If You Only Knew (28 page)

CHAPTER 69

IT'S ONE THING TO
get a witness on the stand and have him admit that an autopsy is, at best, a conventionally opinionated science, with some “exactness” involved, as Dragovic put it to Piszczatowski. Yet, it's quite another for both sides to disagree on just about every facet of a medical examiner's findings in a case. And that's what was going on here as Dragovic's cross-examination testimony wound down during the late-morning session of December 4, 2001.

A particular bone of contention was the idea that all heavy drinkers are created
unequally.
Piszczatowski would not allow the idea any rest.

“And you don't know for a certainty, to ‘exactness,' because you can't do a test on a person to say, ‘Mr. Rogers, why don't you drink to a .44 and let's see if you stay alive or you die?' We can't do that—that is inhumane, correct?”

“I would have never attempted to do that. But there were . . .”

“Okay,” Piszczatowski said, having a difficult time getting Dragovic to answer simply with a “yes” or a “no.”

Dragovic finished, anyway: “. . . some tests done and volunteers who have been exposed to drinking over many years and some inferences had been made. Yes.”

“And you don't know what his coordination was at a. 44, is that correct?”

“I know that being significantly impaired—”

“No!” Piszczatowski said, cutting him off.

But as was his MO throughout, Dragovic continued, adding “. . . but to what degree, of course, you have to assess the person himself.”

Piszczatowski dropped his head. Then: “And you don't know whether, based on your review of
all
the photos in this case, and whether based upon your experience and training in this case, that . . . it was common for Mr. Rogers to hold on to a banister that was located in that house. Do you know that fact? Or not?”

“A banister?”

“A banister, yes.”

“I do not see a . . . banister in the photos.”

Piszczatowski moved on. His point had been made.

Some point later, Dragovic said, without being prompted, “He did not fall, as a result of the appearance of his body, as a result of the constellation of things at the scene.... I do not know who placed Mr. Rogers's body there in that position. That I don't know. But I can tell you that I do
not
believe that he fell. There is no evidence whatsoever that he fell there.”

Vonlee Titlow, a name that rarely come up in this trial so far, had said, in her statement, that Don passed out and fell that night. Dragovic, apparently, did not have that information at his disposal when he made his analysis.

“Now,” Piszczatowski said, pressing forward, “is other than the things that you told us before, the discrepancies that emerged from the scene as being an altered one and the lack of the bruising, we went through all that stuff, were not going to do that . . .”

“We did?” Dragovic said with a smart tone.

“Is there anything about the lividity of Mr. Rogers that would indicate that he had been repositioned?”

“The lividity, as is there . . .”

Piszczatowski was now more than impatient. “If you can answer ‘yes' or ‘no,'” he said with as much restraint as he could manage, “I would appreciate that. Is there
anything
about the lividity of Mr. Rogers that would tell you whether he had been repositioned?”

“No.”

They went back to the chair and its position on the floor as the courtroom seemingly took a collective sigh.

Then the crossed-legs argument once again and the alcohol levels.

Piszczatowski brought up a valid point when he asked the doctor if he could say with absolute certainty that the slight “injury” on Don's lip was not, in fact, a common cold sore.

Dragovic said he couldn't.

Maybe a cold sore that had healed? Piszczatowski mentioned.

“I suspect that it is, but I am not sure,” Dragovic answered.

Piszczatowski put the photos of the injury on the overhead projector and had the doctor point to it, repeating what he now thought.

The doctor seemed to be all over the place. First it was an injury sustained when Don's “killer” placed a pillow over his face, a scrape of some type. Now it was an old cold sore.

Then Dragovic agreed that .44 was a level of alcohol in the blood that would be “sufficient” to cause death “in people that are not regularly exposed to alcohol,” which led to a discussion about “regular drinkers” and the difference between those who drank responsibly.

