And Never See Her Again (25 page)

The witness reported that after hearing of Opal's disappearance, she had made a call to the FBI regarding what she had seen in front of the grocery store and pawnshop. She claimed the child had been Opal and the woman with her, Audrey Sanderford. She also stated that the man she saw following Opal matched the description released by police of her abductor.

Judith Strine commented that neither police nor the FBI had contacted her concerning her sighting. She did admit that the defense's investigator had met with her and her husband.

"You agreed to come forward and see if Ricky was the same person you saw that day outside the Cash America Pawn, three days before the disappearance; is that right?"Jones asked.

"Right."

Judith Strine had gone to the downtown Tarrant County Jail, accompanied by Clifford Ginn, the defense's investigator. As her husband waited downstairs to make his own identification, the witness saw Ricky Franks, standing about five to six feet away from her.

"You looked at Ricky, and is that the person that you saw outside the IGA and the Cash America Pawn three days before Opal's disappearance?"Jones asked.

"No, sir."

Jones passed the witness to the prosecution.

"I just have a few questions because I know you don't want to be here. Okay?" Miller said. "Let me point someone out to you."

Miller turned his back to the witness and raised the palm of his right hand.

"Audrey, would you stand up, please?" Miller instructed Audrey Sanderford.

Opal's grandmother slowly rose to her feet. Her face was drawn, her eyes revealed the strain of the last two days.

'Was this the woman who was with the girl?" Miller asked.

"Yes, sir."

"You described [the man] as five feet seven one hundred and seventy-five pounds?" Miller continued.

"Yes, sir."

"Your husband described him as six foot, two hundred forty pounds," Miller stated.

"Yes, sir."

"That's a pretty big difference, isn't it?"

"Right. "

"And you are both adults."

"Yes."

"You are calm, you have your wits about you," Miller said.

"Yes, sir."

"Okay. Do you think we ought to give a four-year-old a little slack on his identification?" Miller retorted.

As soon as the words left Greg Miller's mouth, Edward Jones was on his feet. "Objection. Calls for speculation and irrelevant," Jones said loudly.

"Sustained," Judge Gill replied.

"That's all, thank you," Miller concluded, inwardly suppressing a sly smile.

Mrs. Strine was excused. Her testimony offered little in the way of condemnation or vindication for Franks.

On her way out of the courtroom, Mrs. Strine passed her husband on his way in. He was the next defense witness.

Billy Carl Strine and his wife had lived in Saginaw for about two years. Like he'd done with the wife, Jones asked Mr. Strine to identify for the jury the IGA food store and Cash America Pawn on an enlarged map.

At that point the direct examination was turned over to Leon Haley. Mr. Strine told the jury he believed the little girl to be about five years old and the woman with her in her fifties. Just as his wife had described minutes earlier, Mr. Strine testified that when the girl and woman would stop, or go, the man would follow suit.

"What was going through your mind at that time?" Leon Haley asked.

"Well, when the little girl and her granny came out, I told my wife, I said, `Look at that pretty little girl. She has pretty eyes.' And my wife said yes. So they came out and he was like looking at this little girl and I said, `Look at that son of a bitch looking at that baby that way."'

Members of the audience smiled at Mr. Strine's frankness.

Mr. Strine explained that the man he saw was wearing blue jean overalls with stripes, sunglasses, and a baseball cap. His hair was in a ponytail. Mr. Strine stated the man wasn't black or Hispanic, but was a white man with a tan, sort of like he was dirty. As his wife had said earlier, Mr. Strine believed the man weighed about 240 pounds. "He had a pudgy belly," Mr. Strine explained.

With Haley continuing to question his witness, Mr. Strine stated he had notified a friend on the Saginaw police force about the incident on the Monday following Opal Jennings's kidnapping. He affirmed no one ever contacted him about the event, until the investigator for the defense, Clifford Ginn, did.

"When you went up to the jail, what did you say when you saw this young man?" Haley asked as he placed his hands on the shoulders of Ricky Franks. "Is he the person that you saw on March 23, 1999?"

