“Why didn’t she call somebody? Isn’t it natural that when someone, your loved one, is hurt, you want to immediately get help? Why did she ask Jason to call? Well, I would suggest to you, when she went into the bathroom to get Jason, she told him to call and she set that place up. She picked up the shell casing, put it under the pillow. She picked the gun up, set the stage and anybody coming in there would be duped. They would think, well, she looks like a normal person to me, a housewife, two kids. I would never think that she could commit a murder like this—she’s acting like she’s upset…. And, you know, it’s probably the best thing that ever happened that Detective Buchanan said, ‘Well, it’s an accident,’ because she kind of dropped her guard in a way. You know, she went down and took that forged will and she thought the five thousand eyes were off of her, but they weren’t.”
Evenson next went into detail about what a safety-conscious person Russ was. “Do you really believe that somebody with that kind of background would sleep with a loaded pistol under their pillow? … A person who was safe would have to make all the following mistakes for this to happen. Number one, he would have to put a gun under his pillow; he would secondly have to load it; third, he would have to cock it. He would have to cock it and he would have to have a round in the chamber and he would have to have the safety off, and don’t you think that if he was that safety-conscious that he would not have made all of those mistakes? I mean, if you don’t have any other evidence, common sense tells you that would never happen.”
Next Evenson turned to the strategies and tricks of lawyers.
“Do you know what they do if they don’t have a case, if they don’t want you to put their client on trial? They put everybody else in the courtroom on trial. They put the DA on trial. We haven’t tried to cover anything up.”
They had brought in seventy-four witnesses from eight states, he reminded. Yet Cotter had tried to make it appear that he was the one who wanted the entire tape of Russ’s voice played, and the state was trying to keep certain parts out.
“The DA’s office has a responsibility not only to try the case but to do it in a clean fashion. We have got to do it that way.”
He had played the parts pertinent to the case, Evenson pointed out, but Cotter had been aware that he was asking all the defense witnesses if they had based their judgment about the voice on the entire tape. He had seen that the state might play the whole tape on rebuttal.
“So what did he do? He stole the thunder, as they say. I will play it, and then it can look like the DA is trying to hide something.”
Evenson then turned to Barbara’s supposed fear of guns, taking the jury back through Carlton Stanford’s testimony and through her telling Buchanan of going to the gun shop with Russ to buy the pistol that killed him, questioning whether she truly was afraid of guns and knew little about them. Sandra Biddle had testified that Russ was teaching Barbara how to use the pistol for protection in the fall of 1987, he reminded the jurors.
“That was when the bank notes were coming up. That was when she was deep in debt without him knowing it…. Do you think it’s possible she might have been asking Russ, ‘Will you show me how to use this gun?’ ”
Evenson then turned to inconsistencies in Barbara’s story of the shooting, pointing them out one by one.
“What if Russ had lived?” he asked. “What would she do? She couldn’t fire twice. She had to make it good. She can’t see without her glasses. I could suggest she probably turned the bathroom light on. It shines on the back of his head. It’s a perfect shot.
“She had to wait until Jason was in the shower, because she was standing up or on top of the bed and was like this,” he said, holding out his arms as if he were about to fire a pistol with both hands, “pointing at him. If Jason was in the shower, he won’t walk in on her. Jason was out of the way.”
Barbara fires, he said. “She puts the gun where she thinks it should be. She puts the shell casing there to set the stage, and then she turns the light off. She gets her son to call and says it’s an accident. She waits for the EMT and then she starts her story.
“She knew she couldn’t afford to miss because then Russ would be able to say what really happened. I guess you might say he was the only real witness and he didn’t live to tell it.
“But he did tell it, and she doesn’t like it one bit. He told exactly what was going on. Is it not odd that the loving wife shoots the loving husband and then gives everything away and she’s down there probating the will before they even shovel all of the dirt on his box?”
Evenson now turned his attention to the will, noting the forgery, the conflict in testimony about the time the will was notarized. Of Barbara’s family’s testimony on that subject, he said, “Take it with a grain of salt because it’s not consistent and it’s not believable, and I would suggest to you that perhaps the stories are not fitting together just right.”
After touching on insurance policies and Barbara’s failure to mention to officers the $50,000 policy that had been taken out just the year before, Evenson moved on to Larry Ford’s death, offering the pictures of Larry’s body sprawled on the bed.
“That is the most awkward position that you would ever want your loved one to be in. His back is like this. His feet are off the side of the bed. He’s up here, as she says, gasping for breath. He’s gurgling. He’s bleeding. He’s wanting to breathe. This is her husband. Don’t you think maybe she could have lifted his legs and got him a towel? But while he is gasping, she picks up the phone and … she calls her mother long distance in Durham, and her mother says, ‘Well, you better call the ambulance or the police.’ He’s back in the bedroom and she’s talking to her mom.”
Just as she had with Russ, Evenson suggested, Barbara had staged the scene. She had placed the gun aimed toward Larry, had put the clip in the bed, perhaps had even moved the body to make it all fit.
“If you’re going to kill somebody, you shoot them in a strategic place. You shoot them in the heart or you shoot them in the head. Accidents, you could be shot anywhere on your entire body. These two men were accidentally shot in strategic places.”
About Cotter’s argument that it was the duty of the state to bring charges if Larry’s death could be shown to be murder, even if it were ten years later, Evenson asked, “Is he talking about us? The district attorney of Durham County has absolutely no jurisdiction to do anything about this case. He says they haven’t charged because they have no evidence. Well, you heard the evidence. Sounds pretty good. He didn’t fire the gun. He didn’t drop it. Her stories are inconsistent.
