Perfect Poison

by M. William Phelps

  Harris was the government’s fourteenth witness in what was amounting to the end of its case.

  She first explained how she and Gilbert had met back in the spring of 1996. Then Welch had her recall the conversation she had with Gilbert the day she picked her up at the hospital in Boston. It was the same day Harris had learned for the first time there was a murder investigation going on at the VAMC, and Gilbert was the main focus of it.

  Welch had to be careful. If Harris blurted out “murder investigation” and “Gilbert” in the same breath, Ponsor would have Welch’s ass served up on a silver platter.

  A smart attorney, Welch didn’t bother trying to slip in anything he knew he couldn’t get away with. He kept to Ponsor’s earlier instructions and, it was clear, had coached Harris rather well.

  “During the course of this car ride, did the issue of Ms. Gilbert and Mr. Perrault’s relationship come up?”

  “. . . Kristen asked me if I knew why she was in the hospital, and I told her that Jim had told me that she was having trouble with the breakup.”

  Welch then had Harris work in the fact that during that same car trip, Gilbert told her she would “stalk” Perrault if he ever “dumped her.”

  Next Harris made it clear how and why she decided to contact the DA’s office in late September 1996, which opened up an opportunity for Welch to bring in the diary Harris had began keeping after she initially met with Murphy, Soutier and Plante.

  Miles, who most likely wanted to suppress as much of what was in that diary as possible, kept objecting, saying again and again that it was all “hearsay.” But Ponsor kept allowing the testimony.

  As Welch continued, he zeroed in on Gilbert’s need to know where Perrault was all the time, and how she continually called Harris’s house to check if Perrault had called while she was out.

  Using the diary to help her recall exactly what had happened on a particular day, Harris painted a dark picture of an “angry” woman with a “very controlled” and “very deep-pitched voice” on a day she had called and, after Harris had confirmed that Perrault had inquired about her whereabouts, told Harris that Perrault was a “fucking twit.”

  “Now, on the twenty-sixth [of September], did you know when Ms. Gilbert left her apartment?” Welch asked.

  Harris told jurors how Gilbert left at five P.M. and didn’t return until eight, which placed her out of the house at the time of the calls.

  In addition, she said Gilbert was “jumpy” and “agitated” when she returned at eight o’clock. Welch got her to describe how Gilbert said she had been out doing laundry, but didn’t have anything—much less a laundry basket—in her hands when she returned.

  Before Welch finished, Harris brought the jury back to the morning of September 27 (the day after the bomb threat), and asked her if Gilbert had a hypothesis about the bomb threat.

  “She told me . . . it was probably a patient who wanted to sit by and watch the action,” Harris said. “She said she was at the Look Restaurant across the street and watched the police cars and fire trucks show up.”

  “Nothing further . . .”

  From his first question, Miles tried tripping Harris up on dates, but she kept saying she didn’t recall the exact date. Beyond that, there really wasn’t much more Miles could pry into. It was best sometimes to leave well enough alone. There was no telling what else Harris knew that Welch hadn’t gotten out of her.

  As she left the courtroom, Harris couldn’t help but think how Gilbert hadn’t flinched one bit or showed any emotion while she had been on the stand.

  “Maybe she was in denial,” Harris later recalled. “Or maybe she just didn’t give a damn about anything.”

  CHAPTER 74

  Before testimony was over on Wednesday, January 14, Karen Abderhalden—who at one time considered Gilbert to be one of her closest friends—explained to the jury that Gilbert had stayed with her and her family for about three weeks during late August 1996, and how upset Gilbert was by the investigation.

  Within moments, Abderhalden admitted that Gilbert’s hatred and frustration over the “other” investigation didn’t stop at just her coworkers and friends; it went right to the top—particularly her nursing supervisor, Melodie Turner, who, by a stroke of luck, was at the VAMC the night of the bomb threat, even though she wasn’t supposed to be.

