Perfect Poison (35 page)

Days before the start of the second week of proceedings in the Gilbert bomb threat trial, the world's most famous serial bomber, Theodore “Ted” Kaczynski, the Unabomber, was in the midst of the start of his trial three thousand miles away.

The Gilbert trial hadn't quite lived up to the same dramatics as the Unabomber's, nor had it garnered the same mass television coverage, but one thing was certain by the time January 13 rolled around: Harry Miles was feeling the walls of the government's case closing in around him. He needed to do something—and quick.

Earlier that morning, Miles argued that his voice identification “expert” witness, Christopher Ryan, would be leaving for California at 12:15 that day, and he needed either to get him on the stand right away, or, as they had previously discussed, have the court videotape his testimony.

On top of that, Miles said that Ryan would testify on the mechanics of the Talkboy and how it was mechanically impossible for a person to record her voice and keep rolling the tape as another person—meaning Perrault—spoke over it, and then play another message.

Welch was raging mad at Miles for his eleventh-hour proclamations.

Judge Ponsor, after listening to both attorneys for several minutes, said he would allow Ryan to testify as an “expert” and the jury was returned to the courtroom.

Living up to the image of the crowd he ran with, Christopher Ryan wore his hair long, in a pony tail, and had that hard-edged look most musicians succumb to after years on the road. He wasn't quite Willie Nelson, but thirty years down the road, well, he might just be able pull it off.

After he sat down in the witness chair, Ryan said good morning.

“If you could lean forward a little bit,” Miles said, “so your voice would be amplified for the jury, I'd appreciate it.”

Here was a man who was supposed to be a “sound expert,” a sound technician and recording engineer being told to speak into the microphone so he could be heard. Welch couldn't have scripted a better start.

Miles first asked Ryan what he did for a living.

“I am a full-time musician, master engineer and record producer.”

“What is a master engineer?”

“A master engineer is someone who tweaks and puts the icing on the final product of a record or CD for production or mass-producing of records.”

After a few more questions, Miles asked Ryan who he had worked with.

“. . . Def Leppard, John Mellencamp, Billy Cobin . . . Phil Collins, Whitney Houston.”

And then—after Ryan explained how he had listened to the tapes—came the question of the hour.

“And as you were listening to the tape, and later with your examination of the Talkboy, did you come to any conclusion as to whether that conversation was taking place in real time?”

“I definitely thought that the conversation was in real time.”

“I have no further questions.”

The main reason why Ryan was testifying, Welch knew as he stared at his notes before beginning his cross-examination, was to counter Bruce Koenig's claim that the phone calls Perrault had received were pre-recorded.

So Welch stood and, immediately, put Ryan's qualifications and credentials into perspective.

“Is it fair to say you don't have any sort of graduate degree in engineering, phonetics, linguistics, or anything like that?”

“That is true.”

“Nor do you have any sort of graduate degree in those fields—is that right?”

“True.”

“Do you have a high school degree?”

“Yes, I do.”

“As far as training and listening to tapes, are you familiar with, for example, the FBI's, or the Internal Association for Identification's two-year apprenticeship program?”

“No, I'm not.”

“In fact, everything you have done is with respect to music, is that correct?”

“Yes, it is.”

“Specifically with replicating drum sounds, is that right?”

“True.”

“Which on occasion are quite loud, is that right?”

“Yes.”

Soon Ryan admitted that he hadn't had an ear exam in quite some time and that he couldn't tell the court how good his hearing was. He was a drummer. He had been around loud music his entire life. One didn't have to be an ear specialist to draw the conclusion that his hearing probably wasn't the same as a person who hadn't.

“You certainly haven't been formally certified by anybody, either an entity or an individual, in doing tape comparisons or tape analysis, is that right?”

“Correct.”

 

 

On January 14 the government got back on track.

The next phase of Welch's case involved time: Did Gilbert have the opportunity that night to commit the bomb threat? Welch wanted to make sure the jury knew Gilbert was out and about between the hours of the threat. And if there was any doubt in the jury's mind that she didn't have the opportunity to commit the crime, Welch's next witness, Samantha Harris, would clear it up.

