The Dreams of Ada (44 page)

Q.* Okay. So the raping took about twenty minutes between all three of you?

A. Yeah, about twenty minutes.

Q.* All right.

A. Pretty close to a little bit after an hour.

Q. Do you have any idea what time of the day or night this was?

A. It was almost dark.

Q. So during that time of the year, say, 8:30, 9:00, something like that, or was it later or earlier?

A. It was later.

Q. What kind of light did you have out there, could you—

A. At the scene?

Q. Yes.

A. The dome-light’s the only light that we had.

Q. Dome-light?

A. Only—

Q. Okay.

A. Yes.

Q. The dome-light inside the pickup?

A. And they had one on—

Q. The back of the cab?

A. Yeah.

Q. Was there any lights on at the power plant?

A. Yeah, there was a lot of lights on, floodlights.

Q. Could you see pretty well?

A. Yes, yes, we could see well enough to know what we was doing.

Q. Okay. Then what happened?

A. Then after that, Tommy—and after that, me and Odell stood there and holded her while Tommy raped her.

Q.* Okay. Did both of you get back in the pickup to hold her?

A. Yes.

Q.* All right. And—

A. I was on this side in between her legs, about middle-ways her legs, and Odell was up here by her neck with the knife.

Q.* Okay. Was she still conscious then?

A. Yes.

Q.* Still crying?

A. She was crying, more or less.

Q.* Still upset?

A. Yeah, she knew what was happening to her.

Q.* Was she saying anything?

A. She was hollering for help and telling us to stop, that we wouldn’t get away with it.

Q.* Was she saying, “Please stop,” or—

A. She was just hollering stop.

Q.* Okay.

A. That we would never get away with it.

Q.* Okay.

A. And then, after that—

Q.* Did she tell you all that she was going to tell on you or—

A. She didn’t refer to that. She said—well, she did say that if he didn’t—that if we didn’t kill her, that she would go back to ya’ll, get us turned in. So that gave Odell an idea to kill her. And then he told—we planned it out amongst the three of us.

Q.* Okay. Let me—let’s back up just a moment. Okay. Karl, you said that Odell Titsworth and you were holding Denice Haraway in the back of the pickup.

A. Yes.

Q.* And Karl was taking his turn at raping her.

A. Tommy was.

Q.* Or—excuse me, Tommy Ward.

A. Uh-huh.

Q.* Okay. So he crawled in the pickup with Denice Haraway?

A. Yes.

Q.* And he raped her.

A. He raped her while me and Odell was holding her.

Q.* All right. Did—so after that happened, then after Tommy Ward got through, did you all let go of—

A. No.

Q.*—Denice Haraway or—

A. Odell was still holding her by himself. I’d let go and Tommy had got off of her.

Q.* Okay.

A. Odell had her under control after that.

Q.* What do you mean, had her under control?

A. Well, she was more or less giving up.

Q.* Okay.

A. At the end. And then he was holding her at the time, and we all got in the truck. After that all of us got in the truck. And then we went to go get a siphon hose and everything, me and Tommy and all of us, was to go get it.

Q.* With Denice Haraway?

A. Yes.

Q.* And you all drove her to get a siphon?

A. We drove the truck. And then—

Q.* Where did you drive to?

A. It was on the country road over there by the power plant. It was a dirt road that me and Tommy had had a siphon hose there.

Q.* Where you had it hid out there?

A. From a long time ago, yes. And then—

Q.* How come you had it hid out there?

A. Because we would siphon gas out of his mom’s car.

Q.* All right.

A. We siphoned gas all the time out of his mom’s—

Q.* Okay. Did you find a can or something?

A. Yes. We got back out there. We drove back out to the house out behind the plant. Found a gas can around the house. He carried her over his shoulder, and she was struggling. He was carrying her. Me and Tommy was behind him. He went up to the fence, put her over the fence. Me and Tommy went over the fence and watched her while he got over the fence.

Q.* Was she conscious?

A. No, she wasn’t very lively, you know.

Q.* How come?

