Sleep In Heavenly Peace (Pinnacle True Crime) (31 page)

“When the jury was picked,” Odell said, “it was always my contention to get on the stand, and I knew that if there were mothers on the jury, or any kind of
intelligent
women, that they would hear what I was saying. They would know and they would understand. Even if they didn’t ever go through it, they had people and friends they knew who had. They would know the suffering, the anguish, the fear, umm…the disbelief in yourself. Ah…and all of the other myriad of emotions you go through when you walk around with this kind of hopelessness in your life on a daily basis.”

That might have been true. But would that same jury then believe the abuse Odell referred to was, in turn, a license to kill?

Patient, Schick stopped at times to collect his thoughts before continuing in a soft, nonthreatening manner, as if to project: this woman has made mistakes, but haven’t we all? It was a gamble to call into question Odell’s parenting skills. After all, four of her children were dead and she was being charged with killing three of them. There was a fine line between serendipity and condescension. If he crossed that line, it was likely jurors would feel it and begin to form opinions about Odell immediately.
Presumed Innocent
and
The Burden of Proof
were titles of Scott Turow novels, not to mention clichés among legal observers and pundits. It was okay to imagine Americans were innocent until proven guilty. Yet, for bona fide defense attorneys practicing in the real world, it wasn’t prudent to practice law with those same assumptions in mind. Most trials weren’t textbook law cases, where the brunt of guilt weighed on the prosecution’s shoulders. Most cases came down to the defense proving their client was innocent.

“You see,” Schick said, “one would think this case was over already,” referring to Lungen’s blistering accusations against Odell. “[But] you haven’t heard one witness, one iota of evidence; just a filibuster.

“Now, the prosecutor said this case, as all cases, is about accountability, it’s about responsibility. My client, Dianne, has things to be accountable for, she has things she’s responsible for, but she
did not
kill those babies, and even more so, she
did not
murder those babies.”

He continued that there wouldn’t be “one iota of evidence” presented to prove the babies were born alive. And with the exception of Odell’s statement, he was correct. “Not one bit of scientific evidence. Not one bit of medical evidence.”

Part of Schick’s case had to confront the undeniable fact that Odell had toted the babies around the country with her for the better part of twenty-two years. He couldn’t get around it. The jury would want to know why.

“She wrapped them up and packed them and took them wherever she went because she couldn’t bear to part from them.”

His argument centered on the prosecution’s notion that Odell was some twisted monster, carrying around mementos of her gruesome crimes. She was not anything like that, he insisted. If she was, and she had wanted to conceal evidence and deliberately try to evade being caught, why, he asked, would she keep the babies with her for that long? Why not discard them? Did she keep them in a garbage area of the houses she lived in? No, Schick said. She kept them with her “personal belongings” because they
meant
something to her.

“What was she going to do? She had three infant children living with her. She wasn’t going to keep them around the
house!
”

He promised he wasn’t going to argue insanity, “but there is more to this case and there is more surrounding facts than the prosecutor gave you…. One of the things I want to do, and I won’t be as long as the prosecutor, I’ll only be a few minutes…. I want to be forthright here in the beginning, right at the get-go, with some of the things that are not in dispute….”

That said, Schick explained how Odell had given birth to the babies. “She’s the mother! What’s not in dispute is that she wrapped them in sheets and blankets and kept them with her as she moved from place to place for employment and other reasons….”

Furthermore, it wasn’t in “dispute” that the police contacted Odell, or that “she wasn’t truthful. She wasn’t accurate.” But “there are reasons for that. Doesn’t mean she’s a murderer…. This is a woman who wants to have children.”

Successful defense attorneys confront those obvious bad situations for their clients that will come up during trial only one way: head-on. “Did she mislead and falsify?” Schick asked the jury, quite animated. “Yes! It’s interesting that the prosecution always wants it all their own way…after speaking to police in Pennsylvania for two days, and for twelve and fourteen hours to the New York State Police, and they finally manipulate her into saying something about possibly hearing something,” meaning that Scileppi had somehow managed to put words into Odell’s mouth regarding hearing the children “gasp” for air. “All of a sudden, that’s truth. That’s accurate.” He threw up his arms in disgust. “See, she’s only truthful, inaccurate, and saying things falsely when it serves
their
purposes. But any little tidbit that serves
her
purposes and it’s…[wrong information.]”

