by Lee Barnett
Next, Russell handed me a couple of pieces of paper. To this day I scowl whenever I think of Stephen and Shelley Schofield and their betrayal not only of me but especially of Samantha and Reece.
The first paragraph said interviewing at Queensland, Australia, resulted in the positive identification of Alexandria Geldenhuys being the same person as Dorothy Lee Barnett. But then the second paragraph stated baldly that Stephen and Shelley Schofield have known the defendant for nearly ten years, meeting in Botswana, Africa in 2000.
How funny that one paragraph was redacted while the next one named them bold as brass! But then I thought a little more about the repercussions sloppy mistakes like these may have on informants who believed that their identity would always be kept secret, or had children to protect.
While I was still hoping to be moved out of Georgetown, Russell arranged for me to be moved to a new cell, which was directly above the old one. The officer opened the door and on the floor was a woman, close to forty, with waist-length dirty hair sitting cross-legged. She started shouting that spies were not allowed in the cell and that I must go back to Vietnam. I turned to the prison officer who, with a smile told me that Tammy was harmless.
That was the beginning of one of the most interesting times I spent in prison, sharing a tiny cell for twenty-three hours a day with a paranoid schizophrenic who resembled a cross between Sybil and Carrie.
Tammy told me she had bugging devices implanted into her arms and behind her ears, and that she couldn’t shower because they had cameras in there. I asked the officer what was going on and she said that Tammy had been picked up a few months before and likely hadn’t showered or changed her clothes since. I asked what she had done to be in jail, feeling bad that I was speaking about her as if she wasn’t there. The officer said that Tammy usually loitered outside a Walmart yelling obscenities to customers so she was picked up on a vagrancy charge, and that there were no mental health institutions in the area so prison was the only option. I spent the first few days sleeping with one eye open – and not once did I ever see Tammy asleep. She was so adamant that her food was poisoned, I willingly exchanged my tray with hers to show her it was safe.
One day in the cell I surprised a guard I hadn’t seen before. ‘No one is supposed to be in here with Tammy, it’s not safe,’ she said.
I smiled and looked at Tammy cross-legged on the freezing damp floor. ‘It’s safe,’ I said, ‘but she’s dying.’
The officer looked at me with sympathetic eyes and agreed that this place was truly terrible. She told me that she had once been a prison officer at Rikers Island prison in New York, which was notoriously one of the most dangerous jails in the country.
Thankfully after a few weeks Russell got me moved back to Charleston. My heart broke for Mary and New Jersey and as I was being led out of the unit I yelled to them to stay strong. I saw their eyes peering out at me though the tiny window of their cell.
Although still chained and shackled, this time I was transported back to Al Cannon in a police car with two armed guards. It was so exciting to be able to see Charleston clearly after so long. The guards acted like tour guides and pointed out some of the major changes over the past decades. My ‘wow’ in response was not so much of admiration but of shock at the congestion that now clogged the once pure, nature-filled outskirts of this historical city.
Once back at the Al Cannon Detention Center I was taken to my new unit. While it wasn’t the same as the one I had before, it was so good to be back. And when I was finally shown to my unit I saw that in the pod to my right was the white girl I was chained to when we went to federal court. She was on the same conspiracy charges as New Jersey and Mary but had been left here in better conditions.
A little before our wonderful dinner trays were to be delivered, I asked for the nail clippers at the officers’ desk. We had two pairs of nail clippers – small and large – to share among sixty women. After washing them the best I could, I used them to cut my bangs and then my nails. A smiling officer named Lucas welcomed me back and as I handed the clippers over, I noticed a tattoo on her forearm. It was of Auburn University in Alabama. Lucas laughed when I told her I had gone there too, and then said there was another thing we had in common – her middle name was also Lee. We chatted pleasantly for a while and I was again struck how a little bit of normality goes a long way in a place like prison. I’d now spent over a year imprisoned and was surprised at how well I had handled it, another thing I’ll chalk up to my being raised by Mom. If I hadn’t been a good reader of people before being incarcerated I was now getting the equivalent of a PhD.
