Perfect Victim

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by Christine McGuire


  “How did you feel?”

  “I felt that I could go home. I felt that it was over.”

  But though Colleen was reunited with her family after a long, mysterious absence, she didn’t go to the police. Why?

  Colleen claimed that Janice had asked her not to—a point which Janice had denied.

  McGuire then questioned Colleen point-blank about subsequent calls and letters to the Hookers. Colleen said she was writing to Janice, not to Cameron, but since the two had gotten back together, the letters were sent to them both. “I don’t really understand why I wrote the letters now,” she admitted, “but Jan wanted me to keep in contact with her, and I wanted to know how they were doing.”

  The phone calls, according to Colleen, were mainly placed by the Hookers, who wanted to know what she’d told her family and whether she’d gone to the police.

  Wrapping up a few final points, McGuire finished her direct examination and turned her witness over to Papendick.

  Hooker’s defense attorney immediately confronted Colleen with her contention that she hadn’t shown affection to the defendant. She maintained she had not.

  Papendick then entered a photograph into evidence. It showed Colleen with her arm around Cameron’s shoulder, both of them seated on a sofa and smiling.6

  This was passed around to the jury who, as usual, registered nothing but somberness on their faces.

  Having punctured Colleen’s credibility, Papendick pressed ahead. He asked if the witness remembered phoning Cameron just after midnight on August 14 and talking for seventy-six minutes.

  Colleen said she didn’t recall.

  Did she recall saying she’d been looking at the photograph and decided to phone?

  “No.”

  Didn’t she remember sending the photograph to Cameron?

  “I don’t remember if I did or not,” she said, but by now it seemed clear that she had.

  Throughout the cross-examination, Papendick portrayed the story of the Company as ludicrous, contending that no one could be so preposterously gullible as to believe it. At one point, in a tone of conspiratorial hilarity, he asked, “Looking back on the story of the Company, isn’t it the most bizarre thing you’ve ever heard?”

  McGuire exclaimed: “Argumentative, Your Honor!” Her objection was sustained, but Papendick was laying a groundwork of skepticism, bringing latent doubts to the fore.

  The defense attorney went on to point out the many opportunities Colleen had to escape but didn’t. Paying special attention to the 1981 trip to Riverside, he listed place after place that she had ventured without apparent fear of reprisals by the Company and without asking anyone for help: How could the Company know the addresses of your aunts and uncles and grandmother? What about your father’s car? Did you honestly believe the Company was monitoring these places? Wouldn’t they think you were escaping?

  Having presented the whole story of the Company and of slavery as absurd, Papendick shifted his attention to Janice: “Did Janice ever tell you that she was a slave?”

  “I don’t recall.”

  “Did you ever ask her?”

  “I don’t recall asking, but I do recall her telling me she was just as much a slave as I was.”

  “How frequently did you go shopping with Janice?”

  “About half a dozen times.”

  “Did you ever suggest to Jan that you could both escape?”

  “No.”

  Then, referring to a shopping trip to the Mt. Shasta Mall in Redding, Papendick asked, “Were there security officers around?”

  “Yes.”

  “Did you believe they were members of the Company?”

  “No.”

  What about the pastor of the church she went to with her grandmother in 1981?

  “No.”

  “When you and Janice went home with the two men you met at the bar, weren’t you afraid the Company would think you were trying to escape?”

  “No, because it was Janice’s decision.”

  “Did you ever inspect the phone on Pershing to see if it was bugged?”

  “No.”

  Papendick listed numerous other phones and Colleen admitted she hadn’t inspected any of them. On the other hand, she explained huffily: “I don’t know anything about that stuff.”

  Asking how Colleen got to and from work, Papendick established not only that Colleen regularly traveled the three-mile distance unsupervised and under her own power on a bike, but that she once detoured to find 1140 Oak Street.

  “Weren’t you afraid the Company would think you were trying to escape?”

  “No.”

  “Weren’t you afraid you’d be punished?” he goaded.

  “No,” she answered flatly.

  Again, after establishing that Colleen had visited a friend, Lenora Scott, after work, Papendick asked: “Weren’t you afraid the Company would be angry with you?”

  “No.”

  “Weren’t you afraid that Cameron would be angry with you?”

  “No.”

  Finally Papendick showed his hand: “Isn’t it a fact,” he said coldly, “that you used the Company as a reason to stay in the Hooker household?”

  In her usual deadpan, Colleen replied: “I didn’t want to stay.”

  Deputy DA McGuire listened with rising trepidation. She’d expected Colleen to do better than this.

  Citing Colleen’s testimony that she’d spent twenty-three hours a day in the box every day between March 1981 and December 1983, Papendick asked what she did in the box.

  “Slept. Listened to the radio. Dreamed about going home.”

  “Did you do any exercise?”

  “No.”

  Papendick asked her to recount what she did when she got out of the box. Besides “some knee-bends after I brushed my teeth,” Colleen mentioned no exercise, a point that would come up later.

