“Did you find out how he found you in the first place?”
“Yes. I discovered the truth about that through these emails.”
“And how did he find you in the first place?”
“Apparently he had hired a private detective to find me. The private detective found me, and told him that I was working at Starbucks, and that I lived in San Diego, and that's when he decided that he was going to go out and meet me, specifically, and ask me to marry him. When he found out what had happened to me at the orphanage because of Dr. Weber, his employee, he decided to find me and give me the life that I was missing when I was a little girl. He felt terribly guilty about what had happened to me. At least, that's what I gathered from the emails."
“So, Lawrence felt guilty about what had happened to you because of his company’s experiment, and he decided to marry you and pay you a million a year to be married to him. Is that correct?”
”Yes. That's right. At least, that's what he told Dr. Weber."
"He found out about the two of you six years ago, and, can you tell by the emails, exactly how he found this out?"
“Well, as I said, he's the CEO of the Pegasus company, but he's not all that involved with the day-to-day operations. He’s not a micromanager, so that's the reason why he didn’t know about this study in the first place. But then, I guess that he was told about the study by a man by the name of Simon Thompson.”
“Objection, hearsay,” Jenna said, standing up.
“Your honor, the evidence regarding Simon Thompson goes to the notice that Lawrence had about my client’s situation. His testimony does not go to whether or not Dr. Weber actually conducted this experiment, therefore it’s not hearsay. And besides, my client is only testifying about what the emails state about Simon Thompson, and Dr. Weber has already authenticated these emails.”
Judge Watts nodded her head. “I’ll allow it. Please proceed, Ms. Vasiliev.”
“Okay, now you were saying about Simon Thompson?”
“Right. Well, Simon was a guy who was working in the same division as Dr. Weber and he was whistleblower about my study. He specifically told Lawrence about what had happened with Oksana and me. And, I guess that Lawrence did not fire Dr. Weber, because Dr. Weber apparently threatened him, and said that he believed that his company would be ruined if this got out. That was what I gathered when I reviewed the emails."
“And did your husband do anything about this study after Simon told him about it?”
"No. Aside from tracking me down and marrying me, he apparently didn’t do anything. “
“I have nothing further for this witness,” I said, sitting down.
I sat down, thinking that I probably did all I could with her. I made her sympathetic, and I showed the jury that she did not hate her husband, she hated herself.
Jenna knew that she was going to have to treat Marina much more gingerly than she had thought that she would have to earlier. But that was okay. She was able to finesse the situation, and she delicately cross-examined her.
For the next hour and a half, Marina kept to her story even though Jenna crossed her as best she could. She was finally excused, and I was relieved.
We got through it.
Now, it was onto the good stuff.
Chapter 38
The next witness I put on was Marina’s doctor. Dr. Alan took the stand to testify about Borderline Personality Disorder, what brings it on, what are the symptoms, and how the individual has a fractured sense of self. He explained to the jury that Borderline makes the sufferers prone to rage, terrified of abandonment, and sufferers tend to have a shifting sense of self. They typically go from self-loathing to self-aggrandizement, and people are either bad or good to them.
He was able to explain Marina's illness well enough that I knew that the jury knew that self-hatred was the cause of the borderline’s rage and pain. He also explained that people with BPD are not any more violent than anybody else in the general population. That was very important that I got that out. I did not want the jury to think that because my client had this illness that she would be more violent than another person.
Brock was next on the the stand. He testified about how he found out that he, too, was a part of an experiment that he knew nothing about. His testimony was uneventful, but I just had to call him so that the jury could get the other side of the story.
The next witness was going to be most important.
I was going to call Dr. Weber.
Chapter 39
Dr. Weber was not happy about being called. In fact, I had a hard time getting him to come to trial. I had to subpoena him, a subpoena that he had tried to quash several times. Of course - he knew what exactly happened. I guess that he thought that he would never have to answer for what he did.
Guess again.
I called him to the stand and he entered through the back doors, slowly walking towards the witness stand. His head was bent over and he looked furtively at the people in the gallery, and at the members of the jury.
I hoped, if I did my job, that the jury would stop hating my client and start hating him. If things went well, this was exactly what would happen.
He raised his right hand and was sworn in, and I got to work, but not before I got permission to treat him as hostile. I knew that I was going to have to ask him leading questions, so this was necessary.
“Could you please state your name for the record,” I said.
“Dr. Robert Weber,” he said, lifting his chin up slightly in defiance. He was trying to convey that he wasn’t intimidated, but then, he meekly looked away, and then looked down at the witness stand.
"And, can you explain to the jury how you are related to the victim in this case, Lawrence Murphy?”
"Yes. He's the CEO have Pegasus Inc., and I’m the head of the division that deals with twin studies.”
“I see. And what do the twin studies entail?"
