Everything She Ever Wanted (25 page)

from the hillside, and finally the very foundation of their lives.

As it was in most felony cases of such importance, there was a delay in

going to trial.
 
Tom's pretrial motions wouldn@t be heard until October

and Pat told him she had hit bottom.
 
She had no money and no strength

to go on.
 
She couldn't bear it that the trial had been delayed.
 
She

told him she really needed to be in the hospital.
 
"But I won't go,

Sugar," she said softly.

"Because that would mean I couldn't see you at all, couldn't come and

visit you-and that would surely kill me.
 
Besides, the premiums on the

medical insurance are past due and I can't pay for that or for my

medicine."

There could have been no more degrading purgatory for a man like Tom

than to be caged and see this fragile woman he adored reduced to

poverty and illness gone untreated.
 
Pat had become the only person who

mattered to him.
 
Her moods, worries, opinions, and well-being

determined his own.
 
Her fears and sorrows had the power to leave him

twisting in the wind.

Tom's attorneys would far rather' have seen him plead guilty to- lesser

charges than innocent to murder.
 
Pat would not have it.
 
She came to

every lawyer-client conference, attached to her husband's side, it

sometimes seemed, like an annoying growth.
 
It was almost as if she had

a secret fear that Tom would tell the Garlands and John Nuckolls

something that would endanger her.

But that was ridiculous.

Ed Garland finally got a!chance to talk with Tom alone, and he seized

it.

"Tom,- listen to me.
 
I cannot defend you unless I know the truth.

I'll defend you on what you say to do, but I've got to know .
 
. .

because all this stuff cannot be true."

Tom would later admit that he did finally tell Ed Garland what had

happened that night in the basement of his parents' house.
 
But he

would not let Garland repeat what he had saidnot to anyone.
 
Tom

exacted a promise that Garland would not use that information in

defending him.
 
He had promised Pat.

She, of all people, loved him more than anyone on earth.
 
And they

would do it her way.
 
Garland was supremely frustrated; he was one of

the best criminal defense attorneys in the state of Georgia, and he was

ethically bound to proceed with one legal arm tied behind his back.

Mary Linda Patricia Vann-"Patty"-two and a half in 1940, the most

beautiful baby in Warsaw, North Carolina.

Always in delicate health and subject to frequent fainting spells, Pat

suffered pulmonary emboli (blood clots in the lungs) and was

hospitalized in 1973.

Suitors filled her room with roses, but the one suitor she wanted most

backed away.

(INSET) Pat, 1973, when Tom Allanson fell in love 14 with her and they

moved to Zebulon, Georgia, to build their dream plantation: Kentwood

Morgan Farm.

(BELOW) It was a high point in her life when Georgia Governor Jimmy

Carter rode with Pat, costumed in velvet, in one of the Kentwood Morgan

Farm surreys.

Pat was distraught when she learned what Tom had told his onorney.
 
"I

thought she was going to divorce me right there," Tom remembered.
 
But

they did what Pat wanted.
 
She absolutely refused to consider a plea

bargain that would dictate that Tom would go to prison, if only for a

few years.
 
She would die without him.
 
He had to be free, and he would

be, she promised him.
 
She would brook no compromise.

It was agreed that Tom'would plead innocent to all charges.

And that left his attorneys precious little ammunition with which to

defend him.
 
They had character witnesses who admired Tom, and

witnesses who would demean the character of those who testified against

him.
 
Hardly the stuff of which a powerful defense is constructed.

Private investigators for the defense had tried to find someone who had

seen Tom far away from the shooting scene.
 
They had even advertised

for such a witness in the Atlanta Yournal personals: REWARD ANYONE

SEEING TOM 6FT 4, 250 POUNDS, LIGHT HAIR, 2 WEEKS AGO, WEDNESDAY, JULY

3RD BETWEEN,4:30 AND 9:00 ON CLEVELAND AVENUE BETWEEN S. FULTON

HOSPITAL AND I-75 OR GIVING HIM A RIDE ON I-75 FROM CLEVELAND TO

CENTRAL, PLEASE CALL 344-5729, 436-8435.

URGENT!URGENT!

The ad backfired, and became State's Exhibit No.
 
102.

It was an endless hot summer and fall as they waited for the trial, and

a relief when October 14, 1974, finally came.
 
Both Pat and Tom seemed

to believe that he would be found innocent and they would be together

again, perhaps in time to save their plantation.

