Perfect Victim (30 page)

At the lunch break, reporters and photographers rushed over for a closer look, but once they’d scrutinized the picture, their enthusiasm waned. Colleen looked so malnourished and pathetic, even the old hands were shocked and appalled, and no one thought this appropriate for the nightly news or a family newspaper. It was too graphic.

Meanwhile, the prosecutor’s entourage went downstairs to view something equally graphic, and also not family entertainment: The Story of O.

Following up on the reporter’s comment, Mcguire had learned from Janice that this was Cameron Hooker’s favorite movie. She’d asked her secretary, Doris Gunsauls, to locate a VCR and a video of the film, and now Shamblin, Janice, her brother, Doris and Mcguire found themselves in the sheriffs office training room, having lunch and watching Hooker’s inspiration.

Mcguire scratched notes about the similarities between the film and Colleen’s enslavement: the slave collar; the rules forbidding “O” to look at her master’s face, wear underwear, or put her knees together; the hanging and whipping; the piercing of her labia; the designation of an initial for a slave name…the list went on and on.

Mcguire later asked the judge about showing The Story of O to the jurors, but he was reluctant, at a cost of three thousand dollars a day, to spend court time on a film. She would have to work it into the testimony.

Mcguire’s impressive display of evidence wasn’t complete yet. When court reconvened, another large box, this one about four feet square, had been added. It was a scale model of the “hole,” which Cameron and Colleen had dug beneath the shed.

Janice again took the stand, and Mcguire asked why Cameron had left two “windows” in one wall when constructing it.

“He was going to make more dungeons,” Janice replied.

“Why?”

“To be able to house more slaves.” (This raised subdued muttering in the courtroom.)

“How many?” Mcguire asked.

“Four.” (More astonishment whispered through the courtroom.)

Sighing often, Janice explained that the hole had taken more than two years to build, and virtually all the work had been done by hand, by Cameron and Colleen. While Jan told about the hole and its construction, some of the jurors again stood to get a better view.

But bizarre as the hole was, and despite the extraordinary effort made in its excavation and construction, it had been put to little use. Janice testified that Cameron restrained her in the hole on only a couple of occasions. And except for two brief stays in the hole, Colleen was locked in the box almost without let-up from March of 1981 to May of 1984 — more than a thousand days.

Not once did she contend that Colleen had been free to go.

Even during the period of “freedom,” in 1979 and 1980, when Colleen babysat the children and was allowed to stay out of the box, she was kept, Janice testified, “in the back bathroom, chained to the toilet.”

While Papendick had said that Colleen had gone to numerous family gatherings, Janice testified that Colleen attended family get-togethers “infrequently,” until June and August of 1984, shortly before the two of them escaped.

But if Janice portrayed Colleen as thoroughly enslaved, she also came across as pathetically cowed by her husband. She described a three-day period in 1983 when he made her fast, threatening to beat her if she ate or drank anything without his permission. And when Mcguire asked Janice why she rarely spoke to Colleen, Janice answered, “I was too scared to. I was afraid to do or say the wrong thing. I was afraid that Cameron would become angry.”

This prompted a dramatic sigh from Defense Attorney Papendick.

Janice testified that Hooker used the Bible to underscore his control, pointing out passages that said slaves and wives should be totally submissive. This made her feel “helpless,” she said.

Cameron also told her that if she didn’t do everything he told her, she would go to hell.

(Everyone puzzled over the strange religious undertones in this three-way relationship. A Bible lay incongruously amidst the hardcore pornographic evidence, a moral contrast sharp as black and white.)

Finally, after two and a half days of draining testimony, Janice’s direct examination was nearly over. Deputy DA Mcguire was proud of her. She thought she’d tried hard to be clear and responsive and had withstood the pressure well. Though Janice may not have emerged as a very admirable character, she didn’t hedge, even when it would have been easy for her to lie.

And Mcguire was touched by small things, such as Jan’s carefully thumbing through magazines or deposit slips to make sure she was identifying them correctly. She doubted that the jury understood the earnestness reflected in those small gestures, but she hoped they saw that Janice did not take her role lightly.

