Sleep In Heavenly Peace (Pinnacle True Crime) (33 page)

Baden gave long, detailed answers. He wanted to be sure the jury understood exactly what he was saying. They deserved it. It might seem long-winded and procedural, but to get to the truth—at least from a medical perspective—one must be privy to
all
the information, not just sound bites that might make for interesting headlines.

As Lungen handed Baden certain photographs of the babies, the judge addressed the jury, “Ladies and gentlemen, you will be seeing shortly, as you have saw yesterday, certain photographs which many of you…may deem to be unpleasant….”

Within a few moments, the photographs were put up on the overhead projector for everyone to see while Baden began explaining the differences between the mummified remains of one baby and the bone fragments of the other two, on occasion using a laser pointer to direct jurors to certain sections of the photographs.

“If we go more to three o’clock,” Baden said, pointing to one of the X rays, “…this is the top of the X ray right here. You can go all the way down. See! This obviously is the skull of the baby. The baby’s skull was fully developed. These are the jaws,” he added, moving the pointer down a bit. “There are no teeth here yet. There are no fractures. This is the spine…bones coming down in the arms. The upper arm, the elbows, the shoulder joints…”

As Baden spoke in graphic detail—but sounding rather congenial and calm, as if it were all some sort of biology lesson—the full structure of the baby emerged. Odell cried silently. The images were equally disturbing to others as most sat and listened to strangers talk about dead children as if they were mere science experiments.

Perhaps most shocking of all was an X ray of mummified Baby Number Three, whose skeleton was entirely intact. There, before everyone, was a full-term baby, cradled in a fetal position, knees tucked to chest, arms seemingly hugging itself, as if still in the womb. The X ray was clear, a full-figured structure of the baby, every bone and every curve, perfect.

“Baby Number Three,” Heather Yakin said later, “that was the one that got the jurors…. You could see in that X ray that he had been a perfectly formed little boy.”

Little boy
…exactly what Lungen had been saying all along. Let no one forget these babies, only minutes or hours old, were human beings.

If there was any question in the jury’s mind that they hadn’t been dealing with fully formed human beings, the X ray Baden was pointing to answered it without question.

It was 12:30
P.M
. With the sober images of the X rays playing in the minds of jurors, the judge decided to break for lunch. Everyone was expected back in the courtroom an hour later, at 1:30.

1

AFTER THE LUNCH break, in the span of an hour, Dr. Baden explained the X rays in further detail, telling jurors what the results meant to him as part of his entire investigation. With that, after discussing briefly how he meticulously studied each X ray, on top of conducting an autopsy on each child, Lungen asked, “Could you state, all by itself, that you would know either the manner or the cause of death?”

“No,” Baden said, “I could not.”

“All by itself?”

“Just by examining the remains, I would not be able to determine each baby by itself the cause or manner of death. I can eliminate a lot of things, but I could not eliminate the cause of death.”

Lungen asked him to give an example.

“I could eliminate traumatic injuries to the bone. Most traumas—that is blunt-force trauma, gunshot wound, stab wounds—that cause death cause some injury to bone. So, there was no injury to bone that speaks against a violent death of that nature. I could also eliminate, even without the tissue being present, many kinds of natural diseases that would affect bone….”

Lungen continued asking questions about procedures and what other elements generally aided Baden in finding a cause of death. Was the fact that the babies had been abandoned and stored in boxes important?

Baden said it was.

“Now, you became aware…prior to making and formulating any opinions and conclusions, that at some point during the police investigation the defendant had made various statements to law enforcement?”

“Yes.”

“And those statements were made available to you for your consideration, were they not, as to how they impacted on what happened to these three babies?”

“Yes.”

Lungen then went into a series of questions detailing how Odell had, at first, lied to police. Then he talked about how she had not received any prenatal care while she was pregnant with the three dead babies. Baden agreed it was imperative in his investigation. Additionally, he said, it was also important to him that Odell had given birth to eight living children at hospitals, but the three dead babies had been born at home.

Then Lungen asked, perhaps, the most critical question of the trial thus far.

“With respect to Baby Number One, would it be important to you, as a forensic pathologist, to know that the defendant said to the police in substance, ‘I heard the baby’s first muffled cry’? And then she said she lost consciousness, and then when she came to, she said there were several inches of one of the towels inside the baby’s mouth? Do those two statements, hearing muffled cries and several inches of a towel inside a baby’s mouth, have any significance to you, in your opinion, with respect to Baby Number One?”

“Yes.”

“Why?”

“The significance is, the baby was born alive to be able to make her cry and that somebody put a towel into the baby’s mouth—and that, in itself, would suffocate the baby.”

