For too long a time Bob Bennett had been hearing talk that held Ash to be some kind of frontier hero. It went something like this: “I wouldn’t have blamed the old man if he had marched up Kirby Drive with a shotgun and blew John Hill’s head off. And no jury in Texas would have convicted him.” The talk came from lawyers, from cops, even from DAs who were not privy to the intimacies of the case.
If he failed in everything else, Bob Bennett promised himself, he would try to put a few facts on the public record. Perhaps these would shape a more informative opinion of the real Ash Robinson. “The truth is,” Bennett could hear himself crying, “Ash Robinson was too cowardly to do murder himself. So he bought himself a killing.” With these thoughts, he prepared for trial.
In the last week of October 1974 the trial of Marcia McKittrick for murder and Lilla Paulus for being an accomplice to murder began in the district court of Harris County. The defendants entered chambers through different doors and resolutely avoided looking at one another. Free on bond, Mrs. Paulus used the public entrance and sat quietly in the front row of the small courtroom for more than an hour before the press discovered her identity.
She did not seem menacing. In a severely tailored blue dress that enhanced her thinness, with eyeglasses dangling from a silver chain, with sensible black walking shoes, with waiflike hair cut inelegantly and let go to shades of sleet and snow, she was the woman who has graded everybody’s English Lit exam since education began. How could Bob Bennett possibly persuade a jury that she was mistress to a salon of crime?
Marcia McKittrick, in handcuffs, came to court under bailiff escort, and she was placed in a cramped waiting corner behind the witness box. On this day she looked less than a battle-scarred whore and more like a frightened white trash housewife, come to court to whisper how a husband had beaten her and abandoned the children to hunger. Prison pallor made her face almost indistinguishable from the wall behind her, and her lumpy figure, filled with institutional food, was contained in a shapeless orange and purple prison smock. On her naked feet and legs were clunky, thick-soled sandals. The romantics among the spectators sympathized, wishing, like Marcia herself, that she could have come for her day of reckoning in the costume of her trade. Marcia was hugely embarrassed to present herself as a pauper; she wanted the paint and feathers and jewels of her art. Nervously clutching and releasing a fistful of the garish sack the matron had ordered her to wear, she sat and watched the people enter the courtroom. It was well past the scheduled starting hour of 10 A.M., and her attorney, Charles Caperton, was not yet in the courtroom.
Percy Foreman wandered in, even though he would not personally represent Mrs. Paulus this day. Matters were in the capable hands of his associate, Dick DeGeurin, busy at the clerk’s desk filing new motions to invalidate the confessions of Bobby and Marcia that implicated his client. With Foreman, at least the figure matched his dossier. He exuded star power, a giant with shaggy gray head whose locks tumbled boyishly to his eyes. He had won acquittals for three hundred accused murderers, and specialized in women who shot men. Once he had taken a drawerful of diamond rings collected as fees from these troubled ladies, ordered a pair of opera pumps encrusted with the macabre gems, and knelt before his wife on Christmas morning to slip them onto her feet. As he now took a seat in the front row of the spectators’ chamber, people gathered around him, but giving him space, drawing back a little as tourists in Kenya might for an old and celebrated lion. In his eighth decade, the legendary lawyer’s court faculties were still machete sharp, but his personal memory seemed to be loosening. Nodding respectfully at Lilla Paulus, he mistook his own client to be Marcia McKittrick. With embarrassment, Lilla corrected him, tossing her head across the room to where the real Marcia sat. Foreman patted the older woman’s arm with gentle reassurance.
“Well, nobody would believe this case, that’s for sure,” he allowed. “All the scandal and subplots, the convolutions, it really outstrips Peyton Place, doesn’t it?”
Lilla Paulus nodded, hesitantly.
Then Percy began to talk for the benefit of the reporters clustered about him. “We decided three or four weeks ago that the state had no case against our client,” he said. “So we aren’t really worried.”
Lilla murmured, audibly, but to herself, “I wish they had told me that. It’s the first I heard of it.”