After saying he considered himself a “regular” drinker because he had a glass of wine each night after work, Dragovic brought up the notion of a “regular heavy drinker”—a category they both placed Don into. This was a person who “regularly consumes substantial amounts of alcohol.”

“Now, asphyxia is a diagnosis of exclusion. Is that correct?” Piszczatowski asked, finally getting them out of the alcohol discussion.

“Yes.”

“And you would agree that as a general principle, medical examiners have always, I think, said asphyxia is a diagnosis of exclusion. Would you agree with that statement?”

“Well, it is. It's a diagnosis of exclusion on physical grounds, examining the body itself, but it also incorporates the circumstances.”

In other words, it had to be ruled out.

“And when you talk about a diagnosis of exclusion, one generally
excludes
competing causes of death as a medical examiner . . . by way of autopsy, correct?”

Piszczatowski looked down at his notes.

Dragovic added something: “That's a helpful tool to demonstrate that there is
nothing
in the body. Yes.”

“And in this case, we didn't have that benefit, correct?” Piszczatowski pointed out.

“That's correct.”

“And were you able to
exclude
any other cause—possible causes of death in this case, medically? And by ‘medically,' I mean via the external examination viewing or via autopsy . . . ?”

“Well, we talked about that earlier, about forensic pathology—not being sterile signs without sense. We talked about forensic pathology taking into consideration
everything.
Sure enough, it would have been nicer to have the body examined and have all the details there and show that, hey, there is nothing there—because in asphyxia, you don't see anything
in
the body . . . [and] scientific principles are only applied with common sense. If they are applied without common sense, then medicine is no good for anything.”

“So, in this case, though,” Piszczatowski said, again looking for that “yes” or “no” answer Dragovic seemed unable to give, “we did
not
rule out any competing causes or possible competing causes of death via either the external examination or an autopsy?”

“We did,” Dragovic said, surprisingly.

“Oh, ‘we did'? Which ones?”

“As a matter of fact . . . all of them that prompted that report I issued in December of 2000, sir.”

“You were able to rule out
other
competing causes? You were able to rule out
all
other competing causes of death?”

“Absolutely, to my satisfaction. Yes.”

“To
your
satisfaction?”

The exchange was becoming heated and tense.

“Yes, sir.”

“Because that's
all
you can give us?” Piszczatowski reminded the doctor, with the jurors looking on with intensity.

“I'm a person. Only one.”

“I understand. And you were able to do that via looking at the
scene,
correct? The absence of a bruise on the head—correct?”

“The absence of injuries. Not only on the head, elsewhere on the body.”

“Okay. And . . .”

“Particular injuries,” Dragovic added. “Specific injuries.”

“And the statements that you received from the police?” Piszczatowski noted.

Dragovic clarified that the statements he received from the police had actually “prompted” him to “evaluate
everything.
I did not take statements from the police as something that is
without
question.” He claimed that he needed to “satisfy” his “conscience first and that's why I went through the process of reviewing
everything.
And if it made sense, it made sense. If it didn't make sense, it
didn't
make sense.”

“Personally, Dr. Dragovic, I'm just curious. How many times have you declared an unnatural cause of death, where you actually had the body,
without
performing an autopsy?”

Good question.

“On a number of occasions,” Dragovic said, “when I had some adequate history, information about the circumstances. That's more or less routine in certain instances.”

“But you reviewed autopsy finds in those cases, correct?”

“No, we're not talking about
autopsies.
You said without autopsy.”

“Oh, okay. So, on a number of occasions, you have?”

“That's right.”

“And did you have the body in
all
those cases that we talked about [during this trial]?”

“In some instances, yes. In other instances, it was not even a body.”

“But that was why I asked the question. When you don't have a body, I understand that. But when you did have the body . . . how many times have you opined as to an unnatural cause of death,
without
autopsy?”

“It's a regular occurrence. If there are injuries occurring in a person . . .” Dragovic stopped himself. Then: “Did you want me to explain?”

