But in 1982, while Jan was in the hospital for a week, Colleen was out of the box most of the time. He hung her up, but there was no sex. Rather, Colleen got angry at him for “not doing enough to push Jan” about letting her out of the box, and they had a fight. He put her back in the box, went to pick up Janice from the hospital, and when he got back found that Colleen had kicked out the bottom of the box . . . but it was “designed to be that way,” he added. “Particle board won’t hold wood screws.”
Papendick asked if Colleen stayed in the box.
She was out at night, Hooker said, and she helped Jan when the kids weren’t around.
Gradually, the two got over their hostilities and became friends. While Hooker was at work and the girls were at school, Colleen was out of the box, and the two women spent more and more time together. They cleaned, did macrame, and read the Bible.
Hooker added that he’d never ordered Colleen to do anything that he didn’t help her do, but Jan would order her to do anything she didn’t like.
In 1984, Colleen gave Cameron an ultimatum, he said. “She couldn’t handle the way things were going,” and since Jan said it was okay for Colleen to be around the girls now, she was let out once again. She got a job, and she and Jan started going to church together.
“What was Jan and Colleen’s relationship?” Papendick asked.
“Good. They were getting along better than ever.”
The defense attorney asked about their financial situation, and Hooker explained they were short of cash at that time, so most of Colleen’s paychecks went into a general fund, used to pay bills. She kept twenty dollars out of each paycheck, but “that was about what me and Jan had to spend, too.”
Papendick asked if he had intended to get more slaves.
Hooker said that he’d threatened to at one time, but he didn’t really intend to.
Papendick turned to some of the physical evidence. He carefully took Hooker through it, asking about piece after piece. Cameron had fairly innocuous explanations for most of it. The knife, for example, wasn’t the one he’d abducted Colleen with, but was instead one he used for carving plaster of Paris sculptures. And he picked up the 1976 issue of Oui magazine (with Dr. Timothy Leary’s article) at the dump in 1984.
Papendick now led the defendant up to the day in August when Colleen and Jan left.
They had “asked if they could have that night to themselves,” Hooker said, and they slept together on the floor. To Cameron’s surprise, Colleen called him from the bus station the next day. She said she was leaving, that she knew the story of the Company wasn’t true, and she didn’t want to cause a divorce. It was time for her to go home, she told him.
“I told her I loved her and stuff like that,” he said, and asked that she call when she got home. “I was crying. Saying good-bye was hard.”
A day and a half after she returned, Colleen phoned after midnight, “and told me she missed me.” She encouraged him to get back together with his wife “for the kids’ sake.” Five or six days later Janice moved back in with him.
Papendick asked if, after Jan moved back, they continued to practice bondage.
“Once or twice,” Hooker said.
“Did you promise to stop?”
Hooker said he had. “After I went to the pastor, and he told me it was wrong and everything, I tried to back off on it.”
“Did Colleen indicate that she wanted to come back to Red Bluff?”
Colleen wrote that she did, Cameron said. Her father had some property nearby, and Hooker volunteered to put in a drip system for some trees.
“Did you talk about seeing each other again?”
“To a point,” he said. Colleen was going to come up and see them, but she didn’t want to come between him and Jan, who “was scared” about Colleen moving back. “She said it would end our marriage,” he said.
Hooker’s first day of testimony came to a close, propelling the “sex slave” case back into the headlines. Newspapers were splashed with stories about the “hen-pecked husband” caught between a jealous wife and a slave who refused to leave.
It made good copy, but Deputy DA McGuire was dismayed that the news coverage cast Hooker in such a positive light, especially in Red Bluff, where many were still convinced of his innocence. She heard that many of her colleagues believed she was losing the case—even Lt. Jerry Brown thought so.
Hooker began his second day on the stand on Monday, October 22. Under questioning, he maintained that Colleen had willingly posed for him in bondage positions. And he portrayed a strange but legal bondage triangle—with Colleen staking out Jan, and Jan hanging and whipping Colleen and Cameron.
Hooker declared that Colleen was in love with him (telling him this almost every day), and was content with her position as a slave. He’d told Colleen she could leave—on the condition that she tell no one about the Company—but she’d stayed because she was grateful to get off drugs and have a home and because she wanted a child.
Finally, Papendick asked: “Did Colleen ever refuse to have sex with you?”
“Yes, in’82 and ’84.”
And did Colleen consent to have sex with him?
“She showed in about every way imaginable that she was willing,” Hooker stated.
Papendick’s direct examination of Cameron Hooker had taken just slightly more than one full day. Now it was the prosecutor’s turn.
Her approach was bitingly sarcastic.
She attacked his story of having been innocently driving when he picked up Colleen, accusing him of carrying the head box for the express purpose of kidnapping someone. “You were out hunting, weren’t you?”
“No, I was not.”
“You took Jan and the baby with you to lure a woman, didn’t you?”
“No.”
“Why did you build the head box?”
“So Jan could scream and yell without everyone in the neighborhood hearing her.”
