Prime Witness (27 page)

A good expert witness will advance your cause without appearing to be an advocate. To the jury he will come across as a good teacher, objective, dispassionate, never tending toward overstatement or extremes of position, the very soul of academic integrity. In short, the dreamboat expert is every hustler’s vision of the ultimate flimflam man. This goes double if you are delving, as I am today, into the dark crevices of the human mind.

“Would you state your name for the record?”

He gives it, spelling his surname for the court reporter.

“Do you hold any academic degrees?”

“A doctor of philosophy,” he says, “in psychology.”

“And your specialty?”

“Clinical psychology,” he says.

He gives the jury an overview of his academic background, training, teaching assignments, scholarly papers published, all the items that would qualify him in court as an expert witness, someone allowed to offer opinions on matters within the area of his expertise.

“In your professional capacity have you ever assisted law enforcement agencies in constructing personality profiles, what has become known as criminal profiling?” I ask.

“I have,” he says.

“How many times have you done this?”

He thinks for a moment. “Actual construction, or collaboration?” he says.

“Construction,” I say.

“Six. No. No. Five times,” he says.

I wince a little with this, deep inside where the jurors can’t see. I had hoped for more, a longer train of experience. Thornton was supplied by Kay Sellig for a single reason; on short notice he was the only expert available in the area.

“Can you explain to the jury the science of criminal profiling, how it works?” I ask.

“It’s quite simple,” he tells me, “straightforward.”

A small psychic signal erupts in my head. I get queasy when academics tell me anything is simple.

Thornton kicks into overdrive. “Profiling is predicated on certain psychobiologic presumptions,” he says.

Just what I thought. I cut him off.

“Dr. Thornton. We’re all a few units shy of our medical degrees here,” I say. “In layman’s terms would be nice.” I smile at him, pleasant and warm.

He gives me a pained expression, then wades in. “Profiling,” he says, “is based on a singular observation, that the way any activity is carried out, the way that it’s performed, will tell you a great deal about the person who performs it.”

Good, I think. To the point, unadorned.

“Applied to criminal acts,” he says, “if we know the habits and personality traits of people who have committed certain types of crimes, we can then use these to generate behavioral descriptions of the classic perpetrator of that particular crime.”

I turn to get some papers from the table. By the time I come back Thornton is narrating, hip deep in the bogs of abstraction again. I see heads nodding off at the table, like it’s time for a midmorning nap.

“Sex,” I cut him off in mid sentence. “Let’s talk about sex crimes, Dr. Thornton.”

Two of the farmers who were dozing come out of their chairs, like it’s milking time, reaching for the udders.

“Do you use profiling in sex crimes?”

“Oh sure. Serial rape is a classic example.”

Thank God for little favors.

“But you can’t use it on every kind of crime?” I say.

“No no,” he says. “There are entire categories of crime, in fact most crime, where profiling would not work at all.”

“Can you give us a few examples?” I say.

“Sure.” He thinks for a moment. “Any crime where there is limited contact with the crime scene. Simple robbery, most thefts. These are crimes that don’t usually evidence any particular psychologic disorder. In these cases, little of the personality of the offender can be determined from a study of the crime scene. If somebody reaches into a register and takes money at the point of a pistol, you’re not likely to be left with much but fingerprints,” he says.

Like a slow burning briquette, this jury is beginning to catch. I can see little embers of interest from the jury around the edges. Thornton is taking on the mantle of teacher, the best cover for a good expert.

“Because greed is too common a human vice to make profiling useful in those cases?”

“Exactly,” he says.

“So what kinds of crimes lend themselves best to personality profiling?”

“Usually these are cases with considerable physical activity at the scene, in which the victim is subjected to substantial violence by the perpetrator. Rape as I said is a good example,” he tells us. “Sexual homicide, any crime of violence on a person involving some ritual, severe torture, cases involving mayhem, disfigurement or mutilation of the victim, either before or after death. These are the classic cases for useful personality profiling,” he tells us.

“Why is that?”

“Because these acts would by their very nature involve some serious psychologic disorder,” he says. “The physical manifestations of the crime scene, the act itself is often patterned by the subconscious in predictable ways. We know this from past similar criminal acts perpetrated by others suffering from some of the same mental disorders. This sets the perpetrator apart from the norm, causes him to stand out, not to the casual observer perhaps, but to the trained investigator who looks at a suspect’s background.”

I take him on a little digression. We talk about the traits and markers, the building blocks that make up the personality of the typical offender for the various categories of crime.

These have been developed in hundreds of interviews by experts, talking with the twisted minds incarcerated in prisons and mental hospitals, in some cases pacing the executioner in a footrace to the death chamber in a quest for knowledge.

“Can you tell the jury how these markers, these individual traits, are applied in the usual case, to apprehend a specific offender?”

“What we’ve found is that by the time an individual reaches an age,” says Thornton, “at which he . . .” He explains that the perpetrator in these cases is usually male. “By the time they commit such a crime or a series of similar crimes, major felonies that would lend themselves to profiling, these people have already established certain patterns of behavior in their lives.”

Direct examination of an expert is like a song, a form of litigious poetry. There is a proper rhythm. It moves from the general, broad theories, to the specific case studies. If done well, it leaves the jury with a hard concrete view of things, a sense that your man’s views are part of the real world, not some ethereal vapor bubbling over a Bunsen burner.

“Can you give us a real example,” I ask, “of how you’ve applied a criminal profile, a true case?”

Thornton muses for a moment, the intense look of painful experience.

“A case in another county,” he says. “A series of ritual slayings. One of the markers, a common pattern of behavior for this particular brand of sado-masochism, based on the earlier case studies,” he says, “told us that the perpetrator quite likely had an early history, a childhood fetish for mistreatment of animals, torture of pets. That sort of thing. We had four principal suspects. So we searched the record on each, juvenile authorities, schools, family members, friends from years past.”

