To Die For (42 page)

Dana told Dr. Rogers that after the attack on Dora, she realized she had a “major problem” and wanted to get some counseling.

“I needed help, but no one was willing to listen to me.”

When Dr. Rogers asked Dana whether she'd considered confiding in Jim or her parents, Dana reversed herself and said she was “petrified” about talking to anyone and said that she didn't trust Jim. “I didn't want to talk to him. I was very evasive.” She said she couldn't unload “something like this” on her parents.

“You realized there was a problem?” Dr. Rogers asked.

“Yeah, all of it was a big cry for help in a sick way,” Dana said. “Yeah, I have this problem; I don't know exactly what it is. I sure would like to fix it; I would like to feel it is fixable.

“I'm not quite sure what it will take, but I really want to get through this. It's killing me.”

DECEMBER 29, 1996

Your Honor,

My mother, Dora Beebe, was killed March 16, 1994. The after-effects of that death have plagued our family, wreaking hardship, illnesses, sleeplessness and horror-haunted mental images of how she must have suffered. We all, after nearly three years of living with an unfinished tragedy, need closure. We need to put it behind us.

The trial of Dana Gray, accused of my mother's murder, has been postponed again and again. The defense has obtained many continuances, and we feel that the time has come to put an end to them.

Please do what you can to see that further continuances are minimized and give the survivors (who are also victims) a chance to resume our lives.

Sincerely yours,

Julia Whitcombe

It's hard to explain years of delay to witnesses and relatives of victims as the judicial system lumbers along at a glacial cadence. As the years passed, Rich Bentley periodically received calls from relatives of the victims asking when the trial would start. Trial dates were set and continued at the request of defense, and to the dismay of the victims' relatives who found the process never-ending, emotionally exhausting, and nightmarish. Judges, defense lawyers and prosecutors understand why this is so. It's the nature of the defense, in most cases and particularly in death penalty cases, to delay as long as you can in hope that the passage of time will dull the memory of witnesses and increase the chances that evidence will be misplaced or lost. A defense attorney would rather not risk having jurors see a tearful, frightened Dorinda Hawkins pointing a trembling finger at her attacker just a few months after she was left for dead at the back of an antique store. Why not let time heal the victim's psyche, so when Dorinda finally faces her assailant years later, she is composed, unafraid, and perhaps unable to remember each detail of the attack? Trying a heinous, sensational case shortly after a highly publicized crime spree—particularly when fear of the killings is still fresh in the minds of potential jurors—fairly guarantees a conviction and the harshest possible sentence. In Dana's case, each new murder and attack was well publicized, and with the publicity came a steady increase in public fear and pressure on authorities and law enforcement to catch the killer. It was the same group of individuals from whom jurors would be selected to sit in judgment of Dana. It is to the defense's benefit to allow a generous cushion of time to soften the public's memory and to blunt the emotional impact should they be called as jurors.

Once Bentley indicated that he would seek to send Dana to Death Row, he knew the case would automatically slow to a crawl. A defendant facing capital punishment is automatically allowed to have two defense attorneys—at taxpayer expense—to share the increase in work inherent in death cases. Another reason for delays was a series of requests for discovery, i.e., that the prosecution turn over to the defense all of the police and lab reports, evidence logs and every piece of evidence and paperwork the prosecution intends to use against a defendant. Stu Sachs often sought delays in order to obtain and review the materials turned over by the prosecution. After Dana's insanity plea there was another delay as each side appointed experts to examine Dana and render their opinions. As more time went by, the second defense attorney left the practice of law to became a court commissioner, a position similar to a judge. Another attorney had to be appointed to assist Stu and needed months to become familiar with the case. There were more delays when the defense attorneys had to try other cases, including another death penalty case that had been scheduled before Dana's trial. Then the defense filed motions to cease the photocopying of Dana's mail and the taping of her visits. Dana's case was then assigned to a different judge in another courtroom.

