To Die For (41 page)

Dana answered “no” for most of these odd questions, but did agree that she sometimes felt as if she were “physically outside of” her body.

“During the crimes, it was like I was watching myself doing the crime, but it wasn't me, it was like watching a movie with the sound off. There was only a little sound in two of them,” Dana said. “If that is out of your body, it's the closest I can describe it.”

As part of the evaluation, each of the experts interviewed Dana about the murders and the assault on Dorinda. She was not questioned about killing Norma, since Bentley had not filed that charge against her. In each case, Dana said that the victims provoked her by making comments that made her feel ridiculed and rejected, and when they turned their backs on her, Dana slid a rope around their necks.

*   *   *

“Who was number one?” Dr. Rogers asked.

“June Roberts,” Dana said.

“Tell me about that morning.”

Dana said that June had been raking when she drove up with Jason in the car, and that June had “started right in with my marriage and divorce,” which angered her. She characterized the religious, health-conscious widow as being intensely critical of Dana and her marriage. When they went inside for the vitamin book, Dana claimed that June continued to berate her about her marriage.

“She kept on and on and on about Tom, how I did not do enough, and I lost it. She pushed that final button,” Dana said.

“Where were you when that happened?” Dr. Rogers asked.

“Right behind her. I choked her with the phone cord.”

“Do you remember wrapping it around anything other than her neck?”

“Oh yeah, that chair. I remember a chair but I don't know where it came from … It just all happened at the same time really fast to me.

“It was like I just … I don't know how to describe it any other way than I lost it. I was just so consumed, utterly pushed off the edge … it must have been quick. As I walked out, she had a little wallet thing. I grabbed it and left. Then I drove us home.”

Dana told the psychiatrist that it wasn't planned and that she was so stunned afterward that she took Jason home, despite receipts showing that she was using June's credit cards within the hour. Dana admitted to the psychiatrist that she'd used June's credit cards, but claimed she was shopping primarily for Jason.

“We went out and proceeded to shop up a storm,” Dana said. “I felt a need to get a bunch of stuff for Jason. I spent a lot on him.”

Dr. Rogers wanted to zero in on the moment when Dana “lost it.”

“She was talking to me face-to-face,” Dana said, “then she turned her back on me and just kept getting at me … without letting me get a word in edgewise. It was just her non-patience, her demeanor that it was my fault, her judgmentalness, that look on her face. As she turned around, she had a look of … big disappointment, disgust,” which Dana said triggered thoughts of unworthiness and rejection. “I was real fragile.”

In a subsequent interview, Dr. Rogers again asked Dana what she was thinking when she lost control.

“That I was making my mother shut up,” she said. “It just built up—the continuing condescending attitude. ‘You are worthless. You failed. I told you so,'” Dana said.

“Did you think she was your mother?” Dr. Rogers asked.

“I was so out of it, so consumed, so enraged, I cannot answer that question right.”

“What did you see and hear from the past?”

“Her carping at me. I just wanted to shut her up, that is all. That simple—just shut her up.”

Dr. Rogers was the third psychiatrist to interview Dana. The first one, Dr. Michael Kania, reported that Dana at first claimed to have found the credit cards in the trash, then said she couldn't recall assaulting June Roberts. Dana finally admitted killing June, focusing on her anger that June had fetched the wrong vitamin book.

To the second psychiatrist, Dr. Lorna Forbes, Dana said that she became incensed after June lectured Dana while she and Jason sat in the Cadillac. “June said that I didn't work hard enough. My responsibility was to make the marriage work. I was really angry. I should have just left. She wouldn't stop berating me. It was all I could do to control my anger.” When June brought out the wrong vitamin book, she said she became explosively angry as she followed June into the house. She told this psychologist that June became “a creepy female image” that reminded Dana of her cancer-stricken mother, making her so nauseated, she wanted to vomit. That's when she reached for the phone cord.

To Dr. Rogers, Dana never mentioned the “creepy female image,” downplayed the vitamin book and claimed that June had tapped into her poor self-esteem by taunting her about her marriage. She told each psychiatrist that she went home “stunned,” and went shopping after sitting at home for several hours, instead of going out shopping immediately, as the restaurant and store receipts indicated.