Percy nodded his great head in emphatic affirmation. “I never for a minute had any doubt that it would be disposed of just the way it is going to be. There’s no way they could convict Mrs. Paulus with what they have.” The Paulus defense had obtained, under disclosure rules, most of the district attorney’s case, specifically the slips of paper taken in the search.
If it was all that cut and dried, wondered a young girl reporter, then was there enough evidence to even indict Lilla Paulus?
“It doesn’t take much evidence to indict,” Foreman lectured. “They could indict you for the murder of the Lindbergh baby, and you weren’t even born then. Any DA anywhere can persuade a grand jury to indict anybody for anything.” With that, Foreman again patted Lilla’s thin hand—it looked like the bone that Gretel stuck out of the cage for the witch to examine—and ambled off. His disdain for the matters of this courtroom seemed to underscore the fragility of the state’s condition.
When Judge Frank Price entered to begin proceedings, both women stared incredulously. He further destroyed the business of images. Here was the referee of their destinies, and he looked less like a judge than a postgraduate college student, probably a phys. ed. major. Barely past thirty-five, and having sat on the bench for only two years through an appointment, he seemed impossibly callow to preside over one of the most notorious criminal proceedings in the history of the city. His business suit was modishly Western, the kind a rich rancher would wear to a rodeo cocktail party, and his aviator glasses were from a men’s fashion magazine. But behind them was a gaze of friendliness—he warmed the room—and a gentle, caring air. His reputation was that of an exceedingly fair judge who maintained a low-key chamber, not unlike a rookie congressman who recognizes the wisdom of prudent quiet until experience allows crustiness.
The broad-shouldered young judge and both of the attorneys—Bennett and DeGeurin—had all been prosecutors in the district attorney’s office. Away from the courthouse, they remained close friends, drinking whiskey together when the occasion arose, dining with wives and dates, and playing handball. Here the judge was the customary winner, not in diplomatic deference to his position but due to his superb condition and his ranking as one of the city’s best players. But when the three stood together in a convivial group beside the bench, they seemed boys playing at men’s work. The image arose of college law students, allowed to take over the court for a day to hold mock proceedings.
But the day was real, and it could not begin until counsel for Marcia appeared. “Where is Mr. Caperton?” asked Judge Price when an hour past starting time had passed. He was annoyed. He ran a streamlined docket, cutting through the fawnings and formalities, dispensing with morning roll call of defendants and lawyers to cut fifteen minutes and try to speed the snailish path of justice. The court reporter disappeared to make inquiry and returned with the surprising report that Caperton was at this important moment still in Dallas. His office claimed Caperton did not even know his client was going on trial for murder.
“I find this difficult to believe,” said Judge Price. “This case has been set and reset, and this time was mutually agreed upon by all of the attorneys with interests here.” Both he and the court—not to mention the defendant—were insulted by the lawyer’s absence. But the judge calmed himself and issued instructions to the clerk: “Tell Mr. Caperton to catch the next plane to Houston and we will commence at 2 P.M.” There was no elastic in his directive.
In the meantime, the judge ruled on a pretrial motion by Dick DeGeurin to quash the confession of Bobby Vandiver as it related to Lilla Paulus’ alleged involvement in the murder. “That will be granted,” said the judge. B
ennett sighed in disappointment, but only slightly, for he had anticipated the decision. The Sixth Amendment guarantees the right to confront an accuser, and it was, after all, impossible to cross-examine the statement of a dead man.
But the judge refused similarly to throw out the statement of Marcia McKittrick as evidence against Mrs. Paulus. Instead, he would hear testimony on DeGeurin’s plea. Bennett perked up at this; at least he had a chance.
Full of excuses and apologies, Caperton arrived after lunch, another of the boyish lawyers perfectly cut out to join the handball team. He was by far the flashiest of counsel present, with chunky diamond rings on both hands, and the aura of a professional golfer, down to the tassels on his shoes. His fair face was beet red from running down airport corridors, and his carefully cut blond hair was drenched in perspiration. Judge Price scolded him, and made his displeasure immediately known by coldly denying the first several objections that the lawyer made when testimony began. Caperton was in the unenviable position of having angered the judge at the very beginning of an important murder trial, and even Marcia, sitting beside him, could sense that her position was harmed. But she had faith in her attorney, she called him “my heart,” and had he not always managed to bail her out of precarious situations before?
