The Innocent Man (12 page)

Tommy had been through several run-ins with the Ada police over the years, nothing serious or violent, but they knew him and he knew them, and Tommy preferred to avoid Smith and Rogers if at all possible.

In Janette’s opinion, if Tommy had nothing to hide, then it was safe to go to the police station and chat with Dennis Smith and Mike Baskin. Tommy had nothing to do with the Haraway girl, but he didn’t trust the police. After wrestling with the issue for an hour, he asked Mike to drive him to the Norman Police Department.

Smith and Baskin took him downstairs to a room with video equipment and explained that they wanted to make a tape of the interview. Tommy was nervous, but agreed. The machine was turned on, and they read him his
Miranda
rights, and he signed the waiver.

The detectives began politely enough; it was just another routine interview, nothing important. They asked Tommy if he remembered the last interview, five months earlier. Of course he did. Had he told them the truth then? Yes. Was he telling the truth now? Yes.

Within minutes Smith and Baskin, going back and forth with the questions, confused Tommy with the days of the week back in April. On the day Denice Haraway disappeared, Tommy had worked on the plumbing in his mother’s home, then showered and gone to a party at the Robertses’ home in Ada. He’d left at four in the morning and walked home. Five months earlier he’d told the cops this had happened the day before the disappearance. “I just got my days mixed up,” he tried to explain, but the cops could not be convinced.

The detectives’ replies were, “When did you realize you hadn’t told us the truth?” and “Are you telling us the truth now?” and “You’re getting yourself into more serious trouble.”

The tone became harsh and accusatory. Smith and Baskin lied and claimed to have several witnesses who would testify that Tommy was at a party by the Blue River that Saturday night and had borrowed a pickup truck and left.

Wrong day, Tommy said, sticking to his version. He’d gone fishing on Friday, partied at the Robertses’ on Saturday, and gone to a party at the river on Sunday.

Why were the cops lying? Tommy asked himself. He knew the truth.

The lying continued. “Isn’t it true you were going to rob McAnally’s? We’ve got people who are going to testify to that.”

Tommy shook his head and held firm, but he was deeply troubled. If the police were willing to lie so casually, what else might they do?

Dennis Smith then pulled out a large photograph of Denice Haraway and held it close to Tommy’s face. “Do you know that girl?”

“I don’t know her. I’ve seen her.”

“Did you kill that girl?”

“No, I didn’t. I wouldn’t take nobody’s life from them.”

“Who did kill her?”

“I don’t know.”

Smith continued to hold the photo while asking if she was a pretty girl. “Her family would like to bury her. They’d like to know where she is so they could bury her.”

“I don’t know where she’s at,” Tommy said, staring at the photo and wondering why he was being accused.

“Would you tell me where she’s at so her family could bury her?”

“I don’t know.”

“Use your imagination,” Smith said. “Two guys took her, got her in a pickup, took her away. What do you think they did with the body?”

“No telling.”

“Use your imagination. What do you think?”

“She could be alive for all I know, for all you know, for all anyone knows.”

Smith continued to hold up the photo as he asked questions. Every answer by Tommy was immediately disregarded, treated as if it weren’t true or weren’t heard by the detectives. They asked him repeatedly if he thought she was a pretty girl. Did he think she screamed during the attack? Don’t you think her family should be able to bury her?

“Tommy, have you prayed about this?” Smith asked.

He finally put the photo aside and asked Tommy about his mental health, about the composite sketches,
about his educational background. Then he picked up the photo again, thrust it near Tommy’s face, and started over with questions about killing the girl, burying the body, and wasn’t she a pretty girl?

Mike Baskin attempted a tearjerker when he talked about Denice’s family’s ordeal: “All it would take to end their suffering would be to tell where she’s at.”

Tommy agreed, but said he had no idea where the girl was.

The machine was finally turned off. The interview lasted an hour and forty-five minutes, and Tommy Ward never wavered from his original statement—he knew nothing about the disappearance of Denice Haraway. He was quite rattled by the meeting, but agreed to take a lie detector test in a few days.

The Robertses lived only a few blocks from the Norman police station, and Tommy decided to walk to their home. The fresh air felt good, but he was angry at being treated so harshly by the cops. They had accused him of killing the girl. They had lied repeatedly to try to trick him.