“Why didn’t you use a gag?”
“They don’t work that well. You ought to try them and see how they work.”
Jaws dropped and chuckles rippled through the courtroom.
McGuire retorted, “Thank you, but I don’t think I will,” and carried on.
The tone of the cross-examination had been set: McGuire mocking Hooker’s story, Cameron sticking to his version every step of the way.
“It excites you to see a woman hung, doesn’t it?”
“Yes.”
“Does it cause you to have an erection?”
“Yes, it can.”
“On Friday, you said that when you used your whips, you didn’t hurt Jan or Colleen, just played, is that right?”
“Yes.”
Showing Hooker a photograph of Janice, McGuire spat out: “Those marks on her back—are those from ‘playing,’ Mr. Hooker?”
“Yes, they are.”
McGuire attacked his version of Colleen’s first months of captivity. “You had a young, naked woman held captive, and you just held her hand?” she said, her voice dripping incredulity.
She asked where he got his idea for the head box.
He claimed he just made it up.
And the rack? “Did you get the idea from a magazine or a video, Mr. Hooker?”
“No, I did not.”
She asked about Colleen’s second meal, when Hooker hung her up and whipped her for not finishing two egg salad sandwiches.
He denied this, saying, “I didn’t care if she ate.”
She questioned him about the use of the bedpan.
Hooker claimed Colleen only had to use it a few days, then they brought her upstairs to use the bathroom.
Turning again to his fantasy, McGuire asked if he had discussed it with Jan.
“Yes.”
“Did you discuss it with Elaine Corning?”
“No.”
She asked whether he practiced bondage on Jan while she was pregnant.
He said he’d practiced bondage, but never hung her up.
/> Here, McGuire produced several pictures of Janice, seven or eight months pregnant, hung on what Hooker called the “X.”
“She’s standing,” he protested.
Didn’t you strike a deal with Janice, McGuire asked, that she could get pregnant if you could have a sex slave?
“No,” he said, but his previous cockiness was gone. He seemed quiet and confused.
She harped at him about The Story of O, pointing out the similarities between the treatment of O and his treatment of K. Then she reviewed some of the evidence with him. Mentioning the photograph of Colleen being hung, she said tauntingly, “You forgot about that, didn’t you?”
McGuire asked if the head box were insulated with foam.
“Yes.”
“With carpet?”
“Yes.”
Referring to his testimony about opening the head box and finding Colleen sweating, she said, “Isn’t it true she wasn’t going through drug withdrawal, she was going through torture?”
“All I know is what she told me later.”
“That first week when Colleen was chained to the rack, blindfolded, was she petrified?”
“Yes.”
“Terrorized?”
“Possibly.”
“In a state of shock?”
“I don’t know. She shook a lot.”
“Her attitude got better after six months?”
“After she got over being sick, she got friendly.”
“The box opened like a coffin, right?”
“It opened like a freezer.”
“Didn’t you hold a heat lamp close to her pubic area?”
“She was laying on the table and she said she was cold. I held a heat lamp next to her to warm her, then she said it was getting too hot.”
McGuire turned to the contract. Gesturing to the poster-size picture next to him, she said, “Look at the contract behind you. Where does it say that the slave will be given freedom?”
“It doesn’t.”
“When she signed the contract, it made you happy, didn’t it?”
“Yeah, in some ways it did.”
“She was afraid of you, wasn’t she?”
“I don’t know.”
“She was a good slave, wasn’t she?”
“Yes, she was.”
“But sometimes, she wasn’t good enough, was she?”
“No, she was a good slave.”
Then, showing him a picture of Janice tied and submersed in the bathtub, she asked if that was what he’d done to Colleen.
“Something like that,” he admitted.
“Face down?”
“Yes.”
“You dunked her?”
“Yes.”
“Until she almost drowned?”
“No. When she started blowing out bubbles and she couldn’t hold her breath anymore, I’d pull her up.”
“Was that ‘playing’ too, Mr. Hooker?”
“Yes.”
“On whose part?”
Softly, he answered, “I don’t know.”
“You said Colleen’s attitude went downhill after she signed the contract.”
“Yes.”
“You seem surprised.”
“I didn’t know what to expect.”
“You told Colleen your father was in the Company, didn’t you?”
“No.”
“You told her he had a dungeon under his home?”
“No.”
“You told the same thing to Elaine Corning, didn’t you?”
“No.”
“You whipped Colleen to punish her for breaking dishes, didn’t you?”
“Yes.”
“With what?”
“A cat-o’-nine-tails.”
“Were you playing?”
“No.”
“You were serious?”
“Yes.”
She asked whether he’d burned Colleen with matches. He denied this, maintaining it was Jan.
“Wasn’t that one of your fantasies, Mr. Hooker?” she asked, showing him one of his sketches: a naked woman, handcuffed, being threatened by a flame. “Isn’t that a match?”
“No, it’s a torch.”
Putting the sketch away, she said, “You loved Colleen?”
“Yes.”
