"How did you determine the cause of death?"
"Well, the bodies were remarkably well preserved," Swanburg said. "There was some decomposition, but I was able to remove the internal organs and compare them to what we should see if the deaths were from natural causes. The organs of the Campbell children were what we call waterlogged."
"Waterlogged? How so?"
"When a person is forcibly drowned, they often struggle violently for a long time, which actually forces fluid into their internal organs, especially the brain; the scientific term for this excess fluid is 'edema.' In particular, the brains of the Campbell children were significantly heavy due to edema; in fact, they were nearly the size and weight of adult brains."
"And what does that indicate to you?"
"That they fought under water for several minutes. It was a slow, agonizing death."
"Objection," Lewis said. "Relevance."
"Relevance, Miss Lewis?" Dermondy asked.
"Yes, relevance. What does it matter if the deaths were slow or fast, agonizing or painless? The point of this trial is only whether Jessica Campbell knew what she was doing and if she knew that it was wrong."
Karp glared at his counterpart. "Your Honor, the witness's testimony unequivocally makes it crystal clear beyond any and all doubt that each of these precious, defenseless children underwent a vicious, merciless execution and that the defendant knew exactly what she was doing."
"MISTRIAL!" Lewis shouted.
Dermondy raised his hand to silence her. "Miss Lewis, your initial comment about relevance was ill-advised. If the witness Swanburg's testimony was not relevant I would have so ruled sua sponte. Moreover, you must have known that your outburst was going to illicit a response from the highly experienced district attorney, whose rhetorical flourish clearly explained the People's position. But ..." he raised his voice and looked at Karp, "... it should have been saved for final summation. So, let's get back to our trial. Your objection regarding relevance, Miss Lewis, is duly noted and overruled."
"Mr. Swanburg, you stated that the cause of death for the two younger children was drowning," Karp said. "Can you tell us what caused the death of the eldest child, Hillary?"
Swanburg held up a hand, which he waggled to indicate uncertainty. "That's a little dicier. But it was one of three things. She was either drowned, or she bled to death from the stab wounds, or it was a combination of the two—in other words, it's possible that she was being held under water as she was being stabbed."
One of the women jurors failed to stifle a tiny cry of horror by covering her mouth.
"Are you all right?" Dermondy asked her. She nodded but pulled a tissue from a box provided by the court clerk and dabbed at her eyes. The outburst seemed to set off a chorus of other small cries and sniffles in the courtroom, including from Ben Gupperstein, who sat weeping with his head bowed.
Dermondy noted the wet eyes and faces drained of color. He looked at the clock and said, "I think we can all use a break about now, if that's all right, Mr. Karp?"
"That would be fine, Your Honor."
"Thank you," the judge said and then addressed the jury. "We'll take our noon break. I'd urge you to get yourselves something to eat and drink. These trials can be physically as well as emotionally draining. I do understand the enormous strain this places on you, and you are to be commended for doing your duty as citizens. But I know saying that doesn't make this easier. We'll reconvene in a half hour; please refrain from talking about this amongst yourselves and certainly not with anyone else."
When the jurors left the room, the judge looked at Karp. "I'm not trying to rush you, but how much more will there be along these lines?"
Karp considered his notes. "I'd say about a half hour."
The judge bit his lip. "Okay, you do what you feel you need to do. But remember, this can be pretty hard on civilians."
A half hour later, the jurors returned to the courtroom and Swanburg was called back to the stand.
"When court recessed, we were talking about the stab wounds to Hillary Campbell," Karp said. "These stab wounds were to her chest, correct?"
"Yes, to the chest area, mostly centered in the middle."
"Would these be the sort of wounds that someone would inflict to cause death?"
"If you mean that the wounds were not haphazard, as though made without reason—for instance, slashing wounds to the arms or legs—but instead directed at an area of the body that would be expected to have serious consequences," Swanburg replied, "then yes. Four wounds in particular would have been fatal without immediate medical attention. One sliced through the left ventricle of her heart. Two punctured her lungs. And one severed the aorta leading to the heart."