Attorney Caperton, with obvious coaching from DeGeurin, sought to prove that Marcia was in the agony of heroin withdrawal when homicide detective Jerry Carpenter fetched her from the Dallas jail, and that she confessed to the murder of John Hill only because the cop promised her narcotic relief. The defense immediately summoned Carpenter to the stand. Looking very gambler man in a hot salmon shirt with matching tie, Carpenter was skilled at testifying—most veteran cops are—and he delivered his responses tersely, in a twang like a taut guitar string. He did not like Charles Caperton, and the feeling was clearly mutual.
“Was Miss McKittrick sick when you picked her up?” asked the lawyer.
“Yeah. She was sick. Dope sick. Chills, stuff like that.” The homicide detective said he stopped at a café en route from Dallas to Houston and bought his prisoner breakfast and gave her two aspirins for her discomfort. But nothing else.
Caperton made a facetious nod. He did not believe this at all. If, as the detective had testified, the prisoner was “dope sick,” then did she understand what was happening to her?
Carpenter nodded. “She’s an intelligent girl,” he said. “She understood what we were asking her, and she understood what she was telling us.” Marcia did not seem “emotionally distraught.”
“Did she understand she could go to the pen for murder?”
“She did.”
“Did you make any promises or hold out the hope of a light sentence … if she co-operated?”
Here Carpenter hesitated, for what a cop says to a prisoner and what he hints at by his attitude and demeanor are two different things. Certainly the promise was in the air that if Marcia co-operated, things would go easier for her. “I made no promises,” answered Carpenter, “but I told her I would talk to the DA.”
The attorney made another look of disbelief. Had there been a jury, the expressions might have been useful, but they were not impressing the still smoldering judge.
Caperton demanded to know why Miss McKittrick would want to talk to the Houston police, since she had spent months trying to keep them from bothering her, and had even filed a motion to enjoin every peace officer in the state of Texas from talking to her?
“Well, she told me she was tired of running and wanted to get her business straight. In the character world, this means getting all her legal problems taken care of.”
Caperton thrust to the heart of his contention. “Didn’t you make any promises to get her medicine to make her ‘feel better’?”
Carpenter glared stonily at the defense lawyer. “No, sir. I did not.” After the prostitute signed the statement, Carpenter and his partner, Gamino, had taken her to the St. Joseph’s Hospital drug clinic where a doctor gave her medicine for diarrhea and a prescription for Amytal, a barbiturate useful to help her sleep, thence to jail. With diligence, Caperton tried to break the cop down, but it was chiseling marble with a toothpick.
Wearily the tired Dallas lawyer put on a parade of witnesses who verified (1) that Marcia was severely addicted to heroin and was suffering from cramps, fever, chills, and diarrhea while in the Dallas jail after her arrest there, and (2) that when she was booked into the Harris County jail following her interrogation and confession, she was passing out. A stout jail matron with purple hair agreed that Miss McKittrick was “semiconscious and had trouble breathing” when Jerry Carpenter delivered her.
“Would a person withdrawing from heroin sign anything—a check, a statement, a confession—to get drugs?”
The matron nodded vigorously. She looked like a missionary who had spent her life among jungle devil worshipers. “Yes, sir, they sure would. They’d do anything to get their drugs.”
Then Marcia herself assumed the witness box, her lawyer having laid down ground rules that questioning would be limited to the confession, and exclusive of the alleged murder. Her version was that Carpenter and Gamino not only tempted her with the promise of narcotics but made alternating threats and promises.
“They told me I wouldn’t serve a day in jail if I co-operated with them,” she said. And if she refused to sign, “the officers said I would be an old lady before I saw my little boy again.… I know that police can do what they say.” The entire week that began in Dallas with her arrest in a stolen Chrysler and ended in the Houston jail when she awoke from a drugged sleep was a blank. “Everything is fuzzy. I don’t remember signing the confession or even being booked.”
