Doc: The Rape of the Town of Lovell (43 page)

security reasons he'd held back the receipts from his Utah trip, but now he needed the reimbursement.

Fifteen minutes after he turned in the papers, he watched as the clerk La Vera Hillman headed up the hill toward Story's home. He admonished himself for not catching on earlier. His good friend La Vera and her daughter Jan had been outspoken Story supporters from the beginning. He thought of calling Terry Tharp and discussing a felony charge of obstruction of justice, but he couldn't bring himself to such drastic action against the sweet southern lady who still said "y'all." He would just have to be more careful.

He drove up to Billings and within an hour had to shake a persistent green Cadillac. Later he spotted the same car in a parking lot and checked it out with the Billings P.D.

"That sounds like Zack Belcher," a detective told him. Zack and Mary Belcher operated Silver Run Productions, a detective agency in Red Lodge, Montana. They were highly regarded and didn't come cheap.

Wilcock reported the incident to Terry Tharp. When the prosecutor complained to Wayne Aarestad, the defense lawyer explained that Story was considering a conspiracy defense and therefore the surveillances were proper.

"They think you're a conspirator, Dave," Tharp warned on the phone.

Wilcock thought, In eleven years of police work, that's one name I haven't been called.

65

MARILYN STORY

What she would have given for John's strength of character! Watching him treat the loyal patients who came in for pelvics, she realized again what an uncommon man she'd married. He was a marvel of consistency in what he did, how he felt, how he acted and reacted. He didn't sulk or brood, and he wasted no time on worry. Emotionally, the two of them were almost opposites. Around Thanksgiving, her doubting soul had convinced her that he was going to prison. "Have been filled with horrible fears . . ." she'd written in her journal. "Can't seem to control my thoughts or emotions. Can't pray—don't know what to ask. . . ."

Both Storys remained high on the ex-hippie Wayne Aarestad, even though his asking fee had risen with the filing of criminal charges. When the lawyer came to dinner, he talked about the power of the Holy Spirit. He explained that he'd been raised as a member of the Two by Twos, a sect that derived its name from its practice of sending out evangelical teams in twos, after Matthew 11:2. The "Two by Twos" were such hardheaded fundamentalists that the fifteen-year-old North Dakota boy had quit in disgust. "I didn't hand my life back over to the Lord till three or four years ago," he confessed to the Storys. "Christ is everything to me now." He urged John to find a prayer partner and meet with him on a regular basis—"starting
tomorrow
!" as Marilyn noted in her journal.

She wasn't surprised when John refused. He honored God in his own way. Once or twice he reminded the lawyer that God loved them all, and God's will would prevail. To Marilyn, it sounded like his old Christian fatalism again. The most dire prospects left him unperturbed. God is in charge, he would say. God knows exactly what He's doing.

One morning at five she answered the phone to a soft male voice saying "You are going to die." Twenty minutes later John took the same message, mumbled something, and went back to sleep, cloaked and protected by God.

She couldn't keep up with the legalities—postponements, pretrial motions couched in Latin phrases, tedious depositions. One gloomy day she wrote, "Lord . . . help us to be braced for this new shock wave." A few days later, her mood improved and she wrote, "We have been having some wonderful times of fellowship with Wayne. Have gone on several mountain outings with him. He is confident about the outcome. ..."

When the McArthur girls had filed their $3-million civil suit, both John and Wayne had surprised her by seeming pleased. "That's the biggest mistake they could have made," the lawyer said at the time.

R. Scott Kath of Powell had been retained to hit Meg and Minda with a $10-million countersuit and also to assist in the criminal trial. The Wyoming newspapers were full of news about the legal maneuvering, and soon a new batch of pro-Story letters and ads began to appear. A woman from Vashon Island, Washington, wrote to the
Chronicle:
"Why are these people doing this sick, unspeakable horror to a man like Dr. Story? This week my question has been answered. We get down to the nitty gritty . . . the almighty dollar."

