I turned to Cosmo, who was sprawled out on the floor next to me. “That’s us, buddy,” I said, getting up to shut off the TV. I didn’t want to hear any more.
When I got to work that afternoon, I found notes about Rosie’s later testimony on my desk. Apparently, things had gotten worse when Gamoian asked Rosie about her sex life with Marcus.
“I don’t like to talk about my private life,” Rosie said, explaining that she didn’t want to state the names of male or female genitalia. Gamoian persisted, however, and Marcus cried from his chair as he watched his loyal niece struggle with the words. Rosie went on to defend Marcus’s “loving,” saying all the girls went along with it willingly, because Marcus told them he was preparing them to please their future husbands.
“We would be better women and we would have experience,” she said, quoting his rationalization. She admitted she was still wearing the wedding ring that Marcus had given her when she was a teenager and said she would always remain faithful to him.
When I came home from work that night, Rosie was in her room with the door closed. She never stayed in there by herself at night.
“Is she okay?” I asked Elizabeth quietly. “How long has she been in there?”
“She’s okay, Alysia. I think she wants to be alone.”
ON THURSDAY, MARCH 31, Elizabeth was called to the witness stand. In exchange for her testimony, Gamoian had granted her immunity, an order that was upheld and signed by Judge Putnam. The immunity deal meant that nothing Elizabeth said could be used to prosecute her, but she could still face perjury and contempt charges if she lied on the stand. Elizabeth was the only Wesson to accept such a deal.
Gamoian started off by asking Elizabeth to state her age and date of birth. Elizabeth said her birthday was July 31, 1959, but then mistakenly said she was forty-four. She was actually forty-five, but I knew her world had shut down after the murders and her concept of time was off.
Gamoian was not so understanding. Her irritation with Elizabeth was immediately apparent, and it would grow increasingly so in the coming days, to the point where I heard her sputtering with exasperation. Elizabeth, in turn, appeared just as annoyed with Gamoian. The prosecutor’s lack of compassion and sympathy for Elizabeth and the other female family members seemed quite obvious, at least to me.
Oftentimes, Elizabeth gave the prosecutor convoluted answers when it was clear that Gamoian wanted simple ones. For example, when she asked Elizabeth to identify Jonathan’s mother, Elizabeth answered, “Sofia gave Jonathan to me, so I am his mother.”
Forty minutes in, the judge called it quits for the day, so Elizabeth had three days off before she had to continue her testimony.
THE APARTMENT WAS very quiet that weekend. Kiani was back in Santa Cruz. Elizabeth sat on the couch the whole time, staring at the TV or writing down thoughts on a yellow notepad. Rosie kept mostly to herself, drawing animals in her sketchbook or playing with Cosmo. I ran errands and went out with friends, but I was just going through the motions. It was hard to have fun knowing that mental anguish was raging in my apartment.
When Elizabeth returned to the stand on Monday, she went over the past three decades of her life with Marcus. Her answers were always brief, and she and Gamoian often sounded agitated. The tension between the two was building, and I knew things could erupt at any time. It didn’t help that Elizabeth often looked over at Marcus before answering a question.
The prosecutor confronted Elizabeth about why, if she was cooperating with police, her first interview with detectives was so scant on details.
“I just lost my children,” Elizabeth said, adding that she had buried her children right before the detectives asked for a second interview.
“I just couldn’t do it. Could you?” she asked Gamoian. The prosecutor said she could if that was what it took to bring justice to the nine murder victims.
“Well, I’m not you,” Elizabeth said. She added that she and her family had been threatened and ridiculed by the general public, which only made life harder.
I was away from court covering other stories for part of the time, so I wasn’t there to watch the fireworks on Tuesday afternoon, but I found out at the station what had happened. The conflict started when Gamoian tried to trigger more of a memory from her hostile witness and began grilling Elizabeth about what she saw in the back bedroom the day of the murders.
Elizabeth kept saying she didn’t remember anything except Lise’s eyes and a pile of blankets. “I just see her eyes,” she said.