He then launched into a discussion regarding the DNA evidence, which he agreed was “true” evidence. He wasn’t going to question any of it. He wanted the jury to understand that “concrete facts” were going to dictate his portion of the case, not assumptions and speculation.

“Don’t make her into a monster until you’ve heard
everything
, heard things the prosecution doesn’t even know about as we sit here today. I’m not talking about insanity. I’m talking about
real
evidence of
real
life with
real
situations, all of which should and must be taken into consideration before you make a decision. Please keep that in mind.

“Thank you.”

1

SITTING IN A courtroom facing the possibility of spending the rest of her life in prison didn’t seem real to Dianne Odell. Yet, as Stephan Schick concluded his opening argument and Odell clutched firmly the rosary beads she held in her right hand, the reality of her life began to settle on her. Was it because she was alone? Sauerstein and the children couldn’t sit behind her in the courtroom because there was a possibility they would be called as witnesses. So there Odell sat, wearing a dark blue sweater, white button-up dress shirt, looking like a Sunday-school teacher, tears running down her cheeks, in between two men—Tim Havas and Stephan Schick—she hardly knew. Schick and Havas, like everyone else in the courtroom, would go home later in the day and have dinner with their families. They might turn on the television afterward, relax, think about their day, and get up in the morning and drive to the courthouse for another day of work. But Odell, she was going back across the street to endure another night of screams and fights and strangers, who, for the most part, saw her as a vile person. On the prison food chain, there weren’t many inmates lower than a child killer.

Prayer and hope, Odell said later, kept her sane enough during trial to focus on maybe escaping a guilty verdict and going home. Faith in the system. Faith in justice. Faith in the jury.

One juror…that’s all it took.

2

When Schick finished his opening, the court took a brief break. After that, Lungen called his first witness: Diane Thomas, the Graham County Sheriff’s Office detective who had opened the investigation after Safford, Arizona, resident Thomas Bright discovered the first baby.

Thomas explained how, why, when, and where. She described the gruesomeness of the discovery, the sheer horror of finding three dead babies wrapped in plastic and blankets and stuffed into cardboard boxes like trash. It sent a message to the jury Lungen had promised in his opening: the death of innocence. To solidify his theme further, Lungen introduced a host of photographs; deeply disturbing images of the crime scene, quite unlike anything anyone possibly had seen on television. This was the real thing. The babies were dead. And someone—that woman sitting over there, fumbling with rosary beads nervously, praying to herself—murdered them.

For an hour or so, Thomas set the stage for Lungen, explaining how the case had come to her attention and how she and Bruce Weddle ended up in Pennsylvania. Then, a short time later, Lungen had her focus on the initial (recorded) interview she and Weddle had conducted with Odell after she volunteered to drive to the Towanda state police barracks. Thomas explained how Odell began the interview cooperative and friendly, but then became defensive. Thomas said she learned later that Odell had lied about certain things.

Eventually, Thomas said, Odell had left the barracks and returned to her place of work, at which time Thomas and Weddle drove to her home to speak to Sauerstein.

It had been decided, Thomas told the jury, that on the following morning, Odell would drive herself to the barracks and submit to fingerprinting, but she called Thomas that day and said she wasn’t coming in.

“When you asked if she would give you the fingerprints,” Lungen asked, “what was her conversation with you?”

“Miss Odell told me that she would not. She was angry with me because we spoke with Mr. Sauerstein before she was able to.”

“Did you have any further conversation with her?”

“Yes, sir, we did.”

“Can you tell us what happened?”

“I advised Miss Odell that’s just part of an investigative process, to try to speak with everyone we can and that’s why we did it.”

“What did she say, anything?”

“Miss Odell indicated that she wanted to—she did not want to talk to me again until she got an attorney to take care of her home and then she would come in the next day and talk to me and tell me everything.”

This would be one of Stephan Schick’s opportunities maybe to bring into the record later the fact that Odell had indeed asked for an attorney. The problem, however, was that Odell voluntarily drove to the Towanda barracks that day—without an attorney.

