Red Mist (24 page)

“I don’t know if it’s interesting or not,” I reply, as I go through the transcript of a clemency hearing for Lola Daggette
in which Colin Dengate testified, and also GBI investigator Billy Long.
“I’ll have to look at her case.
Not an unusual level
for a smoker.”

“You can’t smoke in prisons anymore.
None I know of.
Not for years.”

“Yes, and drugs, alcohol, cash, cell phones, and weapons aren’t allowed in prisons, either,” I reply, as I review the factual
history of what happened in the early-morning hours of January 6, 2002.
“Guards could have given her a cigarette.
Rules get
broken depending on who has power.”

“But smoking could explain her CO, and if so, why would someone give her a cigarette?”

“We certainly can’t know if anybody did.
But it’s true that carbon monoxide and nicotine from cigarettes put a strain on the
heart, which is further exasperated by the narrowing of the arteries from heart disease, which is why I keep reminding you
not to smoke.”
I slide pages in Marino’s direction as I finish with them.
“Her heart’s already working hard if she’s stressed,
and then an exposure to smoke and her heart works even harder.”

“So maybe that’s why she had the heart attack,” he persists.

“It could have been a contributing factor, assuming someone gave her a cigarette or cigarettes while she was awaiting execution,”
I comment, as I read about Liberty Halfway House, a nonsecure, not-for-profit treatment program for girls located on East
Liberty Street, just blocks from Colonial Park Cemetery, very close to the Jordan house, maybe a fifteen-minute walk from
it, I estimate.

At approximately six-forty-five the morning of January 6, a Liberty Halfway House volunteer on the healthcare staff had begun
making rounds of the residential facility to collect urine specimens for a random drug screening.
When she arrived at Lola
Daggette’s room and knocked on the door, there was no answer.
The volunteer entered and heard the sound of running water.
The bathroom door was shut, and after knocking and calling out Lola’s name and getting no response, the volunteer became concerned
and walked in.

She discovered Lola naked on the floor of the shower stall with hot water running.
The volunteer testified that Lola was frightened
and excited and was using shampoo to wash items of clothing that appeared to be very bloody.
The volunteer asked Lola if she
had hurt
herself, and she said no and demanded to be left alone.
She claimed she was doing laundry because she didn’t have access to
a washing machine and to “just leave the fucking cup by the sink and I’ll pee in it in a minute.”

At this point, according to the transcript, the volunteer turned off the hot water and ordered Lola to step out of the shower.
On the tile floor were “a pair of tan corduroy pants, women’s size four, a blue turtleneck sweater, women’s size four, and
a dark red Atlanta Braves Windbreaker, size medium, all of them extremely bloody, and the water on the shower floor was pinkish-red
from all the blood,” the volunteer testified, and when she asked Lola whose clothing it was, she replied that it was what
she’d had on when she was “checked in” five weeks earlier and was issued uniforms.
“They were what I was wearing on the street,
and since then they’ve been in my closet,” Lola explained to the volunteer.

Questioned about how blood could have gotten on the clothing, at first Lola said she didn’t know.
Then she offered, “It’s
that time of the month” and claimed she’d had an accident in her sleep, the volunteer testified.
“I got the distinct impression
she was making things up as I was standing there, but Lola was known for that at the LHH.
She was always talking big and saying
whatever would impress someone or keep her out of trouble.
She’ll say and do pretty much anything for attention and to protect
herself or get a favor and never seems to realize how it’s perceived or any possible consequences.

“Unfortunately, she’s like the boy who cried wolf around here, and it couldn’t have been more obvious the blood could not
have come from her having her period,” the volunteer said under oath in the hearing.
“It wouldn’t make sense for menstrual
blood to be on
the thighs, knees, and cuffs of a pair of pants and on the front and sleeves of a sweater and a jacket.
Quite a lot of it
hadn’t washed off yet, because there was so much of it, and my first thought was wherever it came from, the person must have
hemorrhaged, assuming it was human blood, of course.

“I also don’t know why Lola would sleep in street clothes, which the wards aren’t supposed to wear while they are in residence.”
The volunteer continued a testimony that was damning.
“They wear them when they get here and when they’re released.
The rest
of the time they wear uniforms, and it didn’t make sense why Lola would have been wearing the clothing in bed.
Nothing she
said made sense to me, and when I told her that, she kept changing her story.

