The One Who Got Away

by Caroline Overington

  ‘Well, I’m here to tell you, he’s not. He’s not guilty. Yes, yes, the media says otherwise, or implies otherwise, but you’re not going to subject this man to a trial by media. That’s not part of our Constitution. We’re going to try him on the basis of the facts. We’re going to try him in accordance with the law. And you’re going to come to a verdict based not on what you’ve seen or heard to date, but on the basis of the evidence presented to you in this court. So, thank you for coming. I mean that. Thank you. It’s a big job you’ve got in front of you, but we know you’re up for it. We screened you just right.’ Tucker took his seat.

  Sandy rose from hers. ‘Yes, ladies and gentlemen of the jury, welcome,’ she said briskly. ‘My name is Sandy Ruiz and I hope you’re all comfortable. We may be here for several weeks. I’m not going to try to flatter you. I would prefer to simply lay down some facts: the victim in this case is Loren Wynne-Estes. Loren was thirty-five years old when she went missing from the cruise ship, the Silver Lining. She was married, with five-year-old daughters that she adored. Their names are Hannah and Peyton. They aren’t with us today. They are in the care of Loren’s sister, Molly. Before she disappeared, Loren was living what many of you will recognise as a High Side life. She had a large home on Mountain View Road, with Pacific Ocean views from every room. There was a fleet of luxury cars in the garage. Loren was luckier than most of us, in that she didn’t have to work …’

  I was beginning to wonder where all this was going, when Sandy turned suddenly to the jury and said, ‘Why would Loren give all that up? My argument will be that she wouldn’t, and she didn’t. Her husband, who was intent on blaming Loren for his own heinous crimes, pushed her to her death. Now it’s your job to make sure he pays for that crime. Thank you very much.’

  How long did it take Tucker to demolish that argument? About thirty seconds.

  ‘Why would Loren give all that up?’ he asked, pacing the courtroom. ‘Why would she step deliberately off that boat? What was her alternative? Life in prison?’

  Sandy got to her feet. ‘Objection,’ she said.

  ‘I know, I know,’ said Tucker. ‘I know what you’re objecting to. I’m not supposed to say that Loren is responsible for the death of her husband’s mistress. I’m not supposed to say that, because she’s never been found guilty of that crime and she never will be. And that’s fine. Let me make it clear to the good folk on this jury that Loren isn’t guilty of that crime. You’ll hear her husband saying that he came across her committing the crime, and you’ll hear Ms Ruiz here move to strike that, and you might even hear Ms Ruiz say that Loren didn’t do it because the defendant did, and he’s in fact guilty of not one but two murders, but you don’t have to make a decision about any of that. All you have to decide is whether David killed his wife. He says he didn’t and I believe him and when all is said and done, I’m confident that you’ll believe him, too.’

  ‘Very good,’ said Sandy, ‘but Judge Pettit, I really think we should state the rules … Loren hasn’t been found guilty of any crimes. She’s an innocent woman missing from a ship. I’d like the jury to understand that.’

  ‘Yes, I agree. You need to cut that out, Mr Bingham. You’re not going to stand in my court and flat-out call the victim a murderer.’

  Tucker was chastened, but soon brightened. ‘Well, maybe I’ll just say that Loren had quite a bit going on when she boarded that ship,’ Tucker said cheekily. ‘Is that acceptable, Judge Pettit? May I say that? Loren’s marriage was a mess. Can I say that? Her husband had been having an affair. Oh, come on! We all know that, don’t we? It’s been in all the papers. He was having one hell of an affair with a younger woman. Not only that, Loren had just found out that her husband – this man here, in the witness box – was not only an adulterer, he was broke. Hard to believe, looking at him, that he’s broke, but that’s what my people tell me. They warned me, before I took his case: “Tucker, he’s broke.”’

  One of the jurors laughed, and I admonished him with a frown.

  ‘Forget what you’ve just heard from my esteemed colleague. Loren didn’t have it all. On the surface, yes, on the surface, she was a pretty lady with a High Side home and an upcoming tennis lesson. Beneath it all, she was a woman on the edge of despair.’