The most poignant moment came toward the end of Jan’s testimony, when the long pauses were no longer sufficient for her to regain her composure, and her sighs melted into sobs.

Mcguire was questioning her about the final rape count, in July of 1984, when the three of them were in bed together. Janice murmured that it was Cameron’s idea, that he’d said “that he was going to sleep with her whether I wanted him to or not, so I could make it easier on myself by just accepting it.” He again used the Bible as justification, saying that Colleen was like Hagar, the slave wife to Abraham.

Under questioning, Jan dutifully described the bondage and sexual relations involved, though this was obviously difficult for her. She spoke slowly, with gulps and pauses.

Mcguire asked why she went along with it.

“I felt like I didn’t have any choice.”

“Why?”

Janice covered her eyes with her hand, and sobbed, “Because I was scared to go to hell!”

When Papendick began his crossexamination of Janice Hooker the next morning, his desk was yellow with legal pads. He sprang toward the witness stand and immediately came to the question he’d been waiting so long to ask: Had Janice told Colleen that she could go?

Janice said she had.

What exactly had she said?

“I just simply told her, ‘go.’” The two had been arguing about something, she couldn’t remember what. Colleen had said something about going, and Janice had said, “Then go!” They’d parted without further words.

Hearing this, Mcguire and Shamblin exchanged worried glances. But there was more.

Did Janice recall telling Al Shamblin that Colleen had told her: “God doesn’t want me to go yet?”

“Yes.”

“Did Colleen tell you that God had put her there to straighten out her life — drugs and stuff?”

“Yes.”

The jury sat rapt as quite a different picture emerged under questioning by Defense Attorney Papendick.

“When did you first believe Colleen was becoming fond of Cameron?”

(Sigh.) “About 1980.”

Papendick asked what it was that made her think this.

“She would cook special things for him,” Janice said. “And before he came home from work, she would put on makeup. That kind of thing.”

She didn’t recall Colleen showing Cameron affection before the trip to Riverside, but specified that she’d seen Cameron showing Colleen affection as early as 1977.

Further, Jan said she saw the two “hugging and kissing” in 1982 and 1983 “in the evening, after the kids were asleep.” And in 1984, she saw such displays of affection nearly every day, sometimes in front of the children.

Papendick asked where.

“In the mobile home, in the yard, different places.”

“Such as?”

“Burney Falls.”

This was something Papendick had been waiting for. In July of 1984 Colleen had gone with the Hooker family on a trip to Burney Falls. He even had snapshots of them all smiling together, which he entered as evidence.

His portrayal of Colleen as a happy family member was amplified by Janice’s testimony about the summer of 1980, when Colleen had gone water-skiing with them at Black Butte Lake.

Mcguire cringed when she heard Janice describe how Colleen and Cameron’s brother and his wife had come with them on an all-day outing. Colleen had even learned how to water-ski.

And like any member of the family, Papendick contended, Colleen was free to come and go. He established that the back bathroom where Colleen stayed in 1980 was directly across from an outside door, that Colleen was not always restrained, and that, in fact, Colleen had locked the bathroom door from the inside.

Papendick continued to emphasize the freedoms Colleen enjoyed during her stay. In 1980 she went jogging nearly every day.

Over the years, she frequently worked in the garden and babysat.

She made phone calls to her family. Cameron took her on a trip to Reno and to visit her family in Riverside. She and Jan read the Bible together. And Jan took her on shopping trips, without Cameron, to the nearby towns of Chico and Redding.

Then there were those highly suspect evenings when Jan and Colleen went to bars.

“In 1979 to 1981,” Papendick asked, “did you go out on dates with men other than Cameron?”

Mcguire quickly objected that this was irrelevant, but she was overruled.

“Yes,” Janice answered.

“How many men did you date?”

“Two.” Under questioning, she said she’d dated one in December and January, and the other for a couple of months in 1980, though she couldn’t remember the months.

Papendick asked where they went.

By now, Janice appeared near tears. “The New Orleans bar,” she said.

“With Colleen?”

