Authors: Allison Leotta
Now, Anna did the pointing. She pointed at Desiree Williams. “You look to the prosecutor. It is
her burden
to tell you what happened. It is always the government’s burden to prove the defendant
guilty, beyond a reasonable doubt. Under the American system, the defendant comes into this courtroom cloaked in the presumption of innocence. It is the same privilege you would enjoy if, God forbid, anyone ever accused you of a crime.
“Presume Jody innocent as she sits here today. Presume her innocent as each witness comes up to talk. And any questions you have, put them at the desk of the prosecutor. It is her burden to tell the full story and to prove beyond a reasonable doubt what happened on the night of June third. If you have any questions about what happened, if there are any holes or parts of the story that don’t make sense, the government has not met its burden, and there is not enough evidence to send this woman to jail.”
Anna had been on the receiving end of this argument enough times to understand its full weight.
“Ladies and gentleman, after this trial is finished, you will have far more questions than answers. But one thing will be clear: Jody Curtis did not harm Owen Fowler. I will ask you to send her back home, where she belongs. Thank you.”
Anna sat down and put a hand on Jody’s arm. “You okay?” she said.
Jody nodded, smiled solemnly at Anna, and cradled her belly. Anna hoped the jurors were watching.
48
W
endy made a pretty little widow. Her strawberry-blond hair shone against her black dress. Her eyes welled with delicate tears. She dabbed her rosy cheeks. The jurors watched her performance in the witness chair with rapt attention.
The government always wanted to start a case with an emotional punch: often, that meant a grieving family member describing what a great person the victim was. Hence, the prosecutor called Wendy Fowler as her first witness. Wendy gave the same sort of testimonial she had at the memorial service: he was a devoted father, a loving husband, a coach who cared about his players. She wiped away another tear.
Juror number 8, a gray-haired lady in a blue sweater, dabbed her own tears.
“Tell us about the evening of June 3, 2014,” Desiree said. “Where were you?”
“I was at the Cedar Point amusement park with my daughter, Isabel, and my cousin, Brynn.”
“And that’s located in Sandusky, Ohio? About two hours away from your home?”
The prosecutor wasn’t supposed to ask leading questions, but Anna let it go. She didn’t want to appear obstructionist for petty reasons. She and probably every juror had been to Cedar Point; the “roller coaster capital of the world” was a pilgrimage for every midwesterner.
“Yes. We stayed at the Hilton. Isabel had been asking to go for ages. We left early that morning and came back later the next afternoon. I have the hotel receipt if you need it.”
“Thank you, that won’t be necessary.”
Wendy wasn’t on trial. She didn’t need to provide an alibi.
“Did you hear from your husband?” Desiree said.
“Yes. He called at around ten that evening to wish us good night. He spoke to Isabel and told her to have a fun trip. We expected to see him the next day.”
“Did you see him the next day?”
“No. Around six the next morning, I got a phone call from Detective Rob Gargaron, informing me that my husband had died in a car accident earlier that morning.” Wendy dabbed her eyes. “We drove home immediately. There was talk of identifying his body, but there was really nothing for me to identify. He was,” she choked, “burned to the point where he was not recognizable. They identified him through dental records.”
Anna could have objected, but didn’t. Wendy had no personal knowledge on which to testify about dental records and identification—that was for the coroner to say. But there was no point in alienating the jury by interrupting the teary-eyed widow’s testimony. No one disputed that it was the coach who died in the car that night.
Anna knew Wendy was telling the truth. Anna had obtained the hotel receipt. Wendy had checked into the Hilton at 3:06
P.M.
on June 3, and checked out at 7:13
A.M.
the next morning, exactly as she’d testified. Anna had even obtained Wendy’s cell-phone records, which showed that Wendy’s phone had been in Sandusky, Ohio, the whole time. The woman had been in Cedar Point. Anna couldn’t have blamed the coach’s death on Wendy even if Jody had approved of that strategy.
But that didn’t mean Wendy was useless to the defense. When the prosecutor finished, Anna went to the podium to cross-examine her. She had to be very careful with this witness. This would be a “soft cross.” Anna had to make her points as gently as possible. The jury liked the pretty young widow. They felt sorry for her. They would hate Anna if she was in any way perceived as mean or callous to Wendy.
