My Heart Is an Idiot: Essays

by Davy Rothbart

  *

  So, back to this morning. Imagine me, Peter, Byron, and Evelyn crossing the visiting room and taking our usual table near the back. The mountain-range mural has been painted over with flat yellow paint, though Byron’s not sure why—who can guess at the arbitrary and sometimes hostile whims of the prison administration?

  We start off with small talk. Me and Peter tell Byron some tales from our tour—the bar manager in Boise who tried to cheat us out of our cut of the door, until we took his favorite mouse pad hostage; the teenage sword-swallower we met in Charleston, West Virginia, and convinced to come along with us for a week as an opening act at our shows. I used to feel bad regaling Byron with stories of my adventures, but I finally came to understand how much he appreciates and even craves hearing them. He spends enough of his time suffering through the monotonous rhythms of life inside the prison walls, it’s enjoyable—honestly thrilling, he says—to hear about our lives on the outside.

  Byron asks for updates on my girlfriend situation, and what new movies, books, and music I can recommend. We talk about the stuff he’s been writing and the stuff I’ve been writing. Peter mentions a couple of the new songs that he’s been performing on tour, and Byron begs him to sing one for him. Peter laughs and shakes his head at first, but after a bit of wheedling persistence from Byron, Evelyn, and me, he closes his eyes, clears his throat a couple of times, and then, very softly, begins to sing. The pureness of his voice, even at low volume, is beautiful, and I notice that a few of the families at neighboring tables have dropped their conversations to listen in. The guard senses a change in the air and takes a few steps in our direction, but decides not to intervene. When Peter’s done, everyone claps, and Byron says, “I’ll tell you what, that’s a song I’d put on every mix tape I ever made for a girl.”

  Finally, Byron starts to fill us in on the latest developments with his appeals. He’s already filed for ineffective assistance of counsel, which was quickly denied. (No matter how poorly your lawyer might have performed, it’s incredibly rare for incompetent representation to cause a case to be overturned, even in extreme instances.) Byron’s appeals regarding procedural mistakes the judge may have made and other grounds have all been turned down, and his remaining hope now seems to ride on an appeal known as actual innocence—introducing new evidence (or a new way of looking at the evidence) which contradicts your guilt and shows that you were convicted in error. Recently, in letters back and forth, we’ve been digging into the details of his case, exploring every aspect of it to hunt for any pieces that don’t fit. I’m no professional sleuth, but Byron tells me that sometimes the biggest breaks in the cases of other inmates who’ve been exonerated came from casual observers who were able to look at things freshly and have a flash insight.

  Basically, there are two conflicting accounts of what happened the night that Anastasia was killed. The story that Byron and Kelly told police the day after Anastasia’s body was found—and that Byron has never wavered from—is that they were driving around with their best friends just before dusk when Justin and Anastasia fell into one of their frequent spats—for months, Justin had wanted to end the relationship, and Anastasia, admittedly obsessed with Justin, hated him for it. As they argued at a stoplight on Truman Road, Anastasia hopped out of the car, slammed the passenger door shut, and stormed away, toward the gas stations and pawnshops that bordered Lincoln Cemetery. Though he knew how sketchy the neighborhood was, Justin, who was driving, just shook his head, and when the light changed, he hit the gas, and the three of them continued on their way, figuring that Anastasia would find a pay phone and call her parents to come pick her up. This sort of thing had happened many times before. A couple of hours later, though, feeling bad that they’d ditched her, Justin called Anastasia’s house to make sure she’d gotten home okay, and her parents said they hadn’t heard from her. She was found—shot to death—by the patrol cop a few hours after midnight. The police talked to Byron and Kelly the next day, but were unable to track down Justin. Meanwhile, Justin had stopped at a gun store, bought a shotgun, and driven to DeSoto, Kansas, where he pulled off the road near an old warehouse, wandered around back, put the shotgun barrel in his mouth, and pulled the trigger.

