Twisted Triangle (31 page)

Dianna had given her the name of a counselor who specialized in posttraumatic stress disorder. Margo and the therapist, Nancy Davis, had exchanged messages but had yet to connect. Margo tried her again, and this time she reached her.

“Margo, you know he’s in jail,” Nancy said.

“I know that, but I’m still scared. I’m too afraid to go upstairs in my own house.”

“He’s not there. He’s not going to hurt you. We will deal with your fears, but you are safe in your own house right now.”

Margo’s panic eased after they agreed to meet the following Tuesday morning for two hours. She trusted Nancy as a professional and was relieved that she didn’t have to cope with this by herself any longer.

On the morning of her appointment, Patsy’s latest novel,
Cause of Death
, had just hit the stands. Margo faxed a copy of a
New York Daily News
story about the whole mess to Kathy Farrell with a wry note: “It’s a sensation-seeking rag article. Nonetheless, it’s fun to read over a cup of coffee. The only way I can get over this is to plow straight ahead. I see the shrink this morning from 9 am to 11 am. If she keeps me/commits me, I’ll have them call you.”

The story was mostly about Patsy and how “getting to be famous and very rich did her no favors,” according to Dot Jackson, an old friend of Patsy’s from the
Charlotte Observer
. Dot was quoted as saying, “I remember seeing Margo Bennett once in Patsy’s company, and Margo seemed to be a plain, quiet person, not the sort that you would associate with scandal.”

Margo vaguely remembered the name Dot Jackson and linked it to the woman who dreamed about the blood in Patsy’s bed. She didn’t appreciate being described that way, but she shrugged it off, thinking, “This woman doesn’t know me.”

Nancy quickly determined that Gene’s assault on Margo in 1993 had left her with more emotional damage than his most re-cent attack.

As Margo described the first incident, she could still see the taser in his hand and remember kicking at the strip on the garage door, fighting for her life while he held her down. But Nancy helped her realize the important difference between the two events.

“The fi time, he had me A to Z. I had no control,” Margo said later. “He used everything he knew about me against me, totally violated any sense of trust I had in him. The second time, I was able to fight back and I won. I lived through it. I was able to protect myself. I was able to protect Edwin. I saved us. I was strong enough to come out of it. He didn’t get me in ’96.”

After the
People
magazine reporter showed up in the neighborhood, Margo called her parents to give them an idea of what to expect from the national media.

“You’re going to hear a lot of stuff,” she told her father. “Gene is making accusations that I was with another woman and, Dad, it’s true. It happened.”

Ed’s response surprised her: “Well, things happen in our lives,” he said. A decade earlier, he would have been shocked and appalled, but Margo figured that at sixty-nine, he’d gained a new perspective.

That said, after the tabloids got hold of the story a couple of weeks later, Ed wouldn’t let his wife, Dean, talk to anyone outside the family about the situation. In fact, Dean told Margo that he wouldn’t even let her talk about it to Dean’s youngest sister, Martha, who had read about the whole thing in the
Star
. After talking to her mother, Margo became worried that Dean wasn’t handling all the publicity well, so she called Martha to get her assessment.

Martha said that when she saw Gene’s booking photo, she thought, “My lord, he looks like a crazy man.”

Then Martha started choking up. “I don’t care who you sleep with, and you don’t have to tell me,” she said. “I am your aunt, you are my niece, and I love you and I will support you in anything that you want to do.”

“It means a lot to me to hear you say that,” Margo replied. After they hung up, she called her mother back and urged her to confi in Martha, regardless of what Ed had said.

Margo went to pick up the girls in Tuscaloosa on July 12 and stayed a few days. The
People
magazine story came out midway through her trip, so Margo bought a copy at the grocery store to show her parents. Referring to the love triangle with Patsy, the headline read, “Stranger Than Fiction.”

While her mother was getting her hair done on Saturday morning, July 13, Margo sat talking with her father in his truck outside the beauty shop.

“I don’t know how you have survived through this,” he told

her.

“I guess I came from sturdy stock,” she said, which made her

father chuckle.

That same week, an article came out in
Newsweek
about Patsy, noting that her new book was debuting at number one on the
New York Times
best-seller list. The second paragraph included the inevitable mention of their affair, saying Patsy was “in the middle of a made-for-tabloid scandal.”

Patsy told
Newsweek
she didn’t want to talk about the “alleged relationship with Marguerite,” saying, “My personal life is not anybody else’s business. . . . I don’t believe people should be defi by their sexuality. People can think what they want. There’s nothing I can do.”

The article said
Newsweek
“could not locate Marguerite,” which amused Margo. However, that fleeting comfort lasted only until she saw the huge story splashed across the Style section front of the
Washington Post
on July 28, with a headline that read, “The Ex Files: Here’s What Can Happen When Two Heavily Armed People Fall Out of Love. A Story of Sex, Guns and a Crime Novelist’s Nightmare.”

“Margo pulled out a gat and squeezed off a round. Damn near winged the sumbitch, too,” the article said to describe her actions in the church. “The story is all tabloid. In fact, for a respectable national newspaper like this one to dignify it with a big feature story containing mugshots and everything— well, for that to hap-pen, the story would have to have a sophisticated theme featuring timeless universal truths and, ideally, Greek or Latin phrases. Here, then is the theme: Sometimes, homo sapiens behave very, very badly.”

