Mean Justice (67 page)

43
. The account of events surrounding Gary Coble’s decision to testify against his brother Jerry is based upon the author’s interviews with Gary Pohlson and Laura Lawhon; and Gary coble’s testimony in
People vs. Dunn.
Gary Coble did not respond to requests by the author for an interview. (Jerry Coble and Elvin Coble, in interviews with the author, asserted that Gary made up his story and had accepted a bribe to do so. They offered no evidence to support this bribery allegation, however, and Kern County authorities have never leveled such an accusation, though records show they did investigate Gary Coble once it was disclosed that he would be testifying for the defense in
People vs. Dunn.)

44
. This description of Norwood’s statements and objections to Detective John Soliz’s account of them is drawn from Soliz’s undated report on his and Detective Kline’s interview with Charles Roger Norwood on August 5, 1992, in Kern County Sheriff’s Department Case MO92-00633; an undated memorandum from Laura Lawhon to Gary Pohlson regarding her February 26, 1993, interview with Norwood; and Norwood’s testimony in
People vs. Dunn.

45
. The broker Sandy worked with during her first year of marriage to Pat Dunn, Ed Wilkerson, was interviewed by Detective Soliz on August 4, 1992, as reported by Soliz in Kern County Sheriff’s Department Case MO92-00633. In that interview, and in his subsequent testimony in
People vs. Dunn,
Wilkerson said he recalled Sandy instructing him to keep her investment information secret from Pat. This occurred well before Roger Norwood took over the brokerage accounts in 1988. Some of Soliz’s confusion over who said what on this subject could have stemmed from the fact that Wilkerson also relayed in his interview with the detective a considerable amount of secondhand information he had garnered from conversations with Norwood when the two brokers chatted about Sandy’s disappearance. Furthermore, this secondhand information, as reported by Soliz, was garbled in such a way as to make Pat look more suspicious than the facts warranted. For example, Wilkerson is quoted in Soliz’s report as suggesting Kevin Knutson’s visit to the Dunn home to discuss a living trust was Pat’s
idea, when in truth it was Sandy’s. In Wilkerson’s secondhand and incorrect rendition, Sandy “blew her cool” over the subject of a living trust when she realized it was simply a ploy of Pat’s to get at her money. “It was at that time that Pat Dunn realized he would never see a single penny until after Alexandra Dunn was dead,” Soliz’s report quotes Wilkerson as saying. The implication of this allegation is clear—such a falling-out could have provided a meaningful motive for Pat to kill—except for the fact that the witness who was actually present to observe these events firsthand, Kevin Knutson, swore it never happened. Wilkerson, according to Soliz’s report, also incorrectly relayed something Norwood had told him about Pat calling him up and trying to obtain some of Sandy’s funds after the disappearance. Wilkerson’s statement to Soliz portrayed Pat as trying to loot Sandy’s accounts as soon as she disappeared, but the firsthand source of the information, Norwood, said there was nothing untoward or suspicious about Pat’s request for funds because it was simply a follow-up to a withdrawal Sandy had requested shortly before she vanished. Yet, despite the shortcomings inherent in Wilkerson’s account, when the time came for Kern County authorities to argue the case against Pat in court, they relied upon Wilkerson’s statements rather than the firsthand information that contradicted him.

46
. This discrepancy in statements by Cindy Montes is reflected in a July 27, 1992, report by Detective Soliz in Kern County Sheriff’s Department Case KC92-14851, documenting his July 8, 1992, interview with Montes; in an undated memorandum from David Sandberg to Gary Pohlson, documenting his February 2, 1993, interview with Montes; and in Montes’ testimony in
People vs. Dunn,
in which she again stated the day of the crucial early-morning phone conversation with Pat was Tuesday, June 30 (as she initially told Sandberg). She subsequently changed her testimony to Wednesday when prompted by Deputy DA John Somers.

47
. Although their true names are matters of public record, the first names of the McCuan girls have been changed here.

48
. Defense attorneys would later argue that Mary Ann Barbour’s repeated examinations of the girls’ genitals, rather than molestation, could have caused this condition. Source: Testimony and argument, “In re Scott and Brenda Kniffen, on Habeas Corpus,” Kern County Superior Court Case HC 5092.

