Michael Benson's True Crime Bundle (71 page)

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Authors: Michael Benson

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“Did he hit you?”
“Yes.”
“How did that feel?”
“It stung!”
Then came the day Mike went into Gary’s room, and came out with a real arrow, like the kind you could kill a deer with. Mike shot the arrow at him. Rodney managed to duck behind a door. Mike had fired the arrow so hard, it went through the door. Later, when their dad came home, Rodney told him Mike caused the hole by firing a real arrow and it “accidentally went through the door.”
At times, Carolyn Schlemmer had to steer Rodney through his testimony.
“Did Mike do other things that were strange?”
“He used to act out cartoons—‘ Say your prayers, rabbit.’ Uh, I got sidetracked.”
“Did Mike do strange things throughout his life?”
“Yeah.”
“Any other things you could tell us about?” the defense attorney asked patiently.
“I’m trying to think more.”
“I can direct you. Let me direct you to late 2007. Was Mike up in Michigan?”
“Yeah, Mike was in Michigan, at my mom and dad’s house, and I went over there one time to visit.” That was when Mike was in some kind of trance, lying in a reclining chair, just staring, not understanding. Rodney couldn’t even tell if Mike knew who he was, or even knew anybody was there.
“My wife went right up to him and snapped her fingers in his face.”
Rodney had been told that Mike had been like that all day. It started with a fit of paranoia: Mike claimed that there were wolves in the woods, and they’d been chasing him. Next Rodney brought up the sledding accident, noting that Mike had never been right after that. Now, all those many years later, he was “in outer space.”
“Do you know anything about Mike’s breakup with his ex-wife?”
“I know she was always on the Internet talking to other guys.”
“Did his wife leaving him have an effect on Mike?”
“Yeah, of course. I have been married sixteen years. When you have kids, you want to stay together and live as a family. That’s the way I look at it.”
Rodney told the jury that there had come a time when Mike wanted to put together a résumé that he hoped would lead to him getting better jobs as a plumber. But he had struggled. He was not very good at reading and writing, so his brother decided to help him. They tried to list past jobs and the dates of those jobs, but it wasn’t easy. Mike didn’t remember nearly as much as you’d think he would. The brothers couldn’t help, because he’d lived in Florida and they had no idea what he’d done while down there. Their dad helped him a lot with the résumé, helping him put the dates together.
The witness suddenly hit upon a new strain of testimony. He recalled that there was always a problem with Mike and directions. That was a good indication that there was something wrong with his brain. You couldn’t just give him directions to a place. You had to give him directions on how to get back as well, or he’d get antsy. Heaven forbid you should give him two roads to choose from. Sometimes you could take two routes from one place to another, because it was six of this and a half-dozen of the other. Mike, however, would get scared and think something bad was going to happen to him if he chose the wrong road. You could explain to him again and again that there was no wrong road, but he wouldn’t listen. Sometimes he wouldn’t go to a place at all because he was confused about the directions, so he’d end up staying where he was. This was the biggest handicap for Mike in terms of trying to find work, Rodney thought. His suspicion was that Mike sometimes didn’t show up for job interviews because he was petrified of getting lost.
Carolyn Schlemmer knew this registered with the jurors. Earlier they had heard Robert Salvador say that giving King directions to the firing range hadn’t worked, and King was only willing to follow Salvador there. That tended to corroborate Rodney’s testimony.
When Mike showed up in Michigan after years in Florida, Rodney was under the impression that he’d already lost his house down there. Later, he found out that Mike still had the house but had lost the furniture. Rodney admitted that he wasn’t sure when that was, when Mike had returned to Michigan.
On the witness stand, Rodney King was beginning to lose momentum. “I’m having trouble with my short-term memory,” he said, an out-of-the-blue admission that could not have pleased Schlemmer. He did recall that Mike had to return to Florida. Mike had to declare bankruptcy, and their dad took Mike to a lawyer for advice.
When was the last time Rodney talked to Mike before Mike’s arrest? That was around New Year’s Day, 2008. The brothers got together. Rodney brought a six-pack of beer, but no one drank. He talked to him once after Mike returned to Florida. He was trying to get his electricity turned back on down there, and he was living by flashlight.
“No further questions,” Schlemmer said.
 