Thankfully it didn’t take long before I started speaking daily to Patty, Gordon, Samantha and Reece. I also spent plenty of time on the phone to Susan, Cliff, and my friends Myron and Gail. Mom and a few of her friends came to see me, along with people who lived out of state. Most days my maximum visits were filled by lunchtime, making me feel bad about the people who had travelled a long way to see me but couldn’t. Each Sunday morning there would be a shout from the officer’s desk – ‘Barnett, visit’– and I would lurch over to the monitors to see my cousin Chris and his wife Jill before they set off to church. One time Patty and our friend Tracy came to visit. We started complimenting each other on how great we looked after all these years, and then Patty picked up a newspaper to show me through the monitor, and, just seconds after flattering each other, we noticed that each of us had our reading glasses on. We roared with laughter, because of course things had changed.
My brother Cliff continued to be an outstanding support for me and my children and I honestly don’t know what I would have done if he wasn’t there. Since we reunited he hadn’t slipped up once, resorting to the childhood nickname he’d used all the way through college – Sweathog! I even sensed he might be a little proud of me, and although our family had never been good at showing affection I felt the pride when he spoke of Sammy and Reece. Damn, I had to become an international fugitive and then be imprisoned to gain the respect I’d yearned for throughout my whole childhood!
Russell and I talked a lot about the bond hearing and his decision to make it into a mini trial with my two children as the primary witnesses. But trying to plan and orchestrate a defence when Russell and I couldn’t even speak in private seemed both unfair and unconstitutional to me. I was worried. Cliff and Susan were going to rent a beach house and Samantha would arrive with Brad, then Reece would follow a couple of days later. Of course, some things never changed: Patty was still throwing wonderful parties and she had planned one for the kids while in Charleston. We hoped I would be released on bond and be able to join them. I was incredibly excited that Samantha was finally going to meet all the people she had had to leave behind, but I was also concerned how she would manage with the negative media coverage in Charleston. After my arrest, Harris had given a television interview on local station Channel 4 on the anguish he had experienced for twenty years. Many viewers had written in and commented on the case. The overall comments seemed in line with the reaction we’d had from the Australian TV show, so mostly positive for me, but I was still concerned about any confrontations Sammy might have to deal with. One thing I knew for certain was that from the very beginning this was a game of winning for Harris, that he had to beat me at any cost. Even so, if by chance he and Samantha decide to meet, I couldn’t help myself from wishing that I was wrong and that he would embrace her with open arms and an open heart. After all, when Sammy had written to him, all she asked of Harris was honesty.
Russell sent in copies of my transcripts and kind Officer Lucas allowed me to store them in the drawer under my bed and even gave me a yellow highlighter to use. Visits kept coming, which helped break the unbearable boredom. I spoke to Gordon often, sometimes several times a day, and often while he was in the company of many of our mutual friends. He especially got a kick out of telling me all about the wonderful meals they were eating. One night on speakerphone everyone said hi, and Gordon started raving about the incre
dible she-crab soup he was eating.
‘Well, guys,’ I countered, ‘I’m sitting here watching a 400-pound lady pick something out of her belly button and eat it!’
I heard gasps from around the table.
‘Gordon,’ I said, ‘don’t try and one-up me. I’ve got you beat. Trust me.’
And it was true. Girls high on meth or heroin would regularly come into our unit. The only detox offered was for those withdrawing from alcohol, so these women were for the most part ignored and left to shake and shiver for a few days wrapped in blankets. One night, at God knows what time, all fifty fluorescent lights were suddenly turned on, making everyone who hadn’t been woken by screaming now wondering what the hell was going on. I looked over to my left and saw two women screaming and thumping each other. A guard pulled one girl off the other, who was splayed on her bunk. And then the girl who had been cocooned in her blanket for two days pointed to the other girl. ‘I woke up to her picking the scabs off my face and eating them!’
