Notably, Katie only shed a tear once throughout the trial. She cried when Adam, pressed about their relationship, responded to Laurie Lisi by answering: “Katie was not a good girlfriend.” Mind you, the medical examiner and other expert witnesses had testified and detailed the immense amount of pain Mary Yoder had gone through. Her suffering. The intensity of all those codes and how hard she fought to stay alive.
Yet, throughout that, Katie played with her hair, unaffected. She sat and stared at each witness without an emotion. It was only when she heard Adam describe how bad a partner she had been that Katie found it within herself to shed a tear.
Chris Pelli began his cross-examination by having Adam admit that before he dated Katie, he was in a sexually active relationship with a sixteen-year-old girl. He was twenty then, committing a crime, but was never charged. The question and answer was a blow to Adam’s character by the mere mention of it. Still: What did a stupid, criminal decision by a twenty-year-old have to do with the evidence the state presented against Katie?
From there, Pelli’s cross-examination focused on text messages Adam had sent to Katie before and after his mother’s death, from February 2015 to November 2015. In February 2015, Adam explained, he and Katie were not in a relationship but still met from time to time.
Pelli pointed out that Adam, even then, was texting “I love you” and “We should just start fresh and try again.” That November, Adam had texted: “I miss you and I still love you. I just want you to know that.”
Despite such intimate texts, Pelli implied, Adam claimed he did not want to get back together with Katie. It was difficult for Adam to break free from what was a codependent relationship.
Adam agreed. He had no intention of being in a romance with Katie. He’d been down that road several times and it never worked. He still loved her, but he knew he could not be with her.
Pelli tried to create a divide between Adam and his mother, using text messages to illustrate it. He attempted to shape misunderstandings and routine mother-son squabbles into some kind of dark, twisted, hidden hatred that the guy harbored for his mom. None of it was there, however.
Then Pelli mentioned the drugs Adam had taken: Adderall and a few others. Adam said yes, he had taken those medications. He was also asthmatic and used an inhaler.
This type of testimony was generally tossed aside by attentive jurors, who realized there were agendas on both sides. Adam was a distraught, biased witness. As far as Katie’s team showing how Adam could have killed Mary, the evidence to corroborate the theory wasn’t available. Murder takes motive, opportunity, and action—none of which could be proven in any way pertaining to Adam, or even Bill, for that matter.
The remainder of the trial consisted of expert and character witnesses. They laid out a scenario that showed how Katie Conley ordered the colchicine from her iPhone and home computer and then used it to kill Mary Yoder. There could be no doubt that she framed Adam Yoder for the crime. Even though many gray areas remained in the evidentiary chain—for the sole reason the prosecution did not have enough time to study everything—the state made a compelling case for murder.
Rosa Vargas, for example, walked into the courtroom and owned the entire space. In a fictionalized version of her entrance, Rosa might have dramatically flung the courtroom door open, surprising everyone, while snapping gum and blowing bubbles. The real-life Rosa sported green hair, with matching fingernail polish, wore skintight pants and a fringe-edged blouse, and rocked an eccentric, over-the-top vibe.
Despite her trendy Hollywood look, Rosa gave jurors an impartial, credible side of the truth from a person who had no obligation to anyone involved. She offered cold facts, backed up by documentation, all of which did not support the defense’s claim. Rosa carefully testified how determined the woman she spoke to over the phone was to get her hands on that colchicine. The description of the customer’s voice also matched Katie’s.
The next several days consisted of technical computer experts, forensics, and additional law enforcement officers. Some of their testimony was cumbersome, but crucial. It reflected how much the investigation relied on computer forensics. The experts outlined the significance of e-mail accounts, Google, phone apps, and how computer and phone metadata worked behind the screens, which we all rely on today.
The interviews with Katie played a large role, too.
By May 9, 10, and 11, the defense put up a weak case of trying to shift the blame onto Adam. Katie’s lawyers used witnesses like Adam’s cousin Dave King to try to bury him.
