Doc: The Rape of the Town of Lovell (21 page)

"It was exciting to think that my husband was starting his first full practice. Dr. Croft was phasing out. Dr. Horsley, the Rose Doctor, had a limited practice at home—there was some kind of scandal about him.

"People liked John. Within months we were swamped. The mortician's hearse was the town ambulance, and John would follow along on the accident cases. There were no EMT's in those days and he had to do both jobs.

"For a long time we didn't make much money. John always undercharged, and a lot of people never got a bill. He cared about his patients but not about money. It reached the point where the insurance company wouldn't pay one of the claims because he turned it in two years late. It was a mess!

"We had to take trades. An old couple brought in some packaged frozen meat. I thought it was a gift, but they said to apply it to their bill. It was goat—not tender young kid but tough old grandpa. Sometimes we got paid in services: repairs on the car, housework, yardwork. It cut down on our income tax.

"John treated a lot of migrant workers, mostly Mexicans. Two or three hundred came to town every spring to thin and weed the beets. They lived in shacks and saved their medical problems for John. He refused to bill welfare like the other doctors. He'd tell his patients, 'Just pay what you can.' He didn't think the taxpayer should have to reimburse him for treating the poor. So he ended up doing a lot of charity work. If he'd billed welfare, we'd be millionaires.

"After a while, we began depositing money in the bank and making our house payments on time. In 1962 John saw this ad in a medical publication: 'For your ease and comfort as well as your patient's, new Ritter "75" universal table. . . . Gynecological position, a new and exclusive innovation—offsetting the lowered leg section behind edge of table—provides much needed additional
legroom
for physician. . . .' He had to have one, and
we
bought it
for
$1,792, ten dollars down and $148.50 a month
for
twelve months. It was real nice. But we still didn't consider ourselves permanent citizens of Lovell. The Mormon influence was so heavy.
We
thought about our kids going to school and maybe marrying a Mormon. It was a constant fear.

"Our daughters, Susan and Linda, were more or less ostracized. Susan had a good Mormon friend from kindergarten till the first day of junior high. Then the friend dropped her because that's when the Mormon church groups got more active with kids. Susan was hurt. From then on she never had a close Mormon friend. It was a real heartbreaker.

"There's always been a certain monotony to Lovell, especially if you aren't in with the Mormon clique. The women's lives revolve around food, putting it up, raising and preparing it, and above all eating it. My, how they eat! There's not much else to do except talk about who was born, who died, who's been disfellowshipped or excommunicated.

"When I asked John why we didn't leave, he'd say, Well, I can't leave till so-and-so dies, or I'm committed to taking care of so-and-so, or so-and-so hasn't had her baby yet. Pretty soon I stopped talking about it.

"There were times when he was the only M.D. in town. A lot of doctors set up practices here and left. They didn't like house calls, they didn't like going out on emergencies. But John said he'd chosen a small town for a reason and we had to take the bad with the

good."

Marilyn learned early that malicious gossip was the downside of a life in medicine. Physicians were easy targets of sexual complaints; it seemed to her that John had no more problems in that area than might have been expected in a busy family practice. Of course, he didn't bother her with every little thing. Now and then a high school kid would put in a gripe about a Girls Athletic Association exam. These were mostly Mormons, backward as dirt; they'd never been examined by anyone as thorough as John. Once a new friend told Marilyn, "My daughter says the girls are talking about something going on in your husband's office, but Marilyn—I
know
it's just gossip." Well, of course it was! The mothers all knew John; they came in for examinations themselves.

Ten or twelve years after he set up his practice, a woman named Annella St. Thomas lodged a silly complaint with the state, and he had to drive all the way to Casper to straighten things out. Then Caroline Shotwell stirred up more trouble—something about her daughter Mae, another famous nerve case. Caroline's husband came snorting into the office, which could have been a problem. He was a former high priest, and it wouldn't do to get crosswise with the Saints in a town that was half Mormon. John cooled him off with some facts about hysteria.

Marilyn remembered a few other complaints, par for the course. There was a medical name for the phenomenon: the de Cler-ambault Syndrome. Sufferers operated under the delusion that authority figures were in love with them; if denied, they were capable of violence. Marilyn had seen more than one candidate flounce in and out of the clinic, but nothing serious had ever developed.

Until now.

The first hints of this latest trouble appeared in the clinic's appointment book. Certain regular patients weren't returning, and Marilyn had been asked to make copies of at least a dozen charts and forward them to Dr. Welch or Dr. Wrung in Lovell or Dr. Chris-tensen over in Powell. The McArthurs were the most prominent deserters.

At first she'd thought the problem might be financial; all told, the McArthur clan owed $4,000, and Dean's heart problems were only driving the bill higher. He'd been coming in once a week, and the female McArthurs were always showing up for one reason or another, even if it was just to pick up laundry or argue Scripture.

But now they were all missing. So was the Storys' old babysitter, Lanita "Grandma" Thompson, along with most of her widespread brood, and that nice letter carrier, Aletha, and quite a few others.

"What
is
this?" Marilyn asked her husband. "Something's fishy."

"Oh, that's kind of a natural thing," John assured her. "People want to try greener pastures. It's no problem."

One night he came home and told her he'd listened to a whole set of crazy complaints from Arden McArthur and her daughter Minda, and no explanation seemed to placate them. Then the mail lady, Aletha Durtsche, delivered a certified letter ordering John to appear at an informal hearing in Cheyenne.

"No problem," he repeated. Marilyn wasn't worried. The Medical Board members were practicing physicians. They knew about de Clerambault.

