Strange Fits of Passion (29 page)

Anyway, at the trial, all this was confusin' to the jury, weren't it? The defense lawyer, Sam Cotton, local boy from Beals Island, his argument was this: Mary shot her husband while he was asleep—they allowed as that's what happened, even though actually, Mary said, he'd woken up when she pointed the gun—but she did it in self-defense because she believed that
eventually,
that day or that night, he would kill her.

Tricky.

It was the "eventually" that was the problem, wasn't it?

The prosecutin' attorney—Pickering—he argued that Mary had had time to call the police—me, if it came to that—'n' have Harrold English arrested for assault. But the problem was that Mary didn't go
up
the hill to the LeBlanc place, where there was a phone; she went
down
the point to Jack's boat, where she got the gun 'n' come back 'n' shot her husband in cold blood.

Now, Mary, she kept talkin' about the rape 'n' the blow that had knocked her out, but the problem is, in Maine, a husband can't legally rape his wife, and maybe everywhere else as far as I know, so the prosecutin' attorney, he made short shrift of that one—settin' aside the blow almost as easy as he set aside the rape.

And then there was the fork.

Unfortunate, that, the fork. Well, I mean to say, a
fork.
How much damage can you do with a fork? Pickering, he made mincemeat out of the fork. Even got a laugh out of the jury, if I remember correctly.

So you see, Mary Amesbury, she just didn't help her case 'tall, did she? And even with me 'n' Julia 'n' Muriel testifyin' as to how beat-up she looked the first day she come to us, it wasn't enough, was it? Particularly so when you had Willis Beale testifyin' that Mary herself had told him the bruises were from a car accident, 'n' Julia, she got recalled 'n' had to say Mary had told her the same thing too—very damagin', that was—and in light of the fact that Sam Cotton couldn't produce a single witness from New York City to say they'd ever suspected anythin' amiss between Harrold English and his wife, or who had ever seen any bruises on Mary.

Well, that was it, wasn't it? And I guess it was too much for the jury—got ourselves a hung jury, didn't we? Pretty much split down the middle, far as I can make out.

After the trial, don't you know, the judge thanked the jury for their services and dismissed them, and straight off, Sam Cotton, he asked for a dismissal, but Pickering stood right up and said there was goin' to be another trial, and he asked for a date.

And then about ten days ago, Sam, he must have heard who the judge assigned was, 'n' it was Joe Geary, who everybody in Machias knows has a soft spot for women. He gives 'em light sentences, don't you know. So Sam, he decided to waive Mary's right to a jury trial—I think he figured she'd make out better with Geary—'n' so the whole thing gets thrown to Joe Geary in September, when they have the next trial. It was in the papers.

So there you are.

It's in his hands now, in't it?

The muck? That was from a honeypot. Those are nasty patches in the flats. Can suck you in, give you a fright, I'll tell you. Like quicksand. Mary Amesbury had a run-in with one, tryin' to get to Jack's boat.

The baby? Julia Strout asked to take her. Has her still.

Well, I'll tell you right off the bat what I think happened that night. This guy, this Harrold English, he done what any guy woulda done; he drove up to get his wife and kid and bring 'em back home, and he surprised Mary and Jack in bed, in flagro delecti, if you catch my meaning, didn't he? And there was some kind of a scene between the three of them, and there was Jack with his gun, and one or the other of them shot the poor son of a bitch, and that's what I think.

There's your motive, if you're lookin' for one.

Mary's coverin' up somethin' for Jack. Even Everett, he thinks so. He didn't say so to me, but I heard this around.

I think, near the end, they didn't care who knew what was goin' on. You ask LeBlanc. He'll tell you Jack was there five-thirty in the morning the day the baby got sick. It was Jack went up LeBlanc's place for the phone. And I myself saw Jack comin' and goin' all that day to Mary's cottage, like they was real old friends. I saw him from the fish house. He didn't kiss her in public, but they weren't foolin' anybody.

Maybe they had a plan. Who's to say? I mean, what were they goin' to do when Jack hauled his boat? How was he goin' to see her every day? You ever think of that?

At the trial I had to say, didn't I, that she said the bruises were from a car accident. I was under oath. I know some people from town, they don't understand that, but bein' under oath is serious business to me.

