Sleep In Heavenly Peace (Pinnacle True Crime) (34 page)

“And, of course, concealment
is
an issue,” Schick said. “But you don’t know ‘the why’ of the concealment, isn’t that correct?”

“I know ‘the why’ that the mom told police,” Baden said firmly.

“Well, you know what the police told you what she said, isn’t that correct?”

Lungen bowed his head in disgust.
Come on, don’t be ridiculous
.

Baden remained composed. “Yes,” he said softly.

“Again, you were not present?”

“Yes. That’s correct.”

Schick asked the judge if he could have a moment.

“Mr. Schick, do you have any more questions of the doctor?”

“No, sir.”

3

On redirect examination, Lungen brought the case back into his world of fact-finding, leaving hypotheticals and theories aside. Baden was a forensic pathologist who had worked in the field for forty-plus years. He had offered his opinion as to how the babies had died, based on all of the evidence he had collected. In the reports Baden read, he never viewed anything, he said, about a midwife or an umbilical cord being wrapped around any of the babies’ necks, as Schick had implied near the end of his cross-examination. Furthermore, the medical facts he’d uncovered never pointed to such things.

On recross-examination, Schick once again tried to debunk Baden’s way of coming up with a cause and manner of death, but Baden simply stated the facts as he saw them: traumatic asphyxia. That was his opinion.
Traumatic asphyxia
. He was sticking to it. Schick could say whatever he wanted and speculate and come up with different theories, but Baden’s determination—and how he came about it—wasn’t going to change.

Baden’s testimony ended what turned out to be a long day for everyone. Court TV certainly had some great footage to air, and Schick thought he had done a decent job of giving the jury a second scenario to consider. Yet, if Odell was going to testify, which she was beginning to think was her only chance at freedom, the case Schick was rebutting on cross-examination had nothing to do with the abuse Odell claimed to have suffered, or the idea that Mabel murdered the children.

The following day, December 10, was sure to bring more heated debate. Thomas Scileppi and Roy Streever were set to take the stand. Schick promised he was going to, line by line, dissect the statement Odell had given to Scileppi and Streever.

But before Scileppi could take the stand, Lungen called David Dandignac.

Dandignac gave the jury a complete picture of his rather impressive credentials as a poultry grader for the Department of Agriculture. He had been working for the government for sixteen years. He was married, had two boys from a previous marriage, and his current wife had three children of her own. All five children lived with Dandignac and his wife. Ultimately, Dandignac could only say he had dated Odell, but when she got pregnant with his child, the relationship soured, and he believed when they split, she was going to get an abortion. He said he offered her money to support the child, but she refused.

To cover any potential testimony later on from Odell, regarding her relationship with Mabel, Lungen was smart to ask Dandignac how he viewed the relationship between Odell and Mabel. After all, he had lived in the same house with both of them.

“How would you characterize her relationship with her mother?”

“I thought it was…I thought it was good,” Dandignac said.

“How would you characterize, if you had to describe, her mother, Mabel? How would you describe her?”

“Well, as far as I…For me, I thought she was a nice lady.”

“Was there any kind of volatile arguments; was it a volatile relationship in the house between mother and daughter…?”

“I don’t think it was volatile, but…No, I mean, there were days where, you know, something would happen or, you know, something—”

“That would be the kind of stuff you would see normally with people living together?”

“That’s what I would say.”

“Nothing extraordinary. Is that what you’re saying?”

“I don’t think so.”

“Did Mabel appear to you to be an overbearing kind of woman is what I am really asking you?”

“Not…not all the time. I mean, she would have times where she might say something or do something, but overall I don’t think so.”

After Lungen finished, Schick stood and walked slowly toward Dandignac. For the first few moments, they discussed the relationship Dandignac shared with Odell. Then Schick asked him if it was possible that Odell had tried to hide her pregnancy from anyone.

Dandignac said no, not that he knew of.

From there, they discussed Odell’s financial situation at the time and how she was, basically, a struggling single mother.

By the end of Schick’s cross-examination, he managed to get Dandignac to admit he had left Odell when she was pregnant and never returned to inquire how she was doing, or if she’d even had the child.

Lungen had Dandignac explain on redirect examination how, when he left Odell, he never saw any reason to return because he honestly had believed she was going to abort the pregnancy. It was just one more way for Lungen to prove that during each pregnancy there was no man in Odell’s life around to question whether she’d had the baby. In effect, she could kill each child because there was no one around to question whether the child had been born—that is, except Mabel.

1

INVESTIGATOR THOMAS SCILEPPI was looking at a grilling from Stephan Schick regarding the statement he took from Odell. According to Scileppi, Odell admitted hearing the babies “cough” and “cry.” She’d even said there was a towel in one of the babies’ mouths. Yet, if Schick had his way, the jury would understand that the statement was in Scileppi and Roy Streever’s words,
not
Odell’s.

