A Death in Canaan

by Barthel, Joan;

  Dr. Frank Lovallo said that Barbara had called him that night sometime between 9:20 and 9:40, to ask about some tests she’d had done. Dr. Bornemann’s daughter-in-law, whom Peter had spoken to and had taken to be the doctor’s wife, said his call came “between nine forty-five and ten.”

  “The case is surrounded by clocks,” The New York Times story had said, and John Bianchi seemed to agree. “All these clocks and watches,” he said with irony, “and none of them seem to match.”

  The testimony on the time sequence came early in the hearing, some of it vaguely familiar, even a little boring. Then, after court was adjoured one day, word came that the fingerprint on the back door of Barbara’s house had been identified at last. It belonged to Tim Parmalee. His fingerprints had not been on file at the time of the trial. But in the spring of 1974 Tim was picked up for stealing a car. His fingerprints were taken, and now they were matched. It was an irony that Barbara, with her prankish sense of humor, would have relished. The car Tim was accused of stealing was taken from Jacobs Garage in Falls Village, the shop with which Barbara had had a long-running feud.

  When the fingerprint match came in, a new reporter asked John Bianchi whether the Parmalee brothers would now be charged—word was out that the new evidence involved Michael Parmalee as well. Mr. Bianchi laughed. “Charge them with what?” he asked, and even the Lakeville Journal, in its next editorial, had a word of caution. “It does not necessarily follow that either of them committed the crime,” the Journal declared. “To rush to such a conclusion without either indictment or trial would be to do to others the sort of injustice that some of Reilly’s defenders contend was done to him.” Around East Canaan, the subject was much discussed. “We’re the Legal Defense Fund of Litchfield County,” Jean said to Elaine Monty, when they talked on the phone. “What’ll we do if the Parmalees come to us for help?” Elaine gulped and said she guessed they’d have to help. Jean thought so too. “I’d feel like a hypocrite if we didn’t,” she said, and Marion agreed.

  Our house was closed for the winter, no heat or water, so for most of the hearing, I stayed with the Madows, sleeping in the extra bed in Nan’s room. The atmosphere was strained. Mickey had left his job after more than twenty years, and was trying free-lance as a salesman. Marion was working for an accountant in Salisbury during the day and doing bookeeping at the Lakeville Journal some nights. “It’s hard,” Marion said, simply, about their situation. She didn’t complain, but she seemed depressed, even when things seemed to go well at the hearing. One night she and Nan and I were watching the Shirley MacLaine TV special, just the three of us. Mickey was on the road, and the boys were out. Marion said she enjoyed happy shows, and as much as she liked Arthur Miller, she didn’t care for his plays, or for any play that wasn’t happy. She remembered another play, The Glass Menagerie, that she hadn’t liked. “I just walked out feeling sorry for her,” Marion said. “I don’t like sad endings. I have enough sad endings in my own life.”

  The committee meetings were different now, too. There were arguments. Some committee members were unhappy because on Sixty Minutes, Marion had told Mike Wallace that if it hadn’t been for Mickey and herself, Peter would have had no place to go. And, at a committee meeting, she had told the others that she would do anything, walk over anybody, for Peter’s sake. Some of the people on the committee said Marion was getting a swelled head from all the publicity; Marion replied that some of the people on the committee were small-minded and jealous. “I wish we could all go back to the way we felt in the beginning,” Beverly King told me wistfully.

  Sergeant Pennington was back, talking about fingerprints. He said that at the time of the trial, he’d had 325,000 fingerprint cards on file. Now he had 400,000. He recalled how he’d taken the picture of Barbara’s back door, that night after midnight, after he’d dusted the door with a gray powder. Mr. Bianchi asked the sergeant whether he could determine the age of a print, and the sergeant said he couldn’t. When shown the photograph of the print, he explained that through a color reverse process, the shades were the opposite from what they appeared. Judge Speziale smiled gently. “So white is black, and black is white,” he said.