“No,” Piszczatowski said, and then he asked the doctor if he had any research that could back up what he was saying.

“I probably have . . . yeah.”

Piszczatowski asked him to get it.

“In the year 2001, there was one case of homicide that did not involve autopsy,” Piszczatowski explained, going back to what he and the doctor had discussed the previous day. “Were you involved in that case? Do you know?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Okay. Did you have the body in that case?”

“Yes.”

“And in the year 2000, that would be
this
case. There were none in '99. There were none in '98. There was one in '97. Do you know if you had the body in
that
case?”

“We had the body, possibly. But—”

Piszczatowski put up his hand like a traffic cop for Dragovic to stop. “Thank you.”

But Dragovic continued: “I might not have been involved. Sure, it's a routine. . . .”

“‘Routine'?” Piszczatowski questioned.

“And I can explain that, too.”

Piszczatowski asked the doctor how many autopsies in the year 2000 the ME's office performed.

“Probably about eight hundred fifty or so. I don't know. I'm guessing. Maybe nine hundred. Maybe.”

“Okay,” Piszczatowski said, clearly heading toward a conclusion of some sort. “And do you know many of those . . . involved . . . homicides?”

“Well, I'll have to check the statistics.”

“Okay.”

The doctor took a moment to look at the research provided by the APA.

“We are fairly low on homicides in Oakland County. It's not like when I worked in Wayne County, we had seven hundred homicides a year, you know. This is different.”

“And is eight hundred fifty kind of a standard number?” Piszczatowski wondered. “I mean, is that about what you had? Is that an
average
number—seven hundred to eight hundred autopsies a year?”

“That's within the reasonable variation there, depending on caseload and things that happen.”

“Okay. Thank you.”

Piszczatowski looked at the judge, asked for a minute, and then quickly ran through a checklist he had in his hand, making sure he covered every base.

A moment later, the defense attorney stated, “Thank you, Your Honor. I don't have any other questions.”

Though APA Skrzynski gave the doctor a chance to clarify anything he wanted to on redirect, which lasted about seven additional minutes, Piszczatowski's argument here was well-established by the questions he asked and answers Dragovic ultimately gave: The medical examiner's findings, at least in Don's case, were subjective—completely open to argument by other experts. There was no objective science in this particular case. And if a jury, Piszczatowski was no doubt hoping, could not come to an agreement on a cause and manner of death, well, how in the hell were they supposed to find the defendant guilty of the same crime?

CHAPTER 70

FOR THE REMAINDER OF
day two, financial experts tried to lessen the widening gap in that kill-him-for-his-money motive the APA had been trying to prove. Amy Mouradian, a Bank One employee, and Randall Pan-gretic, a Merrill Lynch retirement advisor, looked at charts, graphs and financial documents presented by the state. The message was that Don had some money and Billie Jean spent it recklessly and generously before and after his death—mostly on stupid, worthless stuff, like clothes she didn't need, gambling, drinking, cigarettes, dinners, and cars. The downside here for Billie Jean—if there even was one—became that the documents showed she was the estate's main beneficiary when Don died. The upside, on the other hand, was that she had been spending her husband's money long before he was dead. She had set her own precedent. All this testimony did, in the end, was drizzle more reasonable doubt into an overflowing pool. Okay, so the woman liked to spend her husband's money on luxury items, liked to piss it away at the casino, she bought a few cars after he died, and she continued that behavior without seemingly having grieved for the loss.

Still, none of it proved Billie Jean was a killer.

* * *

After those two witnesses, Danny Chahine walked into the courtroom. Danny was dressed nicely in dark slacks and a dress shirt, his hair combed slickly back, a large flashy watch and several expensive-looking rings sparkling in the court's modest lighting. Billie Jean did not know this man more than seeing him at the casino and once in a while with Vonlee at the house. Danny was there to talk about his conversations with Vonlee, a third party in all of this.

