Perfect Victim (29 page)

He began by casting doubt on Janice Hooker’s credibility, noting that her November, 1984, statement to police was replete with “I don’t knows” and “I can’t remembers.”

“She was making changes in her statement as late as two weeks ago,” he charged.

And he portrayed her as a clearly guilty party. He said, for instance, that it was Janice, not Cameron, who found the article on slavery and suggested making Colleen their slave.

Striding back and forth as he read from notecards, the defense attorney explained that Cameron and Jan had originally agreed there should be no sex with Colleen, only bondage. He granted that she was initially kidnapped and held against her will, but said that once the Hookers moved to the mobile home, “Kay,” as Colleen was called, was no longer held captive.

She was free to go, yet opted to stay, becoming part of the Hooker household. Papendick enumerated her many freedoms: she attended family gatherings, made phone calls, babysat, and was often out on her own. She went jogging, shopping, and to bars where she met men. And wherever she went, she always returned to the Hooker home.

In 1981, Colleen was even taken to visit her family, alone, for twenty-four hours. She never complained about her living situation. And she voluntarily returned to Red Bluff with Cameron.

Papendick didn’t deny that Cameron practiced bondage with Colleen, but this, he said, was consensual. Moreover, he announced, “the evidence will clearly show that Colleen loved Cameron, even promising she would give him the son that Janice never did.”

Papendick explained that Jan became extremely jealous of Colleen’s relationship with Cameron and felt threatened by Colleen’s easy rapport with the children. In 1981, Colleen was put back in the box at Jan’s insistence.

Emphasizing discrepancies in the stories of the threesome, Papendick said: “Cameron recalls she was out and free all night, every night. Jan recalls one to three hours. And Colleen recalls fifteen to thirty minutes.”

By 1984, Colleen had resumed her status as a live-in babysitter and regular member of the household. She was included in family excursions, and even rode a bike to and from King’s Lodge, where she worked as a motel maid.

Meanwhile, Papendick contended, Janice was on the verge of a mental breakdown and was in no condition to care for her daughters. Still intensely jealous over the sexual relationship between Cameron and Colleen, she now feared they would take her children from her.

By August of 1984, Janice badly wanted Colleen out of the house, so she told her the Company was a lie and that she had to leave.

It was significant, Papendick continued, wrinkling his nose with emphasis, that three days after her departure Colleen telephoned Cameron at 12:11 A.m. and talked for seventy-six minutes!

In fact, the defense would show there were several phone calls placed between the two over the next three months.

More than a lingering affection existed between Colleen and Cameron, Papendick said. They planned to be reunited: Colleen’s father owned land in Cottonwood, not far from Red Bluff, and she talked of moving there. Cameron volunteered to put in sprinklers and plant trees. In a letter, Colleen wrote: “I can’t wait to get back home.”

Janice panicked, went to the police, and Cameron landed in jail.

Returning to his seat, Papendick left in his wake the impression of a quirky — yet technically legal — living arrangement.

Janice Hooker, who had been waiting in the jury room while Mcguire and Papendick gave their opening statements, would be the state’s first witness.

She emerged from the back of the courtroom looking decidedly undramatic, plain, and pudgy. But she’d cut her hair short since the preliminary hearing, and instead of her usual sweatshirt and jeans, she was wearing the simple cotton dress that Mcguire had bought for her.

1. She didn’t know the source of the gift since Mcguire, not wanting to embarrass her, had given it under the pretense that it had come from an outside donor.

Janice was sworn in, then seated herself in the witness box without even glancing at Cameron.

Mcguire had watched Janice grow over the past months, watched her struggle with her own guilt, with her unhappy bond with Cameron, with worry over how all this would affect her children. Her private life had become painfully public — never a comfortable situation, but worse in a small town like Red Bluff.

It took considerable courage for her to overcome the awful twin pulls of fear and loyalty in decrying the sins of the man who had been the center of her orbit for more than twelve years.

But Mcguire knew the jurors might feel unsympathetic toward Janice. That she was getting immunity for her testimony rubbed some people the wrong way. After all, they said, she was guilty of everything he was, she ought to be on trial, too. And there seemed something doubly suspect about a woman who would testify against her husband.