“Yes.” She said they both had a couple of drinks, danced, and had coffee with a couple of guys. With great hesitancy. she related how they’d gone home with the two men, and she and her date had gone into a separate room, leaving Colleen and the other fellow in the living room.

Papendick asked if she had sexual relations with her date.

Looking pained, Janice said, “Not then, but later.”

Papendick also established that the Hookers had a number of visitors, mostly family, who came to their home on a regular basis. Most of them had met Colleen, who was introduced as Kay, the live-in babysitter. (Though Janice didn’t say that guests encountered Colleen every time they came over, it was hard to imagine that another adult could remain isolated in so small a home as a single-wide trailer.)

Papendick also managed at least partially to nullify Mcguire’s pornographic evidence by establishing that, despite the magazines he collected, Cameron had trouble reading. Jan said she assumed he looked at the pictures.

Papendick scoffed at Jan’s contention that the bondage was painful and she’d done it unwillingly. Referring to their dating period, he asked: “Why did you accept the relationship?”

“Cause I was able to block out all the bad and only look at the good,” she replied.

Still insisting that their relationship was completely consensual, he asked if they didn’t have some kind of bondage “system.”

“If you call begging to be let down a system, I guess that was true.” Some of Papendick’s questions, while acknowledging the stories about the Company that Colleen had been told, cast blame on Janice. In general, Jan accepted her share of the blame, but sometimes she quibbled. For instance, Papendick asked if she had given Colleen orders.

“I asked her to do things,” she said stubbornly.

“Did you order her?”

Janice said she had a problem with the term, order, but finally admitted that she sometimes told Colleen to clean the bathroom or clean the girls’ room.

More often than quibbling, Janice would simply say, “I don’t remember” or “I don’t recall.” She said this so much that the courtroom began to sigh at her unresponsiveness. And the less responsive she was, the less credible she became.

The defense attorney also succeeded in making Janice look cruel by getting her to admit that she’d whipped Colleen on two occasions. Papendick asked: “Why?”

“Cameron told me to,” she said simply, as if this were unequivocal.

The lesbian acts with Colleen, she said, were also done under orders from Cameron.

But to everyone’s amazement, when Jan described the incident of the final rape count she admitted that Colleen asked her permission to sleep with Cameron, and she had said yes. If Cameron was such a tyrant, why was Janice the one to grant permission?

The courtroom was utterly silent as Papendick drew out more testimony of this weird menage A trois.

Speaking very softly, Jan conceded that she recalled Colleen saying that she enjoyed sex with Cameron. For instance, Colleen had said that when she returned from Riverside, Cameron had slept with her to make her feel better and that after her shower he had lain with her to warm her before putting her back in the box.

“Did she ever indicate to you that she wanted to have Cameron’s baby?” Papendick asked.

“She said she wanted to have a baby, not specifically Cameron’s.”

“Did you believe that Colleen loved Cameron?”

“Yes.”

“When was the first time?”

“In 1980.”

“Did you still feel she loved him in 1984?”

“Yes.”

“During 1980, did you feel jealousy toward Colleen?”

“Yes.”

“When was the first time you felt jealous of her?”

“Probably May nineteenth, 1977.”

“Did you always feel jealousy toward Colleen for the next seven and a half years?”

“No.”

“When didn’t you?”

“Before and after Riverside, both.”

“Why were you jealous of Colleen?”

“I think that’s a little obvious, why a wife would be jealous of another woman in the house.”

But with Papendick hammering away at her, Janice seemed rather lame and unfathomable. Mcguire could almost feel the jury’s sympathy slipping away.

Now Papendick zeroed in on another weakness: “Did you feel that Colleen liked the children?”

“Yes,” Janice answered.

“Loved them?”

“Sure.”

“Took care of them well?”

“Yes.”

“Did the children care for Colleen?”

“Yes.”

“Refer to her as Mom?”

Icily, “No.”

With at least the suggestion of a rivalry over the children established, Papendick went on to let the jury know that shortly after Cameron’s arrest, Janice had come to his office to tell him that she could “destroy Colleen’s story.” Cameron’s family, Janice explained, had told her that she should stand behind him. But Papendick dug for a deeper reason.