Gamoian continued to press her, but all that did was make Elizabeth cry and clam up. The prosecutor came closer and closer to the stand as she asked her questions.
“Why did you run away? It’s a mother’s duty to protect her children,” Gamoian said.
Elizabeth, who was sobbing by this point, didn’t respond.
“Is it because you didn’t want to be killed?” Gamoian asked loudly.
“Objection, Your Honor,” Marcus yelled, capturing everyone’s attention. “The prosecutor is angry.”
Judge Putnam scolded Marcus, telling him he could speak only through his lawyers.
“I didn’t mean any disrespect,” Marcus said.
Elizabeth grew increasingly overwhelmed with emotion. “I should have stayed,” she kept saying as she struggled to calm down and catch her breath. When she couldn’t, she turned to the judge and said, “I don’t feel good. I feel dizzy. I can’t breathe.”
Elizabeth kept crying, turning to the bailiffs and begging them to “make it stop.”
“I can’t think no more,” she said.
Putnam called a recess and told her that paramedics were coming to check on her. After the medics arrived, they tested Elizabeth’s blood pressure, pulse, and blood sugar and said she was okay to continue.
On Wednesday, Elizabeth pounded the witness stand under Gamoian’s questioning. “He didn’t kill my children,” she declared.
Elizabeth said she blamed Sofia and Ruby for setting off the shooting, but she told jurors that it was Sebhrenah who killed the children.
“I can’t believe she did it,” Elizabeth said.
“Sebhrenah?”
“Yes.”
The judge ruled that her statements should be stricken from the record, but it was too late. The jury had heard her speak. Elizabeth and the prosecutor continued to battle, as Elizabeth told Gamoian she was tired of being mistreated.
The conflict ran into Thursday, when the prosecutor asked Elizabeth why she didn’t sell their collection of videos if the family had no money.
“You’re giving me stupid questions to answer,” Elizabeth replied. “They are not even worth answering.”
Gamoian stood so close to Elizabeth’s chair that she was touching the witness stand. Elizabeth leaned farther and farther to her right to get away from the prosecutor until the judge finally stepped in and told Gamoian to give her witness some space. Gamoian backed up for a few questions but was soon in Elizabeth’s face once again.
Putnam finally ordered the attorney to ask her questions from the prosecution table.
“Excuse me, Your Honor,” she said, retreating behind the table.
From there, Gamoian continued to question Elizabeth about why she wasn’t aware of everything that Marcus was doing to their children.
“I guess I was just plain stupid,” Elizabeth said.
Next, Gamoian confronted Elizabeth for describing Marcus as a sensitive man, asking, “Is it sensitive to molest your daughters?”
When Elizabeth didn’t answer, Gamoian threw another question at her. “As you sit here today, do you believe he fathered Kiani’s child?”
Elizabeth said no, so Gamoian asked her to explain.
“I don’t want to believe it,” Elizabeth said. “It’s not true.”
After five days of feeling embarrassed and humiliated on the stand, Elizabeth finally couldn’t take it anymore and called Gamoian a bitch.
Marcus, who had been crying while the prosecutor hammer
ed at his wife, apparently had reached his limit as well and erupted with another outburst.
“Objection, Your Honor!” he said, accusing Gamoian of showing disrespect for the court and criticizing his attorneys for failing to stop her. Given that Marcus had made two such eruptions that day, his comments prompted the judge to excuse the jury while he, Marcus, and the attorneys discussed the issue.
BECAUSE ELIZABETH’S AND Rosie’s testimony contradicted some of what they had told police the night of the murders, Gamoian played their taped interviews in court, sometimes for days at a time. Whenever there was downtime, I would stare at the big, ugly dreadlock and fight my recurrent urge to grab it.
We reporters usually left the courtroom during the breaks, wandering into the hallway to use our phones and stretch our legs. But I decided to stay for the break one day to observe Marcus’s behavior for a story I was working on.
