Evil Eyes (34 page)

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Despite the screwed-up priorities of Court TV, the trial continued on.

The first witness for the state was Betty Rankin, Helen Dutcher’s sister. She was one of six Dutcher relatives who made it to the courtroom in Oakland County. She was also the relative who identified her sister’s body in the morgue.

The second witness up for the state of Michigan was Barbara Neph, a waitress at Alfie’s, where Dutcher dined on her last meal. Neph testified that she served Dutcher a cup of coffee late that night. The waitress also testified that she saw Dutcher place some coins in the diner’s juke-box. She also testified that she believed Dutcher may have been a prostitute. The night Dutcher’s body was discovered she was wearing a three-piece business suit, not the usual outfit for a low-rent-district hooker.

Next up for the state was Ferndale police officer Carl Eberhardt, who arrived on the scene first and interviewed the witness, Joseph Foy. Eberhardt testified that he only interviewed Foy for approximately two or three minutes. He also stated that during the brief interview with Foy the witness did not say that he saw the killer’s face, or specifically, his eyes. In fact, Foy did not say whether or not he even saw the crime actually being committed.

On redirect examination, Officer Eberhardt reiterated that the interview was only a couple of minutes long and that it would not be unusual for a witness to be unable to recall every minute detail immediately after the crime occurred. Many times witnesses are still in a state of shock or denial after they have witnessed a horrifying act.

Officer Eberhardt also spoke of the fact that police were ready to reopen the Dutcher case back in 1982

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when Joseph Foy saw Coral Watts on television in regard to his plea bargain and subsequent sentencing for assault and burglary. Eberhardt informed the jury that all of the files on the Dutcher case from the 1982 reopening had been misplaced.

Eberhardt, however, was not allowed to testify as to
why
Watts was not charged for Helen Dutcher’s murder back in 1982. No mention of the plea bargain and Watts’s upcoming release could be spoken in front of the jury.

A second Ferndale police officer, Detective George Hartley, took the stand after Eberhardt. He reiterated how he wanted to reopen the case in 1982. He also mentioned the lost case files from that same year.

Oakland County deputy chief medical examiner Kanu Virani, who had worked on thousands of autopsies, including one of Dr. Jack Kevorkian’s assisted suicides in which he determined the man did not suffer from terminal cancer, as was suspected by Dr. Kevorkian, conducted the autopsy on Helen Dutcher.

With oversized autopsy photos of a nude Helen Dutcher as his backdrop, Dr. Virani discussed the twelve stab wounds inflicted upon her body. He informed the jury that Dutcher’s killer stabbed her in the heart three times, four times in her lungs, and that her jugular vein had been slit open. There were also stab wounds to the victim’s back.

The fifth witness before the lunch break was Dr. Steven Lorch, from Michigan State University, who was a crime scene specialist on the night of Dutcher’s murder. Lorch testified that he arrived at the murder scene after Dutcher’s body already had been removed. His job was to collect blood samples and tire track marks.

*

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When asked about the difficulty of testifying at her sister’s trial, Betty Rankin stated, “It’s very hard, but it will be nice to have it over with.”

Sandy Anglebrandt, Dutcher’s good friend, was upset by the talk of Dutcher as a prostitute. “She never told me if she was or she wasn’t (a prostitute). It doesn’t matter to me.”

Anglebrandt fondly remembered her best friend. “She smiled. She hurt. She cried. She was a human being. I knew the good part of Helen. I don’t care about the rest.” Outside the courthouse, after the day’s testimony was completed, Jane Montgomery, Elizabeth Montgomery’s mother, was asked how she dealt with everything. She told a reporter that it was no more painful than the knowl-edge that her daughter had been dead for more than twenty-three years.

“It’s something that never leaves you,” she said of the memory of her daughter’s death. “You can’t say, ‘How do you feel about hashing it all up again?’, there’s no such thing. It’s always there.”

