by Rod Kackley
“Do you mean she is, insane?”
“I didn’t say that. Mary Eileen Sullivan, I believe, has a grave, comprehensive, multi-faceted personality disorder. But she is not insane.”
“Do you mean she knows the difference between right and wrong?”
“Absolutely, yes, Mary Eileen Sullivan knows the difference.”
“And no matter what effect her repressed memories may or may not have had; did she then, and does she now realize it was wrong to kill two men, cut up their corpses with a chain saw and hide their body parts beneath the Coffee Shoppe?”
The jury, Judge Leopold, and Michael Morris stopped breathing. Hank took his time, looking from the jury box to his left, sweeping his gaze across the defendant’s table and up to Judge Leopold on his right before he said, “Yes, she did. She realized that killing those men and disposing of the bodies to cover up the crime was wrong. Mary Eileen Sullivan knew it was wrong then. She knows it now.”
“Was she responsible for her actions?”
Hank rested his chin in his hands, looked down, closed his eyes, took a breath and looked up.
“Yes.”
As he looked at Mary Eileen Sullivan, Hank continued, “She was responsible then, and she is now.”
“Was the defendant trying to ‘replace her father,’ as Dr. Julianne French has suggested?”
“I believe not.”
“What if anything does her father and Mary Eileen Sullivan’s memory have to do with this case?”
“I believe the defendant was not trying to ‘replace her father’ by dating, sleeping with and even marrying men before murdering them.”
Patricia said not a word. She crossed her arms and stepped back so Hank had a direct line of sight to the jury box.
“I believe that psychologically she was trying to kill her father.”
The courtroom exploded in furious emotion. Reporters were rushing to the hallway; some people were standing and cheering, others were in tears. Judge Leopold nearly broke her gavel pounding it on her desk to demand quiet.
When the chaos finally settled, Judge Leopold looked to Patricia.
“I rest my case,” A.P. Fry said.
“Do you have anything further?” Judge Leopold said to Michael Morris.
“Yes, your honor, a final witness."
"And who might that be?"
"Mary Eileen Sullivan."
A second blast of emotional sound and fury had to be gaveled down by Judge Leopold.
"There will be silence in this courtroom!” she said as the sound of her wooden gavel against her antique oak desk competed with the babble of conversation, sobbing, and sounds of outrage.
Leopold stood and swung the gavel from her shoulder to the desk until all in the room were silent and seated.
Judge Leopold let the silence hang as thick as the humidity on an August afternoon and then said quietly, “We are recessed until 9 o'clock tomorrow."
Thirty Seven
Nearly one-hundred people filed into a courtroom built for eighty-five, one by one, after first passing through two metal detection posts and then a court deputy with a wand. The crowd was much more subdued than the previous day's audience. Gone was the carnival atmosphere of people looking for a vicarious thrill. There was no easy banter nor friendly verbal jousting. And for the first time in forever, it was even difficult to lay a bet down on the verdict in Mary Eileen Sullivan's trial.
“What do you think, Tony?” Julie had asked yesterday as her eyes flickered with excitement. The past three days had been better than TV, “Does she get off?”
“Yeah, I think so,” said Tony who was much more interested in what he perceived as his destiny with Julie than Mary Eileen’s fate. Both were huge fans of true crime television shows and documentaries. He and Julie had set up tents on opposite sides of the courthouse lawn two days before Mary Eileen’s trial began. Retired, after twenty-five years toiling at St. Isidore Foundry, they were ready to relax. Unfortunately, relaxation became boredom, so separately, they had decided to move away from their TV sets and get a taste of real life.
Gradually their tents had moved closer together until finally there was no need for two anymore.
The day before they'd been lighthearted and excited. Today, Tony and Julie were almost somber as they prepared to hear from the killer herself.