So Mcguire tried to balance Jan’s guilt against her victimization. She wanted to encourage her to be open, yet avoid appearing too chummy.

Gun-shy after Jan’s horrible testimony at the preliminary hearing, Mcguire asked: “Are you taking any medication today?”

“No.” She was straight and clearheaded.

The prosecutor quickly delved into the evidence. First, a stack of photographs of Janice in bondage positions. (The whole courtroom was stunned to hear that some of these had been done to Janice as many as fifty or a hundred times.) Then Mcguire had her identify the heavy, double-walled head box, which she placed on a table near the center of the room. Next, she had Janice describe how Cameron had constructed the head box in 1975 in the basement at 1140 Oak Street, and led into the agreement that preceded Colleen Stan’s abduction.

Asked to explain, Janice said, “I wanted a child, and I pressed him many times about having a child, and he agreed, as long as he could have a sexual slave.”

Mcguire started to ask, “Was it your understanding that the sadism —” but Papendick shot out an objection over the word sadism.

Judge Knight paused to consider this, then said, “That’s a matter of opinion, but I’ll overrule.”

It was a small victory for Mcguire. They’d made the leap from bondage to sadism, from a legal form of sexual expression to one that, while not overtly illegal, was certainly more sinister.

Mcguire asked, “Was it your understanding that this person would endure the sadism?”

“Yes.”

“And that it would stop with regard to you?”

“I believe some things he might do to me, but the hanging he’d do to the sex slave.”

“Was the hanging the most painful?”

“Yes.”

“Did it end?”

“No.”

“What do you understand a sadist to be?”

“A person who performs acts of bondage, hanging, whipping, and enjoying the pain that the other person suffers.”

“And what about a masochist?”

“Sexual enjoyment from pain.”

“Is the defendant a sadist?”

Papendick shouted out another objection.

The judge sustained the objection, barring Janice’s answer, but the idea that Hooker was a Sadist was firmly planted in every mind in the courtroom. Whether his wife was a masochist was another question.

Several of the jurors took notes as Mcguire laboriously covered the events of the first several days of Colleen’s captivity.

She posted displays on a bulletin board, asking Janice to identify a picture of the rack, then a large drawing of the box that Cameron kept Colleen in. It “opened like a chest freezer,” Janice said.

The courtroom sat transfixed as Janice described the nightly feeding routine, how Colleen was only allowed to use the bedpan once a day for the first few weeks, and the dunking incident when Colleen was given her first bath.

2. This caused one of the jurors, Mrs. Carlton, an unforeseen problem, and she later asked to speak to the judge about it. With the other jurors excluded but both attorneys present, Mrs. Carlton told the judge that, though she hadn’t mentioned it during jury selection, her daughter had drowned. Judge Knight asked whether she still felt she could be a fair and impartial juror. She said she believed she could and so remained on the jury.

“How long was Colleen kept in the box?”

“Maybe five months,” Jan answered, raising an audible gasp from the spectators.

But the next day Janice corrected herself. Colleen’s detention in the box had been even longer.

“We lived on Oak till April ‘78. She was kept in the box during that time. I thought you meant how long she was kept in there until the workshop was built,” she said, and then Mcguire had Janice explain the workshop to the jurors.

This led to a new stage in Colleen’s captivity, and Mcguire put up another exhibit. All eyes strained to make out the writing on the poster-size photograph. Across the top was written: “This Indenture.” It was a blow-up of a picture from the negative of the slavery contract.

Contradicting Papendick’s opening statement, Janice said Cameron was the one who had found the contract in an underground newspaper. He had showed it to her and asked her to type up the contract. She was unaware of the accompanying article, she claimed, until police showed it to her in 1985.

Papendick was right, however, that Janice had been changing her statement almost up to the last minute. She had finally decided to “come clean” and tell what she knew about the Company. For months she’d denied having heard Cameron tell Colleen about it.

Now she started filling in gaps.