On July 20, 1983, two days before the scheduled hearing, Marilyn wrote in her journal: "Annette was born sixteen years ago today." As usual the scene played back: the crumpled form, the screams, the crowded services at the Lutheran church, the long drive with the tiny casket to the family plot in Maxwell.

How John's family had fussed over the lost child! Back home in Colorado, the departed were put in the ground quickly, but the Storys almost seemed to savor death and burials. John's chipper old mother, Inez, who closely resembled Marilyn in face and stature, often talked about relatives who'd died in her arms, how nice they looked, how the undertakers used to pack the bodies in ice, and other morbid details. The Storys enjoyed wandering around cemeteries. John once said, "I'm a graveyard person. I frequent them, look for the old names. It's a history lesson." Marilyn respected his attitude, but she preferred her history in books.

After Annette's death, John had wanted to take long walks and chew over incidents from her twenty months of life. "Those talks were hard," Marilyn told a friend. "He wanted to keep all his memories alive. That wasn't my way or my family's way." For years afterward, he liked to talk about his dead baby, pull her picture out of his wallet and show it around with pride.

When John left for the Medical Board hearing in Cheyenne, Marilyn ordered herself to stop worrying. He'd been persecuted before; it was no big deal. There'd been talk among friends of bringing a slander suit against the McArthurs, but he said he would never dream of suing a patient.

DOC'

She couldn't wait for the scandal to recede. In the fall, John would be going to Jamaica on his second Christian medical mission, and this time wives were invited. Marilyn was in her early fifties, but she still had muscle tone and a firm figure, and she would rather ride waves than horses.

2© '

MINUTES OF SPECIAL MEETING WYOMING BOARD OF MEDICAL EXAMINERS (Condensed)

Dr. John Story appeared before the Board of Medical Examiners on July 22, 1983 at 10
a.m
. for an informal interview as requested by the Board. He was advised that a formal hearing might be required. It was emphasized to Dr. Story that the purpose of the informal interview was to allow him to participate as fully as possible and to talk freely.

Dr. Story was informed that the Board had received five separate complaints from female patients who described sexual advances made during the course of pelvic examinations. It was emphasized to Dr. Story that the purpose of the informal interview was to investigate the complaints and that it was not a disciplinary proceeding.

Dr. Story was advised that the letters of complaint would be paraphrased since the individuals had requested that their names not be disclosed. However, if there was a formal hearing he would be given the opportunity to confront the witnesses. He was provided with the substance of the five complaints. He responded, "What I think as I listen to this is that I wouldn't do those sorts of things in my office. I have friends that have recommended that I take a hard reaction to this. One friend said I should sue."

Dr. Story felt most of the complaints were the products of an ex-employee who is a friend of the mother of one of the persons he suspects is a complainant. He stated that the daughter of one of the families he believed to be involved had used similar accusations to "get a coach out of town." He said of the complainants, "It would take dwelling on it to build up these details. ... It would take visualization ... a lot of thinking and dwelling to think up these details." He alluded to the instability and psychological problems of the people involved and to incest in the community.

He stated he has confronted one or two people about these complaints. He further stated that he would not use his office in "that" way, and that he suspected there were two people involved: middle-aged ladies who were rather "vicious." He explained that one worked for him at one time; his wife told him the other woman had also worked for him, and that half of "this" came from one family.

In response, parts of the letters were read. One complaint stated, "I have no reason to discredit Dr. Story. ... I dearly love this man and I don't want to ruin him." Dr. Story stated the portions of the letters read to him sounded "compassionate." He said that he is aware of innuendos regarding two family households, marginal information about life-styles, and that he is trying to get some perspective as to what controls the mind.

He was asked if the charges were made because they are true, and he answered that the charges were not correct and that he would not use his office for such a purpose. He was asked if he meant that he was not adverse to using other places. He responded, "I haven't always been as I am now," and that the office was not used for such purposes. Continuing, he stated that to guard against "this" happening, a physician should never be alone in the office. He said that is now his practice and he has decreased the number of pelvic examinations by one-half.

Dr. Story was excused at this point. During the discussion the attendees took into account the fact the Board had received five complaints, and that Dr. Cohen had spoken with the complainants to
confirm
their identities. There was no reason to suspect the five complainants were lying about such a sensitive subject. On the other hand, Dr. Story had offered little more than a flat denial and the suggestion that he was being victimized for some unstated reason. At this point, the Board members concluded, the investigation would not be dropped.

Dr. Story was invited back into the room, and the following options were reviewed with him: 1) voluntarily agreeing to take some form of action such as relinquishing his license, or 2) proceeding to a formal hearing if an investigation so warranted. If the matter is not settled at the informal interview stage, Dr. Story was advised that there is an obligation on the part of the Board to further investigate the allegations.

He stated, "After twenty-five years in the community, that means the end for that, doesn't it?" At this point, he was strongly advised to obtain legal counsel before he made a decision.

Dr. Story told the Board he felt his choices were to either leave the state or to have all the accusations come out in the open. He was asked if he had any ideas on how to resolve the problem. He responded that the only thing he could suggest would be a requirement that he never examine a female patient without a nurse present. Assistant Attorney General Kathleen Karpan responded that this type of discipline would be difficult to enforce and would not address the problem of past misconduct. Dr. Story replied he would respond to charges of past misconduct by calling witnesses where there had been witnesses. He repeated his belief that there are two persons who have helped fan the accusations, and that they have histories of unreliability. He was asked, "Is there absolutely no foundation for the complaints, and are the women who have written these letters liars?" He responded, "Yes."