Twisted Triangle (36 page)

Stanton testifi that he spent eight and a half hours interviewing Gene—two or three times longer than the defense’s expert. He also conducted interviews with Margo and Allison, listened to Gene’s 911 tape, and reviewed a voluminous number of documents pertaining to Gene’s fraud case, including Margo’s interviews with federal investigators about the kidnapping.

“Now, sir, did you in fact reach a conclusion as to whether or not the defendant was insane in your opinion on the day of the alleged crime?” Paul asked.

“I did reach such a conclusion.” “And what was that conclusion?”

“That Eugene Bennett was not legally insane at the time of the crime.”

The psychologist explained that during their interviews, Gene was “lucid, straightforward, very clear and very organized in telling me about his life. . . . There was a lot of pressure, and this is a man that rose to pressure and welcomed it.”

He noted that, in many cases, Margo and Gene gave completely different versions of events. But given the allegations of abusive treatment made by Margo and her former nanny, Stanton concluded, “This is a man who was going to get things the way he wanted them, whatever the means were, whatever it took. This is a person who always had a plan. . . . This is a person who was deliberate, who was calculating, and who was rational.”

Gene told Stanton that Allison’s call the night before the church incident “got him tremendously upset.” However, Stanton told the jury that he’d talked to Allison himself and heard a very different story.

“Allison told me this morning that she never told her father on the phone that she was going to move, . . . that she did tell her

father several weeks before that they might move to, I think it was a town house next door, and that his reaction was, ‘Well, I don’t understand why you’re going to move from one house to another,’ but that he wasn’t particularly upset.”

Stanton found it curious that Gene said he’d lost all this time and forgot placing the ad in the
Washington Post
.

“This is a man who had a very good memory,” he said. “This

is a man who, for many hours, went into tremendous detail with me about the things he did remember about so many aspects of his life, and he was extremely clear. And he said to me that I knew more about the crimes that occurred on June 23 than he did.”

But Stanton said the events of that night required “a very organized mind, a very ingenious mind, a creative mind, a mind that can plot, plan, and deliberate. . . . Once you understand it, you see that a person who’s insane is not going to be able to do this.”

He noted that it was very convenient for someone who committed a crime to try to avoid the consequences by claiming memory loss. “But there was nothing I could find in the eight and a half hours that I spent with [Gene], or the collateral interviews, or the documents I read, that said to me that this man was insane other than that he said, ‘I don’t remember.’ ”

He noted that Gene issued a number of conditions to police during the 911 call, clearly illustrating that he was “a man who is in control and he knows what he’s doing.” He demanded to know that his children were safe and to talk to people he knew from the FBI, to his lawyer, and to his minister. “At the very end, he even wants to be sure that his house is locked up after he leaves it.”

Asked if he thought that Gene had been malingering— another term for faking—during the interviews, Stanton said, “I think the whole thing is malingering.”

Dismantling Dr. Bishop’s diagnoses one at a time, he said that if someone were truly disassociating, it was not probable that he would snap into another personality when the phone rang.

He said he also did not agree with the doctor that Gene had obsessive-compulsive personality disorder, although he did concur that Gene had antisocial and narcissistic personality features.

“In your professional opinion, did he understand the difference between right and wrong?”

“I think so.”

“Was he able to understand the nature and consequences of his act?”

“Yes.”

During the lunch recess, Jim asked Margo and Allison to hang around a while longer. Once Stanton Samenow finished testifying, Jim said he would know whether he would call Allison to the stand.

Judge Potter called a short recess after Reid was done cross-examining Stanton, during which Jim ran up to Paul’s offi to talk to Margo and Allison.

“Stanton’s testimony went well,” he said. “I’m not going to need Allison. Take her home.”

Jim had two kids himself, including a daughter around Allison’s age. Looking down at Margo’s daughter, he said, “Allison, you’re a brave girl.”

Last up was Evan Stuart Nelson, a forensic psychologist who specialized in assessing whether criminal defendants were malingering. He had treated and assessed people with dissociative disorder, specifi multiple personality disorder, at the Indiana School of Medicine and was now in private practice.

“Why is it important to be—have expertise in malingering in making an assessment for the courts in a criminal proceeding?” Paul asked.

“When somebody is charged with a crime or when they’re interested in receiving fi damages in exchange for men-tal illness that they incurred because of some traumatic incident, there are strong motivations to be seen as mentally ill and . . . to fake symptoms or exaggerate symptoms.”

In his experience, Evan said, it was rare that someone with this disorder could stay lucid, focused, and organized for a two-to three-hour interview.

“This hearing voices, being psychotic— the whole realm of ‘I feel out of my mind, my mind is controlled, I’m hearing voices,’ are the most frequent malingering symptoms in a criminal forensic context in every study that I have ever looked at.”

Paul asked for Evan’s opinion on the likelihood that a hypo-thetical person who had committed the crimes of which Gene was accused would meet Virginia’s test for legal insanity.

“It sounds really unlikely,” Evan said. “You’re talking about a sequence of rather unusual but highly organized behaviors toward a specifi goal. . . . Unless there is some indication of a delusional understanding of what that goal is, it doesn’t sound at all like somebody who is out of control or doesn’t understand what they’re doing or that it’s wrong to them.”