“She said she’d found the bloody clothes in a plastic bag in her bathroom.
I asked to see the plastic bag, and she changed
her story again and said there was no bag.
She said she’d gotten up to use the bathroom and the clothes were on the floor,
in there, in the bathroom, just inside, to the left of the door.
I asked if the blood was wet or dry, and she said it was
sticky in spots and other stains were dry.
She claimed she didn’t know how the bloody clothes got there but was scared and
tried to wash them because she didn’t want to be blamed for something.”

The volunteer reminded Lola that what she was suggesting would mean someone had gone into her closet and removed the clothing,
gotten it bloody somehow, then reentered her room while she was asleep and left the clothing in the bathroom.
Who would do
such a thing, and why didn’t Lola wake up?
The person who did it “is quiet like a haint and is the devil,” Lola reportedly
said to the volunteer.
“It’s payback for something I done before I got stuck in here, maybe
someone I used to get drugs from, I don’t know,” she said, and she got angry and began to yell.

“You can’t tell no one!
You can just fucking throw them out but can’t tell no one!
I don’t want to go to jail!
I swear I didn’t
do nothing, I swear to God I didn’t!”
the volunteer testified Lola said, and the more I read, the more I understand why no
one at the time considered any suspect other than Lola Daggette.

M
arino does little more than glance at what I slide over to him, handling the pages with a casualness and lack of curiosity
that makes me suspect he’s studied them before.

“You’re familiar with this transcript?”
I ask.

“Jaime’s got it in the records she’s been collecting.
But she didn’t get it from him.”
He means she didn’t get it from Colin
Dengate.

“I wouldn’t have expected him to turn this over, because it wasn’t generated by him.
She would have to get it from Chatham
County Superior Court.”

“She figured he’d let you look at everything.”

“Apparently she figured right.
But what I’m seeing so far doesn’t exactly help her case.”

“Nope,” he says.
“Makes Lola Daggette look guilty as hell.
No big surprise she got convicted.
You can see how it happened.”

“I’m confused about the uniforms,” I add.
“Jaime mentioned that Lola was in and out of Liberty House on job interviews, visiting
her grandmother in a nursing home, that Lola could come and go rather much as she pleased as long as she had permission and
was present and accounted for when they did a bed check at night, I assume.
What did she wear when she went out?”

“The way I understand it, the uniforms looked like regular street clothes, like jeans and a denim shirt.
That’s what the wards—and
they called them wards—wore all the time.”

“You’re talking in past tense.”
I take a sip of the water Colin gave me in his office, my black field clothes damp from sweat,
the air-conditioning chilly.

“Lola Daggette wasn’t good for business, especially a place that depended on private donations,” Marino says.
“Rich people
in Savannah weren’t exactly eager to write checks to Liberty House anymore after Lola was convicted of murdering Clarence
Jordan and his family.
Especially since one of the things he was known for was helping out in shelters, clinics, helping people
who had problems, people who had nothing and couldn’t afford going to the doctor.”

“Did he ever help out at Liberty House?”
I get up to adjust the temperature in the room.

“Not that I know of.”

“Liberty House is gone, I assume.
Let me know if you get too warm in here.”
I sit back down, noting that Mandy O’Toole is
ignoring us, or appears to be.

“A homeless shelter for women run by the Salvation Army.
Nobody from the old days there anymore, and it doesn’t look the same, either,” Marino says.
“You read this stuff, and what
goes through your mind is Lola Daggette wasn’t smart enough to kill anyone and get away with it.”

“She didn’t get away with it.
But we don’t know that she killed anyone.”

“The devil wore her clothing and then left it in her bathroom after the fact,” he says.
“And she won’t tell anybody who the
devil is except the name
Payback
?”

“Seems she started thinking about
payback
when she was caught in the bathroom literally red-handed, washing the bloody clothing,” I reply, arranging more paperwork
in front of me.
“Someone was paying her back, someone from her drug days on the street.
Seems she might have been thinking
that she was set up, and maybe
Payback
is how she began to refer to whoever is responsible.”