  The jury looked interested. No more or less than that. I glanced at my iPad. The tweeters in the back of the court were doing a running commentary under the hashtag #wynneestes and readers were joining in. I scrolled through some tweets. As far as I could tell, public opinion was still running firmly against David.

  One tweet said: YES she had two beautiful children. Why would she kill herself? He obviously DID it.

  Another said: Disgraceful … killed his mistress blames his wife and is trying to get away with it.

  But there was also this, from an anonymous user: Is David Wynne-Estes guilty of murder? No. I know David, and it simply isn’t possible.

  I stored that one to my favourites. It wouldn’t be the first tweet ever written and sent by a PR company, but I hadn’t yet seen one quite as lame.

  * * *

  There isn’t space in the kind of account I’m giving to go over what each and every witness said. Suffice it to say that the first part of the trial – after the two opening statements – were taken up with expert testimony of the type that never makes the newspapers. Dry stuff, like what constitutes an expert in Man Overboard surveillance systems, and what constitutes an expert in the tides and currents in that particular part of the world.

  The rest of the trial would be what I call speculation.

  Did David have a motive? Well, sure, if he’d already killed Lyric and was planning to blame Loren, of course he did.

  Was David the last person to see Loren alive? Presumably yes, since nobody else had come forward to say they had seen her on the deck.

  Was David on the lower deck long enough to locate Loren, push her over and then carry on as if he was searching for her?

  Sure, of course he was, because how long does it take to push somebody? Seconds, but then again aren’t we pre-supposing that Loren was standing at the railing?

  Did she see David rushing towards her? We don’t know. And if she did see him, why didn’t she scream?

  You see what I mean, I’m sure, about it all being speculation. Nobody had a clue what had happened to Loren after she reached the end of that corridor and disappeared.

  It was Sandy’s job to make the jury believe that David had been involved in her death.

  She seemed to believe it, passionately.

  * * *

  Many times in that first week, my attention wandered to the jury, comprised of six men and six women. All were white; most were middle-aged, although one of the women had turned eighteen just four months before the trial began. She had not yet started college. The middle-aged women tended towards cotton trousers and polo shirts; the young woman wore fitness gear, and had a stripe of purple through her hair.

  On Monday of the second week, I started to see one of the middle-aged men enter the court kneeling on one of those brilliant new wheelchairs for people with ankle injuries. He had twisted his ankle during weekend sports. It was painful, but if the court could provide him with a chair to rest it on, he would be happy to continue his duty.

  The second week mostly comprised witnesses able to set the scene for the jury. This included lessons in geography (the Silver Lining set sail from Cabo San Lucas, a resort village on the southern tip of Mexico’s Baja Peninsula at latitude 22 degrees, 53’ 23” north and longitude 109 degrees, 54’ 56” west, and so on) and physics (it takes at least thirty minutes to slow and then stop a ship the size of the Silver Lining, by which time, any object – a body included – may have drifted at least as far again in the opposite direction).

  From my vantage point on the bench, I saw jurors stretch and yawn and flex their feet. Some witnesses were better than others, in terms of holding their attention. Some topics were more interesting than others. Questions as to why Loren’s b
ody wasn’t found were addressed to a marine scientist who noted the sharks.

  One of the jurors shuddered.

  ‘Oh, I know it’s horrific,’ said Tucker, ‘but that’s the truth of it.’

  It’s all very necessary, in terms of clarifying what happened and where, but in truth, the jury snoozed – not literally – through most of it, as they patiently waited for each side to put its case.

  By the third week of David’s trial, I found myself living in a house divided. Cecile – following mostly on Twitter – remained convinced of David’s guilt.

  ‘I sit and watch him every day,’ I said. ‘I don’t see him through the filter of television or social media. I see him in the flesh. He seems to be in agony. He’s under pressure. But he never looks guilty. I know the difference. It’s compelling to watch.’

  Cecile snorted. ‘You’ve been snowed. You’re a victim of the charm offensive,’ she said.

  ‘Now you’re being unfair,’ I said.

