by Greg Aunapu
"How many other people that you talked to had a missing daughter or a child who had never been found?”
Blair rested his head on his knuckles and thought for a moment. "None, I guess."
"And in your characterization that this was a game, did you ever tell Mrs. Billig this was a game?"
The defendant leaned back, looking satisfied. "No. But I kept throwing out things—I never said anything in seventeen years that turned out to be true. It reaches a point where in my mind I think there's almost an implied consent. She'd say things: 'I don't mean to hurt you, I don't want anything from you. Call me back…’ She'd just chat along." Blair didn't realize he'd just admitted to an extra year of abuse.
"She was looking for information about her daughter, wasn't she?"
"Perhaps you're right…" Blair answered. Then, a couple of questions later, "You know, I think that's the primary thing, but I don't think it's the only thing. Like I told you before, there comes a point where she's just wrapped up in the obsession to the point that, you know, the obsession is ruling, you know."
"She should have just kissed off the search for her daughter and forgotten about it?"
"You're putting words in my mouth, counselor."
"I'm not trying to put words in your mouth. I'm trying to understand what you're saying. You're saying she should have given up the search for her daughter?" "I never said that, and never implied that, but that's the second or third time you're trying to put it into my mouth, counselor."
"You never told Mrs. Billig that, 'Hey look, I'm just playing a game, that I really don't have any information about your daughter, but just play along, so we can chitchat,' did you?"
They argued until Blair answered, "There comes a point that I say things that are obviously not true, she says 'Meet me, meet me, meet me,' until it comes to a point that I say 'Sure we'll meet.' She says 'Show up here on a certain day,' and I never show up. And there comes a point over a period of years she's got to say there's nothing here. She is as big an obsessive as I am. We're just two obsessives bouncing off each other, you know. We should both be locked up, probably!”
Hague's voice quieted. "Are you saying Mrs. Billig should be locked up for searching for her daughter?"
"No, I'm not saying that. There again you want to twist the rules, counselor. What I'm saying is this: Mrs. Billig, over the years, has become obsessed, and I know something about being obsessed myself."
"You told Mrs. Billig that her daughter Amy was in white slavery…. You told Mrs. Billig that Amy's tongue had been cut out, didn't you?"
Blair insisted that he had come up with these visions only in the last conversations so that Sue would tell him to "Drop dead, get out of here. Preposterous!"
"She had no way of knowing whether there was reality to that statement or not, did she?"
"Well, if you want my opinion, she knew deep in her heart that I was full of bullshit! And she was playing the game for its own sake because it kept her busy, you know?"
"You told Mrs. Billig that they wanted a mother-daughter team, didn't you?"
"Yep."
"And that they had Amy, and now they wanted her?"
Blair put his face down and rubbed his forehead. "Yep."
"You said they had seen her and they wanted a couple of generations of nipples to play with?"
Blair conceded that he had said something like that.
"You never said, 'I'm full of bull, ignore me,' did you?”
"I never said those words, you're right. I tried to say it indirectly, I guess."
There was a long exchange focusing on other matters, where Hague asked a couple of questions which elicited long, rambling answers from Blair about Customs procedure, and how Blair dealt undercover with Latin American smugglers. Lawyers often rely on tactics like this to get the witness off guard and talkative before jumping back in with another question on topic.
Now Hague resumed questions on Blair's conduct. "Over the years, you didn't think it was malicious to tell the mother of a missing girl that her daughter was being used as a sex slave?"
"Answer, no . . . As I advanced in these twin diseases, did I have any actual knowledge that I was hurting her, that I could actually say consciously, 'Hank ol' boy you're hurting this woman'? No, I never came to that final thing. I didn't rationalize it, because I wasn't capable of rationalizing in this direct area." His hands gesticulated like a wounded bird trying to make a getaway, fluttering crazily this way and that.
"But you were capable of rationalizing for all your work decisions and phone calls surrounding the calls to Mrs. Billig?"
Again Blair argued that he could change back and forth instantly, be logical one moment for his job but completely out of control the next minute to converse with Sue Billig.
"So you were able to step out of your alcoholic state to handle work calls, but step back into it again for the purposes of making calls to Mrs. Billig?"
"No," Blair said, contradicting his statement of moments earlier. He insisted that he would never have physically harmed Billig.
Hague asked, "You would just call her for sixteen years, tell her that her daughter was being used as a sex slave, that her tongue has been cut out, that she is being sold overseas, and that they wanted a mother and daughter team, but that's as far as you would go?"
Blair was rattled. "I'm trying to answer. Maybe if you stopped bounding around and slugging on me, maybe I could, you know?"
Finally, Hague read back statements from Blair's earlier deposition where he had admitted to telling Billig to "Watch out!" But Blair said he "meant that in a good sense." It was advice for her to be wary.
"I wasn't trying to warn her or threaten her. It wasn't even a conceived thought right there."
"You just wanted to tantalize her about what had happened to her daughter and what was going to happen to her?"
"Not at all, counselor! You're just twisting and putting words in my mouth there!"
Judge Ferrer had listened to enough. "Are there any further questions?"