  “Did Ms. Gilbert ever talk about Melodie Turner with you during the summer of 1996?”

  “Yeah. She didn’t really care for Melodie. They had some problems—working relations. She had been upset with Melodie.”

  “Did she ever make a comment to you about Melodie Turner during this period of time . . . ?”

  “Well, one comment I recall . . . in her anger with Melodie . . . is that she believed maybe they ought to investigate Melodie.”

  “Did she specifically mention which people she was upset with?”

  “In particular, Kathy Rix and John Wall.”

  “And were they working up at the VA Medical Center in Ward C on the evening shift in September 1996 . . .?”

  “Yes.”

  By the time she finished, Abderhalden had made a reference to the movie Home Alone II, describing how her son had watched the movie several times and how familiar she was with the Talkboy toy, which, literally, gave the jury an image of Gilbert making the bomb-threat call. Because all Welch needed was for one of the twelve jurors to have seen the movie, where Macaulay Culkin’s character, Kevin, had used a Talkboy, Jr. to reserve a room at the Plaza Hotel in New York. It was even possible Gilbert had devised the bomb-threat plan while watching the movie with Abderhalden’s son.

  Harry Miles began his cross-examination of Abderhalden by trying to refocus the jury on Gilbert’s “good girl” status. Referring to his client as a “good nurse,” Miles had Abderhalden explain how Gilbert used to set up a Secret Santa during the holidays as well as help out at Jessie’s House, a homeless shelter in the Northampton area.

  Would it work? It was anybody’s guess.

  Welch next called Detective Thomas Soutier, who had found the Talkboy in Gilbert’s closet. Soutier was on the stand to try and clarify a conversation he’d had with James Perrault regarding Perrault’s future plans for employment.

  “Did there come a point in time around the time of the bomb threat investigation when you saw [James Perrault] at the DA’s office?” Welch asked.

  “Yes,” Soutier said, “numerous times.”

  “And did there come a point in time when you had a conversation with him about his job search?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Can you explain first the context of how that [conversation] arose?”

  Soutier said that Perrault had been in the office that day for a scheduled meeting with SA Plante. Perrault had shown up early. Waiting, he looked bored, Soutier said. So he invited him into his office to kill some time.

  “Did you have a conversation with him there?”

  “Yes . . . I did.”

  “And what was the nature of that conversation?”

  “It was a casual conversation. I asked him how his job search was going.”

  “Did you know about his job search?”

  “Yes, sir. I did.”

  “How did you know that?”

  Soutier said he had found out through checking Perrault’s phone records as part of “the other” investigation. Someone—he assumed Perrault—had been calling various police stations in the area from Perrault’s phone.

  “Did he make any comment back to you when you asked him how his job search was going?”

  “Well, he said it was slow. That he was concerned that his involvement in the ‘other investigation’ would taint his possibilities.”

  It was nothing more than informal, unplanned conversation, Soutier opined.

  “When he made that response to you, did you have a further conversation with him?”

  “I told him that if there ever came a point in time that anyone questioned his part in the ‘other investigation,’ h
e could feel free to have them call me, and I would explain it.”

  Miles then began questioning Soutier about the kind of relationship he and Perrault had shared. Looking to show the jury that Soutier had crossed the line in promising Perrault a job if he cooperated with investigators, Miles wanted to know if their friendship was more than just casual.

  But it failed. Soutier was as smooth as a desktop. He answered each one of Miles’s questions in a pleasing, reassuring tone. If the jury couldn’t believe a detective with more than twenty-six years on the job and not one blemish on his record, whom could be believed?

  Late in the day on January 15, Special Agent Steve Plante, dressed to a tee, sauntered into the courtroom as though he had just walked out of the pages of GQ magazine. His full shock of hair was perfectly styled and trimmed. At just a hair over five feet, Plante certainly wasn’t the tallest man in the courtroom, but if what he had to say was half of what people had been speculating, he would leave the stand with the distinction of having been the most compelling player in Gilbert’s trial to date.