“Why do you say, ‘Someone put a towel in the baby’s mouth several inches’?”

“Because the baby could not have done that to itself.”

Two questions later, Lungen went for it: “What would you determine the cause of death and the manner of death?”

“I would determine the cause of death to be traumatic asphyxia by suffocation by towel in the mouth as the cause of death. And the manner of death would be homicide.”

Then Lungen had him tell the jury exactly why he thought Odell had killed the children and how, in his opinion, she had done it.

By the end of Baden’s direct examination, Lungen wanted to be sure he had made another point clear to the jury: illegitimate children die at a higher rate.

“Infanticide,” Lungen said, “from a pathologist’s point of view, essentially means what?”

“Death of an infant.”

“Is it a fair statement that in your experience you see infanticide more prevalent with illegitimate children?”

“Yes…”

“Right! In this case, all three children were born alive, in your opinion?”

“In my opinion, yes.”

“I have no further questions, Doctor.”

2

Schick wasn’t about to pass on the opportunity to question Baden. After all, as esteemed and renowned as he was, Baden had just called Schick’s client a murderer.. To
not
cross-examine him would have been detrimental to Odell. Schick needed to try to rebut some of what Baden had said, or least drive home the point that it was his “opinion,” which didn’t necessarily constitute fact.

Schick wasted little time getting into it with Baden.

“Sir, firstly, you said when a forensic pathologist makes a determination of homicide that that can mean many things, is that correct?”

“Yes, sir.”

“That homicide includes many different criminal charges, isn’t that correct?”

“And no criminal charges. Criminal and noncriminal charges, yes, sir.”

Baden wasn’t some callow, just-out-of-med-school doctor, summarizing his first homicide case for a jury. He had been on the stand more times than he could recall. He was a professional, and his “opinions,” regardless of how they were perceived by Stephan Schick, would have a major impact on the jury’s sense of the case.

“Homicide can be accidental?” Schick asked next.

“We, medical examiners, don’t use it in that term. The courts may decide that it could be unintentional, inadvertent.”

“Homicide can be negligent homicide?”

“Yes.”

“It can be a reckless homicide?”

“Yes.”

“It can be manslaughter?”

“Yes.”

“Manslaughter first degree and manslaughter in the second degree?”

“Yes.”

“And it could be murder?”

“Yes. And can be excusable and justifiable.”

Odell sat looking at both Schick and Baden, wondering what was going on, as they volleyed questions and answers back and forth in rapid succession. She wasn’t too concerned about courtroom tactics and legal gibberish. She was focused on telling her side of the story to the jury and making each one—or just one—believe it had been Mabel who had killed her children.

“Okay,” Schick said, pacing a bit, nodding his head, “now, I think you said in a number of parts of your testimony that it’s extremely important to know histories in making these determinations, isn’t that correct?”

“I didn’t say ‘
extremely
.’ It’s important to get as much
information
as possible. Sometimes we don’t get history.”

“Maybe I’ve got this wrong? Maybe you can clear this up?”

“Yes.”

Baden said he could not make a determination of death “based only upon the medical and scientific facts….” He needed more information.

Schick made a point of saying how important it was that the information—the “outside information,” in his words—be accurate.

“To a certain extent,” Baden was quick to lash back. “Because I don’t adopt the outside information as given. I’ll evaluate to see if it makes sense in light of the autopsy or medical findings. But yes, how accurate the information is, is important.”

Lungen sat and listened carefully. He wanted to pump his fist in the air and say, “Good job, Doctor. Perfect.” But he could only, of course, sit in quiet repose and reflect on how good a witness Dr. Baden was.

“I’m particularly concerned with some of the things the prosecutor just went over with you,” Schick said next, quite animated and obviously upset. “He asked you, ‘Is that an important part of your determination in this case?’ And he started saying things like, ‘Reading statements made by the mother of hearing noises and cries’—”

Baden wouldn’t allow Schick to finish. “Yes!”

“…and crying. If that was not true, that could greatly affect your determination here, isn’t that correct?”

“It could affect my determination, yes.”

What Schick was leading up to, clearly, was that Odell’s confession could have been coerced—that maybe she never had said the babies had cried or coughed to begin with, and Baden was basing a major portion of his
opinion
on a situation that actually had never occurred.

Reasonable doubt. It was Schick’s job.

Next Schick tried to dismantle Lungen’s argument that there had been a towel in one of the babies’ mouths.

“For example, in that one baby, if there was never any towel in the mouth at the time of the birth, that’s a significant item of information you used and you no longer have, isn’t that correct?”

“Yes,” Baden answered.