Others of retirement age with the freedom to hang out at St. Isidore’s trial of the century went entrepreneurial. Suzie and Joseph had been selling homemade hangman’s noose-and-tree ceramic figurines to the Deadies who came from around the world to visit St. Isidore’s Suicide Forest. After first selling their little statues of men, women, children, and families swinging from trees, from a roadside cart, Suzie and Joseph had rented a storefront on DeVos Avenue. Business boomed. They opened a second location. But sensing the aroma of fresh opportunity and money, the couple had pulled their cart out of the barn on their twenty-acre hobby farm — purchased with their business profits, thank you Deadies very much — and set up shop on the courthouse lawn.
Adam King, who owned the Reading Room, St. Isidore’s premier (and only) bookstore, moved racks of true crime books to the sidewalk outside the courthouse. He knew a business opportunity when he saw one. Adam wasn't alone. St. Isidore’s tavern and restaurant owners opened an impromptu food festival the week of Mary Eileen’s trial.
Of course, what little criminal underworld there was in St. Isidore also sensed a chance to make money off the trial. Bookies had been taking bets for months on the fate of Mary Eileen.
But today, the audience, many of whom had lined up outside the courthouse before sunrise, knew that they would be witness to a historic day and were treating it with the reverence they felt the moment deserved.
Once the crowd was settled, and Judge Leopold in her seat, the first and only witness of the day was called to the stand; Mary Eileen Sullivan.
"You swear to tell the truth, the whole truth, so help you, God?"
"I do."
Late night TV show comics had made more than a few jokes about what would happen when Mary Eileen's hand touched the Bible.
The fire-and-brimstone crowd was disappointed, of course. Mary Eileen's hand came away unscathed.
Instead of crying out in agony, she and her audience settled in for what all knew could be an emotional confrontation when it was Patrica Fry's turn to cross-examine.
Michael Morris approached his client.
"Why did you decide to take the stand? I never let my clients do this unless I am sure they are innocent. You insisted, and I relented. I am not certain this is in your best interest, yet you do. Why?" Morris asked.
Mary Eileen paused and looked down as she touched the small silver cross on her necklace. It was the only piece of jewelry she wore, so it stood out against the dark gray dress she had worn through her trial.
Just as Judge Leopold opened her mouth to prod Mary Eileen to answer the question, she spoke.
"I want to tell my story without psychiatrists or anyone else getting in the way.”
All twelve members of the jury, as did the audience, leaned forward, some nearly falling out of their chairs to make sure they didn’t miss a word. Reporters stopped scribbling. There would be no need for notes. All felt that the words they were about to hear would remain ingrained in their memories for all time.
“Fine, let's begin. Mary Eileen, did you kill David Van Holt?”
Her eyes grew shiny with tears as Mary Eileen looked into her attorney’s eyes and then at the jury, before glancing back down at her hands.
“Mary Eileen...” Morris prodded his client. Testifying and subjecting herself to cross-examination had been all Mary Eileen's idea. But as they discussed the testimony the night before, Morris began to think this might be the best way to persuade a judge and jury to send his client to a mental health facility for treatment, rather than being warehoused in prison.
And from a purely selfish point of view, Morris knew the world was seeing this trial on cable TV a
nd was no less interested than any of the people in the courtroom. That couldn’t be anything but good for him, as long as Morris was able to make Mary Eileen lose control. He wanted her to lose it, emotionally, but not so much that the jury became afraid of her. He wanted their sympathy, not their fear, or worse, their revulsion.
Before she sat down in the witness booth, it had been a long night for Mary Eileen. Talking to Morris and being forced to relive the nightmares of two murders, and the bloody cover up of both killings had been horrendous for Mary Eileen. She had been obliged to bring up everything she’d kept hidden from the world, even from herself. Mary Eileen had thrashed about in the orange plastic chair. She had slammed first her fists, then her head on the table between her and Morris.
This morning, Mary Eileen looked back up at Morris, took a breath, and whispered, “Yes, yes, I did it.”
“You did what?”
Mary Eileen paused again.
