“Why do you say, ‘Someone put a towel in the baby’s mouth several inches’?”
“Because the baby could not have done that to itself.”
Two questions later, Lungen went for it: “What would you determine the cause of death and the manner of death?”
“I would determine the cause of death to be traumatic asphyxia by suffocation by towel in the mouth as the cause of death. And the manner of death would be homicide.”
Then Lungen had him tell the jury exactly why he thought Odell had killed the children and how, in his opinion, she had done it.
By the end of Baden’s direct examination, Lungen wanted to be sure he had made another point clear to the jury: illegitimate children die at a higher rate.
“Infanticide,” Lungen said, “from a pathologist’s point of view, essentially means what?”
“Death of an infant.”
“Is it a fair statement that in your experience you see infanticide more prevalent with illegitimate children?”
“Yes…”
“Right! In this case, all three children were born alive, in your opinion?”
“In my opinion, yes.”
“I have no further questions, Doctor.”
2
Schick wasn’t about to pass on the opportunity to question Baden. After all, as esteemed and renowned as he was, Baden had just called Schick’s client a murderer.. To not cross-examine him would have been detrimental to Odell. Schick needed to try to rebut some of what Baden had said, or least drive home the point that it was his “opinion,” which didn’t necessarily constitute fact.
Schick wasted little time getting into it with Baden.
“Sir, firstly, you said when a forensic pathologist makes a determination of homicide that that can mean many things, is that correct?”
“Yes, sir.”
“That homicide includes many different criminal charges, isn’t that correct?”
“And no criminal charges. Criminal and noncriminal charges, yes, sir.”
Baden wasn’t some callow, just-out-of-med-school doctor, summarizing his first homicide case for a jury. He had been on the stand more times than he could recall. He was a professional, and his “opinions,” regardless of how they were perceived by Stephan Schick, would have a major impact on the jury’s sense of the case.
“Homicide can be accidental?” Schick asked next.
“We, medical examiners, don’t use it in that term. The courts may decide that it could be unintentional, inadvertent.”
“Homicide can be negligent homicide?”
“Yes.”
“It can be a reckless homicide?”
“Yes.”
“It can be manslaughter?”
“Yes.”
“Manslaughter first degree and manslaughter in the second degree?”
“Yes.”
“And it could be murder?”
“Yes. And can be excusable and justifiable.”
Odell sat looking at both Schick and Baden, wondering what was going on, as they volleyed questions and answers back and forth in rapid succession. She wasn’t too concerned about courtroom tactics and legal gibberish. She was focused on telling her side of the story to the jury and making each one—or just one—believe it had been Mabel who had killed her children.
“Okay,” Schick said, pacing a bit, nodding his head, “now, I think you said in a number of parts of your testimony that it’s extremely important to know histories in making these determinations, isn’t that correct?”
“I didn’t say ‘extremely.’ It’s important to get as much information as possible. Sometimes we don’t get history.”
“Maybe I’ve got this wrong? Maybe you can clear this up?”
“Yes.”
Baden said he could not make a determination of death “based only upon the medical and scientific facts….” He needed more information.
Schick made a point of saying how important it was that the information—the “outside information,” in his words—be accurate.
“To a certain extent,” Baden was quick to lash back. “Because I don’t adopt the outside information as given. I’ll evaluate to see if it makes sense in light of the autopsy or medical findings. But yes, how accurate the information is, is important.”
Lungen sat and listened carefully. He wanted to pump his fist in the air and say, “Good job, Doctor. Perfect.” But he could only, of course, sit in quiet repose and reflect on how good a witness Dr. Baden was.
“I’m particularly concerned with some of the things the prosecutor just went over with you,” Schick said next, quite animated and obviously upset. “He asked you, ‘Is that an important part of your determination in this case?’ And he started saying things like, ‘Reading statements made by the mother of hearing noises and cries’—”
Baden wouldn’t allow Schick to finish. “Yes!”
“…and crying. If that was not true, that could greatly affect your determination here, isn’t that correct?”
“It could affect my determination, yes.”
What Schick was leading up to, clearly, was that Odell’s confession could have been coerced—that maybe she never had said the babies had cried or coughed to begin with, and Baden was basing a major portion of his opinion on a situation that actually had never occurred.
Reasonable doubt. It was Schick’s job.
Next Schick tried to dismantle Lungen’s argument that there had been a towel in one of the babies’ mouths.
“For example, in that one baby, if there was never any towel in the mouth at the time of the birth, that’s a significant item of information you used and you no longer have, isn’t that correct?”
“Yes,” Baden answered.
“That wouldn’t possibly change your determination of asphyxia?”
“If you were only dealing with the one baby, Baby Number One,” Baden replied.
“I’m taking one at a time?”
“One at a time. If I’m told that the mom says, ‘There is a towel in the mouth,’ given the fact that the baby is full-term and there is no other competing cause of death, that would be sufficient for me, by itself, to make a diagnosis of asphyxia.”