  Plante first established that Gilbert had become the target of a probe into several suspicious deaths up at the VAMC in February 1996. Then he said the investigation he was conducting for the IGO became “very active” during the end of the summer in 1996.

  But in the end, however, Plante hadn’t offered the definitive final nail in Gilbert’s coffin that many thought he would, but more or less just reminded the jury of everything it had heard for the past two weeks.

  CHAPTER 75

  The biggest story in the nation on Tuesday, January 20, 1998, wasn’t that a Nor’easter had pummeled most of New England with a blanket of fresh packed powder and delayed the Gilbert trial by four days, or that the trial had taken up banner headlines in the Daily Hampshire Gazette for the past two weeks. It was a certain White House intern who had claimed to have sexual relations with President Bill Clinton.

  But the president’s infidelity and the major snowstorm made little difference to Kristen Gilbert. All she could do was sit in her cell and wonder what the hell had been going on in the courtroom for the last twelve days. A narcissist, the attention the trial had brought Gilbert was more than she could have ever imagined. Reporters were constantly sticking microphones and cameras in her face as she was escorted away from the courtroom, and, as she would tell a friend later that week, she “loved every minute of it.”

  “Can you believe that [TV news anchor] was chasing me down like that?” Gilbert, laughing, told a friend over the phone one day.

  Harry Miles, on the other hand, had his hands full with trying to defend his client. The evidence Welch had presented was devastating. Gilbert looked guilty as hell.

  Miles’s cross of Plante on the morning of January 20 turned out to be a bust. It hadn’t yielded much of anything that would sway the jury one way or the other if, in fact, one or more of them were sitting on the fence.

  After Plante left the stand, Welch indicated that he had one more witness: Glenn Gilbert. Glenn had already testified. But since he was the only one who had “confirmed” Gilbert’s voice on the now infamous “sped-up” tape Welch had made in his office on the Sunday before the trial, Welch needed him back to explain it to the jury. Judge Ponsor had stated earlier that Glenn couldn’t testify about the tape until after Bruce Koenig testified.

  So here he was.

  As the tape played, a chill went through the courtroom. Here was Gilbert’s voice, crystal clear, for everyone to hear.

  While it was playing, Plante happened to look over at the Stricklands. Gilbert’s father’s jaw dropped when he heard her voice ring out in the room, while her mother just put her head in her hands and began shaking it, slowly, back and forth.

  Miles had said back at the start of the trial he was going to prove the government had overlooked two possible suspects and targeted his client from day one. He said it was a substandard investigation from the start, and he promised he would fill many holes in the government’s case with the truth.

  Well, here was his chance.

  Miles’s witnesses consisted of three police officers who had been summoned to the scene on September 26, 1996, along with VAMC Chief of Security, Timothy O’Donnell. They were there to back up his theory that there had been two additional suspects the government had failed to investigate. Northampton PD Officer Carlos Lebron testified that one suspect was John Noble, a former VAMC patient who had been involved in an incident at the hospital some time ago and had made threats toward hospital staff. Northampton Detective Peter Fappiano testified that the other suspect was a jogger he’d spotted along Route 9, near the hospital, who was using a pay telephone right around the time the bomb threat was called in.

  Indeed, the two stories would give the jury a second and third theory to chew on during deliberations. But the case ultimately came down to one vital question: Was it—or was it not—Kristen Gilbert on those tapes the jury had heard in court the past few weeks?

  Closing arguments began on Wednesday, January 21.

  Welch addressed the jury at 1:05 P.M. Before he sat down an hour later, he had made it clear to the jury that Gilbert’s “problem was personal.” She chose to phone in the bomb threat to get back at those people who were helping investigators in the murder investigation, thus turning their backs on her.

  It was just after two P.M. when Welch finished. After a five-minute recess, Miles stood and walked toward the jury.

