First Lady

by Michael Malone

  Still on the phone seven minutes later, Fulke Norris heard a second noise; he thought it might have been fireworks, but he was so troubled by Tyler’s not returning to the phone that he left his guests on Catawba Drive and drove to his son’s house in Balmoral Heights. He arrived there twenty minutes later and found the front door not only unlocked but also ajar. Inside on the floor of the foyer he found the body of his daughter-in-law. She had been shot in the face and was dead. Stacked in the foyer next to the front door were personal possessions of the younger Norrises—two TVs, a VCR, a CD player, two Italian racing bicycles, a leather coat, and a case of sterling silverware. Mr. Norris said he found his son lying on the carpet just inside the living room door, shot in the abdomen, unconscious but alive. He called 911.

  Tyler testified that because of his soundproofed study and the noise of the shower, he was unaware that a burglar was robbing his house or that his wife had unexpectedly returned from the party and found herself confronting this armed intruder. He said he heard nothing unusual until a loud shot-like sound while he was on the phone with his father. Suspecting there was a prankster inside his house, he ran downstairs to the foyer. There he saw a man with a shotgun standing over the body of his wife. He ran toward the intruder, who raised the shotgun and shoved him back into the living room where he fired a single shot at him at pointblank range. He and his wife were each shot a single time with a twelve-gauge, over-under, double barrel Weatherby shotgun, an ornamental trap gun given to the defendant as a gift by his father. Tyler kept it (and an accompanying box of shells) on a shelf in his basement den. He had never loaded the gun and said he didn’t know how one would even do so.

  When Mitch Bazemore had asked, “Why would a burglar, hurrying to rob a house, even if he assumed the house to be empty, stop to load two shells into a shotgun he was stealing?”, Isaac had objected that the D.A. was calling for an opinion. Margy had sustained the objection and that was that.

  Tyler described the intruder as of medium height and stocky build, in his twenties or thirties, African-American, wearing a stocking mask, a Navy pea coat, and black gloves.

  We never found such an intruder or any other suspect. But, as Isaac (and the judge) pointed out, the defense was under no obligation to produce an alternative. We found no one else who’d heard gunshots; no one who’d seen a burglar breaking into the house; no one who’d observed a strange car in the neighborhood. But, as Isaac pointed out, Balmoral homes are on heavily wooded lots of two or more acres, and the Norris neighbors on both sides were away for the holidays. There were no signs of forcible entry, no unexplainable fingerprints or footprints or tire prints at the Norris house. Isaac pointed out that the door had been left unlocked, the burglar wore gloves, and the trampling of the crime scene by Sheriff Louge and his deputies obscured the traces of the intruder. If Louge had been the murderer’s paid accomplice he couldn’t have done more to help him.

  Inconsistencies that Isaac might have had trouble explaining were excluded from evidence because of the contamination of the crime scene. For example, that there were traces of Linsley’s blood on the banister leading to the second floor although her body was in the front foyer. Or that her blood was splattered beneath two items the burglar had presumably placed in the hall, as if they’d been put there after he shot her.

  For everything else, Isaac had plausible explanations: no other houses had been robbed because they all had their alarm systems activated. No subsequent burglaries happened in that area because the burglar, guilty of homicide, immediately moved elsewhere.

  Tyler said that after being shot, the next thing he remembered was waking up in intensive care and being told by his mother that his beautiful, wonderful young wife was dead.

  Isaac said that Tyler was, like his wonderful wife, the ill-fated victim of a random act of panicked violence.

  Witnesses said that the Norris marriage was a very happy one. Other witnesses gave testimonials to Professor Norris’s national standing in his field, his high position in civic and church circles, his harmonious relations with his parents and with his wife’s parents, his heroic stoicism during his long ordeal. Isaac cried when he ended his story by begging the jury to let these good people mourn in peace. “Don’t take the son as well as the daughter, don’t add the evil of injustice to the tragedy of misfortune. Tyler had no motive to kill his poor wife. If you have no motive, you have no murder. It’s that simple.”