At forty-one years old, Danny had learned many lessons. Yet, the most predominant piece of life education on his mind as he began to talk about his background was undoubtedly the notion that nothing was what it seemed in this case. Everything had a gloss over it, some type of sheen shielding the truth just underneath.

A jeweler from Lebanon, who was running his own shop here in the United States, Danny explained how he had met Billie Jean and Vonlee at the casino. But it was many months later before he learned the big secret—Vonlee was a man.

The APA got this out of the way quickly.

“But in [midsummer] 2000, you didn't think so?”

“No.”

They talked about the “relationship” Danny and Vonlee had “formed” throughout that summer.

For the most part, Danny said, they went out to the casino, gambled and had nice, romantic dinners.

The APA had Danny talk through his issues with the law: possession of cocaine, a case that was dismissed; Danny lying to immigration about his citizenship status; a second cocaine possession charge that stuck.

It was Vonlee—or “Nicole,” as the APA referred to her—that called Danny to tell him Don had died. A day after she called, Danny went over to the house. He saw Billie Jean on that evening. He said she wasn't crying and didn't seem to be upset. This was striking to him, because he would have been sad, had his spouse just died. He couldn't understand why Billie Jean wasn't torn up and crying over the death of her husband.

One thing Danny made clear was that Billie Jean and Vonlee were at the casino in those days after Don had died, and Danny thought this to be in bad taste. And two or three days after Don's death, Danny said, he wound up selling the widow a few thousand dollars' worth of jewelry. Another red flag to him, one indicating she wasn't acting “normal.”

Within just a few minutes of them talking back and forth, the APA asked Danny the most important question he was called as a witness to answer. APA Skrzynski set it up by explaining how Danny and Vonlee had dinner at the casino one night. As Vonlee ordered a bottle of vino, she told Danny she had a secret and wanted desperately to share.

“Well, she started telling me that she wants to tell me the truth about everything,” Danny began, adding that Vonlee had first made him “promise” he would not be upset and would not leave her after she divulged her so-called secret. “And I was like wondering what's going on. . . .” So he promised Vonlee he would not leave or be mad. “And she started telling me that she's not really a woman. She was a man. And I did not believe her, because of what I seen. It doesn't match of what she's talking about.... I did not believe she was man . . . and then she kept telling me what happened at the Rogers residence, how Rogers
really
died.”

Danny said Vonlee was “very upset and very nervous” while she spoke to him during the dinner. She wasn't bragging or being sarcastic. She had obviously been carrying around a burden, and she needed to rid herself of its weight. As the wine flowed, she explained more about herself and what happened that night between Billie Jean and Don.

Piszczatowski objected, knowing the APA was walking a fine line here of hearsay and Danny working his feelings and thoughts into the testimony. They agreed that Danny could testify to what Vonlee had said, but that was it. He could not speculate about her feelings or his, or talk about what she
might
have thought or meant.

Danny explained that the “secret” was beginning to wear Vonlee down and she had to tell him for fear of destroying her life with booze and drugs. She was now drinking more than she had been since arriving in Michigan. She was worried about her aunt, too.

Danny continued to speak: “We continued to sit . . . and she said, ‘Are you not upset or anything?' And I said, ‘No. How could I be upset? I mean, you just told me you are a man, and you just told me you killed somebody. How could I be upset?'. . . .”

“Mr. Chahine,” the APA said carefully, now treading in waters Danny had likely said he was a little uneasy about going into, “let me ask you this.”

“Yes,” Danny said, staring at him.

“Had you, like, actually been physically intimate with this person?”

“Yes.”

“You kissed her?”

Danny took a breath. He leaned into the microphone, this after being told several times that they were having trouble hearing him: “I mean, you want me to feel bad now, because I . . .
kissed
a man?” Danny had an attitude all of a sudden, as if the APA was accusing him of regretting his entire relationship with Vonlee.

