by Tonya Craft
I took solace in the fact that none of this motion business was taking place in front of the jury, and that Judge House looked to me like he couldn’t care less. He kept looking away, rolling his eyes, and tipping his head back—especially when my attorneys mentioned some case reference or point of law meant to bolster my side of whatever was going on. If it doesn’t matter to him, and the jury isn’t in here, who does it matter to? I wondered.
That whole business about when I’d invoked my right to an attorney apparently went in my favor. My attorneys seemed pleased. The prosecutors wouldn’t be able to present anything that happened between me and the detectives during that second meeting on my porch, unless it was part of the testimony from Mr. Boggess (who, it turned out, would never be called to testify). Why any of that would make a difference, I wasn’t sure. But I was glad my team was paying attention to the little minutiae and legal goings-on in that courtroom. And the fact that anything could seemingly go in my favor felt like the tiniest sign of something good on that second day of court proceedings.
My nerves were still all bundled up, and the muscles in my shoulders were so tight you could’ve hit ’em with a hammer and the hammer would’ve broken. Still, knowing my attorneys felt good about the outcome of that hearing was something. We all needed a little something.
By the time that all got wrapped up, Judge House decided it was time to break for lunch. I couldn’t eat. All I could do was think about that jury and what would happen if they listened to people like Detective Deal with the assumption that his version of things was the truth. It terrified me. I didn’t understand how anybody on my team could eat or drink or make small talk like it was just some other day, when the battle for everything I’d ever lived for was just about to get started.
It was right around 2:15 that afternoon when the jury filtered in from a door over in the right-hand corner of the room, while everyone in the jam-packed seats behind us quieted down. I’ve been schooled my whole life never to judge other people, I thought, and those twelve people are going to sit there and judge me.
Judge House suddenly put on a jovial face. “Let me just remind you, you don’t have assigned seats,” he said to the jurors. “Most of you went back to the same seat. They’re not assigned. But if you want to put your name on ’em, that’s fine,” he said, eliciting a few chuckles.
It felt like no more than two seconds went by before ADA Len Gregor got up and started making his opening statement.
This is happening now, I thought. Oh, my Lord. This is it. This is my trial.
My stomach tied itself into knots I didn’t know were even possible until that moment.
Much to my surprise, that tall, thin, buzz-cut ADA Len Gregor got up there in his dark-colored suit and started talking to the jury about the “truth.”
The truth!
“It is your job as jurors to speak the truth at the conclusion of this trial—and you do that with your verdicts,” he told them. “That oath you swore is to the truth. It’s not to find a reason to doubt, but to find the truth, simply.”57
That sounded pretty right to me. But then he went on to tell them that in this case, “the truth is contained in the indictment.”
“The bottom line is what is contained in this indictment, it is those charges for which this defendant faces in this trial,” and he turned and pointed his finger right at me. “And those are for the offenses of aggravated child molestation, aggravated sexual battery, and child molestation, and those crimes are against the children of Brianna Lamb, Ashley Henke, and Chloe McDonald. Did the defendant do what she is charged with doing is the ultimate decision for you to make as jurors in this case.”
I couldn’t show my anguish. I wouldn’t. I held it in.
“The truth that you are sworn to find in this case is not ‘Tonya’s truth.’ It’s not some website. It’s not some slogan,” he said. “It’s not something on a bumper sticker. It’s not some selfish, self-interested truth. It’s an absolute truth. That’s the truth you’re here to find.”
Well, hallelujah to that! I hoped and prayed for nothing more than the absolute truth. But my mind was already spinning trying to figure out what his strategy might be. How is he going to use the website and the bumper stickers and the “Truth for Tonya” campaign against me? It’s like I was on the battlefield now, and no matter what my previous training had been, I had to be able to fight and react and move to wherever I needed to move in order to avoid the gunfire and hand grenades and napalm. My eyes and ears were running on pure adrenaline, and I couldn’t wait for a break just to talk with my team about all I’d heard in those first few moments.