"No, Your Honor. No further questions," Hague replied, and sat down at the prosecutors' table.
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C ynthia Blair, wearing a woman's business jacket over a button-down white blouse, took the stand next, and came across as an astounded wife. "The only calls that I knew that my husband was making were family calls. Over the last three to four years I began to suspect that something was happening because my husband seemed to withdraw. I used to ask him frequently if he was having an affair."
Howard Rosen questioned Mrs. Blair for the prosecution, asking if she had ever seen her husband as drunk as he claimed to be during the telephone calls.
Cynthia shook her head, and replied in hard staccato words—like a parent trying to admonish an unruly child at a store. "I've never seen him falling down drunk, Mr. Rosen. No, I have not."
"Well, he was always able to function as a parent, right?"
"He wasn't there a lot of the time, Mr. Rosen." Spoken with impatience.
"But you never saw more than one or two beer cans?"
Cynthia answered that she herself had once been addicted to prescription drugs and so should have recognized the symptoms. "I thought about alcoholics like my father, and he was a mean drunk. I never saw any of that in my husband."
The week-long trial progressed to final arguments on a particularly auspicious day—a day that Hague made sure the jury noticed…
''Twenty-two years ago today, March fifth, 1974, a seventeen-year-old girl named Amy Billig walked out of her home in Coconut Grove, and she has never been seen or heard from since. For the last seventeen years, by his own admission, that man"—he pointed—"has been calling the mother of Amy Billig—Susan Billig— and dashing her hopes and dreams of finding her daughter, and preying on her disappointment and heartache over her lost daughter. Yesterday, the defendant took the stand and told you that he wanted you to believe his actions weren't intentional. Give me a break, ladies and gentleman. You heard the eviden
ce!"
He reiterated all of Sue's experiences searching for Amy over the years. He characterized Blair's calls as harassing and tormenting, and reminded the jury how the defendant had tried to minimize his role, and how he had blamed Sue Billig for accepting the calls.
"He was like a vulture that circles the pack looking for a wounded animal. He saw Mrs. Billig as that vulnerable individual that he could prey upon, and he did prey upon her. For years and years and years. We're not talking about a couple of months. We're talking about years. When Amy disappeared, President Nixon was still in the White House. That was six presidents ago. 1974. And by his own admission he has been calling since 1979… The defendant's calls were cruel, they gave her false hope, which were then dashed, and then he hung the carrot out again… Over the years [the calls] became more and more frequent, and they became more and more violent about what had happened to Amy. And then they became threatening to Mrs. Billig, telling her what would happen to her, describing what had been done to Amy, and that the same thing would happen to Mrs. Billig…”
Hague explained that the jury did not have to consider the calls in a vacuum and could consider "what was reasonable for [Mrs. Billig] to believe under the circumstances; and the nature and the context of what was being said by that man for those decades."
He reiterated many of the telephone calls, especially the ones that were taped. "He picked her out because her daughter was truly missing, and he was able to torment her with specific information. Mrs. Billig had no way to know whether he was making it up or telling the truth. The defendant said he read the newspaper to get the information. He didn't get that information by reading the sports page and calling the person who won the five-hundred-meter dash or whatever it was and call them. He picked on somebody who had gone through a personal tragedy, so he could gain whatever satisfaction he gained from those conversations." Hague was emotional and angry, smacking his fist into his hand.
He continued: "The defendant could have no other intent than a malicious one. And it's ludicrous to suggest otherwise. Listen to the defense's counsel as they give you their closing arguments. See what creative explanation they give you as to why this is not aggravated stalking. But again, ladies and gentlemen, use your common sense, and I submit to you that at the end of the case you will go into that room and find that this defendant is guilty, not of misdemeanor stalking, but of the charges of which he is charged in the indictment, and that is aggravated stalking. You have taken an oath to follow the law, and that law will take you to the conclusion that this defendant is guilty as charged. Thank you."
Bill Norris took the podium and outlined his argument, speaking in conversational tones, telling the jury that there was no question that Sue was obsessed with finding her daughter, and asked "whether this is a healthy obsession of a mother who simply wants to find her daughter? Or whether this is an unhealthy obsession driven by guilt of her own irresponsibility of letting her daughter hitchhike through a town that was occupied by a biker gang? Because what it is that drives [Sue] Billig, what her particular obsession is and has been, is going to affect what she hears and is going to affect what she tells you."
Jury members looked doubtful, but Norris forged onward: "You've also gotten to know in this trial to a surprising, or unusually high degree, you've gotten to know the defendant, Henry Johnson Blair. You've learned that Hank Blair is very much a modern American centurion. He is a warrior who has spent his adult life protecting our borders to make this country safe." He painted Blair's career as that of a hero who gained greater and greater responsibility until finally 'this warrior was struck down. And the irony is that he was not struck down by a Colombian narco-terrorist bullet, but he was struck down by the stress of his job, of his occupation, filtered through his own abuse of alcohol, and filtered through a psychological problem that he didn't understand, that all he could understand, all that he could see of it, led him to believe that he was going crazy. And his struggle with this perceived insanity, with his psychological problem, led him to contemplate to the point of actually putting his service weapon into his mouth on two occasions—led him to contemplate suicide."