Driving back to Ada, Smith and Baskin were convinced they had found their man. Tommy Ward looked like the sketch of one of the strange-acting boys who’d stopped by JP’s store that Saturday night. He’d changed his story about where he was on the night Denice vanished. And he seemed nervous during the interview they had just completed.

At first, Tommy was relieved that he would be taking a polygraph exam. He would tell the truth, the test would prove it, and the cops would finally stop hassling
him. Then he began having nightmares about the murder; the accusations by the police; the comments about his resemblance to the man in the sketch; the pretty face of Denice Haraway and her family’s anguish. Why was he being accused?

The police believed he was guilty. They wanted him to be guilty! Why should he trust them with a lie detector exam? Should he talk to a lawyer?

He called his mother and told her he was scared of the police and the polygraph. “I’m afraid they’ll make me say something I’m not supposed to say,” he told her. Tell the truth, she advised him, and everything will be fine.

Thursday morning, October 18, Mike Roberts drove Tommy to the OSBI offices in Oklahoma City, twenty minutes away. The exam was to take about an hour. Mike would wait in the parking lot, then the two would drive to work. Their boss had given them a couple of hours off. As Mike Roberts watched Tommy enter the building, he could not imagine that the boy was taking his last steps in the free world. The rest of his life would be behind prison walls.

Dennis Smith met Tommy with a big smile and a warm handshake, then put him in an office where he waited, alone, for half an hour—a favorite police trick to make the suspect even more nervous. At 10:30, he was led to another room, and waiting there was Agent Rusty Featherstone and his trusty polygraph.

Smith disappeared. Featherstone explained how the machine worked, or how it was supposed to work, as he strapped Tommy in and hooked up the electrodes. By the time the questions started, Tommy was already
sweating. The first questions were easy—family, education, employment—everybody knew the truth and the machine complied. This could be a cakewalk, Tommy started thinking.

At 11:05, Featherstone read Tommy his
Miranda
rights and began probing into the Haraway matter. For two and a half hours of tortuous questioning, Tommy gamely stuck to the truth—he knew nothing about the Denice Haraway matter.

Without a single break, the exam lasted until 1:30, when Featherstone unplugged everything and left the room. Tommy was relieved, even elated because the ordeal was finally over. He had aced the test; finally the cops would leave him alone.

Featherstone was back in five minutes, poring over the graph paper, studying the results. He asked Tommy what he thought. Tommy said he knew he’d passed the exam, the matter was over, and he really needed to get to work.

Not so fast, Featherstone said. You flunked it.

Tommy was incredulous, but Featherstone said it was obvious he was lying and clear that he was involved in the Haraway kidnapping. Would he like to talk about it?

Talk about what!

The polygraph doesn’t lie, Featherstone said, pointing to the results right there on the paper. You know something about the murder, he said repeatedly. Things would go much smoother for Tommy if he came clean, talked about what happened, told the truth. Featherstone, the nice cop, was anxious to help Tommy, but if Tommy refused his kindness, then he would be
forced to hand him over to Smith and Rogers, the nasty cops, who were waiting, ready to pounce.

Let’s talk about it, Featherstone urged him.

There’s nothing to talk about, Tommy insisted. He said again and again that the polygraph was rigged or something because he was telling the truth, but Featherstone wasn’t buying it.

Tommy admitted to being nervous before the exam, and anxious while it was under way because he was late for work. He also admitted that the interview six days earlier with Smith and Rogers had upset him and caused him to have a dream.

What kind of dream? Featherstone wanted to know.

Tommy described his dream: He was at a keg party, then he was sitting in a pickup truck with two other men and a girl, out by the old power plant near Ada where he grew up. One of the men tried to kiss the girl, she refused, and Tommy told the man to leave her alone. Then he said he wanted to go home. “You’re already home,” one of the men said. Tommy looked through his window, and he was suddenly at home. Just before he woke up, he was standing at a sink, trying in vain to wash a black liquid off his hands. The girl was not identified; neither were the two men.

That dream doesn’t make sense, Featherstone said.

Most dreams don’t, Tommy retorted.