“The truth in this case is that in late May of 2008, Skyler Walker, a seven-year-old child, a child that had had contact with Ashley Henke, her friendship, the Walkers were friends with this defendant. Skyler Walker was at the home of DeWayne and Sherri Wilson out by the pool. Skyler Walker, out by the pool using sidewalk chalk that kids frequently play with and use, she wrote the words ‘sex’ and ‘kissing’ on the sidewalk, or the concrete area surrounding the pool. This was seen by Sherri Wilson. It was also seen by Sandra Lamb, who was there with her daughter, Brianna. Again, we’re talking about people here who know the defendant, who are friends with the defendant, who have trusted the defendant with their children. All of the girls, all of the girls that were there that day ultimately end up being questioned by the parents.
“First there’s Skyler Walker: ‘Why would you write such words, Skyler? Where did you learn those?’ We’re talking about a seven-year-old child here. Sherri Wilson asked some more questions, and Skyler Walker ends up saying, ‘Well, I learned those from Ashley Henke, because we play a game. That game is called boyfriend-girlfriend.’ Ashley Henke is the daughter of Joal Henke and the defendant. And Skyler talks about this game that’s been played between her and Ashley Henke. We’re talking about girls that this defendant has had contact with. She says, ‘We play this boyfriend-girlfriend game and Ashley kisses me on the cheek and she touches my privates.’ Sherri Wilson hears that, and of course it’s a shocking thing to be told by a child, and Skyler talks about the fact that Ashley plays this game with other children, too. Maybe Chloe McDonald, Brianna Lamb. Sandra Lamb is there with her daughter Brianna, and I will say this: Yes, Brianna Lamb has had two small parts, as you heard about during the voir dire during jury selection, that had nothing to do with child sexual abuse. Brianna tells her mother, Sandra Lamb, ‘Ashley plays the boyfriend-girlfriend game with me, too. She kisses me and she touches my privates.’ Brianna also told her mother that in addition to Ashley and the boyfriend-girlfriend game that this defendant, that Tonya Craft”—he pointed his finger right at me again—“had touched her privates as well.
“This is shocking information,” he said. “This is something that no one wants to believe, particularly Sandra Lamb. A school mother in this defendant’s room. A good, close personal friend of this defendant. This defendant was married … in Sandra Lamb’s home. Sandra Lamb had trusted the care of her daughter with this defendant. This defendant taught the children, this defendant had the children spend the night at her house, and had slumber parties at her house, and had these children to her house for playdates. This was not something Sandra Lamb wanted or was ready to hear. She couldn’t believe it and she couldn’t hardly even take the fact that Brianna was telling her this. So she steps away and asks Sherri Wilson, ‘Can you talk to Brianna for me?’ Sherri talked to Brianna, and Brianna told Sherri about the boyfriend-girlfriend game, and she told Sherri about the touching by Tonya, and what stands out so shockingly for Sherri is that Brianna, at seven years old, is telling her about what this defendant has done to her: ‘She touches me and she goes like this.’”
Len Gregor put his hand up in front of him and started moving it up and down, with his fingers all pressed together around his thumb, and he repeated that motion. “She takes her fingers, puts them in front of her, and moves them around to show Sherri Wilson how this defendant touches he
r.”
He thrust his hand up and down, mimicking the motion Brianna had made in her fourth interview, making it look like my whole hand went up inside that little girl. It was awful. I felt sick.
“Again, at this point in time, no one wants to believe. It’s hard to believe. How do you take in this information when it’s someone that they love, that they trusted, someone who has been trusted with the care of children, and they’re having to accept what they hear? They’re not exactly sure what to do, though. There’s not a call made immediately to law enforcement.”
He talked about DeWayne Wilson coming home that night and recommending to Sherri that she call Catoosa County—in particular, that she call Detective Stephen Keith, “a detective that he knows.”
The investigation wasn’t to look into “Tonya,” he said, but just to investigate the concerns about the children.
