Perfect Victim (32 page)

The courtroom heard first of Colleen being hung in Cameron’s father’s barn, then of an “obedience test” with a shotgun: “He told me to get down on my knees. He was holding the gun and he told me to put my mouth over the end” and pull the trigger, Colleen said. “It clicked.”

She testified that on the way down to Riverside Cameron stopped in Sacramento, near the capitol, on the pretense that the people at Company headquarters might want to test her. She waited nervously in the car while he went into a “skyscraper.”

When he came out, he told her she was lucky they didn’t want to test her and handed her a permit to carry money.

Colleen insisted that fear of the Company prevented her from making what might have seemed the obvious move of asking her family for help. She stayed with them for twenty-four hours without even hinting that she was in trouble. As she was leaving, Colleen said, “It was very hard not to break down and cry and tell [my mother] what was happening.”

Why didn’t she?

“I was afraid to.”

When they returned to the trailer, Cameron told her to shower and then raped her.

Why didn’t she resist?

“I was afraid he would beat me or torture me or even kill me,” she said softly.

“Is he strong.”

“Stronger than me.”

But at the next break, some of the public in the back of the room was heard to comment: “Tsk, what a fool.”

“She should have escaped.”

“She liked it.”

From day to day, reactions among the courtroom spectators varied, depending on what portion of the proceedings they’d heard.

But a CNN cameraman, who had been there from the beginning, told a colleague: “I think he’s going to get off. She’s just not convincing enough.”

Her last full day of direct examination — with all the clocks stuck at 3:05, the air-conditioning blown out, and Judge Knight sweltering in his robes — Colleen Stan continued with her testimony.

She held the court spellbound with her perplexing tale of life with the Hookers. It was a story riddled with contradictions: love and hate, tedium and terror, autonomy and dependence, Holy Scripture and sleazy pornography, secret perversions within an apparently wholesome family. None of it seemed reconcilable, yet Colleen claimed it had all coexisted.

In a voice as flat and unemphatic as yesterday’s beer, she described varying terms of confinement — three years in the box, vast new freedoms after January of 1984, and her apparently regular job as a motel maid at King’s Lodge. Still, one part of her testimony remained constant: She said she was too afraid to try to escape.

If Colleen’s monotone testimony wasn’t totally convincing, it harmonized with the unmistakable strain of docility about her.

Whenever court recess was called, for example, she hesitated even to rise from her seat to leave the witness stand until the prosecutor approached, then exited the courtroom with her. And when Mcguire asked if she “had a plan or survival strategy,” Colleen’s reply was typically passive: “I figured that as long as I did what Cameron said, he wouldn’t kill me. And I put a lot of faith in God, that He’d take care of me.”

Further, Colleen said she never felt she had a choice except to do as Cameron told her, “because he told me I was a slave and slaves don’t have a choice.”

During the final summer, Colleen testified, Cameron began telling her that God wanted her to have sex with him, and Janice, feeling that she had to obey her husband, added to the pressure.

They’d come to the controversial eighth rape count — controversial because Janice had testified that Colleen had asked her permission to have sex with Cameron. But in Colleen’s description, both she and Janice were tied to the bed, and penetration was forced.

At length, Mcguire brought Colleen’s testimony to the time in August when Janice unexpectedly came to King’s Lodge, found her at work, and set her free. Colleen said she was very upset and crying. “I was devastated because I had believed everything he’d told me. He’d made it seem so real.”

“How did you feel?”

“I felt that I could go home. I felt that it was over.”

But though Colleen was reunited with her family after a long, mysterious absence, she didn’t go to the police. Why?

Colleen claimed that Janice had asked her not to — a point which Janice had denied.

Mcguire then questioned Colleen point-blank about subsequent calls and letters to the Hookers. Colleen said she was writing to Janice, not to Cameron, but since the two had gotten back together, the letters were sent to them both. “I don’t really understand why I wrote the letters now,” she admitted, “but Jan wanted me to keep in contact with her, and I wanted to know how they were doing.”