Wayne Aarestad pointed out another benefit of the poorly timed lawsuit. In criminal proceedings, there were strict limits on how deeply he could delve into the complainants' personal lives, but by bringing a civil suit, Meg and Minda had made their lives fab-game. They could be questioned till their teeth rattled.

The day Meg was deposed John and Wayne returned from the downtown session wearing grins, and when Marilyn read the transcript, she saw why. Meg had been forced to admit that a relative had made her feel his penis—and not just once. Wayne had made her recite a shameful inventory: five incidents of fornication during a two-year relationship with a man in Logan, Utah, three more in a three-month relationship that followed, three more in a third relationship that lasted a year, and a whole year of premarital intimacy with Dan Anderson. This was the paragon who claimed that John made a "dark ugly feeling" come over her!

Soon another accuser was stripped to the bone, this time in the latest psychological profile by John's old friend Dr. Russ Blomdahl. Marilyn thought, How fascinating to read the truth about Aletha at last! She'd never understood why the mail carrier had been willing to air so much of her own dirty linen just to ruin a fine man. But Russ's analysis made it all so simple—she'd been in love with John!

Of course Russ hadn't been able to interview the Durtsche woman in person, but he'd studied the transcript of an earlier deposition plus additional records that Marilyn had mailed from the clinic. His report noted that Aletha had been devastated by sexual guilt since childhood and felt "expressions of infatuation for Dr. Story [as] described in her recollections of baking bread and taking it to him; painting a picture for him; and bringing the mail into his office. . . ."

In his analysis, Russ considered the question of whether Aletha might have gone to John's office on that fateful February day "to relieve the unconscious desire to engage in sexual fantasy again." When John didn't give her the comfort she sought, Russ explained, Aletha became angry.

The report concluded that Aletha had been caught up in the mass hysteria and "collective obsessions" of certain Lovell women and allowed her fantasies about Dr. Story to become real in her own mind. Nothing that she said could be considered "in accordance with reality or creditable."

MARILYN STORY

Marilyn saw the hand of God in the timing of Russ's report, as she'd seen it in the fortuitous exposure of Meg Anderson's sex life. Just a few weeks before the Durtsche analysis arrived, the Reverend Buttermore had suggested that each parishioner select one of the accusers as a personal special project, pray for her and fast for her, and ask God to keep her from hurting John. Marilyn had selected Aletha.

Two weeks before the trial, there was more good news for her journal: ". . . We found out (via the news media!) that six women accusers have been dropped from the case! The prosecuting attorney seemed to state that they would be damaging to his case. We are praising God, for his hand is beginning to move."

66

TERRILL THARP

"We have to go to trial with as clean a profile as possible," the county attorney explained in his monastic, undersized office. "The McArthurs were just too damn big a problem."

"Where'd we be without the McArthurs?" a baffled-looking Dave Wilcock asked.

"Nowhere. But that's not the point."

In the pretrial maneuvering, the defense strategy had come all too clear to the young prosecutor. Story's private detectives were putting the finishing touches on a highly effective smear campaign. The McArthurs would be depicted as architects of a conspiracy to destroy an elder of a rival church. Studies by a friendly psychologist would show that Meg and Minda had lusted for their family doctor. Meg's modest sex life would be picked over. Minda would be characterized as an immoral flake, and both sisters would be forced to admit they'd been censured by their church. Arden, matriarchal leader of her ward as president of the Relief Society, would be painted as a fanatical schemer who dreamed up the conspiracy after her idol refused to convert.

"I could've handled all that bullshit," Tharp told the police chief, waving his long saxophonist's fingers, "but then Meg and Minda had to go off the reservation and file their damn three-million-dollar suit. So we had no choice, Dave."

The prosecutor had also dropped three or four other counts because the complaints lacked essential elements. "The weaker cases drag down the strong," he explained to Wilcock. "Defense attorneys club you to death with the weak ones. I did it myself when I was a public defender."