Overnight Judge Price perused the testimony and the law, and the next morning he announced a decision that cheered Lilla Paulus and devastated Marcia McKittrick. The prostitute’s confession would not be admissible as evidence in the Paulus matter. But it could be introduced in the state’s case against Marcia herself. The older woman’s lawyer, DeGeurin, sensed that the currents of the trial were treacherous, and he had best divorce his client as quickly as possible from Marcia. He thus asked for a continuance in the Paulus trial until the next February, four months away. Judge Price approved.
With that out of the way, the judge turned and directed that jury selection in the murder trial of Marcia McKittrick would begin on the following Monday—just four days away.
Charles Caperton’s mouth dropped open. He began to stammer. He ran his fingers nervously through his hair. He pleaded for a delay. Clearly this was an attorney who was not ready to begin a murder defense. He had put all his money on one throw of the dice—expecting that Marcia’s confession would be thrown out. And now he had little left in his pocket.
“I feel this is a total denial of this girl’s rights,” said Caperton, “if the court makes us go to trial Monday.”
The judge was not moved by the lawyer’s plight. He was, in fact, further annoyed. Charles Caperton had been Marcia McKittrick’s attorney of record in this case for more than a year. He had served her in other matters years before that. This was an important case involving others, and the court—and the community—were anxious that it be settled. The judge would not tolerate further delay. With a suggestion that his patience was stretched as far as it would go, he left the bench.
Violent rain struck the city over the lunch hour and tornadoes danced in the northern regions of the county. People milled about the crowded lobby of the courthouse, unable to go out, watching great sheets of rain assault the building. The midday skies were dark, almost night, as if the forces of nature were out of balance. The setting was grotesquely perfect for the afternoon’s drama. Fittingly, it was Halloween.
Charles Caperton decided to try a ploy that was breath-taking in its risk and as potentially turbulent for his client as the storm outside. For two hours he dashed about the building, conferring with Bennett in the DA’s quarters, then in the basement jail where Marcia bewilderedly tried to understand what
was going on, thence back to the courtroom, now deserted of spectators and press. The attorney believed, or so he said, that he had presented a compelling case to invalidate his client’s confession. He felt sure that the state’s Court of Criminal Appeals would one day support him and quash the document and either grant a new trial or dismiss charges altogether. Therefore, he hastily plotted a little drama that could be played out in a few minutes and let everybody except Marcia go home. He would come back into court this very afternoon and have Marcia plead “not guilty,” then permit the district attorney to present stipulated testimony—roughly the charges contained in the grand jury indictment—and accept an immediate verdict of “guilty” from Judge Price. With his client thus hurriedly condemned, Caperton could return to Dallas and prepare an eloquent appeal, based solely on the merits of the prostitute’s confession. And in a year or two, the normal length of time that it took for the high court to rule on such a matter, he anticipated freedom for Marcia McKittrick.
Bob Bennett listened to the proposal carefully and weighed it in his mind. Did Marcia understand the danger of such a move? “Yes,” said Caperton. “I explained it to her.” The Dallas lawyer seemed fascinated by the machinations of his plot. He also seemed in a hurry to catch a plane back home.
The young assistant district attorney was being handed a plum on a silver platter, and he wanted to make sure there was no chance the fruit was rotten and the container was tin. Did Charles Caperton really mean that he was willing, nay, eager, for the court to find his client guilty of the murder of Dr. John Hill, and then have her duly sentenced? “That’s just what we intend,” answered Caperton. Did he have that much faith in the merits of his appeal? Yes, he certainly did. Now let them get on with it. Many thoughts swarmed in Bennett’s mind, not the least of which was the ulcerish feeling that Marcia McKittrick was not receiving the best legal advice. Here was a lawyer who had failed to appear on the day she went to trial for murder, and who was now throwing in the towel and sending his client off to the state penitentiary as a convicted murderess—with but one avenue of appeal in the distant future available on which to hope for freedom. In a full trial, several dozen matters—the “hickeys” that Racehorse Haynes always searched for—could easily arise and merit appeal, and any one might cause a high court to overturn a decision. There was also the possibility that in a full trial a jury might even find Marcia McKittrick not guilty.
Blood and Money Page 49