Dr. Rogers asked her about the sequence of events and Dana candidly described the sequence of the attack.

“I think I hit her after I used the phone cord. I pulled her down so she was on her back and hit her with the wine bottle …

“I really don't have any explanation for my actions, I really don't, but I wish I did.”

Dana continued her attack on June verbally, twisting the perspective to make herself the victim.

“I was shocked that June came on to me about Tom and I.” June was “snippy … She was really weird after Duane died. She turned into a different person.” Dana said that when she and her parents had run into June at the clubhouse a few weeks before the murder, she'd “snubbed us off.” When Dr. Rogers talked to Russ and Jeri later, both of them said that they could not recall June ever being cool to them, although June naturally was somewhat withdrawn as she mourned the death of her husband.

When asked about Dorinda, even Dana seemed pressed to come up with why she had attacked the antique store clerk. She told Dr. Rogers she wasn't sure what it was about Dorinda, “but she really, really got me. She really bothered me. She reminded me of my mother in her alcoholic stages.

“I don't know if she said anything to provoke me or what, I really don't know. But I ended up choking her with yellow propylene rope.”

Dana said that they fought, and recalled Dorinda trying to poke her with a broom, but once Dorinda told her about having eight children, she says she let go. She recalls telling Dorinda to “relax” in the same manner she'd told her mother to “let go” the night she died. Dana said she walked out of the antique store feeling nauseous and thinking, “What the hell have I done?” In all of the interviews with all of the psychiatrists, this is the closest Dana ever came to expressing remorse. Dana said she quickly overcame that feeling and visited a beauty salon and a grocery store that afternoon.

Dana minimized her conduct during June's murder with the first psychiatrist, Dr. Kania. But she told him that she “woke up” during a scuffle with Dorinda, something she didn't repeat to the other two psychiatrists. She told Dr. Kania that Dorinda looked like her mother, “like a fat barfly … She had a fat barfly look, a pathetic barfly trying to look happy … acting like she was real important.” Dana said Dorinda “put her down” and made her feel insignificant. Afterward, she said she tried not to think about the attack, but felt depressed and “lashed out in anger” at anything that got in her way.

When she was interviewed by Dr. Forbes, Dana said Dorinda “struck a pose. She gave me a look saying, ‘Can I help you?' She comes up and crosses her arms in a condescending manner. I felt sick in my stomach. I wanted to vomit. I wanted her to die.” Dana told Dr. Forbes that she saw the “creepy feminine image” in Dorinda's face and after she showed Dana some frames that Dana didn't like, she slipped the rope around Dorinda's neck when her back was turned.

When Dr. Rogers interviewed Dana, she no longer tried to reason that Dorinda's appearance as a “fat barfly” had motivated her to kill.

In answer to specific questions from Dr. Rogers, Dana claimed Dorinda handed her the key to the cash register that was on the plastic coiled ring and that she took nothing else, in conflict with Dorinda's account that Dana had taken the key ring off her wrist and fled with $20 from Dorinda's purse and $25 from the cash register. While discussing this incident, Dana told Dr. Rogers that she put the key ring in her purse, in contrast to reports from officers searching Dana's house, who said the key ring was hanging from a hook on the entertainment center. “They lied about that key being on the side of my entertainment center when it was right there in my purse. There's no reason to lie about a stupid thing like that.” She also claimed she had close to $2,700 in her purse. When Julie Bennett went through Dana's purse, she found $1,900 still in the wrapping from Dora's bank and $170 in Dana's wallet.

“They stole cash out of my purse and underreported what they said they found,” Dana said. Dana told Dr. Rogers that she got $50 in cash over the total of her purchase every time she used one of Dora's checks, collecting a total of $600 to $700. If that were true, Dana would have had to have visited up to 14 different stores between the time she killed Dora and the time she was arrested, which conflicts with the task force's account of her activities after the murder, the store receipts indicating the additional cash received at the time of purchase, and each of Dora's numbered checks that were recovered, showing the cash received over the amount of purchase at each store. The location of the cash register key ring was noted and photographed when the house was searched. The desire for Dana to sling mud at the police might be explained by Dana's history of striking out at those who hurt her.