Featherstone remained calm but continued to press Tommy to come clean, tell him everything about the crime, and, especially, tell him where the body was. And he threatened again to turn Tommy over to those “two cops” waiting in the next room, as if a lengthy torture session could be in the works.

Tommy was stunned and confused and very frightened. When he refused to confess to Featherstone, the nice cop turned him over to Smith and Rogers, who were already angry and seemed ready to throw punches. Featherstone stayed in the room, and as soon as the door closed, Smith lunged at Tommy, yelling, “You, Karl Fontenot, and Odell Titsworth grabbed that girl, took her out to the power plant, raped and killed her, didn’t you?”

No, Tommy said, trying to think clearly and not panic.

Talk to us, you little lying sonofabitch, Smith growled. You just flunked the polygraph, we know you’re lying, and we know you killed that girl!

Tommy was trying to place Odell Titsworth, a name he had heard but a man he’d never met. Odell lived somewhere around Ada, he thought, and he had a bad reputation, but Tommy could not remember meeting him. Maybe he’d seen him once or twice, but at the moment he couldn’t remember, because Smith was yelling and pointing and ready to punch him.

Smith repeated his theory about the three men snatching the girl, and Tommy said no. No, I had nothing to do with it. “I don’t even know Odell Titsworth.”

Yes, you do, Smith corrected him. Stop lying.

Karl Fontenot’s involvement in their theory was easier to understand because he and Tommy had been friends off and on for a couple of years. But Tommy was bewildered by the accusations and terrified of the smug certainty of Smith and Rogers. Back and forth they went with their threats and verbal abuse. The language deteriorated and soon included every profanity and obscenity on the list.

Tommy was sweating and dizzy and trying desperately to think rationally. He kept his responses short. No, I didn’t do it. No, I wasn’t involved. A few times he wanted to lash out with sarcastic comments, but he was scared. Smith and Rogers were erupting, and armed, and Tommy was locked in a room with them and Featherstone. His interrogation showed no signs of ending anytime soon.

After sweating through three hours with Featherstone and suffering an hour of torment from Smith and Rogers, Tommy really needed a break. He needed to find a restroom and smoke a cigarette and clear his head. He needed help, to talk to someone who could tell him what was going on.

Can I take a break? he asked.

Just a few more minutes, they said.

Tommy noticed a video camera on a nearby table, unplugged and neglecting the verbal battering under way. Surely, he thought, this cannot be standard police procedure.

Smith and Rogers repeatedly reminded Tommy that Oklahoma uses lethal injection to kill its killers. He was facing death, certain death, but there might be a way to avoid it. Come clean, tell what happened, lead them to the body, and they would use their influence to get him a deal.

“I didn’t do it,” Tommy kept saying.

He had a dream, Featherstone informed his two colleagues.

Tommy repeated the dream, and again it was met with disapproval. The three cops agreed that the dream made little sense, to which Tommy replied again, “Most dreams don’t.”

But the dream gave the cops something to work with, and they began adding to it. The other two men in the truck were Odell Titsworth and Karl Fontenot, right?

No, Tommy insisted. The men in his dream were not identified. No names.

Bullshit. The girl was Denice Haraway, right?

No, the girl was not identified in his dream.

Bullshit.

For another hour, the cops added the necessary details to Tommy’s dream, and every new fact was denied by him. It was just a dream, he kept saying over and over and over.

Just a dream.

Bullshit, said the cops.

After two hours of nonstop hammering, Tommy finally cracked. The pressure came from fear—Smith and Rogers were angry and seemed perfectly able and willing to slap him around if not outright shoot him—but also from the horror of wasting away on death row before finally getting executed.

And it was obvious to Tommy that he would not be allowed to leave until he gave the cops something. After five hours in the room, he was exhausted, confused, and almost paralyzed with fear.

He made a mistake, one that would send him to death row and eventually cost him his freedom for life.

Tommy decided to play along. Since he was completely innocent, and he assumed Karl Fontenot and Odell Titsworth were too, then give the cops what they want. Play along with their fiction. The truth would
quickly be discovered. Tomorrow, or the next day, the cops would realize that the story did not check out. They would talk to Karl, and he would tell the truth. They would find Odell Titsworth, and he would laugh at them.