On Wednesday, November 10, 2004, all of the key courtroom players returned to fulfill their roles. Defense attorney Ronald Kaplovitz, adorned in an olive green, shoulder-pad-heavy suit, sat next to his client, who was dressed the same way as the day before. Assistant Attorney General Donna Pendergast was dressed elegantly in a tan blazer and skirt with a low-cut eggshell blouse and white hoop necklace.

Before her, sitting patiently in the witness stand, was Joseph Foy, the state’s star witness, and one of the key reasons why everyone was in the courthouse in the first place. Foy seemed uncomfortable dressed in his light blue button-down oxford shirt and designer dark blue tie. His cleanly shaved dome gleamed under the fluorescent lights in the courtroom.

“Will you tell the members of the jury where you lived in December of 1979?” Pendergast asked as she stood behind the wooden lectern located directly behind the prosecution’s table. Harriett Semander and Jane Montgomery sat directly behind Pendergast on the second row. “[At] East Bennett, Ferndale, Michigan,” Joseph Foy responded.

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“And [the address on] East Bennett, where is that, well, first off what type of residence was that? An apartment, a house?”

“Uh, single-family house.”

“All right. Where does that house fall on the block?

Middle of the block, end of the block?”

“It’s on the corner, which would be the, uh, nearest east corner of Eight Mile and Woodward.”

“All right. Would your house be the first house off of Woodward?”

“Yes, it would be,” Foy stated as he craned his neck in circles trying to work the kinks out.

“All right. Where was your house situated in relation to H&M Cleaners?”

“Directly behind the east of it.” “Did your house have a back door?” “Yes, it did.”

“And what you refer to as a back door, did it actually go to the backyard or did it go out to the side?”

“It actually went to the back porch.”

“Did you have a porch outside your back door?” “Yes, I did.”

“And is there an alley behind H&M Cleaners?” “Yes, it ran parallel to Woodward.”

“All right, and this alley that ran parallel to Woodward, would that have run down the side of your house, down the side of your backyard?”

“Correct,” Foy answered.

“All right. Briefly describe, if you would, for the members of the jury, what H&M Cleaners, how it was situated, what kind of building it was.”

“H&M Cleaners was a cinder block building. It was the second building north on Woodward with a drive-through running along the south side of it,” Foy recalled while look-

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ing up and to his right, as if reaching up for the answers that were stored away from long ago.

“When you say ‘drive-through,’ you mean like a driveway to drop off laundry?”

“Correct.”

“All right. Did that driveway lead from Woodward to the alley behind Woodward?”

“Yes.”

“From your back porch, if you were to walk out on your back porch, do you have a clear view of that driveway?”

“Yes, I did.”

“Did H&M Cleaners face Woodward?” “Uh, yes,” Foy recollected.

“Were you home the night of December 1, 1979?” Pendergast asked as she turned over a sheet of paper in her legal notepad.

“Yes, I was.”

“Who was home with you on that night?” “Uh, my wife, Paula, and her two children.”

“Did something unusual come to your attention in the evening hours?” Pendergast queried.

“Uh, yes. My, uh, dog was barking quite violently.” “And what did you do when you noticed your dog

was barking violently?”

“I got up, we were watching TV. I got up, looked out the alcove window that was directly to the alley.”

“All right, when you looked out that alcove window the first time, what did you notice?”

“I noticed a car sitting there,” Foy stated as his upper right lip curved upward in a slight grimace reminiscent of the Joker’s.

“Was it a vehicle that was familiar to you?” “No.”

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“And what, roughly, [was the] general description of the vehicle that you observed?”

“Tan Pontiac.”

“Had you ever seen this vehicle in the alley before, that you could recall?”

“No.”

“Where exactly was this vehicle in the alley?”

“There was a custodial building that actually sat on the north corner of Woodward,” Foy recalled while holding his right hand forward, “and they used it as a shipping van parked at a bay door, but it was just south of the shipping van.”

“So the shipping van was in the alley?” “Yes.”

“And you were familiar with that van?” “Yes.”

“What did you watch this vehicle do?” “Actually, nothing. It just sat there.” “For how long?”