“I mean . . . no,” the APA said, a bit embarrassed.

“I did kiss her. Yes. And I'm like . . . I'm not a homosexual and I do feel . . . It has never happened to me before.... There was nothing I could tell that she was a man. There's
nothing.
That's why I was very shocked.”

It was not his fault for being duped, Danny seemed to say.

Danny talked about how he demanded Vonlee show him the goods to prove she was a man. He told the jury about going out to the car, having that conversation, and Vonlee not dropping her pants until the next time they got together.

After that, Danny explained how Vonlee eventually told him “about the way they did kill Don Rogers—and she was describing what they did.”

The APA asked Danny to explain in detail.

“She said that they got there at eleven and she said he was laying down on the floor, passed out from drinking, and that the other thing that she said that Billie Rogers told his family that they got there at three. . . .”

So there was some discrepancy in the stories and Danny thought this might become a problem for them.

The APA asked Danny to slow down a bit. Danny, obviously nervous, composed himself and continued in his broken, accented English: “When they got there, they found him on the floor, and Billie Rogers said to [Vonlee] that they got to do it now, because it's a good time.... So she said they start pouring alcohol, vodka, in his mouth. The way they do it, one of them will hold his nose, he cannot breathe—he open his mouth. The other will throw vodka in his mouth and they did that so many times that actually [Vonlee] said to her, ‘Why are you wasting this good vodka on him? Let's get some cheap vodka.' That's what [Vonlee said she] said. And he would not die. She said that he would not die. While . . . they were doing that [Don] was playing with [Vonlee's] boobs.”

And it was now clear to jurors where the APA and, likely, the TPD developed its narrative that the ME's office tried so hard to back up with the science.

Danny mentioned how Billie Jean had blurted out to Vonlee something about giving her twenty-five thousand to fifty thousand dollars, and how if Don woke up the next day and remembered what they had done (pouring that alcohol into his mouth), they'd be in big trouble.

“So they got to do it right now,” Danny claimed, referring to how Billie Jean felt after she allegedly tried to kill her husband by pouring the booze down his throat. “He would not die. And she said, [Vonlee] could not kill him, could not put her hands . . . on his mouth and nose. Every time he gasped for air, she would let him breathe, because she couldn't do it. So her aunt gets so frustrated, she went and got a pillow. . . .”

What happened after that was obvious. According to the narrative Danny Chahine was putting out there for jurors, Billie Jean placed a pillow over her husband's face and smothered him.

The APA brought Danny back around to that moment in the car as he and Vonlee sat and talked, when Vonlee refused to show him her private parts to “prove” her manhood. The APA wanted to know what happened when she refused. Did Danny and Vonlee then leave the casino and go to his apartment that night or the next?

Danny said the following night they were at his apartment, again talking about the “murder” and Vonlee's penis.

“What happened?”

“And that's when I found out
exactly
that she was man.”

“How?”

“By seeing.”

“Her penis?” the APA asked, without any hint of irony.

“Yes.”

“
His
penis?” the APA then corrected, after realizing the possible confusion of his earlier query.

Danny nodded in the affirmative, without speaking.

The APA wouldn't let it go. “You saw that?” he asked again.

“Yes!”

Danny talked about those videotapes Billie Jean had given him. He said he couldn't understand why she would want to throw them out.

However, in the grand scope of things, what did this part of his testimony mean? That the recent widow didn't want a memory of Don around the house? It was clear from most everyone that the husband and wife had despised each other. More than that, mostly all of the tapes were pornography.

Danny said he had called his friend, the cop in a nearby town, and asked him to relay the information about Don's “murder” to the TPD.

He then spoke of how he met with TPD detectives Tullock and Zimmerman at the TPD and talked through everything he knew.

He testified how the TPD had offered him nothing for his “testimony.”

“Has anyone given you
anything
to do this?” the APA asked.

“No.”

The APA took a look at his notes and indicated he was finished.