by A. W. Gray
At the far back of the lower vanity cabinet shelf was a small prescription bottle with a plastic cap. The label was turned away from Stefanie, and inside the bottle were tan gelatin capsules. At first she thought that the bottle was her roommate John’s, that possibly he’d bought some medicine without mentioning it to her. Frowning in curiosity, Stefanie reached in to pick the bottle up and turn it around.
The prescription was for the general-purpose antibiotic Keflex, and had come from the drug department at Eckerd’s on Mockingbird Lane, near SMU. The recipient of the medicine, who was instructed on the label to take one every four hours, was Nancy Lyon.
Stefanie very nearly dropped the bottle. Only that morning there’d been another story in the paper having to do with Richard’s upcoming trial. Her fingers trembling nervously, Stefanie called downstairs and told Mary Ann Will what she’d found. Mary Ann bounded up the steps to Stefanie’s, and on seeing the bottle and its contents, she didn’t hesitate. She put in a call to the police department at once. Before the day was out, the bottle, encased in a plastic evidence envelope, was on its way to the crime lab. An analysis of the capsules’ contents showed each to contain Keflex save one; that suspicious pill, near the bottom of the prescription bottle, was packed with sodium nitroferrocyanide.
There was a problem with the pretrial incident which stood to bolster the defense’s position, the same problem, in fact, which was inherent with nearly all of the defense’s evidence: the source was Richard himself. He spent a great deal of time in playing detective prior to his trial, and though his discoveries might well have been untainted as newborn babes, Jerri Sims was to have a field day in making the defense’s case appear manufactured by the accused.
Shortly before relocating her contracting business to Austin, Denise Woods got a call from Richard one day. He seemed so excited that she dropped what she was doing and sped to the Shenandoah duplex, and arrived to find a cardboard box on the kitchen table with Richard frantically going through the box’s contents. In the box were pages and pages of notes taken in Nancy’s handwriting, notes which, according to Richard, were reflections made during Nancy’s incest counseling. The contents of the notes would become a major factor at Richard’s trial, but it was another item found inside the box that had his undivided attention when Denise arrived.
The item was an invoice from Chemical Engineering. Its owner, Charles Couch, is the man who responded to a request in the fall of 1990 from a woman who lived near SMU, by devising a formula for fire ant poison. The invoice stated that on September 6, 1990, Chemical Engineering had sold chemicals including arsenic trioxide to a customer identified as D.P. Foundation, whose address was shown as “in care of Nancy Lyon.” D.P. Foundation was one of the many charities to which Nancy had donated her time, and the invoice bore what appeared to be her signature. Underneath that was the number of her driver’s license. As Denise read over the sales ticket, she gave Richard’s arm a hopeful squeeze.
If legitimate, the invoice was critical to Richard’s defense. If the defense theory that either David Bagwell, Bill Jr., or Lynn Pease had done Nancy in failed to hold water, then her purchase of arsenic lent credence to the idea that she might have committed suicide. As Richard showed Denise the invoice, his eyes shone with excitement.
In retrospect, there were serious questions regarding Richard’s discovery that never occurred to Denise in the heat of the moment. According to him, he’d located the box while moving some of Nancy’s things, but his previous story had been that he’d gone over the duplex with a fine-tooth comb within days of Nancy’s death. If he had, how could a box the size of the one now on the table have gone unnoticed? Another question: Why had he made his revelation to Denise instead of Dan Guthrie, his lawyer? Of course, Richard may have been so excited at his discovery that he wasn’t thinking clearly, but there could be a more sinister reason for contacting Denise. Richard may have needed a witness.
32
During the lull between his indictment and the storm which was his trial, Richard had things on his mind other than the murder charges. Now that their suspicions were out in the open, the Dillards had no reason to continue their charade of sympathy for Richard. The hostility between Nancy’s family and their former in-law was about to become a public matter because in addition to his hatred for Richard over Nancy’s death, Big Daddy was worried sick about his young granddaughters. If Richard would poison his wife for profit, Big Daddy reasoned, why would he stop short of killing his children as well? Allison and Anna were, after all, the beneficiaries on Nancy’s $500,000 life insurance policy, and Richard stood to inherit the money should anything happen to the little girls.