"No, he is not the person that I saw," Mr. Strine replied.

Mr. Strine expanded his description of the man he saw with Opal Jennings and Audrey Sanderford, as about forty years old, with a mustache, and a face that was kind of crinkled. He said he would be able to identify the man if he ever saw him again.

"All right. But that person you saw stalking her was not my client," Haley reiterated.

"No, sir."

"Pass the witness, Your Honor," Haley announced.

Lisa Callahan would question Mr. Strine for the prosecution. After a few preliminary questions, Callahan struck on the discrepancies between Mr. Strine's description of the woman and that of his wife.

"You described the woman you saw with the girl as having orange or reddish hair; is that right?" Callahan asked.

"Yes."

"And your wife described her as a woman with blondish or grayish hair; is that right?"

"I don't know what my wife said."

"Would it be fair to say that you and your wife didn't really agree on the description of the woman?" Callahan said in a nonthreatening tone.

"I don't know what my wife said," Mr. Strine insisted.

Mr. Strine denied that his wife had ever told the FBI that his recollection of the event had come back to him after a period of time, that he initially had forgotten about it.

Callahan's cross-examination took but a few minutes. She ended by asking, "You didn't see the child taken; is that right?"

"Yes."

"You think in your mind that you know the man that took her, even though you weren't there and never saw it," Callahan accused.

"I didn't see the man take her, but I saw a man stalking her out of a grocery store, watching her walk with her granny that day that looked suspicious to me. Like he was going to grab her until he noticed I was watching him and he backed off of them, yeah," Mr. Strine said.

"Okay. So you knew what was in his mind?" Callahan asked.

"Oh yeah. I know what he looks like," Mr. Strine responded.

"Pass the witness," Callahan stated.

With no additional questions from the defense, everyone in the courtroom anticipated Leon Haley's announcement of his next witness.

Mouths dropped open, eyes grew larger with surprise, and heads turned to stare at Leon Haley as he declared, "The defense rests."

Taken by surprise, Miller's head snapped quickly to his left. He stared at Haley questioningly. He had anticipated the defense to call a number of witnesses to support their claim that Richard Lee Franks suffered from a low IQ. The prosecution's rebuttal witnesses were waiting in a nearby office, ready to give their own professional opinions on the defendant's alleged diminished mental capacity. The defense was also expected to produce witnesses that would support their allegations that Franks had been manipulated easily when investigators detained him more than twelve hours and gave him a polygraph test, which he had failed.

Outwardly Miller remained calm, but inside his heartbeat quickened. With the defense abandoning their predicted strategy, the assistant district attorney was prohibited from calling witnesses he had saved in reserve for rebutting their allegations. Miller feared the jury had been left with the impression that Ricky Franks was a mistreated retarded man who had been manipulated into making a false confession. He could only hope the jury would examine all the evidence and conclude, as he and the law enforcement community had, that Richard Lee Franks was guilty.

Leon Haley, on the other hand, believed the state hadn't proved its case. Prosecutors had presented no evidence linking his client directly to the crime; therefore, he felt it would have been overkill to present a lengthy line of defense witnesses.

As Miller, Foran, and Callahan digested the defense's unpredicted tactic, Judge Robert Gill recessed court for the day. Closing arguments would be heard the following morning at eight-thirty. The case would then be turned over to the jury. Only time would tell if the prosecution had been outmaneuvered by the defense.

The following morning the courtroom was filled to capacity. It was expected that closing arguments would be heard, the judge would charge the jury with the task of finding Ricky Franks guilty or not guilty of kidnapping, and they would retire to deliberate. It was anticipated that a verdict would be returned by late afternoon.

Greg Miller walked to stand in front of the jury box. As he looked into the faces of the twelve men and women, he saw nothing that would indicate if they were leaning toward guilty or not guilty.

Miller spoke in a strong, confident voice as he addressed the panel. "I believe that every one of you knows what happened to Opal. As much as everyone wants to see Opal walk through the courtroom doors, it's not going to happen. It's not going to happen."