"Well, just what it says. I study twins. Identical twins. I am particularly interested in twins who have different environments. Like, if one twin is with one parent, and the other twin is with the other parent, in totally different environments. And I have done research studies on how different these twins are. How the environment affects each identical twin, and how it explains the diversions in their behaviors, their personality and their intellect."
"I see. Now, do you study twins that have been separated at birth?"
“Yes, but that is very difficult to do."
"And why is that?"
"Because twins are not usually separated at birth. And when they are, they usually are adopted by families in a closed adoption. So I'm not able to get information about them."
"And did you find a way around that whole situation?”
"What do you mean?"
“I mean, you found a way to study twins who were separated at birth. Twins who were put in completely different situations. You found a way to make sure that one twin was brought up in an abusive and neglectful situation. And the other twin was given everything. Isn’t that right?"
He looked over at the judge, over at Jenna, and then at me. He knew it was coming. He read the emails earlier. Yet, he still looked like a cornered animal.
"Yes." He took a deep breath. "Yes. I did find a way around that whole situation."
I guess he figured that there was no use lying now.
"In fact, you managed to manipulate the situation, by putting my client into a Soviet orphanage, and you made sure that she stayed there for the first seven years of her life, while her identical twin was adopted out by a very loving family, it isn't that right?""
"Yes."
"And, isn't it true that Lawrence found out about what you were doing, six years ago?"
"Yes. That's right."
I was pacing around. This is all stuff that the jury had already known, because I brought it about in various ways, through Marina, through the emails, all of that.
I was going to ask him something that the jury could not kn
ow about. "In fact, Marina and her identical twin Oksana, they were not the only children that you did this with, isn't that right?"
Dr. Weber nervously scratched his forehead and then put his fingers to his hair. He looked down at the witness stand again, and he looked up at me, and at the jury again. He looked like he wanted to find a way out the situation, any way he could possibly think of.
"Yes, that's right."
"In fact, you did this with 500 other kids, didn't you?"
"Yes."
Some of the jury members gasped and Judge Watts glared at them. She motioned them to be quiet. I smiled when I heard the gasps because I knew that I was winning.
“500 pairs of identical twins were separated at birth at your behest, right?”
“Right.” He was still looking at the witness stand, his eyes not meeting mine. He was shaking. I guess that he knew that he was caught.
“What you were doing was that you were going around to countries that were developing, countries that did not have very good records for their kids, and you found as many identical twins as you could, and you paid all these children’s mothers if they would give up their children to you, isn’t that right?”
"Yes. That's what I would do. I would find a mother who would be struggling to care for her children, somebody who was desperate, and I would offer her a better life here in America, and money, if she would relinquish her children to me. Yes that's what I did."
He seemed almost proud of it, now.
Maybe he was.
"You went to places all around the globe for this, didn't you?"
“Yes. That's what I did."
"In fact, you went to places like China, Thailand, Guatemala, El Salvador, multiple countries in Africa, the Philippines, any country that was developing, and you knew that you could get away with it, because there was lax enforcement with their adoption procedures. If you had difficulties getting these kids, you would just bribe the officials to get what you wanted. Isn’t that right?"
“Yes. That is what I did. I don't think that what I did was wrong. These mothers, they had no choice but to give their kids up. They certainly could not care for them. And, in every one of these cases, one of the children got a life beyond that they could have ever dreamed of if I never came along.”
“Fair enough. I guess I could say that if you were genuinely paying these mothers for their children, and you actually made sure that both children were adopted, together, to a loving family, I would say that you were not a monster. But that wasn't the case, now was it?"
"No. It was not the case."
"In fact, with all these kids, you did the exact same thing. Exactly what happened to my client, you did the same thing with all these 500 other pairs of kids. You gave one of the kids to an adoptive family - you made sure that one of the kids was adopted through the proper adoption agency, and you made sure that that kid was placed with a good family. The other kid, he or she wasn’t so lucky, right? These kids were forced to stay in an orphanage for seven years. You made sure with these other kids that nobody could adopt them from the orphanage for the first seven years of their lives. Isn’t that right?”
By now, he didn't even try to pretend that he was anything but what he was – a monster.
"That's right. Listen, I had a very pinpointed study.”
“What do you mean by pinpointed study?"
"My pinpointed study was to show how wildly divergent environments can affect identical twins. And, yes, I wanted to make sure that the two twins did have extremely divergent backgrounds. It wasn't enough that I studied two twins who lived with two different parents, one twin to the mother and one to the father, because usually in these cases, the father and the mother were roughly equal. Roughly equal socioeconomic status, roughly equal environments, roughly equal in every way. I mean, the mother might have less money than the father or the father might be more strict, or there might be other slightly divergent factors between the households. But the two households usually were too similar for me to determine, with any degree of certainty, how much nurture plays in a person’s development. Plus, I had a very limited amount of material I could work with in studying these separated twins, because judges don’t usually want to split up twins, so they usually don’t award one twin to the mother and one to the father. So, yes, I had to manipulate the situation. I won’t apologize for it. My research has yielded some really solid results. So yes, I had to go the extra mile to make sure I separated the twins myself, and that the environments could not be more different."
