If You Only Knew

by M. William Phelps

  “You bring Baden in and you put him opposite Dr. Dragovic, who can be exaggeratedly arrogant, an attitude not consistent with establishing an effective relationship with a jury and inconsistent with the local social structure out here . . . and Baden is a star. Remember, they had no evidence, and Dragovic was now coming in and saying it was a homicide—all with a little scratch on Mr. Rogers’s nose and a theory?”

  The PO’s failure, Cataldo observed, was in the notion that they likely knew how the crime happened, how Billie Jean had allegedly killed her husband, based on what Vonlee had said and that she passed a polygraph, backing up her story, but they had no evidence to support their theories. And so going into the ring with that, “this is what happens,” Cataldo added. “Baden comes in and says this guy was so drunk, with heart disease and lung disease and liver issues, yada, yada, yada, this very well could have been natural causes.”

  Slam dunk.

  When he looked at Vonlee’s role, however, Cataldo saw a few things he could not get around: these were fatal flaws—no matter what he did, or what expert he brought in, or how he portrayed Vonlee.

  “All I could do,” Cataldo explained, “was ask for a reduction when the time came. There’s not going to be a not guilty. Won’t happen. The biggest thing here was that audiotape.”

  There was just no way he could quash the significance of the admission on that tape Danny Chahine had made. It was going to ring inside the courtroom. It would be all the jury needed to hear. Moreover, he could not talk about Billie Jean’s verdict or what had happened with Vonlee and her botched plea deal. None of it would be allowed in court.

  “She explains it all on that tape,” Cataldo commented. “Complete confession, premeditation, first-degree murder!”

  This was impossible to ignore as a defense attorney.

  Another major obstacle he faced, which he knew from experience, was that a defense attorney cannot mess with the jury. You cannot try to confuse or misdirect them. You cannot lie to them. You cannot make them feel stupid. You cannot try to say, “Hey, this tape here . . . it’s not what you think it is.... It means nothing.” That strategy would backfire.

  “Here, going in, my only chance was, I needed to make the jury feel that, okay, Vonlee participated, but at what level? They needed to ask themselves that question. . . .”

  If Bill Cataldo could get the jury to the point where they were asking that question during deliberations, he had a shot at a lesser charge, less time in prison for his client—that reduction he spoke of. Maybe even a manslaughter conviction.

  On a personal level, Cataldo viewed Vonlee as someone he liked and someone he did not think was a vicious killer or dangerous in any way. However, she was a narcissist, in his view, which became another complication he needed to put a shine on for the jury. She couldn’t present herself in court as the selfish-all-her-life, not-ever-wanting-to-work, looking-for-a-sugar-daddy, flashy-paid-escort transsexual she was—this would weigh heavily on their verdict. One juror gets it in his or her mind that Vonlee is a sexual deviant or a money-hungry transsexual looking to fund her operation through the murder of her long-lost aunt’s wealthy husband—as the newspaper headline writers had tagged her—and it was over.

  Cataldo also believed Vonlee had “turned a blind eye to the obvious.” Sure, she could have been wasted; she could have not known entirely what was going on inside that kitchen on that night because she had drunk too much. However, as Cataldo saw the truth through the documents and evidence, “She had chosen not to participate.”

  The point being, she had a choice. And if she had a choice not to, then she probably knew what was going on at some point and had a choice to turn her aunt in or stop the crime.

  “She’s never worked, and she’s always looking for the glitter—always looking for the easy way.”

  These were all facts, whether Vonlee agreed or not, the jury might get into its collective mind-set. And once lodged there, it would be impossible for Cataldo to extract.

  As a situation, Cataldo concluded, when Toca walked into her life and, combined with Vonlee’s inherent narcissism, told her, “You didn’t do it,” it was something, the lawyer contended, Vonlee wanted to hear.

  “It’s not that she’s incapable of thinking logically, okay,” Cataldo explained about that moment when Vonlee and Toca decided to withdraw the plea. “But that she is not going to think logically if there is an easy way out of it all. So, when he comes in and promises two or three years, of course, she’s going to jump at it. Why? Because. It’s. What. She. Wants. To. Hear. Period. Therefore, Vonlee was the perfect foil for what Toca was attempting to do.

