She was processed and taken to her room in the reception center. Every new and returning inmate spent her first weeks in the RC. Priscilla’s room resembled a college dorm and possessed a wooden door rather than bars. She tried the bed. Then she closed the door and lay down. She thought she had to stay in her room. No one explained the rules to her. No one told her she could go into the yard anytime she wanted, or down the hall to watch TV, or play Ping-Pong in the recreation center. No one mentioned the pool. And no one thought to tell her that closing the door to her room automatically locked it.
Priscilla missed dinner her first night at CIW because she could not get out. She was finally able to attract the attention of another inmate who came to release her.
“Well, you’ve missed dinner, but in the future you can order food from the canteen and have it in your room, as long as you do it by Saturday,” the girl told her, smiling. She stayed with Priscilla for a while, explaining some of the rules. Priscilla was impressed by the amount of freedom inmates were allowed. And the girl seemed nice. But later that evening, another inmate stopped by to talk.
“Don’t you hang around that girl,” she advised seriously. “She’s got a bad reputation. Watch what you say around her.” Priscilla swallowed. There was a game here, and rules to be learned; she saw that clearly. This girl was all right, that one bad. Don’t talk about your crime; don’t be honest. Watch yourself.
Priscilla soon would learn something else about prison. It was something Ted Lindquist could have told her. Everybody there was innocent.
3
On Thursday, October eleventh, Steve and Ed Caldwell flew PSA from San Francisco to Ontario Airport to attend Priscilla’s serious offender hearing. In July, shortly after her departure for CIW, the Community Release Board had set Priscilla’s term of imprisonment for Tia’s murder at the median term of six years. This was automatic in converting an indeterminate sentence to the determinate sentences now in force. But because this was a murder case and in addition involved more than one count, it was also automatic to hold an enhancement hearing to determine whether the sentence should be increased to the maximum—in Priscilla’s case, to seven years.
This was Steve’s third visit to Frontera since July. He and Marietta and the boys had driven down shortly after Priscilla’s arrival, camping at the nearby Prado State Park campgrounds. And they had returned, after Marietta’s departure for North Carolina, the last weekend in August. By then Priscilla had expected to be moved from RC to Campus, which was the main part of the facility. But August found her still in the reception center. Because she was a superintendent’s case—assigned, due to the nature of her crime and the publicity attached to her case, to the superintendent personally—her transfer to Campus had been delayed. Since visiting at the RC was much less appealing and open than at Campus, with visitors confined to a small airless room without food-vending machines, the boys had soon grown irritable and restless. The visits had also proved difficult for Steve.
He did not want to burden Priscilla with his problems, though he had many. After her departure, Steve had switched to night shift at juvenile hall. Each night, before reporting to work at eleven, he brought Erik and Jason to the Doudiets to sleep. At seven, he returned there, retrieved the boys, took them home, and readied them for school. He slept until they came home. It was the only way he could find to spend time with the boys but it was hard on Jan and Jim, he knew, and it was beginning to tire him to the point of illness. He was smoking heavily and felt depressed and out-of-sorts. On top of that, the boys—and particularly Jason—were taking the separation from Priscilla very hard. Jason had suddenly forgotten how to read. But Steve didn’t want to mention this to Priscilla. She had enough troubles of her own.
At Ontario Airport, Steve and Ed rented a car for the forty-five minute drive to Frontera.
“How was Pris doing the last time you were here?” Ed asked.
“She was reporting some hassles because it’s a child-related case. She was working in the kitchen, she said, and some inmate started pointing at her and holding her nose and talking about the rotten odor, that it smelled dead—stuff like that.”
“How’s she handling it?”
“Who knows? She’s so naive about things. She thought if she just told people she was innocent, they wouldn’t hassle her. She told me that the ones who go after her the most are the ones who feel guilty about their own kids, not the ones who are loving mothers. But she’s starting to learn the institutional lingo. Calls everybody girls. You know they turn everybody into children in institutions. Makes them easier to deal with.”
“But no one’s actually threatened her right out?”