A. Because we’d all three raped her.

Q.* Had anyone cut her with the knife?

A. At one—I seen blood on her side is all I seen.

Q.* On her right side?

A. Yeah.

Q.* How did she get that?

A. I—undoubtedly, Odell, because he was the only one that had the knife at the time. Me or Tommy never handled the knife.

Q.* Okay. So did you see him stab her with the knife?

A. No, I noticed the blood as we was going towards the fence. And then he—when he threw her over, me and Tommy got over and watched her while he—

Q.* Was she still alive then?

A. Yes.

Q.* All right.

A. Me and Tommy watched her while he got over, and he carried her on to the house. Me and Tommy, after we got her all to the house, me and Tommy went looking for a can. We found a can, we got the hose, and we got gas out of the truck.

Q.* What was Odell doing?

A. He was with her.

Q.* Inside the house?

A. Yes. And we went and got the gas can and come back, got some gas—

Q.* What was the intentions of getting the gas?

A. To burn her.

Q.* Burn—

A. Burn the flesh.

Q. Burn her flesh?

A. Yes.

Q.* Denice Haraway?

A. Yes. Then after that, me and Tommy had siphoned the gas, went over there. He had already had her down on the floor and everything when we got there. And then he started stabbing her and everything.

Q.* Stabbing Denice Haraway?

A. Yeah. And then he put her off in the rotten place in the floor—

Q.* Where was that?

A. —or where the floor was missing.

Q.* Rotted out or missing?

A. Well, somebody had tore it up and then some of it was rotted. He placed her down in there. We put the gas on her. And after that, it was early that morning, I guess, somewhere around in the morning time, we burned her. And then we come back and burned the house.

Q. Okay. Now, what portion of the house was this in, Karl?

A. It was in one of the bedrooms.

Q. Was—as you—and I don’t know the particular layout of the house at this time, but did you go through the front-door portion of the house?

A. Yes.

Q. Does it have a living area to it?

A. It had a living room, yes.

Q. All right, now, was the bedrooms one on the right side and one on the left side—

A. One on the—yes.

Q. —as you walk in?

A. We went to the right side.

Q. You went to the right bedroom?

A. Right bedroom.

Q. All right, now. Was the hole that was torn in the floor, was it up against one of the bedroom walls, or was it right in the center of the bedroom, the hole in the floor, or where?

A. It wasn’t completely in the center. It was closer to the wall than it was the center of the floor.

Q. All right. As you’re facing the bedroom from the living room, which wall was the hole closest to?

A. Over here (
indicating
).

Q. The wall on the right?

A. Yes, and then—

Q. So it’s close to the outside wall?

A. Yes.

Q. It would be an outside wall.

A. The front of the house.

Q. Okay.

A. Yes. And after that, we come back that next—or that morning, and burned the house down.

Q.* Okay. You said you poured gasoline on her.

A. Yes.

Q.* And then what did you do after you poured the gas on her?

A. We lit the house. We lit the gas and burned the house and her.

Q. Did the whole house catch on fire or just part of it?

A. It just more or less built itself up; flames built up.

Q.* So what you’re saying is, he carried her down there.

A. Yes.

Q.* You and Tommy went to get gas.

A. Went to get the can.

Q.* And you came back, went inside the room, and he—

A. He’d already had the gas on her and everything.

Q.* Well—

A. He had rolled her off in the hole.

Q.* All right.

A. You know, he’d stabbed her and killed her, I guess, you know, she was dead because he’d rolled her off.

Q.* When you said just a moment ago that he stood over her or was on his knees or something, what was he doing?

A. He was more or less squatting down.

Q.* All right. Did he have something in his hand?

A. He had his knife.

Q.* Was it open?

A. Yes, it was open.

Q.* Well, what was he doing?

A. He was attempting to stab her, and—

Q.* Did you see him stab her?

A. He was stabbing her.

Q.* How did he do it?

A. He had the knife in his hand like this (
indicating
).

Q.* All right.

A. And he was stabbing.

Q.* Hard?