As Harris entered the courtroom, Gilbert took a long, hard look at her and shook her head. The most grueling part of testifying, many of the witnesses agreed, was having to sit only a few feet from Gilbert. The witness box was directly in front of the defense table, where Gilbert could stare down each one of her old friends.

Harris was the government's fourteenth witness in what was amounting to the end of its case.

She first explained how she and Gilbert had met back in the spring of 1996. Then Welch had her recall the conversation she had with Gilbert the day she picked her up at the hospital in Boston. It was the same day Harris had learned for the first time there was a murder investigation going on at the VAMC, and Gilbert was the main focus of it.

Welch had to be careful. If Harris blurted out “murder investigation” and “Gilbert” in the same breath, Ponsor would have Welch's ass served up on a silver platter.

A smart attorney, Welch didn't bother trying to slip in anything he knew he couldn't get away with. He kept to Ponsor's earlier instructions and, it was clear, had coached Harris rather well.

“During the course of this car ride, did the issue of Ms. Gilbert and Mr. Perrault's relationship come up?”

“. . . Kristen asked me if I knew why she was in the hospital, and I told her that Jim had told me that she was having trouble with the breakup.”

Welch then had Harris work in the fact that during that same car trip, Gilbert told her she would “stalk” Perrault if he ever “dumped her.”

Next Harris made it clear how and why she decided to contact the DA's office in late September 1996, which opened up an opportunity for Welch to bring in the diary Harris had began keeping after she initially met with Murphy, Soutier and Plante.

Miles, who most likely wanted to suppress as much of what was in that diary as possible, kept objecting, saying again and again that it was all “hearsay.” But Ponsor kept allowing the testimony.

As Welch continued, he zeroed in on Gilbert's need to know where Perrault was all the time, and how she continually called Harris's house to check if Perrault had called while she was out.

Using the diary to help her recall exactly what had happened on a particular day, Harris painted a dark picture of an “angry” woman with a “very controlled” and “very deep-pitched voice” on a day she had called and, after Harris had confirmed that Perrault had inquired about her whereabouts, told Harris that Perrault was a “fucking twit.”

“Now, on the twenty-sixth [of September], did you know when Ms. Gilbert left her apartment?” Welch asked.

Harris told jurors how Gilbert left at five
P.M.
and didn't return until eight, which placed her out of the house at the time of the calls.

In addition, she said Gilbert was “jumpy” and “agitated” when she returned at eight o'clock. Welch got her to describe how Gilbert said she had been out doing laundry, but didn't have anything—much less a laundry basket—in her hands when she returned.

Before Welch finished, Harris brought the jury back to the morning of September 27 (the day after the bomb threat), and asked her if Gilbert had a hypothesis about the bomb threat.

“She told me . . . it was probably a patient who wanted to sit by and watch the action,” Harris said. “She said she was at the Look Restaurant across the street and watched the police cars and fire trucks show up.”

“Nothing further . . .”

From his first question, Miles tried tripping Harris up on dates, but she kept saying she didn't recall the exact date. Beyond that, there really wasn't much more Miles could pry into. It was best sometimes to leave well enough alone. There was no telling what else Harris knew that Welch hadn't gotten out of her.

As she left the courtroom, Harris couldn't help but think how Gilbert hadn't flinched one bit or showed any emotion while she had been on the stand.

“Maybe she was in denial,” Harris later recalled. “Or maybe she just didn't give a damn about anything.”

Before testimony was over on Wednesday, January 14, Karen Abderhalden—who at one time considered Gilbert to be one of her closest friends—explained to the jury that Gilbert had stayed with her and her family for about three weeks during late August 1996, and how upset Gilbert was by the investigation.

Within moments, Abderhalden admitted that Gilbert's hatred and frustration over the “other” investigation didn't stop at just her coworkers and friends; it went right to the top—particularly her nursing supervisor, Melodie Turner, who, by a stroke of luck, was at the VAMC the night of the bomb threat, even though she wasn't supposed to be.

“Did Ms. Gilbert ever talk about Melodie Turner with you during the summer of 1996?”