  “Did Vonlee know something was going on in that kitchen and it was wrong?” Cataldo asked rhetorically.

  “Probably,” he said, answering his own question.

  “Was she a little bit wasted from all the booze?”

  “Probably.”

  The reality of Vonlee Titlow, though, was that she never “looked that far into anything,” he explained in his perfectly eloquent way of analyzing his client. “She knew it was wrong, yes, but let’s look at this: her whole life has been ‘Who gives a shit! I’m going to do it because it feels good. . . .’”

  Vonlee’s failure on that night was in not processing the information and her reality properly in those moments with Billie Jean in that kitchen. Either impaired by alcohol, ignorance or both, she wasn’t able to judge for herself what exactly was happening before her. If she had just stopped to think about it, Vonlee was smart enough to know that her aunt was drawing her into a web that included the two of them allegedly getting rid of Don and sharing in the responsibility equally. But she never, as Cataldo determined, thought that far in advance about what was going on at any time in her life.

  So how could Bill Cataldo possibly work some magic and get Vonlee off on a crime she admitted committing?

  CHAPTER 78

  ALL SHE KEPT HEARING from guards was “You’re going to be somebody’s bitch. You get up there to the state prison and you’ll be raped repeatedly, beaten, and sold for sex and cigarettes.”

  Vonlee was more fearful than she had ever been in her life. The things she was hearing while waiting to go to trial painted a future in hell. She thought, If there is anything I can do to keep from going to prison, I need to do it.

  There was a part of Vonlee, however, that had been satisfied with not testifying against Billie Jean. “It would have been a betrayal, in my grandmother’s eyes,” Vonlee explained.

  She did not mind betraying anyone else in her family, even her own mother; but when it came to her grandmother, Vonlee was loyal to a fault. Beyond that, Billie Jean had convinced the grandmother that Vonlee was making it all up because she was so drunk. It was all a fabrication. And now, Billie Jean had the support of a verdict of not guilty—“See, even the jury believed me!”—to back up her argument.

  Regarding the plea deal she had made after admitting her role in the crime, Vonlee claimed Toca had never explained to her that her prior admission was basically going to curtail any chance for a verdict of not guilty.

  “When I looked at this later on,” Vonlee reflected, “it was clear to me that a plea deal was not a good end to the story if we’re talking movie and book deal. Toca wanted drama for his ending.”

  According to what Vonlee claimed, in selling the idea of a new plea to her, Frederick Toca had said, “Look, I know Richard Lustig and spoke to him. He told me if he was younger and had more energy, he would have taken your case to trial himself.”

  “In fact,” Vonlee explained, “Toca told me one day he had just come from lunch with Mr. Lustig, and he said Lustig was ‘so glad’ that he (Toca) was now representing me. . . .”

  Lustig later provided a document to the court stating he had never spoken to Toca, and Toca had never asked for any of the documents from Vonlee’s case “until five weeks after the plea had been withdrawn.”

  Vonlee also made the accusation that when Toca withdrew from her case,
he told her that the book deal and film had fallen through.

  “I was so shocked when the judge allowed him to withdraw.”

  After Billie Jean’s verdict, Vonlee wondered, “How could they possibly say I aided and abetted her if she was found not guilty?” Vonlee had never been charged with the “actual” crime, she said. “I was always charged with helping Billie.”

  There had been a part of Vonlee, she admitted, “that was . . . Well, I was hoping Billie would be found guilty. I felt like she needed to pay for what she did.”

  Vonlee had been in jail, waiting her turn in court, going on a year.

  “And Billie had spent all of a few hours behind bars,” Vonlee said. “Was that fair? I am the one in jail, and she is the one that killed Don! I’m the one that had a conscience. I’m the one that went crying to my boyfriend and told him I couldn’t live with this. She’s the one that lied. I’m the one that passed the polygraph. I’m the one that tried to do the right thing.”