"But you testified that Hillary also had edema consistent with being forcibly drowned. Could you tell which occurred first, the drowning or the wounds from the knife?"
"Because the wounds to the heart and aorta would have caused her to 'bleed out' and lose consciousness in a short amount of time, and because the severity of the edema indicated that she struggled under water for several minutes, my best guess is that the defendant was forcibly drowning her and then stabbed her repeatedly at some point after that process began." Karp let the last image hang in the air. When he again addressed the witness, it was to change to another topic. "Mr. Swanburg, yesterday, crime-scene investigator Bob Watts testified that during his investigation, no evidence of blood was found in the Campbell home, and particularly none in a bathroom that he described as having been wiped clean. Is that consistent with your own examination of the home and bathroom?"
"No. But that's not a reflection on Mr. Watts or the NYPD crime-scene folks; they're as good as it gets. When they first arrived at what I believe proves to be the actual murder scene at the Campbell residence, they didn't know what they were looking for; they had some missing kids and that was about it. They had no clues about the manner of death. For that matter, they couldn't be sure that a murder had taken place. The kids could have been abducted or visiting a relative for all they knew, because other than comments, such as that she had sent them to God, the defendant wasn't saying much, nor were ..."
Swanburg stopped talking and glanced over at Lewis, who was beginning to rise from her seat. One of the earlier pre-trial motions she had won was that prosecution witnesses would not be allowed to testify that Jessica Campbell had "lawyered up" and had not been allowed to speak to police. Jurors sometimes looked at the right to remain silent as an admission of guilt, Lewis had argued, "and in this case, they might not understand that my client was not in a position mentally to be talking to the police."
Swanburg had almost stepped across that line, but caught himself. "... nor were there any indications in the house about what might have happened.... Mr. Watts and his team were suspicious about the lack of fingerprints in the bathroom..."
"I object, the witness is now testifying about what other people were thinking," said Lewis, who'd remained standing.
"The witness has reviewed the police reports and crime-scene notes," Karp replied, "which is very much in line with his long experience as a pathologist. Pathologists rely on such documentation to determine such issues as time, manner, and cause of death."
"Overruled, you may sit Miss Lewis," the judge said.
"Anyway, in his report," Swanburg continued, "Mr. Watts noted that the main floor bathroom was devoid of fingerprints and that he found this to be, and I quote, 'highly unlikely,' end of quote. There were no positive results for blood. Now remember, that was back in March. When we found the bodies in July we were able to ascertain that Hillary had been stabbed repeatedly in the chest, which would have resulted in a lot of blood. However, if the crime had occurred in the house—as we believed—the blood had somehow been contained. Just like it was unusual not to find fingerprints, it's nearly impossible to stab someone in the manner that this little girl was stabbed and not leave some blood evidence, even if it is minuscule."
Swanburg adjusted his suspenders
and clasped his hands on his round belly. "We've all had our blood pressure tested, right?" He waited for the jurors to nod. "So we know that blood in the body is under pressure. When someone is shot or stabbed, blood sprays or gushes or splatters—sometimes quite a distance from the victim. Tiny droplets will fall from the blade of a knife or be released in a fine mist, with some ending up on a wall or a piece of furniture. We can find even the tiniest amounts using a substance called Luminol, which reacts with iron in the blood and will glow under a black light. But what if we know there was a stabbing but there's no blood?" Swanburg looked from juror to juror as if expecting one of them to raise a hand to answer like children in a classroom. "The blood must have been contained somehow."
Guy's frickin' brilliant, Karp thought.
"And we have the bodies of three children who were violently drowned, which is no easy task even for an adult, so better to do it away from prying eyes," Swanburg said. "That's when we put two and two and two together—the evidence of drownings, the ultra-clean bathroom, and the lack of blood—and came up with the bathtub."
