Accused: My Fight for Truth, Justice & the Strength to Forgive

by Tonya Craft

  I quietly wondered why someone on their side, anyone on their side, hadn’t asked these same questions of me two years ago.

  He got real specific about Sandra Lamb’s assertion that I had once kept Brianna at my house after the kids had gone to Joal’s on a Friday night. He added a detail, too, saying that Sandra had said I kept Brianna until around nine thirty at night. To all of it, I said, “No. She wasn’t over there when my children weren’t there.”

  “So again, to sum up, Brianna Lamb: never bathed her, never spent more than one night, was over at your house some but not that much,” he said.

  “Correct.”

  “Chloe: one night, not the after-Halloween party night, the High School Musical party night, and not really over at your house that much either.”

  “Correct.”

  Why weren’t these questions asked before I was arrested?

  Gregor spent a lot of time going over the details of Ashley’s January 2008 birthday party. He said he was “confused” about the fact that I didn’t yell at the girls, and so why would I tell David that I thought I just “ticked off two influential families”? I walked him through the whole thing, wishing once again that someone had sat down and simply asked me about all of this two years ago.

  After a moment when he mocked Doc’s voice and asked some more about Ashley, he asked me, “How long do you think it would take to touch a child’s vagina inappropriately?”

  “I haven’t done it, so I don’t know,” I answered.

  “Well, I think you do,” Gregor said. “How long do you think it would take?”

  “I don’t know.” He pressed me on it again, demonstrating various motions with his hand in front of the jury, so I said, “Seconds. Sure. I would say that the appropriate and the inappropriate could take the same amount of time.”

  “We’ve heard all of this about your busy schedule and you were asked the question, ‘When did you fit in molesting children?’ Well, you didn’t really have to make a lot of room in the schedule to do that, did you?”

  “I didn’t molest any children,” I said, “and I didn’t have a video camera, unfortunately, on me twenty-four seven.”

  “How often do you think a child molester molests a child with video running?”

  “I didn’t molest any children.”

  He repeated the question, and I answered: “I can’t tell you what a child molester would do.”

  After some talk about the unfortunate fact that no one “expects” anyone to be a child molester, and yet it happens—a statement to which I agreed—he said, “It’s not some creepy guy in a trench coat always, is it? That stereotype doesn’t even really exist.”

  “You’re exactly right.”

  He then asked me if it was my “testimony” that I had “never” told anyone that I had been sexually abused myself. I confirmed that I had never said such a thing, ever, and I looked over at my poor father, who had to sit there and endure this line of questioning about the “cycle of abuse,” and the notion that “someone” who was touched by their “mother” might repeat that “learned behavior.”

  “Sir, are you implicating my mother?” I asked.

  “No, I’m asking general questions,” he responded.

  I took a drink of water. When is this going to stop? I had put myself up there. I knew the risks, and I knew with some certainty what I was going to endure. It just never occurred to me that Gregor would drive his cross so far into the dirt. The thing that changed in that moment, for me, was that I got angry. I was tired of this man saying whatever he wanted. It’s fine if he wants to say things about me, but for him to stand up there and misquote people who’ve come into this courtroom, to disparage my friends, to disparage my parents—I feel like I need to stand up for the people I love, the way I would stand up for them in response to any common bully.

  Even as I looked him in the eye and countered all of the attacks with the truth as strongly and assuredly as I could while still remaining respectful to that court of law, that man continued in this manner for another solid hour. I could barely stand it. He’s jumping from one subject to another, misquoting testimony that we’ve all heard, insinuating that our expert witnesses are lying simply because they were paid, asking me about the men I’ve dated in my past, wrongfully accusing me of being physically abusive to one of my old boyfriends (without either evidence or source; in fact, that former boyfriend is still a friend of mine, and had shown up in court to support me on previous days), incorrectly claiming that I’d dated a married man when the man he spoke of was clearly divorced (and his divorce decree is public record), misquoting me multiple times by using much harsher words than I’ve actually used in documented testimony, and more. How far can this go?

  He then seemed to mock Doc’s delivery and the way he pronounced DeWayne Wilson’s name. At one point, his questioning made it sound like Doc and I together had made disparaging comments during my testimony about Jerry McDonald—as if we were somehow poking fun at Jerry for working three jobs and trying to support his family.

  “Isn’t it kinda just cheap and silly to try to humiliate someone,” Gregor said, “with a name or the fact that they had to work three jobs or struggle financially?”

  I glanced at the jury as he uttered those words, and then I looked Gregor straight in the eyes and said, “I think that it’s ironic that you’re talking about humiliating someone.”

  He went on for so long about so many disparaging things that Doc finally stood up and said, “Cut it out!” He asked to approach the bench. Judge House didn’t stop any of it, of course, but the ADA finally moved on—and started talking about some of the research I’d done into other false-allegation cases.

  “None of these children had accused you of turning them into a mouse,” he said. “Right?”

  “Okay. No.”

  “None of those children have talked about being molested in secret tunnels, right?”

  “Correct.”

  “Or about ritualistic sacrifice of babies—”

  “No, that’s not in the Kern County case,” I said.