I don't know how she got found. I do recall this fella up from New York City, he come down the co-op askin' questions. I mighta said, if he asked was there someone new in town, that there was this girl with a baby, but I wouldn'ta let on where she lived or anythin' like that. If Mary didn't want to get found, that was her business, wasn't it?

I'm real curious now about Judge Geary's verdict in September. She'll probably get off, 'cause he's partial to women.

Yes, I had to testify at the trial. I testified as to the condition Mary Amesbury was in when she first arrived in St. Hilaire. Then I had to say that she'd told me that the bruises were from a car accident. But I was quick to say, before the lawyer interrupted me, that I hadn't believed her.

I could not have done what Mary Amesbury did. I don't believe so. I don't think I could have shot a man, but who is to say what a person might be driven to? I know that they say she killed this man, her husband, in cold blood. She could have asked Jack or Everett for help. She could have done any number of things, I suppose. But then who is to say that an act of passion, of hot blood if you will, has a finite limit of only a minute or two? Who's to say an act of passion couldn't last all the way through going out to the boat to get the gun and returning with it and shooting the man who was hurting you? Who you were sure would hurt you again. Who might eventually kill you. Who's to say an act of passion couldn't last for weeks or months if it came to that?

So I can't tell you what will happen to Mary in September. They say she might get off, and I hope that's true.

But when I think about this terrible business over to the point, what I feel most is ... distressed. I feel distressed for Mary and for Jack, and distressed about Rebecca, and most of all now, worried for Emily and this little baby I'm taking care of now. It's Emily and the baby I feel for.

Listen. Do you hear that? That's the baby now. It always takes me by surprise. It's a strange sound in this house after all these years. But a welcome one. My husband and I, we didn't have any children ourselves, and I was always sorry about that.

I just have the baby until Mary gets out.

Would you like to see her? I saw his picture.... She looks like her father.

by Helen Scofield

Sam Cotton seemed preoccupied. He looked uncomfortably hot in his best blue suit and in his shiny black wing tips, which were getting ruined in the sand. It was unseasonably warm on Flat Point Bar this September afternoon, and the talk in this small coastal town of St. Hilaire, Maine, 65 miles north of Bar Harbor, was that the temperature would hit 85 before the day was out.

Cotton put a finger between his collar and his neck, then wiped his bald pate with a handkerchief. He was headed for the end of the bar, also known as "the point," so that he could get a better look at a green-and-white lobster boat that was bobbing in the channel. When he finished examining the boat, he made his way back to the other end of this small peninsula that juts into the Atlantic. There he stood next to his car below a modest white cottage that overlooks the point and the water. Apart from the odd wave to a fisherman heading for shore in his dinghy, Cotton said nothing and spoke to no one. The entire round trip, including the time he spent gazing at and thinking about the boat and the cottage, took about twenty minutes. He does this every day.

Defense attorney Sam Cotton, 57, has been practicing criminal law in eastern Maine for almost 30 years. But his current case, at the Superior Court in Machias, may be the most complicated defense he's undertaken. It is certainly the most celebrated. The case is known around here as "that awful business up to Julia's cottage," or "that terrible story about the Amesbury woman," or "the killing over to the point." Sam Cotton must prove his client, a 26-year-old woman, innocent of murdering her husband last January in the small white cottage Cotton has spent so much time studying. And there isn't much time. Next week, at the conclusion of the second trial of a woman known both as Maureen English and as Mary Amesbury, Judge Joseph Geary is expected to deliver his verdict.

As Cotton has told it, the bare facts of the case are these:

Following two years of domestic violence at the hands of her troubled and alcoholic husband—including repeated rapes and physical assault, even while she was pregnant—Maureen English left her home in New York City last December 3 with her infant daughter, Caroline, and drove 500 miles to the small fishing village of St. Hilaire to seek refuge. There, under the alias Mary Amesbury, she rented the white cottage on Flat Point Bar and settled in to a life of quiet tasks, centered around caring for her six-month-old daughter and nursing herself back to both physical and emotional health.

In the early morning of January 15, after six weeks in hiding, Mary Amesbury was surprised and frightened by her husband's sudden appearance in her bedroom. Harrold English, 31, a successful journalist with this magazine, had driven to Maine to confront his wife. He'd been tipped off to her whereabouts by a physician at a local health clinic Mary Amesbury had visited.

