Almost Midnight (27 page)

Every Wednesday Darrell joined other prisoners, though usually not Tom and Henry, for a midday prayer service that was presided over in the jail kitchen by a Baptist minister named Jim Minor. Minor was a gentle and humble soul who lived in semiretirement with his wife in a trailer on the outskirts of nearby Rockaway Beach. He’d come to the ministry relatively late in life, receiving ordination at the age of forty-three, and he enjoyed the prayer service probably as much as any of the prisoners. He especially enjoyed getting to know Darrell, whom he found polite and respectful. “Darrell was a regular at our meetings, and he’d occasionally let me know how much he appreciated my prison ministry,” Reverend Minor would subsequently recall. “I knew he’d recently converted and professed belief in Christ. Some people assumed it was because of me. I’d love to take credit for it, but I can’t. Someone else—I don’t know who—had gotten to him first.”

Darrell was still praying, and reading now, too—the Bible sometimes, and anything else of a religious bent he could get his hands on. The pickings were slim at the jail, but three or four items left a lasting imprint on him. One of these was a book called
Power in Praise
, which Roscoe had brought along on his visit and then left
behind. The book fit Darrell’s needs perfectly. Far from being an old-fashioned scold, a repent-or-be-damned jeremiad, it was a best-selling paean to positive thinking. Its message was tantalizingly simple: You’re sick or in prison? Broke and depressed? Lost and forlorn? Don’t fret about it. Simply praise God. Praise and thank God for your grief and your failures, for every situation you happen to be in—regardless of how tragic or evil it may appear. That way you show confidence in God; you demonstrate trust that God has a perfect plan for your life. In return God will convert your difficult circumstances to joyous and prosperous ones. Be steadfast in your praise, never waver in your confidence—God will take care of the rest.

Darrell was so impressed with
Power in Praise
that after a second or third reading he sent it to the front desk with a note asking Roscoe to hand-deliver it to Mary.

The jail had a small bookshelf near the kitchen, and rummaging through its contents one afternoon Darrell dug out two palm-sized pamphlets written by a Tulsa-based preacher named Kenneth Hagin. Pastor Hagin was the spiritual godfather of the so-called Faith movement, a new sensation that was just then sweeping across the southern and southwestern regions of the country. His message was so bright and jaunty, so lustily optimistic, that it made
Power in Praise
seem almost grudging in comparison. The message was addressed to born-again Christians. The world is your oyster, it advised them. You have miraculous powers at your disposal; unlimited blessings are yours for the taking. Simply stand on your faith, master the art of positive confession—and tell God what you want. That’s right: don’t beg or cajole but rather
tell
God.
Name it and claim it, brothers and sisters
. Don’t resign yourselves to poverty or disease or any other earthly affliction. Let God know your heart’s desires, shout them from the rooftops. If properly confessed, your wish is God’s command. This is your birthright as Christians; this is what has been wrought for you through Christ’s atonement.

Hagin’s message almost took Darrell’s breath away. This is precisely what he’d been doing: telling God in no uncertain terms what
he wanted, confessing his heart’s desires. He’d been telling God that he wanted to be spared execution, freed from prison, and reunited with Mary. And he had no doubt that God would deliver. Imagine now finding these pamphlets—in the Taney County jail of all places. It couldn’t be a coincidence. They had been miraculously placed here, as nourishment for his soul, corroboration of his convictions. He couldn’t read them often enough.

O
N APRIL 11
, in preparation for his trial, Darrell was transferred to the Greene County jail in Springfield. The jail was located in a large rear wing of the old sandstone courthouse on Boonville, just a few blocks north of the city square. After playing musical cells for a few days, he finally settled into a fifteen-by-nine, six-man unit down a dingy corridor in the old section of the jail. Three two-man racks crowded the cement floor, and a sink and toilet were set off in an alcove to the left of the steel entrance door. From the waist up along the back wall a window with heavy bars looked out onto a walkway for guards. It was tight, claustrophobic living, but Darrell wasn’t complaining. After so many months waiting, he was anxious to get the show on the road. Not only that, he liked his new cell mates and even tried his hand at religious witnessing with a couple of them—something which not so long ago would have been utterly unthinkable.