  A few years later, during a stint in drug rehab, Kelly mentioned to her counselor that she’d witnessed her friend Anastasia’s murder. She said that Justin and Byron had always been fascinated with death, and, sick of Anastasia’s antics, had decided to kill her. They’d brought Anastasia to the cemetery, Kelly said, and Justin had shot her. The alarmed counselor called in her parents, and then the police, and several times Kelly repeated her story, with one crucial new wrinkle. Now Kelly said that Byron had been the one with the gun. She said that at the last second, Justin had tried to intervene, but Byron had ignored him and blown Anastasia away. Certain aspects of Kelly’s story were consistent with unreleased details of the crime scene, which intrigued the detectives, although other parts of her story—including the type of gun that was used, and where she said they’d gotten it—didn’t make much sense. Kelly said that after the shooting, they’d dumped the murder weapon in an industrial area, and had concocted the story of Anastasia leaping out of the car and walking off, since that stretch of Truman Road was known to be shady, and they felt that the notion of a random killing in the vicinity would probably be believable. This was contradicted in court by an Amoco station mechanic who said that right before nightfall he’d seen a car stop at the light and a young woman jump out and stalk angrily away, toward the cemetery. Later, he’d even identified Anastasia from a set of photographs shown to him by the cops.

  If Byron was innocent, why would Kelly have incriminated him, knowing how grave the consequences might be, and even putting herself in legal jeopardy for her role in covering up the crime? There are a few theories. After the deaths of Anastasia and Justin, Byron and Kelly had dated for another couple of years. But her emotional neediness, erratic behavior, and continued drug use became too much for Byron and at last he’d broken things off with her and made plans to move to St. Louis, four hours away. Friends of Byron’s say that before he headed off, Kelly levied a threat: if he left her, there would be “hell to pay.” Byron left. Six days later, Kelly was telling the police that Byron had killed Anastasia.

  Accusing someone of murder may seem like an extreme way to exact revenge over a breakup, but it’s worth considering what else Kelly stood to gain. For years, she’d been estranged from her family due to her drug problems—she was forbidden to even step into her parents’ house. All that changed when she came forward with the story of witnessing Anastasia’s murder. The idea that she’d been harboring a horrible secret—that she was a victim herself—immediately brought her back into their good graces. She had a tidy explanation now for her years of dishonesty, disloyalty, and substance abuse, and she was welcomed home to try to make a fresh start.

  Was this part of her plan? If she made the whole thing up, I doubt it was that well thought out. It’s easier for me to imagine Kelly making an impulsive claim to her rehab psychologist, not really aware of the entire chain of dominoes she was tipping into motion. At each step—repeating the story to her parents, to the sheriff’s deputies, in her first meeting with them, again at her official deposition a couple of weeks later, and once more when she testified in court—she would’ve had a chance to turn back, but the more her tall tale snowballed, the harder it would’ve been to stop its progress. Sometimes, if you lie enough about something, you start to believe in the lie yourself. A month after Byron was arrested, Evelyn says, Kelly called her at three in the morning, frantic. “This is insane!” she told Evelyn. “I can’t believe what they’re doing to Byron!” Had she thought she could blame him for Anastasia’s murder without a dire outcome? Her promise of “hell to pay” had been borne out beyond measure.

  These days, with the emergence of complex new DNA tests, science has freed hundreds of people wrongfully convicted for robberies, rapes, and murders. Each case has become a
vividly drawn lesson in shoddy police work, coerced confessions, prosecutorial overzealousness, and an overreliance on faulty or fraudulent eyewitness testimony. But Byron’s challenge is uniquely steep. How do you overturn a conviction when there was no physical evidence of any kind to begin with? Kelly claimed that Byron had shot Anastasia right beside Justin’s car, and the medical examiner later established that the bullet had come at point-blank range, yet a lab analysis discovered no traces of blood on the car or on Byron’s clothes, nor in the trunk of the car, where Kelly said Byron had initially stashed the gun. A murder weapon was never found. Byron’s hazy motives, as suggested by the prosecution team—that he was jealous of the time Justin spent with Anastasia, and that he wanted to see what it would feel like to kill someone—remain unprovable, but by the same token, they can’t be disproved. Unless the real killer comes forward and confesses to the crime, the best hope has seemed to be for Kelly to recant her story.