He admitted sympathetically that the case was tragic, from Amy's disappearance through Hank Johnson's calls, but declared, "[Sue's] obsession to find Amy, and Hank Blair's sickness, fed off of each other. She could not let him go because she was obsessed that maybe he had information. And he could not force her to make him go away, which is what he wanted, because of her obsession, so his sickness continued…”
He told the jury that the prosecution had not established "credible threat" against Susan Billig. In order to convict Blair of aggravated stalking, the jury had to believe beyond any reasonable doubt every word that Billig had told them. Norris got bold, saying that as far as the taped conversations were concerned, they should listen to them carefully and "if you find on those two tapes, on either one of them, that this man here, Henry Johnson Blair, threatened the life of Susan Billig, threatened bodily harm to Susan Billig, then come right back out—come right back out and tell the judge that he is guilty…”
Norris highlighted Blair's argument that he played his role as an outsider to the terrible things that had happened to Amy, and also stressed parts of Sue's previous testimony where she had difficulty remembering facts to answer his questions. He said Sue was "very facile with her answers, but very cagey with her facts," and questioned her version of the many conversations. He insisted that the evidence did not support aggravated stalking and accused Sue of making up "something that points the finger at Hank Blair."
He continued, "And ladies and gentleman, that's not good enough in this country, no matter what you think of how despicable, how sick, how wrong-headed, how unforgivable what the defendant may have done in this case, and no matter how you may feel about Susan Billig and the heart-wrenching agony that she's been through because she let her seventeen-year-old daughter hitchhike through a town full of bikers, that's not proof beyond reasonable and to the exclusion of a reasonable doubt…”
He told the jury to listen to the tapes and convict his client if Blair had threatened Billig. "But if the only peg you have to hang a hat on is Susan Billig's testimony, then do the right thing and acknowledge if you try to hang your hat on that peg, it's going to hit the floor, because that peg isn't enough to hang your hat up in the air—and come back with not guilty on the aggravated stalking counts—all three of them."
The judge would also instruct the jury that they could convict Blair of a "lesser included offense," a misdemeanor stalking count, so Norris argued that his client should not be found guilty on those counts, either.
He summed up his argument: "You know that Hank Blair's family has been supportive of him, notwithstanding what he's accused of, and I ask you in this case to let him return tonight with his family to his life, what's left of it after the crash of this tragedy in his life, and go home and get on with the rest of his life and continue dealing with the psychological problems and the alcohol problems that he has… I thank you." Norris took his seat, and Hague replaced him at the podium again. The prosecution always gets the last word.
The prosecutor told the jury that they could never go back in time to discover what happened to Amy, but they could "address what has happened in seventeen years by the admission of the defendant to Mrs. Billig and the phone calls she received from that defendant!" He jabbed an accusing finger at Blair and continued, "They get up here, and from what I understand, they wrap him in the flag and say he's a centurion, an American centurion protecting our borders!”
Here, his voice modulated: "He's been making phone calls to Mrs. Billig for almost as many years as he's been with Customs. Basically it was a plea for pity, feel sorry for him. He got up and took the stand and gave you that self-diagnosed psychobabble and tells you, 'Hey, if I'm guilty, I've got these problems.' His wife said she never saw him out of control. His coworker who worked very close with him said he never saw him out of control. He didn't drink too
much! And [Blair] was very pleased that they 'never questioned my judgment, they never said he's intoxicated, he made a bad decision.'"
Hague produced the visual aid showing how Blair was cognizant enough to take calls from work between the supposed drunken calls to Mrs. Billig. "The defense told you, 'Don't believe Mrs. Billig, she got up here basically and lied!' Said that to her face and continued to make her a victim by calling her a liar on the stand! What is her motive to lie? If she truly had a motive to lie, wouldn't she get up here and say, 'He told me he was going to slit my throat! He told me he would shoot me with a gun. He told me they were going to skin my hide.' She got up there and told you what was said… The defense told you. 'Don't believe her, she's the only witness.' " He wagged his finger. "He did concede the fact that what Mrs. Billig did describe constituted aggravated stalking. Credible threats…”
Hague told the jury that this was a crime that had been committed between two people on opposite ends of the phone. It wasn't the type of crime that has witnesses. He reminded the jury that the defendant had admitted that he told Billig that he said "they" had cut out Amy's tongue, wanted the mother-daughter team, and other threats.
"How can the defense go back and tell you it didn't happen, when their own client is telling you that it did!" After reiterating some prior testimony, Hague made the point, "In order to buy the defense's theory there was no credible threat," the jury had to believe "that being abducted into white slavery for the purposes of forced sex is not bodily injury!"
Hague was theatrical without going over the top, modulating his voice, sometimes to a whisper. Perhaps he had listened to some tapes of the famous defense lawyer Gerry Spence, who is a master of his voice. It helped that Hague obviously believed the defendant needed to pay for his crimes. "Yesterday, the defendant, again on the stand, said, 'Gee, you know,' back to his psychobabble again . . . 'she played into it all, maybe the two of us should be locked up!'”