“Some lady in the kitchen who was in for a knifing got burned at her for something and started pointing Pris out to all her friends. Pris felt pretty threatened by that!” Steve shuddered and his voice hardened suddenly. “Christ, why don’t they leave her alone? She’s a better mother than any of them.”
Ed lifted a hand from the wheel and patted his arm. “Steve, I know,” he said. “What about you? How are things going?”
“Oh, I’ll make it. I mean, as you know, I’ve got a net worth of minus thirty-three thousand dollars, monthly expenses of over twelve hundred dollars, and a salary of fifteen hundred dollars. Not to mention the forty thousand dollars I owe you in fees and costs. You know, one time I told Dr. Satten I’d be satisfied to come out of this with my family intact, that the rest didn’t matter. Now I don’t even have that.”
“Well, the defense fund is still in operation.” Caldwell raised a finger from the steering wheel to tick off a point. “And one juror—that old lady-librarian—is even contributing to it! We’ve also got this new attorney, Jonathan Purver, to handle the appeal for a new trial, and he’s supposed to be a bright, capable guy.” He raised another finger. “And personally I think Burke’s denial of our request for Pris’s release pending appeal will be overturned.” A third finger came off the wheel. “Then there’s this Syntex thing: that could win us a new trial.”
“Right!” Steve was animated for the first time. When the news about the formula recall for chloride deficiency had broken in August, everyone had called Steve in excitement. Syntex Corporation, a drug and baby formula manufacturer, had withdrawn two of their baby formulas due to chloride deficiency, he learned. It had been an innocent mistake, apparently. With all the new linkages between sodium consumption and heart and arterial disease, Syntex had decided to reduce drastically the amount of chloride in its formulas. No government standards existed for baby formulas; no agency tested them. No one realized that certain levels of chloride were essential for infant growth until babies began to get sick. Then a doctor in Tennessee, Dr. Shane Roy, had tracked down the problem to the chloride-deficient formulas manufactured by Syntex.
But what was significant to Priscilla’s case was that the two formulas recalled were Neo-Mull-Soy and Cho-free. Both Tia and Mindy, and particularly Tia, had been on Cho-free for months. Maybe that had caused their problems.
Ed was working on this new development, Steve knew. He was in touch with Dr. Roy. And so was Josh Thomas. So far nothing definitive was known. Syntex wasn’t talking, and there was disagreement about which lots of formula had been affected. A number of lots manufactured in 1978, and probably other lots sold as early as 1975, had certainly been deficient.
Steve did not know how this might affect Pris. There seemed to be no correlation linking decreased chloride with increased sodium levels, but Ed had found that decreased chloride in a formula could lead to increased bicarbonate levels. Many times over the course of her illness, Tia had exhibited elevated carbon dioxide levels, and those were a reflection of bicarbonate. Still, although there had been one or two exceptions, her chloride level had not been decreased. Also, she had been receiving food other than Cho-free some of the time, while it appeared that the babies who had fallen sick from the formulas had been younger and consequently had been given no other food. There was another difference
: although these chloride-deficient babies had not thrived, they had not suffered from diarrhea.
The investigation into the formula was only preliminary, but Steve thought it might well suggest an answer. At the very least it would throw up considerable doubt, and Steve was confident that the appellate court would be forced to grant a new trial on the basis of this new evidence.
Another forty-five minutes elapsed. Finally the correctional officer behind the glassed-in section that looked out on both the Visiting Room and the Waiting Room called out, “Priscilla Phillips.”
Steve and Ed were buzzed into the brightly lit Visiting Room that resembled a train station with its line of vending machines and its TV bolted high on one wall. Still, Steve thought, train stations did not have guards in one corner who insisted that visitor and inmate embrace only in front of them, and who refused to allow an inmate to handle the change visitors were permitted to bring in for the vending machines. Priscilla was not even supposed to push the machine buttons for her selection.
Then Steve saw her coming in through the back door, pulling down and adjusting her clothes unselfconsciously from the search, and when she looked up and smiled and started to run to them, Steve had to blink hard. He missed the hell out of this lady—that was the worst of it.
