The Stranger Beside Me (54 page)

"When you say 'reasonable degree of dental certainty,' you are speaking of some kind of probability. Is that right?"

"A very high degree of probability. Yes sir." Minerva was trying to make the "new science" suspect, to make it look simply "probable" and not "absolute," but Levine would not buckle under.

". . . in my mind it becomes a practical impossibility to come up with something with all the identical1 characteristics."

"Would you say that it is fair to say that odontology is a relatively new, newly recognized forensic science?"

"No. I do riot think that is fair at all. Historically, you have a case of Paul Revere doing identifications. You have testimony admitted to the bar in Massachusetts in the late

1800s on identification, and you can find citations for bite-mark cases even in the legal justice system that go back twenty-five years. So what's new?"

The prosecution rested. Ted Bundy asked that Dr. Souviron be held in contempt of court for speaking out at the Or-

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lando meeting prior to his trial on his case, and Cowart denied his request. In the empty courtroom, Ted studied the dental exhibits of his teeth and the pictures of Lisa Levy's bite marks. I have no idea what his thoughts were.

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Things were not good in the defense camp. Robert Haggard had resigned, hinting that the defendant's insistence on questioning Ray Crew, the police officer who was in the death rooms on the night of January 14-15, had been a mistake. The public defenders would not allow Ted to cross-examine witnesses any more.

On the first day of the defense, July 20th, Ted rose to address Judge Cowart. He was claiming that his attorneys were inadequate-the same attorneys that he had praised highly to me in his pretrial phone call. He blamed Mike Minerva for dropping out of the case without warning, the man he now said had "the most experienced courtroom presence in this case." He didn't mention that he himself had asked Minerva to leave.

"I did not have any choice in the selection of Bob Haggard to represent me here in Miami. In toto, I have not been asked at any time my opinion about who should be representing me within the public defender's office."

In fact, Ted did not like his whole defense team.

"I think it's also important to note that there are certain problems of communication between myself and my attorneys which have reduced my defense, the defense which is not my defense or sanctioned by me, nor one which I can say I agree with."

Ted complained that his lawyers ignored his input into the case, would not let him make decisions, and were stubbornly refusing him the right to cross-examine witnesses before the

jury.

Cowart was aghast.

"I don't know of any case I've seen or experienced where an individual who is indigent has received the quality and quantity of counsel you have. There have been five separate counsel here representing you. It's unheard of. Who's mind-372

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ing the store for the public defender I can't tell you. And what's happening to all those other indigents they represent I can't tell you. This court has watched with a great deal of carefulness that, before witnesses are tendered, you are questioned, and this record will show hundreds of 'just a moment, pleases' where they [Ted's attorneys] go by and confer with you. I've never seen anything like it in the history of any case I've ever tried. Or in twenty-seven years at the bar have I ever seen anything exactly like what has happened in the defense of this case."

But Ted was adamant; once again, he wanted to take over his own defense. Cowart said he would agree, but warned Ted that a lawyer who represents himself has a fool for a client. Ted responded, "I've always taken that particular axiom like someone who works on his own car has a fool for a mechanic. It all depends on how much you want to do by yourself." It was an old, tired story. Cowart suggested that Ted's question was one of "submission of counsel."

"Imposition," Ted countered.

"No, it's submission, and this court has addressed that. If they don't do every little, single, solitary thing that you want 'em to, they're incompetent. And, bless your heart, if they do ... I'm gonna fire 'em." It is likely that Ted wanted to be sure the record showed that he had not had his attorney of choice. Millard Farmer's name wasn't mentioned, but the implication was clear.

Once again, Ted was at the helm, and his attorneys were only "advisors." Still, for the moment, Ed Harvey would question the defense witnesses. Harvey said-out of the hearing of the jury, a jury which did not seem to realize that the defense team was in a shambles-that he wanted out too.

