Everything She Ever Wanted (29 page)

"Did you have occasion, Mr. Allanson," Garland asked, "to have a

telephone call from Carolyn Allanson?"

"Yeah .
 
. .

"When did Carolyn Allanson call you?"

"About six weeks ago."

"In that conversation, what did she say to you?"

"She wanted to come out to the house but I had company coming.
 
I asked

her to wait till Sunday to come.
 
Then in talking to her, she's telling

me she loved Tom, and I asked her what all went on out at the house at

the killings.
 
She said, 'Mother Allanson got killed."
 
That's what she

called her mother-in-law, see, and then [she said], 'But we didn't mean

for Walter to get killed-' " What could she have meant: that there had

been a plot to kill her mother-in-law, and her father-in-law was killed

by mistake?
 
It was doubtful that young Carolyn had been romantically

involved with her husband's father, as Margureitte had suggested.
 
Was

this simply the testimony of a very old man who would do anything to

save his grandson?
 
Quite possibly.
 
Paw had no further observations or

remembrances to offer on Carolyn, and the jury seemed oblivious to any

spicy connections his testimony might have evoked.

Weller seemed to think that the old man was fabricating.
 
"Mr.

Allanson," he began on cross-examination.
 
"You want to do everything

you can to help your grandson, don't you?"

"I want to be fair with the world."

"Yes, sir.
 
You want to help him and do everything you can to help

him?"

"If it takes anything to help him, the truth is what I'm telling.

"And really," the prosecutor asked, "it's pretty well your philosophy

that the dead are gone and the living are still here, isn't it?"

"Yeah.

Nothing further."

On redirect, Garland elicited Paw's opinion of Tom as far as violence

went.

"I've known him and he's a fair, square boy," he replied.

"Wait a minute.
 
I'm asking you about his reputation for

peacefulness.

"Good."
 
Paw did not waste words.

While questioning Paw, Bill Weller had, for the third time in the

trial, managed to get the information on the record that Tom Allanson

was a quick-draw expert.
 
He had, the prosecution maintained, once shot

himself in the leg while practicing in college.
 
Paw Allanson agreed

that Tom was a "pretty good quickdraw" shooter.

Nona Allanson, who could barely speak due to a stroke, entered the

courtroom in a wheelchair.
 
She testified that she had heard her son

Walter threaten to kill her grandson.

"Did you tell your grandson that?"

"Yes, I told him."

Weller had no questions.
 
Lawyers rarely make points with the jury by

cross-examining such a vulnerable witness.

The long week of testimony was over.
 
Next would come the summations.

The members of the jury would hear neither Tom nor Pat Allanson

speak.

They had watched their interplay and wondered about them, seeing the

pretty woman whisper passionately to her husband and his attorneys,

seeing the man on trial gaze at her with such longing in his eyes.
 
The

jury had not seen Tom and Pat kiss and hold each other as they did

during court recesses, but they had picked up on the sexual tension

between them.
 
They had been curious, and undoubtedly wished they could

have heard Tom and Pat testify.
 
There seemed to be so much about this

case that remained unexplained.
 
But both sides had been represented by

extremely able attorneys, and now it was time for final arguments.

Bill Weller contended that Tom Allanson had killed his parents

deliberately.
 
"Everything points to him.
 
He has no reasonable

hypothesis.

The only reasonable hypothesis, the only reasonable circumstances-this

man murdered his mother and his daddy in cold blood.
 
He's the only one

had a motive.
 
No phantom involved in this."

Weller came as close to naming Pat Allanson as an accomplice as he

dared under the law.
 
She had not been formally charged with any crime

because the D.A."s office wasn't sure just where she fit in-if at

all.

Weller asked the questions the D.A."s staff had asked one another.

"What's she doing way up from Zebulon fifty or sixty miles away driving

around the Allansons' home-if not to let him off to do his little

deed?

Is she the fly in the ointment?
 
Is she the rejected woman that the

parents would not accept because they had another daughter-in-law and

two children?
 