The solution that Big Daddy’s army of lawyers suggested was a custody suit, an attempt in civil court to take the children forcibly away from their father. The court wouldn’t likely consider Big Daddy and Sue as acceptable guardians for Allison and Anna due to the grandparents’ age, the lawyers said, and suggested that the named plaintiff be one of Nancy’s living siblings. So far so good, but the Dillards’ choice of plaintiffs in the Dallas County action headed, “In the matter of Allison and Anna Lyon, minor children,” seems critically flawed to an outsider looking in.
Nancy’s older sister, Susan Dillard Hendrickson, was married to a practicing Wichita Falls orthodontist, and Susan had all the credentials that family judges look for in placing children in foster homes: a nice residence, a stable home life, a husband capable of adequate support. For reasons known only to the Dillard clan, however, the family chose not to use Susan in the lawsuit. The plaintiff instead turned out to be Bill Jr. and his wife, Mary Helen, and the thought of facing his hated former brother-in-law in civil court would have Richard licking his chops.
“It mystifies me,” an experienced family law specialist says, reclining his high-backed swivel chair and clasping his hands behind his head, “why they ever filed that suit to begin with. At the very least, the timing was bad. Christ, they were beat going in.” Visible behind him through his office window, downtown Dallas stretches far into the distance; the glistening ball atop Reunion Tower is outlined in sooty haze.
“They feared for the kids,” the interviewer says. “It’s what they’ve claimed all along.”
The veteran lawyer scratches his nose and brushes thin gray hair from his forehead. “Right, but look at the circumstances. To begin with, getting a judge to terminate somebody’s parental rights is damn near impossible, and I’ve been doing this twenty-eight years. I had a case, let’s see, seventy-eight or -nine. The guy was in the pen down in Huntsville, for rape, mind you, and he’d beaten some of these women damn near to death. His wife, ex-wife, had remarried and her new husband wanted to adopt the kids. I put her on the stand at the hearing. She testified how the guy had beat her up, beat the children, and that she was scared to death that if he ever got out he might kill all of them. And guess what happened?”
“From your tone,” the interviewer says, “I guess you lost.”
The elderly lawyer laughs out loud. “Lost? Lost? Hell, man, the judge gave us the hook before I could put my second witness on. That’s when I made up my mind, no more custody suits, not when you’re talking about taking somebody’s parental rights away. This Richard Lyon, he hadn’t been convicted of anything at the time, no way was anybody going to take those kids. All those Dillards accomplished was getting their dirty laundry aired.”
The interviewer regards his crossed legs. “The hearing didn’t go well for them.”
“That’s what I understand. That stripper, didn’t they have her down there?”
“She’s not a stripper, not any longer,” the interviewer says. “But yes, I think I get your point.”
“Sure,” the lawyer says, turning to his credenza to pour water from a chrome carafe into a styrofoam cup. He sips. “Now, I know Dillard Jr. has taken the cure, and for all I hear around he’s a changed man. But what have you really got? You’ve got a man
, a drug and alcohol addict who’s on record for having been up to Sierra Tucson, what, a couple of years ago? He’s been keeping a stripper, at least there was evidence to that, and buying the girl dope to boot, and to top it all off the other side shows he used to get in bed with his sister. And this is the guy that’s trying to take custody of another man’s kids? And the other man hasn’t even been convicted of anything? Christ, why they went for that hearing to begin with. It mystifies me.” The lawyer raises shaggy gray brows. “That hearing, that’s really what made a media circus out of the whole affair, wasn’t it?”
“It didn’t help,” the interviewer says. “There’d been hints, the Hard Copy piece and whatnot, but that hearing was the first time anyone testified to the skeletons in the family closet.”
