A Death in Canaan (45 page)

“Went back to my uncle's house,” Tim said. “Drank more beer and talked until my sister Marie came home from work. She went to her own house. I went in after her.”

“About what time was that?” Mr. Daly asked.

“Ten after nine, quarter after nine.”

“What did you do after that?”

“I went home, said good-night and went to bed.”

It may have sounded early for bed, but in a newspaper story during the hearing, Duke Moore, a reporter who lived in Falls Village, explained the neighborhood tempo. “Often Friday and Saturday nights consist of nothing more than hanging around, drinking beer, talking, finally going to bed, often early,” he wrote.

Tim testified that he went to sleep at once, and slept until twenty past one in the morning, when his father woke him to say that a policeman wanted to talk to him. It was Jim Mulhern, sent out by Lieutenant Shay to make the house-to-house check.

Later in the hearing, Jim Mulhern confirmed Timothy's account. “He came out of the bedroom,” Mulhern testified. “This was roughly 1:40, 1:45
A.M
.”

“The room Timothy Parmalee emerged from, if he did, was on the first floor of the house, is that correct?” Mr. Daly asked.

“Yes sir,” Mulhern said. “First door to the left as you go in the front door.”

John Bianchi's assistant, Robert Beach, asked a question.

“When Timothy Parmalee came into your presence, did you make any observations as to his physical appearance?”

“Yes sir,” Mulhern said. “The only thing he had on was a pair of trousers.… He appeared as if he had been in bed, sleeping.”

“Did you leave [your] bedroom until you were awakened sometime after one o'clock to talk to Trooper Mulhern?” John Bianchi asked Tim.

“No.”

“How long have you known Peter Reilly, Mr. Parmalee?” John Bianchi asked Tim.

“Ever since he moved up to the corner,” Tim said.

“Did you ever play with Peter Reilly at the house wherein his mother was murdered?”

“Yes,” Tim said.

“Did you ever stay overnight at this same little house?”

“Yes,” Tim said.

“Have you ever gone in or out of the side or back door?”

“Occasionally,” Tim said.

“And is it true that you also went in the front door?”

“Yes,” Tim said.

“Prior to September 28, 1973, can you recall the last time you were at the house?”

“Week and a half, two weeks and a half. Not really sure,” Tim said.

“Going back for approximately one year, what is your best estimate of how many times you were at the house?”

“I am really not sure,” Tim said. “Quite a few times.”

Mr. Bianchi questioned two Parmalee sisters, both married. Marie Parmalee Ovitt said she got home from work at ten past nine, the night Barbara died.

“Did you see your brother Timothy between the time you got home at about nine-ten and before nine-thirty?” Mr. Bianchi asked.

“Yes, I did,” she said.

“And how do you determine that that was the time you saw him?”

“Because I watched the last few minutes of ‘Pins and Needles,' and that went off at nine-thirty,” she replied.

Over at the Madows, I remembered, they'd begun watching
Kelley's Heroes
then. Mrs. Ovitt said that when Timothy came in, he stayed “not too long. Five minutes, at the most.”

“And did you see him again that night?”

“No I didn't,” she said.

But Tim's other sister testified that she had. From about twenty-five of ten, she said, she was sitting opposite Tim's bedroom door; the door was closed. Just after ten o'clock, her sister Marie came over, wanting Tim to baby-sit.

“I went in and tried to wake up Timmy in his bedroom,” Judith Machia said. “He was sleeping, and I couldn't wake him up. It was about ten after ten.”

“Between twenty-five minutes of ten, and the time that you went in—shortly after ten o'clock—to wake Timmy up, did anybody come in or out of his bedroom door?” Mr. Bianchi asked.

“No,” she said.

I drove in to court with Peter, Art, and Geoff one morning, sandwiched in the middle of the front seat. Peter was driving. Arthur, in the back seat, was complaining that it was his turn to sit in front. Everybody was smoking except me, and I wished I were.

On the way to court, Peter pulled into the Texaco station across the road from the little white house. I looked over at the yard, and I asked them, for the last time, about that night.

“Why did we ever go to that Teen Center meeting?” Geoff asked. It was a melancholy question, but Peter answered lightly. “Because I thought Nancy was going to be there,” he said.

