by Tonya Craft
I stood with my sign held high, and Robin Roberts actually came over to me during a commercial break. I showed her the pendant with my kids’ pictures on it and said, “If I can just have fifteen minutes of your time, I think you’ll find this is a story you’ll want to cover. I’m fighting for my life and for my children’s lives.” I gave Robin and one of her producers a business card with the Truth for Tonya web address on it.
Then I waited and waited for the phone to ring.
Back in Tennessee, it occurred to me that maybe I needed to start a little smaller. I decided to approach some of the regional media outlets to get my story out. The idea of it scared me because the local media had covered my story so extensively already. I was worried they might twist my words on the air in a way that might make matters worse. But something told me I had to do this. I just needed to find the right person to tell my story to.
That’s when I met a producer named Melydia Clewell, from NBC Channel 3 in Chattanooga. Melydia wasn’t really doing much on-air reporting anymore. She’d moved behind the camera pretty much full-time. But she and I met and had an off-the-record conversation, and she told me she was absolutely floored by my story. It was clear to me that she was listening to what I had to say and that she wasn’t approaching this with any preconceived notions of what kind of a “monster” the DA’s office had painted me to be. After hearing me out, she said she’d be willing not only to cover my story but also to do the on-air interview herself. She assured me she would help me to get the truth out to the public.
I’d learned to go with my gut, and my gut told me Melydia was the one.
I sat down with her and her camera crew for an extensive interview at my parents’ home. I opened up about everything. My parents agreed to be interviewed. My attorneys Clancy Covert and Scott King both went on camera and discussed the case. Some friends came by to show support, and we all snacked and chatted in the kitchen while the cameras rolled. We basically gave Melydia carte blanche.
Then nothing happened. We waited a few days, and the interview never aired. I reached out to Melydia to find out what was going on, and she told me that the interview was so strong, they’d decided to hold it until March, and to tease that interview all through NBC’s Winter Olympics coverage in February—when just about anyone with a television was sure to be tuned in. I realized that her ratings strategy was a good thing. I guess I’d grown fairly accustomed to waiting by then, too, but it still made me nervous. I’d given her the exclusive, and yet I needed my story to get out there. I felt like I was running out of time. What if I’ve made a mistake?
While I waited for the public to hear my side of the story, the trial clock kept ticking. On January 26, we got Laurie Evans’s notes from all three children’s sessions with her at the CAC. We also got a log of parents’ notes, and the sign-in/sign-out records for parents and detectives and anyone else involved in the case.54
The notes were awful to read. They suggested my kids didn’t want to see me. They suggested that the kids hated being around my parents and were said to be sad and miserable the whole time they were with them. None of it reflected the truth that had been relayed to me by the people I trust or by those who had been around the kids firsthand. Those notes showed that Laurie Evans had diagnosed my son, Tyler, with major depressive disorder, too—a serious condition that suggested he’d turned into a nonfunctioning member of society. Yet I knew that his grades were good, he was playing sports, he appeared happy and playful around my parents, and he even seemed happy at my house when he got to play with his friend Braden and others. That serious diagnosis was now a part of my child’s medical record, even though a judge had found that woman “non-credible.” It burned me up inside something awful.
I read every document, every line, every word of those notes. My attorneys said I didn’t need to do that, but I knew that I did. There were times when my attorneys said I didn’t need to be present for certain meetings, too. I insisted I did.
There were times when all of my attorneys would be gathered in a conference room with me, discussing the case, and they’d start making decisions about this or that without asking my opinion. I’d make a suggestion and they’d just keep talking and arguing while my words seemed to fall on deaf ears. Finally, one day when they were all bickering about some part of the case or another and dismissing my suggestions with hardly a nod in my direction, I slammed my hands on the table and stood up.
“Everyone shut the hell up!” I said. “I appreciate all of your hard work and guidance, but one thing needs to be clear. This is a business of sorts—and I am the CEO. I will consider everything I am told, but in the end the decisions are mine. It is my life on the line. Not yours. When that verdict is read, I could spend the rest of my life in prison. No matter how heart-broken and upset you might be about the loss, you will still get to go home and continue with your lives. So please remember: You work for me. And if you do not like that, there’s the door.”
They didn’t dismiss me so much after that.
The day after we received Laurie Evans’s treatment notes, ADA Chris Arnt posted this status update on his Facebook page:55
Chris A. Arnt is wondering if Tonya Craft’s Defense lawyers are really insane of just trying to jack uo her defense bill?
January 27 at 10:13 a.m.
I wasn’t Facebook friends with Chris Arnt, but a friend pointed it out to me, and he’d posted it with a setting of “public.” So anyone could see it. I was just beside myself. Ignoring the sloppiness and typos, all I could think was, How could he write something so flippant in a public forum? Is Facebook the place for an ADA to be making comments—during work hours—about a major case in which a woman’s life is at stake and three children have supposedly been molested? Is this some kind of a joke to him? Just below the post was a little thumbs-up symbol, along with the phrase, “Holly Nave Kittle likes this.” (Holly Kittle was the woman who had performed the fourth interview with Brianna Lamb.) Where’s the professionalism? Where’s the seriousness with which child sexual-abuse cases should be treated?
