A Death in Wichita (13 page)

On December 11, five weeks after Kline lost the election, Johnson County officials come together to select a DA to replace Morrison. Because Morrison had been voted into this position as a Republican, the GOP got to choose his successor and they picked Kline, sending waves of disbelief and indignation across Kansas, while shocking Morrison and Linda Carter. There was nothing Morrison could do to stop this, but he demanded that because Kline had never worked as a DA, he should get paid less than his predecessor. With Kline and Morrison flip-flopping jobs, Carter would now go to work for her lover’s archrival. Down in Wichita, Tiller immediately suspected the worst.

Five days before Morrison would become the new Kansas AG and Kline become Johnson County DA, Tiller and his lawyers asked Judge Richard Anderson to make certain that the redacted medical files were kept in a secure location during the transition. Kline would be taking over an office 177 miles from Wichita, in suburban Kansas City, where he had no jurisdiction over Sedgwick County or WHCS medical files, but Tiller was still nervous, and with good reason. Despite the urgency of the situation, Judge Anderson did not rule on the matter immediately, giving Kline all the leeway he needed, as a court-ordered investigation later revealed.

On Friday, January 5, his last full workday as AG, boxes of medical records were moved from his Topeka office and transferred into the car of Steve Maxwell, the assistant prosecutor who worked under Kline. They were driven to Maxwell’s residence, where he and Kline’s chief investigator, Tom Williams, sorted through the boxes. According to the investigation report, some records were then transferred again, into the trunk of Williams’s state-owned vehicle, but the critical WHCS and CHPP files stayed with Maxwell over the weekend.

At eight o’clock on Monday morning, January 8, four hours before the job switch, Williams and another investigator, Jared Reed, left five boxes of medical records at Judge Anderson’s chambers in the Shawnee County Courthouse, including the WHCS and CHPP files. That morning Kline had told Eric Rucker, chief deputy attorney general for Kansas, to make certain that these records would be available to him as the Johnson County DA. Rucker then told Williams to get them back from Shawnee County. The order surprised Williams, who didn’t understand why the files should be taken into Johnson County’s jurisdiction, so he asked for a written confirmation of Kline’s request. At 3:43 p.m., nearly four hours
after
Morrison had been sworn in as the new attorney general, Rucker e-mailed Williams. He said to “copy all medical files” and that Kline had directed them to be “delivered to the District Attorney for the 10th Judicial District,” in Johnson County. Williams and Reed copied the records at a Kinko’s and put them in Reed’s car. Reed took them to his apartment and stored the women’s private medical files in a Rubbermaid container, where they sat for more than a month.

Before leaving the AG’s office on January 8, Kline had left three boxes of Inquisition materials for Morrison, but they held no copies of the WHCS and CHPP records.

“When we moved into the office that first day,” says a Morrison staffer, “we looked around and couldn’t find any of these files. We were absolutely stunned and couldn’t believe that Kline had actually taken all the records from Tiller’s clinic and Planned Parenthood.”

Morrison’s staff wasn’t the only ones who were stunned. Over in Olathe, the new attorney general was present during the transition at the DA’s office, where he learned that the medical files hadn’t been left behind in Topeka. He got into a verbal scuffle with Maxwell, whom Kline had just hired to work for him as an assistant prosecutor.

The following day, Judge Anderson sent Morrison a letter asking if Kline’s just-named special prosecutor for Dr. Tiller, Don McKinney, had any of these files in his possession. It was a moot point; one of Morrison’s first acts as AG was to fire “The Dingo.” He also ended Kline’s Inquisition, and a new era seemed to be coming to the Kansas attorney general’s office and its relationship with George Tiller.

Three months passed before the matter of the copied medical files made its way through the court system and came before Judge Anderson. Not until April 9 did he learn that Kline had taken the WHCS and CHPP records with him to Johnson County. Judge Anderson was mightily disturbed and would eventually testify about the records, Fox News, and Kline’s appearance on the November 3, 2006,
O’Reilly Factor
.

The talk show host, Judge Anderson said, had asked Kline “softball questions,” while O’Reilly himself was “claiming that he had inside information about this or that…I viewed Bill O’Reilly as, frankly, quite a windbag…I was very upset with Kline, because he had put himself in a position where O’Reilly could claim he had stuff. And whether it was driven purely by the pressure of that political campaign or not…I didn’t think he should have put himself in that position as the attorney general because it looked bad.”

Judge Anderson ordered Kline to return all the records to the AG’s office or face contempt charges. Kline turned the files over to the judge, telling him that no copies of the materials were left in his possession. Only later did he admit that his staff had “created summaries of at least three WHCS patient records” and would use the summaries in their work in Johnson County.

According to Kline’s own criminal investigator, Jared Reed, both Kline and Chief Deputy Attorney General Rucker were “willing do to whatever is necessary to get charges filed or to get abortion stopped. Whatever is necessary up to and including going above the law.”