  Timothy Parmalee was clipped and trim in his dark green uniform, a marksman’s medal on his jacket. He had enlisted in the Army in the spring of 1975 and had been called to active duty that fall, when he turned eighteen. When Roy Daly questioned him about his activities on the day Barbara died, Tim said he’d had dinner with his father at their house on Route 63. His sister, her husband and their six children lived there, too. His mother was working the evening shift at Wash ’n Dri, where one of Peter’s jurors had worked.

  Around 6 or 6:30, Tim continued, he went to the Falls Village market to buy diapers for his sister’s baby. He went to the package store, too, along with his brother-in-law, and Wayne Collier, to buy beer. Timothy said he didn’t go in, though. Then they went back to his father’s house. It was around 7:30.

  “And did you stay in your father’s house for the rest of the evening?” Roy Daly asked.

  “No,” Tim said.

  “Where did you go when you left?”

  “Across the road to my uncle’s house.”

  “Were you alone, or was someone else with you?”

  “Wayne was with me. We just sat down and talked and drank beer,” Tim said. “Till eight thirty, quarter to nine.”

  “And then what did you do?”

  “Went over to my sister Marie’s house … used the phone.” Marie’s house was next door. Tim said he had called a girl in Massachusetts and talked “twenty, twenty-five minutes.”

  “About what time did you place that call?” Mr. Daly asked.

  “Five minutes to nine,” Tim said.

  “And the call lasted twenty, twenty-five minutes. Is that what you said a moment ago?”

  “It was before quarter to nine I made the phone call,” Tim said.

  “Now, after you finished the call from your sister Marie’s house, what, if anything, did you do?”

  “Went back to my uncle’s house,” Tim said. “Drank more beer and talked until my sister Marie came home from work. She went to her own house. I went in after her.”

  “About what time was that?” Mr. Daly asked.

  “Ten after nine, quarter after nine.”

  “What did you do after that?”

  “I went home, said good-night and went to bed.”

  It may have sounded early for bed, but in a newspaper story during the hearing, Duke Moore, a reporter who lived in Falls Village, explained the neighborhood tempo. “Often Friday and Saturday nights consist of nothing more than hanging around, drinking beer, talking, finally going to bed, often early,” he wrote.

  Tim testified that he went to sleep at once, and slept until twenty past one in the morning, when his father woke him to say that a policeman wanted to talk to him. It was Jim Mulhern, sent out by Lieutenant Shay to make the house-to-house check.

  Later in the hearing, Jim Mulhern confirmed Timothy’s account. “He came out of the bedroom,” Mulhern testified. “This was roughly 1:40, 1:45 A.M.”

  “The room Timothy Parmalee emerged from, if he did, was on the first floor of the house, is that correct?” Mr. Daly asked.

  “Yes sir,” Mulhern said. “First door to the left as you go in the front door.”

  John Bianchi’s assistant, Robert Beach, asked a question.

  “When Timothy Parmalee came into your presence, did you make any observations as to his physical appearance?”

  “Yes sir,” Mulhern said. “The only thing he had on was a pair of trousers.… He appeared as if he had been in bed, sleeping.”

  “Did you leave [your] bedroom until you were awakened sometime after one o’clock to talk to Trooper Mulhern?” John Bianchi asked Tim.

  “No.”

  “How long have you known Peter Reilly, Mr. Parmalee?” John Bianchi asked Tim.

  “Ever since he moved up to the corner,” Tim said.

  “Did
you ever play with Peter Reilly at the house wherein his mother was murdered?”

  “Yes,” Tim said.

  “Did you ever stay overnight at this same little house?”

  “Yes,” Tim said.

  “Have you ever gone in or out of the side or back door?”

  “Occasionally,” Tim said.

  “And is it true that you also went in the front door?”

  “Yes,” Tim said.

  “Prior to September 28, 1973, can you recall the last time you were at the house?”

  “Week and a half, two weeks and a half. Not really sure,” Tim said.

  “Going back for approximately one year, what is your best estimate of how many times you were at the house?”

  “I am really not sure,” Tim said. “Quite a few times.”

  Mr. Bianchi questioned two Parmalee sisters, both married. Marie Parmalee Ovitt said she got home from work at ten past nine, the night Barbara died.

  “Did you see your brother Timothy between the time you got home at about nine-ten and before nine-thirty?” Mr. Bianchi asked.