“Because Stephen Keith knows some of the individuals in this case, and because he has a daughter that attends Chickamauga Elementary School, he decides to bring in Detective Deal, and Detective Deal becomes involved in the case. The investigation proceeds.”
I wanted to shout, “What investigation? What did they investigate? Detective Deal himself just admitted in this courtroom that he’d only heard about the case from what Stephen Keith had told him the day before he came knocking on my door!”
Len Gregor continued his opening argument by telling the court that Chloe McDonald’s name came up “early on” in the investigation. He talked about Kelly and Jerry McDonald introducing me to friends in the community, helping me to move into my house, driving my children, and how Kelly cleaned my house for me. “This was a very close personal relationship. A relationship almost like sisters. They did so many things together,” Gregor told that jury.
Sisters?
He then jumped into what the jury was going to hear and see in the trial, including the actual interviews with the children and testimony from the children themselves. “They will sit right here and tell you what the defendant did to each of these little girls. You will hear how the girls disclose the sexual abuse in the hands, literally, of the defendant touching—touching of their primary genital area, their vaginal area. You will hear from each of these girls how during the course of the investigation, it isn’t as though it all comes out at once. These little girls are scared. These are children that [disclose] a little bit of information, and then as they get a little bit more comfortable they provide a little bit more information, and it takes sometimes a series of a couple of interviews for them to say everything. But they don’t come into the first interview and have everything spelled out. They are scared, and they say they are scared. You will see when you see the video, you will see their demeanor on the video. You will see how they react. You will see what happens to them emotionally. Imagine, if you will, talking about your consensual adult sex lives, and that’s what these children have to talk about.
“You’ll get to see the children in the videos, and you will get to see them here in court.”
I dreaded that last part more than anything.
“Ashley, in the first interview, disclosed that her mother had touched her privates, and that her mother had sexually abused her,” Gregor said.
I grabbed a pen and wrote, “Can he just lie like that?” on a Post-it note—and slid it over to Doc. He read it without drawing attention to himself and gave me a little nod.
ADA Gregor then went on to say something I thought was really odd. “When you see and you hear from each of these little girls, there’s something I want you to take notice of: how similar they are in some ways. Approximately the same age. Their appearance, how they look similar in their appearance”—Those girls don’t look alike, I thought —“and how each of these little girls, no matter how scared they are, these are each bright and articulate girls. And that really, other than one other thing, is what binds these girls—other than one other thing. And that’s her.”
He pointed his finger right at me again, and there was a part of me that wanted to stand up and break it off. “That’s this defendant. That’s what brought these girls here. That’s what binds these girls together: Her,” he pointed again, “and what she did to them.”
He then got animated and talked about seeing and hearing “the meltdowns” these girls had during their interviews. What meltdowns? “You will see and hear about the nightmares these girls suffer from.” I felt sick to my stomach. “You will hear about the therapy these girls have been involved in and need because of the defendant—therapy that continues to this day. That’s because of what she did,” he said, pointing at me yet again.
“This is a case in which it doesn’t just end with the statements of these three little girls about what happened to them. Medical exams are performed on the children. It is a touching case, and touching cases don’t always result in medical evidence. Nonetheless as part of the investigation, medical exams are performed when appropriate—and in this case it was appropriate to perform these exams … by a sexual assault nurse. By someone who is trained to perform sexual assault exams.”
He talked about Chloe’s exam being “normal,” and Ashley’s exam being “suspicious for abuse.” I truly felt like throwing up. Then he talked about Brianna Lamb; how she had spent the night at my house “so many times”; that she had been “bathed by the defendant”; how Brianna discloses the “most” acts, discloses “the worst” acts, the “greatest number of acts over the greatest length of time”; and that her exam is “very, very suspicious for sexual abuse.”
His whole opening statement was summed up by telling that jury, “You may not want to believe that a mother, that a woman, that someone who worked as a teacher could do such things, could do such awful things to children,” but that they would believe it after seeing the evidence and knowing that the evidence would point to “the truth.”