  David struck me simply as one of those men raised with towering expectations by parents who gave him every opportunity and never let him forget it: the money we spent on your education … we expect you to make the most of the opportunities you’ve been given … we sacrificed so much for you …

  The bulk of Cecile’s work as a school counsellor at Grammar had been with teens wilting under precisely that kind of parental pressure. They grow up driven to succeed at almost any cost. David’s whole life had been about demonstrating how well he was doing.

  You won’t be surprised to hear that Cecile did not agree with me.

  ‘Loren was a lovely young mom trying to hold her marriage together,’ she said briskly, ‘and David would do anything to get out of a fix.’

  Our breakfasts – which for so long had been pleasant in the pretty atrium by the kitchen – grew tense.

  * * *

  ‘How many of David’s witnesses are being paid to be there?’

  Cecile had wandered away from our breakfast table to peel the skin off a mandarin. We were deep into week four of the trial. Fatigue had set in: how long would this go on?

  There is an urgency in the community that cannot be allowed to infiltrate the courtroom. I felt the public’s hunger for a verdict. To many, the outcome seemed obvious, but it is neither right nor fair to rush.

  David Wynne-Estes was entitled to his day in court; each and every witness is entitled to be heard in a thoughtful way.

  Tucker the Texan had spent the previous day quizzing psychologists. Cecile was quite right, most of them were paid by David’s team to be there.

  ‘It’s quite proper and legal,’ I said.

  ‘But does the jury understand that they’re paid?’ asked Cecile.

  ‘Indeed they do,’ I said. The District Attorney, Sandy Ruiz, had pointed it out for them.

  ‘Could a man who planned this type of vacation for his wife – a soothing, romantic vacation – also be planning to kill her?’ Tucker had said, resting his hand on his hat.

  ‘Oh, no, I wouldn’t think so,’ the psychologist had replied.

  ‘You know he’s paid to say that?’ Sandy had asked the jury.

  ‘Objection,’ Tucker had said wearily. ‘He’s not paid to say that. He’s paid to be here. Big difference. He’s a professional, being paid for his time. He’s here giving an honest, professional opinion.’

  ‘I think we’re done with psychologists,’ I told Cecile, ‘and we’re moving on to people who were on the ship.’

  The press seemed relieved. Paid witnesses don’t make for good copy. The ship’s captain would surely be more interesting? And so it proved but only to a point. The captain came to court in a white uniform with gold on the shoulders and a chest of medals. What those medals were for, I couldn’t say.

  What had he seen? Precisely nothing.

  ‘But weren’t you there on the night of the Captain’s Dinner?’ asked Sandy, vexed.

  ‘The Captain’s Dinner is a dinner for two hundred people,’ he replied. ‘I remember Mrs Wynne-Estes because she was beautiful. She wore blue. I remember that. I can’t remember how much she had to drink. I can’t remember seeing her leave. I can’t say more than that. This is a tragedy for her family.’

  The ship’s surveillance expert came to the stand. He explained that the Silver Lining didn’t have a Man Overboard detection system. Such systems have been developed, but they are far from perfect and very few ships have them.

  ‘A bird can set them off,’ the expert said, ‘as can anything tossed from a balcony or deck.’

  ‘But isn’t that the point?’ said Sandy, prowling the court. ‘To know when something has gone overboard?’

  ‘The cruise industry has twenty million customers a year worldwide,’ he said. ‘We lose maybe fifteen people to Man Overboard events. It’s a tiny percentage. And it’s almost always deliberate.’

  ‘Almost always?’ repeated Sandy.

  ‘Tragically, yes.’

  The same expert explained that it was not possible to have every inch of the ship covered by security cameras.

  ‘There are cameras in elevators, the hallways, and in the disco area; there are cameras in the gaming room, to deter card counters. But you can’t have them covering every inch of every deck.’

  The jury saw footage from the corridor outside David and Loren’s cabin. It was black-and-white and grainy. Loren came out of their cabin with her hands in the back pockets of her white jeans, palms facing outward. She went down the corridor without looking back.

  ‘Does she look like a woman about to take her own life?’ asked Sandy.

  It seemed an odd line of questioning. The jury could not see Loren’s face. The footage had been shot from behind. Then came David, moving at speed.