Katie never testified. Kathleen Richmond, Mary’s sister and Bill’s new girlfriend, did, however. Pelli called Kathleen to perhaps see if he could squeeze anything out of the widowed romance and give jurors a reason to question Bill’s motives.
After only a few questions, Kathleen said she and Bill did not hook up romantically until September 2015, nearly two months after Mary passed. “We were grieving together and we gravitated to each other.”
Kathleen had lost her husband and her little sister within a year or so. Pelli tried to get Kathleen to say she and Bill were involved before Mary’s death, but it wasn’t happening. The facts weren’t there to support the allegation. Pelli had zero corroborating evidence: no e-mails, texts, phone calls, or letters.
Pelli asked: “Didn’t you tell [your sister] that you’d been close with Bill for the past couple of years?”
“No. I said we’d been friends for many years . . . It was nothing different from the last thirty years.”
That other sister was called next. Pelli wanted to know how Bill was acting after Mary’s death, specifically at the Celebration of Life.
“[Bill] just seemed sort of distant,” she said, as if it was suspect for a guy who’d just lost his wife and soul mate of four decades to be acting erratic and off.
Pelli also wanted to know what she thought after investigators called her in and explained the case they were building against Katie.
“Okay,” she replied. “I’m willing to accept that maybe Katie had something to do with this, but I cannot believe that she acted on her own.” Mary’s sister went on to explain how discouraged she felt after investigators seemed to be only focused on Katie. According to her, they did not want to hear additional theories about what could have happened.
“It was obvious I did not agree with their theory,” Mary’s sister testified. “I thought [they] were going to tell me something about [Katie’s] character or her past, and [they] didn’t do that. You know, all this [was] just computer logistical stuff.”
Moving on, she explained that once, in 1981, she’d received a bag of weed from Bill in the mail. Then she digressed, recalling how she suddenly remembered telling investigators when she met with them: “Couldn’t someone have hacked or, you know, gotten into the computer stuff or the phone stuff? It was like they weren’t . . . they really didn’t want to hear anything that I might have offered at that point in time.”
At times, the court had to stop testimony because she became too agitated and nervous. Laurie Lisi was able to get the sister to admit she had told investigators she never suspected Bill or Mary of having an extramarital affair. As a heated, prickly back-and-forth ensued, the smart prosecutor pointed out how upset the sister became after the OCSO failed to provide her with a motive for Mary’s murder.
“And is that one of the reasons why you didn’t agree with their theory?” Lisi asked.
“No. I don’t think it was because . . . um, well, yes. I mean, it makes no . . . it made no sense—”
“Just ‘yes’ or ‘no’?” Lisi insisted.
“. . . that Katie would do this, that a young girl would do this—was not even just Katie—out of the blue.”
The statement put an exclamation point on Lisi’s argument that this sister had demanded a motive, a reason why, and the OCSO was not coming through.
Lisi paused. She looked at the witness. Then, with squinted eyes, the prosecutor repeated the witness’s comment as a question: “�
�Out of the blue’?”
The sister did not respond.
“No further questions.” ADA Lisi sat down.
Both sides offered closing arguments on May 11. By 2:26 p.m., the judge was reading the jury its instructions. Pelli had motioned earlier in the day for the court to dismiss the case, which was immediately denied.
Many leaving the courtroom were scratching their heads. They wondered what, exactly, had taken place. There didn’t seem to be a focus for the defense, besides Bill or Adam Yoder committing the murder.
The prosecution’s case was a strong circumstantial presentation, but perhaps it lacked the pithy explanation that juries yearned to hear. Additionally, so much evidence still needed to be looked at. Although confident, both Laurie Lisi and Stacey Scotti wondered if they’d offered that aha moment to convince jurors that Katie was their killer.
