Perfect Poison (34 page)

By Friday, January 9, word had spread that Welch's next witness was James Perrault.

The previous day, Bernie LaFlam, the evening clinical coordinator at the VAMC who had directed emergency procedures during the bomb-threat calls, told the jury how chaotic that night had been.

Besides Samantha Harris, who was going to testify to dates and times, along with Gilbert's erratic behavior on the night of September 26, Perrault was the show. Since Perrault had answered most of the calls, Welch first had the soft-spoken security guard go through each call and tell the jury how the calls made him feel.

Perrault said he felt the caller was “taunting . . . [and] provocative towards” him. Then Welch asked about the “In twenty-five minutes, I'll see you all in hell” call. That specific call, Perrault said, left him with the thought that the caller was “cold [and] lacking in feeling.”

Then it was time for the jury to hear why Perrault felt so sure it was his ex-girlfriend making the calls.

The tones and inflections in her voice, Perrault said. The first call “. . . sounded familiar to me.”

“When was it that you decided it was the defendant?”

“I believe it was probably maybe that evening . . .”

“And who was the person you associated with the tones?”

“Because the pronunciation was very precise and Kris likes to pronounce everything very precisely. A lot of the tones were very familiar to the ones I heard during arguments with her where she would leave messages on my machine or call me up . . . upset with myself.”

Perrault was nervous. He was fumbling some of his words and leaving sentences unfinished. But it didn't change their meaning or power.

“What
tones?”
Welch asked.

“The coldness . . . the lack of feeling. Upset.... [H]urt.”

Next Welch wanted to make sure the jury clearly understood why Gilbert had purchased a Talkboy a few days after she bought a Talkgirl.

“Did you notice anything about the message at the time [September 27], other than the voice that you've described?”

“It sounded like that whatever [it] was being played on . . . it was malfunctioning and the tape was being eaten.”

With that, Welch had given the jury an explanation as to why Gilbert purchased a second toy. She had probably broken the first toy in the process of using it.

After nearly talking the jury to sleep describing his adventures with several NYNEX operators, Perrault explained how preoccupied Gilbert became with the bomb threat. He said she would call and want to discuss the newspaper articles written about it—that she wanted to be involved in the investigation.

Welch asked him about October 7, 1996, the day before Gilbert was arrested, and how she had tried to cover her tracks.

“You mentioned that she told you that she stopped at the Tasty Top to check on her messages. Her messages where . . . at her home? And do you know from your own personal knowledge the distance between the Tasty Top and her home?”

“Approximately a half mile.”

“Did she tell you anything that occurred at the Tasty Top during this conversation?”

“Yes.”

“What did she tell you?”

“She felt she had observed a state trooper, and she felt that he was following her around. . . .”

“I have nothing further, Your Honor,” Welch said.

“Good morning, Mr. Perrault,” Miles offered comfortingly after Welch sat down.

That said, Gilbert's gray-haired attorney first went after Perrault's background in the military and how he should have known, because of his time in the military, how to keep better records. In particular, Miles insisted, Perrault's “report writing” and “investigative” skills as a security guard, making the assumption that on the night of September 26, Perrault should have written “tighter” reports. He made the point that Perrault, professionally speaking, was a cop wannabe, a security guard who tried, but failed to become a cop.

Using Perrault's job record as a launching pad, noting that he had applied to several area police departments but had been turned down by every last one of them, Miles began to lay out one of his theories.

“Has anyone ever told you that they would give you a recommendation for the state police . . . ?”

“Yes.”

“And who told you that . . . ?”

“Trooper Soutier.”

“Detective Lieutenant Soutier?”

“Yes.”

“When did Detective Soutier tell you that he would recommend you to the state police?”

“I believe it was October [1996].”

“That would be after these incidents . . . occurred?”

“No. It was while we were investigating them.”

“So while you were investigating this bomb threat, Detective Soutier told you that he would like to give you a recommendation to the state police?”

“Yes.”

Miles rubbed his chin. This was the cusp of his defense: that Perrault had made all of this up to get a job with a “real” police force and get the woman he wanted nothing to do with anymore off his back for good.

“Is that when you were asked to report telephone calls from Kristen Gilbert?”

“It was before.”