Dana told Dr. Rogers that she had been despondent the day Dora was killed and had gone to see her father. When she found he wasn't home, she drove toward Sun City and claims she “blanked out” while driving.

“I turned down a street I never turned down before and got lost,” Dana said. “All the houses look the same, they all have gravel in front. I saw one house with the garage door open so I stopped there.”

Dana said Dora invited her in when she told her that she was lost. Dana claimed that the church-going widow sighed and said, “I don't have time for this,” but walked to the back of the house to fetch a Thomas Guide map book.

“So, she turned her back on me, continuing to bitch [while we were] somewhere in the back of the house. I choked her with the phone cord,” Dana said, adding that Dora made her feel the same way her mother did when she was yelling at her.

“I had that overwhelming, like, detached feeling,” she said. “Stupid as it sounds, I felt hurt and rejected. Actually, all of them were kind of like that, but when I look at them, that is so stupid, but that is how I felt.”

“Then what?” Dr. Rogers asked.

“I hit her in the head with an iron.”

“And then?”

“That was it. Her purse was on the right next to where we were. I took her wallet, the checkbook and passbook in it and I left.”

“Then what happened?”

“I had this overwhelming need to shop. I went to every grocery store in town, filled up my whole car with stuff, stuff I didn't even need, cake decorations, Baxter's soup.”

“What was going on when you used the iron?”

“I don't know,” Dana said. “Why did I grab the wine bottle? The same thing, I don't know why.”

“Was she facing you when you used the iron?”

“She was already down on the ground.”

“I would have to assume they were giving you a little fight,” said Dr. Rogers, who knew from examining the police reports and crime-scene photos that her victims desperately fought for their lives.

“No,” Dana said. “As I remember, it was not much of a fight.”

Dana told the psychiatrist that she put the iron in the sink and rinsed off her hands with a towel and water. By the time Dr. Rogers asked her about where she'd shopped that afternoon, Dana had forgotten her accusation the police about taking $600 to $700 in cash from her purse. Dana recounted her visits to the bank, grocery stores, the stationery store and the health food store, which accurately accounted for the cash found in Dana's purse and corresponded with the receipts and the the checks belonging to Dora that Dana used.

With Dr. Kania, Dana's story of killing Dora had huge gaps. She said she was “in a haze” after leaving her father's house, got lost and felt “pulled to” Dora's house. She told him that she didn't recall exactly what happened, except that she stopped to ask for directions. When Dora told her that she was “in a hurry” and “didn't have time for this,” Dana told her that she recalls seeing the back of the victim's head as they walked down the hallway and next recalls seeing Dora on the ground and seeing an iron on an open shelf in the hallway. She told Dr. Kania that she recalled picking up the iron, but didn't remember hitting Dora with it, saying she “woke up” after the murder. Her next memory was seeing the bloody iron in the sink, but she didn't look at Dora's lifeless body on the floor. At the time, Dana said, she'd thought, “There is nothing you can do with this person … she's beyond help.”

Despite being “spaced out, like it was surrealistic,” and feeling grief and tremendous sickness, Dana managed to find Dora's bankbook, checkbook, and other credit cards, which Dana said were conveniently sticking out of Dora's purse, got back into her car, and somehow found her way to the local shopping center. Within minutes of killing Dora, Dana's alleged confusion didn't prevent her from finding Dora's bank and signing Dora's name to her checks. She told Dr. Kania that she'd had an overwhelming need to “stock up” because she sensed doom.

In her interview with Dr. Forbes, Dana said the “creepy female image” was superimposed on Dora's face after Dora allegedly said that she “didn't have time” to help her. When Dora turned her back, Dana said she became enraged and used the phone cord and threw Dora to the floor. In this version, Dana remembered reaching for the iron and bludgeoning Dora with it. She told Dr. Forbes that she bought a briefcase because she recalled that her mother wore a uniform and carried a briefcase to a Scientology meeting, something she didn't tell the other psychiatrists.