Audrey Sanderford dropped her head, each inhalation coming quickly. She knew what Greg Miller said was the truth, but neither she, nor anyone close to Opal, wanted to believe it. Audrey wanted Opal to come home, and as long as the little girl's body hadn't been found, she held a glimmer of hope that her granddaughter was still alive.

Miller recapped the case, again explaining the manner in which Franks had appeared before and after Opal's abduction, the car he was driving, his familiarity with the area, and the statement he had given to investigators.

As expected, the defense disagreed with the prosecution. Ed Jones told jurors that the state hadn't presented any evidence linking his client to Opal. He focused on the car and the varying descriptions, and reminded them that several people reported seeing a Hispanic man with a ponytail in the neighborhood.

"The abductor is not in this room,"Jones declared. "He never was."

When Leon Haley stood to complete the defense's closing statements, he picked up where Jones had left off, insisting that it was not Ricky Franks who had abducted Opal Jennings. Haley maintained that when Franks talked with the two inmates at the Tarrant County Jail, he simply had been repeating what he already had told investigators.

Haley emphasized Franks's IQ of about 65, the twelve-hour delay at the Special Crimes office, and his client's sleep deprivation during the ordeal. The defense attorney told jurors that the twelve-hour interrogation had left his mentally retarded client fatigued and willing to confess to something he didn't do.

"Investigators were messing with a weak person's mind," Haley stated. "His statement had more to do with authorities manipulating him. Ricky just told detectives what they wanted to hear, thinking that if he did, he could go home."

Then Haley made a charge to the jury. "That is how you get people on trial for something they haven't done. When the state begins to overreach, you (the jury) can prevent these things from happening."

Then, asking the jury to ignore Franks's statement, Haley explained: "He said it, but it isn't even true. There's no evidence to support it. It's not right to convict somebody because we're outraged about Opal's disappearance."

Haley accused investigators of being overzealous in pursuing the case against Franks because they were in a bind to solve the case.

In closing, Haley walked over to his client and, standing behind him, placed his hands on Franks's shoulders.

"He's just trying to go along, to get along with people, so he can go home. So I'm gonna ask you, can Ricky go home?"

Greg Miller buttoned his suit jacket as he rose to address the jury for the final time.

"Mr. Franks's statement is an incomplete confession, and that's enough to bring charges against him," Miller said. "He admits he talked to Opal. Opal tells him she makes good grades. There's only one way Ricky Franks could know that.

"He admits Opal got into his Cougar. He admits he took her to the store. That's enough. You can convict him."

Miller asked the jury to consider more than the defendant's statement, but to also take into account that he told the two jail inmates he had taken her. The lead prosecutor also denied defense contentions that investigators were pressured to make an arrest in the high-profile case.

Miller walked to the prosecution table, picked up a photo, and, holding it against his chest, walked back to the front of the jury box.

"I ask you to send a verdict that says crimes against children will not be tolerated," Miller said.

Then, turning the photo around, Miller softly said, "I want you to look at this little girl."

The jury gazed into the smiling face of Opal Jennings. No tears were shed, but silence fell across the entire courtroom. Only the low voice of Greg Miller could be heard.

"Look at the twinkle in her eyes, her precious smile. Don't reward Richard Franks because he was able to dispose of Opal. He got his satisfaction with Opal. He took her from us. Opal belongs to every one of us. Say a little prayer for Opal."

The courtroom remained quiet as Miller took his seat and waited for judge Gill to address the jury. Greg Miller, Robert Foran, and Lisa Callahan had done their jobs to the best of their abilities. As in every trial, the verdict now rested with the jury. The verdict would be their report card. If the prosecution had performed well and made their case, Ricky Franks would go to prison for life. If not, then Franks could go free. Free to abduct, assault, and kill another North Texas child.

Once the prosecution and the defense had completed their closing arguments, the jury was charged with the weighty task of determining the guilt or innocence of Richard Franks. Even though Greg Miller had indicated his belief that Opal was dead, jurors would only discuss evidence concerning the six-yearold's kidnapping.