For about a half hour, Baden and Schick went back and forth, discussing how Baden had determined cause and manner of death. At one point, Baden agreed that part of his opinion had been based on Odell’s confession. After that, Schick attacked how the babies had been stored in boxes for twenty or more years and how the heat might have been responsible for deteriorating their bodies enough to corrupt any forensic investigation. And wasn’t it possible, Schick suggested, that being in those boxes all that time, wrapped in towels and blankets, traveling around the country, one of the babies could have ended up with a towel in its mouth?
Baden agreed it was a possibility—but highly unlikely.
“You made assumptions based upon the accuracy and the truthfulness of those statements,” Schick asked at one point, “isn’t that correct?”
“Yes, based on what was written down, but also based on my interpretation of the findings that these statements were consistent with the findings of the baby.”
In other words, Baden went back and tried to corroborate part of what Odell had said in her statement to see if all of the information added up.
“But you weren’t present when the statements were being made, is that correct?”
“That’s correct.”
“You don’t know the circumstances under which the statements were made, isn’t that correct?” Schick posed.
“That’s correct.”
Was a medical examiner supposed to be in the same room with a suspect when he or she was interviewed? Was that what Schick was asking the jury to believe? Or, was he merely making a point that for the jury to understand the entire case, it had to take into account the mere notion that some of the statements Odell had given to police might have been coerced?
“And you are a colleague of those police personnel, wouldn
’t that be fair to say?” Schick asked.
“Of some. Yes, yes.”
In the end, it was up to each juror to draw a conclusion as to whether the statement Odell had given police had been bullied out of her. The problem, when it came down to it, though, was that Odell had signed the statement, and by doing that, she agreed with every word BCI investigator Roy Streever had typed.
After a series of questions based on Baden’s actual role in the investigation process as the case developed, Schick became sarcastic and quite patronizing, perhaps trying to rattle the good doctor.
“Did you want to know at the time of the birth”—he stopped, thought a minute—“Withdrawn. Would you agree with me that childbirth is painful? Is that difficult? I know you have to think a little!”
Baden didn’t crack. Instead, he ignored the insult and remained calm. “It can be painful. However, I’ve been involved with many situations in which childbirth was concealed and it’s amazing how, to me, how a woman, young girls often…not wanting the mom in the next room to hear about it, keep quiet and the mom may not know about it. The answer is, childbirth itself is painful. But there may be other emotional factors that are more significant in giving birth to a child without anybody in the household knowing it.”
It was an image, perhaps, Schick didn’t want the jury to have. He hadn’t followed the one golden rule trial attorneys generally live by: don’t ask a question you don’t know the answer to. Baden had, with one answer, given the jury a scenario that could have taken place in the Odell-Molina household.
Schick was a bit dismayed. “Then just humor me,” he said as if he were playing stupid.
“Sorry?” Baden said. He didn’t understand.
“Humor me! If I suggest, without all of the things that you said, I suggest the childbirth is painful, I have not done it, okay?”
“You and I would have the same experience, yes.”
For the next hour, the two men traded verbal jabs; Schick the aggressor, trying to get Baden to expound on different hypothetical scenarios that could have taken place. Ultimately, the jury sat through a discussion of theory and happenstance. Where were the facts? Where was Schick’s smoking gun?
Schick talked about stillbirth for a time, and then launched into a debate regarding how a father’s medical history could play a role possibly in a woman having a stillborn child. Could that have happened here?
Interestingly, no mention of Mabel was broached as Schick then worked into a discussion of midwives. He was hoping, maybe, that the jury would at least question the statement Odell had given police. It was, at last, his only real potential loophole in Lungen’s case.
After Lungen objected several times to Schick’s line of questioning, noting time and again that many of the questions were “hypotheticals” and had no place in the trial, Schick asked Baden, “Is it possible for a baby to be born and never take a breath?”
Lungen stood. “I object to the question—anything is possible!”
After the judge allowed him, Baden explained that the term Schick was referring to was “stillborn.”
A moment later, after a heated discussion over Baden’s determination that a lack of prenatal care would greatly affect the health of a baby at birth, Baden said it was his opinion that, in Odell’s case, it was a “minor factor. It’s the concealment of the pregnancy that’s more of significance to me.”
“And, of course, concealment is an issue,” Schick said. “But you don’t know ‘the why’ of the concealment, isn’t that correct?”
“I know ‘the why’ that the mom told police,” Baden said firmly.
“Well, you know what the police told you what she said, isn’t that correct?”
Lungen bowed his head in disgust. Come on, don’t be ridiculous.
Baden remained composed. “Yes,” he said softly.
“Again, you were not present?”
“Yes. That’s correct.”
Schick asked the judge if he could have a moment.
“Mr. Schick, do you have any more questions of the doctor?”
“No, sir.”
3
On redirect examination, Lungen brought the case back into his world of fact-finding, leaving hypotheticals and theories aside. Baden was a forensic pathologist who had worked in the field for forty-plus years. He had offered his opinion as to how the babies had died, based on all of the evidence he had collected. In the reports Baden read, he never viewed anything, he said, about a midwife or an umbilical cord being wrapped around any of the babies’ necks, as Schick had implied near the end of his cross-examination. Furthermore, the medical facts he’d uncovered never pointed to such things.