The NYPD investigators had already tested the bathtub with Luminol, Swanburg noted. "They tried the drain and around the edges. But they did miss one thing. Remember that old television commercial? 'Ring around the bathtub'? Well, that's what they missed. As any homemaker can tell you, one of the most difficult cleaning jobs is trying to get rid of that ring, a residue of soap, hard minerals, and biological material such as dead skin cells and body oils. The stuff is miserable to get out, right? Anyway, we tested the ring with Luminol, and that's where we discovered a ring of blood around the tub, indistinguishable from the rest of the residue except that it glowed in a black light."
"Was it a lot of blood?" Karp asked. "Perhaps one of the children had a cut or a bloody nose in the past."
"The amount was pretty consistent through the ring," Swanburg said, "instead of being stronger at one place and more diluted at another, which in my opinion meant there was quite a bit of blood that had diffused throughout the water in the tub."
"Were you able to tell whose blood it was?"
"Unfortunately, it was so mixed in with the rest of the residue that we couldn't get a clean enough sample to test for DNA."
Swanburg testified that he had called in a plumber, who knocked out a wall and took apart the drain apparatus beneath the tub. "Again, as any of us home plumbers know, particularly one living in a house with women, a lot of hair and junk gets stuck in there, and more junk settles into the bottom of the drain pipe. That's where we also found a significant amount of blood caught up in this gooey mess of hair and whatever, enough that we were able to test it."
"And what was the result?"
"The blood was that of Hillary Campbell."
"And your conclusion as to how it got there?"
"I believe she was stabbed in the bathtub, which also made it the likely site of the drownings."
Karp glanced at the jurors, who were beginning to look worried that they were going to be dragged back into the horror. It was one thing to listen to kindly old Jack Swanburg lecture about forensic technique, quite another when the testimony turned to the details involved in the brutal murder of three young children.
"Mr. Swanburg, you've already testified that in your opinion, based upon the evidence, the Campbell children fought to stay alive. Is there anything else that you learned during your investigation that supports that conclusion?"
"Yes. During the autopsy, I examined the hands of the three children, looking for defensive wounds. I saw nothing of note with Benjamin. However, with the two older children, Hillary and Chelsea, many of their fingernails were missing. Now some of that was due to decomposition. But under a magnifying lens, several of their nailbeds showed evidence of their fingernails having been tom out. Also, from beneath two of Hillary's nails that were still in place, and three of Chelsea's, I was able to extract a small amount of skin tissue."
"Were you able to ascertain where the tissue came from?"
"I was able to compare it to skin samples taken by court order from Jessica Campbell. They were a match for the skin tissue beneath the fingernails of the two girls."
Karp leafed through the photographs and selected a half-dozen of them, which he walked over to the witness. "Your Honor, with the court's permission, I would like the witness to review these six photographs, previously marked for identification People's Exhibits 21-26."
Dermondy nodded, so Karp continued. "Have you seen these photographs before?"
"Yes. These were taken by a New York police photographer the night the defendant was taken to Bellevue; they are of the defendant's arms, legs, and one of her back."
"Mr. Swanburg, first, do these photographs fairly and accurately depict the wounds on the arms of the defendant?"
"Yes, the long red marks."
"Do you have an opinion on what caused them?"
"Yes, given the skin residue beneath the fingernails of Hillary and Chelsea, the wounds are consistent with the children having scratched at their assailant."
"Are there any other wounds or marks depicted by the photographs?" Karp asked as he crossed over to the jury box.
"Yes, there are scrapes and bruises on the defendant's elbows and knees, as well as a large bruise on her back," Swanburg replied.
"And again, do you have an opinion as to what caused these wounds?"
"Not specifically as to the exact cause. But the scrapes and bruises on her arms and legs are consistent with a fall. The bruise on her back is consistent with having been struck by a hard object that caused bruising over a fairly wide area on her ribs."
"And Mr. Swanburg, is there one more wound on one of the defendant's arms that we haven't discussed yet?" Karp picked up one more photograph from the prosecution table, which he kept hidden from view.
"Yes, there was a bite mark on her arm," Swanburg said.
"Were you able to determine who bit her?"