“That wouldn’t possibly change your determination of asphyxia?”

“If you were only dealing with the one baby, Baby Number One,” Baden replied.

“I’m taking one at a time?”

“One at a time. If I’m told that the mom says, ‘There is a towel in the mouth,’ given the fact that the baby is full-term and there is no other competing cause of death, that would be sufficient for me, by itself, to make a diagnosis of asphyxia.”

For about a half hour, Baden and Schick went back and forth, discussing how Baden had determined cause and manner of death. At one point, Baden agreed that part of his opinion had been based on Odell’s confession. After that, Schick attacked how the babies had been stored in boxes for twenty or more years and how the heat might have been responsible for deteriorating their bodies enough to corrupt any forensic investigation. And wasn’t it possible, Schick suggested, that being in those boxes all that time, wrapped in towels and blankets, traveling around the country, one of the babies could have ended up with a towel in its mouth?

Baden agreed it was a possibility—but highly unlikely.

“You made assumptions based upon the accuracy and the truthfulness of those statements,” Schick asked at one point, “isn’t that correct?”

“Yes, based on what was written down, but also based on my interpretation of the findings that these statements were consistent with the findings of the baby.”

In other words, Baden went back and tried to corroborate part of what Odell had said in her statement to see if all of the information added up.

“But you weren’t present when the statements were being made, is that correct?”

“That’s correct.”

“You don’t know the circumstances under which the statements were made, isn’t that correct?” Schick posed.

“That’s correct.”

Was a medical examiner supposed to be in the same room with a suspect when he or she was interviewed? Was that what Schick was asking the jury to believe? Or, was he merely making a point that for the jury to understand the
entire
case, it had to take into account the mere notion that some of the statements Odell had given to police might have been coerced?

“And you are a colleague of those police personnel, wouldn’t that be fair to say?” Schick asked.

“Of some. Yes, yes.”

In the end, it was up to each juror to draw a conclusion as to whether the statement Odell had given police had been bullied out of her. The problem, when it came down to it, though, was that Odell had signed the statement, and by doing that, she agreed with every word BCI investigator Roy Streever had typed.

After a series of questions based on Baden’s actual role in the investigation process as the case developed, Schick became sarcastic and quite patronizing, perhaps trying to rattle the good doctor.

“Did you want to know at the time of the birth”—he stopped, thought a minute—“Withdrawn. Would you agree with me that childbirth is painful? Is
that
difficult? I know you have to
think
a little!”

Baden didn’t crack. Instead, he ignored the insult and remained calm. “It can be painful. However, I’ve been involved with many situations in which childbirth was concealed and it’s amazing how, to me, how a woman, young girls often…not wanting the mom in the next room to hear about it, keep quiet and the mom may not know about it. The answer is, childbirth itself
is
painful. But there may be
other
emotional factors that are more significant in giving birth to a child without anybody in the household knowing it.”

It was an image, perhaps, Schick didn’t want the jury to have. He hadn’t followed the one golden rule trial attorneys generally live by: don’t ask a question you don’t know the answer to. Baden had, with one answer, given the jury a scenario that could have taken place in the Odell-Molina household.

Schick was a bit dismayed. “Then just humor me,” he said as if he were playing stupid.

“Sorry?” Baden said. He didn’t understand.

“
Humor
me! If I suggest, without all of the things that you said, I suggest the childbirth is painful, I have not done it, okay?”

“You and I would have the same experience, yes.”

For the next hour, the two men traded verbal jabs; Schick the aggressor, trying to get Baden to expound on different hypothetical scenarios that could have taken place. Ultimately, the jury sat through a discussion of theory and happenstance. Where were the facts? Where was Schick’s smoking gun?

Schick talked about stillbirth for a time, and then launched into a debate regarding how a father’s medical history could play a role possibly in a woman having a stillborn child. Could that have happened here?

Interestingly, no mention of Mabel was broached as Schick then worked into a discussion of midwives. He was hoping, maybe, that the jury would at least question the statement Odell had given police. It was, at last, his only real potential loophole in Lungen’s case.

After Lungen objected several times to Schick’s line of questioning, noting time and again that many of the questions were “hypotheticals” and had no place in the trial, Schick asked Baden, “Is it possible for a baby to be born and never take a breath?”

Lungen stood. “I object to the question—
anything
is possible!”

After the judge allowed him, Baden explained that the term Schick was referring to was “stillborn.”

A moment later, after a heated discussion over Baden’s determination that a lack of prenatal care would greatly affect the health of a baby at birth, Baden said it was his opinion that, in Odell’s case, it was a “minor factor. It’s the
concealment
of the pregnancy that’s more of significance to me.”