  The State told a different story. There was no intruder, there was no attempted burglary. Tyler Norris ingeniously plotted to murder his wife and planned it very carefully. He chose New Year’s Eve because he knew his wife would go to the Hillston Club, his neighbors would be out of town, and the noise of the fireworks (despite their illegality, common that night) would mask the sounds of his shotgun.

  Whatever work he may have needed to do for the academic article that ostensibly kept him home from the party, he had done it well in advance. As soon as his wife left for the club, he began to create a burglary scene in his own home—stacking appliances, bicycles, and such in the front hall as if a burglar had put them there. His plan was to meet his wife at the party late in the evening (emailing his document just before leaving the house). He would bring her home, and as soon as she walked into the foyer, he would pick up the shotgun left ready there and shoot her. After calling 911 and claiming he’d just heard a burglar, he would then shoot himself (not critically, of course) and wait for the ambulance to arrive.

  But things went wrong: his wife, feeling ill, returned home unexpectedly. Dr. Josie Roth was right that she had left the Hillston Club no later than nine. She arrived home at 9:30 and caught Tyler staging the burglary. He had to plot an elaborate new murder scheme immediately. But then this was a man who at the age of eight had defeated five adult opponents in chess games simultaneously. He had no trouble thinking fast. He picked up the gun, shot and killed her, and wiped the gunstock.

  Everything else happened after the murder: he emailed the document to his colleague. He showered, dressed himself in his tuxedo pants and shirt—leaving the jacket, tie, and damp towel on his bed—and telephoned his father, suddenly claiming to hear the noise of a shot downstairs. He ran downstairs barefoot, carrying his black silk socks so that his prints would not appear on the gun when he shot himself. He did so by holding the gun out from his stomach with one hand and pressing the trigger with the thumb of the other. He had deliberately left the phone off the hook so that his father—a man of impeccable reputation—would be aural witness to the second shot and would take steps to bring aid.

  But why do it? What was the motive? True, Linsley Norris came from a wealthy family and her husband was her sole beneficiary. True, divorce would be difficult for she was a devout Catholic, as was the defendant’s mother. But did he need money? Did he want a divorce? We found two of his colleagues in the mathematics department at Haver who testified that they had seen the couple arguing in public. These two men also testified that Tyler was subject to sudden if rare outbursts of uncontrollable temper.

  On cross-examination, Isaac brought out that both witnesses had been in direct competition with Tyler, one for a Haver Foundation grant, one for a promotion, and in both cases they had lost out. And that was that.

  Linsley’s sister, Dr. Josie Roth, was a witness for the prosecution. A psychiatrist, she testified that she believed her sister to be unhappy in her marriage, neglected and even abused by her husband. She said that she had often encouraged Linsley to seek a divorce. But we could find no one and nothing to support Dr. Roth’s view.

  From his opening argument to his closing statement, Isaac had hammered at our failure to produce a compelling motive. It was his mantra. “If you have no motive, you have no murder. It’s that simple.” For me, there was only one problem with that. I was sure Tyler was guilty.

  • • •

  Judge Margy Turbot was talking when I walked into Courtroom A. Her clean collegiate fea
tures and blonde pageboy hair looked even more youthful above the somber black pleated robe and neat knotted white collar that symbolized her position. On her desk was the little blue vase of fresh roses that she always brought into the court with her as if their brief fragile beauty were a necessary reminder that there is good to life that has to be cared for.

  She sat behind her bench on a carpeted dais, beneath the gold-leaf seal of the State of North Carolina and the big clock with the gilded eagle that President McKinley had given Briggs Cadmean’s father. She looked down to Miss Bee Turner at the clerk’s desk and past the counsel tables with their plush leather chairs and out to the spectators crowded in pews. Courtroom A was a beautiful room, with sixteen brass chandeliers and sixteen tall windows painted Federalist colors. It was old Cadmean’s loving refurbishment of an “authentic reproduction” of the 1912 remodeling of the 1835 original.