“I really can’t say how long. A minute maybe.” “What happened next?”

“It pulled away and I went [and] checked [it] out.” “When you say the vehicle ‘pulled away,’ it pulled

away out of that alley?”

“Yes.” As Foy testified, Coral Watts seemed to fidget and fiddle with some documents he had before him. He moved around so much that Ronald Kaplovitz actually grabbed his hand and silently motioned for him to stop. “Okay, and did you see where it went out of that alley?”

“Kind of toward Woodward.”

“It didn’t drive to a service drive, did it?” “No,” Foy said as he shook his head.

“Okay. So it pulled out of the alley onto which street?” “It backed up and turned down Bennett, which would

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be west, because Bennett was a one-way street heading west.” He used his right hand to mimic the movement of the car.

“All right. Now that area where the vehicle was parked, can you describe for the members of the jury what kind of lighting there was back in that area?”

“It was actually a well-lit, not a well-lit area, but a very

. . . it was lit. It had a two-story billboard on top of the custodial building that had floodlights. I had a side-porch light that I kept on during the night and there was two floodlights that point directionally down above the shipping van.”

“Okay. So behind the building in that alley area you recall two floodlights?”

“Right.”

“All right, and then you said there was a billboard?

Where was this billboard?”

“It was on top of the custodial building which was right where the shipping van was in a two-story building. It had lights coming down and shining up on it.”

“And is that billboard still there today?” “Yes, it is.”

“All right, now you said you had a light on at your house that you kept on at night too?”

“Yes, the side-porch light. I’m sorry, side door.” He grimaced again, almost as if he had a wad of chewing to-bacco in his mouth and was swishing it around from his bottom lower lip to his right cheek.

“So your porch is in the back?” “Correct.”

“And, in fact, in terms of the lighting conditions, from the back of your house and the alley area, did you conduct activities at nighttime in your backyard?”

“During the summer I used to have a lot of people

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come over and we’d play volleyball at night. We didn’t need any lights on us just because of these lights that were back there.”

“Okay. Now you said on the corner was actually a cleaning building?”

“Yeah, it was a janitorial-supply company.”

“All right. So H&M Cleaners is actually the second house off the corner?”

“Second building.”

Pendergast smiled at the mild, unintended correc-tion. “After you saw the vehicle pull out, can you tell the members of the jury something unusual that came to your attention after that?”

“I went back down and started watching TV with the wife again.”

“Was your wife awake or asleep?”

“Asleep. A few minutes later, my dog—well, my dog was barking constantly because it was a high-traffic area. But, again he started barking real violently again and so I got up, looked outside.”

“Will you tell the members of the jury when you looked outside the second time, what, if anything, did you see?”

“I seen the same car back that was parked, farther north this time.”

“Okay. Where exactly in the alley area was the car parked?”

“It was parked at the northern point of the custodial building and directly behind H&M Cleaners.”

“All right. Did you notice if anyone was in this vehicle or not?”

“I couldn’t see anybody in the vehicle. No.”

Watts seemed to calm down and appeared bored. He nonchalantly pushed his glasses farther up the bridge of

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his nose and rubbed the sides of his face. His boredom was apparent.

“All right. Did you observe anything other than that this vehicle had returned and was once again parked in the alley?”

“I looked and I noticed two people standing at the outer edge of the driveway, drive-through, of the dry cleaners.”

“At the end of the drive-through that’s closest to the alley?”

“Correct.”

“Describe the people that you saw.”

“I seen a Caucasian female and an African American male,” he recalled as he pulled on the right side of his dress-shirt collar.

“All right. I want to back up for just one moment before I talk about that. This vehicle, you said it was a, what color Pontiac?”

“Uh, tan.”

“All right. When you looked out a second time and observed two persons in the alley under the service drive, what did you do next?”

“I was standing in my alcove and I watched him push, ummm, I’m not too sure I want to . . . to get a better view, I went up to my landing, which was in between the first and second floor and got a better view.”