“I sat over there in the chair,” Geoff said, “with Schatzi in my lap, under the elm tree, watching the sun go down, and I was thinking, this is the end of something. I know it sounds weird now to say I thought that, but I really did. And I don't know why I did.” Peter said nothing.

“I came home that night and everybody was gone,” Arthur said. “I asked my grandmother, ‘Where is everybody?' Nan said there was an ambulance call. ‘Peter's mother's sick,' she said. So I boogied on over to Sharon Hospital, thinking they took her there.”

Peter looked into the rear-view mirror. “When you got to the house, Art, did they say my mom was dead?”

“Nope,” Arthur said. Peter seemed about to speak, but just then Geoff spoke. “Shay took me into that van, and he searched me, and he didn't even take off my socks. I said, ‘Don't you want to look between my toes?'”

Peter didn't say anything more. He started the motor, and the radio came on again. It was tuned to Bob Steele, Barbara's favorite.

In the courthouse hallway, I saw Tim's wife and her parents. Tim and Chris Sager had been married the year before, and they had a baby girl. Mary Sager, Christine's mother, had just written a letter to the
Journal,
defending Tim, very much as her husband had written after Peter's conviction. I remembered Mr. Sager from a committee meeting, volunteering to make arrangements for the dance. Now he looked worn and strained, and the sum of the human factors, in all this, suddenly seemed overwhelming. We said hello, and I wanted to say something more—maybe that I was sorry, and I started to mumble some words, but then it just seemed too awkward, and I let it go.

Assisting Catherine Roraback on the Peter Reilly case had been Peter Herbst's first job after law school. Now, as he took the stand, Judge Speziale looked a little concerned. “Rise, Peter Reilly,” he said. Peter stood up, and the judge read the attorney-client privilege, which sounded rather like the seal of the confessional. The judge told Peter that if he waived that privilege, things he told Peter Herbst might now be disclosed. Peter Reilly said he understood, and he did waive it.

On the stand, Peter Herbst said there had been some problem getting some of the statements they wanted from the State's Attorney. He said John Bianchi had told him “it was such a hassle to go to the trouble of Xeroxing all the statements,” so John Bianchi had said he himself would decide what was exculpatory, and pass it along to the defense. Peter Herbst said he'd never known that John Sochocki's aunt was interviewed by the police, that he hadn't got that statement or the statement from Dr. Bornemann's daughter-in-law, whom Peter had spoken to when he called for help the night Barbara died. He said he remembered Elizabeth Mansfield bringing in the wallet she'd found and now, in court, he looked at the wallet in the plastic bag and said yes, that was it.

Peter Herbst didn't finish testifying that day, and the next morning he took the stand again, first thing. The courtroom was settling down to a new round of legal arguments, when the witness's first statement startled everyone awake. He said that after court adjourned the day before, he'd been asked to stop by the State's Attorney's office before he left the courthouse. Inside the little office, Peter Herbst said, Mr. Bianchi had asked him a question. “Pete,” he'd said, “your privilege is gone. At any time—before, after, or during the trial—did Peter Reilly admit his guilt to you?”

John Bianchi, at the counsel table, flushed, and Mr. Gallicchio stood up quickly. “Objection, your honor,” he said. “The question is whether or not Peter Reilly is entitled to a new trial. It's not a question of his innocence or guilt.” Mr. Gallicchio's voice faltered a little toward the end, as though what he was saying sounded as bizarre in his own ears as it did in mine.

“All I want is the answer to the question,” Roy Daly said, and the judge looked at Mr. Gallicchio. “Do I hear a motion to strike?” he asked, and Mr. Gallicchio, still looking surprised, said yes. “Motion is granted,” the judge said.

As interesting as that revelation was, the most fascinating part of Peter Herbst's testimony concerned the new evidence.

“Did you know of a woman named Sandra Ashner?” Mr. Daly asked.

“No, I did not,” Peter Herbst said.

“Did you know whether Michael Parmalee had requested a separation from the United States Army based on alleged homosexuality?” Mr. Daly asked.