Then Thomas talked about the second day she met with Odell, when Odell finally admitted the babies were hers. One of the points Lungen brought out, again and again, was how clear Odell had made it to Thomas and Weddle that she
didn’t
tell her mother she was pregnant. Why? Because she was terrified, Thomas testified, of what Mabel would do or say, and, she added, “Miss Odell was not married, nor did she have a relationship with the father of the babies.”

Near the end of Thomas’s direct examination, she explained how the case finally ended up in the hands of the NYSP and the Sullivan County District Attorney’s Office.

The jury was then allowed five minutes to collect their bearings while Thomas stepped down from the stand for a moment to do the same. When court resumed, Schick would get his first chance to plug holes in Lungen’s case.

Schick sat, looking through his notes, conversing quietly with Havas, as Odell listened attentively. For Odell, Thomas’s testimony was just one more version of the events she didn’t agree with.

“The statement Diane Thomas made on the stand regarding my calling her and demanding an attorney made Stephan Schick jump up out of his chair,” Odell said later.

This bothered Odell, she said. Because, “When I had said it to him myself, he told me at the time that it didn’t make that much of a difference. But Thomas got up on the stand and she admitted to it…and he got very agitated and angry. And I thought to myself, sitting there, ‘My God, I’ve been telling you this for months and it comes out of
her
mouth and you’re jumping up out of the chair?’”

For Schick’s part, he later agreed there was no doubt in his mind Odell had asked for an attorney, but he categorically denied Odell’s “jumping out of his chair” statement.

“From my standpoint, if a person doesn’t want to answer questions in that regard,” Schick recalled, “why should she say why she wants to speak to an attorney?”

Lungen—and many of the cops involved in the case—had made a point to insist that Odell had asked for a
civil
attorney, not a criminal attorney. Big difference from a legal, investigative standpoint. Yet, should it matter what type of attorney a suspect asks for? When one is being questioned about the deaths of three babies, should the type of attorney requested matter?

“I don’t think anybody, rationally, can look at this situation,” Schick added with fervor, “and say that if she went to speak to an attorney, she
wasn’t
going to bring up the fact that these
cops
were questioning her about dead babies.”

It was a good point. Would Odell speak to a civil attorney regarding matters at home and
not
mention anything about three dead babies she was being connected to? One would have to be quite ignorant to think she wouldn’t. Odell was manhandled by these cops and, in a way, tricked into talking to them without an attorney, Schick insisted. Does it make her any less guilty? No, of course not. But it does mean she might have been denied a constitutional right any American in her position—guilty or innocent—was entitled to?

Schick didn’t begin his cross-examination of Thomas by bringing up the fact that his client had asked for an attorney and what type of attorney she wanted. Instead, he attacked Odell’s supposed clandestine approach to first speaking with Thomas and Weddle. By asking the right questions, Schick was able to flesh out a theory that Odell wasn’t necessarily hiding those babies in the storage shed, but had put them there to go back later perhaps and retrieve them and go to the police. It might have been a stretch, sure, but through Thomas’s testimony, Schick was able to point out to the jury that there was plenty of documentation in the storage shed that clearly proved the boxes were Odell’s. If she was hiding the babies, why leave behind evidence of who you are?

After that, Schick got into the attorney dilemma.

“When you called her on a Sunday and you reached her at home, she said before talking to you…that she wanted to speak to an attorney, isn’t that correct?”

Thomas shuffled a bit, but was certainly not made uncomfortable by the question. It was more of just getting used to the hard seat she found herself once again sitting in.

“Yes, sir,” she said without hesitation.

With that out of the way, Schick focused on the interview Thomas and Weddle had recorded. He wanted the jury to understand that the tape recording was not “representative” of everything Odell had said, but was more of a slice of time from what would become three days’ worth of interviews.

Thomas agreed.

Then it was on to the question of whether the word “stillborn” was Thomas’s idea or Odell’s. Who brought it up? It would be important, because Schick was prepared to push the theme that cops had put words in Odell’s mouth, beginning with “stillborn.”

“Did you specifically use the word ‘stillborn’ in asking her a question: ‘Were these babies stillborn?’ Did you specifically use those words?”

“No, sir, I did not.”

“Do you even know whether she was aware of the words ‘stillborn,’ or what it meant? It was never even used in your conversation, was it?”

“I did not ask her that question, no.”

“Now, did you—before entering this second conversation with her—did you ascertain from her whether she had been able to speak to an attorney?”