“I’m so sorry for your husband’s death, Ms. Fowler,” Anna said quietly.
“Thank you.” Wendy folded her tissue and set it on her lap.
“I need to ask you some questions, but I understand this is difficult for you. So please let me know if you need to take a break at any point.”
“I will. Thank you.”
Anna glanced at her notes, as if she needed reminding. “You were married to Owen Fowler for ten years, is that correct?”
“Yes.”
“You two shared finances?”
“That’s correct.”
“You had a joint bank account?”
“Yes.”
“And you had two mortgages, which you held jointly?”
“Yes.”
On cross-examination, a lawyer could ask leading questions. Structured properly, the lawyer was essentially the one testifying. Wendy was just confirming the points Anna wanted to make. Or denying them, if that was more dramatic.
“So you were aware that he had taken over a million dollars out of your lake house in a series of home equity lines of credit?”
Wendy shook her head. “I was not aware of that until after he died.”
Anna looked up from her notes, as if shocked. “He took out a million dollars and never told you?”
“No.”
“So then . . . you don’t know where that money went?”
“I don’t, strictly speaking. I had to sell the lake house. I’m struggling to hold on to the house in Holly Grove. It was also heavily mortgaged.”
Anna glanced at the jurors. Anna had told them this in her opening statement; the fact that Wendy confirmed it gave Anna instant credibility. Plus it tore down the idea of the coach as a perfect
husband. Anna wanted the jurors to mull that over. She turned to the judge.
“Would now be a good time for the midmorning break?”
“Certainly,” Judge Upperthwaite said. “We will break for fifteen minutes and resume at ten forty-five.”
Anna and Cooper hustled Jody to the bathroom two floors up, where they were less likely to run into anyone. Jody walked with an adorable waddle, although she didn’t appreciate hearing her gait described that way. This hallway was empty and quiet. Through the windows, Anna could see the crowd of Anonymous protesters filling the square, waving their signs and waiting in the cold.
“You hanging in there?” Anna asked her sister.
“You’re the one doing the work. All I have to do is sit there and look pretty.”
“You’re great at that.”
Jody patted her enormous stomach. “Liar. It feels like there’s a bowling ball between my legs.”
“Tell that baby to stay in there until this trial is over.”
“Stay in there, baby.” Jody smiled at Anna. “Are you going to ask Wendy about the loan shark?”
Anna shook her head. “An old trial-lawyer rule is: Never ask a question for which you don’t know the answer. A trial is a place to present evidence, not fish for it. For the rest of Wendy’s cross, I have ‘control documents’ to prove my point if Wendy lies. I’ve got no control document for the mysterious loan shark.”
Jody put a hand on Anna’s arm and looked her square in the eyes. “Ask. She’s not going to hurt us.”
Anna met Jody’s eyes and found certainty there. It made her extremely nervous.
Back in the courtroom, the trial reassembled. Wendy returned to the witness stand, and Anna continued her cross-examination.
“Your husband spent about four or five nights a week at Screecher’s bar or in the MotorCity Casino, is that correct?”
Charges from the casino were listed in black and white on the credit card receipts.
“Yes. He needed time to unwind after his very stressful job.”
“He was not home until very late hours, roughly four to five nights a week, true?”
“True.”
Anna paused, considering whether to go on. Everything she’d ever learned in law school said she shouldn’t ask the next question. She took a deep breath and went for it anyway.
“Were you aware of anyone ever threatening your husband?”
“Yes,” Wendy said. “A few weeks before his death, a man came to my house. A stranger. He asked for my husband. I said he wasn’t home. The man told me to pass a message on to him. He said I should tell Owen that he’d break his kneecaps if Owen didn’t pay up.”
Juror number 8 gasped.
“Objection!” Desiree stood up. “Hearsay.”
“Not offered for the truth of the matter,” Anna said. Out-of-court statements were only considered hearsay if they were offered to prove the truth of the matter asserted in the statement. “The fact that a threat was made is critically important, but we’re not offering this to prove that the stranger was actually going to break the decedent’s kneecaps.”