“And how long before you were requested to report telephone calls from Kristen Gilbert did Detective Soutier tell you that he would . . . recommend you for a position with the state police?”

“Maybe ten minutes.”

Miles then had Perrault talk about several cards Perrault had received from Gilbert and when he received them, suggesting that Perrault and Gilbert had been romantically linked for longer than Perrault wanted to admit.

Getting nowhere, Miles brought Glenn into the picture, asking Perrault whether he wanted Kristen and her husband to get back together. Perrault said he “encouraged” Kristen back in the fall of 1995, and the winter of 1996 to reconcile with Glenn. He said he told Kristen she should go to counseling with Glenn.

“And you're still having a sexual relationship with her at the time?” Miles asked.

“Yes.”

Then he wanted to know if Perrault had suspected Gilbert, at that time, of doing “it,” killing her patients.

“Not at that time.”

“Do you suspect it today?”

“Yes.”

“And you suspect it today because it helps you to testify against her. Isn't that correct?”

“No. It doesn't.”

“Isn't it true, sir, that the reasons you're saying some of these things against Kristen Gilbert is because it helps you in your career and it justifies your dumping her?”

“No. It doesn't, sir.”

“You don't think it does?”

“No,
sir.”

Miles kept throwing dates at Perrault like darts, hoping to confuse him. But it didn't work. More confident now than ever, Perrault stayed sharp.

For the next half an hour, Miles went through several turbulent episodes during the affair, hoping to convince the jury that Perrault had reasons to want Gilbert out of his life.

“Did she [ever] physically threaten you [ . . . ]?”

“Physically without words, yes.”

“Did she hit you?”

“Yes.”

“Did you hit her back?”

“No.”

“Did you report it?”

“No.”

“Did you make any notes of it?”

“No. I did not.”

“Did you tell her that you wanted to go to counseling with her?”

“No.”

“Did she ask you if you wanted to go to counseling?”

“I don't recall.”

“And when she hit you, would it be just a punch or a slap . . . ?”

“She's punched me twice in the testicles.”

That one statement put a damper on Miles's momentum. Perhaps he shouldn't pry anymore? There was a chance Perrault knew something else.

As Perrault's testimony wore on, it became remarkably clear that after the initial courtship, the affair he had with Gilbert was a rocky road of emotional instability that continued to escalate as the pressure surrounding the murder investigation began to wear Gilbert down. Her life was becoming more unmanageable by the day, and she was bringing all that baggage into the relationship. What was clear—and Miles probably didn't want it to come out this way, but it did—was that as soon as Perrault got a whiff of what kind of woman he had been shacking up with, he quickly made the decision that there wasn't a piece of ass in the world worth that much trouble.

The
Daily Hampshire Gazette,
which had been covering the trial from gavel to gavel, ran a front-page headline over the weekend that hit Bill Welch like a sucker punch:

Many who were in the courtroom the previous week, however, didn't quite see it that way. The
Gazette
article rallied many on the side of Gilbert, saying Perrault had said that a “VA investigator offered him help with a job search” if he helped in the murder investigation or he could “face losing his job” at the VAMC.

But to a lot of the people who were in Ponsor's courtroom during Perrault's testimony, it never happened that way.

Nevertheless, if any of the jurors had seen the weekend paper, there was a good chance they were questioning the very testimony they had just witnessed.

It was a prosecutor's worst nightmare.

 

 

On Monday, January 12, Miles indicated he had only a few more questions for Perrault. Perrault had been on the stand for about three days. He looked tired. Drained. He was ready to call it a day.

But before Perrault took the stand, Miles and Welch argued about the testimony of Welch's next witness, Bruce Koenig, a former FBI expert who specialized in analyzing voice and tape. Miles said he was informed months ago that Koenig wasn't going to be used as an “expert” witness.

“I was hoping . . . I would have a little more time to ponder it. . . .” Ponsor said after hearing out Welch and Miles, but “I would say that it's very likely I am going to permit the government to put on [Mr. Koenig]. . . .”

With that out of the way, the coast was clear for Perrault to return.

After asking him a few questions about the trap NYNEX had installed on the VAMC phone line on September 26, Miles turned his attention toward Gilbert's home phone.

