Doc: The Rape of the Town of Lovell (46 page)

Q Offended?

A Yes.

Q Not angry?

A Not at that moment. . . .

ALETHA DURTSCHE

She thought, This is how they tear you down. Well, it won't happen to me. When he asked, "Do you want to take a break?" she proudly answered "No."

After lunch Tharp asked more questions, then passed her back to the defense. At last she heard the judge say, "You may step down, Mrs. Durtsche." She'd been on the stand for three hours.

70

JUDI CASHEL

Aletha came reeling into the hall, and Judi steered her to a wooden bench for first aid. "Hey, it's over!" 'she said. "You did a good job. See, I told you we'd make it."

"I said some stupid things," Aletha said. She cried as she listec her mistakes.

"No, no!" Judi interrupted, wagging a finger. "You did fine Aletha."

"I shouldn't have cried."

"You were believable. You sounded like what you are. We didn't want you to sound like a tape recording."

They walked downstairs and passed Aletha's husband Mike, on his way up to testify. He looked undaunted.

In the basement sequestering room, a deputy sheriff guarded the rest of the scheduled witnesses. "You're next, Emma Lu," Judi said.

"I'm ready," the wrinkled little woman said.

Judi thought, I hope so. Our side needs a boost. The truth was that Aarestad had beaten up on Aletha. She'd fallen into his rhythm, let him overpower her. Apparently his style was going to be to force the victims off balance, then highlight every contradiction and inconsistency. Aletha's emotional testimony had been honest, but some of the jurors looked unimpressed, especially when she admitted that she'd suspected Story of abusing her when she was a teenager and yet continued to see him. Fairly or unfairly, she'd come across as someone who'd worn a path to her doctor's office from the age of six. Jurors preferred strong, healthy types.

As Judi walked up the three flights with the seventy-six-year-old witness, she intoned her standard message of support: "Now remember, Emma Lu, give me a high sign if you need a Kleenex or water. If you think you're gonna pass out, wave your hand and we'll call for a break."

Emma Lu climbed the staircase like a young woman. "Remember," Judi went on, hustling to catch up, "you don't have to look at Dr. Story. Look at me and I'll smile. That's what I'm there for."
Yes,
she said to herself,
but I about wore out my smile on Aletha, and the trial just started.
"Remember, Emma Lu, there's plenty of folks on your side."

The cute old woman said, "The Lord will guide my words."

Judi took her own seat in the front row and smiled. When the witness was asked if she swore to tell the truth, she said "I do!" in a firm and fervent voice.

Her answers to Terry Tharp's questions were precise and direct. Did she go to Dr. Story very often? "Well, I have been very healthy so I haven't gone very many times." Was there a nurse in the room for her pelvic? "No, there was no nurse in the room." When she was asked for information that she no longer remembered, she simply said, "I don't remember," instead of fumbling for an answer.

Q What happened then from the point that he reentered the room?

A Well, he said, I am going to put a tube up you.

Q Up you? Where did he mean?

A Well, up my vagina, I suppose is what he meant. He says, I am going to use a tube.

Q Okay. What happened then?

A Well, then I began to hurt and I was looking at his face and ] began to hurt. And then he got a real odd look on his face and in fact it looked like my husband did when he meant to enter me, anc I looked down and there he was, and there was his penis. Q You say you saw his penis? A Yes, I did. . . .

Tharp held up State's Exhibit 20:

Q Is that a speculum?

A I guess it is.

Q Did that—I guess, this isn't what you saw on that day, is it'

A Heavens, no!

Judi looked at the jury. A few of the women were smiling, seemed attentive. Please, Lord, Judi said to herself, let her hold on cross.

Tharp asked how she'd felt at the sight of Story's penis. "Li! kicking him!" Emma Lu said with a toss of her lank gray hair. Ii seemed to Judi like a normal reaction for a pioneer woman wl was as tough and wiry as the greasewood roots she'd once torn
01
with her father. The minor outburst only made her seem mi believable.

Aarestad's first question was, "What is your date of birth?"

When Emma Lu said it was November 17, 1908, he asked, "So you would have been approximately sixty-eight years of age then on October 3, 1977?" Behind the question, Judi realized, was another one: what man would want to rape such an old woman? Few jurors understood that a rape victim's age or appearance were meaningless to a typical attacker. Judi had heard of women in their eighties who were raped by teenagers. It was not a crime of love or lust. She'd watched defense lawyers play on this ignorance before. It was a standard defense.

Aarestad returned the witness to the crucial scene and then asked, "Did you observe him undo his trousers and remove this tube?"

A I did not.

Q Did you hear a zipper come down?

A I didn't hear a zipper.

Q All right. Then you feel pain in vaginal area?

A Yes, I did.

Q And could you describe this pain to me, please?

A I don't believe I could. I think you have to be a

woman. . . .

Q The next thing that you remember then is looking down and seeing what?