The trial started on April 24, a Tuesday. Judge McGuire’s was the largest courtroom on the second floor of the old courthouse, a trim and dignified room with oak paneling, high windows, and a swinging gate separating the gallery from the judicial bench, counsel tables, and jury box. A portrait of Thomas Jefferson hung on the front wall. More than sixty spectators, a packed house, were on hand the first day, including a dozen representatives from the regional news media. Michelle Beth Katzenell wasn’t among them. She’d hoped to cover the trial for the
News-Leader
, but a more veteran reporter, Barbara Clauser, had been given the assignment instead.

Bill Wendt had realized from the start that he’d be facing long odds, but several recent developments had lengthened them even further. Just a few weeks earlier, on March 23, Mary Epps had finally signed her long-anticipated deal with Jim Justus: immunity from prosecution in return for her trial testimony. Jim had notified Wendt’s office of the deal and offered to make Mary available for a deposition. Wendt had declined the offer. At this late hour deposing her seemed more trouble than it was worth. He’d read the statement Mary had given Jack and Chip in Arizona. He knew how damning it was to his client. What else was there to know?

And then, in an eleventh-hour maneuver, Judge McGuire had approved a motion by Jim to sever the three murder cases, which meant that Darrell would be tried at this point for the death of Willie Lawrence only. This arrangement worked to the advantage of the prosecution in two ways. Willie was clearly the most sympathetic of the three victims, not nearly as susceptible as Lloyd (or even Frankie) to being dirtied up by the defense. And if Jim, for any reason, failed to convict Darrell for Willie’s murder he could always go after him later on for the other two.

Jim and Wendt gave their opening statements, and then Jim summoned his first witness, Retha Lawrence, who described finding the bodies of the three victims at Lloyd’s farm. Jack Merritt testified next, followed by pathologist Jim Spindler, Chip Mason, and then Charles Durham, a ballistics expert from the Highway Patrol’s forensics laboratory.

The star witness for the state took the stand after lunch. Mary looked elegant in a black dress, her hair tied back in a braid—and also very nervous, struggling for her composure, dabbing her eyes with Kleenex. The direct examination was handled by Bill McCullah, a young prosecutor from Stone County who was assisting Jim with the case. In response to McCullah’s careful prompting, Mary tearfully recounted how she and Darrell first fled Missouri and then returned so Darrell could “settle things with Lloyd.”

“Did the two of you discuss any further what settling things with Lloyd might entail?” McCullah asked.

“Yes.” “What?”

“He started talking of ways that he could stop Lloyd from ever hurting us.”

“Did he get more specific than that?”

“Yes, he said the only way to stop Lloyd was if he was dead.”

“Was it talked about in the abstract like that or more specifically?”

“He was—said he had to kill him.”

“What conversation would you have with the defendant when he would say things like that?”

“Well, I wanted to take the money we had and get a house in California, but he said he had to go back and take care of business.”

“Do you recall when that conversation took place?”

“Well, when we were in California, I said I wanted the house and the closer we got to Missouri, the more he was obsessed, and so by the time we were in Louisiana, he had figured out what he had to do, and by that time, you know, I didn’t think that he was really serious. I thought, you know, how some people say they’re going to kill somebody when they’re mad. I thought we were just going back to that area kind of as to satisfy maybe an ego or something of being seen.”

Mary left nothing out. Dropping Darrell off near Lloyd’s farm and then picking him up. Their heartbreak days as fugitives in Nevada, Colorado, and Arizona. Their arrest in the desert outside Phoenix. She covered all the bases.

Sitting at the prosecutor’s table, Jim Justus couldn’t help but feel pleased. Mary was coming across precisely as he and McCullah had hoped: sincere and vulnerable—a young woman clearly susceptible to being manipulated by an outlaw such as Darrell.

Bill Wendt, on the other hand, courtroom dapper in a light blue suit and wire-framed glasses, seemed almost ready to throw in the towel. Up to this point, he’d still been devising strategies for keeping Darrell’s videotaped confession out of evidence. But now he wasn’t so sure it really mattered. Mary’s performance, in and of itself, had been damaging enough.