“On [September] twenty-seventh, were any of the calls [you received at the VAMC] traced to Kristen Gilbert's apartment?”

“I don't believe any of them were. . . .”

“I'm sorry?”

“None of them were traced to Kristen's apartment!”

“So, did you know how many calls were made by this person you identify as the caller?”

“Between twenty and thirty maybe.”

“So twenty or thirty calls were made by this individual and none of them were traced to [Gilbert's] apartment; is that correct?”

“No, they weren't. That is correct.”

“I have no further questions.”

On redirect, Welch established that even before Perrault had met Gilbert and became romantically involved, he had been applying for law-enforcement jobs. There was little need to go over the obvious: that phone calls from Gilbert's apartment had little, if anything, to do with the case. The government had never claimed Gilbert had made the calls from her home.

Miles stood back up.

“Do you remember being asked on redirect examination . . . if you would manufacture a bomb threat in the case?”

“Yes.”

“And if you would have manufactured a bomb threat, would you tell us that?”

“I wouldn't manufacture a bomb threat.”

“If you had, would you tell us that?”

“I wouldn't make a bomb threat, so therefore I wouldn't have to.”

“And do you recall being asked if you manufactured a bomb threat to get rid of Kristen Gilbert?”

“Yes, I recall that.”

“And would you tell us that if you had?”

“I hadn't made one, so therefore I wouldn't have to worry about that.”

Perrault was tough.

“Is it fair to say, sir, that with respect to the actual threatening telephone call, the one that mentioned an explosive device, you're the only person who heard that?”

“Yes.”

“In order to believe that that occurred, we have to believe your testimony?”

“Yes.”

 

 

It hadn't been a good start to the new week for Harry Miles and Kristen Gilbert. With Ponsor ruling against a motion Miles had filed, seeking to stop several witnesses from testifying that the voice on one of the tapes was, in fact, Gilbert's, it appeared Miles's claim of bias on the part of the government had some credence—if only in the way things looked.

There was, though, little he could do about it at this point besides plan an appeal if Gilbert was found guilty—because Welch was calling retired FBI voice expert Bruce Koenig, who had eliminated most of the distortion on the sped-up tape Welch had discovered before trial, and there wasn't much Miles could do about it. Although Koenig couldn't make the determination that the voice on the tape was Gilbert's, Welch won the argument earlier that morning and said he would be bringing in witnesses who could.

While the court waited for Detective Kevin Murphy to make his way to the witness stand, Miles walked over to Welch and said something with regard to how the case was proceeding.

Seizing the moment, Welch said, “You just keep a leash on Gilbert's father, Mr. Strickland. I don't want him lashing out at me during the proceedings.”

Miles took a look over to where Mr. Strickland was sitting, and paused for a moment. “Yes,” he said, “he's been acting a bit strange lately.... He requires a lot of maintenance.”

Earlier that morning, Strickland had once again made Welch feel uncomfortable with the way he had stared at him. They were in the hall outside the courtroom, and the old man gave Welch one of his how-dare-you-do-this-to-my-daughter stares that had become part of his daily regimen.

“He's coming over that railing one of these days,” Welch had said half-jokingly to Murphy as they entered the courtroom.

Welch felt Strickland wasn't the type to whip out a knife or gun and “go postal.” But he wasn't putting it past the old man to do something irrational if he thought his daughter was going to prison.

 

 

With his neighborly charm, Detective Kevin Murphy took a seat in the witness stand. He looked every bit like the seasoned pro he was.

Welch had him first describe his role in the bomb-threat investigation and then had him give the jury a blow-by-blow account of the night he watched Gilbert make a call from the Tasty Top Ice Cream Stand public telephone. But beyond that, there really wasn't much more the detective could offer as far as evidence was concerned.

On January 13, the following morning, Miles tore right into Murphy, questioning just about every aspect of his investigation. Yet, in the end, Murphy stood his ground and offered Miles absolutely nothing he could build upon.

He was a cop doing his job. Period. Miles couldn't get out of him what wasn't there.

By the end of the day, Welch brought in FBI expert Bruce Koenig and had him make the point that it was highly possible that the person who had made the calls to the VAMC on September 26 used a Talkboy toy. The clicking sounds in the background were a dead giveaway, Koenig explained. There was no other conclusion he could come to.