Chris Arnt eventually removed that Facebook post, but a friend of mine saved a screenshot of it for me. Lots of people were aware of it. The local media picked up on it and wrote about it. Bloggers in the legal community had a field day with it. It felt like yet another violation of trust. We were supposed to trust the courts and detectives and judges and assistant district attorneys. My trust was crushed.
My own father broke down in tears over his loss of faith in the system that was supposed to protect us, right in the middle of his interview with Melydia Clewell. I wondered if my daddy’s tears would make the cut and be seen on TV when that interview finally aired. I’d have to wade through another long month of setbacks and preparations in order to find out—right before all of this would finally come to a resolution, one way or another, in a courtroom.
Chapter 42
It had always been do-or-die time for me, but February seemed to finally be do-or-die time as far as my attorneys were concerned, too. The whole month became all about our strategy in the courtroom.
Doc would be the lead attorney, handling opening and closing arguments, expert witnesses, and the cross-examination of many of the prosecution’s witnesses. Scott would be the “bad cop” who’d go head-to-head with the witnesses we considered adversarial. Cary would be more of a “good cop” who’d deal with the direct examination of most of the witnesses for our side, with Clancy doing a couple of friendly directs as well. Clancy’s a wonderful organizer and a fantastic thinker. I needed him at the defense table as much as possible, helping me to strategize and think about everything.
It was especially difficult dealing with Doc, who quite frankly is the most arrogant man I have ever met in my entire life. The more time he spent with us, the more I understood my team’s initial reaction to him. We’d go grab lunch at some restaurant and after his interactions with waitresses I’d feel like I wanted to sink under the table and die. After one meal full o
f comments, I said to him, “Doc, what God gave you in intellect, he clearly took away in social skills.”
I don’t think anyone had ever spoken to Doc that way, but I couldn’t help but be frank. All of my attorneys made the comment at one point or another that they’d never worked with anyone like me, and I’m not sure they meant it as a compliment. I really didn’t care. I did what I had to do and said what needed to be said. What else could I do? I wasn’t going to sit back and let any of them get lazy or make what I thought was a wrong decision concerning my case.
As we got down to brass tacks (as they say), Doc led us wholly in the direction of science and facts. We would need to try to refute everything the prosecution threw at us, not with theories or emotion or character attacks, but with how wrong these accusations were and how we had the science and facts to prove that beyond any doubt. That was the standard I demanded. We would hire people who we felt were the best experts in the field to come and review my case and testify on my side—true standard-bearers in the legal world. That, of course, would cost a lot of money and would stretch our budgets past the breaking point. But it was what we had to do. I couldn’t take any chances.
By the middle of that February, we locked in the basic strategy that would help keep us focused, no matter what the prosecution tried to throw at us. The strategy was to prove three things to the jury: “It didn’t happen; it couldn’t have happened the way they said it happened; and it doesn’t make sense.” That was our whole case. That was what we needed to prove in order to prove my innocence.
I reminded my attorneys almost daily, “Don’t let yourself for one minute think that you’ve got this thing won. Arrogance will send me straight to prison.” I knew in my heart that we all needed to remain humble. We needed to keep cool under pressure, and we would have to fight with everything we had in order to present the truth no matter what happened in that courtroom.
The teasers for Melydia Clewell’s interview started running, and all of a sudden, all of the other networks started calling trying to get interviews of their own. I made Melydia a promise that hers would be an “exclusive” until after it aired, and I stuck to my word. Melydia asked me something else once things heated up in the press, though: “When the trial’s over, will you give me your first interview?”
“You keep your word to tell the truth about my story, and I will absolutely give you the first post-trial interview. You have my word on it,” I told her.
On the inside all I could think was, I’m pretty sure that interview is never going to happen.
Chapter 43
By mid-February, we were running out of money like never before. David and I decided to hold a yard sale. Every dollar counted at that point, and bringing in a little extra cash felt good.
A young woman stopped by who showed great interest in some of my old classroom supplies. “I just started teaching,” she said, and she went on about how much the kids would love some of this stuff. “It’s such a struggle having to pay for supplies,” she said.
This woman seemed to have no idea who I was. I mentioned that I used to be a teacher myself, and we talked for a while. I saw so much of myself in the enthusiasm of this young woman.
“Hold on a second,” I told her, and I went into the garage. I grabbed all the big boxes full of classroom supplies that my attorneys had managed to retrieve from Chickamauga Elementary after my termination, and I gave them to her. All of them.
“I want you to have these,” I said with tears in my eyes.
“Why are you giving me all of this?” she asked.
I handed her a Truth for Tonya card and told her to visit the website. “You’ll understand,” I said. I turned and walked into the garage, sat on the stairs, and cried.