“When you assess for this disorder, are there any other diagnoses you consider?” Paul asked.

Evan said he would consider schizophrenia, but said malingering was “really high on the list,” because people had heard a lot about this particular disorder in the media. But for him, behaviors such as committing illegal acts and lying, then claiming to have no memory and showing no remorse, more aptly fi the description of a psychopath.

By the time Evan was fi he and Stanton had successfully poked holes through Dr. Bishop’s diagnoses, methods, and testimony. But Jim and Paul knew no case was won until a jury delivered a guilty verdict.

When Margo later learned about testimony from defense witnesses that Gene had claimed that he’d had insomnia and blackouts back in 1993, she figured he’d been planning for years to use this insanity defense— probably even prior to kidnapping her.

Margo remembered how Gene had planned the Nickelride raid at Tony’s down to the minute and figured he had done the same thing with this murder plan of his. Unlike Nickelride, however, this one turned out to have a fatal fl .

“This one would’ve been foolproof if I hadn’t had the pepper spray,” she said. “I was the unpredictable factor.”

Chapter Fourteen

Vindication

Monday, February 10, was day seven of the trial, which was starting its third and final week.

Judge Potter had given the prosecution an hour and the defense ninety minutes for their closing arguments, and thirty minutes to the prosecution for its rebuttal.

In their closings, Jim and Reid summed up their cases, highlighting their best witness testimony and trying to undermine that of the other side.

Paul got to have the last word in his rebuttal argument before the jury began deliberating.

Paul said he took no pleasure in asking the jury to convict a former law enforcement offi who had done so much good for his country. He contended that Gene didn’t kill Edwin Clever before Margo arrived or knife her in the church parking lot, because he knew he would go down for murder. So instead he came up with a plan “that defi imagination.”

“I asked you folks on voir dire if any of you couldn’t accept that there are times when the truth is crazier than fiction and all of you said you could accept that premise. Well, folks, this is a case where the truth, perhaps, is stranger than fi

Paul had been saving one piece of evidence for this very mo-ment, as the pie`ce de re´sistance of the prosecution’s case, when the defense could no longer offer some crazy explanation.

“I think it tied everything together. It told its own story,” Paul said later. “I thought it was going to kill the defense. They kind of skimmed over it and they thought we were going to overlook

it.... When the jury got the full flavor of it, I think that was the end of the case.”

Paul began to read aloud part of the fi typed note that Gene had planted in the Annandale campus locker, explaining that it was a business plan Gene had drafted to read as if Margo had written it.

“ ‘I will control the fi clients, and business money concerns as required. . . . She will obtain life insurance in the amount equal to four times the amount of financing that I provide or arrange.’ This is ostensibly Margo’s notes about her business arrangements with Mary Ann, prepared by that man,” Paul said, pointing at Gene.

“ ‘I will hold the policies and she will name the benefi

that I direct,’ ” he said, pointing again, “prepared by that man. ‘I will use my alias/DBA name of Elizabeth Akers with no questions asked by MAK.’ ”

Then, turning to the jury, Paul said, “almost like Ed Adams, isn’t it?

“ ‘Convince MAK to take a job at McDonald’s. Convince her to work a demeaning job when not in class and convince her that it is an assignment for a client.’

“This, I should say, takes it all: ‘MAK, Mary Ann Khalifeh, will always refer to me as Edwin Adams to friends, family, etcetera as her boss, partner, associate, etcetera. . . . It’s much safer this way now. I can work several [angles] all at once with little risk of exposure. [I will win at all levels.]’

“ ‘Have MAK rent van and room for dry run on 6/22, 23. Run through all phases. Use this time to teach her some surveillance work. . . . Get her weapon[s training and certifi in order.’

“That will answer for you, I believe,” Paul said, “and I can’t speak for you folks, some of the questions you might have as to why in the name of God would somebody do what he did.”

If Gene had pulled off his scheme, Paul said, he would have been a hero, “the person who was wrongfully convicted in the fi instance, and Margo would have been the crazy, dingbat lesbian

who put pornographic material in her lockers along with all of this other evidence.” Mary Ann, a “blind little lamb,” he said, would have ended up dead as well.

Paul told the jury that Gene had already manipulated Margo, the family’s nanny, Edwin, Mary Ann, even Dr. Bishop, his own attorney, and the police.

“Don’t let him manipulate you,” he said. “Don’t let him manipulate the system. Hold him to the burden that the law holds him to.”

Jim and Paul had successfully tied all the evidence together so that for the fi time in Margo’s mind—and, she hoped, the jury’s as well—she could see how the dots in Gene’s cunning scheme were connected. Finally, she understood.

By this point, Margo felt pretty confi Juries were always unpredictable, but she believed that the prosecutors had done a remarkable job.

At 1:07 pm, Judge Potter announced the identity of the thir-teenth, alternate juror, and told the other twelve members to begin deliberations after lunch.

He called court back into session three times that afternoon, fi to announce that the jury had requested the exhibit list, next that the jury wanted to see a transcript of Gene’s 911 tape, and then that the jury wanted a legal defi of “to defraud.” Margo and Dianna trekked up to the courtroom each time, as did Gene and his attorneys.