“You really think she had nothing to do with it and doesn’t know who did?”

“I don’t know what I think.
Not exactly, not yet.”

“Well, I sure as hell know how it sounds,” Marino says.
“Sounds the same now as it did at the time.
Makes no friggin’ sense.
Plus, you’ll see when you get to the DNA part that it’s everybody’s.
Lola’s clothes have the blood of the entire Jordan family
on them, so I’m telling Jaime from day one, I don’t know how you explain that away.”

“It gets explained away by Jaime the same way it was by Lola’s original defense team.
Lola’s DNA wasn’t recovered from the
Jordan house or from their bodies or whatever clothing they had on when they were killed,” I reply, as I come to a section
in the transcript that includes photographs.
“Her DNA was recovered from the clothing
she was washing in the shower, and nowhere else.
Only from the corduroys, sweater, and Windbreaker, but so was the DNA of
the victims.
To a jury, that’s quite incriminating, although scientifically it raises questions.”
I don’t say what questions.

Not in front of Mandy O’Toole, who gives no sign she can hear us or is interested as she types on her BlackBerry with headphones
on, purportedly listening to music.

“She’s naked in the shower, washing the clothing,” Marino says.
“Seems like she’d leave her DNA on it just from that.
She’s
touching everything.
And her DNA probably was on the clothing to begin with, since they were the street clothes she had on
when she first arrived at Liberty House.”

“Correct.
So no matter where the clothing came from, she’d certainly contaminated it with her own DNA by the time she was
ordered out of the shower,” I agree.
“That her DNA was recovered from her own clothing isn’t necessarily significant.
Now,
if another individual’s DNA was recovered in addition to Lola’s, that would have been a different story,” I add, as I think
of Dawn Kincaid, whom I’m not going to mention.
“If another individual had worn her clothing, and that person’s DNA was recovered
from the pants, sweater, and Windbreaker left on the bathroom floor?”
I’m careful what I say as I probe for information.

I won’t take the chance that Mandy O’Toole might overhear any allusions to new DNA results.
According to Jaime, Colin Dengate
doesn’t know.
Scarcely anybody does, and I don’t understand how she can feel so sure of that, unless it’s what she wants to
believe and her wish is her reality.
In my opinion she should have filed a motion to vacate Lola’s sentence weeks ago.
Then
the truth would be known
and there would be nothing to leak.
It would have been safer for the case but not safer for Jaime.
She couldn’t have hoodwinked
me into coming to Savannah if I’d known about her new career and her big case down here.

She wasn’t off the mark last night when she doubted I would have volunteered to be her forensic expert if I’d had time to
think about it, if she’d been up front with me instead of lying and manipulating and setting me up to be sitting where I am
right this minute.
The more I’ve mulled over everything that’s happened, the more certain I am that I would have said no.
I would have referred her to someone else, but not because I would have worried about Colin’s response to my reviewing his
findings and possibly second-guessing him.
I would have been worried about how Lucy would react.
I would have felt that anything
I did with Jaime would be tainted by an unpleasant past and would be a bad idea for almost every reason imaginable.

“Well, if someone borrowed Lola’s clothes so this person could commit multiple murders, why wasn’t that person’s DNA recovered
from the pants, sweater, the Windbreaker?”
This is Marino’s way of confirming that neither Dawn Kincaid’s nor any other individual’s
DNA was recovered from Lola’s clothing.

“Washing with hot soapy water could have eradicated another donor’s DNA if we’re talking sweat and skin cells.
Maybe not blood,
but it depends on how much, and if it was a small amount, perhaps from being scratched by a child, the blood might have been
washed off in the shower,” I contemplate out loud.
“Especially in early 2002, when the testing wasn’t nearly as sensitive
as it is today.
Did anybody look at Lola Daggette’s shoes?”

“What shoes are you talking about?”

“She must have had shoes.
Were they issued by Liberty House?”

“I don’t think the wards were issued shoes.
Only jeans and denim
shirts.
But I really don’t know,” Marino answers me, as he continues looking at Mandy O’Toole, who isn’t looking at him.
“Nobody’s
ever said anything about shoes that I’m aware of.”

