Beyond Obsession (41 page)

“No.”

“Did you ask Dennis Coleman to kill your mother?”

“No.”

Santos took her this far. Now he was preparing to take a crucial step, the gamble that would be the main thrust of his defense. If it worked, he could change the whole course and tenor of the trial. He had nothing to lose. He had been laying the groundwork for it day after day, with those questions, to which answers were not permitted, about a priest, about childhood abuse, about other aspects of Karin's life with her mother. Now he tried to swing wide the door and get it all in.

“Where did you grow up?” he asked.

“In East Hartford.”

“What did your mother do?”

Before Karin could answer, Thomas rose and objected. It was as though he suddenly understood what Santos was attempting. This line of questioning, he said, was not relevant.

It was absolutely relevant, Santos said, and he asked that the jury be sent out so he could explain why. The jurors filed out. Now Santos showed his hand. What he intended to do, he said, was go into the history of Karin's relationship with her mother and father, to develop in detail the psychological and emotional abuse to which she had been subjected from her earliest age until the day of the murder and beyond. His purpose was to explain Karin's conduct in August 1986, when those first discussions of murder arose. “What Karin did,” he said, “when she made that sandwich and when the lights were flicked was not with intent to commit murder, but rather she was acting out all the frustration that developed over the years of child abuse.” By showing this, he said, he would be able to rebut the state's claim that she was engaged in any conspiracy at all, and he would explain why she acted the way she did after the murder, why she covered for Dennis and why she had sex with him.

He intended, he told Corrigan, to have Karin testify to everything she remembered about her mother through all the years, and then he would corroborate her stories of all the abuse with the testimony of teachers and others who were witness to it, or its results, and with hospital and social service reports. And then he would bring in the psychiatrists, who “are prepared to testify that the defendant suffers from a mental disease or defect. She fits the profile of a battered child, and her conduct before and after the murder was consistent with the result of that abuse. We will show, that she did not have the mental state to commit the crime nor the specific intent to conspire and participate in it. The experts will rebut the state's claims that she did. The whole history of mental and physical abuse is essential to our defense. And the centerpiece is the lie that someone else was her father, and not Michael Aparo.”

Thomas was outraged. He didn't see what such testimony, or evidence, had to do with this case. “She says, ‘I didn't do it,' so how is this relevant? What Mr. Santos is trying to do is present a mutually exclusive defense, and that is not permissible. She is not entitled to this defense. She could have pled not guilty and not guilty by reason of insanity, and then she could present this testimony. But she took the witness stand, and she denied everything.”

Corrigan asked whether Santos was preparing to offer an insanity defense.

Santos said, “We might. We don't have to make that decision at this point. We will decide at the time of Your Honor's charge to the jury.” At this point all he wanted to do was lay out the relationship with Joyce Aparo and show how what Karin did in 1986 was the culmination of that relationship and why she was acting it out. “Our purpose is to show that she never conspired and that her conduct after the murder was consistent with and the result of the years of abuse and the effects that had on her. If the testimony we offer is credible, then it has the possibility of raising a reasonable doubt whether she actually conspired and helped Dennis Coleman plan and commit the crimes charged between August 1986 and August 1987. The state says, if she didn't conspire and didn't abet, then why cover up? The defense says, this is a troubled young girl who did some things that can be construed as consistent with guilt but are actually the result of abuse.”

By not committing himself to a particular line of defense, Santos was keeping all his options open. If Corrigan refused to allow this testimony, Santos was sure he would have solid grounds for an appeal should Karin be convicted. If Corrigan permitted him to put everything he wanted on the record, let the jury hear it all, then at the end Santos could judge the effect and decide where he wanted to go. He could continue to maintain that Karin was not guilty of any crime because she had done nothing. This would compel the jury to decide only on the counts of the indictment whether or not she was guilty of the crimes charged. If she was guilty, she would be sentenced, at Corrigan's discretion, to up to eighty years in prison, and Corrigan had the reputation of a fair trial judge and a very stiff sentencer. Or Santos could decide to use the evidence as mitigation. This would allow the jury to acquit her on the murder and conspiracy counts and to find her guilty of a lesser offense, manslaughter, as it could not do if the original plea stood; she would then be subject to a much less severe term in prison. Or Santos could decide to change the plea to not guilty by reason of diminished capacity, mental disease or defect, the insanity defense.

He would have, then, very wide latitude to make a decision once that testimony was on the record. It was an audacious step, one the prosecution did not seem to have anticipated or prepared for. But it was one that Santos had obviously been planning to take, without revealing it to anyone before, and in so doing put Joyce Aparo on trial in place of her daughter.

Thomas tried his best to prevent Santos from following along this path. It seemed as though he suddenly realized where this might be heading, and he wanted to stop it before it got out of control, before all his careful planning for the state lay in ruins. So he argued vehemently that the testimony Santos intended to present was irrelevant unless the defense changed its plea. To no avail. Corrigan thought about it, called a recess and then, when he returned, announced that he was going to permit Santos to pursue this line, to lay out for the jury Karin's story of the history of Joyce Aparo's abuse of her, to bring in Archbishop Whealon's name at last and the effect all that abuse and all those lies had on her; he was going to let Santos call witnesses to back up Karin's story and then, perhaps, allow him to call his experts to give their psychiatric opinions.