  There was a picture of Carl Yarborough the mayor on a wall next to a picture of Andrew Brookside the governor next to a picture of the president. Cuddy often points out the picture as progress: in 1835, Carl would have come into this courtroom as a piece of property. In 1912, he wouldn’t have come into it at all unless charged with a crime, (certainly not as judge, lawyer, or jury). In 1947, Carl could have sat in the tiered “Colored” balcony but not used the restrooms or the water coolers. Now Carl was the mayor of Hillston and could sit anywhere he wanted.

  It was also a change that the judge was a woman. Despite her youth and sex, Margy Turbot was as fully robed in the authority of her office as had been her predecessor, the hawk-faced octogenarian Judge Shirley Hilliardson, a man so scathing in his contempt for ignorance that ill-prepared lawyers would start to stutter in his presence. Margy didn’t scare people in the same way, but there was no question about who governed her courtroom.

  So when Isaac Rosethorn stood up and headed over to Bee Turner’s desk with an empty glass carafe in his hands and Judge Turbot stopped in mid-sentence and said, “Mister Rosethorn!” he instantly stood still.

  “Your Honor?” he said, all courtesy.

  “Sit down, please, counselor. If you are in such desperate need of water that you can’t wait until I finish my instructions, go get it yourself and stop bothering Miss Turner. She isn’t your secretary and even if she were, she shouldn’t be waiting on you.”

  This comment produced a gasp from some of the old-timers in the courtroom, including Bee Turner herself, who (like Cuddy) had been running errands for Rosethorn for decades.

  Isaac turned his large remorseful eyes up to the bench. “Your Honor, I stand corrected. Stooped, but corrected.” And he hobbled back to the defense table where his client sat looking patiently at his folded hands. Watching him was a handsome middle-aged woman seated in the first row on the prosecution side of the room, her arms tightly crossed, her eyes never leaving the defendant. She was Dr. Josie Roth, the older sister of the dead woman, the only member of her family not to side with Tyler. Her mother and father were in fact now seated right beside the elder Norrises, the four of them a formidable line of support behind the defense table.

  Margy was beginning her instructions to the jury. She reminded them that a man’s life was in their hands. “To prove the charge of first degree murder, the State must establish that the defendant had method, means, and motive, all three, and that he acted with premeditation and with malice. Whether the State, in the person of District Attorney Mitchell Bazemore, has done so in this case is for you alone to decide. Just because the grand jury found sufficient evidence to indict does not mean there was sufficient evidence to convict.”

  She studied the eight women and four men carefully listening to her. “I remind you that you are not the police, ladies and gentlemen. You are not supposed to go into that jury room and start investigating the murder of Linsley Norris. That has already been done. Tyler Norris is charged with the crime. If, given the evidence you’ve heard, you do not believe he is guilty, it is your duty to say so and that is the full extent of your duty. It is not your responsibility to solve the crime or even to suggest another suspect.”

  A female juror looked at the man beside her as if to say, “I told you so.”

  “Secondly, you are not the judge. It is not your responsibility to interpret the law or evaluate it or teach each other about it. That is my job.”

  Lisa Grecco, Mitch Bazemore’s young deputy counsel, slipped into the back of the room and leaned against the wall beside me. “Back from Virginia?” she whispered. I nodded. Lisa admired Margy Turbot and wanted to hear what she had to say about a homicide case that had alienated the whole town from its police department. “I know you don’t like Mitch,” she told me, “but he actually did a damn good job in this trial considering what was left after the sheriff fucked everything up.”

  A woman on the back row turned around and hissed at Lisa to be quiet.

  “So what are you here for?” The judge was smiling across at the jury and they were smiling back at her. It was impossible not to like Margy’s frank easy openness. “Believe me, you have a big enough job. You are going into that room together, and come to a conclusion about this case, based on the facts that have been offered in evidence inside this courtroom. You are going to consider only those facts. Not something you heard elsewhere or read elsewhere or somebody else told you. Nor may you take into consideration any evidence that this court has excluded because of the—” Margy looked over at Sheriff Homer Louge who had just strolled in through a side door. Her face tightened angrily. “Because of the contamination of the crime scene by law enforcement officials.”