“It looks to me,” the lawyer says, “that if they were bound and determined to do it, they’d have used the older sister, not the brother. Hell, everybody in town knows it was the old man’s doing to begin with, Dillard Sr. What difference does it make to him which of his living children has custody of the grandkids, he can see the little girls anytime he wants. It’s almost like they wanted everybody reading their family secrets in the newspaper.”
“Don’t ask me,” the interviewer says. “I’m sure they had reasons that we can only speculate about.” He clears his throat. “While we’re on that subject, though, I’ve got another question for you.”
The lawyer cocks his head to one side. “Shoot.”
“Well, if you feel that they never had a chance to get the children to begin with, and that seems to be the consensus of everybody I’ve talked to, why did the Dillards’ lawyers go ahead with the thing?”
The custody hearing was indeed a bad day in court for the Dillard family. It was an embarrassing day as well, particularly for Bill Jr. The string of witnesses whom Richard’s lawyer paraded in and out seemed to know every transgression that the elder Dillard son had ever committed, and before the day was over Bill Jr. regretted every alcohol-induced conversation he’d had with his brother-in-law.
The media was present in force for the hearing, and as the sordid tale of Nancy’s adolescent relationship with her brother unfolded, reporters scribbled madly away. The Dillards were crushed. Not only had they lost Nancy, it seemed now that every mistake a member of the family had made in a lifetime was about to become public knowledge. Furthermore, at least on the date of the custody hearing, Richard seemed invincible. It appeared to the Dillard clan that if he could get away with smearing the family in public, he might even get away with murder. Hatred for Richard, already a sore spot among the Dillards, now became a malignancy.
In addition to the barbecuing of Bill Jr., the hearing also brought a second murder suspect into the public eye. Richard’s casting of suspicion on Lynn Pease had previously been a nebulous sort of thing, but on the day of the custody hearing her possible motive for killing Nancy came to the forefront. Lynn herself took the stand, admitted under oath that she’d resented Nancy’s handling of the two Lyon children, that her dismissal as Allison and Anna’s nanny had driven her to distraction, and finally stated that she and her new psychologist husband were planning an addition to their home in which the two little girls could live. When Lynn’s testimony was finished, note-taking media people spoke to one another in whispers.
Once the evidence was in for the day, the court quickly ruled in Richard’s favor. He was Allison and Anna’s father, and as far as the judge was concerned, he would remain so. His confidence building, the risk of losing his daughters gone for the time being, Richard went home and gave a party.
Rosemary Lyon, who’d moved down from Connecticut to be with her son until after his trial, charcoaled steaks in the backyard of the duplex, and Richard invited several of the neighbors in. There was beer and wine for all, and after dinner he entertained his guests by strumming his guitar and singing ballads. As the evening drew to a close, he sat in a folding chair and held Allison on one knee and Anna on the other until long after everyone had gone home. His trial was scheduled for the week following Thanksgiving. By Christmas, Richard thought, a jury would have declared him an innocent man.
Evan Fogelman is a literary agent, which in New York City would make him one of the masses, but which in Dallas sets him apart from the crowd. Not that he’s the only literary agent in Dallas. There are a few others, to be sure, flashy types who hang around cocktail parties and make literary agent noises, but Fogelman seems the only one with clients who actually publish anything. In a city far removed from the Big Apple, a flesh-and-blood literary agent is a novelty.
Fogelman, a constantly smiling and energetic young man with horn-rim glasses and a deep devotion to his business, specializes in authors who write historical romance novels. Like all agents, however, Evan is interested in anything with the potential of making a buck. Which brings us to his role in our story.
In his constant search for talent, Fogelman makes numerous speeches to unpublished writers’ groups. It was at just such a gathering, held on the campus at the University of Texas at Dallas in the fall of 1991, that Fogelman encountered a would-be profiteer in the Lyon case who, on the surface at least, showed potential.