"Yes, Hillary was missing her two front incisors. Pretty common for someone her age."
"Does one of these photographs demonstrate what you are talking about?" Karp asked.
"Yes. A purple bite mark is clearly evident—except there was a space in the front where Hillary's two front teeth would have been.
Karp now held up his last photograph, taken of Hillary that year for her class photograph. The little girl smiled out at the jurors, completely oblivious to the missing teeth. Several of the jurors shook their heads sadly and then looked over at Jessica, who just kept drawing.
Time to finish, Karp told himself. He'd gone over this moment a dozen times in his head getting ready for the trial. Allow enough time to let the photograph sink in with the jury, he'd told himself. He looked down at his legal pad and made notations with his pen, checking off his questions. Only then did he lift his head and look at Swanburg.
"I won't keep you much longer," Karp said and thought he heard, or felt, a sigh of relief from the jurors. "I'd just like to sum this up so that I have it all straight. So far you've testified that all three Campbell children were forcibly drowned—causing death in two of them, and possibly the third, though it's possible that she might have died from wounds caused by a hunting knife."
"That's correct."
"And you further testified that they fought so violently that their internal organs swelled with fluid, that two of them managed to scratch their attacker, and that each murder took several minutes ..."
"At least..."
"... thank you, several minutes at least. And that theirs was a slow death."
"Yes. A slow, agonizing death."
Karp nodded as he walked slowly over to stand near the jury box. "If I asked your opinion on whether the defendant intended to cause the death of her children and knew what she was doing ..."
"Objection! Calls for giving a psychological opinion that the witness is not qualified to render."
"Mr. Karp?" asked the judge.
"Once again, Your Honor, as a pathologist, Mr. Sw
anburg is asked not only to render opinions on the medical cause of death, but also whether that death was accidental, the result of a reckless but unintended act, or a homicide—in all of its various shades from manslaughter to deliberate, premeditated murder."
The judge thought about it, then nodded. "I believe the witness is qualified to answer the question. Overruled."
"You can answer the question, Mr. Swanburg," Karp said.
Swanburg let out a sigh; he'd never quite developed skin thick enough to pretend that it was all just about science. "I know, just give me a moment to collect my thoughts," he said, looking at the jurors, taking in each face, some of them in tears, others set grimly, all of them just wishing it could be over.
"Yes," he answered at last. "The person who did these things to these children intended to kill them. And despite how hard they fought to stay alive, this person held them under water or stabbed them until they were dead. The person who did this knew what she was doing."
29
Since parking on the street across from the docks before dawn Saturday morning, Suleiman Abdalla had kept his eye on the Star of Vladivostok as instructed. He was to report anything that seemed amiss, but other than the guard smoking and pacing beneath the weak yellow light at the bottom of the gangplank, there'd hardly been any activity at all.
To keep himself from dozing, he listened to a taped English-language version of Sayyid Qutb's book Social Justice in Islam. And when that threatened to put him to sleep, he turned on a flashlight to read a newspaper that he'd found lying on a bus-stop bench. The newspaper had a story about a "crazed cabbie" who had run over a woman outside of the building where Jessica Campbell was on trial.
Small world, he thought. He'd met Campbell years ago as a student at NYCU before getting kicked out for bad grades. Now there she was on trial for murder, claiming that God had told her to kill her children. Ironically, he, too, would soon kill for God.
In a few days, the world would forget all about Jessica Campbell and instead be talking about Suleiman Abdalla and the other members of the Al-Aqsa Brigade. Instead of a courtroom artist's watercolor depiction of his former professor sitting at the defense table drawing on a sketch pad, he himself would be immortalized on the front pages. His photograph would appear for years to come in newspapers and magazines, and used in the background for television specials about terrorism in the United States. There'd be hundreds, maybe thousands, of stories written about the "Ramadan Martyrs," he liked to fantasize; and every year on the anniversary of their deaths, the stories would be regurgitated, along with pious commentary about what had been learned ... or not.
Escape Page 42