The fact that he used that word and tried to turn it on its head like that seemed like a cruel joke. God, please tell me it’s not possible that that twisted version of the truth is the “truth” that jury’s going to believe.
Chapter 47
There appeared to be an immediate shift in the mood of the room as Doc stood up and Len Gregor sat down. I didn’t realize until that moment just how stiff the jury seemed as Gregor made his opening statements. Yet as soon as Doc started speaking, I could almost feel them exhale. I hoped that didn’t mean they were too relaxed. I hoped that was something that would work for us, not against us, because I had no idea what any of them were thinking. They were as poker-faced as I was trying to be as I sat there sweating under my tweed jacket—praying that my sweat wasn’t making me look guilty.
Doc’s approach was to tell the jury the story of what happened. I don’t want to say he was “entertaining” to watch, because that seems like too light a word. He was incredibly serious, almost studious in a way, but he just talked to that jury like he was talking to a room full of friends—or maybe a room full of eager college students. He was authoritative, but he never talked down to them. And he was animated as he talked about how everything was just fine between me and the Lambs until “Ashley had a birthday party.”
“Brianna, who’s two and a half years older than Ashley, was invited with her friend Lydia Wilson, Sherri Wilson’s daughter. And they played with Tyler, the older brother, and his buddy. But all the little girls got all made up, with makeup and hair and sparkles, it was really cute and they got in a limo and went to the party and it was excellent. And it was a sleepover: One of the few that Tonya ever had,” he said. “And the facts will show that Brianna and Lydia, the older girls, said, ‘Oh, this is a baby party. We don’t want to stay.’ And Miss Tonya said, ‘Hey, that’s not very nice. You were invited to come to the birthday party.’ And the facts will show the little girls got ticked off, and they called Sandra Lamb, and kaboom! Like a steel trap: One day you’re up, next day you’re down, you’re dirt, never coming over again. As of January 2008, Tonya was dirt, Tonya was ‘forget about it’
to Sandra Lamb. So when Sandra Lamb was grilling, questioning, repeatedly, over and over and over and over: ‘Tell me what Miss Tonya did. Miss Tonya did something. Tell me what she did!’ And she told this detective that she did it, and she told this detective she was OCD, and she told the detective that she bribed the kid—
“Oh!” he shouted, and stopped, and looked at the jury. “You didn’t hear that, did you? Well, so they take Brianna for an interview.” He came over and picked up a transcript of her interview from the table next to me. “And what does Brianna say? What’s Brianna say? Sandra has previously called DFACS and said, ‘I think there’s child-on-child funny business going on between my daughter and whatever.’ So before this, Sandra has already turned little Ashley in. So they take Brianna down to the interview place, and they interview her on May 27th, Part 1. And they talk to her about what’s been going on. I’ve got it word for word. Anything about Miss Tonya doing anything? No. Was she scared? Oh, please. La la la la la. Having a nice time,” he said as he turns the page. “Nothing about Miss Tonya. The interviewer goes out, and then comes back and says, ‘Say, wasn’t there something about a bath?’ And Brianna goes, ‘Oh yeah! Miss Tonya did this and Miss Tonya did that.’
“The rest of the story was, it wasn’t enough to get an indictment. So what do the cops do? They’ve got to go searching for another victim. They go get Skyler Walker. You’ll meet her. So in comes Skyler Walker. ‘Oh yeah, me and Ashley and da da da da.’ We’re bringing in two professors of pediatrics from the best universities who will tell you that even though we may think little girls don’t do that—yes, they do! Yes, they do. There’s fifty years’ worth of research. You’ll hear that testimony. We’ve got boxes of science. So what does Skyler Walker say? ‘Did Miss Tonya do this?’ ‘No.’ ‘Did Miss Tonya do that?’ ‘No.’ No, no, no, no, no. D’oh! And what happens with Sandra Lamb when she finds out from her friend Detective Keith that Skyler Walker’s not going to say anything about Tonya? ‘Ooooh. Who can we get? Aha! Chloe McDonald!’ How did that happen? We’ll show you. We’ve got the evidence.”