  “Or that you could fly, or any of those cases from the 1980s that we’ve all learned from—McMartin, Kerns … right? I mean, they haven’t accused you of any of these outlandish allegations in those classic cases.”

  “I would say there are some outlandish things in this. Throwing a child down a flight of steps with the mother in the driveway, and not feeding, and—”

  “Now if we really—” he attempted to interrupt, but I continued.

  “False allegations are awful in and of themselves,” I said, “for everybody involved. From the accused to the children.”

  He seemed to try to disparage the experts who spoke on my side, making an analogy about how it’s easier to “blow up a bridge than to build one.” He said, “You paid people a lot of money to blow up a bridge.”

  “No,” I said. “I paid money to experts to tell the truth.”

  His final line of questioning was all about the manner of questions Doc asked in the courtroom. He went on about how Doc asked leading questions, made suggestions, and offered closed-choice options when Dr. Aldridge was on the stand.

  “Okay,” I said. “She was an adult. And he would, kind of like you’re trying to lead me?”

  “That’s what you do on cross-examination. That’s one of the rules of court—do you understand that?”

  “And not what you’re supposed to do whenever you are trying to get to the bottom of a matter of a child that’s been abused or not been abused,” I said.

  “Okay, is that how you’re gonna answer that one? You gonna stay with that answer?”

  “Yes, that’s how I’m gonna answer.”

  Gregor seemed to finally be reaching the end of his rope. He kept pausing longer and longer between switching subjects. He repeated himself, flipping through the pages of his legal pad, trying to cover the same material over and over and throwing in what seemed to be one last notion he caught in his notes: “What
did you mean when you said it was hard to prove female-on-female sexual abuse?”

  “I have never said that,” I said.

  “So let me sum it up,” he said. “The children are incorrect about what happened to them, and everybody but Tonya and her witnesses are incorrect and liars and part of this ‘gotta get Tonya Craft,’ right?”

  “I did not call anyone a liar,” I said. “I don’t know how—well, from some of the expert testimony, it makes sense about how the investigation was handled, about how parental influences and different things that they discussed, how it can happen. I don’t know how it did happen, but I did not molest any children. I did not molest Brianna Lamb, I did not molest Chloe McDonald, and I did not molest Ashley Henke. So how it happened, I don’t know. But it has happened, and unfortunately these children are just as much of a victim as I am.”

  He went once more back to words he apparently found on a website, and he went once more back to his apparent anger about the “conspiracy” theory, and spoke forcefully, thumping his podium about how “the system … these authorities just had to get Tonya Craft … ‘We want this kindergarten teacher!’ Right?”

  “I don’t know what you want,” I said. “I want the truth.”

  Gregor looked back at Chris Arnt, and Arnt shook his head.

  “That’s it,” Gregor said.

  Doc immediately stood up.

  “Nothing further,” Doc said. “Thank you, Tonya. The defense rests.”

  Chapter 64

  I stood up as the judge recessed the trial until nine o’clock Monday morning, and the whole gallery exploded into a sea of commotion once again.

  My heart raced something fierce. I tried to take some deep breaths. I wasn’t sure how I would make it through a whole weekend of running that testimony through my head over and over, worrying about every word I said and every word I didn’t say. Have I said my piece? Did they hear me? Does it matter?

  I wouldn’t have a chance to defend myself again in this trial. I wouldn’t have another moment to get in front of that jury and tell them that I was innocent. Ever. It was done. Other than doing what I could to help Doc prepare his closing remarks that weekend, I was finished.

  My own freedom wasn’t in my hands anymore.

  Maybe it never was.

  I threw myself into closing preparations that weekend. My whole team did. Doc needed every key moment, every key detail, every key piece of evidence and testimony and background material at his fingertips at a moment’s notice while he composed his final argument meant to save my life and the lives of my children.

  Somewhere in the back of my mind, I wondered if either side’s closing arguments would matter. After four long weeks of testimony, what more was there to say? Still, I could not rest. I could not give up. I had to give it everything I had, and I did.

  The courthouse was a madhouse that Monday. There was more media from all over the country than I’d ever seen before in one place. There were so many people that showed up to hear the closing and quite possibly a verdict that day that poor David barely made it in. He was all sweaty from running and pushing through the crowd.

  There was a sea of people left standing in the hallways and outside the building. The court even opened up the media room just so some of those spectators could watch over the reporters’ shoulders and see what was going on through that little TV.

  Normally each side would have two hours for closing arguments, but there seemed to be nothing “normal” about my case. Judge House decided to limit it to ninety minutes each that morning. Not one of my attorneys had ever seen a judge do that. Ever. We’d worked up a Power-Point presentation, which of course suffered a major computer glitch when transferring from Mac to Windows at four in the morning and had to be copied without half of the professional look we’d developed. Then we got to court and had to scrap a huge portion of it to help Doc fit into the newly allotted time.

  The prosecution had the advantage. They’d go first, then Doc would go, then the prosecution would get to finish out whatever portion of their ninety minutes was left. So Chris Arnt and Len Gregor would have the first word and the last word before that jury started their deliberations.