  After Byron received his life sentence, Evelyn began to pepper Kelly with postcards, simply listing how many days Byron had been locked up. She prayed that an appeal to Kelly’s conscience would bring a change of heart. But that began to feel like a long shot, especially after hearing that Kelly had complained about the cards to a friend of Byron’s, and said, “Whatever Byron gets, he deserves.”

  In court, the prosecutors stressed Kelly’s reliability as a witness—freed of the burden of her horrible secret, they said, she’d finally broken free of the grip of substance abuse and was putting her life back together, completely sober. Evelyn never bought this whole narrative. Even before Anastasia was killed, Byron had told his mom that Kelly was struggling with alcohol, and that she sometimes used hard drugs. Kelly’s demons, Evelyn felt, hadn’t been loosed by witnessing a murder and concealing its details; by the same token she doubted that they’d been banished through providing phony testimony.

  One day, posting handmade, photocopied “Free Byron Case” flyers in Westport, Evelyn got a tip from a goth kid at the Broadway Café, Byron’s old hangout. Kelly, the kid told her, had started dating a guy in Lawrence, Kansas, who played calliope in an indie band called The Strongest Man in the World. If Evelyn wanted to confront Kelly, she realized, she could probably find her at one of the band’s shows. Evelyn had been warned by a lawyer friend that stopping by Kelly’s parents’ house might constitute harassment, but approaching her in public seemed within bounds. A couple of weeks later, Evelyn and a friend made the hour-long drive to Lawrence, parked on Main Street, a few blocks from the Kansas University campus, and found the bar where Kelly’s new boyfriend’s band was playing.

  Evelyn told me the story the next day over the phone. As she and her friend edged into a booth at the back of the bar, Evelyn said, she was twitching with nervousness, upset at herself for not formulating more of a plan for what she would say if she came face-to-face with Kelly. Evelyn and her friend had arrived three hours early, and they waited, eyes glued to the door, ordering round after round of Cokes, as the bands loaded in their instruments and gear and warmed up onstage. One opening band played, and then another, but Kelly still hadn’t appeared, and Evelyn had the sinking feeling that she wasn’t going to show. She’d sucked down so many soft drinks, she desperately needed to pee, though she was reluctant to abandon her post, with its view of the front door. Finally, during a break between bands, just before The Strongest Man in the World took the stage, Evelyn hurried into the bathroom. She peed and came out of the stall just as the bathroom door swung open and Kelly Moffett walked in, sipping a gigantic whiskey drink through a pair of black straws.

  They stared at each other in stunned silence. Kelly was bulgingly pregnant. She lowered the drink in her hand, and Evelyn saw that her other hand held an empty shot glass. “What the fuck are you doing here?” Kelly sputtered at last.

  “Oh, Kelly,” said Evelyn, shredded by a wave of emotion. “All I want is the truth. That’s all anybody wants.”

  Kelly turned pale and ashen.

  Evelyn went on, aching inside but fighting to keep her voice strong and clear. “My son’s not supposed to be in prison, is he? Remember, you’re not just punishing him, you’re punishing his mom. His friends. We all need him back.” She could hear her voice cracking, and feel herself beginning to break apart. Her eyes burned with tears. “Nobody’s going to hold anything against you,” she said, “but it’s time to do the right thing and end all of this.”

  Kelly met her gaze, eyes flashing fiercely. Finally, she cried, “Everything just got all fucked up! Nothing was supposed to turn out this way!” She smashed the empty shot glass against the granite lip of the sink and it fell in shattered pieces to the floor. “Ouch, fuck!” Kelly said. She inspected her hand. Blood began to well up from her sliced palm.

  “Oh no, are you all right?” asked Evelyn. Without a response, Kelly turned and crashed out the door. Evelyn gave chase, but right at that moment the band blasted into their first number and the crowd surged toward the stage, carrying Evelyn along with them, giving Kelly a chance to separate herself. Evelyn glimpsed Kelly heading toward the front door, but by the time she made it out to the street, Kelly had disappeared.