As this played out in the Kansas court system, O’Reilly continued to hound Tiller on the air. In one video clip, Fox’s Jesse Waters followed around Governor Kathleen Sebelius and unsuccessfully tried to ask her about Tiller. In another clip, Fox’s Porter Barry confronted the physician himself on the streets of Wichita.

“They call you ‘Tiller the baby killer,’” Porter said. “Is that appropriate?”

Tiller took out a phone and dialed 911, telling a police dispatcher that he was being accosted by a TV producer.

“No matter what you think about the abortion issue,” O’Reilly said on his program in the spring of 2007, “you should be very disturbed by what continues to happen in Kansas. This man, Dr. George Tiller, known as ‘Tiller the Baby Killer,’ is performing late-term abortions without defining the specific medical reasons why. Let’s be more blunt: Tiller is executing fetuses in his Wichita clinic for five thousand dollars. And records show he’ll do it for vague medical reasons. That is, he’ll kill the fetus, viable outside the womb, if the mother wants it dead. No danger to the mother’s life, no catastrophic damage if the woman delivers.

“Now, some Kansas politicians want to stop the madness. But incredibly, Governor Kathleen Sebelius is protecting Tiller, citing privacy. The governor vetoed a bill a few weeks ago that would have forced Tiller to provide a specific medical reason for destroying a viable fetus. Now, America is a great country, but this kind of barbaric display in Kansas diminishes our entire nation.

“Tiller has killed thousands, thousands of late-term fetuses without explanation. And Governor Sebelius is allowing him to continue the slaughter. How the governor sleeps at night is beyond me.”

On May 14, 2007, CHPP filed a motion asking Judge Anderson to hold Kline in contempt and for him “to surrender all copies of all patient records he had obtained through the Inquisition.” The judge denied the motion. On June 6, CHPP filed a “writ of mandamus” seeking for the court to compel Kline to return the medical records to the AG’s office. The legal wrangling over the women’s records would generate nearly 2,600 pages of testimony and other documentation, which in time would make their way to the Kansas Supreme Court.

While the case against Kline edged forward, Morrison ran the AG’s office, parking his car each morning near the back door of the Kansans for Life headquarters. Those associated with the anti-abortion group constantly put up signs near his vehicle saying “Charge Tiller” or other messages that chided Morrison for being both Catholic
and
pro-choice, in their minds an irreconcilable position. Morrison ignored the taunts because he had so many other things to think about, starting with Linda Carter, who now worked for Phill Kline.

The last time the couple had had sex in the Johnson County Courthouse, according to a sworn statement from Carter, was on Sunday, January 7, 2007, the day before Morrison became AG. With the campaign behind them and Morrison settling into his new job, Carter announced that she was ready to divorce her husband and backed this up by driving down to Western Grove, Arkansas, and bringing back some furniture. She put it in an apartment she’d just rented in Lawrence, about halfway between Kansas City and Topeka, where the lovers could meet in secret. During one stretch that winter, they spent four nights in a row at their new home. They’d begun discussing a tentative wedding date of April 5, though the attorney general hadn’t even left his wife.

On Valentine’s Day, Morrison told Carter that he’d changed his mind and decided to stay with Joyce. That set off an eruption, until he changed his mind again. In March, he moved some personal items into the Lawrence apartment and began going there more often. Things were smooth for a while, but then the two began arguing about a highly divisive subject they just couldn’t agree on: Dr. George Tiller. Morrison had never prosecuted an abortion doctor or shown any intention of doing so. Right after becoming AG, he’d dismissed the thirty last-minute charges Kline had filed against Tiller in late December 2006.

“It was clear, after looking at the case,” Morrison said when announcing this decision, “Kline’s investigation of Dr. Tiller was not about enforcing the law. It was about pushing a political agenda.”

When visiting Carter’s Lawrence apartment, Morrison was intensely interested in finding out from Linda if Kline was investigating the Planned Parenthood clinic in Kansas City and, if so, what tactics he was using. As the director of administration for the Johnson County DA, Carter had inside information about the Olathe office, but she wasn’t very forthcoming with her lover. Abortion was a serious point of contention between them. Morrison had made clear to her that he thought Kline’s Inquisition had been unethical, if not illegal, and that he’d manufactured evidence against Tiller. Carter was strongly opposed to late-term abortion, especially after Kline had taken her into his confidence and shown her some of the WHCS medical files. She felt that Morrison, with his statewide powers of prosecution as AG, should take action against the Wichita physician.

“Are you going to do the right thing and charge Tiller?” she demanded of Morrison during one of their fights in her apartment.

With two decades of great success as a high-profile prosecutor, he bristled at anyone telling him how to do his job, and he tried to deflect the question by encouraging Carter to look for work in another field and get away from Kline. She wasn’t easily put off. The conflict over abortion, which had affected many American families during the past several decades, had angrily come to life between the lovers.

Had Morrison, she pressed, taken campaign contributions from Tiller when he was running for AG?

He lied and said no.