4
Exactly five weeks later, Priscilla returned in the six-seater airplane from CIW via Visalia to Gnoss Field. She hadn’t wanted to make the trip, agreeing only at Ed’s insistence. “You have to be here for your bail hearing; I can’t emphasize that strongly enough,” he had said.
“But I can’t stand another trip like the last one. You know how terrible it was. Can’t I just wait down here, and then if Burke decides to release me on bail, I’ll just walk out of here?”
“No, Priscilla. I want you to be here. Grit your teeth and bear it. I want that judge to see you.”
“Everyone here says there’s no way he’ll grant bail—they’re all laughing at me and my optimism.”
“Most people don’t get out on bail pending appeal. But you know the appellate court ordered Burke to reconsider his decision. I think you’ve got a good chance or I wouldn’t subject you to this.”
“Okay.” She had packed her belongings: her clothes and the clock radio and her Bible. She had said good-bye to some of her new friends—among them Kathy, who was in on a child-abuse case; Laura, a Beverly Hills socialite; and Wendy Yoshimura, who had been captured with Patty Hearst. Wendy had left the RC for Campus the same day as Priscilla, and her enhancement hearing had also coincided with Priscilla’s.
Ed had been eloquent at the enhancement hearing the month before. He had cited Priscilla’s impeccable record, the support of her many friends and family, and the possibility that the Syntex formula recall would affect the findings in her case. The board had voted unanimously not to enhance her sentence. It had been a victory, and it meant that Priscilla’s sentence could be as little as twenty months. And assuming good behavior, her maximum sentence would not exceed four years. Priscilla had no doubts concerning her behavior, but she was beginning to acknowledge that her time would not be easy, that it would not be simple to avoid trouble.
Problems began, in fact, as soon as she moved from the reception center to Harrison Cottage on Campus. Harrison was known as a rough cottage, and because it was the last cottage on Campus, its inhabitants had the longest walk to meals or to the canteen or the pool, and this was to prove significant.
All the newcomers to Campus passed through an initial period of double-bunking before receiving their own rooms. Priscilla achieved single-room status sooner than most because an inmate moved suddenly to Wilson—the prerelease cottage—freeing her room for Priscilla. Hers was one of the nicest rooms on Harrison B, with extensive wood paneling. But by the time Priscilla moved in, someone had deliberately gouged long scratches in the wood. It foreshadowed Priscilla’s reception at the cottage and on Campus.
It was only later that Priscilla realized she was being set up for persecution. Priscilla’s assignment to work as a clerk for Mr. Williams, the counselor at Harrison, required her to order housekeeping and office supplies for the whole unit. She was responsible for picking up the supplies from the warehouse and bringing them to the cottage. But before she could turn the supplies over to the cottage staff, the inmates clustered around her, taking whatever they wanted from the boxes. She soon understood that the cottage inmates were hoarding the supplies; then they would come to her for more. It was nothing more than stealing; within a few weeks, they were taking things directly from the office, daring her to stop them. The code she was fast learning required Priscilla’s silence, if not her cooperation. But one day a girl reached into the box containing Mr. Williams’s own supplies.
“No,” Priscilla told her in exasperation. “That box is for Mr. Williams. Take it from this one.”
The girl snarled back at her. It had been the opportunity, Priscilla discovered later, that this inmate had sought. From that time on, she was Priscilla’s personal persecutor, taunting her with shouts of “Baby killer!” Others tormented Priscilla, too. Once a group of women called Priscilla over.
“You’re Priscilla, the baby killer, right?” asked one conversationally.
“That’s my name, but I’m no baby killer.”
“Well, no killer is fit to use that name, so don’t let me hear you use it again.”
“It’s my given name, and I’m going to use it,” Priscilla snapped in return, and she walked away, her back tight against the abuse the group hurled at her. At least they had not offered physical abuse, as they had to Kathy. Priscilla was thankful for that, and for her friends on Campus and in her cottage who warned her and tried to protect her.