The courtroom had emptied except for me, a bailiff, and Marcus. I really wanted to talk to him but knew that I wasn’t allowed. When Marcus began moving his fingers across the table, I startled to attention. He was playing an imaginary keyboard, swaying his head to an imaginary beat, and mouthing imaginary lyrics. Another reporter had seen him do this before, but I didn’t realize how absurd it looked until I’d seen it for myself. It was almost as if he did everything he could to act sane in front of the judge and jury, showing his true self only during breaks. Completely counterintuitive for a man trying to beat a murder rap.
His lawyers weren’t arguing insanity, as many of us had predicted. I later figured Marcus didn’t want anyone to think he was crazy. Still, as I stared at the make-believe musician that morning, insanity was all I could see.
I picked up my pen and jotted down some notes: “10:30: During break, Wesson plays pretend piano on defense table.” I talked about his odd behavior on the news that night.
When I got home, Elizabeth was staring at me. I knew she had something on her mind.
“I saw your story tonight,” she said finally.
“Oh yeah? The fake piano?” I asked with a smile.
“My husband writes songs in his head. He’s been doing that for years. He does this conducting thing . . .”
“Really?”
“We never thought it was strange. I guess we’re used to it. That’s all I wanted to say.”
“What kind of songs does he write?” I asked.
“I have some of them in the room. Do you want to read them?”
“Sure, I guess.”
I knew if his songs were anything like his book, I wasn’t going to like them.
The next day, Elizabeth came out of the room bearing a stack of handwritten lyrics and makeshift sheet music. “Enjoy,” she said.
“Ah, perfect poolside reading,” I joked, taking the papers down to the pool.
I expected some eccentric, crazy lyrics out of the man, but to my surprise, the songs were pretty benign. They were mainly about boats and girls.
Some say a ship is a woman,
Some say the sea is her soul.
She’s the guardian of the waters,
The keeper of the winds.
I kept flipping through the pages and stopped at a song called “Haul Yard Girls.”
Some ask why do us girls haul yard.
You’re young, you have life, much to live.
We spy each other, not to smile.
Our smiles fade silent with the air.
Our past holds secrets as our night.
We leave while yet still standing there.
I wasn’t moved. I kept flipping. I saw something labeled “The Seeds of Vampyr” and thought that sounded more like Marcus Wesson.
My life is fulfilled with love’s shattered expectations
Only to find sadness in love’s anticipation
My hope when I see her she’ll remember our past time
Yet I fear when I lose her it won’t be the last time.
I realized I was softly singing the lyrics to try to make sense of them. A guy lying near me at the pool gave me an odd look. If he only knew what I was singing.
* * *
AFTER BEING BOMBARDED with testimony defending Marcus, I was actually looking forward to Gypsy’s testimony, which started on April 12. She was the only Wesson child who seemed to have told police and prosecutors the whole story. I couldn’t wait for Marcus to hear one of his daughters tell the truth about how much he’d hurt her. I wanted someone finally to stand up to him, even if it wasn’t one-on-one. But once she took the stand and was face-to-face with Marcus again, Gypsy didn’t say what everyone, including me, was expecting her to.
I was in court for only one day while she was testifying, so I didn’t have to hear her claim that Marcus had never raped or molested her. When Gamoian confronted her with her own statements to police that he had started touching her when she was seven years old, Gypsy contended that she had exaggerated her statements to police because she believed he’d killed all the children. However, she said, she had since learned that “the evidence” proved he didn’t do it.
Gypsy also claimed that the kids didn’t really take the suicide pact seriously, nor did they have clear instructions on what to do, further downplaying the severity of the situation. Because Gypsy had not delivered the anticipated inflammatory testimony and because some of it conflicted with her statements to police, Gamoian felt it necessary to play those interview tapes for the jury as well.