  “Kristen Gilbert was a nurse,” Miles said, “who ran the Sunshine Club . . . who organized the Christmas festivities for the staff . . . a nurse who took care of patients.” Then, in a whisper, Gilbert was “a good nurse,” he said.

  Reading part of a letter Gilbert had written to Perrault, where she described how she had watched him one night at the VFW throwing darts, Miles posed a question: “Are these the words of a techno terrorist—or the words of a plaintive woman who loved Jim Perrault?”

  Then he broke into his attack on Perrault.

  “This is a man who told you that he was a cop wannabe.” He called Perrault and Gilbert’s relationship a “paragon of immorality,” questioning Perrault’s integrity, motives, and his believability under oath.

  “He’s an individual without honor, morality, and who’s governed by self-interest.”

  After that, Miles shifted his focus and laid into SA Plante’s desire to find someone responsible for the crimes he had been investigating—because, according to Miles, Plante was “frustrated” that the murder investigation wasn’t going anywhere.

  “Did they ever try to determine whether Mr. Perrault set this whole thing up with a confidant?”

  Welch smiled and shook his head.

  By 2:30, Miles was finished.

  Judge Ponsor told Welch he had fifteen minutes for his rebuttal.

  “Timing was everything,” Welch offered. Plante, he explained, had to make decisions fast. Wherever the leads took him, was where he went. It was like being pulled by a team of horses.

  “That’s why it’s important to look at all the evidence . . . build it brick by brick and see how . . . she”—he raised his voice and pointed at Gilbert—“could have been the only person to have made that call on September 26, 1996, at 5:22 P.M.”

  As Welch turned to walk back toward his table, a final thought occurred to him.

  “Don’t forget this one iota of evidence,” he shouted. “That Melodie Turner was working on the twenty-sixth and she normally didn’t work the evening shift. But on the very day that the bomb threat comes in, Melodie Turner happens to be working . . . wow . . . that’s a coincidence.” He threw up his hands in disgust. “The one person that she”—he pointed again at Gilbert, who now had her head bowed as if she were being scolded by a parent—“wants the IGO to investigate is there!

  “I’ll submit to you that there are two sides to this person. There’s the side that her attorney wants to tell you about”—he lowered his voice—“and the side that the evidence told you about.”

/>   CHAPTER 76

  Judge Michael Ponsor handed the case over to the jury at 3:01 P.M., on Tuesday, January 20, 1998. Three days later, the jury weighed in.

  At 10:17, on January 23, Ponsor addressed the courtroom. He said he didn’t want any jubilation at the reading of the verdict. “Act,” he said, “in a dignified manner.”

  Gilbert’s parents held hands as the foreperson stood.

  “Guilty.”

  After each member of the jury was polled, Ponsor excused them.

  With the jury gone, Ponsor said that there was a pressing matter at hand.

  “[T]here are a couple of . . . issues that have come up—very serious issues—with regard to the defendant’s conditions of release given the guilty finding, and we’re going to have to take up those issues . . . [after] I have a chance to talk to the jury.”

  He ordered Gilbert to remain seated.

  Fifteen minutes later, after personally thanking each member of the jury, Ponsor was back on the bench, ready to do battle with Welch and Miles concerning where Gilbert would spend her days and nights pending her sentencing.

  “I have concern in two areas,” Ponsor began. “One of them relates to a complaint or report that has been placed on your desk from Alan Chipman, who is the home confinement specialist for this court.”

  With the exception of the attorneys, this was news to almost everyone in the courtroom. According to the report, Gilbert, while under house arrest at her parents’ home in Long Island, had “tampered” with her electronic anklet, a thick rubber band-like apparatus, similar-looking to a donut, that slides over a defendant’s ankle.

  On Monday, January 5, the first official day of the trial, Gilbert’s anklet had been removed. But as the officer removed the anklet, she noticed something strange. It looked as though it had been picked at with some type of sharp object. So it was sent off to the New York Office of Pretrial Services for examination.