67
MURDER TRIALS IN SMALL towns are a bit different than those in big cities, where televised talking-head attorneys bang on about speculative evidence and hearsay on a public stage. There’s a certain close-knit community atmosphere within the former. It’s almost as if those in town who pay attention have personal skin in the game; they have an intimate connection to the accused or (rare as it is) the prosecution. Katie’s trial had garnered big headlines, some talk on the cable shows, with NBC’s Dateline in the courtroom to report on it.
None of it, sadly, had to do with the reason why everyone was there: Mary Yoder. As in many high-profile murder trials, the victim had taken a backseat to sensationalism.
After all, one has to ask: Did the Jodi Arias case gain all that international attention because of murder victim Travis Alexander? Or was it the absolute bloody, horrific nature of the crime itself?
Neither.
It was Jodi.
Arias had a cunning, charming ability to manipulate situations and people. She was a psychopath adept at portraying the innocent, beautiful, girl-next-door ingénue, who became a media martyr. There were striking similarities between Katie Conley and Jodi Arias.
The way they thought was similar. How they acted. Their obvious narcissism. How they paraded themselves in public, as opposed to behind closed doors. Their psychology. The way they both believed that as long as they told a lie long enough, to as many people as possible, that it should be believed because they said it.
Community members take sides when small-town murder occurs. They debate details at local diners, the post office, while fueling up at the gas station. Theories are individual and personal. People make judgments. They feel directly attached to some of the players. Many in Utica and Oneida County had known Mary Yoder personally. Many more knew the Conley family and viewed Katie as an upstanding young member of the community.
You look at Katie and her sisters, father, and mother, and what you see on the outside—without knowing anything about them—is wholesomeness. It’s easy to be sucked into the charm, some of which is genuine. Like Mary’s sister who had testified on Katie’s behalf, and said she just couldn’t believe a young girl such as Kaitlyn could commit such a horrible crime.
It’s all perception. It’s how some people are able to present an image of who they want you to think they are. It’s how we see, sometimes, only what we want to see.
Likewise, you look at the Yoders and see some of the same characteristics. They are a hardworking, upper-middle-class, honorable, kind, and generous family. Well-educated professionals. The outstanding difference between the Conleys and the Yoders: the Yoder family lost the one member who held the rest of them together.
All of these facts and opinions attracted NBC’s Dateline to the case. According to the Yoders and the prosecution, the TV team chummed it up with Katie and her family. This murder was the ideal Dateline narrative. It checked every production box the show called for.
Chris Pelli had placed a blemish on the Yoder family name from the get-go, and had done a good job of it. It was in the suggestions he’d made, the questions he put to witnesses. The speculation and gray areas left without complete explanations. The answers from witnesses didn’t matter. Once a bell is rung, it’s impossible to un-ring it.
In dissecting it all, still without knowing any of the intimate details, one could draw any conclusion he or she wanted, and justify the choice. For a jury facing the burden of guilt or innocence, the same is true. The men and women making up a jury feel, judge, and develop theories and questions. The difference is juries sit through every moment of testimony and have the opportunity to look at and weigh every single piece of evidence.
Heading into deliberations, Katie sat in the courtroom, seemingly content and self-assured. If you studied Katie’s life, you saw through the conservative dresses, the country-girl—strolling-in-the-meadow hairstyle, and her innocent mien. An angry, dark woman, whom nobody truly knew, lurked inside Katie. She was a woman who had done things most in her camp would never believe, no matter how much evidence had been presented to prove it.
On the afternoon of May 12, after the judge called everyone back in, Katie looked hopeful and undaunted. The rumors were true: the jury was having trouble. This was no slam dunk, as some might have expected. In order to get over to the prosecution’s side, there were a great many computer-technology and high-tech bridges to cross. So much so, it became a bumpy walk. On the flip side, if you wanted to toss reasonable doubt onto the table and claim you were unsure whether it was Adam or Bill who was involved, that bridge was easy to get over.
The judge indicated he’d received a note from the jury. They had requested evidence regarding Bill Yoder’s testimony regarding “the first time he heard colchicine toxicity, how he first learned about it.”