“Yeah. She didn't really care for Melodie. They had some problems—working relations. She had been upset with Melodie.”

“Did she ever make a comment to you about Melodie Turner during this period of time . . . ?”

“Well, one comment I recall . . . in her anger with Melodie . . . is that she believed maybe they ought to investigate Melodie.”

“Did she specifically mention which people she was upset with?”

“In particular, Kathy Rix and John Wall.”

“And were they working up at the VA Medical Center in Ward C on the evening shift in September 1996 . . .?”

“Yes.”

By the time she finished, Abderhalden had made a reference to the movie
Home Alone II,
describing how her son had watched the movie several times and how familiar she was with the Talkboy toy, which, literally, gave the jury an image of Gilbert making the bomb-threat call. Because all Welch needed was for one of the twelve jurors to have seen the movie, where Macaulay Culkin's character, Kevin, had used a Talkboy, Jr. to reserve a room at the Plaza Hotel in New York. It was even possible Gilbert had devised the bomb-threat plan while watching the movie with Abderhalden's son.

Harry Miles began his cross-examination of Abderhalden by trying to refocus the jury on Gilbert's “good girl” status. Referring to his client as a “good nurse,” Miles had Abderhalden explain how Gilbert used to set up a Secret Santa during the holidays as well as help out at Jessie's House, a homeless shelter in the Northampton area.

Would it work? It was anybody's guess.

 

 

Welch next called Detective Thomas Soutier, who had found the Talkboy in Gilbert's closet. Soutier was on the stand to try and clarify a conversation he'd had with James Perrault regarding Perrault's future plans for employment.

“Did there come a point in time around the time of the bomb threat investigation when you saw [James Perrault] at the DA's office?” Welch asked.

“Yes,” Soutier said, “numerous times.”

“And did there come a point in time when you had a conversation with him about his job search?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Can you explain first the context of how that [conversation] arose?”

Soutier said that Perrault had been in the office that day for a scheduled meeting with SA Plante. Perrault had shown up early. Waiting, he looked bored, Soutier said. So he invited him into his office to kill some time.

“Did you have a conversation with him there?”

“Yes . . . I did.”

“And what was the nature of that conversation?”

“It was a casual conversation. I asked him how his job search was going.”

“Did you know about his job search?”

“Yes, sir. I did.”

“How did you know that?”

Soutier said he had found out through checking Perrault's phone records as part of “the other” investigation. Someone—he assumed Perrault—had been calling various police stations in the area from Perrault's phone.

“Did he make any comment back to you when you asked him how his job search was going?”

“Well, he said it was slow. That he was concerned that his involvement in the ‘other investigation' would taint his possibilities.”

It was nothing more than informal, unplanned conversation, Soutier opined.

“When he made that response to you, did you have a further conversation with him?”

“I told him that if there ever came a point in time that anyone questioned his part in the ‘other investigation,' he could feel free to have them call me, and I would explain it.”

Miles then began questioning Soutier about the kind of relationship he and Perrault had shared. Looking to show the jury that Soutier had crossed the line in promising Perrault a job if he cooperated with investigators, Miles wanted to know if their friendship was more than just casual.

But it failed. Soutier was as smooth as a desktop. He answered each one of Miles's questions in a pleasing, reassuring tone. If the jury couldn't believe a detective with more than twenty-six years on the job and not one blemish on his record, whom could be believed?

 

 

Late in the day on January 15, Special Agent Steve Plante, dressed to a tee, sauntered into the courtroom as though he had just walked out of the pages of
GQ
magazine. His full shock of hair was perfectly styled and trimmed. At just a hair over five feet, Plante certainly wasn't the tallest man in the courtroom, but if what he had to say was half of what people had been speculating, he would leave the stand with the distinction of having been the most compelling player in Gilbert's trial to date.

Plante first established that Gilbert had become the target of a probe into several suspicious deaths up at the VAMC in February 1996. Then he said the investigation he was conducting for the IGO became “very active” during the end of the summer in 1996.

But in the end, however, Plante hadn't offered the definitive final nail in Gilbert's coffin that many thought he would, but more or less just reminded the jury of everything it had heard for the past two weeks.