  It was Vonlee’s counselor at the jail that called her in on that evening, sat Vonlee down, and then told her: “Your aunt has been found not guilty.”

  Vonlee dropped her head. How was she supposed to react to it?

  “Bittersweet” was the way Vonlee later put it. “Part of me felt that maybe I’ll be found not guilty because she was. And part of me felt like, ‘Wow, is this woman working with the Devil or what?’”

  In Bill Cataldo, Vonlee found a “very nice guy.”

  When they first sat down, Cataldo said, “Just unbelievable. You had a deal for seven to fifteen and you withdrew it.” He shook his head in disbelief. All the air had been sucked out of the room with that one comment. But looking back was not going to change the future. Vonlee was facing the fight of her life and Cataldo was in charge. They needed a plan.

  “I know” was all Vonlee could say.

  “I feel especially bad, because if I lose and you get more time . . . well, let’s just talk about the case. You know, what [Toca] did, that wasn’t aboveboard. I just need to look at all this, go through everything and see where we stand.”

  Vonlee said she’d help, obviously, in any way she could.

  What became a focal point right away in their discussions was the idea of Vonlee testifying. Was there any way around her sitting and explaining to the jury her version of the events that had led to Don’s death? Could she do it? Was she emotionally prepared?

  “Nothing is ever cut-and-dry,” Cataldo told her. “Look, it’s going to be tough.”

  “I know,” Vonlee said. “I’ll think about it.”

  CHAPTER 79

  WHEN THE FIRST DAY of her trial arrived, Vonlee sat in the courtroom goosed up on so many psychotropic medications, she later said, the numbness actually helped her deal with the anxiety and fear associated with what was the possible outcome she faced. The feeling inside the room was one in which everyone seemed to know the ending was not going to be what was expected. Concurrently there was a dismal feeling that it would not end happily for the defendant.

  Vonlee did not look like the female she had in the past. She was a bit heavier, with her hair dyed blond, short and curly, and her more manly features showing prominence on her face and plump body. She looked like a transsexual, which, Bill Cataldo knew, was not going to help.

  People judge by appearances. By looks. By what they think a person might want out of life. Jurors, of course, were no different.

  The trial’s date had been pushed back, but on March 11, 2002, things got under way with a daylong voir dire as a jury of fourteen was chosen. Following that, Judge Wendy Potts asked everyone to return the next morning, March 12, for opening statements and the state’s first witness.

  Regarding his rival in the courtroom, Bill Cataldo viewed APA John Skrzynski as a skilled competitor and reliable colleague.

  “He is thoughtful, professional, personal and a very good trial lawyer,” Cataldo later said. “He doesn’t play games and does not engage in trickery. If anything, I would like to think I have modeled [part of my career] on him. We both have this certain bravado when it comes to trials. We love providing complete discovery, then going to trial, mano a mano. . . .”

  Both lawyers agreed that “winning feels better when talent and facts” usurp “cheating.” Playing by the rules and coming out on top always felt better than the alternative.

  Before entering into the world of law, quite interestingly, APA Skrzynski toured nationally with various rock acts as a horn player. Colleagues and friends said he did not involve himself in office politics and was a loyal soldier to those assigned to supervise him.

  “He has a humility and understanding for the defense attorney plight that comes with having to ask for leniency,” Cataldo explained. “He takes no pleasure in saying no. He treats all in our field with respect, including defendants. Some in our position love to point fingers and derogate those charged with crimes. He doesn’t stoop to it. Neither do I. Respect isn’t [just] a buzzword for John. He listens to all sides before forming opinions and is evenhanded in an environment that rewards pathological ideology.”

  Still, running alongside the charming, complimentary verbiage he spouted for his archfoe, Cataldo also claimed that there was a fair amount of “aggression” between the two men when they practiced in a court of law, on opposite sides. And yet, this was how lawyers, Cataldo added, at least the passionate ones, played the game.