“I don’t need to argue all of the similarities of these cases. Two husbands shot in bed with .25-caliber semiautomatic pistols during normal sleeping when she’s the only one in the house in essence. She’s the last one with each man. She’s the first one to discover the bodies. She’s the one that is the beneficiary on the insurance policies. She’s the beneficiary on both wills. She’s the one that shows lack of true remorse in both cases, and she’s the one that disposes of his items right after it happens. I ask you, do you really detect in all of the evidence that has been presented a deep grieving love for her husbands?
“See, the plans were made, the explanations were made, the showers were taken, the funerals were attended, the clothes were packed and moved out, the evidence was washed, the insurance forms were applied for, the will was probated and after that, sorry, kids, the dog got run over, life moves on, we’re just going to have to live with it. Where is the heart?
“No one ever knew the dark turmoil seething in her mind. Her deceptions had their endings, but the truth should win and that’s your job.”
To help them come to truth, Evenson said, they had the benefit of true revelation.
“You have got the documents and you have got the spoken word. And where does the spoken word come from? It comes from the best witness of all. It comes from Russ Stager.
“Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, you have a rare opportunity today to hear from the actual victim. You all know it’s him, because it’s just too much detail. They want you to believe that someone else made that tape. No one else is going to simulate that voice. Your reason and common sense tell you that was his voice. And you know he’s talking to you from his cold, wet shroud six feet under the earth, and he’s telling you what really happened.
“I don’t know where that tape came from. Maybe an angel flew into Durham High School and put it there because heaven couldn’t tolerate this.”
Once more Evenson had the tape played for the jurors, this time straight through, and as the voice echoed through the silences of the courtroom, the jurors listened as intently as if they could see Russ talking to them from his cold, wet shroud.
When the tape was finished, Evenson briefly went over a few points that he wanted to stress. Russ had been given pills on Wednesday night. He awoke at five on Thursday morning, an hour earlier than Jason’s alarm. The next night he was again given pills but he didn’t take them, and he awoke to find Barbara looking on his side of the bed to see if he had hidden them.
“On Friday, she has concern. Did he take the pills? So now does she wonder, is he on to her? The next six o’clock alarm for Jason would be that Monday, and that’s when he was shot. And I would suggest to you that you’re hearing his voice and that’s the best evidence that you could ever want, is somebody telling you exactly what’s really going on underneath the appearance. But appearance is not always reality. This is reality, and I would ask you to return a verdict of first-degree murder in this case.”
The courtroom remained quiet after Evenson sat down, awed perhaps by the clarity of his summation. Nobody seemed to notice that the closing arguments had gone well past the court’s normal time for adjournment. Judge Allen broke the silence to dismiss the jurors for the day and give them another night to think about all that they had seen and heard.
35
The judge’s instructions to the jury took less than a half hour on Wednesday morning, May 17. When the jurors departed for deliberation, Judge Allen turned to the lawyers, but he was addressing everybody in the courtroom.
“I can appreciate the emotions and strong feelings on behalf of the friends and family members…. I’m talking to the four lawyers now, but I’m talking loud enough so everybody can hear me.
“If and when this jury comes back with a verdict, I do not want to hear from anybody except one of you four lawyers. I do not want to have any outbursts in the courtroom in any way.”
It had been 9:55 when the jury went out, and the judge now put the courtroom at ease until a verdict could be reached. The judge retired to chambers. Reporters, witnesses and family members sat chatting softly in the courtroom, or wandered in the broad hallways to smoke or seek refreshment.
The jury room was located directly behind the judge’s bench. It was small and hexagon-shaped, without windows. A stout rectangular oak table, big enough to accommodate twelve cushioned chairs, commanded the center of the room. A Bible lay in the center of the table.
After all the jurors had taken their seats, the first chosen, Norman Watkins, volunteered to be foreman. Nobody objected.
None of the jurors had any idea what the others had been thinking of all the evidence they’d been presented, and Watkins’s first suggestion was that they take a turn around the table expressing their feelings. By the time the last juror had spoken, they all realized that they had been thinking the same way.
At 10:39, just forty-four minutes after the jurors had left the courtroom, a small clear electric bulb suddenly flashed at the edge of the judge’s bench.
A buzz went through the courtroom. Surely the jurors had a question, some in the courtroom thought. They had not been gone long enough to have reached a verdict.
Word went through the courthouse. Spectators and witnesses hurried back to their seats. Technicians took their places at the stationary TV camera that had been recording the trial. Reporters scurried for closer seats, leaning intently into their notebooks. The judge was quickly fetched from his chambers.
“All right,” the judge said, after taking his seat at the bench, “I do not know whether it’s a verdict, but again, I will remind anybody if you can’t control your emotions, please leave the courtroom now.”
The judge leaned over to the bailiff. “You go see if they have a verdict,” he said. “Bring them all in. Mr. Sheriff, you bring in the alternates.”
The courtroom was taut with tension as the jurors filed back into the box, all wearing unreadable expressions. On their front-row bench Barbara’s parents, sons and brothers reached for one another’s hands, until they were linked in a solid line of support behind her.
“All right,” the judge intoned, “let the record show the twelve jurors are now present and the alternates are in the courtroom. Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, have you reached a verdict?”
“Yes, we have,” said Watkins.
“Would you have the foreperson hand the verdict sheet to the bailiff? Hand it to me, Mr. Bailiff.”
The bailiff delivered the slim file folder to the bench. The judge looked it over briefly and straightened in his chair.
“I will hand the verdict sheet to the clerk,” he said, passing it to Cynthia Myers, “and ask the clerk to take the verdict.”
Myers stood. “Members of the jury, would you please stand?” she said in a nervous voice straining to be strong. With the jurors standing, Myers turned and looked straight at Barbara.