The defense tactics were not to present any alibi for Ted Bundy, but to try to negate the state's evidence. Dr. Duane DeVore, an oral surgery professor from the University of Maryland, and an advisor in forensic dentistry to the chief medical examinertof the state of Maryland, testified that bite marks were not unique-though teeth themselves were.

". . . the material of skin is flexible, elastic, and, depending upon the bleeding structures underneath and the amount of blood, [a tooth]

may not leave a unique mark."

DeVore produced four models of teeth from Maryland youngsters that he said could have caused the bite marks on

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the victim, but he admitted to Larry Simpson that Ted Bundy's teeth also could have made the same marks. The defense produced a tape taken while Nita Neary was in a hypnotic trance where she said that the houseboy, Ronme Eng, had resembled the intruder. Eng was brought into the courtroom and stood beside Ted. The jury looked on, and, of course, said nothing.

Serologist Michael J. Grubb, of the Institute of Forensic Sciences in Oakland, testified that the semen left on Cheryl Thomas's sheet could not have been deposited by Bundyagain in a long, highly technical discourse that seemed to confuse the jury.

Ed Harvey, trying one more time to save his client, asked for another competency hearing. "The man's life is at stake. He shouldn't be forced to take the services of public lawyers whom he has no confidence in. His conduct has revealed the debilitating effects of his mental disorder by reflecting a total lack of insight regarding the disorder and its effects on him, by reflecting a wholly inadequate ability to consult with lawyers about the case."

Danny McKeever opposed the competency motion. "The man is difficult to work with. He's almost cunning the way he works against his attorneys sometimes . . . but he's competent."

Ted smiled. Anything was better than being considered incompetent. Cowart felt Ted was competent too, and a compromise was worked out as the trial approached its ending. Harvey would stay, Lynn Thompson would stay, and Peggy Good would make the final arguments. Bundy would comment later, "I feel really, really, good . . ." I had not seen Ted alone since I'd reached Miami, although I had left messages at the jail with my phone number. I don't know if he got them, or, if he had, if he was allowed to call out. Perhaps he no longer had anything he wished to say to me. So I cannot judge whether he was competent or not. It is a moot question whether his deliberate rocking of the defense team's already shaky platform was a move on his part to gain even more attention or whether it was an indication that he was, truly, no longer rational, a man in the grip of some kind of egomania that obliterated the issue of survival itself. I could only observe him in the courtroom, and he seemed hellbent for destruction.

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Ted continued to denigrate his attorneys, still angry that they would not allow him more control.

"I've tried to be nice. We're speaking more to a problem attorneys have in giving up power. Maybe we're dealing with a problem of professional psychology. Where attorneys are so jealous of the power they exercise in the courtroom they're afraid to share it with the defendant. They are so insecure in their own skill and experience that they are afraid that anybody else might know as much as they do or can at least participate in the planning process."

Cowart commented mildly that Ted's attorneys had passed their bar exams, had graduated from law school. "I can't conceive of submitting myself, or I'm sure you wouldn't submit yourself, to brain surgery by somebody who had only a year and a half of medical school." In actuality, of course, Ted's defense attorneys were not that experienced. Cowart had helped them often in phrasing questions, and much of their cross-examination was tedious, uninspired, and headed nowhere. But then Simpson and McKeever-for the state-did not rival Melvin Belli or F. Lee Bailey. The Bundy trial had been marked throughout with mediocrity; only the judge himself was a thoroughbred. However, if Ted could have worked with his attorneys instead of trying to tear them apart, he might have had an adequate defense. They had succeeded in barring the "fantasy tape," the Utah panty-hose mask, his former record, his escape. Despite any faltering on their parts, they might well have saved him ;'/ he had allowed it.

Moving into final arguments, the press was still wagering even odds on the outcome of the trial.