  Papendick moved on, establishing that Colleen was aware that Janice was jealous of her, that Colleen was taking care of the children earlier than Janice realized, and that there was a strong bond between Colleen and the Hookers’ daughters. “Did you believe Jan was a good mother?” he asked.

  McGuire immediately objected.

  Papendick exclaimed: “That was her motive for staying, Your Honor!”

  Judge Knight sustained the objection, as there’s no cause to show a victim’s motive, but the defense attorney had succeeded in planting another seed of suspicion.

  At times, however, Papendick seemed to be doing his client more harm than good. He stunned the courtroom by spending what seemed an inordinate amount of time in questioning Colleen about the electrical shock incident on the frame. He quibbled with her over whether the wire had been taped “tightly.” Colleen, who averted her eyes from the defense attorney, looked pained at even having to discuss this, her words becoming very soft.

  “How many times were you shocked?”

  “I don’t remember.”

  “More than once?”

  “Yes.”

  “More than twice?”

  “Yes.”

  “More than three times?”

  “Perhaps.”

  “How long?”

  “Maybe three or four seconds.”

  Surely this was not the sort of testimony Papendick was hoping to elicit, yet, to the court’s astonishment, he continued.

  “Where did you feel the pain?”

  “In my entire body.”

  “Wasn’t the pain more concentrated in one spot?”

  “It shoots electric current through your entire body,” she insisted.

  Although Papendick must have thought he was helping his client by belaboring this, it seemed he was only making the incident more vivid to everyone in the courtroom. Worse, it was time for lunch and court was now recessed, leaving the image of Colleen being hung and electrocuted lingering in the minds of the jurors.

  When Papendick resumed the cross-examination after lunch, he let loose with his biggest ammunition, a rapid-fire line of q
uestioning that shot holes in Colleen’s credibility.

  “Did you ever tell Cameron that you would give him a son?”

  “No.”

  “Did you ever tell Cameron that he spiritually inspired you?”

  “No.”

  “Did you ever tell him that you were his spiritual wife?”

  -“No.”

  Here, Papendick handed Colleen a sheet of paper and asked her to identify it. It was a letter. Looking disquieted, she admitted it was her handwriting.

  “Do you remember when you wrote it?”

  “No.”

  He suggested she read it to refresh her recollection. After a moment, she said, “It says Christmas.”

  Papendick moved the letter into evidence and passed copies to the jury and the prosecutor. While the jury read, Papendick and Hooker sat whispering, Hooker looking pleased.

  Resuming his questions, Papendick asked, “Did you ever tell Cameron that you felt more of a woman being a slave?”

  “No.”

  “Did you tell him that he made you feel good about yourself?”

  “No.”

  Now Papendick showed her a card. She admitted the printing was hers, and that she had drawn the picture of the leaf with a “K” on the front: It read: “Happy Third Anniversary,” and copies of this, too, were passed to the jurors.

  “Did you ever tell Cameron that your love was growing every day?”

  “No.”

  Alluding to the card, he asked, “When you talk about ‘just because I love you,’ who are you referring to?”

  “Could’ve been Jan,” she said defensively.

  Quoting again, Papendick read: “My love for you is growing every changing day—”

  “I felt a love that he made me feel for him,” Colleen objected.

  “This card was given to either Cameron or Jan, is that correct?”

  “Yes.”

  “And it expressed how you felt at that time, right?”

  “Not necessarily. I used to write poems a lot.”

  “Do you recall writing a diary?”

  “At Cameron’s instruction.”

  “Did you prepare a document entitled ‘Past’?”

  “Not that I recall.”

  Papendick handed Colleen some handwritten pages. She flushed but said she now remembered writing it.

  “Do you recall putting in the diary that you wanted to stay with Cameron, that he welcomed you into the family?”

  She admitted that she recalled being welcomed into the family, though she couldn’t remember when.

  “Did you tell Cameron that you loved him?”

  “Yes.”

  “When was the first time?”

  “After he let me out of the box in 1980.”

  “Why did you tell him you loved him?”

  “Because he treated me better, didn’t lock me in the box, gave me more freedoms.”

  “Did you believe that Cameron loved you?”

  “He told me he did.”

  “Did you believe him?”

  “I didn’t know.”

  While the defense attorney was pursuing this line of questioning, McGuire brooded over the new evidence Papendick had just dropped on her desk. This was a prosecutor’s worst fear: unexpected evidence. The state is required to fully disclose its case to the defense, but since the reverse isn’t true, there was always the danger of a sudden bombshell being exploded. And now it had. She recalled that she’d heard rumors of “love letters” months ago, but since Colleen and Janice claimed to know nothing about them, she’d put them out of her mind.

  Now they lay inches from her fingertips, but she resolved not to read them until later. She didn’t want the jury to realize this information was new to her, or to see how worrying it was.

  Papendick asked Colleen a range of questions—about her diet, her encounters with family and neighbors, jogging—before coming back, again, to the letters. He quoted: “I seem to be falling deeper and deeper in love with you.”

  Colleen protested that Cameron had told her to write of her love for him.