A The next thing I remember was the look on his face . . . the look of my husband when he penetrated me ... a look of concentration. . . .

Q As I understand your testimony, you don't know whether or not he entered you or not?

A It felt like it.

Q Okay. And then what did you do?

A I began to try to get out, get away from there.

Q How did you do that?

A I don't know. I'm quite agile. I'm in good physical shape. ... I just got out of the road as fast as I could.

Aarestad increased the pace, and Judi tried to project a message with her eyes: don't play his game, Emma Lu. Think carefully before you answer. Don't let him run you the way he ran Aletha.

Q Would you describe this penis for me? How long was it?

A I don't know how long. I only saw that much.

Q About like that?

A About like that, yes.

Q A couple inches.

A A little littler, less than that. Go littler. About like that. Up next to him, between him and me.

Q So what you saw when you looked down was not the head of a penis?

A No, it wasn't.

Q What portion of the penis would it have been?

A It would have been about two inches of him next, up next to —the root.

Q I'm sorry?

A The root up next to him.

Judi smiled. Emma Lu's bright green eyes were locked on the lawyer's. It was hard to believe that this was the same person who'd omitted information in her first two interviews because she couldn't say "penis."

The judge smiled as he called for order. Most of the jurors laughed.

Aarestad launched into a series of questions about Story's penis: its length, what portion she'd seen, how long she'd seen it. He asked her to use her hands to show its girth. Judi thought,
Don't let him embarrass you, Emma Lu. He's trying to upset you and make you look ignorant.

She stole a glance at the jurors. They watched closely as Emma Lu refused to be bullied or led. Even when she misunderstood the questions, she seemed in control:

Q And I believe you indicated that [Diana Harrison] is your husband's aunt?

A No.

Q She would be your husband's nephew's wife?

A No.

Q She would be your nephew's wife.

A No. She is my nephew's wife.

Aarestad abruptly ended his questioning. Judi thought, score a round for us. The trial, she figured, was now about even.

A less emphatic Emma was next—Emma Briseno McNeil, a heavy, dark-skinned woman who'd moved to Maine two years earlier with her laborer husband Kenneth. She testified that Story had raped her while her two-year-old daughter Crystal played with the controls on his automatic table. ". . . He got mad and he said that I should have left her home. And then I guess he was mad, he backed up and then that's when I felt the penis come out. ... He walked over to the washbasin and he started washing it off."

Despite the novelty of her story, the jury didn't seem attentive, maybe because her voice was too weak to carry over the construction din from outside, or maybe because she was less certain of her facts and nowhere near as angry as Emma Lu. To Judi, she seemed to lack the motivation of some of the other women. Maybe it was because she was isolated from the rest of them in her new home in Maine.

On cross-examination, Aarestad had no trouble mixing her up, and sometimes Tharp had to interrupt to keep the record straight:

Q
(By
M
r.
A
arestad
) In addition to the speculum portion of the exam—

M
r.
T
harp
Your Honor,
I
think that question—now she said, she never said anything about a speculum. ... I object to that as misstating the testimony.

T
he
C
ourt
Ask her, Counsel, if one was used that day.

Q
(By
M
r.
A
arestad
) For clarification, you do not recall a speculum being used by you on that particular day?

A No.

Once again, the tall defense lawyer dwelled on what seemed to be a favorite subject:

Q Did you see his penis?

A Yes.

Q This is before he got to the sink?

A Yes.

Q Would you describe the penis to me that you saw?

A Well, his pants were unzipped and it was hanging out and that's when he started to wash his hands and his penis.

Q I take it his penis was hanging down?

A Just a little bit.

Q Okay. Was it erect and parallel with the floor? Was it drooping? Could you give me some indication with your hands?

While the embarrassed woman groped for an answer, Judi concluded that these repeated questions about the male organ could only be part of an overall defense plan to throw the women off and make them sound undignified and silly. Well, she said to herself, Story knows these women well. A month ago, before counseling, the technique might have worked. Now it just seems to be annoying the jury.

The last day of the first week of trial was Good Friday, and the only victim to testify was Julia Bradbury. She was now seventy-two, white-haired and neatly dressed in a black suit with red piping and a red blouse with a soft bow. She testified that she was a widow; her husband had run a store and she'd kept the books.

Tharp elicited her story in a straight line: a visit to Story for a flu shot, an unscheduled pelvic exam at the doctor's suggestion, a "tube," a rape. The jury perked up when she testified that semen ran down her legs after the exam, and "I was so stunned I didn't do anything."

When she inadvertently mentioned the Medical Board hearing, Aarestad objected and Tharp rephrased the question. When she mentioned it again, the annoyed lawyer threatened to move for a mistrial. Before he began his cross-examination, Aarestad arranged for the judge to remind the woman that the Medical Board proceeding "has no bearing in this criminal proceedings and we would ask that you not refer to it again." Judi thought that the elderly woman looked shaken and confused.