  ‘Does he look like a man about to kill his wife?’ asked Tucker, but again, who could tell?

  * * *

  Day two of week five, Molly took the stand.

  ‘If you could please state your name?’

  ‘Melinda Franklin, but people call me Molly. I’m Molly Franklin.’

  ‘Welcome, Molly,’ said Sandy warmly. ‘And if you could describe your relationship to the deceased?’

  ‘I’m Loren’s sister,’ said Molly. ‘Technically, her stepsister. But we were very close. Loren’s girls – they live with me now.’

  I glanced at the jurors. Having endured the expert-witness testimony – currents, camera angles and so forth – they were warming to Molly as a real person with much at stake.

  ‘That must be difficult?’

  ‘Oh, no,’ said Molly quickly. ‘They’re wonderful. And they’re a wonderful reminder of Loren. It’s like seeing Loren when she was a girl. They’re pretty and kind. Loren had them at Grammar and that’s expensive, but together with my dad, I’m doing what I can to keep them there.’

  ‘You’re trying to pay the fees yourself?’

  ‘Yes, and it’s not easy,’ said Molly. Wryly, she added: ‘The school say they’re “all about the child”, but in my experience, so far, anyway, they’re “all about the money”.’

  Several of the jurors exchanged knowing smiles.

  ‘All right,’ said Sandy. ‘Now, Miss Franklin, I understand that you booked this vacation for Loren, is that right? You booked the flight, the villa, the cruise ship that Loren was on when she went missing?’

  ‘I did,’ said Molly ruefully.

  ‘And I’m wondering, Molly, what did Loren tell you about this particular vacation? Did she explain what it was for?’

  ‘She said it was a second honeymoon.’

  ‘And did Loren say why she was going away on a second honeymoon?’

  ‘She didn’t,’ said Molly, ‘but I realise now that it was because David had been cheating. She was trying to save her marriage. Why she’d want to do that is beyond me, and it’s beyond Dad, too. David didn’t deserve somebody like Loren.’

  Tucker rose from his seat. He had different boots on: these ones were Cuban-heeled with pewter toecaps.

>   ‘Now, let’s just cool down,’ he said. ‘That’s some pretty tasty opinion you’re offering the court, but just so the jury understands the context here, your relationship with my client, even before his wife went missing, it’s never been warm, has it?’

  ‘David treats anyone from the Low Side like they’re a piece of gum stuck to the bottom of his shoe,’ said Molly indignantly. ‘He’s a snob. The whole family are snobs, like they don’t have to sit down and poo.’

  A juror laughed before stopping himself.

  Tucker didn’t object.

  ‘So you’re not much of a fan of Mr Wynne-Estes,’ said Sandy.

  ‘Me? No,’ said Molly. ‘I don’t like him, not at all.’

  She was looking at David with real distaste. David, seated behind the blonde-wood desk, didn’t take the bait. His expression stayed neutral.

  ‘And why is that?’ asked Sandy. ‘Why don’t you like him?’

  ‘Why would I like him? He was horrible to my sister,’ said Molly.

  Tucker rose. ‘Careful,’ he said, flashing a smile that seemed to come with a diamond ping.

  ‘Oh, I’ll be careful,’ said Sandy. Collecting herself at her table for a moment, she said: ‘Miss Franklin, we’re talking now about the time before Loren went missing. What I’m trying to get from you is a sense of what their relationship was like.’

  ‘I would say terrible,’ said Molly. ‘David’s big thing was to call Loren fat. We were sitting by her pool in our bikinis this one time. She pulled two handfuls of her tummy up over her bikini bottom, saying: “David says it’s disgusting.” It wasn’t disgusting. Her skin was loose because she’d carried twins. I said, “Don’t be so hard on yourself. Those gorgeous girls came out of that body.” She said: “That was two years ago and I’ve still got a stomach like a hundred-year-old woman. Isn’t it supposed to bounce back? David wants to know when I’m going to get back into my sexy underwear.” I said: “Tell him to shut up,” because I just don’t think a husband should harass his wife about how she looks after she’s had his babies for him.’