A. Yes.

Q.* How hard? Show me how hard.

A. Hard enough to get the full blade in (
indicating
) like that.

Q.* Was he coming down hard with the knife?

A. No, he wasn’t coming down real hard because the knife was sharp.

Q.* Show me on your body where the knife was going into her body?

A. It was on the front, around her chest.

Q.* Was she making any noise then?

A. She was hollering.

Q.* What was she hollering?

A. She wasn’t hollering anything; she was just hollering. She was just—

Q.* Screaming?

A. Screaming, then she give up. And then after that, she died. And then we put the gas on her and burned her.

Q.* Okay. Who put her in the hole in the floor?

A. Odell.

Q.* All right. And then who put the gas on her?

A. Me and Tommy.

Q.* Okay. Who lit the match to start it?

A. Odell.

Q.* Were you all out of the house when you started the fire, or—

A. He’d put his knife up and we’d went outside and lit it.

Q. Did you lay a trail or something? Did you light a trail and burn it, or did you stand over the hole and throw the match in?

A. Just tossed it over.

Q. Okay.

A. It ignited.

Q.* Where did you spread the gas to, all around the house or inside it or where?

A. We spread it all around her and on her.

Q.* Okay.

A. And then the house just burned up on the inside.

Q. Let me get something straight, now. Did you all burn the house twice? Did you all come back a second time and set the house on fire again, or initially when you set her on fire, that got the whole house on fire? I’m not straight about that point.

A. It got her on fire and the house, too.

Q. Okay. So you all did not go back down and set the house on fire again after that—

A. Not that morning, huh-uh.

Q. Did you all, in fact, go back again—

A. Yes.

Q. —and set the house on fire again?

A. We went back to see if everything was gone, and the house was burned and there wasn’t no remains.

Q. Okay. So you all only had to do it one time?

A. One time.

Q. Did you all carry any—you didn’t see any remains left or anything?

A. No, there wasn’t nothing.

Q.* You mentioned earlier that you saw pieces of burned flesh.

A. Well, it looked like ash, you know, from the wood.

Q. But you all didn’t carry anything away from the scene there—

A. No.

Q. —as far as any body parts or anything?

A. Didn’t carry anything. We all—me, Tommy, Odell got in the truck and then we left. We got out at Tommy’s house, and from there Odell left.

Q. Okay. Did—or have you, to this point in time, been back out to that location?

A. No, I haven’t. I’d been living in Norman. Me and Tommy moved to Norman from there.

Q. Okay. How long after this, the incident, did you all move to Norman?

A. It was months.

Q. Okay. So about a month or so?

A. It was a couple of months, around there. Two or three months. We moved back. Then after we moved there, I moved with Robert and them.

Q. Okay.

A. And Tommy stayed there at Jannette and thems.

Q. How much, if any, of the money from the robbery did you get?

A. He more or less kept the money himself.

Q. Now, who is he?

A. Odell.

Q. So are you telling me that you didn’t receive any of the money at all?

A. No, I didn’t. Neither did Tommy. He more or less kept the money himself and told us what the money was going to be used for and we agreed.

Q. What was the money going to be used for?

A. Gas to get away in the truck.

Q. To get away to where?

A. For him to get away in the truck. He was going to get away in the truck, and he drove it to his mom’s house from there.

Q. Well, did that kind of bother you, I mean—how much money—did he ever tell you how much money you got out of the deal?

A. Close to a hundred and fifty or maybe a little over. It was around in there.

Q. Did that bother you because you all didn’t get any money?

A. No, because we had already agreed and made our plans out how it was going to be used. And then from there, I don’t know where he’s at. From there, me and Tommy stayed together.

Q. Have you heard Odell talk about doing anything like this before?

A. I didn’t know Odell very much.

Q. You didn’t?

A. Tommy knew Odell more than I did. See, Tommy had brought Odell around me. And I met Odell. That was the first day I’d ever met him and then I ain’t seen him since.

Q.* Did—I’m a little bit confused, I think, about the burning part. All right. After Odell Titsworth took her in the house—