I turned to my pod mate with a look of horror and she shrugged and said that the scabs still contain traces of meth.
25
Charleston, South Carolina, US
November 2014
EVERYONE WAS VERY UPBEAT IN PREPARING FOR MY KIDS’ VISIT, BUT deep down in my gut I still felt that bail would be refused. Then again, to put a more positive spin on things, that same gut also told me there was no way I would spend the next twenty-two years in prison.
Another reason I was not swept away by my friends’ excitement, though, was that I knew each and every word I said during phone calls and monitor visits was being listened to and relayed back to the prosecutor, Nathan Williams. How would it look if I said that I had it in the bag and strutted around like a cocky rooster?
The night before she and Brad flew out to the US, Sammy mentioned that I had written something in her diary that she wanted to share with me over the phone:
22 October 1996
Last night I had a vivid dream about home, all my senses were there, although I wasn’t. I could smell the salty marsh air and feel the sun and salt on my tanned back. I wonder what my mind is actually doing at times especially when sleep takes over. Usually sleep brings nightmares but occasionally it brings heart-felt feelings that take me back to the past. Someday we’ll go back and face what happened to us and we will return hand-in-hand. And we will always have the support of Daddy and Reece. Unfortunately, you’ll never get to meet some of the most wonderful people in our past life. The older people whom I love so much like Uncle Ernie, Aunt Jane, Ann and Aunt Clara will probably be gone. Oh, there were so so many people who loved us who we’ll never be able to see again. On the flip side there are so many people you will get to see and get to know. Another ten to twelve years and we’ll go home, hand-in-hand.
‘I’m sorry,’ said Sammy.
‘Why?’
‘Because we didn’t get to do this hand-in-hand.’
‘Oh, angel,’ I said. ‘Life is always a surprise, and what we make of it determines how we live our lives. So make the best of this trip and meet all of these wonderful people who loved you and who still love you. It will still be special, I promise. Every choice you make catches up with you, and my choice has led to these consequences. And I can’t wait to see you in a couple of days, even if I don’t get to put my arms around you.’
When Sammy and Brad landed, Patty’s three girls hugged her; she was someone they had come to love through their mother’s stories. Mom was also there with Cliff, and my cousin Chris and Jill, Gordon and his wife Sue, and my dear friends Gail and Myron. On the journey to Charleston they stopped in Austin, Texas, to meet Aunt Susan. Gordon gave me blow-by-blow descriptions about it all on the phone.
The next day, Sammy, Susan and Lorraine came to visit me in prison, and we all squealed with delight. A couple of days after that, Reece arrived, followed by Cliff’s two children Logan and Carolina. The beach house which was a few blocks from Patty’s became a revolving door for people who were there to support me and I relived the experience vicariously through everyone who went there. Just knowing that both of my children were in the same country and same town as me meant that I now slept like a baby. They were at least breathing the same air as me!
The hearing was fast approaching and Russell became a little stern, concerned at how I kept joking about things. He made it quite clear that if people thought I was being flippant or glib it wouldn’t look good. I thought back to Patty’s birthday dinner a few nights earlier where they had concocted a cut-out mug shot of me, glued to a stick to pretend I was there with them, drinking wine and eating pasta. I realised that if he knew that he would kill me. And if he knew the cut-out me had been photographed and shared to my children on Facebook he would kill the lot of them. I didn’t fess up to that but I did tell him that I needed to be me, and that this was me, me in survival mode. I promised him that I wouldn’t say anything stupid but admitted that I might not be able to change. He then told me that friends and family had now raised around US$1.3 million for a bond. I whistled, and he agreed it was an impressive sum, but that no judge was going to ignore the fact that I had been on the run for twenty years.
He was going to ask the judge to let me stay with my cousin Chris, a colonel, under house arrest, wearing an ankle monitor at all times.