Lungen, on direct examination, had Scileppi go through the entire investigation and explain how he ended up in Waverly questioning Odell. There were no surprises in Scileppi’s testimony, and he came across rather diplomatic and knowledgeable, never hesitating, always sure of his answers. Scileppi had been an investigator, with an untarnished record, for seventeen years.

Eventually Scileppi described a woman who was quite willing to talk about how three of her dead children ended up in boxes in an Arizona self-storage facility. At one point, he even insisted Odell wanted to purge her soul of what was, he believed, a great emotional burden. He felt she needed to admit to the crimes so she could finally come to terms with what she had done. When asked what should happen to her, Scileppi said, Odell admitted she thought she “should go to jail.”

Schick later had some rather strong opinions regarding tactical approach and how law enforcement go about obtaining statements from suspects—especially in Odell’s case. There was no question Odell willingly had signed the statement Scileppi and Streever had prepared. The question was: why would she sign a statement she knew to be false?

“The legal answer is, if you ask for a lawyer and don’t get one,” Schick said, “okay, obviously, if they are going to keep [questioning you] forever until you sign a statement, you’re going to sign it eventually. There’s a feeling that a lot of this Miranda stuff (meaning, reading a suspect her rights) is a lot of baloney….” Moreover, Schick said, when you have “all these cops marching into a courtroom” and telling a jury how a suspect’s rights were not violated, “it makes what the defendant said in her statement all the more harmful.

“From a defense standpoint,” Schick continued, “you know, people have guilt. Even if people kill somebody and it’s not murder, they can feel guilty. I think you’re naive if you think that under all the facts and circumstances of the taking of [Odell’s] confession, the police didn’t manipulate. She had been questioned for hours and hours, for three days. I mean, there reaches a point where a person becomes very malleable. And they could put words that they’ll sign—this particular confession or statement she gave, I mean, a word here or there could change the whole flavor of it.
They
are the ones who are writing it! The New York police know they can manipulate and they do! I’m sure if they recorded everything she had said, it wouldn’t have come out like that written statement.”

Would a cop, however, suffice it to say with Scileppi’s reputation and standing, hold someone “hostage,” until she gave in and signed a statement of guilt? It seemed unlikely. The investigation, at the time Scileppi first met Odell, had just begun. Why would Scileppi (or anyone else working the case) push so hard that early on in the investigation? It didn’t seem reasonable.

“Cops don’t have to do that…. They don’t have to beat people or torture people. They are experts at psychologically manipulating people, and I don’t put it past them to rub her back and be sympathetic, holding her hand. And to Scileppi’s credit, I think if he was the…judge, I think he believes [Odell] was pathetic.”

The problem Schick faced, however, he explained, was that “you could have all the sympathy in the world for Miss Odell, but four babies are dead and that didn’t have to happen. We have to have a society where the birth of children is an extremely important concept and important event. A tragedy is if one or two babies died. Yet, if a person keeps doing something, by repetition, in such an important event that they know that more care has to be taken and they refuse to do it, who is responsible?”

Nevertheless, it was Schick’s job to attack Scileppi and possibly get him to admit he had somehow coerced Odell into saying those things in her statement—a statement, incidentally, the jury would be reading during deliberations.

By day’s end, Scileppi, along with his partner, Roy Streever, never cracked. They stood firm on what Odell’s statement had confirmed. Regardless how hard Schick pushed, he couldn’t get either one of them to admit they had coerced Odell or put words in her mouth.

At times, Schick became heated and animated, badgering each witness, but both men, seasoned cops who had taken the stand dozens of times as part of their jobs, spoke with an articulate, intelligent, and calming temperament. Odell had said she heard the babies cry, gasp for air, and cough. She had read the statement and signed it. To Scileppi and Streever, what more was there to discuss?

Next witness.

Near the end of testimony on day three, the jury was able to hear from Odell as a redacted transcript of the tape-recorded interview on May 17, 2003, with Diane Thomas and Bruce Weddle, was read aloud. The following day, December 11, the remainder of the transcript was read before Lungen put his final witness, Investigator Robert Lane, on the stand.

Lane reiterated what Scileppi and Streever had said already, but added one solid bit of information missing from the trial thus far: motive. He testified that Odell had said the children were “bastards” at one point in his conversation with her, and she had kept the pregnancies hidden from Mabel for that reason. It was the first time the jury had been given an explanation as to why Odell would have killed the children—to hide the pregnancies from her overbearing mother, whom she told police she was terrified of.