“Mary Eileen, what did you do to David Van Holt?”
“I killed him.”
“Louder please.”
“I killed him!” Mary Eileen nearly stood up but caught herself as a court bailiff was moving to her side to push her back down into her seat.
“I killed him,” she whispered, slumping in the hard wooden chair.
Morris said as gently as possible, “How did you take the life of David Van Holt?”
Mary Eileen was distracted by the sound of David’s mother gently weeping.
Judge Leopold looked up but decided not to use her gavel. After suffering two miscarriages, she understood only too well a mother’s grief.
“I shot him in the head. I came up behind him with my gun, and I shot him in the head.”
"Oh my God!" said David's mother from the third row.
Two men helped her out of the courtroom.
Michael Morris paused. He licked his lips and looked at the jury trying to gauge how they were taking his client’s admission. Surprisingly, they seemed concerned for Mary Eileen Sullivan.
As Morris looked back at his client, he realized why. Mary Eileen’s expression had changed. Her chin was thrust out. Her shoulders were straight. She was no long slumped in the chair.
Morris asked,“Why?”
“He would not leave my apartment. We were divorced. I told him to leave. He would not. What was I supposed to do? I had a life to live,” Mary Eileen said as she slapped her hands on the oak railing in front of her. “I have a life to live! Damn it! He had no right!”
“So, you shot him?”
“Yes.”
“Tell me more about how and why it happened.”
Mary Eileen began to tremble, just as she had in the jail’s visitor’s room the night before. Morris had her very, very close to the edge. Mary Eileen hesitated. She chewed her lip. Morris didn’t push. He waited.
“I didn’t remember any of it, until my first session with Dr. French. But now I do. I remember the bullets hitting his head, and it was like his face exploded. He fell on to the table. And David was gone.”
Mary Eileen's stern facade had faded. Now she was an attractive young woman whose auburn hair was all the more stunning because of her pale complexion.
“But until your sessions with Dr. French, you did not remember the actual murder?”
“No, I did not.”
“Did you, or do you, remember cutting up his body with a chain saw, putting it in cement and hiding the body parts in your cellar?”
“I do now.”
“Does this seem a rational act to you?”
“Objection,” Patricia Fry said. “He’s asking the witness to reach a conclusion that she is not qualified to make.”
“Overruled,” said Judge Leopold. She and the world wanted to hear Mary Eileen’s answer.
Thirty Eight
Sally Randall, the jury foreperson, felt crushed by her responsibility. Not only was it up to her to lead the other eleven members of the jury to an unanimous decision; she, as did the other jurors, had the responsibility of deciding if a young woman should spend the rest of her life behind bars.
Was this an unbiased jury? Sally didn’t believe so, and neither, if they were honest, did her colleagues in the jury box. How could anyone in St. Isidore not have heard of the murders of these two men? Even if they hadn’t, how could any person who worked within two miles of the Coffee Shoppe not have purchased a coffee or a bagel from Mary Eileen Sullivan?
Judge Leopold, who was the kind of woman Sally dreamed her daughters would become, said the jurors only needed to be able to say that they had not made up their mind about the case.
Sally couldn’t speak for the rest of the jury’s honesty, but she had not decided if Mary Eileen should be found not guilty because of insanity.
Michael Morris explained to the jury in his opening statement the difference between a defendant being “not guilty” or “innocent.”
“‘Not guilty’ is a legal term,” Morris had said. “It means that under the law as you understand it when you reach your decision, Mary Eileen Sullivan was ‘not guilty’ because she was legally insane at the time of the killings. If you find her to be ‘not guilty,’ you will not be declaring that she is ‘innocent.’”
Morris paused to let the concept sink in. Not only was he legally accurate, but Morris could also see that in one paragraph, he had relieved much of the burden that weighed down on the jurors, at least those who cared about reaching a fair and honest verdict.