Bentley was ready to try the case and was prepared to deal with an insanity defense. It had been no surprise that Dr. Forbes and Dr. Kania had found that Dana was legally insane at the time of her actions. In his 23-page report, Dr. Kania concluded that Dana was suffering from severe, psychotic depression tinged with alcoholism, though he hedged his opinion as to whether she was aware of her criminal acts. “There is indication that at times she was aware of what she had done, but at other times she experienced a sense of unreality and estrangement from her actions … She took the wallets of two of these women in an action reminiscent of her actions as a child when she took money from her own mother's wallet when she had been mistreated by her mother.” Dr. Forbes wrote a 29-page report finding that Dana had an “unspecified disassociative disorder” coupled by depression and alcoholism and a series of “severe losses.” “She had absolutely no awareness of the enormity of her offense as she acted on bizarre distortions of the identity of older women, all the result of earlier maternal abuse.”

Bentley had tried two insanity cases to completion, and in both cases, the defense attorneys had hired Dr. Kania, who concluded that the defendants were insane. Bentley cross-examined Dr. Kania both times and found that he wasn't even using the latest forensic definition of legal insanity, but was quoting outdated case law. He was aware that Dr. Kania was often the expert of choice among defense attorneys and that he usually found that defendants were insane. Bentley was not familiar with Dr. Forbes, but he disputed both experts' opinions. If Dana had no awareness that her actions were wrong, why would she wash off the blood after the killings? If she didn't know what she was doing, how did she find banks, stores and restaurants so quickly after the killings? How did she know that she needed to sign the victims' names on the receipts? If Dana had no awareness of her actions, why did she cease her attack on Dorinda after Dorinda's pleas to spare her life because she had eight children?

Bentley found more satisfying answers in Dr. Rogers' hefty and comprehensive report. At 163 pages, it not only offered a thorough examination of Dana's mental state, but discussed and dissected the other experts' diagnoses and compared the consistency of Dana's answers to their questions and psychological tests with answers Dana gave to her, as well as follow-up questions to Dana and a comparison of Dana's behavior with what others observed during her childhood, at work, and at home. Dr. Rogers found that while Dana was most certainly a disturbed individual who suffered from depression and abused alcohol, she was sane.

One of the biggest hurdles in reaching a diagnosis was evaluating the veracity of a defendant who clearly had a stake in the findings and who had been first evaluated by “friendly” defense experts before an expert examined her at the behest of the prosecution. Dr. Rogers said she sympathized with Dana's dilemma.

“I think this lady has really struggled with how much to be honest because obviously her life is on the line,” Dr. Rogers wrote. “Overall, I think she has done about as well or better than many individuals facing the death penalty—a lot more open than many, since some defendants, of course, never even acknowledge their crimes. But she was a lot more unreliable, distorting or selective in her reporting than I have seen in cases which were ultimately adjudicated as insanity.”

She noted that Dana's alleged loss of memory of the murders when discussing them with Dr. Kania seemed to have disappeared by the time Dr. Rogers interviewed her. “This most likely reflected some kind of systematic and self-serving withholding of information rather than actual loss of and return of memory … I think she started out feigning some memory lapses which, to her credit, she later thought better of doing and gave up.”

Dr. Rogers was also suspect of Dana's statements that she'd felt hurt, insulted and rejected by the victims just prior to the attacks. They conflicted with Dana's own answers on tests and interviews with people familiar with Dana's inclination to strike back with “castrating zingers,” to never let people take advantage of her and to project blame when in conflict with others. The psychiatrist questioned Dana's reliability regarding the severity of the abuse she'd suffered from her mother, reports of suicide and suicidal thoughts, the history of her symptoms and her mental state. “The noted fluctuations [about her history of symptoms and mental state] appeared to be situational and/or a result of attempting to deny or exaggerate to herself and others about the severity of her disturbance at various times, perhaps in part to make herself feel better, or to obtain empathy from others, or to find an explanation that would make it easier to live with what has happened, or to build a rationalization for her offenses.”