Margo thought that the writer, Karl Vick, made light of the trauma she’d been through, as if she were a character in a theatrical farce. But she was most hurt by the way he’d made her look like such a terrible mother. “It made me seem very careless, uncaring, and crazy on my own,” she later said. The only redeeming thing she could say about the article was that it didn’t portray her as a victim.

Margo was never tempted to call the newspapers to tell her side of the story. “I felt that truly, in time, the information would get out, and I believed I’d be vindicated,” she said.

Gene’s preliminary hearing was scheduled for August 13.

Margo met with Jim Willett and his boss, Paul Ebert, for the fi time about two weeks before the hearing.

Paul had the corner offi which was much larger than all the other prosecutors’, and was strewn with piles of papers and books. Margo had to fi back laughter when she saw a joke sign on his desk, featuring a phony classifi ad that read, “Woman that can cook and clean fi tie flies, and owns boat and motor. Please send picture of boat and motor.”

At fi she thought he was a sexist old Southern redneck, but she soon learned that he was just a boating enthusiast with a playful sense of humor. Jim was far more straitlaced, but they both took their jobs very seriously.

The two prosecutors reassured Margo that they believed her story. They thought Gene was very dangerous, and they were go-ing to do their best to put him away for a long time. It seemed important to them that she trust them to handle this case, because they obviously needed her to be a strong prosecution witness. As they asked her a series of questions, they gained her trust in short order.

“How would you answer if we asked you, ‘Have you ever committed perjury?’” Paul asked.

“I would tell you no.”

Jim and Paul both looked surprised.

“I would tell you no because by law I never have. My testimony was coerced, and that’s not perjury.”

After the two prosecutors exchanged glances, Margo could perceive their heightened sense of respect for her. Yes, she did know her stuff.

“What would you say if I asked you, ‘Have you ever lied under oath?’” Paul asked.

“I would say yes, I have.” “Why?”

“Because I thought my children’s lives depended on it.” “What would you say if we asked you if you’d ever had a homosexual relationship?”

“I would tell you no, I haven’t had a relationship, but I have had two intimate encounters with Patricia Cornwell.”

“You’re prepared to admit that?” Paul asked. “Yes, I am.”

Paul and Jim started talking as if Margo weren’t there, saying they didn’t want to divert the judge’s attention with the divorce and the emotionally charged nature of her homosexual affair because they felt it would be a diversion from the central issue— the crimes Gene had just committed. For that reason, they thought Margo shouldn’t testify at the preliminary hearing, only at the trial.

“I think you’re right,” she interjected.

After that, the three of them discussed how best to bring out the homosexuality issue in court at trial.

“Let us be the ones to bring this issue out, take the wind out of their sails, and make sure the jury understands that we’re not trying to hide anything,” Jim said.

When the meeting was over, Margo felt relieved that she didn’t have to testify at the hearing and would be able to put off being grilled by Gene’s attorneys. She also felt reassured to have such competent and dedicated lawyers on her side.

During the ninety-minute preliminary hearing before Judge Thomas Gallagher, the prosecutors called Edwin to testify and laid out the skeleton of their abduction and explosives case, which was enough to certify the fi felony charges against Gene and send the case to the grand jury for a possible indictment.

Gene’s attorney Reid Weingarten spoke to reporters after the hearing. “The center of this case is Gene Bennett’s effort to protect his children,” Reid said. “Twenty years in the FBI did not prepare him for his wife’s alternative lifestyle, a lifestyle he believed to be abnormal and presented a danger to his little girls.”

On September 3, the grand jury indicted Gene on six charges, after adding a new one—that he had obtained more than $200 under “false pretenses” from Mary Ann.

Despite this good news, Margo’s financial house imploded in October, when a creditor sent an order to NOVA to garnishee her wages. She immediately met with an attorney and filed for

Chapter 7 personal bankruptcy in Alexandria. Her total debt was approaching $500,000, including more than $150,000 in attorneys’ fees. Despite the bankruptcy fi she continued to make small payments to Brian Gettings, Frank Dunham, and Kathy Farrell, and before she was done paying them, she’d spent all her retirement money.

That fall, Margo met about a dozen times with Jim Willett, often together with Paul, as they built their case for trial in January. In the beginning, Margo talked to Jim with her arms crossed, her body language self-protective and her voice timid. Jim saw be-fore him a very frightened woman who was trying to be brave and

do what she could to help them.

“Her life was on the edge, and she was holding on as best she could. She wasn’t going to give up, but it was an extremely pre-carious position,” Jim later said. “She had to put her faith in the system, in me, and in the jury, and the system isn’t perfect.”

Paul and Jim both came to respect and admire her courage and self-discipline as she tried to hold her family together amid the media onslaught.

“She was really, really alone at that place in her life at that time,” Jim said. “I’ve told her on more than one occasion how great she did, how courageous she was, and how valuable her contribution to the success of the prosecution was.”

Paul, who had tried the John and Lorena Bobbitt penis-sever- ing case in the same courthouse three years earlier, felt that the Bennett case was more complex than any other he’d prosecuted. One of the biggest challenges was to decide which of the several hundred pieces of physical evidence should be presented to the jury, and in what order, so as not to cause confusion.