“No, sir, I did not.”

Whereas most witnesses were accustomed to answering questions with long, detailed—sometimes too detailed—answers, cops generally know to keep their answers pithy: yes or no. There was no reason to carry on, bringing out things that would be cause for more examination.

Schick asked Thomas a few more inconsequential questions about Sauerstein and then, “Thank you very much.”

Lungen had only one point to go over with Thomas on redirect. He had Thomas explain further why Odell wanted an attorney. At one point, Thomas said, “Miss Odell’s words to me were ‘I need to speak to an attorney to get my house in order before I talk to you again.’”

“Did she ever tell you that she wanted to have an attorney representing her in her contact with you and the police in this investigation?”

“No, sir, she did not.”

“At any time?”

“No, sir, she did not.”

“And as part of her concern about getting her house in order, is that what prompted the telling her that she’d be able to go home that night…to take care of whatever business she had to take care of?”

“Yes, sir.”

“And did that satisfy her?”

“Yes, sir, it did.”

“And did you, in fact, allow her to do that?”

“Yes, sir. Miss Odell did leave that day with Mr. Sauerstein.”

“Thank you.”

Schick stood right up and walked toward the witness stand.

“Something else, Mr. Schick?” Judge LaBuda asked.

“Yes, Your Honor.”

“So, before she blurted this thing out about the babies, she said to you, ‘I’ll talk to you tomorrow,’ is that correct?”

“Yes, sir.”

“You didn’t want to wait till tomorrow; you wanted to talk right then, is that correct?”

“That’s correct, sir.”

“But you knew it was Sunday and she probably wouldn’t be able to get in touch with a lawyer until the next day, isn’t that correct?” Schick was animated. He was sure he had Thomas on the ropes.

“I object to that,” Lungen said.

“Sustained.”

“You said she told you she wanted to talk to an attorney,” Schick then asked, “she wanted to get her house in order before she talked to you again, is that correct?”

“That’s correct, sir.”

“But she wasn’t able to talk to an attorney and get her house in order before she talked to you again, isn’t that correct?”

“Objection!”

“Overruled,” the judge said, then, looking at Thomas, “To your knowledge?”

“To my knowledge, that’s correct, sir.”

“Okay,” Judge LaBuda said, “anything else then, Mr. Lungen?”

Apparently, Schick was finished—except he hadn’t told anyone.

“No, Your Honor,” Lungen said.

“Thank you, Sergeant Thomas,” the judge said. “The next time you visit New York, please bring some sunshine with you.”

“I sure hope so,” Thomas said. “Thank you, sir.”

3

PSP trooper Robert McKee, a criminal investigator, was next. McKee was the liaison between the NYSP and the PSP as the Odell case became a New York investigation. He had met with Thomas and Weddle when they arrived in Rome, Pennsylvania. Beyond that, McKee was there when Weddle and Thomas interviewed Odell that first time. He could give the jury a timeline and explain how Odell had been allowed to go home on that first day.

Schick had little for McKee.

“McKee didn’t say much of anything because there wasn’t much of anything he
could
say,” Odell recalled. “It was just a cock-of-a-walk-strut thing, that’s all! Basically, this was a parade of people, paid by the New York State Police, to get up there and say, ‘Yes! [She] was cooperating voluntarily. [She] said all of these things. [We] would have no reason to lie.’ Even though the fact remained that they were all getting commendations, they were all standing in the back of the vestibule area of the courtroom watching the proceedings inside the courtroom.”

PSP trooper Gerald Williams took the stand late in the day. After having Williams go through his impressive list of credentials, Lungen zeroed in on the second day Odell had been interviewed. Williams had fingerprinted Odell. During that process, Williams said, he asked Odell if she would like to talk about the three dead infants found in Arizona.

Odell agreed, Williams said.

“And did she,” Lungen asked at one point, “raise any conversation with you about wanting to have an attorney before she spoke to anybody on this investigation…?”

“Not in reference to this investigation,” Williams said. “No.”

Moreover, Williams said, Odell talked about “wanting to get her house in order before she really sat down with us and what she had told us is she would have liked to [have] spoken to an attorney in reference to the custody of her son Brendon. She said her young son…and his father…really didn’t get along, and she…she described it as rock and water, just really not mixing well….”