That moment was a huge letting go for me. I knew I’d most likely never be allowed to teach again. What school would ever hire me even if I’m acquitted? The indictments and charges would show up on my background report. I couldn’t deny that any longer. I’d kept those supplies and dreamed of putting them to use in a classroom again. Now at least a part of my dream would come true. Those supplies would get used in a classroom. They just wouldn’t be used by children I was teaching myself.
Shortly before my trial, a grand jury indicted my private investigator, Eric Echols, on the “Intimidation of Witness” charges he’d been arrested for the previous summer. His trial was set to start the same day as my trial, March 15. It obliterated our plans to put him on the stand and negated our ability to introduce the interviews he’d conducted, too.
I was feeling pretty down about it all when my friend Jennifer showed up and said she had a surprise for me. She turned around and pulled her long hair up in the back to show me her brand-new tattoo.
She’d gone and had a Truth Cross tattooed on the back of her neck!
I cried like a baby. I could hardly believe that a friend would do something like that. She reminded me in that moment that the support I had from my friends and family was deep and permanent as could be.
No matter which way this trial went, I was innocent. That was the truth. That would never change. At times I felt like I was the only one who realized that, but the fact of the matter is I wasn’t the only one. I had people all around me who knew the truth. Who believed in the truth. Who believed in me with all of their hearts.
It was right around the same time when another friend opened up a Truth for Tonya Facebook page to go along with the Truth for Tonya website. A few hundred people “liked” that site almost overnight. Another friend printed up “Truth for Tonya” bumper stickers in my favorite color, yellow, and people started putting them on their cars all over town. The love and support seemed to flow in from everywhere.
It was only the beginning.
On March 1, my interview with Melydia Clewell aired on NBC Channel 3. It started with a report on the five o’clock news, followed by a longer report on the six o’clock news, and a “closer look” at the charges against me on the eleven o’clock news that same evening.
Melydia promised to be fair to me, and to my absolute relief, she was.
“Nearly two dozen times since her arrest in 2008, we have reported on the charges against her, we have aired her mug shot, and we also covered her termination hearing,” Melydia said live from her seat at the anchor desk just before that first five o’clock report aired. “Now, for the first time, Tonya Craft wants you to hear her side of the story.”
It was a strange thing to watch myself on the news, in my gray turtleneck sweater with my silver pendant around my neck, pleading for some kind of understanding. It was difficult to hear my own words echoed back at me through the TV: “How can I go from being a mother, and a teacher, and a friend, and an aunt, and a daughter, to having a mug shot on television for something I did not do?” I had said.
I bawled watching my mother on that report, telling the world that she supported me and that she would be there no matter what, no matter how long it took.
Melydia stood in front of the Catoosa County courthouse and talked directly into the camera, telling the audience that I did understand the need to protect children, including my own, because of the nature of the charges. But she also noted that I felt that in this case I’d been “condemned without a trial.”
“If I was innocent until proven guilty,” I had said, “then I would have my children, I would at least have contact, I would have my profession, I would have my home that I’ve lost, and I’ve lost everything without a trial.”
She went on to note my confidence that I would prove my innocence when my case finally went to trial and added that in the meantime, I hoped to change laws and perceptions of the accused.
“It could happen to anybody at any time,” I had said. “All there has to be is an accusation, and that’s it. You’re stripped of your life, and your rights, and your children.”
The piece went on to share a sound bite from ADA Chris Arnt. He looked to me like he had a little smirk on his face as he spoke about us attempting
to “try the case in the media” and said he refused to reveal any facts of the case before he stepped into a courtroom. I guess he forgot the press conference he gave after my termination hearing, in which he revealed to the media that his office had “physical evidence” against me.
The hypocrisy is staggering, I thought.
The six o’clock report included news of the positive results of my two polygraph exams, quotes from my attorneys, and more—including the moment when my daddy broke down in tears. That shattered me. It broke my heart to think of what he and my mother had been put through, and how much they’d given—and given up—trying to defend me from these lies.
Melydia told me her reports received a massive response from Channel 3’s audience. The station was overwhelmed with calls and emails, she said. They wound up doing a follow-up report the next night looking at the phenomenon. Overnight, the number of “likes” on the Truth for Tonya Facebook page shot up to more than 3,000.
The only reason I wanted cameras on this trial was to attempt to hold the judge and prosecutors accountable. I didn’t want the attention for myself. My greatest wish was that I could just go back to being an unknown kindergarten teacher doing the job I loved. It was a wish with no possibility of ever coming true.
A few days later, my team got busy preparing for our final hearing in front of Judge Brian House before the start of the trial. That hearing would be so important that we decided we needed to bring Doc down from Ann Arbor to make the arguments himself. It would be the first time that the judge and prosecutors laid their eyes on Demosthenes Lorandos, and I could not wait to see their reaction. His scholarly presence, his quirky delivery, the matter-of-fact way he seemed to devastate opponents with research and facts was something I suspected no one in Catoosa County would ever expect.