  Papendick, undaunted, pondered the letter in his hand and smiled, saying, “Sweet. Sounds like a teenager wrote it.”

  By now Colleen’s eyes were red. She was sniffling as Papendick let loose with a barrage of questions about the eighth rape count. Specifically, he wanted to know whether she’d asked Jan if it was okay.

  Colleen said she’d asked that because they’d been telling her that she needed sex, that God had told them that Cameron was to be the one to satisfy her needs, that they’d pressured her for weeks.

  Again, Papendick asked whether she recalled saying “okay?”

  “I don’t recall,” she said, looking away.

  Papendick questioned her rigorously on this count, having her describe again what had happened, getting her to contradict herself on a previous statement, and finally bringing her to tears.

  The unemotional witness was crying.

  Having made his major points, Papendick jumped around to various time periods, asking about the letters she’d mailed home, incidents of bondage she’d testified to, her relationship with Jan. Then, abruptly, he was done.

  For a second time, McGuire was startled by the brevity of Papendick’s cross-examination. Another thirty-five minutes, and the jury would have gone home to sleep on all the doubts he’d raised. Now she had a chance to dispel these.

  Letting the “love letters” sit until she’d had a chance to read them, McGuire questioned Colleen about the damaging photograph of her hugging Cameron, giving her a chance to reassert that Cameron had told her to make it appear they were in love and that she feared letting her family know the true situation. Further, she hadn’t told her family what was going on because Cameron had said the house and cars were bugged with minute and precise listening devices.

  Only a few of McGuire’s questions were hard hitting. She let the last minutes of the day elapse, still worrying about those unread love letters.

  That night, the lights were on well past midnight in Christine McGuire’s hotel room. She went over the letters in exhaustive detail with Colleen, who, shaken by this new evidence, apologetically explained that she’d simply forgotten about writing them, it was so long ago.

  Long after Colleen had gone to bed, McGuire sat alone and read over and over the anniversary card Colleen had given to Cameron in May 1980, three years after the kidnap. The outside, decorated with a leaf and a “K,” said, “Happy Third Anniversary.” Inside, it read:

  Sometimes I feel that being your slave has made me more of a woman. But then there are other times when I feel it has made me less of a woman. You know how to make me feel good about myself. And I love you so much for it. I only wish that my dreams could be fulfilled with you. Because I feel a strong love and need to be with you. I’ll always serve you with singleness of heart.

  K

  The Christmas letter was even worse:

  This is my Christmas letter to express and give my love to my Master. You ask me to tell you how much I love you but I haven’t ever been able to tell you because I don’t know the right words to describe how much I love you but I seem to be falling deeper and deeper into love with you with each passing day. I find love hard for me to express with words. But you bring the passion out in me and it’s a way of expressing my love for you. You’ve also spiritually inspired me and I can’t tell you how much I love you for it. More than any words I know could ever tell. It’s not easy being a slave but your love makes it worth being your slave. I hope that your right about how things will change for the better and that I’ll have your child some day. I promise you I’ll give you a son. I know you’ll be proud of him and I hope you’ll love him as much as you love me. I know that you know that I have great faith in God, I read this in St. Luke: For with God nothing shall be impossible. And I think you know how important it is to me to do everything with God in my heart, I need and want his guidance and strength. I can’t explain how happy it made me feel i
nside when you told me that if I ever have your child that you would take me as your spiritual wife. I pray it will be someday. That God will recognize our love and commitment and that he’ll join us to be one and that even though I’ll be your bondmaid (slave) and second wife that no one or anything will ever separate us. I wish you a Merry Merry Christmas and the best of New Years. I pray that God will always hear your prayers and always answer them. And that the Holy Ghost will always be with you to guide you and to give you insight and understanding so that you will always do that which will make your soul feel good.

  I love you more than words could ever say,

  K

  The third and last was another card. The outside read: “Just because I love you. . . .” Inside, Colleen had written:

  Love is not a single act, but a climate in which we live, a lifetime venture in which we are always learning, discovering, growing. It is not destroyed by a single failure, nor won by a single caress. You cannot learn to love by loving one person only, for love is a climate of the heart. My love for you is growing with every changing day. You fill my life with happiness and love. And I pray that that happiness and love will never end.

  Love,

  K

  The next morning, McGuire opened by confronting the “love letters” head on, one at a time.

  Asked why she’d written the anniversary card, Colleen said, “I suppose it was because I wanted to have something to celebrate,” since she didn’t observe holidays or birthdays.

  Then McGuire led her through the card, line by line, noting that Colleen had referred to herself as “your slave,” and had written: “I’ll always serve you.”

  The Christmas letter was written around Christmas of 1980, just prior to her trip to Riverside. Why did she write it?

  “I believe Cameron told me to, because I write in the beginning that he told me to tell how much I love him,” she said, then softly added: “I don’t understand why I wrote it.”

  McGuire went through the letter highlighting each reference to slavery, noting that Colleen called Hooker “Master,” and wrote, “It’s not easy being a slave.”

 

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