  “Yes, I did,” she said.

  “And how do you determine that that was the time you saw him?”

  “Because I watched the last few minutes of ‘Pins and Needles,’ and that went off at nine-thirty,” she replied.

  Over at the Madows, I remembered, they’d begun watching Kelley’s Heroes then. Mrs. Ovitt said that when Timothy came in, he stayed “not too long. Five minutes, at the most.”

  “And did you see him again that night?”

  “No I didn’t,” she said.

  But Tim’s other sister testified that she had. From about twenty-five of ten, she said, she was sitting opposite Tim’s bedroom door; the door was closed. Just after ten o’clock, her sister Marie came over, wanting Tim to baby-sit.

  “I went in and tried to wake up Timmy in his bedroom,” Judith Machia said. “He was sleeping, and I couldn’t wake him up. It was about ten after ten.”

  “Between twenty-five minutes of ten, and the time that you went in—shortly after ten o’clock—to wake Timmy up, did anybody come in or out of his bedroom door?” Mr. Bianchi asked.

  “No,” she said.

  I drove in to court with Peter, Art, and Geoff one morning, sandwiched in the middle of the front seat. Peter was driving. Arthur, in the back seat, was complaining that it was his turn to sit in front. Everybody was smoking except me, and I wished I were.

  On the way to court, Peter pulled into the Texaco station across the road from the little white house. I looked over at the yard, and I asked them, for the last time, about that night.

  “Why did we ever go to that Teen Center meeting?” Geoff asked. It was a melancholy question, but Peter answered lightly. “Because I thought Nancy was going to be there,” he said.

  “I sat over there in the chair,” Geoff said, “with Schatzi in my lap, under the elm tree, watching the sun go down, and I was thinking, this is the end of something. I know it sounds weird now to say I thought that, but I really did. And I don’t know why I did.” Peter said nothing.

  “I came home that night and everybody was gone,” Arthur said. “I asked my grandmother, ‘Where is everybody?’ Nan said there was an ambulance call. ‘Peter’s mother’s sick,’ she said. So I boogied on over to Sharon Hospital, thinking they took her there.”

  Peter looked into the rear-view mirror. “When you got to the house, Art, did they say my mom was dead?”

  “Nope,” Arthur said. Peter seemed about to speak, but just then Geoff spoke. “Shay took me into that van, and he searched me, and he didn’t even take off my socks. I said, ‘Don’t you want to look between my toes?’”

  Peter didn’t say anything more. He started the motor, and the radio came on again. It was tuned to Bob Steele, Barbara’s favorite.

  In the courthouse hallway, I saw Tim’s wife and her parents. Tim and Chris Sager had been married the year before, and they had a baby girl. Mary Sager, Christine’s mother, had just written a letter to the Journal, defending Tim, very much as her husband had written after Peter’s conviction. I remembered Mr. Sager from a committee meeting, volunteering to make arrangements for the dance. Now he looked worn and strained, and the sum of the human factors, in all this, suddenly seemed overwhelming. We said hello, and I wanted to say something more—maybe that I was sorry, and I started to mumble some words, but then it just seemed too awkward, and I let it go.

  Assisting Catherine Roraback on the Peter Reilly case had been Peter Herbst’s first job after law school. Now, as he took the stand, Judge Speziale looked a little concerned. “Rise, Peter Reilly,” he said. Peter stood up, and the judge read the attorney-client privilege, which sounded rather like the seal of the confessional. The judge told Peter that if he waived that privilege, things he told Peter Herbst might now be disclosed. Peter Reilly said he understood, and he did waive it.

  On the stand, Peter Herbst said there had been some problem getting some of the statements they wanted from the State’s Attorney. He said John Bianchi had told him “it was such a hassle to go to the trouble of Xeroxing all the statements,” so John Bianchi had said he himself would decide what was exculpatory, and pass it along to the defense. Peter Herbst said he’d never known that John Sochocki’s aunt was interviewed by the police, that he hadn’t got that statement or the statement from Dr. Bornemann’s daughter-in-law, whom Peter had spoken to when he called for help the night Barbara died. He said he remembered Elizabeth Mansfield bringing in the wallet she’d found and now, in court, he looked at the wallet in the plastic bag and said yes, that was it.