  * * *

  The following morning, first thing, two words dominated the APA’s opening: “aiding” and “abetting.” This was the state’s focus.

  Vonlee helped her aunt kill her uncle.

  “Now,” APA Skrzynski said, “the law says that if you intentionally help another person commit a crime—even though you yourself are not the person that actually commits the crime—if you intentionally help someone else commit the crime, you are as guilty as if you had committed the crime yourself.”

  Was there anything left that the APA needed to say?

  Vonlee looked on, terribly lost in an abyss of gloom and doom. When it was put that way by the APA, she felt, there was no chance for her to come out of this unscathed.

  Of course, the APA didn’t stop there. He banged on and on, carefully uttering that same narrative he had utilized throughout Billie Jean’s trial, or one could say the “dress rehearsal” for this event. He hammered the same points home: the money, the cars, the casino, Danny Chahine.

  “She helped her aunt kill her uncle to get money for a sex change operation—and, in fact, she got the money.”

  Thunderous.

  Direct.

  Condensed.

  The APA was on his game here. And it was obvious that Skrzynski did not want to lose this case, too. As he worked his way through what was a brilliant opening statement, pointing out the law repeatedly, he won over the jury.

  Then, upping the ante for himself (perhaps when he didn’t need to), Skrzynski spoke of how Vonlee was on trial for a vicious, premeditated, planned-out murder with her aunt; she was here today to face that and the charges of aiding and abetting.

  Skrzynski worked in the recorded conversation with Danny Chahine near the end. And just like that, the icing was sugary and sweet, capping off the charges she faced.

  If there was one fault in APA Skrzynski’s opening, it was that he went on for maybe just a bit too long, went over some pieces of evidence twice. In culinary terms, he seemed to be putting too many eggs into the pudding. Yet, finally, as he concluded, the APA asked for jurors to consider a few simple facts: “And when I come back at the end of the trial, after you’ve heard all the evidence, I’m going to ask you to render the verdict . . . of first-degree premeditated murder and that will be the verdict that you’ll want to return.”

  From manslaughter to first-degree murder was all Vonlee could think as she stared at jurors. She couldn’t get it out of her head, no matter how many meds she had taken. Rewinding the clock would be something she might make a deal with the Devil to achieve. Such a contras
t in reality: her life for Don’s life.

  What could Bill Cataldo do? He had to pull out something substantial here. But where should he begin? As a defense attorney, one had to be careful with overpromising and then not delivering.

  * * *

  Cataldo stood, looked down at his notes one last time, and then conveyed his first line, a rather stark, terse piece of factual insinuation: “The state of Michigan, through Mr. Skrzynski, has improperly aimed their case of Vonlee Nicole Titlow.”

  Don’t reach for the stars. Try to grasp onto a small piece of the pie and feed it to jurors. They might bite. Make them feel as though the state was stepping over a line and overcharging Vonlee.

  Cataldo focused the early portion of his opening on the cause of death, or, rather, the lack of evidence. If he could prove, same as Billie Jean’s lawyer had, that Don died naturally, then there was no murder to charge his client with.

  Another strategy, one that Vonlee totally got on board for, was Vonlee taking responsibility for what she had done. She was entirely willing to do that, which that first plea bargain had proven, though Cataldo could not mention it.

  “At best, or at worst, what Vonlee did was stupid. What Vonlee did was inappropriate. But there are appropriate charges that would hold her responsible for what she did. But those appropriate charges are not the state’s worst-possible charges, first-degree murder.”

  As he continued, Cataldo talked about how the APA had focused his argument on the allegations Danny Chahine had made that, of course, supported the state’s case. The APA did not reference everything else said between Danny and Vonlee, which would refute the idea that Vonlee was a murderer. Rather, these other conversational exchanges revealed that Vonlee had simply behaved in a stupid and ignorant fashion. Moreover, Vonlee would not be denying her involvement in what Billie Jean was doing. But once she realized her aunt actually wanted to hurt Don, Vonlee backed off and told her to stop. Only she then walked away—her mistake—and unknowingly left Billie Jean to finish the job.