Out in the corridor, with the court adjourned for the day, Wendt spoke with an interviewer for KY3 TV, sounding very much like a guy who’d just missed the last train.

“With her testimony it makes no difference whether that videotaped statement by Darrell comes in before the jury,” he said. “It just pretty well closes up the first stage of the case. That’s my belief.”

Criminal trials in Missouri are divided into two stages: the evidentiary stage in which a verdict is reached; and then, if the defendant is found guilty, the penalty stage in which a sentence is imposed. Even without Mary’s testimony, winning the first stage would have been tough sledding for Wendt. His options were severely limited. The state’s evidence was strong enough that a straight acquittal was a long shot at best, and he’d already abandoned the possibility of a psychiatric defense. He couldn’t very well argue self-defense, especially now that the cases had been split and Darrell was being tried here just for the death of Willie. His only realistic option, especially after Mary’s testimony, was to somehow create reasonable doubt that Darrell had acted with deliberation, that his killing of Willie had been cold-blooded and premeditated. Get him off the hook for first-degree murder and instead finagle a conviction for murder in the second degree.

He planned on pursuing this strategy during his cross-examination of Mary on Wednesday, fully aware that it would take some nimble footwork. He had gone after Jack and Chip aggressively in cross-examination, all but accusing the two investigators of having played mind games with Darrell, extracting his confession through emotional extortion. A similarly aggressive approach clearly wouldn’t work with Mary. She’d already proven herself a sympathetic witness, so sweet, so vulnerable, so naïve. If he tried discrediting her, impugning her testimony, he’d risk alienating the jury. Not aggressive or hostile, then, but firm and avuncular: that’s how he’d approach it the next day.

In the days leading up to the trial the defense had been concerned that Jim Justus might have Rocky Redford waiting in the wings, ready to hit the stand and testify against Darrell. As a precaution
Wendt had arranged for Rocky’s younger brother, Rick, to be brought in from a prison in Kansas, where he was serving serious time on a kidnapping rap. Rick knew Darrell, he knew Rocky, and, if need be, he’d take the stand himself and tell the jury which of the two men he’d side with when the truth was on the line. Not the ideal rebuttal witness, perhaps, but the best Wendt could come up with on short notice. Rick was being held in a cage in the Greene County jail, which Darrell now passed on his way back to lockup after the first day of testimony.

“How’s it going so far?” Rick asked.

“The trial’s going down the toilet,” Darrell said.

“That’s pretty rough, man.”

“Nah,” Darrell said, smirking. “I’m not worried about it.”

Rick stood there deadpan, watching as Darrell passed out of view, not quite knowing what to make of his old buddy’s apparent unconcern.

With R.J. sticking it out at home, folding in on himself these past few months, Lexie was attending the trial with her daughter, Rita. On Wednesday morning a reporter caught up with the two women outside the courtroom, wanting to know how Lexie was holding up under the pressure. Wearing a crisp blue jacket over a white blouse, looking even thinner than her normal hundred and ten pounds, Lexie said that she was holding up just fine, her voice not giving away so much as a flutter of anxiety.

“I’ve put all of this right in God’s hands, and God is supreme,” she said. “So whatever God’s will is, this is what we’re waiting for.”

At ten o’clock Mary, in a purple blouse and white skirt, took the stand for Wendt’s cross-examination. The defense attorney wasted no time throwing his strategy into gear.

“You in your testimony yesterday, Mary, mentioned that prior to these deaths, or prior to the time at least that you dropped Darrell off and later heard the radio report, you used the word ‘obsessed.’ Was Darrell obsessed with his relationship with Lloyd Lawrence at the time you dropped him off?”

“Yes.”

“Wasn’t he mad and upset and disturbed, as well as obsessed, with his problems with Lloyd Lawrence at the time you dropped him off?”

“Yes.”

So far, Mary was cooperating nicely. Wendt decided to shift direction just for a moment.

“Many months ago didn’t Darrell say to you, Mary, if this ever comes to the courtroom I want you to turn on me and to tell the truth and get yourself out of this? Wasn’t that your agreement with Darrell?”

“He told me to tell the truth,” Mary said, her voice buckling.

“And he encouraged you, if there was an arrest, to go ahead and testify even though you had to testify against him, did he not do that?”