House of Secrets (40 page)

Eddie Lee Sexton was not entitled to immunity for events that happened “off the reservation,” he said. As Sexton watched from the defense table, Mitcham reached from the bench, giving Sexton’s membership card to a court clerk. “Hand this back to Running Bear,” the judge said.

Pruner would soon hear about other Indian matters. Not 10 days later, the prosecutor took a phone call from homicide detective Mike Willette.

A witness had come forward after seeing the Sexton coverage in the newspaper. Willette was calling from Sarasota. “Jay, I’ve got a librarian down here who seems to know something about these people,”

the detective said. He didn’t play organized sports. He didn’t lift weights, he told a jailmate. He’d pumped those bulging biceps by throwing yards of dirt in his little landscaping business back in Ohio, sometimes with his helper, the boy he also called his “best friend,”

also his victim-Joel M. Good. He’d never had a date, except his sister Sherri, whom his father allowed him to take to the senior prom. He liked to fish on the family pond for bass, and when it froze, he skated. He liked music, country western mostly. His favorite song was “Pin A Note On My Pillow” by Patsy Cline. Once, when he threatened to leave the house on Caroline, he’d been tied to a tree, his father pressing the tip of a rifle to his head. Another time he’d been carted back by the police as a runaway. He’d received 5446 a month from Social Security, but hardly saw a dime. He’d been whipped, pummeled, and sodomized by a father. He was big enough to beat his father until he couldn’t walk. But by all accounts, he’d never raised a hand. By September 21, Judge Bob Mitcham had received three psychological evaluations of William Sexton from the defense and prosecution. He was virtually illiterate. He’d been in special ed classes all his life.

He had an IQ of 80. He couldn’t count backwards from 20. On the Vineland Social Maturity Scale, he registered the age of an 11year-old.

One official diagnosis, Major depression, congruent with severe psychotic features. And Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. He claimed to be hearing voices about Joel. He had flashbacks. He hid under beds and in cell corners. He was on two medications for depression, anxiety, and seizures. He was not necessarily insane, everyone concluded, but was “incompetent” to stand trial under the law.

He was competent at the time of the murder, one psychiatrist wrote.

But he wasn’t now. “Mr. Sexton does not have the sufficient present ability to consult with his lawyers with a reasonable degree of rational understanding,” reported psychiatrist Bala K. Rao, M. D. “He does not have a rational or factual understanding of the proceedings against him … He can’t provide a reasonable description of the roles of the judge, the prosecutor, or defense attorney.” He couldn’t understand “the concept of plea bargaining.” Two psychologists believe he might be competent at a future date following extended therapy in a state mental health facility. Judge Mitcham ruled Willie Sexton incompetent to stand trial. Less than a month later, he would commit him to the Mentally Retarded Defendant’s Program at the Florida State Mental Hospital at Chattahoochee. He’d be evaluated every six months for competency, and brought back for trial if his condition improved.

Later reports would surface of Willie being raped by inmates at the Hillsborough County Jail. Before the judge’s ruling, Otis Sexton spoke to Willie on the telephone. His uncle told him he’d see him during the trial. He seemed oblivious to the potential consequences of strangling Joel Good. Willie asked, “Uncle Otie, will you be able to take me home?” The jury was seated, the opening arguments held that morning on the last day of August. Eddie Lee Sexton, 53, sat at the defense table, wearing a brown suit and red power tie, his hair combed back.

During voir dire the day before, he’d worn a pair of Rick Terrana’s shoes, three sizes too big. Now he had a pair of Bass Weejuns. The clothes came from the county public defender’s office, which kept a wardrobe of suits for indigent clients. Without his beard, his weight up from jail food, Eddie Lee Sexton looked as harmless as Art Linkletter. His eyes followed Jay Pruner’s first witness to the stand.

Charles “Skipper”

Sexton was dressed in jail blues. His temporary Florida residence was the Hillsborough County Jail. He easily answered the prosecutor’s first 46 questions. He told the jury he’d pled guilty to burglary in Ohio. He told the jury of camping at Little Manatee and seeing the large “mint” Winnebago with Raymond Hesser. He recalled a discussion between his father, Pixie, Willie, and himself. “And what did your dad say about Mr. Hesser, this disabled camper?” Jay Pruner asked.