The collective noise in the courtroom wasn't a gasp, more of a shuffle. Homosexuality—the most dreaded, derided thing in a small New England town. Being a queer. When the citizens of nineteenth-century Canaan hanged Jeff Davis in effigy, they dressed him in petticoats first. Now the sound in the courtroom nearly drowned out the witness's answer.

“No, I did not,” Peter Herbst said.

Mr. Roberts had taken Roy Daly aside and asked him to please speak a little more slowly. He sometimes spoke very quickly, especially when he seemed angry. After so many years in the courtroom, Mr. Roberts knew very well that a person's talking speed could affect what the person was trying to say. “By the time an attorney asks a question five times, he's lost sight of the subject, the predicate and the object,” Mr. Roberts said, a little sadly.

So Roy Daly spoke very slowly and deliberately to the young woman wearing slacks and a pea coat. She had a small, pointed face, a sharp chin, and long, wavy black hair. Her big dark eyes had a sad, almost haunted look. As Sandra Ashner spoke, she created, in this familiar courtroom, a most unfamiliar world.

A country way called Undermountain Road ran behind the Kruses' place. There was a large dairy farm down that road, where the hired man, Sherwood Scanlon, lived in a trailer with a woman named Jacqueline Watson. Another couple was living in the trailer, too, Sandra Ashner and Michael Parmalee, whom Sandra called “Mick.” Sandra had a little boy named Bobby.

Sandra Ashner and Michael Parmalee had not been living together long, and she had never met his family. In the middle of the afternoon on the day Barbara died, she testified, they walked from the trailer to the Parmalee place on Route 63. When they passed the Kruse property at the corner, Barbara was out in the yard, and Michael pointed her out to Sandra.

Back at the trailer that evening, Sandra said, she gave her son a shower and heard him say his prayers. She put him to bed. In the bedroom she shared with Michael, Sandra said, she was sitting on the bed. “Michael come in,” she testified, “and he says something was wrong. He says, ‘Well, something is wrong at home.'”

“Did he, thereafter, do anything?” Mr. Daly asked.

“I believe he left,” Sandra Ashner said.

“He left the trailer?”

“Yes.”

She said she went to bed and awoke around seven or seven-thirty the next morning.

“Did Michael Parmalee, after you got up, come back to the trailer?” Mr. Daly asked.

“Yes,” she said. “About eight-thirty, nine o'clock.”

For the next few weeks, then, Sandra said, Michael acted strangely.

“He woke up—one, two, three o'clock in the morning, we sit on the couch,” she said. “He would be upset, shaking and nervous.” After a while, Sandra moved out of the trailer. She and Bobby went to live with her mother, and although Michael came to see her a couple of times, they didn't live together any more.

When the police had questioned her on October 7, 1973, Sandra told them that Michael had spent the night with her in the trailer.

“Did there come a time when you decided to tell somebody what you have said here today?” Roy Daly asked.

Sandra Ashner said that, more than a year later, she had told the visiting nurse, thus setting off a chain of phone calls that resulted in the County Detective coming to see her, then the police, then Jim Conway. I stared at this young woman, so tough yet scared-looking, wondering where she had found the strength to stand up to the barrage of questions she must have faced. “What she went through for Peter, you can't imagine,” Jim Conway told me later, but even when I saw her for the first time, on the stand, I had an inkling.

John Bianchi looked at her scornfully. “So you and Michael Parmalee occupied the same bedroom?”

“Yes,” Sandra said.

“And you did, did you not, on September 28, 1973?”

“He was not there that night,” she said.

“You didn't occupy the same bedroom on September 28, 1973?”

“No, he was not there,” Sandra said. “He left.”

“You went to bed by yourself?”

“Yes. When I woke up, he wasn't there.”

“Did you wake up by means of an alarm clock?” Mr. Bianchi asked.

“No,” she said. “Mr. Scanlon woke us up. He walked by the room and he would say, ‘Get up.'”

“And when Mr. Scanlon woke you up, Michael Parmalee was not in bed with you at that very moment?”

“No, he wasn't,” the witness said.

“When you went to sleep, it was about what time? Nine-thirty?”

“I went to bed about quarter to nine. I fell right to sleep. I was on medication, for my foot.”

“What doctor treated you?” Mr. Bianchi asked.

“Dr. White at the Torrington Hospital.”