The chief seemed to understand.

"Dave, I'll tell ya one thing," Tharp reassured him. "We're not gonna let the bastard walk."

He was surprised when Wilcock said he intended to quit his job, no matter how the case came out. "Judy and I are moving over near Seattle," he said.

Tharp said to himself, You poor guy, you look stressed out. No wonder. He'd worked this case night and day for three months.

"You'll hang in till trial, won't you, Dave?" Tharp asked.

"Try and get rid of me."

Tharp said he hated to see Dave go, and meant it. Back-of-beyond towns like Lovell didn't often see his like.

The county attorney felt bad when he read that Minda had called the dismissals "a slap in the face." She was quoted in the Casper
Star-Tribune,
"I don't know where the justice is. . . . I thought it was the people's case. I felt like I have been led on. It took me a long time to decide to go through with this and now he treats it like what happened to me is nothing."

He wished he could call her and explain the dynamics of criminal prosecutions, but that would have to wait. The McArthur women were the real heroines; people would find out soon enough. His spirits improved when he read a few inches deeper in the same article:

Aarestad has been reluctant to discuss Story's case prior to this week. But Thursday he blasted Tharp, the alleged victims, the investigation of the case, and what he perceives

as a lack of communication between his office and the prosecution. . . .

The Story case is "Wyoming's version" of the widely publicized Jordan, Minn., child abuse and sexual assault case, Aarestad said.

In Minnesota, he noted, "the prosecution jumped the gun and through a complete and total investigative failure, began premature prosecutions of innocent people."

In Story's case, "the decision to prosecute was made and then the real investigation began," the lawyer said. "If this case had been properly investigated . . . then none of this would have occurred."

The allegations against his client "are unsupported by any evidence," Aarestad said.

"All you have is the unsworn, bold assertions of the ladies . . . who, in many respects, pulled the wool over the eyes of the prosecutor and the investigators. They are now beginning to realize they don't have a case."

Tharp was pleased to see that he'd struck a raw nerve. As the April, 1985, trial date approached, he got word of the new prayer schedule at Story's Bible Church. Vigils were being held from 6
p.m
. till dawn. Sometimes Reverend Buttermore presided, sometimes elders like Tom Holm and Joe Brown. They prayed for Dr. Story, for his wife, for the judge and jurors. They even prayed for the county attorney. Tharp told his wife, "I'll take all the help I can get."

The victims kept phoning for reassurance. He had no choice but to hear them out. Now that he'd narrowed the list, every witness was crucial.

Aletha Durtsche told him, "I delivered to Reverend But-termore's house, and his wife said, 'Aletha, I want you to know that in spite of everything, we still love you. I want you to know that you're welcome in our home at any time.' I said, 'Well, thank you, I appreciate that.' But good heck, she's never welcomed me in her home before! Why now, Terry? It makes me feel so guilty, like I'm doing some terrible thing to Dr. Story and his wife."

"You're not guilty, Aletha," Tharp reminded her. "That's how they'd like you to feel. Story did this to himself."

Aletha thanked him and said she would try to feel better.

The reclusive Hayla Farwell phoned. As a lifelong Lutheran, she was a key witness, along with the Presbyterian Julia Bradbury and the Catholic Emma Briseno McNeil. All the other complainants were Mormons and could be used by the defense to further the claim of religious conspiracy.

"I'm afraid to go downtown," the Farwell woman complained. "People glare at me. I'm the type that likes people to like me." She had a childlike voice, and Tharp remembered hearing something to the effect that she'd been gassed and suffered mild brain damage years ago.

"Don't worry, Miz Farwell," he assured her in * farm-boy drawl. "Everyone'll like you after the trial."

Wanda Hammond came to his office for a pretrial interview and referred to Story's "thing."

"You mean 'penis'?" Tharp asked.