I was looking forward to this bond hearing mini trial as the two of us had worked hard preparing questions to ask the children, and I had provided detailed notes on timelines up to my leaving. I wanted the truth of what had happened to be told. I wanted people to know I had been manipulated by Dr Bjorksten, Harris and my mother; how I was forced into having Jania Sommers as a GAL and how she had said I was mentally ill to people all around the town; how Dr Saylor’s evaluation on the witness stand completely contradicted his previous assessment given at a meeting and agreed to by all, and that I had taped it. That I still had that tape.
The day before the bond hearing, Russell visited me and dropped a bomb. He had changed his mind. He no longer wanted to make it a mini trial but a straightforward bond hearing. His rationale was that he wanted to get me out of jail first and then to get to work on the big hearing.
I couldn’t hide my disappointment; I was absolutely crestfallen.
I said I didn’t think I would get bond, but that if we had a mini trial we would still be able to tell a little of what had happened. Russell, however, stood firm and said he was sure this new course of action was the right one. Ultimately, I trusted his decision.
That night the girls helped me prepare for the big day. One of them offered to pluck my eyebrows if I could successfully pull a long thread from my mattress cover. I did, and so she did; later I learned this was called threading. Another girl lent me her haemorrhoid cream and told me to dab it under my eyes to reduce swelling. Our tiny short pencil normally used when golfing doubled as eyeliner and eyebrow pencil, and I was told to save my red M&M’s, which came in handy as blush and lipstick.
The following morning, Monday, 24 November 2014, I was the only female being transported so I wasn’t chained to anyone. There were about eight males in the van with me, and even though we were separated by a metal wall, we could still hear one another. They knew who I was because of the TV coverage, and asked loads of questions and were all supportive, some even praising my actions as a mom.
A female US marshal I’d met the night I’d arrived back in the US took me into the courtroom. She explained that we would have to sit up in the jury box while I waited my turn. I shuffled towards the steps leading to the jury box, watching the floor, trying to avoid tripping over my chains and landing on my face. This was not how I wanted to be seen by my friends and family. When she and I finally sat, I raised my head. I was instantly overwhelmed with joy – there were my two beautiful children smiling at me, and a whole room of familiar, beaming faces. I felt like Tom Hanks in the movie Cast Away. Here were all the people I cared about, the ones who were still with me, who had comforted me in my dreams and k
ept me going. Truly, there was so much love in that room, I couldn’t help but be happy. Samantha was sandwiched between a very protective Cliff, Susan and Brad and Reece. Sammy mouthed ‘I love you’ and Reece gave me his best smile. I lifted my chained hands and waved to them and to the people I recognised. Patty and Mike, their three daughters and Patty’s nearly ninety-year-old mom, Winnie, were close by. The more elderly people were the easiest to recognise. Many of Mom’s friends were also mine. Sitting next to her, they looked much the same even after all these years, though some now had walkers.
At last I joined Russell at the table. In the back row I glimpsed a face and my stomach flipped end over end. Harris, I thought. I risked a second glimpse and realised it was Harris’s brother, John. Whew. Graham Sturgis was there too, once again staring daggers at me.
After some preliminaries. Judge Marchant stated that there were two potential victims, Harris and Samantha. He then asked Graham Sturgis if Mr Todd was aware of the trial. Sturgis stood. ‘He is aware of it, Your Honour, and for reasons of privacy and safety and health, he won’t be present today, but he asked that I attend on his behalf.’ Next the judge asked Sturgis if he had a position on bond in the case. Before my eyes I saw Graham grow several feet. He was very much opposed to the granting of bond given that it had taken twenty years to locate this particular defendant.
The prosecutor Nathan Williams started with a brief history of Harris and my short marriage, that it had produced a pregnancy and later a child. Nathan said that after a four-week hearing the Family Court had issued a written order giving custody to Mr Todd. I shook my head and gently kicked Russell’s foot. I scribbled on a piece of paper: ‘No written order’.