She noted that Dr. Kania's diagnosis treated seriously Dana's claim that she was suffering from hallucinations, particularly hearing voices. Dr. Rogers found that this was not noted by either of the two psychiatrists who saw Dana prior to the offenses in 1993 and early 1994, was not noted or mentioned by Dana during her multiple mental health screenings after her incarceration, and was not even noted by Dr. Kania until after he had been seeing Dana for five months. After Dana complained of hallucinations and delusions in October 1995, she was examined by a jail psychiatrist with negative results. She also denied having auditory hallucinations to Dr. Rogers, who said Dana's answers on exhaustive psychological testing were not consistent with hallucinations or delusional thinking. The “voices” Dana reported hearing, Dr. Rogers said, “were a product of her own mind and were internal conversations and did not reflect a major loss of reality.”

The most curious aspect of Dana's crimes—her choice of elderly women as victims—was explored by Dr. Rogers. Dana admitted that she'd never linked her crimes with any maternal issues until after Dr. Kania “really, really dug” and encouraged her to consider that possibility.

“While she saw the victims as similar to her mother in various ways, and they ‘reminded' her of her mother, she didn't believe they were her mother. There was not the precipitous loss of reality testing of a delusional person. Most crimes perpetrated as a product of hallucinations are in reaction to fear of being harmed … which was not the case in these crimes, nor had she suffered any ‘command hallucinations' telling her to perform the crimes.”

The maternal trigger seemed suspect to Dr. Rogers after looking at how Dana first chose victims with clear family ties. When Dana thought that might focus attention on her, Dr. Rogers suggested, she switched to strangers.

Dana had told each of the examiners about voices telling her to stock up, in reference to what she claimed were food shortages as a child, but neither her brothers nor the boarder Michael Carpenter recalled a lack of food. Dr. Rogers said Dana later admitted that they were not actually voices, but an “inner need.” She added that luxury items like fancy foods, clothing, perfume and toys “hardly constitute things one would be stocking up for the holocaust. Rather, the procured items were consistent with her past reported shopping patterns … She made hair appointments, went to restaurants, and had a massage. The alleged nihilistic delusions about needing to shop because of some feelings that the end was near or the holocaust was coming and she needed to prepare for it simply have little credence…” In interviews, her family and friends reported her preoccupation with money, her propensity to buy what she wanted when she wanted it and her persistent and manipulative pursuit of a great aunt to change her will. Court records indicated that she'd been having financial problems since 1988, which points to Dana's focus “on her own wants and lack of concern about the needs and feelings of others to the point of ruthlessness,” Dr. Rogers wrote.

The question of whether Dana knew what she was doing at the time of the murders was answered by Dr. Rogers' examination of the crimes. The use of multiple means to kill a person, she wrote, “is more indicative of a greater degree of sustained intentionality, deliberation and malice in killing than crimes where one method only was used. The repeated efforts to choke Hawkins, where she reported that she nearly passed out or did pass out several times is also indicative of a sustained intention to deliberately kill.” Dana said she had at one point calmed down from an earlier insult before entering June's house, but got angry again, which Dr. Rogers said suggested deliberation rather than a build-up of anger and loss of control. When she took June's credit cards, she selected those within a close geographic radius and left behind those from JCPenney and the Broadway department stores, showing that she consciously sorted through the cards rather than just grabbing them, as she claimed.

In the attack on Dorinda, the limited conversation between her and Dana was enough to suggest that Dana never lost awareness of what was going on during the attack. Even when she entered the store, Dana asked if Dorinda was “alone again,” which suggests premeditation and an awareness of what she was about to do. Dana's awareness of her crimes was also apparent in the fact that she left no fingerprints, cleaned blood from herself, threw away June's credit card when she was done with it, hid credit cards of Dora Beebe's in a drawer at home and knew that she had to sign the victims' names on the credit card receipts and checks. Dana had expressed to the psychiatrist her surprise at the time that the bank teller didn't ask for ID when she withdrew $2,000 from Dora's account, a clear acknowledgment of wrong-doing. Shortly after the murders, Dana had the presence of mind to lie to a cashier who recognized the name and asked if Dora was all right. Dana had replied that Dora wasn't feeling well.