Jan said she heard Cameron tell Colleen that a Company messenger was waiting upstairs for the signed contract and that he’d had to pay a fifteen-hundred-dollar registration fee to the Company. Also, Cameron had threatened Colleen that she would be caught and “tortured almost to the point of death” if she ran away, and that “if she did anything wrong, her family would also be killed.”

3. Janice’s description of the elaborate contrivance of the slavery contract wasn’t the only part of her story that didn’t mesh with Papendick’s.

During a break, Mcguire and Shamblin searched through their several boxes of evidence trying to find some particular photographs of Janice. When Shamblin announced that he’d found some, Mcguire asked, “Is she pregnant?”

Hearing this, Hooker looked over sharply.

Papendick had claimed that Cameron’s sexual preference for bondage had been thwarted when Jan became pregnant. The photographs said differently.

After signing the contract, Janice said, Colleen was known by her slave name, “K Powers.” She and Cameron also assumed aliases.

“What happened to the original contract?” Mcguire asked.

“I believe Cameron burnt it,” she said, at which point Papendick leaned over and whispered something to Hooker, who nodded.

Under questioning, Janice carefully described the conditions of Colleen’s enslavement over the next few months and how, in the spring, they moved to the mobile home where Colleen was kept in a box beneath the bed.

As she talked, a weird assortment of evidence gave mute testimony from a nearby table — the nightgown Colleen wore, the large and small head boxes, straps, the bedpan, leather cuffs, hardcore pornography, even a bright purple-and-pink afghan that Jan and K had crocheted.

The whips caused a stir. “How many whips did he have?” Mcguire asked.

“Four or five,” Janice answered. He had several types — a bull whip, a cat o’ nine tails, and other variations, some of which Cameron had made himself, But the strange clutter on the table paled next to the spectacle that awaited.

4. As Mcguire stood talking with Janice, whip in hand, a sketch artist did a quick rendering of the scene. Mcguire was amused to see herself on the television news that night, apparently brandishing this whip in the courtroom.

After the lunch break those who entered the courtroom found, set up in the middle of the room, the box. The waterbed frame had been reconstructed and the steps placed in front of the opening, just as they had been at the Hookers’ home.

The spectators were agog. The press was delighted. And the jurors stared.

The prosecutor had Janice explain how the box opened: “Move the steps from the foot of the bed and there’s a cut-out panel. I used to take, like, two knives and pry the front part down.”

The bailiff and Officer Shamblin assisted as Mcguire unscrewed the wing nuts and removed the panel, revealing the opening.

Jurors in the back stood to get a better look. Taking this as a cue, many spectators, unable to restrain themselves, also stood to see into the infamous box. If the box had been sordid in imagination, it had greater impact in reality. Sitting hard and cold and open in the middle of this carpeted court of law, the box seemed massive, chilling, and more obscene than even the worst of Hooker’s pornography.

Just two weeks before the trial, Christine had finally made good on her tearful threats and left Jim. Now, on top of the stress of commuting a long distance to a demanding trial, she was juggling addresses and child care while weighing the prospect of divorce. Far from being relaxing, her weekend home in Red Bluff only added to her tension.

Back in court on Tuesday, October 1, Mcguire took Janice through the remaining years of Colleen’s captivity and entered more stacks of evidence.

Much of the evidence logged that day was pornography Hooker had collected, pornographic pictures he’d taken, and listings of pornographic movies he’d seen or wanted to see. In fact, there was so much of this pornographic material that, at one point, the judge asked its relevance, since Hooker had already stipulated to a preference for bondage. Mcguire simply replied, “It goes beyond that, Your Honor.” Only later would it become clear that these were more than just a collection of girlie pictures.

Just as the courtroom was getting bored with the tedious logging of exhibits, Mcguire exploded another bombshell: two large photographs of Colleen Stan, nude and hanging by the wrists, with the slave collar around her neck.

Everyone in court sat bolt upright, straining to see. Spectators buzzed. Judge Knight gave a long, hard look, pulling thoughtfully on an earlobe, as Mcguire set the pictures on an easel at the front of the courtroom.