And yet, there seemed to be something happening, something that couldn't be stopped. Ted had spoken of "this railroad train running," and it struck a chord buried deep in the recesses of my memory. The outcome of the trial would not necessarily be the wrong verdict; that verdict was something that none of us had control over any longer. The truth had been lost somewhere among the games, the rituals, the motions, the petty arguments and the rational arguments, the quotes for the pless, the notations for the record.

In all human endeavors that deal with what is unthinkable, too terrible to be dealt with squarely, we turn to what is familiar and regimented: funerals, wakes, and even wars. Now, in this trial, we had gone beyond our empathy with the

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pain of the victims, our niggling realization that the defendant was a fragmented personality. He knew the rules, he even knew a great deal about the law, but he did not seem to be cognizant of what was about to happen to him. He seemed to consider himself irrefrangible. And what was about to happen to him was vital for the good of society. I could not refute that. It had to be, but it seemed hollow that none of us understood that his ego, our egos, the rituals of the courtroom itself, the jokes and the nervous laughter were veiling the gut reactions that we should all be facing. We were all on "this railroad train running ..." I looked at the jury, and I knew. Never mind the odds. My God, they are going to kill Ted . ..

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Ted himself had one "last hurrah" before final arguments. He had studied the blow-ups of his teeth carefully, listened stony-faced as Dr. Souviron testified that there was no question in his mind that it was Ted Bundy-and only Ted Bundy-who had sunk his teeth into Lisa Levy's buttock. In the emptied courtroom, he had even mugged a bit for the cameras, holding a model of his teeth against the picture of the dead _girl's bruised flesh. And he had realized just how damning this forensic dentistry evidence was to his case.

In the absence of the jury, Bundy called his investigator, Joe Aloi, to the stand. Aloi is a hearty, husky man with Latin coloring, given to wearing flamboyant tropical shirts when he is not in the courtroom, a respected investigator who often joked with the press and the attorneys in the lounge of the Holiday Inn. Now Ted was trying, through him, to bring forth physical evidence that would dispute the accuracy of Souviron's testimony. The chip in one of his front teeth had not been there at the time of the Chi Omega murders, not according to Ted. Aloi identified some photographs sent to him from Chuck Dowd, the managing editor of the Tacoma News Tribune, Ted's hometown paper-pictures that represented a chronological sequence since his first arrest in Utah.

Ted asked: "What was the purpose of enlarging certain portions of the photographs that you were attempting to obtain in chronological order?"

"I had received information from Mr. Gene Miller of the Miami Herald conAprning a seminar Dr. Souviron had given. I was very concerned about when this characteristic occurred." I

"And what characteristic is that?"

"This is concerning one of two front teeth-I don't know all the names-and I was concerned about this chip on the

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inside of the tooth, and whether it was or was not there and whatever specific times we could document some of the photographs in evidence to depict that this particular tooth was in very good condition at certain times. And, of course, at other times when Dr. Souviron had taken his samples from you if the tooth was in a different condition." Ted asked what the photo blow-ups had revealed. An objection was sustained. Judge Cowart coached the defendantdefense attorney.

"You might ask him if he was able to accomplish [discovery of the teeth in different conditions]. Try it that way and see if I object."

"The court is always right."

"No," Cowart demurred. "Not always."

"Did you accomplish what you set out to do?"

"No sir, I did not."

"And why not?"

Aloi responded, "The media, for legal reasons and perhaps for other reasons, would not be very cooperative."

The investigator explained that various newspapers would not release their negatives to him, negatives of pictures of Ted Bundy flashing his familiar wide smile. Aloi had been unable to lay his hands on pictures taken of Ted before his Pensacola arrest that would indicate positively that there was no chip in his front tooth at that time. Ted changed places again, and, again, became the witness-questioned by Peggy Good. He testified that his tooth had been chipped in the middle of March, 1978-two months after the murders in Tallahassee.

"I recall I was eating dinner in my cell in the Leon County Jail and I bit down hard, just like you bite down on a rock or pebble, and I pulled it out and it was just a white piece of tooth, and it just chipped out of one of my central incisors."