The phone calls, according to Colleen, were mainly placed by the Hookers, who wanted to know what she’d told her family and whether she’d gone to the police.

Wrapping up a few final points, Mcguire finished her direct examination and turned her witness over to Papendick.

Hooker’s defense attorney immediately confronted Colleen with her contention that she hadn’t shown affection to the defendant.

She maintained she had not.

Papendick then entered a photograph into evidence. It showed Colleen with her arm around Cameron’s shoulder, both of them seated on a sofa and smiling.

This was passed around to the jury who, as usual, registered nothing but somberness on their faces.

Having punctured Colleen’s credibility, Papendick pressed ahead. He asked if the witness remembered phoning Cameron just after midnight on August 14 and talking for seventy-six minutes.

Colleen said she didn’t recall.

Did she recall saying she’d been looking at the photograph and decided to phone?

“No.”

Didn’t she remember sending the photograph to Cameron?

“I don’t remember if I did or not,” she said, but by now it seemed clear that she had.

6. The photograph had been taken by Colleen’s stepmother in Riverside in 1981.

Throughout the crossexamination, Papendick portrayed the story of the Company as ludicrous, contending that no one could be so preposterously gullible as to believe it. At one point, in a tone of conspiratorial hilarity, he asked, “Looking back on the story of the Company, isn’t it the most bizarre thing you’ve ever heard?”

Mcguire exclaimed: “Argumentative, Your Honor!” Her objection was sustained, but Papendick was laying a groundwork of skepticism, bringing latent doubts to the fore.

The defense attorney went on to point out the many opportunities Colleen had to escape but didn’t. Paying special attention to the 1981 trip to Riverside, he listed place after place that she had ventured without apparent fear of reprisals by the Company and without asking anyone for help: How could the Company know the addresses of your aunts and uncles and grandmother? What about your father’s car? Did you honestly believe the Company was monitoring these places? Wouldn’t they think you were escaping?

Having presented the whole story of the Company and of slavery as absurd, Papendick shifted his attention to Janice: “Did Janice ever tell you that she was a slave?”

“I don’t recall.”

“Did you ever ask her?”

“I don’t recall asking, but I do recall her telling me she was just as much a slave as I was.”

“How frequently did you go shopping with Janice?”

“About half a dozen times.”

“Did you ever suggest to Jan that you could both escape?”

“No.”

Then, referring to a shopping trip to the Mt. Shasta Mall in Redding, Papendick asked, “Were there security officers around?”

“Yes.”

“Did you believe they were members of the Company?”

“No.”

What about the pastor of the church she went to with her grandmother in 1981?

“No.”

“When you and Janice went home with the two men you met at the bar, weren’t you afraid the Company would think you were trying to escape?”

“No, because it was Janice’s decision.”

“Did you ever inspect the phone on Pershing to see if it was bugged?”

“No.”

Papendick listed numerous other phones and Colleen admitted she hadn’t inspected any of them. On the other hand, she explained huffily: “I don’t know anything about that stuff.”

Asking how Colleen got to and from work, Papendick established not only that Colleen regularly traveled the three-mile distance unsupervised and under her own power on a bike, but that she once detoured to find 1140 Oak Street.

“Weren’t you afraid the Company would think you were trying to escape?”

“No.”

“Weren’t you afraid you’d be punished?” he goaded.

“No,” she answered flatly.

Again, after establishing that Colleen had visited a friend, Lenora Scott, after work, Papendick asked: “Weren’t you afraid the Company would be angry with you?”

“No.”

“Weren’t you afraid that Cameron would be angry with you?”

“No.”

Finally Papendick showed his hand: “Isn’t it a fact,” he said coldly, “that you used the Company as a reason to stay in the Hooker household?”

In her usual deadpan, Colleen replied: “I didn’t want to stay.”

Deputy DA Mcguire listened with rising trepidation. She’d expected Colleen to do better than this.

Citing Colleen’s testimony that she’d spent twenty-three hours a day in the box every day between March 1981 and December 1983, Papendick asked what she did in the box.

