Ephesians, 5:22-24.
Holy Bible, The New King James Version
2. “But every woman who prays or prophesies with her head uncovered dishonors her head, for that is one and the same as if her head were shaved.”
1 Corinthians, 11:5.
Holy Bible, The New King James Version
3. “Servants, be obedient to those who are your masters according to the flesh, with fear and trembling, in sincerity of heart, as to Christ; not with eyeservice, as men-pleasers, but as servants of Christ, doing the will of God from the heart, with good will doing service, as to the Lord, and not to men, knowing that whatever good anyone does, he will receive the same from the Lord, whether he is a slave or free.”
Ephesians, 6:5–8.
Holy Bible, The New King James Version
1. In rape cases, the victim’s past has no bearing on the crime and is generally disallowed, but ultimately it’s up to the judge to decide whether certain evidence is admissible. Since myriad crimes had been committed here, and since this was a highly unusual case, McGuire was unsure how the judge might rule. She resolved to do everything she could to keep Colleen’s past out of the trial.
2. Though the article carried her byline, Grant later denied having written it. Colleen also insisted that her mother hadn’t been paid anything for the article in The Globe.
3. The most significant information he learned was that when Colleen came home, she told her mother only the bare minimum of what she’d suffered over the past several years. This seemed to explain, to some extent, the lack of “moral outrage” that concerned Dr. Hatcher and Deputy DA McGuire.
1. Tehama County’s judges and district attorney took the position that the Board of Supervisors did not have the authority to control the operation of the courts and that state law required they operate five days a week. Therefore, while the Board announced four-day work weeks, the courts continued to schedule hearings for a full five days.
1. For some reason, the Hookers used this pronunciation and spelling of the wife’s name. The husband’s, they pronounced as “Abraham,” so “Sarah” and “Abraham” are used hereafter.
1. Jones was the cult leader of the People’s Temple who ordered some nine hundred followers to commit suicide in Jonestown, Guyana, in 1978.
1. Dr. Hatcher’s twenty-three-page report on Janice Hooker and Colleen Stan summarized their personal histories, their perceptions of what had occurred between May of 1977 and the fall of 1984, and gave the psychologist’s evaluation of the mental status of each.
2. In a bill modeled after legislation that helped another financially strapped county (then faced with the burden of trying mass-murderer Juan Corona), the Tehama County Employees’ Association asked Assemblyman Stan Statham to seek special funding of $120,000 for trying the “sex slave” case. Then, in an unexpected development, California Senator Jim Nielsen managed to slip an urgent request for $250,000 into a bill regarding the disbursement of offshore oil tax revenues. These unusual measures made funds available for trying Hooker.
3. Considerable effort was made to find a grave site. Not only the Red Bluff Police, but also the Redding and Chico Police, the Shasta County Sheriff’s Office, and the Department of Justice participated in searches in the mountains. Using infra-red satellite photographs to pinpoint disturbed earth, teams of as many as twelve drove up into the mountains to probe the ground and dig at suspicious-looking sites. They found nothing.
4. Just before the start of the trial, Judge Knight reversed his ruling on the prior similar act motion, holding that it was more prejudicial than probative.
1. She didn’t know the source of the gift since McGuire, not wanting to embarrass her, had given it under the pretense that it had come from an outside donor.
2. This caused one of the jurors, Mrs. Carlton, an unforeseen problem, and she later asked to speak to the judge about it. With the other jurors excluded but both attorneys present, Mrs. Carlton told the judge that, though she hadn’t mentioned it during jury selection, her daughter had drowned.
Judge Knight asked whether she still felt she could be a fair and impartial juror.
She said she believed she could and so remained on the jury.
3. Janice’s description of the elaborate contrivance of the slavery contract wasn’t the only part of her story that didn’t mesh with Papendick’s. During a break, McGuire and Shamblin searched through their several boxes of evidence trying to find some particular photographs of Janice. When Shamblin announced that he’d found some, McGuire asked, “Is she pregnant?”
Hearing this, Hooker looked over sharply.
Papendick had claimed that Cameron’s sexual preference for bondage had been thwarted when Jan became pregnant. The photographs said differently.
4. As McGuire stood talking with Janice, whip in hand, a sketch artist did a quick rendering of the scene. McGuire was amused to see herself on the television news that night, apparently brandishing this whip in the courtroom.