After Lane testified, the judge ordered the notes Lane had taken during his interview with Odell, where he had specifically written the word “bastards,” be redacted to conform to the Huntley ruling that barred the jury from knowing anything about the 1989 case. When that was done, the jury was asked to step out of the room for a time.

Lungen indicated he was prepared to rest his case. With that, the judge asked Schick if he needed any time before calling his first witness.

“Judge, actually,” Schick said, “I would like to be able to talk to Miss Odell in the conference room here. Ultimately, it’s up to her if I call witnesses and who they might be.”

Odell, twirling her rosary beads, looked on and nodded.

The judge said okay.

It was nearing noon, a good time to break for lunch. The jury was brought back into the courtroom and Lungen officially rested his case. Then the judge ordered everyone back at 12:30
P.M
., whereby Stephan Schick would begin presenting his case.

According to Odell, after the judge called a recess, she and Schick walked into the conference room and sat down. It was cold, the winter air from outside bleeding underneath a tiny opening in the bottom of the door. Odell took a seat next to Schick, and at first, she said, she just stared at him, waiting for his advice.

“I think I have done a very good job of punching holes in this case,” Odell recalled Schick telling her. “I really don’t think you need to testify.”

“Okay, what happens if I
don’t
testify?”

“Well, if you don’t testify, we don’t have to put the psychologist on the stand.” Schick was referring to Janet Hooke, a psychologist who had interviewed Odell several times. Schick was convinced, he said later, that Hooke’s testimony wouldn’t do anything to help Odell. “Furthermore,” he added, “that fourth child doesn’t come into play.”

Odell said she stared at Schick at that point. “I wasn’t even worried about the fourth child coming into the trial,” she noted later. “Because Lungen had already put it out in the newspapers, so the jury knew about it, anyway. What the hell was I worried about?”

Schick later said that as an attorney, he had to believe when the jury was questioned during voir dire about the 1989 baby, they were being honest as to their knowledge regarding it. He couldn’t “assume” they knew about the baby and shape his case around that theory. It wasn’t a professional way to go about trying a case that could have such damning effects on his client.

“Does that mean,” Odell said she asked Schick next, “everything I talked about with Janet would be put out on the stand?”

“Yes,” she recalled Schick telling her.

“At this time,” Odell said later, recalling that day, “even though I was beginning to open up about a lot of things that had happened, there were still very many issues that I had not addressed. And I really didn’t want that sitting in black and white in a newspaper before I had a chance to come to terms with it.”

When Odell heard Schick’s answer regarding Janet Hooke on the witness stand, likely airing all of Odell’s past experiences, she said, “Okay, then I don’t think I’m going to testify…but, can we use the other people?”

“Okay,” Schick answered, according to Odell later, “if that’s what you want to do.”

“Let me go to lunch,” Odell said, “and let me think about it.”

Odell claimed if she could “do this” without getting on the stand herself, it was something she was interested in pursuing.

Schick was deferential toward Odell’s feelings about how to proceed with her defense, but he insisted that putting anyone else on the stand besides Odell would not have helped her case. It would have hurt it, more than anything. Proving Odell was abused as a child was fine, but it still didn’t address the main theory of Lungen’s case: Dianne Odell had murdered the children.

Odell believed the information her half brother could present to the jury—and she admitted she didn’t know the extent of all the information—would have helped her defense raise reasonable doubt. However, Schick still didn’t want to use it.

“That’s not what Schick said to me,” Odell claimed later. “He told me that the information my brother had would ultimately help me.”

“I could have put her on the witness stand and we could have argued until the cows came home about her abusive childhood,” Schick said later, “but how far does that take you? Does that give you license…or does that give you ability to have four dead children and it doesn’t mean anything, it doesn’t matter?”

When court resumed after lunch, the judge looked at Schick and asked, “Does the defense choose to call any witnesses?”

Odell thought it was odd, she said later, that when she walked into the courtroom, her family was sitting in back of the defense table. She knew something was wrong at that point.

To the amazement of nearly everyone in the courtroom—including Odell, who claimed later she had no idea Schick was going to do it; she said she thought they were going to make a decision together—Schick simply said, “No, Your Honor.”

In effect, Schick was resting his case without calling one witness.

“He played both sides against the middle,” Odell said. “He told my family I wanted to rest and told me my family wanted
me
to rest.”

To his credit, Schick vehemently denied ever doing that.

Nevertheless, the judge then explained to the jury that Schick had chosen not to call any witnesses, which meant “the evidentiary portion of the trial” was over. Closing arguments would follow.

It would be a few days before closing arguments, though. The court had several matters to take care of with Lungen and Schick. Until then, jurors were asked not to discuss the case.