Hoyt Waller expected a balloon payment by December or he would

repossess their paradise.
 
Tom thought he could find some way to scrape

the money together, if only he were free before the end of October.

Tom's divorce skirmishes had been held in small county courthouses; his

murder trial would be held in the Fulton County Courthouse in downtown

Atlanta.
 
Outside the massive white marble courthouse, the oak trees of

Atlanta glowed golden, the dogwood's leaves were tinged with red, and

the maple's turned a clear bright coral.
 
Inside, as in all courtrooms,

there was no sense of season, only the dust of many seasons, many

years.

"The court calls for trial," Judge Charles A. Wofford, white-haired and

benign, intoned, "the case of The State of Georgia v.

Walter Thomas Allanson, charged with murder, Indictment No.
 
A22765,

Colonel Edward T. M. Garland for the defendant and Colonel William

Weller for the state."

Customarily, relatives of the accused sat behind the gallery divider,

but Pat insisted on sitting at the defense table.
 
That was fine with

Tom, but Garland threw up his hands.
 
Dressed in a dazzling new outfit

each day, sewn by her own hand, Pat was the picture of the anxious,

devoted wife standing by her man.
 
Her vantage point at the trial also

allowed her to instruct Garland and,to nudge and whisper to Tom.

It took only a day to pick a jury, although they went through more than

four dozen candidates before both Ed Garland and William Weller

accepted a panel of seven men and five women, eight blacks and four

whites, with two alternates.
 
An inordinate number of the prospective

jurors had relatives in law enforcement, or knew either the prosecutor

or the defense team, or had very strong feelings about the death

penalty.
 
In the end, Tom Allanson's fate would be decided by a Sears

Roebuck store manager, a retired teacher, two postal employees, an

insurance analyst, a grocer, a physical education teacher, a phone

company clerk, a retired waitress, a payroll administrator, a

housewife, and a retired airline pilot.

As Assistant D.A. William Weller called his witnesses one by one, they

painted a devastating, unrelenting picture that would be hard for Ed

Garland to erase.
 
Sergeant Butts of the East Point Police Department

testified that Tom had been so angry two days before the killings-as he

sought to charge his father with public indecency-that he had said, "If

this kind of stuff keeps up, I'll kill him!"
 
Deputy Richard

Satterfield of Forsyth County, an investigator into the abortive ambush

at Lake Lanier four days before the murders, described how Walter and

Carolyn Allanson had almost died in a storm of bullets.
 
Mary Rena

Jones of the Jones store said she had seen a blue pickup truck with a

round decal on the door the morning of the ambush.

Weller called Walter Allanson's employees and neighbors, and then all

of the East Point police investigators who had pored over the house and

the yard on Norman Berry Drive or who had gone to Zebulon and arrested

Tom.
 
Twenty-two convincing witnesses for the state, none of whom had

particular axes to grind.
 
Step by step, Weller built his case,

implying to the jury that Tom Allanson was not only guilty of shooting

his parents on July 3, but that he had been present at all the earlier

attacks and harassments.

Tom sat frozen at the defense table, his longish hair cut now above his

ears and his shoulders straining at a tailored navy blue sport coat.

When Mary Jones testified that she had seen him drive by her store on

the morning of June 29, 1974, in a blue pickup with a canopy and a

Kentwood Morgan Farm circular seal on the door, he shook his head

slightly.
 
He knew that seal hadn't been on the truck since Pat's

accident in Stone Mountain two months before.
 
Pat's reaction was much

more obvious to the jury.

Frowning and grimacing, she wrote a note and shoved it dramatically

across the defense table to Ed Garland.

On cross-examination, Garland got Mrs. Jones to admit she hadn't

recognized the driver of the blue truck, nor had she mentioned seeing

the truck on the day of the ambush.
 
Her testimony warred with her

first police report.
 
She had first recalled seeing Tom the day before

the ambush at Lake Lanier.
 
Garland fought to have Mary Jones's

testimony thrown out, but he lost.

For the second time in two days, he asked for a mistrial, and for the

second time, Judge Wofford denied his request.

There would be many legal tussles between the defense and the

prosecution during the trial, times when the jury would be banished

from the courtroom.
 
Judge Wofford was an easygoing, folksy jurist.
 
He

invited the male members of the jury to remove their jackets and even

their shoes if they were pinching.

Ashtrays would be provided for those who cared to smoke.
 
He apologized

for the delays and explained that "if you're inclined to blame anyone,