I was dying to know why Gypsy had changed her story. It was eating me up inside. She was the brave one, the only one who truly “got it.” How could she have lied? I knew she hated Marcus and wanted to see him pay for what he had done. I had envisioned the moment as so triumphant. She was supposed to stare right at him and list the horrible things he’d done to her and her siblings, then turn to the jurors and tell them he should be locked up forever. Why had she caved? Unfortunately, the gag order was still in effect, so I couldn’t ask her. Not yet, anyway.
I was angry with her for blowing her big chance. But deep down, I knew she didn’t want to talk about such private things in front of strangers. She probably thought the jury had ten times the amount of evidence they needed to convict him. Still, it bothered me to see him look over at his youngest living daughter and smirk, as if he’d scored a victory of some kind. If even she couldn’t confront him, what hope was there for the rest of the family?
NEARLY SEVEN GRUELING weeks into the trial, it was time for Kiani to take the stand.
“Will you be there, Alysia?” asked Kiani, who was staying in the apartment with us the night before her first day of testimony.
“I’ll be there.”
Neither of us knew she’d be on the stand for six days.
I’d already found out—from interviews with the police and the preliminary hearing—much of what Marcus had done to the girls sexually. Even so, I wasn’t prepared for the intensity of their testimony.
With Kiani, the prosecutor went straight for the details about the sexual abuse.
“When did your father start touching you?” Gamoian asked. “How did he touch you?”
As the questions got increasingly invasive, I watched Kiani struggle to answer them, clearly feeling embarrassed and helpless. It was obvious she didn’t comprehend the seriousness of what Marcus had done to her. When Gamoian asked Kiani to demonstrate how she touched her father’s penis, I was so furious I almost jumped out of my seat. I wanted to throttle the prosecutor.
Give me a break! This is too much.
There was already concrete DNA evidence proving Marcus had fathered Kiani’s two children. I watched Kiani cup her hand and make the up-and-down stroking motion and felt absolutely mortified for her, especially with Marcus sitting right there, watching.
Just as Rosie had testified, Kiani told the jury that she and her sisters were never forced to do anything sexual with Marcus; they did it willingly. All the girls were allowed to leave the house and get married if they wanted to, as long as they left their children behind with
Marcus. When Gamoian asked how marriage was possible if he never allowed them to talk to men, Kiani said she didn’t know.
“Did you want Illabelle to have ‘loving’ with her father?” Gamoian asked, referring to Kiani’s eight-year-old daughter, one of the murder victims.
“No,” Kiani said, sounding offended. “I wanted her to grow up different.” She added that she wanted Illabelle and her younger daughter, Jeva, to attend public school and get married.
“Then is loving a bad thing?” Gamoian asked.
“I can’t say it’s a good thing,” Kiani said sadly. “When I was young I didn’t mind it. I just wanted something different for [Illabelle].”
Kiani began crying as Gamoian questioned her about her relationship with Lise and Sebhrenah, but she sobbed even harder when the prosecutor threw the facts in her face: Illabelle’s life had been no better than or different from Kiani’s. Marcus had them both trapped in the house, with no way out.
Gamoian spent a couple of days going over Kiani’s diary entries from 2000 to 2004, often asking her to read them out loud. I couldn’t imagine reading my most intimate thoughts in front of a roomful of strangers who were taking notes to broadcast my words to the world.
Yet there was Kiani, spewing out loving anecdotes about her father, reading the entries that expressed sentiments such as “Dads are special in a girl’s heart,” “I love my Daddy very much,” and “Daddy was very sweet today.” When Gamoian asked her if the last statement was code for the times she had sex with her father, Kiani denied it.
Some entries had a more serious tone, such as the ones that discussed the Second Coming of Christ. In February 2001, for example, Kiani wrote, “It’s truly the end of time. Dad truly wants to make sure we all get there. Reading some serious Bible text.”
Other entries reflected Kiani’s worries that her children had only rice to eat. “I hope we make it today,” she wrote. “I can’t take it any longer.” She explained how they sometimes had to dig through the garbage at grocery stores, McDonald’s, and other fast-food restaurants to find something edible.
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