No, Daddy, Don't! (23 page)
Authors: Irene Pence
F
ORTY-TWO
ORTY-TWO
Death investigator Gigi Ray had taken the weekend off from the medical examiner’s office for a little R&R, a necessity for someone in her profession. She and a friend had driven south to the historic town of Fredericksburg, nestled deep in the Texas hill country. With the bustle of the Metroplex behind her, she could unwind in the quiet serenity with nothing more on her mind than the nightly hum of cicadas.
Gigi returned home April 21, the night before the trial began, on a warm Sunday evening. As she carried her small travel bag down the hall, she noticed the blinking light of her answering machine. She pushed “play” and heard the voice of her coworker Scarlett Long.
“Gigi. The DA’s office has been trying to get hold of you. You’re to call Paul Johnson.” Then she left a number.
Gigi glanced at her watch. Five-thirty. She figured that she wouldn’t get hold of Johnson at this hour, especially on a Sunday, but she punched in his number anyway.
Paul Johnson was sitting on a chaise longue next to Paul Brauchle on Brauchle’s patio. The air was thick with cigar smoke as they reviewed the Powerpoint presentation one of their psychiatry experts would detail at the trial. They had spent the entire day with the doctor in Fort Worth.
“Have you heard from that ME investigator yet?” Brauchle asked.
“Gigi Ray? I left a message with her office. Called them late Friday. They were under the impression that Gigi wasn’t needed at the trial. I told them she wasn’t, but we wanted her at the evidentiary hearing. Since the hearing’s right before the trial, I’d hate to have to run around getting a subpoena and delay the trial. They told me she was out of town for the weekend.”
The lawyers continued talking, then an hour later, Paul’s cell phone rang.
“Mr. Johnson, this is Gigi Ray with the ME’s office. I was told to call you.”
Johnson gave Brauchle a knowing glance. He placed his cigar in the ashtray and picked up a pen. “Yes, Gigi. Just wanted to check with you about a few things before the trial starts. What did that crime scene look like when you first got there?”
“Well, one of the officers told me it was a real-‘cluster-fuck. ’ It didn’t seem like anyone knew who was in charge.
“I thought there was going to be some kind of problem with the search warrant because the officers kept discussing it. Some were saying that they didn’t know if one was needed in the first place. Is that what they’re trying to say, that there’s a problem with the warrant?”
“That’s what
we’re
saying,” Johnson told her, his pen flying as he scribbled notes of everything Gigi was telling him.
we’re
saying,” Johnson told her, his pen flying as he scribbled notes of everything Gigi was telling him.
Johnson heard Gigi take a deep breath. She said, “Now wait a minute. You
are
the DA, aren’t you?”
are
the DA, aren’t you?”
“No, I’m not. I’m the defense attorney.”
There was a long pause before Gigi replied.
“I was told you were the DA.”
“Well, ma’am, I can promise you I didn’t characterize myself that way. I’m the defense attorney and I haven’t told anybody anything different.”
“I think this conversation has to end,” Gigi declared. “I need to call the DA and let him know that you want me at the evidentiary hearing.”
“I can understand that. Guess I’ll see you in court tomorrow.”
Gigi sat on her couch, totally bewildered. She needed to call Scarlett Long immediately. The calm from her peaceful weekend had evaporated and now her stomach was churning. Scarlett was so dependable. How could this have happened? Well, it didn’t matter; Gigi had major fires to put out and some big players to call.
First, she called Scarlett at work to verify her message. When Scarlett heard about the phone call, she felt miserable for having misinformed Gigi. Second, Gigi called her boss, Bill Lené, and explained the problem.
Since none of the prosecuting attorneys had ever called her and she hadn’t heard the names of anyone from the DA’s office who were working on the case, being told to call Paul Johnson hadn’t seemed suspicious to her at all. She called a court investigator and he contacted chief prosecutor Howard Blackmon.
Blackmon phoned Gigi and was very upset that she had given such information to Paul Johnson, the head of the enemy camp. She could hear the disapproval in his voice as he expressed fear that the evidence could be in jeopardy. Blackmon told her to show up for the next day’s hearing because Johnson could simply get a subpoena and force her to be there, but he wanted Gigi to meet with him first, thirty minutes before the hearing.
Paul Johnson was at home, basking in the afterglow of his phone call with Gigi Ray. The ME’s death investigator had given him invaluable information. With her testimony he could prove that the evidence from the loft had been collected without a search warrant. He could possibly get all evidence found in the loft thrown out of court. It was the shot in the arm that his case needed.
He strolled into his den, dropped down on a black leather recliner, and flipped on the television. After a few minutes of news, there was an announcement that they would be airing videotape of an exclusive interview with John Battaglia at the Lew Sterrett Justice Center. Johnson sat up straight and frowned. This wasn’t good news.
Soon John Battaglia’s straggly-bearded face filled the screen. The piece had obviously been taped three or more months ago, before voir dire had begun. John’s dark gray hair hung in long corkscrews that shot in every direction and matched his long sideburns and four-inch-long gray beard; he looked like a gnome. Paul knew that razors were banned in jail, but they did have stainless steel mirrors. Didn’t John know how he looked?
The Channel 8 newswoman interviewed Battaglia. When she asked him about the murders, John told her he thought that he was putting his girls to bed. He was doing something good for them. He explained that the doctors had diagnosed him as bipolar, and claimed that if he had been treated earlier, none of this would have happened. John frequently laughed and grinned at the camera. He said, “All I needed was a pill. Isn’t that something?”
