“Yeees,” Dr. Petridis agreed uneasily. “He was. But clinically, that wouldn’t be enough to exonerate him on mental health grounds. He knew what he was doing.”
“I quite agree. He knew that the men he killed were not his father or his stepfather.”
“Of course.”
“And so did Sofia Basta.”
“Well, yes. She would have understood that. But—”
“No further questions.”
DAVID ISHAG DIDN’T SLEEP A WINK that night, tossing and turning in his suite at the Beverly Wilshire. Nor did Matt Daley, in the ground-floor spare room at his sister’s house, which Claire had converted into a bedroom in order to make it easy for him to come and go in his wheelchair. Nor did Danny McGuire, in a lonely motel room a few miles east of the courthouse.
Ellen Watts had done a good job so far of painting her client, at least partially, as a victim. Despite the prosecution’s attempts at undermining Dr. Petridis’s sympathetic testimony, she still came across as a disturbed little girl, drawn into a web of hatred, fantasy and violence by the corrupt Mancini. But it was tomorrow’s evidence that would decide the fate of the woman each man still thought of by a different name and who, despite everything, each man wanted to spare from execution. Deep down they all still wanted to rescue her.
Tomorrow, that woman would finally speak for herself. She would answer what had become, for David Ishag, Matt Daley and Danny McGuire, the most important question of all:
Who are you?
CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR
THE TELEVISION CREWS WERE LINED UP along Burton Way en route to the courthouse as if they were covering a royal wedding. Today was the day the Angel of Death was going to testify in the Azrael murder trial and the sense of excitement and anticipation in the air was almost palpable. People were in the mood for a carnival, it seemed, smiling and joking with one another, cheering as Judge Muñoz’s bulletproof Cadillac swept by and catcalling as the armored prison vans bearing Basta and Mancini passed the security barrier and descended into the secure underground lot.
“It’s all just a game to them, isn’t it?” Matt Daley gazed out of the LAPD squad car in despair. He and Danny McGuire arrived at the trial together every morning. The squad car came courtesy of an old friend of Danny’s from back in his homicide-division days. “Don’t they realize there are lives at stake? Don’t they care?”
Danny wanted to respond that perhaps they cared more about the four lives that had already been taken than about the fate of two admitted killers. But he bit his tongue. Today was going to be tough for all of them, but it would be toughest on Matt. If Sofia—Lisa—incriminated herself up on that stand, death row was a certainty. No one, not even Matt Daley, would be able to save her then.
Inside courtroom 306 they took their usual places, oblivious to the gawking stares aimed their way from the spectators in the gallery. David Ishag was already in his seat. It was tough for an Indian to look pale, but David had achieved it this morning. Sitting rigid-backed in his chair, immaculately dressed as always, in an Ozwald Boateng suit and silk Gucci tie, the poor man looked as if he was about to face the firing squad himself.
“You okay?” Danny McGuire asked.
Ishag nodded curtly. There was no time for any further exchanges. Preening like a squat, Hispanic peacock, Judge Federico Muñoz strutted into court, basking in his short-lived moment in the spotlight and the rush he always got when a roomful of people rose to their feet to acknowledge the importance of his arrival. In truth, though, no one much gave a damn about Judge Dread this morning, any more than they did about Ellen Watts’s opening statement. There was a brief flurry of interest when Alvin Dubray announced matter-of-factly that his client, Frankie Mancini, had elected not to testify, a clear sign that his lawyer was shooting for a diminished responsibility/mental incapacity defense. But even the Mancini team’s legal maneuverings were of little interest to those assembled today in courtroom 306. Only when the name Sofia Basta was called, and the slight, slender figure at the defendants’ table was escorted to the stand to take her oath, did the room come to life.
“Please state your full, legal name for the court.”
“Sofia Miriam Basta Mancini.”
Her voice was neither strong nor faltering, but deep and mellow, projecting an aura of peace and calm. David Ishag, Danny McGuire and Matt Daley all remembered that voice and each man felt his heart leap when he heard it.