  She and Louge stared at each other for a moment. On one side of the courtroom, Mitch Bazemore grasped his biceps and glared angrily at the floor. At the other table, defense counsel Isaac Rosethorn bowed his head and somehow restrained himself from gleeful grinning.

  Margy opened a thick yellow legal pad. “You the jury are going to decide if the State has made its case. Remember that the burden of proof is on the State. The defense did not have to prove Tyler Norris innocent. The State had to prove his guilt. The State had to make a case that even if you twelve people viewed all the evidence that you’ve heard, in the light most favorable to the defendant, that evidence would instead prove his guilt beyond a reasonable doubt. Not beyond any doubt now, but beyond a reasonable doubt. Did the State make such a case? That is what you are going to decide.”

  Margy turned to the next page on her yellow legal pad. She read it, then looked at the jury. “You have heard the Counsel for the State Mitchell Bazemore set before you one version of what happened last New Year’s Eve in the Norris home.” She pointed over at a floor plan on a bulletin board in the courtroom. “Counsel for the Defense Isaac Rosethorn has offered us a very different version of those events. Only one is true.”

  “The State’s,” whispered Lisa to me.

  “Miss! Please!” hissed the woman in front of us.

  The courtroom stirred as the judge paused to take a drink from a glass of water. She held up the glass and smiled at Isaac Rosethorn. “I got this myself,” she said. Laughter relaxed the room. I saw Homer Louge lean over behind Mitch Bazemore and say something to him. Bazemore wheeled around and nodded. Margy startled the sheriff by suddenly addressing him. “Sheriff Louge, does your business concern this trial?” He looked up, his face flushing to a deep red. He started to speak, then stopped himself. She added, “If not, would you please allow us to continue?”

  Furious, Louge stomped out of the courtroom. There was a pause until the door closed behind him. Turning the pages of her notes, Margy seemed to be struggling with a thought but may have been only distracted by her dislike of Sheriff Louge. Then she looked over at the defendant’s table and Tyler Norris looked back at her. It was a strange moment, the way their eyes held. Finally her face cleared and she continued. “You must weigh these two versions of the truth, not in terms of how well they were told, but how well they are supporte
d by the evidence.”

  Isaac glanced up at her sharply. He was the great storyteller in this room and everyone knew it. Was she subtly suggesting that the evidence was with the State? She looked at him a moment then moved her eyes to the jurors. “You do not have to doubt the word of all the witnesses who spoke on behalf of Tyler Norris’s character to disagree with their belief in his innocence. Good and bad citizens alike have been known to commit crimes. Brilliant men, well-bred men, charitable men, rich and famous men, quiet professors all have proved themselves capable of murder.”

  I whispered. “She thinks he did it!”

  Lisa gave a jerk downward of her bent elbow. “Yes, ma’am!”

  The judge gazed along the two long rows of tall elegant windows, beautiful restorations of the nineteenth-century windows in the original courthouse. The afternoon summer’s sun slanted through them, shadowing the faces in the room with a soft gold. Margy took a long breath as if her authority weighed heavily on her. “The crime of murder,” she said, “is the most harshly punished of human crimes because it most denies our shared humanity. To accuse a man of murdering his own wife, of murdering his own pregnant wife, is a dreadful charge, never to be made without just cause. Ask yourselves, did the State prove that charge beyond a reasonable doubt? If so, you must find Tyler Norris guilty of murder in the first degree. If not, then you must find him not guilty. The sovereign right and the solemn responsibility of that choice is yours.” And Judge Turbot sent the jury out.

  Tyler Norris did not look at them as they left. Behind him, his father and mother sat waiting with the same chilling composure.

  • • •

  As Lisa and I were pushed along by the crowd hurrying out of the courtroom, I noticed a group gathered around Nancy and Zeke’s display case of HPD homicide artifacts. It wasn’t unusual to see a few people there looking over the old guns, bludgeons, straightback razors, and hangman’s rope. But this was too large and too animated a crowd. I moved my way through them to the front of the case. The first thing I noticed was that the Italian Bernardelli PA .32 pistol was back in its place and the long-nosed Colt revolver returned to its normal position to make room for it.