“But you didn’t tell her the truth about the Company?”
“No.”
“And you kept her under your bed in a box?”
“Not in 1980.”
“Or you had her sleeping in the back bathroom with a chain around her neck, like a dog?”
“No.”
Turning to the trip to Riverside and its detour to Sacramento, she asked, “Hadn’t you told her on prior occasions that Company headquarters was in Sacramento?”
“Earlier, I may have.”
“And you told her neighbors were with the Company?”
“I told her they were everywhere.”
“And she believed that?”
“Yes.”
“You told her the Company had tapped the phones?”
“No.”
“You had her say good-bye to the Coppas, the Deavers, and your daughters a week before she left.”
“She was leaving.”
McGuire reviewed Colleen’s return to Red Bluff, the rape on the floor (which Hooker had called “making love”), and her three-year return to the box. Coming to the end of her biting cross-examination, she recounted Colleen’s increased freedom, her job with King’s Lodge, then listed the amounts of Colleen’s paychecks, which Hooker had deposited into his account.
A few jurors studiously took notes. The judge sometimes raised his eyebrows or scowled so deeply it seemed his face was made of rubber. Papendick perched on his chair, seeming irritated.
“Jan moved back in because you promised to get counseling and give up bondage, didn’t she?”
“Yes.”
“And you didn’t give up bondage?”
“No.”
McGuire suddenly asked: “Jan hung you up once, didn’t she?”
“Twice,” he said.
“It was pretty painful, wasn’t it?”
“Yes.”
“You didn’t enjoy that, did you?”
“No.”
It was a significant, if slightly askew, addition.
“In 1980, Colleen still believed you were a member of the Company?”
“Yes.”
“And in 1984, Colleen still believed you were a member of the Company?”
“Yes.”
With that, McGuire abruptly rested her cross-examination.
Defense Attorney Papendick focused his redirect examination on his strongest evidence: the many calls placed between Colleen and the Hookers after her departure, and the letters that she wrote. Papendick went over these item by item, giving times and dates, driving them home, then rested.
McGuire, on her re-cross-examination, also focused on the calls and letters, though her questions usually revealed more than Hooker’s answers.
“You called Colleen because you were afraid she was going to the police?”
“No.”
“Didn’t Colleen’s cousin call you?”
“Yes, and chewed me up very thoroughly.”
“Did that make you afraid?”
“I don’t believe so.”
“So you called Colleen again to make certain she wouldn’t go to the police?”
“No.”
Her re-cross-examination was brief, and now both counsels had concluded their questions to this witness. But before Cameron Hooker could step down, Judge Knight had a few questions.
He asked about that perplexing trip to Riverside in March of 1981: “On the way to Riverside, did you stop in Sacramento?”
“Yes, I stopped at an adult bookstore.”
“Are there office buildings in that area?”
“Yes, near the capitol.”
“Why was it that you took Colleen to Riverside?”
“Originally, it was to leave her t
here.”
“Why didn’t you send her?”
“We wanted to spend the night together, but we didn’t ’cause Colleen got excited about seeing her father, so I took her right there.”
“But the purpose of your trip was to spend the night together, and you never did?”
“No, we never did.”
CHAPTER 34
Out of court—clicking down the hall toward the newspeople in her high heels, so smartly dressed they began to jokingly bet on when she might repeat a suit—McGuire seemed friendly enough. But in court she changed, and after her lacerating cross-examination of Cameron Hooker, some of the press corps wondered if her sarcastic approach could backfire, whether the jury might think she was “bitchy.”
Attorneys, like salespeople, have to worry about image. A customer often buys a product less on its merits than the salesperson’s personal appeal; and sometimes, more than the strengths or weaknesses of the case, an attorney’s charm can tip the scales toward a defendant’s acquittal or conviction.
The jury is the major imponderable in any trial. Who knows which attorney they prefer, how the evidence affects them, whether inconsistencies in the witnesses’ testimonies strike them as lies or simple errors—indeed, whether they’re paying close enough attention to catch inconsistencies at all? These jurors watched impassively—a few took notes, some chewed gum, and one noisily rattled candy wrappers. . . .
A total of eleven witnesses would testify over five days for the defense. Most of these were relatives. It seemed remarkable that if Colleen Stan were held captive, these people had never perceived the least hint of distress or oddity. They consistently portrayed Colleen as “happy” and “outgoing.” All agreed she was wonderful with the kids. No one could remember ever seeing any bruises or scars on her.
At one point, Papendick stopped the proceedings to read a stipulation into the record. The telephone calls. Followers of the trial may have thought they’d heard everything possible about the calls placed from Colleen’s father’s residence to Cameron and Jan. They hadn’t.
In a clear voice, the defense attorney read each listing: the date, the time it was placed, the duration of the call, the telephone number. It was an impressive list, covering four months, totalling 29 calls, and taking several minutes to read. When he’d finished, Papendick had surely emphasized these phone records as much as he conceivably could.
Perfect Victim Page 30