Ellen Watts started off gently. “Ms. Basta, would you begin by telling us in your own words how you met Mr. Mancini and to characterize your relationship with him.”
“I was fourteen. I was living in a home for children in New York, in Queens, and Frankie was transferred there from a different home.”
“And the two of you became friends?”
“Yes. More than friends. I loved him.”
As one, the court turned to see if Mancini had displayed any reaction to this announcement, but his face remained as regally impassive as ever.
Sofia went on: “In the beginning, he was different. I mean, he was so beautiful and smart and charismatic. But he also treated me differently.”
“In what way?”
“He talked to me. He listened. And he respected me. He never tried to touch me.”
“Sexually, you mean?”
Sofia nodded. “The other boys at the home, and the men there, the staff…they all forced themselves on me.” Matt Daley bit his lower lip so hard it bled. “But not Frankie. He was different and he kept them away from me.”
Ellen Watts paused to allow the impact of Sofia’s testimony to sink in, especially among the female jurors. “You’re saying that you suffered sexual abuse while at this children’s home?”
Sofia nodded, hanging her head. “I didn’t know that’s what it was at the time. I thought that was just…what happened. But Frankie made me see things differently. He told me I was beautiful, that I was special. I had a book, it was about a princess, from Morocco. We used to read it together. He told me that the princess was my grandmother, he’d found it out somehow. He knew things about my past, like what had happened to my mother and my sister. I had a twin, you see. We were separated.”
As she went back into the past, something strange began to happen to Sofia’s face. Her eyes took on a distant, glazed expression, almost as if she were under hypnosis.
“The others didn’t believe I came from an important family. They were jealous. But Frankie understood. He knew. He loved me.”
Very gently, Ellen Watts said, “Sofia. You understand now that that isn’t true, don’t you? That the story about the princess wasn’t really your history. That it was just a story. And the letter from the lawyer, about you and your ‘twin sister,’ Ella, that was just something that you made up, you and Frankie, right?”
For a moment a look of sheer panic passed over Sofia’s features. Then, like someone waking from a trance, she said quietly, “Yes. I know that now. It wasn’t real.”
“But at the time you believed it was. That was when you changed your name legally to Sofia Basta, wasn’t it? Basta was the name of the Moroccan family from the story.”
“They told me that later. Yes. I think so.”
She looked so confused and forlorn, Matt Daley couldn’t bear it. Even Danny McGuire found it hard to believe that this degree of mental confusion could be an act.
“So once you became Sofia, how did things develop with you and Frankie? When did the relationship become physical?”
“Not until after we married. And even then it was rare that we…he didn’t really want to.”
“He didn’t want to have intercourse?”
“No.”
“Did you suspect that he might be homosexual?”
“No, never. He loved me, he was passionate in other ways. You have to understand, I…I had no life and Frankie gave me one. He saved me. I didn’t question that. I embraced it.”
“So the two of you married and moved to California.”
“Yes
. Frankie was brilliant, he could have gone anywhere, done anything. But he was offered a job at a law firm in L.A., so that’s where we went. It was a new life for us, so he gave us new names. He became Lyle. And I was Angela. We were very happy…at first.”
“It was as Angela that you met Andrew Jakes?”
Sofia twisted her hands together, as if kneading an invisible ball of dough. “Yes. Angela met Andrew. Lyle set it up.” She’d slipped into the third person so naturally, at first people barely noticed. But as the depths of her schizophrenia were laid bare, scattered gasps could be heard around the court as, for one spectator after another, the other shoe dropped. “Poor Angela. She didn’t want to marry him. She didn’t want him anywhere near her…he was so old.” Sofia shivered. “She felt sick every time he touched her.”
“She?” Ellen Watts asked the question that was on everyone’s lips. “Don’t you mean you, Sofia?”
“No! It was Angela. I’m telling you about Angela, remember? Please, don’t confuse me. It’s so hard to remember.” She pressed her hands to her temples. “Angela didn’t want to marry Andrew Jakes. She was a lovely girl, Angela. But Frankie made her do it. He said Andrew needed to be punished for what he’d done and Angela had been created to punish him. There was no way out.”
