Everything She Ever Wanted (81 page)

of state and it was sleeting outside and rainy."
 
She said she thought

Pat was safely tucked in bed.
 
"I went back and she was gone.".

Margureitte said she had tracked her daughter "like an animal" out

there behind the house on Tell Road.
 
"She wouldn't let me come near

her .
 
. . she said .
 
. . she would take the same instrument that she

had used on her right hip and she would plunge it into her heart."

Margureitte sat straight and unflinching as she unveiled one histrionic

scene after another, her crystal gaze fixed, daring anyone to think

less of her and her daughter.

Sonja Salo maintained that Margureitte's testimony was newly discovered

evidence that Dunham McAllister had not known about during Pat's

trial.

"I think under the law that if she was, in fact, legally insane at the

time, she could not be held criminally responsible for a crime."

Judge Hicks seemed a little puzzled.
 
"Doesn't that take some

adjudication, to declare one legally insane?
 
She has not ever, I

assume .
 
. . been declared legally insane, has she?"

Sonja said that that could be decided prior to any new trial Pat would

have, but she certainly felt the question of Pat's insanity made a new

trial necessary.

"Of course," the judge pointed out, "all of the information you had

Mrs. Radcliffe testify to so far today was known by Mrs. Radcliffe

way back in 1975 and '76 and she was in touch with the attorney, Mr.

McAllister, and testified as a witness in the trial.

. . . None of that information is anything new, is it?"

Sonja explained that this was all new, not only to Dunham McAllister,

but to everyone else.
 
Margureitte Radcliffe had not known what to do

with her knowledge that her daughter was insane," so she told no one.

"Mrs. Radcliffe is under no legal obligation, if she has problems with

her child, to be telling an attorney or anyone else that problem."

Judge Hicks was baffled and a little annoyed.
 
"Well, who is the moving

party in this case today?
 
Is it the same Patricia Allanson?
 
Is it her

guardian?
 
Is it a legal fiction-or who is the court reviewing.

Sonja Salo believed so much in her cause that she may not have seen how

specious her arguments were.
 
She had had no psychiatric tests done on

Pat, who was the "movant," because "I do not believe Patricia Allanson

today is legally insane.
 
This is a very strange situation."

It was indeed.

Andy Weathers cross-examined Margureitte Radcliffe.
 
He quickly

elicited the information that she had known that Dunham McAllister was

her daughter's attorney for ten months before her trial, but she said

she had been so unsure of her legal rights that she had never mentioned

to him that she felt Pat was insane.

Nor had either she or her husband felt they should bring that out in

trial.

To date, Margureitte and Clifford Radcliffe had presented many faces to

the world.
 
But, never, ever had they appeared timid and unsure.

Weathers's voice was thinly edged with sarcasm as he questioned the

witness and drew forth only repetitions of how awed she had been by the

Georgia judicial system.
 
Margureitte said she had had no idea in the

whole wide world that she should have mentioned her daughter's

craziness to anyone, or even that she had the legal right to do that.

Sonja Salo introduced an affidavit from Dr. Ray Loring Johnson, a

psychiatrist who had treated Pat at the Metropolitan Psyer in April of

1975, but who had lost track of her chiatric Cent between June and

December.
 
He had not seen her again until the next October.
 
He'd seen

Pat twice in December 1976, and seven times in early 1977, as she

awaited trial.
 
He had diagnosed her initially as having "severe

personality disorientation" when she slashed her wrists after being

struck by Colonel Radcliffe.
 
She had- been obsessed with getting Tom

out of Jail and felt she and her husband were being mistreated.
 
At

that time, Johnson saw agitation, disorganization, and "much paranoid

ideation.

Essentially, Dr. Johnson could not diagnose what Pat's mental state

might have been at the time of the arsenic poisonings.
 
He hadn't seen

her at all during that phase of her life.
 
"It is impossible for me to

make definite statements about her sanity at the time of the offense,

since this was three or four months after I saw her in December 197S,

and six to seven months before I saw her again in October 1976.
 
I can

say that she was disorganized, suspicious, mistrustful, and, on several

occasions, had seemed out of touch with reality during my earlier work

with her.
 
. . . I believe that it was quite probable that she was out

of touch with reality at the time of the offense."
 
Dr. Johnson did,

however, say that he felt Pat had been "unable to collaborate

effectively with her attorney in the preparation of her defense.
 