Johnson clicked off his set. He had been working on Battaglia’s case for almost a year—some days for just an hour, at other times for the entire day. John Battaglia and his father had not taken one bit of his advice. In addition, two of John’s brothers were cooperating with the DA.
On that busy Monday morning before trial, Gigi Ray fought her way down the wide corridor at the courthouse to meet with Howard Blackmon. Lawyers were easily spotted in the courthouse. Their dark suits and soft leather briefcases set them apart from the swarms of casually dressed people who were there to pay fines or support a loved one at a trial.
Once Gigi was in Blackmon’s office, she insisted that her photos of the dead children, combined with the mother’s testimony of the phone call, would be enough to convict John Battaglia. But by the time Gigi left to attend the hearing, Blackmon was still not convinced.
Judge Warder’s Criminal District Court filled quickly that April 22 morning in anticipation of Battaglia’s trial. The court held sixty-five people in churchlike pews. The gray carpet and cloth-covered walls lent a soft, insulated tone that contrasted sharply with the violence of the case that would be heard. People began jamming together, sliding closer to make room for latecomers.
Paul Johnson opened the evidentiary hearing by calling Gigi Ray to the stand. Out of her normal work garb, she looked more feminine in a blue jumper and coral blouse. After she was sworn in, Johnson wanted the court to hear a full recounting of their previous evening’s phone conversation. By asking, “Do you remember telling me that... ,” he was able to force Gigi to reiterate everything she had related on the phone, including the fact that one officer had called the scene a “cluster-fuck.”
Reading from Ray’s investigative report, Paul Johnson asked, “Did Detective Fite give you permission to remove the bodies before the warrant arrived?”
“He said there wasn’t any need to wait for the warrant.”
“Okay, the girls’ bodies were removed prior to the search warrant. Can you tell me how PES had pictures of their bodies if no one went inside the loft prior to the arrival of the search warrant?”
“All those people were in there with me,” Gigi answered.
Johnson’s six-foot-six frame was imposing and as effective now as in his basketball days. In only a few steps, he was at the witness stand, towering over Gigi. It was an intimidating move, but Gigi remained calm. Johnson gave her a stack of seventy-seven crime scene photos to sort through, and he stood beside her while she thumbed through each one.
“Did you take that photo?” Johnson asked, pointing to a picture of the Glock smeared with hair and tissue residue.
“I don’t know. Could have. I did take a photo of that gun, but the police did too. I take slides at my scenes. If this picture was made from a slide, it could possibly be mine.”
Johnson now realized that he hadn’t requested that pictures be made from her slides. “Do you have a complete set of the photos you took?” Johnson asked.
“The original set of slides is back at the ME’s office.”
Paul Johnson asked the judge’s permission to allow Ray to call her office and ask someone to bring over her slides.
Prosecutor Howard Blackmon stood up. “Your Honor,” he began, “the Medical Examiner is separate from PES. Her jurisdiction is the bodies and one was in plain view right from the front door.”
Paul Johnson answered that he knew Ray could go in and photograph the bodies and the evidence, but because she did that before a search warrant arrived, he wanted to see if the police were doing it at the same time.
Gigi was asked to stand in the back of the room while they waited for the slides to arrive.
In the meantime, Johnson called Dallas police officer Elton Fite of the Child Abuse Section to the stand, and he was sworn in. The trim officer was dressed in a sports coat and slacks—exactly what he wore as a plainclothes detective, and probably less intimidating to children than a police uniform would be. He had been called to the lofts at 9:30 on the night of the murders.
Paul Johnson began questioning him about the crime scene, and Fite admitted that patrolmen, PES, and ME were in the building.
“But no one entered the room until the evidentiary search warrant arrived,” he said with authority.
Paul’s eyes grew large.
“You didn’t go inside that loft?” he asked in amazement.
“No.”
“Did you give authority for the ME to take the bodies ?”
He hesitated for a moment. “I talked to Mary Jean Pearle,” he said. His mentioning the victims’ mother placed him away from the crime scene, as Mary Jean had been downstairs. “No,” he continued, “I don’t recall telling the ME she could take the bodies.”
“But you yourself didn’t go into that crime scene?” Johnson asked for clarification.
“No. I just looked in from the door,” Fite said.
Courtroom spectators exchanged questioning glances at the discrepancy with Ray’s testimony.
Gigi Ray did not want to return to the witness stand, but now she was sitting there, dreading Johnson’s next question. After he viewed the slides and asked the court to make photographs from them, he turned to Gigi.
“Okay,” he said. “You heard what Detective Fite said. Was he telling the truth?”
Gigi was frozen, wishing she could magically disappear. She didn’t want to paint a law enforcement peer in a bad light, but even more, she didn’t want to perjure herself. She looked up at Judge Warder, feeling like a ten-year-old wanting her mother to tell her what to do. A sympathetic smile crossed the judge’s face, then she gave Gigi a subtle nod that said, “You have to answer.”
Gigi swallowed hard and said, “I guess he could have been mistaken.” She looked down at her hands, and her face reddened with discomfort.
During the morning break, Paul Johnson and Gigi Ray just happened to reach the vestibule of the courtroom at the same time. Their eyes locked, and Paul stuck out his hand.
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