“And what had Andrew Jakes done?” Ellen Watts asked. “Why did he have to be punished? Was he a bad man?”
“Andrew…bad…? Not to Angela, no. He was quite sweet actually. Thoughtful…She was fond of him in the end. But he’d done the same thing as all the others, you see. He’d abandoned his family. His children…That was why he had to die.”
Danny McGuire saw his life flash before his eyes. Could it really have been that simple all along, the link between Azrael’s victims? That they’d all walked out on their children, the way that Frankie Mancini’s father walked out on him?
“That’s why they all had to die. Andrew, Piers, Didier, Miles. It was for the children. The children had to be avenged.”
You could have heard a pin drop as Ellen Watts asked her next question.
“Who killed Andrew Jakes, Sofia? Was it Angela or Frankie? Or did they both do it together?”
Sofia answered without hesitation. “It was Frankie.” She broke down in sobs.
“That’s a lie!” Mancini jumped to his feet. “This is bullshit, it’s a fucking performance. She chose Jakes as the first kill. She picked him out, not me!”
Judge Muñoz sternly called for order, and court officers quickly subdued Frankie and wrestled him back into his seat.
Sofia was still talking, in a trance, apparently unable to stop. “He slit Andrew’s throat. It was awful! There was blood everywhere…I’d never seen so much blood. Then he raped poor Angela…She was begging him to stop, but he wouldn’t, he went on and on and on, hurting her. Then…then he tied them together and he left.”
“And where were you while this was happening, Sofia?” Ellen Watts asked. “Do you remember that?”
“Of course.” Sofia looked surprised by the question. “I was where I always was…Watching.”
ELLEN WATTS QUESTIONED HER CLIENT FOR another hour before Judge Muñoz ordered a two-hour recess. Officially this was to allow the other attorneys to prepare their cross-examinations. In reality, the extended break would give the slew of media people time to indulge in an orgy of comment and speculation on Sofia Basta’s spectacular performance on the stand so far, earning the Azrael trial maximum exposure and guaranteeing it a place as the lead item on the East Coast lunchtime news.
The second hour of Sofia’s testimony had continued in the same dramatic vein as the first. She had interludes of perfect lucidity, when she seemed fully aware of who she was, where she was, and why she was answering questions. During these periods she appeared calm, intelligent, articulate and remorseful about her role in the killings. But when asked to go back to the nights in question, she inevitably slipped back into the third person, talking about each of her alter egos—Angela, Tracey, Irina, Lisa and Sarah Jane—as if they were real women she had known and befriended, dissociating their experiences entirely from her own. In her warped mind, Tracey’s love for Piers and Lisa’s for Miles Baring were not acts. The love, the sorrow, that the wives felt were real emotions. For each murder, the message was the same: Frankie had arranged, orchestrated and carried out the killings, driven by his own desire for “retribution.” He had “created” the various wives to help him. And then he had hurt them—while poor Sofia watched.
The question now was: Was her apparent insanity an act, as Frankie Mancini vociferously insisted, a charade designed to send him to death row while she lived out the remainder of her days in some cushy psychiatric ward? Or was it the truth?
Roused from his usual torpor by the mesmerizing effect that Basta’s evidence appeared to have had on the jury, particularly the women, William Boyce opened the session that began after the break aggressively, going straight for the jugular.
“Ms. Basta, when you assumed different identities expressly for the purpose of marrying and murdering defenseless elderly men—”
“Objection!” Ellen Watts screeched.
“On what grounds, Your Honor? She’s admitted that much under oath.”
“I’ll allow it. You may finish the question, Mr. Boyce.”
“When you assumed these identities, presumably that required a lot of preparation?”
“I don’t understand.”
“Oh, I think you do. Before each crime you had to change your appearance, and invent and learn an entirely new backstory for your new ‘character.’ You’d have had to practice accents, find employment, make friends. Establish a base from which you could engineer a meeting with the intended target, then begin the business of seducing him.”
