Lethal Guardian (34 page)

Dee Clinton, if nothing else, had given the jury a blow-by-blow description of the custody battle from her point of view. The jury now had an understanding of why these families hated each other so much and, possibly, why Beth Ann wanted Buzz dead.

February 8 was a Friday. Because of a holiday the following Tuesday, and the court’s being closed on Mondays, it would be the last day of testimony until February 13.

Kane needed to give the jury something to think about before the break. He had set up the motive by bringing in Dee—a motive he would build upon with each witness—but he and Peter McShane needed to give the jury something more. Something tangible.

Facts.

After Dee stepped down, Linda Kidder, an attorney who had represented Kim and Buzz for a time back in 1993, took the stand to back up some of what Dee had already talked about regarding the child custody fight.

But after Kidder’s brief testimony, it was time for the jury to hear exactly how Buzz was murdered—from someone who was there.

Chris Despres was dressed in a plain dark blue suit and matching tie when he entered the superior court building on the morning of February 8, 2002. As he walked through the metal detectors and headed down the hall, he said nothing. Reporters asked him questions, and spectators stared and whispered, but Chris was as stand-offish as he had ever been. It was grueling for the twenty-three-year-old. Regardless of how he felt about dear old dad, the thought of participating in the proceedings weighed heavily on him. He knew anything he said today would be used against his dad at some point later on.

According to a family friend who spent the previous night with Chris, he hadn’t slept well. He had nightmares. And at one point, he even vomited.

After being sworn in, Chris explained that he now lived in Windsor, Connecticut, with his girlfriend and her son. Despite the hell Chris had gone through for the past eight years, as Kane burned through the normal introductory questions every witness was subjected to, Chris showed how composed and direct he was. He spoke loudly, clearly and tersely. Kane didn’t once have to ask him to repeat himself. His answers were short and to the point. He gave only the information he knew and no more.

When it came time for Kane to bring Buzz into the picture, Chris wasted no time telling the jury how he’d first heard Buzz’s name.

“Do you recognize the name Anson Clinton?” Kane asked.

“Yes.”

“And how is it that you recognize that name?”

“My dad shot him.”

The gallery gasped. Dee and Buck Clinton, Suzanne and Billy, shifted in their seats, but they kept their composure. They were looking at and listening to one of the people who had last seen Buzz alive. Indeed, years had gone by, but the pain was as intense as if it happened the day before.

During the next hour, Chris explained how he and his dad had stalked Buzz. Kane had been questioning witnesses for decades. He knew how to get things out of people. Whenever he asked Chris about a certain event, he followed up with questions that made Chris recall as many details as he could remember. Details, Kane knew, went hand in hand with truth. If someone could remember without reservation the color of a car, the make and model of a car, the color of someone’s hair, a person’s eye color, the weather, there was a good chance he knew what he was talking about. On the other hand, if someone was trying to dance around the truth, he might likely, conveniently, just say he didn’t recall.

When jurors got a chance to weigh Chris’s testimony against his father’s statements and the statements of Cathy White and Haiman Clein, they would clearly see how Chris’s testimony dovetailed almost perfectly with that of people he didn’t really know.

Kane then moved into the main reason why Chris was on the stand. He asked Chris to explain how he and his dad had met Buzz at the hotel on March 10, 1994, and how they drove in separate vehicles toward East Lyme on I-95, but when they got to Exit 72, Mark panicked and began flashing his lights at Buzz to pull over.

“As your father was flashing the lights,” Kane asked, “did you or he say anything?”

“Yes.”

“Did you say anything first?”

“Yes. I asked him what he was doing.”

“And what did your father tell you?”

“He said he was going to kill him.”

Before Chris Despres could explain to the jury what he knew about the conspiracy between Joe Fremut, his dad and Haiman Clein, the state first had to present evidence to the fact that there was a conspiracy. A witness couldn’t testify to something that hadn’t yet been brought out in court. So Chris had to step down from the stand in lieu of witnesses who could substantiate the state’s contention that a conspiracy had, indeed, taken place. He would return, Kane and McShane promised, at a later date.