So the case turned, and it was Joyce Aparo, not Karin, who was now on trial in the public mind—on trial and soon convicted as the tales of abuse, the tales of lies and deceit, the tales of Archbishop Whealon filled a packed and sometimes stunned and certainly appalled courtroom and newspaper columns and the television screens over the next ten days. The stories came from Karin herself, from all those teachers and neighbors and friends and from the psychiatric experts. They were chilling. It was possible to feel the sympathy grow and swing. At the beginning Karin had been an object of scorn. Now she was turning into an object of pity.

In the corridors outside the courtroom, on the sidewalk outside the courthouse, one could hear voices saying, “She should have killed that woman herself. Then she could have pleaded justifiable homicide and gotten off.” There was, though, an inevitable “but.” “But she didn't. She got that poor jerk to do it for her, and now he's in prison for thirty-four years.” No matter the testimony that Santos was managing to enter onto the record, the public perception of Karin's guilt remained unchanged, though not the views about what punishment she might deserve, which had once been that whatever Dennis got, she should get as much if not more. Punished she should be, people said, but nobody was sure just how.

When Santos was finished, it remained to be seen how and if Thomas would manage to rebut and deflect the impact. First came his cross-examination of Karin. It was a trying time for both of them.

“What,” he asked, “were your feelings for Alex Markov from August fifth to August twelfth?”

“I don't remember.”

“Did you ever intend to marry Alex Markov?”

“Maybe.”

“Have children with Alex Markov?”

“Maybe.”

“Tell people after you met Alex Markov that you and Dennis were just friends?”

“Yes.”

“Now you say you loved Dennis?”

“Yes.”

“Why did you lie to Dennis?”

“I didn't want him to know.”

“Did you go off with Alex Markov in the Coleman house to Dennis's room and discuss having him as your guardian?”

“After what happened, I didn't know what to do.”

“What was to be Dennis's role?”

“I didn't know.”

“Did you love Dennis when you called him from Woodstock and asked him to buy you a ring on July fourteenth and you were sleeping with Alex Markov?”

“Yes.”

“Why did you turn Dennis in?”

“It was seeing my mother's body for the first time.”

“That's all?”

“It was the pressure. Knowing everything and not knowing what to do with it.”

“There was no agreement between you to cover up your participation in the murder?”

“No.”

“Why did you lie to Dennis then?”

“I didn't want him to know I had gone to the police.”

“Why?”

“I was afraid he would get mad.”

“What does that mean to you?”

“I didn't know how he would act. Not then, but later, when we were alone. I was not sure what I felt.”

“Did you see Dennis after he got out of jail?”

“Yes.”

“You went and saw Dennis and you say you were afraid of him because he had killed your mother, yet you had sex with him?”

“Yes. I was afraid. The way he was acting and asking questions.”

“You felt compelled to have sex?”

“I didn't feel in a position to say no. I didn't want to do anything to upset him.”

“But you had just turned him into the police. Did you discuss that?”

“Yes.”

“What did you say?”

“I don't remember.”

“You saw him once more. Were you afraid of him then?”

“I think so.”

“You had sex with him then?”

“Yes.”

“And you were afraid of him?”

“Yes.”

“Why did you lie to Shannon about how the police got the note Dennis left in your bed?”

“I don't know.”

“What did you mean in your letter to Dennis about crucial papers?”

“I don't know what that refers to.”

“The plot you wrote about, that refers to running away and getting married?”

“Yes.”

“That was the extent of the plot?”

“Yes.”

“Why did you need a guardian if you were going to run away?”

“So my mother couldn't get me back.”

“About the pills. You say you did that to calm your mother down?”

“Yes.”

“Did you tell Dennis this?”

“Possibly.”

“What did you tell him?”

“I don't remember.”

“How could Dennis help you run away?”

“I don't remember.”

“What's the distinction between running away with help and without help?”

“I'm not sure.”

“Did you have the logistics worked out?”

“I don't remember now.”

“In your letter, you mentioned unfulfilled promises. What were the unfulfilled promises?”

“They were his promise to take me away from my mother and get married.”

“But what did you mean by the reference to unfulfilled promises?”

“I don't remember.”

“You said you crushed the pills into her sandwich to calm her down. What does calming her down have to do with running away?”

“I wanted to get away from her because she could be so difficult to be with.”

“But how could that help you run away?”

“It couldn't.”

“Why did Dennis write to you that he would kill for you?”

“It was just a general expression of his feelings for me.”

“This is the same man who was upset by the flicking of the lights?”

“Yes.”

“What did he mean by writing that he was giving his soul to something black?”

“I don't know.”

“On the night of July thirtieth, what were your intentions regarding Dennis?”

“After the trip to Binghamton we would have the rest of the summer together. Really, my intentions were that because Alex was going away, I was not using Dennis.”

“You were not using him when you were sleeping with others and leading him to believe it was not so?”

“That was not my intention.”

“Did you tell Shannon Dubois that you had a role in the murder?”

“No.”

“Did you tell her you were supposed to clean up?”

“No.”

“Did you tell her about other plans to murder your mother?”

“I can't remember. But we did have discussions.”

“You didn't tell her about the discussion with Dennis about the flicking lights and that plan to kill your mother?”

“I don't specifically remember.”

“Were you misleading Shannon?”

“No.”

“Why did you tell Shannon the same story you told Dennis about the finding of the note?”

“I don't remember.”

“The note you wrote Dennis after he was arrested, where you said, ‘Don't worry about what others say.' What were you afraid he would hear?”

“I don't remember.”

“What did you mean by telling him, ‘I forgive you for loving me'?”

“I was telling him how sorry I was that he thought he did this for me.”

“What did you mean by the reference that you didn't want to go to jail?”

“I thought that would happen if I refused to testify.”