49
. Although most of the research in this area has been done in the years since those interrogations, concerns had already been raised in law-enforcement circles in the late 1970s and early 1980s about the use of suggestive interviewing with children. Since then, a variety of studies have definitively shown that suggestive interviewing techniques can lead to false allegations by children, and most federal, state and local law-enforcement standards recommend open-ended questioning that allows children to use their own words rather than parrot adult comments. During her testimony in the Kniffen habeas hearing in Kern County Superior Court in July 1996, McGill University psychologist Maggie Bruck described her research on child suggestibility. In one of Bruck’s studies, a group of young children were asked leading questions about whether they had witnessed a school janitor’s abusive behavior. Though they had not witnessed any such behavior, more than half of the children claimed to have done so after being asked in a suggestive and leading manner. Bruck and other researchers have conducted many similar experiments and observed like results.

50
. Sources: Testimony of Murillo and Bruck and arguments of Michael Snedeker and Stan Simrin in the Kniffen and McCuan habeas hearing; Debbie Nathan and Michael Snedeker,
Satan’s Silence,
(New York: Basic Books, 1995) pages 56, 146; and Tamara Koehler, “Sex acts were described to children,”
Bakersfield Californian,
July 19, 1996.

51
. Police reports and medical records filed in the Kniffen habeas corpus action and described by Nathan and Snedeker in
Satan’s Silence
state that, prior to her hospitalization, an insomniac Mary Ann Barbour lost twenty pounds in the space of a month, was plagued by nightmares when she could sleep, and had hidden a gun in her car so she could be safe when “they” came to get her, “they” being representatives of some nameless conspiracy she believed was persecuting her. On January 15, 1980, after she threatened to stab her husband, Gene, and herself, Gene dialed 911. The sheriff’s deputy who responded to the call found Gene pinning Mary Ann to a kitchen counter. Shoeless and unkempt, her hair wild, she yelled at her husband, “I hate you. I’ll kill you! I hate you.” The deputy promptly took her to the county hospital’s psychiatric unit, where she was placed on a seventy-two-hour hold as a danger to herself and others. It was her second time as a mental-health
patient, having been treated five years earlier for a suicide attempt and depression. The social worker assigned to her case at that time wrote, “Patient has much anger, a passive aggression that comes out in fear and distrust of others, a need to belittle others and Sgt.-like control of her children.” This time, she babbled endlessly about her granddaughter’s molestation and the fact that she believed Rod Phelps had killed people, displaying a condition that psychiatrists call “pressure of speech” (excessive, fast talking often associated with mania). She was diagnosed as delusional and obsessive, and was treated with the powerful antipsychotic drug Thorazine. Then she was transferred to another hospital, where different doctors did not consider her condition so serious. Six days later, she was sent home as an outpatient with only sleeping pills for medication.

52
. Mary Ann Barbour had turned for help to Jill Haddad, the child-abuse crusader and Ed Jagels’ campaign supporter. At the time, the vocal Haddad led a local chapter of an anti-molestation organization, S.L.A.M. (Stronger Legislation Against Molesters), which had been spawned by the murder of young Dana Butler and the failure to prosecute her suspected killer, Glenn Fitts, three years earlier. Haddad, who believed—correctly—that child molestation was woefully underreported and lackadasically prosecuted in that era, also believed in the existence of large-scale, secret conspiracies of molesters who communicated with one another, sharing information, photographs and even victims. Haddad also maintained a special relationship with the Kern County District Attorney that ensured her views would be taken seriously. She recommended that the social worker Carol Darling get the job as the DA’s child-abuse coordinator, making Darling a key figure in the Witch Hunt cases to come. Haddad, moreover, was the person who stood up during a pivotal campaign debate and publicly confronted Ed Jagels’ opponent in the DA’s race with confidential juvenile records (an event in which Darling also played a role in helping to retrieve those same records). Haddad was given access to all sex-crime arrest reports in Kern County, and the district attorney’s office began consulting with her on which cases to prosecute. This extraordinary arrangement with a civilian expanded further when the DA began using Haddad in the courtroom as an expert witness in molestation cases. Among other things, Haddad testified in favor of removing Jenny and Jane McCuan from their parents’ care and
turning them over to Mary Ann Barbour. Sources: Nathan and Snedeker,
Satan’s Silence,
pages 57, 58; “Why adults molest the young,”
Bakersfield Californian,
April 10, 1982; Kern County Grand Jury, “A Special Interim Report,” July 5, 1983; Michael Tribey, “Adult’s Obsession Blamed in Children’s Charges,”
Bakersfield Californian,
April 13, 1986; and deposition of Mary Ann Boucher,
McCuan vs. Kern,
Kern County Superior Court case 181864, October 9, 1985.