“Let me be the first, and I dare say I will not be the last, to tell you that Mary Eileen Sullivan did kill David Van Holt and Hans Mueller. She shot both of these men, ended their lives far too early, then proceeded to cut up their bodies with a chain saw and bury them with cement in the cellar of the Coffee Shoppe.”
Again, Morris paused if only to see the reaction of his jury. And, at that moment, the jury was his. Morris wore his most expensive suits in the courtroom. But, it wouldn’t have mattered if he had worn jeans. When it came to captivating a jury, Michael Morris was a force of nature.
"The attorney, especially defense lawyers in murder trials, is on a pedestal in the eyes of jurors," Morris told a table of second-year law students assembled in his office for coffee, scones, and wisdom. "These poor folks have never cracked a law book. They have never before come close to a courtroom or even had an encounter on the wrong side of the law with a police officer. They could not be more in awe of their surroundings than if they had somehow landed next to a surgeon performing a heart transplant."
“Sadly, most of my fellow defense attorneys, as will most of you I fear, either forget or never understand that fact of life,” Morris said. “Most lawyers don’t talk down to a jury, as they should; they try to be on the same level with the jurors. The jury doesn’t need that anymore than a dog needs to take its owner for a walk.”
Indeed, Sally and the rest of the jury felt beholden to Morris for doing them the favor of walking them through the explanation of the difference between ‘innocent’ and ‘not guilty.’
“So, Mary Eileen Sullivan is not innocent,” continued Morris to the jury. “But I would argue that she is most definitely not guilty by reason of temporary insanity. After all, how many of us have considered killing a neighbor, a co-worker, or even a spouse.”
Now, he paused to smile at the jurors, and they returned his grin. They were in on the joke. All twelve felt they were partners with Morris.
With a smile, he added, “But how many of us have pulled the trigger, or plunged the blade of a knife into the object of our anger?”
With the rhetorical question hanging in the air, Morris waited again, to give the jurors a chance to look at each other and smile.
“None of us have,” Morris said, and after a beat pause, added, “right?”
Several jurors looked at each other and chuckled.
“And why not?” Morris asked. “Because we knew it would be the wrong thing to do, or we knew we would be punished if caught; or perhaps, no matter how angry we got, we knew
the difference between right and wrong.”
The jury nodded its agreement as one.
“Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, I implore you to give me the opportunity to show you that Mary Eileen Sullivan is not innocent; she did kill two men. But that sense of reason you all possess that keeps you from sitting where she is now,” and he swept his hand through the air, directing the jury’s eyes to the defendant’s table, “is that same sense of reason that Mary Eileen Sullivan somehow lost, in what was, I contend, a moment of temporary insanity.”
Sally Randall didn’t remember a word of Patrica Fry’s opening statement. But she could have recited Michael Morris’ speech in her sleep. In fact, it had not been a speech, Morris was speaking directly to her, Sally was sure of that.
Sally had been angry enough at her ex-husband to kill him. She had not, but even today, twenty years after the divorce, there were nights Sally dreamed of his assassination. Sally felt that she understood where Mary Eileen was the minute before she pulled the trigger of the gun that killed David Van Holt and Hans Mueller. But, for some reason, while Sally was able to turn the heat down on the burner of her anger; Mary Eileen Sullivan was not.
Sally wanted to know why Mary Eileen had killed, perhaps to answer the question of why she had not.
So, like Judge Leopold and the rest of the world; Sally Randall, and her eleven peers waited for Mary Eileen’s response.
Thirty Nine
Patricia Fry knew her career was sitting on the witness stand. That wasn’t Mary Eileen Sullivan up there on the hard oak chair. That was Patricia’s destiny. If she closed this case with a win — and that would be a guilty verdict on two charges of first-degree murder with a double sentence of life in prison without the possibility of parole — she was going to the State Capitol in Lansing, and after that, Washington.
She’d given enough time and money to the leading Democrats of St. Isidore County to know a victory of that magnitude would result in a meteoric rise in her career’s trajectory.