“Slept. Listened to the radio. Dreamed about going home.”

“Did you do any exercise?”

“No.”

Papendick asked her to recount what she did when she got out of the box. Besides “some knee-bends after I brushed my teeth,” Colleen mentioned no exercise, a point that would come up later.

Papendick moved on, establishing that Colleen was aware that Janice was jealous of her, that Colleen was taking care of the children earlier than Janice realized, and that there was a strong bond between Colleen and the Hookers’ daughters. “Did you believe Jan was a good mother?” he asked.

Mcguire immediately objected.

Papendick exclaimed: “That was her motive for staying, Your Honor!”

Judge Knight sustained the objection, as there’s no cause to show a victim’s motive, but the defense attorney had succeeded in planting another seed of suspicion.

At times, however, Papendick seemed to be doing his client more harm than good. He stunned the courtroom by spending what seemed an inordinate amount of time in questioning Colleen about the electrical shock incident on the frame. He quibbled with her over whether the wire had been taped “tightly.” Colleen, who averted her eyes from the defense attorney, looked pained at even having to discuss this, her words becoming very soft.

“How many times were you shocked?”

“I don’t remember.”

“More than once?”

“Yes.”

“More than twice?”

“Yes.”

“More than three times?”

“Perhaps.”

“How long?”

“Maybe three or four seconds.”

Surely this was not the sort of testimony Papendick was hoping to elicit, yet, to the court’s astonishment, he continued.

“Where did you feel the pain?”

“In my entire body.”

“Wasn’t the pain more concentrated in one spot?”

“It shoots electric current through your entire body,” she insisted.

Although Papendick must have thought he was helping his client by belaboring this, it seemed he was only making the incident more vivid to everyone in the courtroom. Worse, it was time for lunch and court was now recessed, leaving the image of Colleen being hung and electrocuted lingering in the minds of the jurors.

When Papendick resumed the crossexamination after lunch, he let loose with his biggest ammunition, a rapid-fire line of questioning that shot holes in Colleen’s credibility.

“Did you ever tell Cameron that you would give him a son?”

“No.”

“Did you ever tell Cameron that he spiritually inspired you?”

“No.”

“Did you ever tell him that you were his spiritual wife?”

“no.”

Here, Papendick handed Colleen a sheet of paper and asked her to identify it. It was a letter. Looking disquieted, she admitted it was her handwriting.

“Do you remember when you wrote it?”

“No.”

He suggested she read it to refresh her recollection. After a moment, she said, “It says Christmas.”

Papendick moved the letter into evidence and passed copies to the jury and the prosecutor. While the jury read, Papendick and Hooker sat whispering, Hooker looking pleased.

Resuming his questions, Papendick asked, “Did you ever tell Cameron that you felt more of a woman being a slave?”

“No.”

“Did you tell him that he made you feel good about yourself?”

“No.”

Now Papendick showed her a card. She admitted the printing was hers, and that she had drawn the picture of the leaf with a “K” on, the front. It read: “Happy Third Anniversary,” and copies of this, too, were passed to the jurors.

“Did you ever tell Cameron that your love was growing every day?”

“No.”

Alluding to the card, he asked, “When you talk about ‘just because I love you,’ who are you referring to?”

“Could’ve been Jan,” she said defensively.

Quoting again, Papendick read: “My love for you is growing every changing day.”

“I felt a love that he made me feel for him,” Colleen objected.

“This card was given to either Cameron or Jan, is that correct?”

“Yes.”

“And it expressed how you felt at that time, right?”

“Not necessarily. I used to write poems a lot.”

“Do you recall writing a diary?”

“At Cameron’s instruction.”

“Did you prepare a document entitled ‘Past’?”

“Not that I recall.”

Papendick handed Colleen some handwritten pages. She flushed but said she now remembered writing it.

“Do you recall putting in the diary that you wanted to stay with Cameron, that he welcomed you into the family?”

She admitted that she recalled being welcomed into the family, though she couldn’t remember when.

“Did you tell Cameron that you loved him?”

“Yes.”

“When was the first time?”