  Granted, this is only Evelyn’s version of the story, and it’s possible that Kelly would describe the episode differently. But over the years, as I’ve continued to get to know Evelyn, I’ve found myself impressed, time and again, by her awareness and intelligence, and inspired by her ability to deal with a situation that’s clearly so painful with such openhearted honesty, optimism, and grace. She’s always struck me as entirely credible.

  In the months that followed, Evelyn made other trips to see The Strongest Man in the World play at other clubs in Lawrence and at clubs in other towns, but never saw Kelly again, and eventually, one night, learned that Kelly and the guy in the band had broken up. She called me when she got home to pass on this latest bit, and, as always, managed to find levity even in a dark moment. “That guy better watch out,” she said. “I hope Kelly doesn’t find a murder to pin on him. And at least I got to see The Strongest Man play again tonight,” she went on. “I’ve actually become a real fan. I love their music. I know all their songs now. They’ve got great lyrics. You know how they got their name?”

  “How?”

  “It’s from Ibsen. Byron told me. He knew the quote. ‘The strongest man in the world is he who walks alone.’”

  *

  Not long after, Kelly was arrested and convicted on a domestic assault charge and sentenced to six months in a Kansas prison. I’d come to learn that even when a witness recants testimony, it rarely does much to clear someone who’s already serving time. The initial statement someone gives to the cops is what stands. Kelly’s story had already mutated several times over the years, and though her drug problems and state of mental disarray had been downplayed during the trial, her continued path of self-destruction would likely be used to discredit her if she tried to change her story once more.

  In fact, there was one other piece of evidence presented during Byron’s trial that was probably more damning than Kelly’s testimony. After Kelly told the cops that Byron was the one who’d killed Anastasia, they asked her to call him to try to elicit some admission of guilt, while they sat beside her and recorded both ends of the conversation. But as her drug problems had worsened, Byron had grown tired of her calls, badgering him about their failed relationship, begging to borrow money, or even asking if she could come over to take a shower during stretches when she’d been living on the streets. By the time he’d moved to St. Louis, he’d made a practice of avoiding her calls entirely; his roommate would tell her she had the wrong number. With the cops at hand, Kelly made a bunch of attempts to get Byron on the phone, but could never make contact. Ultimately, all they had was her word against his. The investigation stalled.

  Eight months later, without the detectives there to assist her, Kelly called Byron in the middle of the night, her tape recorder running. He was back from St. Louis, living with his mom again, and
sick with the flu. In court a year later, the transcript of their conversation that night was likely the critical piece of evidence that led to Byron’s conviction. The recorder hadn’t been set up properly, so while Kelly’s voice is clear on the tape and easy to understand, Byron’s voice is muffled and at times impossible to make out.

  In the transcript of the call, Kelly says, “Seriously, why’d you have to kill Anastasia? What was the whole fucking big deal? Could you explain that to me? Because I don’t get it. She’s dead for no reason. Justin’s dead for no reason. It’s all fucked up. I mean, if you could seriously explain to me as to why you actually felt the need to kill her, then that would really help me feel better about the whole fucking thing. I mean, seriously, was there any reason to all of this?”

  Byron’s response: “We shouldn’t talk about this.”

  “Now the cops are around, asking me questions,” Kelly continues. “I really need to understand. Just tell me. Why’d you have to kill her?”

  Byron says nothing. Then he begins to coach her on how to speak to the police: “If they’re asking you questions, just say ‘I don’t know,’ or ‘I don’t remember.’” At the end of the conversation, Byron tells Kelly he’ll talk with her more once they can meet up in person. They make plans to rendezvous in a park the next day and hang up—the whole call lasts less than four minutes.

  Kelly skipped the meeting, though. She’d already shared the tape with the cops. At first, there was some concern about the legal merits of a recording that had been made in an uncontrolled setting, without police assistance. But when Kelly tried calling Byron again, with officers present, she failed to mention Anastasia or the murder, which made the recording virtually useless. After a few more attempts went nowhere, police reviewed her initial call and felt they had what they needed to make an arrest. Days later, twelve deputies stormed Evelyn’s house and took Byron into custody.