1. Another gift from Christine McGuire, who was convinced her star witness needed a new dress to wear in court.
2. The volunteer was Debbra Hess, an employee of the Tehama County DA’s office.
3. McGuire believed both her main witnesses were telling the truth as they saw it, but their perspectives varied. She was struck, rather, by the difference in their attitudes. Colleen now seemed hostile, especially toward Janice, who she believed was giving incorrect testimony. Janice was more introspective, probably because she’d been in therapy, and when she learned that Colleen was angry, she wanted to talk. Colleen did not.
McGuire endeavored to keep the two apart. But as they were leaving the eighth-floor courtroom that afternoon, they had an accidental brush. Along with McGuire and others, Janice and Colleen ended up going down in the same elevator. The air was electric—intensified since everyone in the elevator was aware of the tension between the two. No one spoke.
Janice was hurt by Colleen’s new coldness toward her—especially since when they’d met at the preliminary hearing they’d rushed together and hugged. But it was probably healthy for Colleen to finally express her anger, however mildly, by snubbing Janice.
4. Some incidents that Colleen described during the course of her testimony fell beyond the statute of limitations. Others, she had not testified to at the preliminary hearing, so they could not be charged.
5. There is nothing in the California penal code regarding torture. “Mayhem,” the closest, refers to maiming—putting out an eye, slitting a nose, ear, or lip. “Assault,” another possibility, carries a light sentence. McGuire opted, therefore, to prosecute Hooker primarily on the sex counts, which carry severe sentences that can be stacked consecutively.
6. The photograph had been taken by Colleen’s stepmother in Riverside in 1981.
1. Later, it was clarified that these were more accurately “techniques” rather than “steps.” Dr. Hatcher pointed out that not all the techniques need be applied, and they needn’t be applied in any particular order. “The degree and intensity” of application of these techniques is “so variable that you could take three or four of them and, with particular individuals, achieve the result,” he said.
2. Dr. Leary expressed astonishment upon learning that this article had been introduced as evidence in the Hooker trial. He said that, following the Patty Hearst case, he wrote the article “to warn people” how easily they could be brainwashed. Though he said he had “nothing against things being sexy,” he disavowed any responsibility for “those horrible illustrations,” which he called, “disgusting.”
3. McGuire was astonished that Papendick had retained Dr. Donald Lunde, the Stanford psychiatrist she had interviewed for the prosecution months before.
1. Lunde’s association with the defense of Dan White did little for his credibility. Dan White, the man who murdered San Francisco Mayor George Moscone and Supervisor Harvey Milk in 1978, had received a scandalously light sentence, which was blamed on the notorious “Twinkie de
fense”—a diet of junk food. Recently out of prison, White had committed suicide just four days earlier, putting his name back in the news. When asked about working on the case, Lunde said: “Right. I didn’t say anything about Twinkies, though.”
2. McGuire couldn’t shake a feeling that it was vaguely unethical that Lunde, who many months prior had indicated he was willing to work with the prosecution, was now about to testify for the defense.
3. Papendick told McGuire later that he hadn’t realized his expert was charging so much.
1. When the charges against Hooker were filed, no one in the Tehama County DA’s office realized that the extraordinary time-span of this case presented an unusual problem: The sexual assault laws had changed in 1981. Some of the counts against Hooker occurred before the change and so would have to be charged according to the old law. The more recent counts stayed the same. Making this case even more complex, the jurors would be given different instructions for judging sexual assaults occurring in different years.
2. If they found the defendant guilty, the jury then needed to deliberate over “special findings” to determine whether the defendant had used force, violence, duress, menace, or threat of immediate and unlawful bodily harm in committing the crime.
3. The previous instruction did not apply; penetration need not be committed with a “criminal intent,” but, rather, “for the purpose of sexual arousal, gratification, or abuse.”
4. Three of the jurors tried on the head box, and one of the jurors, Mrs. King, climbed into the box beneath the bed.
5. There were some special findings, including use of force, violence, duress, menace, and threat of immediate and unlawful bodily injury, on all the rape counts. Special findings determine whether a full, separate, and consecutive term shall be served for each sex offense.
6. Half the jury felt the evidence indicated that the sexual encounter in 1984 was not technically rape, since Colleen had apparently first asked Janice if it was okay.
7. Janice Hooker later said she thought it was appropriate that Cameron was convicted on his favorite holiday, Halloween.
Perfect Victim Page 36