53
. Sources: Kniffen habeas petition—Exhibit 22 (records from the Shalimar child protective home regarding Jenny and Jane McCuan), Exhibit 23 (notes of social worker Dana Maciewitz) and Exhibit 28 (April 26, 1982, report of Deputy Betty Shaneyfelt in Kern County Sheriff’s Department Case KC81-41195); and Nathan and Snedeker,
Satan’s Silence,
pages 58-59.

54
. One veteran social worker who worked with the McCuan and Kniffen children, Georgia Herald, recalled raising such questions. Herald had been concerned that every time the girls added a new suspect or allegation to their account, they were rewarded with praise, trips to the park, ice cream, and the like. In essence, the girls were given an incentive to make up increasingly sordid stories. No matter that their new stories contradicted their old ones, Herald said. The new stuff was hotter, bigger, capable of generating more indictments, more headlines, more juice come election time. “I don’t want to be alone with those girls,” Herald recalls telling Carol Darling, the child-sexual abuse coordinator for the district attorney’s office, Velda Murillo’s coworker and a former child-welfare colleague of Herald’s. “They accuse everyone around them sooner or later.”

Darling had been handpicked by Jill Haddad to work in the district attorney’s office with the child victims of the molestation rings, interviewing them, supervising their care, forging a bond with them. She was an ardent Ed Jagels supporter during his first campaign for office, a member of the group that trooped to the courthouse one weekend and uncovered the embarrassing records that helped defeat his opponent. Darling’s curly blond hair and easy way with children almost, but not quite, masked the steely resolve of a prosecutorial zealot—a “true believer,” Herald called her, one who seemed to see a victim in almost every child she encountered. “You’ve got nothing to worry about, Georgia,” Herald
recalls Darling replying. “Those girls would never accuse you of anything—as long as you don’t do anything to them.”

Herald perceived an unspoken warning: Whatever the girls said, no matter how outlandish, would be believed, no matter who they accused. The only time they were disbelieved was when they asserted someone’s innocence. Then they would be questioned relentlessly until they accused once again. Herald eventually resigned because of this case, and, years later, her testimony would help free innocents from prison. Sources: Georgia Herald, interview with the author; Kniffen habeas petition, Exhibit 85 (the September 29, 1993, sworn declaration of Georgia Herald); testimony of Georgia Herald at the Kniffen-McCuan habeas hearing in July 1996.

55
. Only the third female prosecutor ever hired by the Kern County District Attorney (“You’re not some fuzzy-haired feminist, are you?” one of the attorneys conducting her job interview had asked), Grady was a proponent of a new, aggressive trend in prosecuting crimes against children. Instead of bundling all of the allegations into a single charge of molestation as was traditionally done, Grady took each separate sex act mentioned by the kids and charged it as a separate count—an approach that turned a misdemeanor case with an inevitable probation sentence into a major felony prosecution with a potential sentence of dozens of years in prison. This was a novel approach at the time, and though it is now standard, Grady was treading in uncertain waters, especially considering that she had little experience with major crimes to guide her and faced a great deal of head-shaking in her office. Source: Medalyian Grady, interview with the author.

56
. Although no verbatim record exists of Velda Murillo’s conversations with the girls, Medalyian Grady recalls tape-recording most of her conversations with Jenny and Jane. The tapes could have shown how much or how little pressure Grady put on the girls to continue their accusations of molestation—after those first interviews with Velda and sheriff’s detectives—and whether the later questioning was open-ended or leading. Grady says she applied no pressure herself. But the tapes that could have verified this have mysteriously vanished. Grady recalls turning them over to one of her successors on the case, but their whereabouts are now unknown. The district attorney never turned them over to defense
attorneys, despite court orders requiring them to do so. Source: Medalyian Grady, interview with the author.