“Don’t go in the pool without some of us being around,” they told Priscilla. “We’ve heard people talk about trying to drown you.”
“I’m a good swimmer,” Priscilla insisted.
“Yeah, but you haven’t heard about what’s going on around here. Somebody threw shit in a child abuser’s room a while ago, and there’s all kinds of wild rumors about you. One girl said your husband had been killed in Vietnam and you had adopted Korean kids and killed them just to get revenge.”
Priscilla laughed. “Oh, come on!”
“Really! And there’s another one that you’re really a man and had a sex-change operation and you murdered the kids because they weren’t yours!”
Priscilla tried to ignore the abuse, even after mud was thrown through her window, but her problems came to a head shortly before she left for her bail hearing.
The first week in November brought early darkness to the prison grounds. One night after dinner, Priscilla delayed returning to Harrison because she wanted to talk to a friend. When she was ready to leave, she found her usual group of companions had left, and she began to worry about whether she should walk back alone. Finally, dressed in a light windbreaker, she started off, her muscles bunched against the fall chill and the threat of darkness.
They were waiting for her. A group of girls appeared suddenly and fell in behind her.
“There’s the one who killed that Korean kid! Let’s get her!”
Priscilla’s blood stopped dead in her veins. She peered ahead and made out two dim figures. She rushed up. They were from Harrison and she knew them slightly: one was a huge black woman, the other a thin little white girl.
“Please, can I walk with you?” Priscilla was trembling.
“Why, sure, girl. You come right on.” The black woman pulled her between them. Behind them, the others were still following, taunting.
“Dirty kid killer!”
“You deserve to die!”
“Wait till we catch you alone, baby killer!” Without warning, they were right behind Priscilla.
“How’s that feel?”
It was burning her and Priscilla screamed. Then they were all throwing it at her. The boiling coffee drenched her shoulders and back, the heat slicing through her thin jacket. Some of the liquid flecked th
e black woman and she turned on the pursuers in fury.
“You burned me, too, you bitches! Get outta here!” she screamed. And in a moment the others were gone, shrieking with laughter.
Priscilla was sobbing as they led her to the cottage. She ran to her room and collapsed on her bed. Soon her friends began gathering.
“It’s so ugly. Where does all this ugliness come from?” Priscilla cried. Somebody told the officer on duty and he summoned Priscilla.
“You know who they are?”
She nodded.
“Want me to lock them up?”
Priscilla recoiled in horror. It was the worst thing she could do.
“No, no,” she said. She knew she would soon be leaving for her court appearance; it was only a matter of surviving the next few days. And she was fortunate, as it happened, because the ringleader behind the incident had a court date herself that week, and she never returned to CIW.
The Air Security return flight to Marin County was only slightly more palatable than before. Priscilla was the sole woman on the flight; even the guards were men. She could have demanded the presence of a matron or refused to go, but she would only have hurt herself, and so she said nothing. At Visalia she was again placed in a filthy call, but at least she was alone. With the bizarre logic she now saw as routine in the prison system, the officers at Visalia agreed as a special dispensation to allow Priscilla to keep her book, but they insisted she remove her contact lenses so she could not read it. At Gnoss Field, they handcuffed her hands tightly behind her back, and after a few minutes she was in such pain she thought she would cry. The Marin County jailers released her from the cuffs but they had no clothes that would fit her. The jeans were not even close to her size, and the sweatshirt they gave her to wear was so stretched she was embarrassed to appear in it. Still, she was back in Marin County. She was home.
The next day the courtroom at the Civic Center that had been selected for the bail hearing was filled with Priscilla’s supporters. Some clients were there, the Doudiets, and Dr. Satten. Pat Wrigley had driven over from Vallejo. She and Harry and their two older children had taken a trip to southern California the previous weekend and had dropped by CIW unexpectedly to see if they could visit Priscilla. She wondered how quickly the officials would have denied visiting privileges had they realized the Wrigleys were Mindy’s new parents.
A Mother's Trial Page 35