  I prayed to God for fairness. I prayed to God for truth. I prayed for my kids. I prayed for Doc. I sat there trying to hide my shaking, trying to hold off the tears—basically trying to keep breathing as Gregor stood up. The courtroom fell silent as he started his speech aimed at putting me in prison. Forever.

  “I got to thinking,” he said, “you know, when you’re bass fishing, you use a lot of colorful lures. You change those colors and you use those to try to attract the fish. The colorful lures, to me, are like conspiracy theories. And like those lures, there really isn’t any substance to those colorful conspiracy theories.”

  He turned on an overhead projector and put up a series of slides that he referred to as “Tonya Truths.” He started with Tonya “Truth” #1: The Wilson Conspiracy Theory. He went on to Tonya “Truth” #2: The Brianna Lamb Conspiracy. And so forth. Naming my husband as one of the conspirators. Naming Chickamauga Elementary as a conspirator. Naming Chris Arnt as the “architect of evil” and himself as “even more evil than that,” continuing all the way through #12, naming all of Catoosa County (and the surrounding area) as a conspirator because it included everyone in the whole mix of numbers 1–11.

  He repeated many of what we felt were the same half-truths and untruths that he’d asked me about during cross-examination, using them as the basis for each of his so-called “truths.” He added some fresh accusations, too. I don’t think it’s worth repeating any more of his awful claims than I already have here, except for one: With David sitting right there in that courtroom, he talked about our “miraculous” reconciliation in November 2008—and basically called it a sham.

  “What she has on him, or what power she has over him, I don’t know,” he told that jury.

  As he completed each “truth,” he took the piece of paper it was printed on from the projector and laid it on the rail right in front of the jury. He commented that each “Tonya Truth” was a “color,” and he wondered aloud whether the jury would “go for that one.”

  Gregor told those jurors to think back on my testimony and to think about all of the “lies” I was caught up in: “How do you know when Tonya Craft is lying?” he said. “When her lips are moving. Just lie after lie after lie.”

  “And don’t let packaging fool you,” he said. “Unfortunately in this world, evil comes in attractive packages. More often than not you can’t identify ‘evil’ by appearance, or else we’d be able to stamp it out.”

  He referred once again to this “ridiculous, shameless, disgusting conspiracy defense.”

  “If this was motivated by anything other than people wanting to get to the truth and wanting this defendant to be held accountable for what she’s done, don’t you think they could have come up with bigger, better lies than the evidence that was presented in this case?” he said.

  He explained what those lies would be, too: about eyewitnesses, confessions, and more. “There is plenty of evidence to prove this defendant’s guilty beyond a reasonable doubt. If it was a conspiracy, there would be a lot more,” he said.

  “There is an absolute and actual truth out there,” he added. “It’s not a Tonya Truth. It’s simple. It’s black and white. It’s not a bunch of pretty colors,” he said, forcefully grabbing up the printed paper “Tonya Truths” one by one from the jury rail and dramatically crumpling all that paper in his hand. “It’s not variations on it,” he said. “It’s simply the truth. As sad, despicable, and cruel and distasteful as it might be, it’s the truth. It’s like what’s contained in this indictment. It’s black and white. It may be unpleasant, but it’s the truth.”

  After hitting once more on the “overpaid” experts and my attempts to “buy” the truth, he asked that jury to find “a truth that is real, for Brianna, for Chloe, for Ashley, for our community, and for justice.”

&n
bsp; I tried not to shake my head. I tried not to throw daggers with my eyes. I’m not sure I successfully held it in. After listening to all of that, I was floored that they’d only used up thirty minutes. They’d have almost a full hour left on their ninety-minute clock for Chris Arnt to present at the end. What else are they planning to say about me?

  Doc got up looking very tired. In some ways, I think he had already given everything he had to my defense. But slowly and surely his adrenaline kicked in, and he ramped up his fully animated self in front of that jury. He recounted absolutely everything that mattered. He walked through my whole timeline. He talked about the experts and the interviews. He somehow managed to squeeze all of it into three-quarters of the time he’d been preparing for all weekend.

  He showed the jury a tattoo on his wrist, a Greek word that means “essential truth,” and he talked about the fact that it was the State who held the burden of proving each part of the alleged crimes “beyond a reasonable doubt”—not the other way around. He reminded the jury that it was up to them to discern the truth: “The only thing that matters is what you believe in your hearts to be true.”

  He verbally fought back against what we felt were a few of the more ridiculous claims Len Gregor had been harping on for days in that courtroom. He defended the experts we’d hired, saying each one of them had studied the evidence from a professional and unbiased point of view. They weren’t going to come participate in a trial that was based on “conspiracy theories,” he said. Why would they risk their entire professional reputations for that? They studied the evidence, they saw the “shoddy” investigation and the “tainted” interviews, and “they came here to put a stop to this,” he said. “Because they care about the truth.”

  Doc spent most of his time going over what we saw as problems with the investigation. He reminded them of how hard we had worked to bring in the best people we could find to show them why, in reality, “it didn’t happen, it couldn’t have happened the way they said it did, and it doesn’t make sense.”