Skipper answered quietly, “You know, we’re just having a discussion about how good the motor home, you know, the condition the motor home was in and everything.”

“Okay. Was there any plan to do anything with Mr. Hesser?”

“Yes, there was.” Pruner asked, “What was that and who said it?”

“Wellskipper paused. Frozen. Then he began to cry. Jay Pruner could feel his own pulse thumping. It would be the attorney’s most vivid memory of the entire Sexton case. He posed the question again, number 50. From the back row, spectators could see Pruner’s neck turning bright red. “Mr. Sexton, what did you father say he wanted to do with Mr. Hesser?” Rick Terrana objected. “That’s a mischaracterization of the evidence.” But there was no evidence, not yet. Mitcham overruled.

Skipper finally answered, “He wanted to get his identity.” Pruner pushed him now. “What did his plan involve as how to get his identity?” Terrana objected again. “Sir?” Pruner demanded.

“Kidnap him.”

“And to do what with him in addition to kidnapping him, if anything?”

“Take him out.”

“Take him out, meaning what, sir?”

“Kill him,” Skipper Sexton said. For the next hour, he detailed the entire plot. There were a half dozen more witnesses waiting. But after Rick Terrana couldn’t shake Skipper Sexton on cross-examination, the attorney conferred with his client. Then the attorney had an announcement for the court. Eddie Lee Sexton was prepared to plead guilty to conspiracy to murder, a potential 30-year felony. The conspiracy trial was over by the Tampa rush hour. Said Terrana later, “We determined that it would be in our best interests, and Eddie’s best interest, from a strategic standpoint and for other reasons, to discontinue the trial at that point. And Eddie, for some reason I don’t know to this day, he wanted to get that trial out of the way.”

“The Big One” had some of the trappings Americans have come to expect from high-profile trials. Judge Bob Mitcham’s large courtroom just off a busy hallway on the first floor of the Hillsborough County Courthouse Annex was at capacity. Photographs and video cameras were allowed in the courtroom. But Mitcham also would allow wimesses to avoid being shown on camera if they so requested. Considering the subject matter, several witnesses took advantage of the option. TV stations secured copies of Sexton’s Clinton-Reno videotape for viewers. Newspapers and TV news weighed in daily with coverage. Joel Good’s aunts, uncles, and grandparents strolled the hall, wearing pins made from Good’s bright-eyed high school portrait. The Sexton Family Robinson had been put up in a nearby Holiday Inn, along with witnesses Steve Ready and Judee Genetin. The Stark County DHS also sent a social worker to look after the minor Sexton kids. They planned a trip to Busch Gardens for the siblings, but it rained through most of their stay. They amused themselves by feeding pigeons from the balconies overlooking a nearby canal. At night, they talked deep into the early morning hours, making more disclosures about family life. Eddie Lee Sexton also had his supporters. His older sister Nellie Hanf had arrived from Canton and was expected to be a witness in the penalty phase of the trial, if the jury convicted her baby brother. Dave and Jean Sexton arrived, Jean a witness. On breaks, Dave Sexton sat in the hall in his wheelchair, sunglasses on. During one, Steve Ready stood down the hall and flipped him obscene gestures every time Sexton looked his way. If he couldn’t see him, Ready figured, no harm. If he could, he deserved it. Ready remained frustrated that Sexton’s daughter had chosen not to pursue a rape and incest charge. Otis Sexton wandered the halls, talking to reporters, commiserating with Good’s family. Eddie Jr., not a witness, also showed up at the Holiday Inn. The state picked up the tab until Jay Pruner learned he was siding with his father, asking his siblings, “Are you for us, or against us?” The patriarch’s letters had him all twisted around. Pruner checked him out on the county’s hotel tab.

Eddie Jr. went to Rick Terrana for help. Before everyone gathered, there’d been weeks of motions, including an attempt by Terrana to move the trial to another county, but it had been denied. More crucial to the defense were hearings to limit the evidence to the facts surrounding the murder itself. Terrana had made a preemptive strike at the prosecution’s theory of dominance and control by Eddie Lee Sexton.