“Someone should have looked for blood on her shoes.
I see nothing here to indicate Lola was cleaning a pair of shoes in the
shower.
Or undergarments, for that matter.
If clothing is saturated, the blood soaks through onto panties, undershirts, bras,
socks.
But she was washing only the pants, sweater, and jacket.”

“You and shoes,” Marino says.

“Because they’re really important.”

Shoes are happy to tell me where a person’s feet were at the time of a terminal event.
At a homicide scene.
On the brake pedal
or accelerator.
On a dusty windowsill or balcony before the person jumped or was pushed or fell.
On the body of a victim who
was stomped and kicked, or in one case I had, in wet cement when a murderer fled the scene through a construction site.
Shoes,
boots, sandals, all types of footwear have tread patterns and unique flaws that leave their mark, and they deposit evidence
and carry it away.

“Whoever killed the Jordans would have had blood on his or her shoes,” I say.
“Even if it was trace amounts, something would
have been there.”

“Like I said, I haven’t heard anything about shoes.”

“Unless Colin has them in the lab, stored with the other evidence, it’s too late now,” I reply, as I look through photographs
included in Lola Daggette’s bid for clemency last fall.

The first few pages are portraits and candid shots intended to humanize the victims and inflame the governor of Georgia, Zebulon
Manfred, who ultimately denied clemency to Lola Daggette.
He is quoted in a photocopied newspaper article included in the
transcript as stating that efforts to spare her life are based on evidence already heard and rejected by a jury of her peers
and the appeals courts.
“We can ruminate about this heartless act of human depravity until the cows come home,” he said in
a public statement, “and it all comes back to the same horror acted out by Lola Daggette, who was in a mood to massacre an
entire family on the early Sunday morning of January sixth, 2002.
And she did.
With no motive whatsoever except that she felt
like it.”

I can only imagine the governor’s outrage when he looked at a studio portrait of the Jordan family during the last Christmas
season of their lives, just weeks before their brutal deaths.
Clarence Jordan, with his shy smile and kind gray eyes, was
dressed festively in a dark green suit and tartan plaid vest, his wife, Gloria, sitting next to him, a plain-looking young
woman with dark brown hair parted down the middle, demure in green velvet and ruffles.
Their five-year-old twins are seated
on either side of their parents, towheads with rosy cheeks and big blue eyes, Josh dressed exactly like his father, Brenda
like her mother.
There are more photos, and I flip through them, getting the point all too well as they draw whoever is looking
at them deeper into the nightmare that begins on page seventeen of the transcript.

A child’s bloody bare arm dangles off a blood-soaked bed.
The wallpaper is Winnie-the-Pooh and the sheets have a western pattern
of lassos, cowboy hats, and cacti, all of it spattered with elongated drops of cast-off blood, and drips and large dark stains,
and what appear to me to be wipe marks.
Dawn Kincaid enters my mind without my inviting her, and I see her inside that dark
bedroom, pausing during her frenzied attack, using the sheets and bedspread to clean off her hands and the weapon.
I feel
her lust and rage and hear her breathing hard and fast as her heart hammers and she stabs and slashes, and I wonder why she
would slaughter two children, two five-year-olds.

Twins, a boy and a girl who looked almost exactly alike at that young age, pretty blue-eyed blonds.
Had she met them before?
Had she watched them in the past, perhaps while gathering intelligence about their house and the family’s habits?
How did
she know about Josh and Brenda and whose room they were in, or did she?
What is the psychology of her going after them in
what I interpret as an enraged attack?
Who was she really killing when she went after them while they were asleep in their
own beds?

It wasn’t necessary.
It wasn’t needed or expeditious or motivated by a certain goal, such as stealing.
Maybe the parents,
but not young children who couldn’t defend themselves and possibly couldn’t identify anyone.
There could have been no sensible
reason, only a highly personalized driving force, and I feel Dawn Kincaid’s hatefulness, her victims’ blood the language of
a fury that she reveled in.
I believe she didn’t go after them randomly or impulsively any more than her coming after me was
a whim.
It was thought out.
She intended to leave the entire Jordan family dead.
Including the children.
Why?