 
On cross, Lon Arend took the witness back to the time when he and Mike were little and each had an accident that required a visit to the same doctor. How had Rodney injured his chin? Fell out of a bunk bed.
“When Mike said there were witches in the woods, did you believe that he was saying those things because of the aftereffect of his sledding accident?”
“To me, it didn’t make sense. I didn’t know the reason behind it.”
“Do you believe it was a result of brain damage, or was it just children pretending?”
“I believe the accident was why Mike acted differently.”
“According to the testimony you just gave, the witches were a result of his accident?”
“Yes.”
“And you believe the
Texas Chain Saw Massacre
incident was a result of his injuries?”
“Yeah, I do believe that. I believe it goes back to that.”
“When Mike was in a trance in December of 2007 or January of 2008, and your wife snapped her fingers in Mike’s face, you believe that behavior was a result of his sledding accident?”
“Yes, his eyes were bugging out. It seemed like a lingering head injury.”
“When Mike was worried about getting lost on the roads of Michigan, you attribute that anxiety to his sledding accident?”
“Well, he could never take directions. He never stopped asking directions. All those years later, why was he still acting that way? Had to be the accident.”
“You agree that you yourself do not have a good memory—”
“I have a short-term memory problem. I have trouble remembering dates. I have lung disease, and that affects it, too.” His long-term memory was fine. Things that happened long ago he recalled pretty well.
“You don’t have trouble remembering the chain saw incident?”
“Right.”
“Do you recall on February 5, 2008, a detective came to visit you in Michigan?”
Rodney did remember. Yes, he answered questions about the sledding accident. Yes, he told them he thought the snowmobile was going ninety miles per hour. Maybe it seemed faster then than it would today. Today he would revise his estimate of the speed: eighty miles per hour. The pole Mike hit was “like a telephone pole.” Rodney had previously called the object Mike hit a “shed.” The defense smoothed out the seeming discrepancy by suggesting the pole was at the corner of the shed.
“Do you remember telling the detective on February fifth that you didn’t remember whether or not Mike was bleeding?”
“I don’t. That would be short-term memory.”
“Do you, in fact, remember Mike bleeding after the accident?”
“I remember it had something to do with his teeth.”
“You don’t remember telling the detective you don’t remember?”
“No. I was on medicine at the time.”
“This was three weeks after Mike’s arrest. You knew it was a serious situation?”
“I thought maybe they had the wrong person. My brother wouldn’t do that. I remember that the police from Florida were not nice.”
Arend produced a transcript of the February 5 interview. In it, Rodney didn’t recall the bleeding. He remembered Gary carrying Mike inside and putting a frozen pork chop on his head. During that same interview, he said he didn’t recall if Mike was taken to see a doctor after the accident.
The jury had the idea. Arend moved on.
“When you boys were growing up, your mom and dad were good parents?”
“Yes.”
“No abuse?”
“No.”
No, Rodney had never seen Mike get violent. Never saw him yell or scream or hit anybody. No fights when they were kids. Oh, sure, they would wrestle around, goofing around, like brothers do, but no real fights. Maybe during a previous interview, he had referred to his brother “going off,” but he didn’t know what he meant by that. His answer to the question here today was that Mike was never violent, not that he knew of.
During that February 2008 interview with police, Rodney was asked if he’d seen any changes in Mike after the sledding accident. He’d said Mike was prone to exaggeration, couldn’t tell the truth about the size of the fish he’d caught, always making things seem more dramatic. There was a time when they were little when Mike and their dad went into the woods. Mike carried a cork gun. Came back saying he got a rabbit with the cork gun. “Today, he still believes that. Ever since his accident, he believes all that stuff. Your imagination believes anything’s possible.”
In 2008, Rodney mentioned nothing about the buzzing in Mike’s head. Now he said there was buzzing just weeks before Mike was arrested. How did the witness explain the discrepancy?
“I was in a hurry with their questions,” Rodney said. “I couldn’t think at the time.”
The witness was showing signs of mental fatigue as he tried to field Arend’s increasingly rapid-fire questioning. He hadn’t told the cops about the witches Mike claimed were in the woods; now he did tell that story. How come now, but not then?
“I’m getting sidetracked,” Rodney said again.
“I’m looking at the overall picture of Mike’s history from birth to now,” Arend said.
“I think I’m lost. It could be my short-term memory,” Rodney said. Arend knew he scored a point with the jury each time the increasingly confused witness talked about his poor memory and faulty answers due to “taking medicine.” The jury was getting the point. This guy wasn’t sure what happened yesterday, much less the year before, or thirty years before.
“Did you tell the police in 2008 about the chain saw incident?”
“I believe not. It was hard to sum up Mike’s entire life in one hour. This was a shock to me, and nothing made sense.”
“Did you tell police in 2008 about Mike being in a trance and your wife snapping her fingers in his face?”
Rodney didn’t remember, but suspected he hadn’t—or Arend wouldn’t have asked that question. No, he hadn’t told them about the wolves, either. But that didn’t mean Mike wasn’t in another world. His brain was like a computer that crashed. No, he didn’t mention to the police that Mike always got lost when driving.
That concluded Arend’s cross-examination.
 
 
On redirect, Carolyn Schlemmer did her best to rehabilitate the witness, a tough task considering Rodney’s inclusion of his own mental problems.
“Mr. King, back in 2008, did detectives sit down with you for hours and discuss every detail of Mike’s life?”
“No, they didn’t give me a chance to talk. I tried to explain, but they told me to keep my answers short and sweet.”
The 2008 interview was further complicated when, in the middle, the batteries in the detectives’ tape recorder went dead. Rodney’s son was running back and forth looking for fresh batteries to put in the machine. Rodney repeated that he was sick at the time, on meds, and they told him that it didn’t matter if he left things out. There would be a chance to tell the story in greater detail later. So stuff was left out. Plus, just because he recalled things now, that didn’t mean he recalled them then. “They caught me on the spot,” Rodney said. His mom called, complaining that the police had been there, too, harassing her, being mean, asking if Mike was gay. The cops had been mean when he talked to them as well, and some of the questions were rough. Rodney had been embarrassed because the cops asked these things in front of his kids. “If they wanted me to tell them everything I knew about my brother, then they should have given me more time!”
“Thank you, Mr. King,” Schlemmer said.
Judge Economou called for the lunch break.
 
 
When court reconvened that afternoon, Rodney was gone. On the TV screen was seventy-year-old James King, the defendant’s dad. He told the jury his wife was named Patsy and that he had four sons, James Jr. (Jim), Gary, Michael, and Rodney.
“Are you sure that you are okay to testify?” Carolyn Schlemmer asked.
“Yes, I’m fine,” James said. Then he explained that he couldn’t be in court in person because he’d recently undergone open-heart surgery—triple bypass.

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