At no

time did she question her own sanity, or entertain the idea of making

it an issue at her trial."

Next came an affidavit from Dunham McAllister to,the effect that he had

not been aware that Patricia Allanson was "harboring any legal mental

defect."
 
Andy Weathers bought none of it.
 
He argued that it was

ridiculous to think that McAllister could have spent almost a year with

Pat preparing for trial and failed to notice that she was insane.
 
It

was even more ridiculous that she could testify at length at her own

trial and that no one from Judge Holt, to Weathers himself, to the 'ury

had found her even marginally mentally incompetent.
 
"No I w, the other

sort of a shotgun defense that is being raised here is that she didn't

know what she was doing at the time she did the act," Weathers

argued.

"The defense in this case was that she did not do it, and she very

clearly took part in that defense and testified to that effect.

Pat Taylor's current appeal was based on one of the most familiar

defense postures ever used: I didn't do it-but if I did do it, I was

crazy at the time.
 
And now I'm not crazy anymore.

It seldom worked.

Weathers would allow only that Pat "might not have been operating

mentally at peak capacity."
 
That didn't make her crazy.

The family hoped and prayed that Pat would be home with them by

Christmas.
 
It was not to be.
 
On December 9, 1980, Judge Ralph Hicks

rendered his decision.
 
"It is hereby ADJUDGED, ORDERED and DECREED

that said Motion be and the same is DENIED."
 
Hicks did not find that

the evidence was "newly discovered."
 
He was not convinced that Pat

Allanson had suddenly come to her senses and discovered that she had

been insane from 197S to 1977.

Sonja Salo was a very nice young woman.
 
She had done the best she

could for Pat and the Radcliffes, and they had lost.

Years later, she acknowledged how gullible she had been to believe

Pat's stories; she had even believed in the sociopathic sister hidden

away in North Carolina.
 
"I can say now," she concluded wryly, "that

Pat Taylor is the most manipulative human being I ever met in my

life."

. . .

Pat's story seemed to be over.
 
She was a middle-aged woman, confined

to prison for many, many years, her beauty blurred by too much fasting

and gorging and by the passing of those years.
 
She found her pleasure

in the pages of a craft store catalog and in bombarding her

grandchildren-except for Ashlynne-with handmade presents.
 
She sent

Sean dainty, hand-painted handkerchiefs to carry to school.
 
He thanked

her dutifully, and put promised him she would buy him a pony them in a

drawer.
 
She as soon as she was free.
 
(She never did.) Pat had never

gone into any phase of her life halfway.
 
She became completely

obsessed with Victorian needlework.
 
Her letters could still prickle at

the consciences of those who loved her.
 
She moved in their minds a

ways, a pi re who lived a desperate existence while they went about

enjoying their lives.
 
"Please remember," Pat I wrote to apologize for

slow progress on a petit point picture in April of 1982, "my day starts

at 4 AM & I work from 7AM-8 or 9 Pm.

Then when I do get in at night, I do have to shower, hand wash & iron

my clothes for next day.
 
(I only have 2 uniforms.) Then usually I have

a little dress to smock or hem, etc. But I usually spend every

available moment (that I have any light) on it."
 
Pat was horrified to

hear that Susan and Bill were moving away from Georgia again.
 
She

worried about how it would affect her grandchildren.
 
"I realize that I

have no right to voice an or offer advice; for who am I?
 
I'm a

prisoner but I'm opinion also your mother.
 
. . . Yes, I've made a lot

of mistakes.
 
Let me say one thing-if I lived to be a 100, I am

paying.
 
I'm paying for anything I ever did, or thought of doing or

would ever do.
 
It's Hell enough to not know if I did or did not

attempt to harm those two people.
 
But that's something I have to live

with & get straight with God.
 
I know I'll never take another pill

(narcotic) for you can be turned into a monster & not even know it &

then everyone & everything that comes into contact with you is harmed

in some form or another.
 
That's a form of Hell in itself, to know

that you've done this (& to people whom you love & who love you) & yet

you have no real memory of it.
 
. . . If anyone ever has any doubt that

I'm not suffering sufficiently, I assure them I am & will continue to

do so until the day I die.
 
And the worst suffering is not the

incarceration, but the knowledge that I'm responsible for destroying