Between February 13 and 15, Teresa Jenkins, Jan Dahl (an early childhood intervention specialist with the state department of mental retardation), Carolyn Brotherton and John Gaul testified about the ongoing custody battle and bad blood between Buzz and the Carpenter family, thus adding more weight to what had become the focal point of the trial. So much so was the trial turning into a history of Rebecca’s early life and the custody battle that had ensued around her, many were wondering how far Judge Devlin was going to let Kane and McShane take it. Devlin was an “extremely fair” judge, a colleague later said, “very thorough.” If he felt an issue was slipping away from him in court, he’d attack it immediately. Keefe had filed a motion to suppress the state from putting forth any more statements of hostility toward Buzz made by the Carpenters, explaining without the jury present that it was “very difficult [for his client to defend herself] if witness after witness testifies about this animosity.” Keefe further stated that “by osmosis” the state wanted the statements to “trickle down to Beth.” Keefe was tired of it. It was time, he insisted, to get back on track with what the state actually had on his client. Forget about this custody battle business. What about the conspiracy? Where was the evidence to support it?

Kane argued that the statements were motive for murder and the jury should be allowed to hear them.

Judge Devlin said he would make a decision at a later time regarding Keefe’s argument. As for right now, it was time to continue with witness testimony.

As Jenkins, Dahl and Brotherton testified over the course of the next two days, they continued to hammer home the point that the custody battle was fueled by the notion that the Carpenters didn’t want their grandchild to be around Buzz for fear he was hurting her. As for Kim, several witnesses had already testified that, according to the Carpenters, she was an unfit mother. They had basically raised Rebecca from day one themselves.

But by the time John Gaul finished testifying on February 15, he put on record that the Carpenters had become so obsessed with gaining full custody of Rebecca they were prepared to do just about anything to achieve that goal. Gaul told the jury he didn’t know he was Rebecca’s father until
after
Kim had met Buzz, and Beth Ann and Kim then showed up at his house one day to tell him. A few weeks later, the Carpenters, Gaul recalled, began laying out their case to him, inviting him and his then-girlfriend, Tricia Baker, to their house every weekend to spend time with Rebecca. When it came time to fight legally, Gaul said, the Carpenters promised to help him financially, and they soon gave him the money to retain a lawyer. Dick Carpenter had even given him a job. Yet, when Gaul later indicated that he wasn’t interested in pursuing a custody fight legally, the Carpenters ended their relationship with him and Tricia.

Joe Fremut was never considered to be one of the state’s potential star witnesses. That distinction, hands down, went to Haiman Clein, who was still waiting in the wings. Joe Fremut had been evasive in the past, and he was clearly someone who, Kane and McShane speculated, could react on the stand any number of ways, none of which would help their case. For that reason, Kane and McShane floated the notion that they probably weren’t going to call Fremut to testify. He had been out on bond for a while now, waiting for his own trial to begin, and there was no telling what he might say once he was sworn in.

Since the beginning of the trial, however, rumors had swirled around the courtroom like gnats that Fremut, who was supposed to turn forty-one on May 9, had been ill—extremely ill. Someone who had worked out at a nearby YMCA gym where Fremut was a frequent guest said he hadn’t seen him in quite a while, and there was a good possibility he was in the hospital.

It was no secret Fremut had dated a drug-addicted prostitute, Cathy White.
Had he gotten AIDS?
some wondered.
Hepatitis
?
Was he using drugs himself?

No one seemed to know.

By the second week of February, however, the status of Joe Fremut was clear. Word had come down that he had died back on February 13. It wasn’t AIDS, or hepatitis, or an overdose of drugs that got him. It was cancer. Fremut had been diagnosed with bladder cancer about four months earlier, and it spread remarkably quickly and killed him.

Although Fremut’s death had an impact on Kane and McShane, it wasn’t that much of a setback to their case; it was merely one more odd occurrence to add to a long list that had accumulated throughout the course of a long investigation.

For Dee Clinton, on the other hand, it was Buzz at work. From the grave, Buzz was wielding his sword, Dee later hypothesized, getting back at those who had played any part in his murder.

The one witness who could best explain how obsessive and preoccupied with Rebecca Beth Ann had become during 1992 and 1993 took the stand next. Tricia Gaul, John Gaul’s wife, had met Beth Ann shortly after John had found out he was Rebecca’s father. Eight years after the fact, Tricia Gaul was still holding on to the pain and hurt Beth Ann had caused her when she severed their friendship after John indicated he wasn’t going to fight for custody.

Tricia was one of those perfect witnesses. She and John had had their share of trouble in their marriage, and Tricia wasn’t afraid to admit that a lot of it had to do with what had happened concerning her, John, Rebecca and the Carpenters. Tricia had shown Rebecca nothing but love. If the jury was in need of latching onto a particular witness and drawing sympathy from that person, Tricia Gaul was the answer—and Kane and McShane knew it.

Kane had Tricia first detail how she had met Beth Ann and the circumstances surrounding the early part of their friendship. After Tricia explained how she and Beth Ann would talk on the phone just about every day, Kane wanted the jury to realize how quickly Beth Ann had manipulated Tricia into thinking that Buzz and Kim had lived with Rebecca in filth and that Buzz was nothing more than a child abuser.