He wanted Mitcham to prohibit testimony of rape, incest, and brutality by Eddie Lee Sexton. It was basic criminal law. Previous bad acts by a defendant could not be introduced to prove a crime, lest they prejudice a jury. They were only relevant if they had probative value related to the crime. Jay Pruner had argued exactly that in an evidentiary hearing. He wanted it all. The abuse, the Satanism, the dynamics in the house on Caroline Street. They were part of the “iron-fisted”

control that allowed Sexton to order the murder of his son-in-law.

“The State must be able to accurately depict the true nature of Sexton’s relationships with family members,” the state argued in a brief. “Absent such evidence, a jury shall be left wondering why William would kill for his father, why other adult offspring would acquiesce in their father’s plan and why they shared in their father’s desire to avoid arrest and the dissolution of the family.” After hearing arguments, Judge Mitcham put both sides in a state of legal suspended animation. Rather than limit the evidence up front, he told attorneys he’d rule witness by witness during the trial. For Terrana, that meant a flurry of objections in front of the jury. For Pruner, that meant he faced the very real possibility of watching his entire theory crumble before the gathered crowd. In the first trial phase, the prosecution would present 17 witnesses and 23 exhibits. Crime scene photos. Pictures of Joel Good, one from high school, the others after he was unearthe The crude garrotte. Polaroids of the Dodge Challenger. Pixie’s plea agreement. She would not be sentenced until after the murder trial.

There was a noticeable absence of one prop, a time-line card common in a trials of such complexity. Jay Pruner planned to steer clear of dates and times, putting Good’s death at somewhere between Thanksgiving and Christmas of 1993. A few of the Sexton children had been able to name a day of the week for particular events, but that was it. Their depositions about the length of stays at the state parks didn’t even match camping receipts. Through thousands of .k pages of reports and depositions, the Sexton Family Robinson seemed to have been living in a time warp. A jury of eight men and two women would hear potentially two phases, the first to determine guilt or innocence. Under Florida law, if the jury determined Sexton had planned the killing, he could be convicted of first-degree murder, even though he himself had not strangled Joel Good. During the second, they’d determine if the death penalty was warranted. In his opening, Jay Pruner said good morning to the jury, then went right at Eddie Lee Sexton. “For all of his adult life, it is apparent that Eddie Lee Sexton had a secret,” he began.

She was the state’s second witness, the first Flatliner, walking slowly to the stand. Pixie Good wore a padded-shoulder blazer with a hounds’-tooth-like pattern and a black shirt that seemed to accent the dark circles under her eyes. Her first words were nearly inaudible, even to the court reporter five feet away. Mitcham exhorted her to speak up. Finally, the court adjourned early for lunch so a microphone and speaker system could be installed. Even then, the microphone had to be continually readjusted. Someone finally propped it on top of a phone book, the microphone almost touching her lips. Still, the jury strained to hear. She told the story she’d been telling in depositions.

She’d heard Joel yell “Ed” and rushed into the brush to find Willie strangling Joel. Her father returned from the picnic. She took him to Willie and the body. He lowered his ear to Joel’s mouth to see if he was breathing, then kicked his leg and ordered Willie, “Finish him oœ”

He ordered her and Skipper to drive and buy a shovel. Her father ordered the cover story about the woman in the red Nissan. Then she surprised attorneys on both sides of the courtroom. She said she heard more conversation the night of the murder in the motor home, between her father and mother as they lay in bed in the Challenger, only “six steps” from her bed. “What did your father say?” Pruner asked. “He was telling my mom what actually happened.”

“What did you hear him say?”

“That he had Willie kill Joel.” . It was the first time any Sexton sibling had said May Sexton had been told about the murder plan.

Terrana wanted a bench conference, complaining he’d been blind-sided.

He’d received no police statements concerning this testimony, he complained. Terrana told Judge Mitcham, “That’s the first time I’ve heard that statement.”

“That’s the first time I’ve heard it, too,”

Pruner said. When they resumed, Pixie told of two conversations in which her father told of planning to kill Joel. One was during a trip to Ohio two weeks before the killing. The other was at the camp picnic table a week later. “He said that he wants to get rid of Joel because he knows too much,” she said. They moved into life in the house on Caroline Street, her father’s discipline, Pixie saying, “Until you’re 18, you get it with the belt. After you’re 18 you get his fist.”