On recross-examination, Schick once again tried to debunk Baden’s way of coming up with a cause and manner of death, but Baden simply stated the facts as he saw them: traumatic asphyxia. That was his opinion. Traumatic asphyxia. He was sticking to it. Schick could say whatever he wanted and speculate and come up with different theories, but Baden’s determination—and how he came about it—wasn’t going to change.
Baden’s testimony ended what turned out to be a long day for everyone. Court TV certainly had some great footage to air, and Schick thought he had done a decent job of giving the jury a second scenario to consider. Yet, if Odell was going to testify, which she was beginning to think was her only chance at freedom, the case Schick was rebutting on cross-examination had nothing to do with the abuse Odell claimed to have suffered, or the idea that Mabel murdered the children.
The following day, December 10, was sure to bring more heated debate. Thomas Scileppi and Roy Streever were set to take the stand. Schick promised he was going to, line by line, dissect the statement Odell had given to Scileppi and Streever.
But before Scileppi could take the stand, Lungen called David Dandignac.
Dandignac gave the jury a complete picture of his rather impressive credentials as a poultry grader for the Department of Agriculture. He had been working for the government for sixteen years. He was married, had two boys from a previous marriage, and his current wife had three children of her own. All five children lived with Dandignac and his wife. Ultimately, Dandignac could only say he had dated Odell, but when she got pregnant with his child, the relationship soured, and he believed when they split, she was going to get an abortion. He said he offered her money to support the child, but she refused.
To cover any potential testimony later on from Odell, regarding her relationship with Mabel, Lungen was smart to ask Dandignac how he viewed the relationship between Odell and Mabel. After all, he had lived in the same house with both of them.
“How would you characterize her relationship with her mother?”
“I thought it was…I thought it was good,” Dandignac said.
“How would you characterize, if you had to describe, her mother, Mabel? How would you describe her?”
“Well, as far as I…For me, I thought she was a nice lady.”
“Was there any kind of volatile arguments; was it a volatile relationship in the house between mother and daughter…?”
“I don’t think it was volatile, but…No, I mean, there were days where, you know, something would happen or, you know, something—”
“That would be the kind of stuff you would see normally with people living together?”
“That’s what I would say.”
“Nothing extraordinary. Is that what you’re saying?”
“I don’t think so.”
“Did Mabel appear to you to be an overbearing kind of woman is what I am really asking you?”
“Not…not all the time. I mean, she would have times where she might say something or do something, but overall I don’t think so.”
After Lungen finished, Schick stood and walked slowly toward Dandignac. For the first few moments, they discussed the relationship Dandignac shared with Odell. Then Schick asked him if it was possible that Odell had tried to hide her pregnancy from anyone.
Dandignac said no, not that he
knew of.
From there, they discussed Odell’s financial situation at the time and how she was, basically, a struggling single mother.
By the end of Schick’s cross-examination, he managed to get Dandignac to admit he had left Odell when she was pregnant and never returned to inquire how she was doing, or if she’d even had the child.
Lungen had Dandignac explain on redirect examination how, when he left Odell, he never saw any reason to return because he honestly had believed she was going to abort the pregnancy. It was just one more way for Lungen to prove that during each pregnancy there was no man in Odell’s life around to question whether she’d had the baby. In effect, she could kill each child because there was no one around to question whether the child had been born—that is, except Mabel.
CHAPTER 30
1
INVESTIGATOR THOMAS SCILEPPI was looking at a grilling from Stephan Schick regarding the statement he took from Odell. According to Scileppi, Odell admitted hearing the babies “cough” and “cry.” She’d even said there was a towel in one of the babies’ mouths. Yet, if Schick had his way, the jury would understand that the statement was in Scileppi and Roy Streever’s words, not Odell’s.
Lungen, on direct examination, had Scileppi go through the entire investigation and explain how he ended up in Waverly questioning Odell. There were no surprises in Scileppi’s testimony, and he came across rather diplomatic and knowledgeable, never hesitating, always sure of his answers. Scileppi had been an investigator, with an untarnished record, for seventeen years.
Eventually Scileppi described a woman who was quite willing to talk about how three of her dead children ended up in boxes in an Arizona self-storage facility. At one point, he even insisted Odell wanted to purge her soul of what was, he believed, a great emotional burden. He felt she needed to admit to the crimes so she could finally come to terms with what she had done. When asked what should happen to her, Scileppi said, Odell admitted she thought she “should go to jail.”
Schick later had some rather strong opinions regarding tactical approach and how law enforcement go about obtaining statements from suspects—especially in Odell’s case. There was no question Odell willingly had signed the statement Scileppi and Streever had prepared. The question was: why would she sign a statement she knew to be false?
Sleep In Heavenly Peace (Pinnacle True Crime) Page 35