When she continued interrogating him, he erupted and stomped out of her apartment.

She dumped all of his possessions into a pile by the door so he could pick them up when he came back and get out of her life for good. She also decided to sell her engagement ring, but first hid it in her apartment. When her husband, John, stumbled onto the ring and an appraisal document holding Morrison’s name, he sold the $16,000 piece of jewelry for $4,750, depositing the money in a joint account with his wife.

Ten days after Morrison stormed out, he called Carter and said that he’d left his wife and taken an apartment in Topeka, where they could now be together. And he was ready to go to St. Louis and have his vasectomy reversed, so he and Linda could have children. He gave her the key to his new apartment and she saw him there in April and May. By now, Joyce Morrison had learned of the affair and she called Carter, demanding that Linda stop seeing her husband.

What neither Carter nor Morrison knew was that Kline had also been tipped off. In March 2007, two months after he became Johnson County DA, a staff supervisor wrote Kline detailing Carter’s inappropriate behavior at work. It mentioned her “flirtatious manner with defense attorneys, law enforcement officers and other individuals.” One man she’d flirted with was Tom Williams, the former chief AG investigator who now had a similar job in the DA’s office. The supervisor’s allegations were passed along to the Johnson County Board of Commissioners and to the DA’s new chief deputy, Eric Rucker, who’d also worked for Kline back in Topeka.

On March 19, Kline received another letter, this one anonymous, outlining Morrison’s affair with Carter. On two occasions, it stated, employees had heard Morrison and Carter having sex in the DA’s office. Kline gave the letter to Steve Maxwell, who’d tangled with Morrison on the day Kline had moved into his new job. The DA, who was still involved in his own legal battles at the Kansas Supreme Court, decided to sit on the explosive information. Several months went by as his contempt case moved forward and he pushed on with his plans as DA, doing what Morrison had never done in nineteen years of running the Johnson County office. Using the women’s medical records he’d gathered as attorney general, Kline filed 107 criminal charges against Planned Parenthood of Kansas and Mid-Missouri (CHPP) for its abortion practices. For all practical purposes, the Inquisition was back on.

As Kline went after CHPP, the attorney general made a move that baffled and angered his supporters. It may have been because he was under the influence of his lover. Whatever the reason, he asked a lawyer in his employ, Veronica Dersch, to look at the WHCS files Kline had earlier gotten his hands on. Did they, he charged Dersch with finding out, show that Dr. Tiller had had a financial relationship with Dr. Kristin Neuhaus, who’d given him so many of the second medical opinions needed to perform late-term abortions? Had Tiller violated the legal statute that read, “
No person shall perform or induce an abortion when the fetus is viable unless such person is a physician and has a documented referral from another physician
not legally or financially affiliated
with the physician performing or inducing the abortion…
”?

Both CHPP and WHCS were again under investigation.

On June 22, 2007, the Kansas Supreme Court ordered Kline to explain to its seven justices why he shouldn’t be held in contempt for violating a judge’s orders and distributing the medical records to outsiders, including perhaps Fox News. Five days
after
the court issued this directive, Kline had a subordinate make a copy of CHPP patient records and give them to yet a fourth medical expert. Then Morrison jumped into the case, writing a legal memorandum stating that “CHPP patient records and other materials had been taken without authorization from the Attorney General’s office when Kline’s term was over; that patient records had been mishandled; and that copies of the records had been disseminated improperly.”

On June 28, with his relationship with Carter as volatile as ever, Morrison filed nineteen misdemeanor charges against Tiller. By late July, he and Carter were again discussing their marital options and Morrison kept pushing her to reveal the activities taking place inside the DA’s office. What was Kline doing with the medical files still in his possession? How much money had the DA’s staff spent hiring expert witnesses to prosecute CHPP? When Kline became DA, he’d fired seven lawyers and an investigator who’d worked for Morrison. The “Olathe Eight” had then banded together and sued the new district attorney in a wrongful-termination lawsuit. Morrison insisted that Carter keep him informed about the suit and wanted her to write letters of support to staff members who’d joined the case against Kline. Carter balked, feeling divided between her loyalties to her old boss and her new one, who was paying her $90,001 a year. When she refused to write the letters, her relationship with Morrison again went to the brink.

On September 18, he called her and said the moment had arrived to prove his love for her once and for all. He drove the couple to a Kansas City parlor, where a tattoo artist inked a heart into his pelvis, and inside the heart were two initials: “L.C.” She was supposed to get a similar tattoo with “P.M.” engraved in her flesh, but backed out and ten days later told him she wanted Morrison out of her life forever. The quarrel escalated, over the tattoo but also why she wasn’t keeping him informed about Kline’s investigation into Planned Parenthood.

She feared that if she left the DA’s office to hunt for a new job in Arkansas, Morrison would sabotage her efforts. In late October, he tried to reconcile with her by saying that if she’d have him as a husband, he’d make peace with Kline and get an emergency divorce from his wife.

She told him never to call back.