"I see. So, you ruined the life of one of the kids, and, in every one of the situations you manipulated, I can assure you that one of the kid's life is ruined. I've spoken with some of the other twins and I can tell you that they went through just as much hell as my client did in their young lives. Those orphanages were not places where anybody should grow up in. Orphanages in poor countries are poorly funded, so these kids grow up in horrible conditions. Abuse, neglect, starvation. And you made sure that each one of these 500 kids had to stay in the orphanage. If someone wanted to adopt them, they could not. You paid off every one of these orphanages make sure that that happened. These orphanages were so desperate for funding, they happily took your money and accepted your conditions. You did this for every child. Isn't that right?"
"That's right."
“And why did you do this study?”
"I had to do this study for our cloning division. Our company is on the cutting edge of human cloning, and we are working towards being the first company who will actually produce a human being through cloning. It's up to me to be able to tell the parents who want to clone their kid how the kid’s environment is going to shape them. So, it’s very important that this study was done.”
"And isn't it true that Lawrence found out, within the past few months, exactly what you were doing with all these kids?”
Dr. Weber looked like he wanted to think about whether he wanted to lie or not. If he did try to lie, I was going to present him with the email chain, because that was how I found out about all of this. Marina showed me the email chain, and then I did my own research on all the kids that he separated all over the world. Regina and I managed to track each one of them down, and I was able to talk to most of them. Most of them told me the same kind of war stories that Marina told me. They all told me about the neglect and the abuse. Most of them had severe psychological effects from it, just like Marina had.
The kids who were adopted out when they were very young fared much better, unlike Oksana, but I was able to work with the adoption agencies who had adopted out them out, and reunite them with their long-lost twin. Most of them were happy to find their twin, but they were also extremely enraged that this would happen.
"Yes. Lawrence did find out about it."
“And you actually embezzled millions of dollars from Pegasus to pay for these studies, because, in actuality, you were doing these studies on the sly, weren’t you? These studies were off the books, weren’t they?”
“Yes, that’s right. Nobody knew at Pegasus what I was doing. Nobody could know.”
“Sounds like you knew that it was wrong, doesn’t it?”
“No, it wasn’t wrong.”
I decided to pivot. “Actually, Lawrence knew about Marina years ago, didn't he?"
"Yes. He knew because a guy named Simon told him about it. He only found out about Marina, though, so Lawrence also only knew about Marina at this point.”
"But just recently he found out that you were doing it with a lot of other kids, didn't he?”
“Yes. He did find that out."
"How did he find that out?
“He found it out from different person. She was someone whom I trusted. I never trusted anybody with my study. I never told anybody about it, either. I wanted the study to be very controlled. But, I met a woman. Edison Caldwell. And, I fell in love with her. I trusted her, so I told her what I'd been doing with this kids. And she betrayed me. She betrayed me, and I was blindsided.
"
"Betrayed you. What do you mean by that?"
“She told Lawrence. She told Lawrence about the kids. She told him about the 500 kids I separated over the years."
“You mean 500 pairs that you have separated over the years, don't you?"
"Yes. That's what I mean. The 500 pairs I separated over the years. She found out about it, and she told Lawrence."
“She told Lawrence about it. What did he do?"
"He told me that he was going to immediately go to the FBI and tell them what I did. Well, no, he didn't tell me he was going to do it immediately. He was going to consult with some attorneys about what would happen to his company if this got out. He had to do some succession planning, and he had to make sure that the company did not completely go under when the lawsuits started. So, I knew it was just a matter of time before I was exposed."
“I see. So he was going to expose you, specifically, right?"
"Right. He was going to expose me, specifically.”
“And you knew that if Lawrence went to the FBI, you would spend the rest of your life in prison, didn’t you?”
He shook his head. “I don't know what I did wrong. I gave their mothers a better life. I gave one of the kids a better life. If I never stepped in, the mother and both of the kids would have ended up dying in poverty. That is if both of the twins didn’t end up in the orphanage anyway. What I did was give the mother and one of the kids a good life. I gave two of them a chance. If not for me, none of them would have had a chance.”
He made a point, but I had to ignore it. “You were trafficking. You were buying children. That is against the law. Not to mention the fact that because one of the kids was kept in a terrible condition, you would have been personally sued. You had a lot to lose, didn't you?"
“Yes, I did have a lot to lose.”
"You knew that Lawrence knew about these kids, but, to your knowledge, nobody else did, isn’t that right?”
By Reason of Insanity Page 20