Thornton tells us how investigators learned to probe for the sick underbelly, to slip the subtle questions without asking: “Did your friend ever pull the wings off some living bird? Fricassee the neighbor’s dog on the run with flaming gasoline for a frolic?” “The sharp investigator, the best cop for this sort of work,” says Thornton, “is the good-old-buddy just indulging in confidences about youthful pranks.”

I look at the jury as they study each other. The message: beware of Joe-six-pack with a badge.

“After two days of questioning by nine different officers, a miniature census,” says Thornton, “one suspect drew a crowd of investigators. Nine hours later he confessed to all five murders,” he tells us. “When done right, and if you are lucky, that’s how it works.”

I look over at the jury. Thornton has achieved critical mass for an expert, he has laid the groundwork, established the practice of profiling as something higher on the plain of science than astrology, more credible than reading tea leaves.

I round the last curve and chase for home, the core issue.

“Dr. Thornton, have you had occasion at our request to study those crimes, those series of murders commonly known in the area as the Putah Creek killings?”

“I have,” he says.

“So as to avoid any confusion among the jury, would you tell us which crimes you have studied in this regard? The names of the victims?” I say.

Thornton wants to look at his records and notes to refresh his recollection. He identifies three separate sets of murders as having been referred to him by the Davenport County Sheriff’s Department, the two sets of student killings and the later murders of Abbott and Karen Scofield.

“And with regard to these murders, were you asked to prepare personality profiles regarding the perpetrator or perpetrators of those crimes?”

“I was.”

I make clear that in doing this Thornton has not had access to Andre Iganovich, no interviews, opportunities for observation, something Chambers would no doubt pursue if he were here on cross-examination. It is the principal weakness of this test run, that no adversary is present. So I play devil’s advocate.

“And applying your expertise as a licensed and trained psychologist, your experience in years of personality profiling, have you formed any opinion regarding a personality profile of the perpetrator in these cases?”

“I have,” he says.

“Could you share that opinion with us?”

He’s looking at his notes. “With regard to the murders of Julie Park and Jonathan Snider, the first of the student victims, and Sharon Collins and Rodney Slate, the last two college victims, it is my opinion that they were killed by the same person.

“With regard to the murders of Abbott and Karen Scofield, it is my opinion, based on scientific evidence, that these victims were killed by a different person or persons, not the murderer of the four earlier college students.”

I wait for a moment, allow this to settle on the jury. It is the zenith of my case on this point. All that is left now is to backfill with the rationale, the reasoning that supports the good doctor’s views.

“And how did you come to this conclusion?” I ask him.

“While there are a number of factors,” he says, “the one overriding and principal element would be the facial mutilation of the victim Karen Scofield. From the pathology report, her left eye was removed from her head after death.

“Studies tell us,” says Thornton, “that facial disfigurement is performed in these cases for a single reason: because the killer and the victim were personally acquainted. In the usual case the closer the relationship, the more severe the facial mutilation. Here, with the removal of an eye, I would venture that the murderer knew the victim well.”

He tells us that the symbolic message in all of this is unavoidable: remove the organ of sight, and in the subconscious mind the killer remains hidden from, undisclosed to, his victim.

To demonstrate this fact to the jury he uses one of the photographs, a color picture of Karen Scofield’s head as it lay on the coroner’s slab.

“The killer used some violence to remove this eye,” he says. He points to three deep slashes, one nearly cutting through the brow on the top, and two more deep into the cheek under the eye. “Not exactly surgical precision,” he says. “He was probably in a panic, a frenzy when he did this.”

“And your opinion regarding the earlier victims, the students?”

“That the killer and these victims were strangers. There was no facial mutilation as to any of the earlier victims.”

“Is it not possible,” I say, “that the same killer might have murdered all of them, that he didn’t know the students, but did know Karen Scofield?” A little counter advocacy here. A show of fairness, exposing a potential softness to our case.

“From case studies, I would say only the most remote of possibilities,” he says. “Highly unlikely.” The true scientist, Thornton abhors the notion of absolutes. It is one of the things that breeds believability.

“There is a general pattern to serial murders,” he says. “There are killers who know their victims, who select them from a pool of acquaintances. There are other pattern killers who murder only strangers, victims of opportunity. As a general rule the two types or categories of killers do not cross over. We know from studying past cases that generally they will not kill some acquaintances, and some strangers.”

This apparently is the linchpin, the keystone of his opinion that there were two killers: Karen Scofield’s missing eye. While there are other factors, this one element is so persuasive in Thornton’s mind that it tends to override everything else.

“Were there other factors, doctor? Any other reason to suspect a separate murderer in the Scofield cases?”

“Yes,” he says. “The age discrepancy between the Scofields and the students. While not unheard of, this is unusual in pattern murders,” says Thornton.

“Also the tools of death,” he says. “The killer would usually not change rope or stakes if he had an ample supply, which according to the police report the suspect Iganovich had in his vehicle. These are generally part of the ritual,” says Thornton. “And these murders are ritual slayings,” he says, “make no mistake about that. The arrangement of the articles of clothing in an arc about the head of each victim, the use of undergarments to cover the face of the female victims, all point to a liturgical crime,” he says.

I look at him, a question mark.

“Ritual murder,” he says for clarity.

“No,” he says. “In my opinion, there is no question. The Scofields were not killed by the same perpetrator who murdered the four college students.”

“Can you explain the similarities in the crimes, the use of stakes and similar cord?”

“A crude attempt to mimic.” He looks straight at the jury with this, the polished performance of one who is no novice on the stand. “What you would commonly call a copycat,” he tells them.