  Peter Herbst didn’t finish testifying that day, and the next morning he took the stand again, first thing. The courtroom was settling down to a new round of legal arguments, when the witness’s first statement startled everyone awake. He said that after court adjourned the day before, he’d been asked to stop by the State’s Attorney’s office before he left the courthouse. Inside the little office, Peter Herbst said, Mr. Bianchi had asked him a question. “Pete,” he’d said, “your privilege is gone. At any time—before, after, or during the trial—did Peter Reilly admit his guilt to you?”

  John Bianchi, at the counsel table, flushed, and Mr. Gallicchio stood up quickly. “Objection, your honor,” he said. “The question is whether or not Peter Reilly is entitled to a new trial. It’s not a question of his innocence or guilt.” Mr. Gallicchio’s voice faltered a little toward the end, as though what he was saying sounded as bizarre in his own ears as it did in mine.

  “All I want is the answer to the question,” Roy Daly said, and the judge looked at Mr. Gallicchio. “Do I hear a motion to strike?” he asked, and Mr. Gallicchio, still looking surprised, said yes. “Motion is granted,” the judge said.

  As interesting as that revelation was, the most fascinating part of Peter Herbst’s testimony concerned the new evidence.

  “Did you know of a woman named Sandra Ashner?” Mr. Daly asked.

  “No, I did not,” Peter Herbst said.

  “Did you know whether Michael Parmalee had requested a separation from the United States Army based on alleged homosexuality?” Mr. Daly asked.

  The collective noise in the courtroom wasn’t a gasp, more of a shuffle. Homosexuality—the most dreaded, derided thing in a small New England town. Being a queer. When the citizens of nineteenth-century Canaan hanged Jeff Davis in effigy, they dressed him in petticoats first. Now the sound in the courtroom nearly drowned out the witness’s answer.

  “No, I did not,” Peter Herbst said.

  Mr. Roberts had taken Roy Daly aside and asked him to please speak a little more slowly. He sometimes spoke very quickly, especially when he seemed angry. After so many years in the courtroom, Mr. Roberts knew very well that a person’s talking speed could affect what the person was trying to say. “By the time an attorney asks a question five times, he’s lost sight of the subject, the predicate and the object,” Mr. Roberts said, a little sadly.

  So R
oy Daly spoke very slowly and deliberately to the young woman wearing slacks and a pea coat. She had a small, pointed face, a sharp chin, and long, wavy black hair. Her big dark eyes had a sad, almost haunted look. As Sandra Ashner spoke, she created, in this familiar courtroom, a most unfamiliar world.

  A country way called Undermountain Road ran behind the Kruses’ place. There was a large dairy farm down that road, where the hired man, Sherwood Scanlon, lived in a trailer with a woman named Jacqueline Watson. Another couple was living in the trailer, too, Sandra Ashner and Michael Parmalee, whom Sandra called “Mick.” Sandra had a little boy named Bobby.

  Sandra Ashner and Michael Parmalee had not been living together long, and she had never met his family. In the middle of the afternoon on the day Barbara died, she testified, they walked from the trailer to the Parmalee place on Route 63. When they passed the Kruse property at the corner, Barbara was out in the yard, and Michael pointed her out to Sandra.

  Back at the trailer that evening, Sandra said, she gave her son a shower and heard him say his prayers. She put him to bed. In the bedroom she shared with Michael, Sandra said, she was sitting on the bed. “Michael come in,” she testified, “and he says something was wrong. He says, ‘Well, something is wrong at home.’”

  “Did he, thereafter, do anything?” Mr. Daly asked.

  “I believe he left,” Sandra Ashner said.

  “He left the trailer?”

  “Yes.”

  She said she went to bed and awoke around seven or seven-thirty the next morning.

  “Did Michael Parmalee, after you got up, come back to the trailer?” Mr. Daly asked.

  “Yes,” she said. “About eight-thirty, nine o’clock.”

  For the next few weeks, then, Sandra said, Michael acted strangely.