Not a good sign for the prosecution.
The jury also wanted to know what Mary had eaten on the morning of her illness. Which could mean they were looking for a way in which to blame her death on anyone but Katie.
Finally, in the same note, the jury asked for the “poison control expert testimony” on the time frame of “colchicine reaction on the body.”
This was certainly a sign there were several jurors looking to see if the possibility existed that Bill could have put the toxin in Mary’s breakfast.
Colchicine toxicity symptoms can arise almost immediately, subtle as they might come on. Testimony by experts claimed there is not enough research available to give a more exact window of time other than eight hours for the onset of fully bloomed symptoms. The first symptoms one experiences if poisoned by an overdose of colchicine are persistent nausea, abdominal pain, vomiting, and diarrhea—all of which Mary experienced late that afternoon, near three to four o’clock.
If jurors looked at the testimony and evidence, this second question could have been answered with Mary ingesting the colchicine while at work. Bill Yoder testified Mary did not eat breakfast. The opinion of the prosecution was that Mary had a Shaklee protein shake that afternoon for a pick-me-up. Inside the tin of powder she kept in the office was a dose of colchicine sprinkled over the top by the only other person in the office—Katie Conley. Katie had access and opportunity, along with knowledge of the Shaklee powder being in the refrigerator.
And, perhaps most important, she had motive.
Then the jury asked to see Katie’s interview with Detective Mark VanNamee.
After the video played, Judge Dwyer adjourned for the weekend. He gave his verbal warning regarding talking to people and looking at news/media reports or engaging in social media conversation and Web surfing.
“See you all on Monday morning.”
As everyone left the courthouse, an incident took place outside, in front of the building. “It was beyond comprehension,” said one Yoder family member.
Christopher Pelli had driven “his fancy sports car,” as several described it, to court. He’d parked it on the street in front of the DA’s office. As they had done every day of the trial, the Yoders had waited inside the courtroom for the Conley family and Katie’s supporters to leave first, to avoid a run-in.
“But when we went outside,” said the same family member, “Katie and her sisters were posing for pictures with the car, taking selfies, laughing.”
It spoke to the utter lack of appropriateness, understanding, and empathy displayed by Katie throughout the trial.
“Never in my career,” said one member of the prosecution, “have I ever seen a family act like this—especially during a murder trial.”
68
ON MAY 15, 2017, a chilly Monday morning, 48 degrees, with puffy, marshmallow clouds slowly moving east, the sun poking in and out, the jury arrived and met for a short time. The foreman then indicated they had additional requests. “We need the definition of ‘intent,’ as described in the charges.”
Laurie Lisi and Stacey Scotti looked at each other. Damn.
Pelli sat back in his chair and took a deep breath.
Then this: “We feel that we do not know what to do. We cannot reach a mutual agreement.”
Clearly, there was a holdout or two.
This gave everyone on Katie’s side a fuzzy feeling of success, but not necessarily victory. The jury was deadlocked. They were unable to reach a group decision. A verdict of not guilty was definitely off the table, that much was certain. Yet, there was still a problem—and a good chance Katie was walking out of the courtroom, on bond, with her freedom.
The judge read the note. He addressed the jury. Clear and direct, Dwyer told them: “If you cannot reach a unanimous verdict . . . a new trial will have to be scheduled before a different jury.”
Dwyer went on to say this type of indecision was not uncommon. Most juries were, however, able to reach a unanimous verdict after further deliberations. It seemed to Dwyer that the jury, not yet deliberating for a full day, wanted to give up.
After ordering the jury to continue, Dwyer said: “Start with a fresh slate . . . Have the courage to be flexible. Be willing to change your position if a reevaluation of the evidence convinces you that a charge is appropriate . . . Be honest with yourselves and with the other jurors . . . Frankly, it wasn’t intended to be easy.”
We Thought We Knew You Page 25