Sometime during these early-morning hours, English assaulted his wife with a sharp instrument, raped her, and hit her so violently in the head she was knocked unconscious.

Believing her life was in danger, Mary Amesbury waited until her husband had passed out from excessive drinking and then made her way to the end of the point. There she crossed a short expanse of water and located a gun she knew was kept on a green-and-white lobster boat moored in the channel. She returned to the cottage, and fearful that her husband would kill her when he came to, shot him twice—once in the shoulder and once in the chest.

Cotton claims she acted in self-defense. So does Mary Amesbury. "I had to do it," she says. "I had no choice."

Last June, a jury was unable to reach a verdict in Mary Amesbury's case, and the trial ended in a hung jury. There were seven votes for acquittal; five for a guilty verdict. Cotton immediately moved for dismissal, but D. W. Pickering, the prosecuting attorney, asked for a new trial date in September. In a surprise move in early July, Cotton announced that his client would waive her right to a trial by jury. Cotton has not commented on his strategy, but sources close to the defense attorney suggest that Judge Geary's reputation for leniency toward women may be the explanation.

At both trials, Cotton likened his client to a modern-day Hester Prynne, the heroine of Nathaniel Hawthorne's classic
The Scarlet Letter.
Both, said Cotton, were wronged women, romantic figures, living out quiet exiles in cottages by the sea and both fiercely protective of young daughters. Both women were outcast and doomed by love to carry the scarlet "A" on their breasts. In the case of Mary Amesbury, the "A" stood not for adultery, but for abuse.

When Mary Amesbury tells her own story, however, she comes across as somewhat more complex than just a "wronged woman." And her story sometimes raises more questions than it satisfactorily answers.

To prevent her husband from finding her, Maureen English assumed the name Mary Amesbury when she arrived in St. Hilaire on December 3. She refused at both trials to answer questions when addressed as Maureen English. The prosecuting attorney solved the problem, addressing her as "Mrs. English/Mary Amesbury." Cotton deftly avoided using either name when he addressed his client on the stand.

For seven weeks this summer. I conducted a series of exclusive interviews with Mrs. English while she was awaiting her second trial. Despite the tension and fear she was obviously feeling, Mrs. English was often eloquent. She was also sometimes sad and occasionally angry, but she was always forthcoming, even at times appearing to contradict testimony she had given in court. One of these interviews was conducted in person. The rest were carried on through the mail.

Because there were no adequate facilities in Machias for long-term female prisoners, Mrs. English has been remanded to the custody of the Maine Correctional Center at South Windham. As she sat in the visitors' room, she looked older than her 26 years. Her skin was pale and lined about the eyes and on her forehead. Her red hair, one of her most striking features, had been cut short, and there was a thin streak of gray over her left eye. Her posture was tense and angular beneath the gray sweatshirt and pants of her prison garb. When she spoke, she had a nervous habit of twirling a strand of hair between her fingers. Those who knew Maureen English less than a year ago find the changes in her appearance startling.

I had met Mrs. English only once prior to our prison interview—at a party at this magazine's office in Manhattan. Although she had once worked there, she had left before I joined the staff. At the party she wore a black velvet dress and looked radiant as she showed off her infant daughter, Caroline, to her former colleagues. She struck me that evening as a happy woman, well-off and well-married, and content to take a few years off to start a family. Harrold, her husband, was almost constantly at his wife's side and kept what appeared to be a loving and protective arm around her shoulder. The idea that he might be beating his wife in the privacy of their home was inconceivable.

During the course of telling her story, Mrs. English spoke at length about her childhood and her upbringing. The illegitimate daughter of a soldier and a secretary whose immigrant Irish family hailed from Chicago's south side, she spent most of her youth in child care, while her mother worked to support them. Mother and daughter lived in a small white cottage in the suburban town of New Athens, 20 miles south of Chicago. Mrs. English appeared to have been close to her hardworking mother and to have respected her values: "My mother would often tell me that things happened to a person and that you should learn to accept those things," Mrs. English said, "but I also understood from an early age that neither my mother nor I would be happy unless I did what I was supposed to do. Unless I seized for myself a life she had been denied—a life with a husband and a stable family."