Before He Wakes (33 page)

As the tape was being played, Jason, seated in the front row beside his brother, broke into tears at the sound of his trembling voice pleading for help.

Doug Griffin, who had been first to reach the house that morning, told about his arrival.

“Did you see any blood on the lady at all?” Evenson asked.

His reason for asking this would become apparent when the videotape of the reenactment was shown later. In it Barbara described crying out to Russ and rolling him over and back after she realized he had been shot, something Evenson was convinced never happened. If so, Barbara should have had blood on the flannel shirt she was wearing that morning.

“No,” said Griffin. “I did not notice any, no.”

Russ, however, was bleeding profusely, Griffin noted a few minutes later. “It wasn’t spurting,” he said, “It was oozing … coming from his nose and mouth and running down the side of his face … in his hair, all around the back left side of his head.”

James Wingate, the fire department captain, related that Barbara had told him the shooting was an accident soon after he arrived in the room. He, too, said that he had not noticed any blood on Barbara.

“Did you later in fact find out there was blood on the front of Mrs. Stager’s shirt?” Cotter asked on cross-examination.

“No, sir, I did not.”

“Did you look for blood?”

“No.”

“That really wasn’t your function, was it?”

“We were concentrating on him very hard at that time and really didn’t pay that much attention to her,” Wingate said.

Clark Green, the first deputy on the scene, told of questioning Barbara with Deputy Paul Hornbuckle.

“As you were talking to her, observing her, did you form an opinion about her emotional condition?” Evenson asked.

“Yes, sir.”

Cotter objected to this line of questioning, and the judge sustained.

“Did you watch her demeanor?” Evenson pressed on. “Would you describe—was she crying?”

“Objection to the leading,” said Cotter.

“Overruled. You may answer that.”

“I didn’t see her cry,” Green said. “She seemed concerned and shaken, but she wasn’t crying. She was calm.”

Deputy Paul Hornbuckle testified next, telling of removing the cocked and loaded pistol from the bed, of being asked to remove Barbara from the room and of questioning her afterward.

“Was she saying anything before you started questioning her?” Evenson asked.

“Yes, sir. She was stating, ‘I kept telling him about those damn guns.’ ”

When Cotter cross-examined Hornbuckle, he tried to show that Barbara wasn’t unemotional and composed that morning.

“Isn’t it a fact that either you or Deputy Green or both of you told Mrs. Stager to calm down so she could answer the questions?”

“Yes, sir, that is correct. We were asked to take her out of the room while they were still administering aid.”

“But you told her on more than one occasion to calm down so she could answer your questions?”

“Yes, sir.”

Kevin Wilson, the director of emergency training in the county, followed Hornbuckle to the stand and said that Barbara had been so loud in the room that he and other emergency workers couldn’t hear one another.

“Okay, you say this was a distraction?” Evenson said.

“Yes, sir.”

“Was she repeating this over and over?”

“It was more of a chant, best way I could describe it.”

Evenson asked him to demonstrate Barbara’s chanting, and he attempted it, mimicking her words. “ ‘I’m scared of guns. Guns are not safe. My God, I wish we didn’t have them.’ ”

Wilson told of getting Russ into the ambulance and then going back to see if he could help Barbara by taking her to the hospital or going to get Russ’s parents. After telling of Barbara’s quick and cold rejection of his offer of help, Wilson said, “I backed up and just did not say anything else.”

It took him ten or fifteen seconds to regain his composure, he said. “It sort of startled me. I guess that’s the only way to describe it.”

It was then, Wilson said, that he went to Doug Griffin and told him to document the events of the morning, only facts, no opinions. “Before you talk to anybody, before you eat breakfast or anything,” he recalled telling him.

“Let me ask you,” Evenson said in closing, “do you remember her ever asking, ‘Is he going to make it?’?”

“I don’t recall that being asked of me, no, sir.”

After Phyllis Cagle, the now-retired secretary to the principal at Durham High School, testified that Barbara had calmly called her on the morning of the shooting to report that Russ was “sick” and wouldn’t be at school, Evenson turned to the judge and said, “Your Honor, at this time we would call Mrs. Doris Stager.”

The time had come to show the jurors how differently Russ’s mother had reacted.

Wearing a bright red suit, Doris strode to the stand, looking nervous but purposeful. After identifying herself and answering a few background questions, she was brought to the events of the day before Russ’s death.

“He went to church and he ushered and they was supposed to have come home and eat with us in the middle of the day,” she said. “We love to have them over on Sunday. As many times as they could come, they would come and the day before, he had called and said, ‘Mother, instead of us eating in the middle of the day, how about us eating at night?’ ”

She went on to tell of the supper and of Barbara going to sit near Russ. “She sat on the floor beside him and she reached up and held his hand, and as she did she looked at me. And Russ was sitting over to the opposite side of the chair with that hand over there and he didn’t respond. By that, I mean usually he would have come over and kind of acknowledged, but he just sat there like this.” She demonstrated the way he was sitting, indifferent to Barbara’s obvious attentions, which Doris had come to believe to be a devious move to impress her.

Evenson next led Doris through the events of the morning of the shooting. Her words came in a gush and she fidgeted, wringing her hands as she told of arriving at the hospital and her experiences there.

Later, as she spoke of making funeral plans at the Terry house, Doris had a slip of the tongue that caused her to grasp her head with both hands, as if in horror at her own words.