And the constant needling-constant needling-crying .

.

. about somebody exposing himself and here she is a grown woman.
 
. .

.

Every time you hear some witness, 'Yes, she was with him."
 
This wife's

everywhere.
 
She's here waiting for him.
 
She's there.
 
She's driving

around the house.
 
He's walking to Zebulon.
 
She's next door looking

for him at his grandmother's house thirty minutes before."

Weller reminded the jury that Tom had been seen on Norman Berry

Drive.

"Three eyewitnesses.
 
. . . That policeman looked him flat in the face

three or four times.
 
Mr. and Mrs. Duckett saw the police car running

down the road with him.
 
They described him, jeans, boots, Tarzan hair,

tannish shirt-or brownish green , all the same color scheme."
 
Weller

ended his summation with a call to the jury to simply add up the

established facts.
 
It was all there.

Ed Garland contended in his final arguments that the case against Tom

Allanson had not been proven to a moral certainty, and that was what

was needed to convict.
 
"That is what this case is about.
 
There is no

moral certainty in it.
 
There's no firm piece of evidence you can plant

your foot on and say, in fact, in that house that the defendant fired

that weapon and killed those two people.
 
It does not exist-but there's

this assumption, speculation.
 
There's positive proof to the contrary

that someone else did the shooting on the twenty-ninth of June.
 
. .

.

"There's not one piece of evidence that puts this defendant in that

basement-not one-and if you consider a guilty verdict, you have to

speculateyou have to assume.
 
. . . In this case you're dealing with

circumstantial evidence.
 
Lots of bits and pieces of circumstances.

The law sets an even higher standard.
 
It says this, that the

circumstances must exclude every other reasonable theory-must exclude

every other one!"

And it was true.
 
There was no physical evidence that placed Tom in

that charnel house of a basement.

It's just not there," Garland continued.
 
"Was there a boot print, a

bloody boot print walking from this basement through that blood where

the man was lying in the trail of blood?
 
Somebody had to go right

through it.
 
Was there .
 
. . one bit of blood on an item of clothing

this defendant had?"
 
They went there to his home and arrested him.

There was not and there's a reasonable doubt.
 
. . .

"If you can meet the challenge of the law, then you will stand up and

write a verdict of not guilty in this case because there are hundreds

of reasonable doubts."

Ed Garland's voice dropped as he spoke the final sentences of his

argument.
 
He would not be allowed to speak again.
 
Bill Weller would;

the onus of proving a case is always on the state and the prosecutor is

allowed a rebuttal statement after the defense finishes.
 
"I ask you to

write a verdict of not guilty," Garland pleaded."
 
In this case-not

proven-to follow your duty as jurors..... and return a verdict that

says this case has not been proven....... I now give the burden of Tom

Allanson's life to you.
 
Please look after it."

Step by step, in rebuttal, Weller went over the case the state had

built, asserting that the defendant had pried open the door into his

parents' basement and then waited coldly for them to come home so he

could murder them.
 
It was a good argument, and plausible, and Weller

was persuasive.
 
"I want to quote one thing from the Scriptures, from

the Book of Proverbs, and I'll leave it with you," Weller concluded."

'He that curseth his father and mother, his lamp shall be put out in

the midst of darkness.

The jury could find Tom guilty of murder, not guilty of murder but

guilty of voluntary manslaughter, or they could find him not guilty,

period.
 
In a two-count indictment such as this, they had to return a

separate verdict on each count.

The jury retired to deliberate at 6:00 P.m. on Friday, October 18.
 
At

8:27

P.m. they buzzed the courtroom and asked to come before the court.

Judge Wofford understood that they had a question.
 
But it was not a

question.

Joseph Thackston, the payroll administrator, had been elected foreman

by his fellow j u rors, and he said, "We have reached a decision, Your

Honor."

"You have?"

"Yes, sir."

Judge Wofford immediately sent the jurors back into the jury room and