“I’ll allow it,” the judge said. “Just for that purpose.”
“Can you describe this man?” Anna asked.
Wendy nodded and spoke earnestly to the jurors. “He was in his fifties, a white man, with black hair—very black—and a widow’s peak. I remember thinking maybe he used hair dye, because a man his age should have more gray. He had a scar in one eyebrow.”
Juror number 11
tsk
,
tsked
, apparently unhappy that this did not come out during the government’s direct examination.
“What did he wear?” Anna said.
“Dark pants and a black leather jacket, as I recall.”
Anna took a sip of water as she absorbed that information. Wendy’s description exactly matched the description Kathy had given of the thug who roughed up Owen Fowler at the casino.
There were only two possible explanations for this, and Anna didn’t want to think about one of them.
She should sit down. She couldn’t possibly hope for the testimony to get better than this. But something in Wendy’s face made her press on.
“Did you pass the message along to your husband?”
“Yes, I told Owen later that night. He admitted that he’d borrowed money from a—what do you call it?—a loan shark. And he was having trouble paying it back. He was scared the man might kill him.”
Too late, the prosecutor shot out of her seat. “Hearsay!”
“Indeed,” Judge Upperthwaite said. “I’ll strike that. The jurors will disregard that testimony.”
Anna sat down, knowing there was no way the jurors could disregard that. “No further questions.”
49
A
fter the loan shark testimony, Anna politely asked Desiree to dismiss the charges. The prosecutor politely declined. And so the trial went on.
In fact, two trials went on: one in the courtroom, and one outside. Outside, the trial was about the failure of the system: the rape kits untested, the child sex-abuse charges unbrought, and how one man had managed to victimize so many girls for so long. Regardless of whether Jody killed him, the protesters didn’t think she should go to jail.
Inside the courtroom, Anna was prohibited from introducing evidence of the coach’s prior sex assaults. She couldn’t go with the killer-as-hero theory. Plus, the people of Holly Grove—including her jurors—loved Coach Fowler. In the courtroom, she stuck with the theory of a good but flawed man being chased by shady creditors.
Outside, Anonymous protesters called for the trial to stop, because Jody had killed the right man. Inside, Anna tried to convince the jurors that Jody had killed no one.
Outside, journalists interviewed women who came forward to talk about being sexually assaulted by the coach when they were teenagers. They ranged in age, appearance, and socioeconomic status but had one thing in common: they all adored him for a time. Some “consented” to having sex with him, to the extent that a thirteen-year-old can be said to consent, and they continued to adore him afterward, at least for a while. Some of them fought him and he overpowered them, and they hated him consistently after
ward. All of them now felt that what he’d done was wrong. Some remained private, but many came forward to talk to Oprah, Katie Couric, Jezebel, and
USA Today
.
Outside, the question was: Why was the coach never held accountable? Inside, the question was: Who was the loan shark who’d threatened to break the coach’s knees?
The jurors had been instructed not to watch any television or read any news stories about the case.
Good luck enforcing that
, Anna thought. She didn’t mind if the jurors saw the news. That would only give them one more reason to acquit her sister.
Desiree continued to put on her case. An auto expert talked about how cars don’t generally explode on impact. A coroner talked about how the side of the coach’s skull was bashed in before ever hitting the windshield. For cross-examination Anna simply asked them whether they saw Jody doing anything to the coach. They all had to answer no.
On the third day of trial, Desiree said, “The government calls Grady Figler to the stand.”
Jody sat up straighter as the door swung open. A couple of women in the audience made approving clucks as the bartender strode in. He cleaned up nicely, Anna thought. He wore dark pants and a white button-down shirt, which showed off his muscular chest but hid the tattoos that covered his arms. His oft-broken nose looked tamer with combed hair and a fresh shave. He gave Anna a friendly nod, but his eyes got big when he saw Jody. He slowed and stared at her big belly. She held it with both hands and looked away from him.
Grady sat in the witness chair and answered the prosecutor’s questions in a slow, deep drawl. His testimony was exactly what he’d told Anna when she visited him at Screecher’s eight months earlier. It was his body language that was interesting. He couldn’t take his eyes off of Jody, although she refused to meet his gaze.