“They lived in a shed and had no electricity,” Tricia said when Kane asked her to recall an early phone conversation with Beth Ann. “Just horrible conditions. Basically, it was like a dog kennel.”

“And you recall [Beth Ann] telling you that…?”

“Right.”

“You also said that [Beth Ann] had said there was abuse?”

“Yes.”

Kane wanted to make sure Tricia—and the jury—understood what he was getting at. So he asked her again: “Is that correct?”

“She said Rebecca was being abused by Buzz.”

There it was: one of the state’s main reasons behind calling all of these witnesses who could explain the animosity between Buzz and the Carpenters.

Rebecca was being abused.

Beth Ann was, according to Tricia, repeatedly telling her that Buzz was abusing Rebecca—even when there was no proof to back it up. No one from the Department of Child and Youth Services had found any type of evidence whatsoever that proved Buzz had abused Rebecca. To the contrary, DCYS investigated and found Buzz and Kim to be competent parents. It was all, one could say, a figment of Beth Ann’s imagination—and also, the state was beginning to show, a motive for murder.

When court resumed on February 26 after nearly a two-week break, Tricia Gaul took the stand again and spoke of how, over a period of time, Beth Ann became actively involved in helping her and John hire a lawyer so they could fight legally for custody of Rebecca. Yet, Tricia explained, Beth Ann was adamant about telling the Gauls not to let Buzz or Kim know of their involvement.

One of Kane’s final questions brought back into light a central point Kane didn’t want the jury to forget.

“Can you tell us whether or not the defendant expressed concern about whether the…whether Buzz would adopt Rebecca?”

“Yes.”

“And can you tell us how concerned she was about that?”

Keefe objected to Kane’s form of questioning. Keefe had been watching and listening closely throughout Tricia’s testimony, catching Kane many times leading Tricia to the answers he’d wanted.

After withdrawing the question, Kane gave it another stab: “Did she express concern to you…Can you tell us whether or not she expressed concern to you about Buzz going away with Kim and Rebecca?”

“Yes,” Tricia said.

“I object, Your Honor. That’s leading! She had already answered a few minutes ago she doesn’t remember anything else. And now he is just giving her these softballs, and she’s agreeing.”

“The objection is overruled. The answer was ‘yes.’ Please put your next question.”

“What did she say?” Kane asked.

“They were afraid he would leave with her.”

“Thank you,” Kane said. “I have no further questions, Your Honor.”

“Go ahead, Mr. Keefe,” the judge said.

“Thank you, Your Honor.”

Tricia Gaul had refused to be interviewed by Keefe’s team prior to the start of the trial. It was a decision, even years later, she stuck by without reservation.

Even so, Keefe had a few things he could use to cause doubt in the jury’s mind regarding Tricia’s believability.

Tricia had difficulty remembering dates. Still, it wasn’t as though a particular date played a significant role in her testimony. Kane and McShane had put Tricia on the stand to explain to the jury Beth Ann’s preoccupation with gaining full custody of Rebecca. It wasn’t anything more than that. According to what Tricia had testified to over the course of two days already, there wasn’t a time she could recall when Beth Ann
didn’t
carry on about Buzz, his desire to adopt Rebecca and how she wasn’t going to let it happen. Dates, as it turned out, had little to do with that.

Nonetheless, dates were a foundation for Keefe to build reasonable doubt.

As he began his questioning, he would walk over and stand beside a blackboard whereupon he’d posted several dates based on Tricia’s earlier testimony. Whenever he asked Tricia a question and she recalled a date that didn’t jibe with what she had previously testified to, Keefe would cross it off his list.

At one point, Keefe asked in a mocking fashion, “Are you one of those witnesses who adjust your testimony depending on who is in the chair?”

“No!”

Throughout the day, Keefe badgered Tricia and, at times, even brought her to tears. He was loud and, some claimed, mean-spirited in his questioning, rarely ever letting up—even when Tricia seemed as if she were never going to stop crying.

“You are, of course,” Keefe said, “biased in favor of the prosecution, aren’t you?”

“I’m not biased in favor of anybody.”

In the end, however, all that Keefe’s hardball questioning proved was how he could trip up a witness on dates. Besides that, there wasn’t much else he could get out of her. Tricia had seen firsthand, along with her husband, how obsessed and active Beth Ann and her family were in the pursuit of custody of Rebecca. And there really wasn’t anyone—besides, of course, Beth Ann—who could take the stand and dispute it.