for money to get a sex change operation?

“No.”

As for Danny testifying that Vonlee said she “helped pin [Don] down” on the floor while Billie Jean smothered him, Vonlee said that statement was nonsense.

“Don Rogers was passed out! I mean, he was . . . No one was holding him down. He was passed out. He was . . .
unconscious.
”

They spent another hour or more discussing what happened next, and how Danny Chahine had gotten the story all mixed up, and how Vonlee felt guilty to this day for not stopping Billie Jean. It was the reason why she had told Danny what happened; she had felt responsible in some way. None of it was planned. None of it was thought out beforehand and talked about. (At least not by herself, Vonlee said.) None of it seemed real at the time it was happening. And none of it was done with any nefarious nature on her part.

Vonlee said she got sucked into it and lied for Billie Jean because it was easier and less humiliating. After she lied, she started drinking more and more. The guilt was weighing on her soul, and the secrets she held were bubbling up inside. She started taking Xanax and other pills to quiet the demons inside her head. The images of Billie Jean and that pillow were nightmarish and overwhelming. She knew her aunt might have killed him. But she didn't do anything about it, and that was the mistake Vonlee believed she needed to pay for.

As her attorney's direct questioning seemed to be drawing to a close, he asked Vonlee to talk about the dinner she had with Danny when she first told him what had happened. She had explained everything one night, and then Danny hooked up with the police and she told him again on a second night. Cataldo was asking about that first time she told Danny, which had not been recorded.

After she told Danny what happened with Don and Billie Jean, Danny did something she had not expected.

“I mean,” Vonlee testified, “Danny . . . gave me [a] ring and he said I could keep the ring on one condition.”

“If you marry me,” Danny demanded. He was smiling. Vonlee claimed he had a sparkle in his eye. He was serious, Vonlee believed.

“Marry you?” Vonlee said in turn. She was puzzled.

“You've made a decision, right?” Danny asked. They had jokingly talked about marriage before this night. Vonlee had written it off as nothing more than conversation.

“No!” she said during that unrecorded dinner. “Danny, you know that I can't marry you legally.”

“Why?” Danny asked. “I'm a citizen.”

“Because I'm a male, Danny.”

“What do you mean?”

“Well, you know that I have a penis just like you do. And I cannot legally marry you.”

Danny became “very upset,” Vonlee testified.

Cataldo wanted her to clarify.

“I don't know if he was upset because I wasn't going to marry him or [because] he [finally] realized I [had] a penis.”

What's more, on the night Vonlee first explained to Danny what happened to Don, she “went home with him” and “we slept together.” They had consensual sex. Vonlee recalled specifically walking around in his bedroom with the lights on; her penis was hanging out there, flopping around for Danny to see.

“He
had
to have seen it,” Vonlee said.

Closing out her direct testimony, Vonlee told jurors Billie Jean bought her a car, yes. But she never gave her that one hundred thousand dollars her aunt had written inside her checkbook next to Vonlee's name.

Cataldo wondered if Vonlee had been given any money at all.

She said seventy thousand dollars.

Cataldo posed a powerful question that jurors would certainly be asking themselves at some point: if Vonlee hadn't done anything wrong, as far as participating in “killing” Don, why had Vonlee taken that money?

“Well, I was drinking. She gave it to me. I wanted to get away. I didn't want to go home to Tennessee. I knew they would know I was upset, and I figured it was a way I could just start a new life, and I just figured, just take it and . . . I don't know, I just
took
it.” She looked down at a crumpled-up tissue in her hands. Then: “Because she
gave
it to me.”

Her defense attorney asked where the lion's share of all that money had gone.

Vonlee claimed she gave most of it away, some to an AIDS organization, some to friends; she spent a lot of it on her drinking and drugging habits, which had become worse as each day passed and she lived with what she had done to Don.

Finally, Cataldo prompted Vonlee to explain why she told Danny—which would be clear on the recording jurors would have available—that “drinking drove me to kill somebody”? That was the one quote she had to explain. It was perhaps the most unfavorable and liable comment Vonlee had said to Danny, and it was clear on the recording.

How were jurors supposed to overlook what seemed to be such a bold admission—a confession?

Vonlee thought about that comment. It was true. She had said it. “I felt that [God] was, you know, showing me that it was my fault. If I had stopped drinking . . . If I hadn't have been drinking that night, I could have stopped her. I could have known that she was serious. I was just blaming myself. I felt like it was
my
fault. If [only] I hadn't been drinking—because I had made a promise to God that I
would
stop.”