Fogelman, drink in hand, was in his usual writers’ group posture of responding to—or fending off, as the case may be—rapid-fire questions from a surrounding crowd of men and women with bestseller millions on their minds, when a man who’d jockeyed for post position in the mob nudged his elbow. “Tell me,” the man practically shouted in Fogelman’s ear, “are you in the market for true-crime books?”
“Yeah, I …” Fogelman said. “Sure, there’s a market for true crime. Depends on the case, and depends on how much the author knows about it. And whether the author can write, though these days that’s not nearly as important as it used to be.”
The elbow-nudger held his ground against would-be writers who shoved him from behind. “What about the Lyon case? Poison murder trial, you familiar with that one?”
Fogelman snapped his head around for a good look at the man. “What, are you kidding? Who hasn’t heard about it?”
“That’s the subject of my book,” the man said.
“You and every Tom, Dick, and Harry,” Fogelman said. “There’s certainly a market for it, but you’ve got to have an angle. To sell a publisher on true crime you need inside information. An exclusive pipeline to the police, or maybe even the defendant.”
“I’ve got an exclusive,” the man said. “When can we talk?”
Fogelman whipped a business card out of his breast pocket and handed it to the man. “We should visit,” he said. “This week’s tough, but call me Monday.”
The guy put Fogelman’s card away, and then handed the agent a business card of his own. “Don’t worry, I’ll be in touch,” the man said, then made his way through the crowd and headed for the exit.
Fogelman read the card over, then snapped to attention and craned his neck for another look at the man. “Well, I’ll just be damned,” he said to no one in particular. “That guy who just left. He’s Richard Lyon. Gee, isn’t he the suspect?”
Balmy fall moved into its annual pre-winter chill. Halloween came and went, and Dallas cheered loudly through November as the Cowboys marched with certainty toward their first playoff berth in eight long years.
Rosemary Lyon fixed the Thanksgiving turkey at the Shenandoah duplex. Allan had come in from Connecticut to be with his wife, son, and grandchildren for the holidays, and to remain in Dallas throughout Richard’s trial. Once Allison and Anna had gone outside to play after dinner, Richard and his mom and dad retired to the living room to relax, sip cognac, and make a few plans. Texas had not been a good influence on Richard at all, they decided, and once the trial was over he would take the little girls and move back to the Mansfield-Willimantic area. Back in his old home stomping grounds, Richard could put the tragedies of the past year out of his mind and get on with his life. A convicti
on was a possibility the Lyon family simply refused to consider.
33
The Frank Crowley Courts Building, magnificent edifice that it is, isn’t steeped in tradition because it isn’t very old. The red brick courthouse where Ruby went to trial and where, fifty years ago, Benny Binnion and his cohorts sauntered in to pay their fines and slip a few dollars into the sheriff’s campaign fund, is a mile to the west of the Crowley Building on the western edge of downtown. That’s where Dallas history lies. Before the first Monday in December 1991 the grand and gaudy Crowley Building was nothing but a curiosity for old-time Dallas courthouse buffs. The events of the pre-Christmas fortnight to follow, however, gave all local trial addicts a satisfying fix, and then some.
Towering over acres of rancid Trinity River bottomland on the opposite side of elevated Stemmons Freeway from Reunion Arena, the Crowley Courts Building draws double takes from passersby and is, some say, the epitome of government excess. A three-story glass-enclosed arch rises above its front entry, and its lobby, also three full floors in height, holds a network of suspended escalators for access to the second and third levels. Visitors approaching from the north exit the freeway at Continental Avenue, pass alongside the minimum-security jail for wayward gamblers and homeless drunks—which in a not-too-distant and glorious past was the ultra-suave Dallas Cabana Hotel, and claimed the celebrated actress Doris Day as its principal stockholder—then hang a little dipsy-doodle right-and-left onto Industrial Boulevard. From there it’s a two-block jaunt to the wide paved drive that runs along the northern side of the Crowley Building, and which leads to the covered six-level parking garage.