Ellen Watts got to her feet again. “Is there a question here?”
“There is. How long did it take? To become Angela or Tracey or any of the others?”
Sofia looked uncomfortable. “It varied. Sometimes months. Sometimes years.”
“So you would spend months, or even years in training, preparing for your next kill?”
“It wasn’t like that.”
“Oh? What was it like?”
“Frankie would take me away for a while, after…” Her voice trailed away.
“After the murders?”
She nodded. “We were supposed to go and visit my sister. We were going to find her together. But then we’d end up moving again. The new names were supposed to be a fresh start. They weren’t part of any plan.”
“Of course they were part of a plan, Ms. Basta! Did you or did you not know, when you met Sir Piers Henley, that you intended to marry him?”
“Tracey married him.”
“You were Tracey, Ms. Basta. Did ‘Tracey’ know that her real husband, Frances Mancini, intended to murder Sir Piers?”
“I…I don’t know.” Sofia looked around her in panic, like a fox cub surrounded by a pack of slavering hounds. Matt Daley couldn’t stand to watch. Leave her alone! Stop bullying her.
“You do know, Ms. Basta. You know very well. Tracey helped Mancini get into the house in Chester Square. She disabled the alarm for him, didn’t she?”
“Yes.” Sofia’s voice was barely a whisper. “But you don’t understand. She had no choice. She had to. Frankie—”
“Yes, yes, we know. Frankie ‘made’ her do it. Ms. Basta, isn’t the truth really that you willingly and actively participated in all these murders?”
“No.”
“That you and Mancini planned them together, months or even years in advance?”
“I told you, it wasn’t like that.”
“What was more sexually arousing to you, Ms. Basta? The rape fantasy? Or watching the innocent men you entrapped being mercilessly butchered?”
“Objection!”
“Overruled.” Judge Muñoz was starting to enjoy himself. He’d waited a long time for the prosecution to make this bitch squirm and he wasn’t about to let her off the ho
ok now. “Answer the question, Ms. Basta.”
For the first time, and quite unexpectedly, Sofia showed a flash of anger. “I wasn’t aroused, Mr. Boyce,” she shouted. “I was raped and beaten. I was forced. He told me if I didn’t do what he asked, he’d do the same to my sister. That he’d rape her and torture her and kill her. If you think I derived enjoyment from that, you’re the sick one, not me.”
Ellen Watts put her head in her hands.
William Boyce allowed himself a small smile.
“I feel obliged to remind you, Ms. Basta, that you don’t have a sister. But I do so appreciate your use of the word I. No further questions.”
EVERYONE AGREED THAT WILLIAM BOYCE’S CROSS-EXAMINATION had been devastating to Sofia Basta’s defense. The L.A. Times put it most succinctly: “Never in the history of criminal justice has not just a single word, but a single letter, had such a profound impact on a case.” In one enraged outburst, Sofia had turned all the doubt and goodwill so carefully cultivated by her attorney over the previous few days into hardened certainty: the Angel of Death’s “identity confusion” was nothing but an act. And if that was fake, how much more of her insanity defense might be put on?
Ellen Watts did her best to limit the damage, calling Sofia’s current, state-appointed prison psychiatrist to give an evaluation of her mental state. Dr. Lucy Pennino was a strong witness and her testimony was unequivocal: Basta was “without question” suffering from paranoid schizophrenia. Like most schizophrenics, her condition was cyclical—it would come and go—and her mental state now, during the trial, was almost certainly more lucid than it would have been during the times of the murders, when she was taking none of the mood-stabilizing medication she was taking now.
“A person suffering from her condition would be highly susceptible to influence by others, both for bad and good. Matthew Daley, for example, seems to have had a profoundly positive effect on Sofia, when she met him as Lisa Baring. During my sessions with Ms. Basta, she has described theirs as being a genuine love relationship. Had she met Mr. Daley before the first murder, rather than after the fourth, it is my professional opinion that the Azrael killings would never have taken place.”
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