“Al said he would like for Russ to be born,” she said, then caught herself, “to be buried, to be buried, to be buried in our family plot …”

The judge interrupted to declare the lunch recess, and when court resumed Doris again took the stand to continue her story of Russ’s death and its aftermath. At the funeral home on Tuesday morning, she said, Barbara had brought up the matter of Social Security benefits with the funeral home director.

“What did she say about Social Security in specific detail?” Evenson asked. “Drawing what kind of Social Security?”

“She was talking about drawing Social Security for the boys.”

“On both boys?”

“Yes, sir.”

Doris went on to describe her later, much longer conversation with Barbara about their strained relationship before Evenson brought an end to his questions.

Doris, he knew, had been a strong witness, holding the rapt attention of the jurors, who seemed obviously sympathetic to this tiny mother who had lost her son. Cotter could risk no cross-examination.

“No questions,” he said.

As Doris left the jury stand, Barbara averted her eyes.

27

Evenson continued building his case with Durham County Medical Examiner Franklin Honkanen. He told about examining Russ on the morning of the shooting and finding him brain-dead. When he went to the hospital’s counseling room to talk with Barbara, she told him of waking, stretching, feeling something hard under her husband’s pillow. She pulled it out, realized it was a gun, started to get out of bed with it.

“She was backing off the bed and the gun went off and hit him,” Honkanen said. “I asked her if she knew approximately how far away she was at the time and if she could describe how the gun discharged. She said she didn’t know how the gun went off, but it was in her hand and she thought she was somewhere at the edge of the bed, about three or four feet, maybe five feet away at most.”

From her description, he said, he thought that “she was not holding the gun up but dragging it across the bed.”

He had expressed his condolences, he said, and asked if she could recall any other details, but she couldn’t. She had been “very upset and seemed very shaken” but had a good command of the facts when he had talked with her, Honkanen said.

“Now, before you ended your conversation, did she make one other statement to you?” Evenson said.

“Yes, when I was expressing my condolences and asking her if she could continue talking about it, she said she thought it was just a terrible accident and it was just something she was going to have to live with and she really hadn’t grasped the fact that he was going to die.”

“Said it was just something she was going to have to live with?” Evenson said for emphasis.

“Yes.”

Detective Rick Buchanan took the stand in mid afternoon. He first heard of the shooting when Honkanen called him, he said, and he told of going to the Terry house later that afternoon, where Barbara’s father showed him the bedding.

“What did you tell them at the time?” Evenson asked.

“I told them as far as I was concerned, everything appeared to be accidental and I had no need for it and to clean the bedding would be fine.”

Evenson led Buchanan to February 5, the day he and other officers had gone to Barbara’s house in the hope of getting her to reenact the shooting.

“At this particular point, what was your posture regarding your investigation?” asked Evenson.

“Publicly it was listed as an accidental shooting. However, we were doing a more in-depth investigation.”

The videotape of the reenactment was introduced, and Barbara cried as it was being played. After the tape had ended, the attorneys gathered at the bench. The jury was sent out and District Attorney Ron. Stephens moved that the tape be played again, because the volume had been too low at the beginning. Cotter objected strenuously.

“It’s just like asking a question, getting an answer and asking it again,” he said. “It is just repeating what their evidence is.”

The judge played the tape again for his own benefit before ruling that he would allow it to be played again only if the jury requested it.

After returning, the jury got to hear only one question (Did Buchanan have a conversation with Barbara at the time the tape was made?) before the judge intervened and sent them out again.

“I understand at this time the state by examination of this witness intends to bring in some evidence as to a prior husband?” the judge asked Evenson.

“Your Honor, that’s not exactly what we’re attempting to do.”

There was no intention to introduce evidence of another shooting, Evenson explained, merely to show what Barbara had told the detectives.

“Is there going to be an objection?” the judge asked Cotter.

“I don’t know. I haven’t heard the exact question. I haven’t heard the exact answer.”

Evenson was instructed to continue his questioning out of the jury’s hearing, and he asked if Barbara had made mention of a prior husband’s death.

“Prior to the filming she stated she had not mentioned to me about her first husband being killed because she did not think it was important,” Buchanan said.

“Is that all she said?”

“Yes.”

After hearing Buchanan, Cotter renewed the motion he had filed before the trial asking that any evidence of Larry’s death be denied admission.

“Do I understand that the state later on in the trial is going to attempt to offer more evidence as to the death of James Larry Ford but at this point this is all the state intends to go into?” the judge asked.

“That’s correct, Your Honor,” said Evenson.

Larry’s death had been more than ten years earlier, Cotter reminded, and introducing it now would only be prejudicial.

The judge ruled that he would allow Buchanan to tell the jury what Barbara had said “over the strong objection of the defendant.”

The jury returned and Buchanan continued his testimony, telling of Barbara’s mentioning Larry’s death and asking if she could get a copy of his report so that she could file for insurance. He went on to tell of other contacts with Barbara, stressing her concern about insurance, much to the satisfaction of the prosecutors.

Late in the afternoon, as Buchanan got to the search of Barbara’s house, Evenson had a big cardboard box delivered to the witness stand. In it was the evidence that had been seized in the search. Cotter objected, and the judge asked the jury to leave. Cotter was concerned again about prejudicial evidence making its way to the jury.

Evenson said that he only wanted to have the evidence marked, not introduced at this time.

“How are you going to be prejudiced marking this and the jury not even seeing it?” the judge asked.

“I don’t know,” Cotter said. “He won’t tell me.”