Deadly Dose (16 page)

The judge presiding over the hearing was Judge Donald Stephens, the chief resident Superior Court judge for Wake County. He was a law-and-order judge who steered clear of politics and had gained the respect of the entire legal community. Because he was dedicated to strictly following the law as it was written, and not as many people wanted to interpret it, no one had ever been able to predict how Stephens would rule on any case until the words came out of his mouth. He would often stop witnesses and lawyers in midsentence to ask them pointed questions or to steer them away from a tangent that was going nowhere.

The white-haired, handsome jurist peered down at the courtroom from the bench with his wire-framed glasses perched as always on the tip of his nose. When he became annoyed, Judge Stephens would take the glasses off with one hand and knead his forehead with the other hand.

“There is no better judge that I’ve had the privilege to appear in front of, or that I know of,” Morgan says, echoing the sentiments of almost everybody who knew Donald Stephens. “I’ve always found him fair. I’ve always found him truthful and I’ve always found him to be a proponent of the law and of justice.”

One of Gammon’s attorneys, a bright, young, aggressive lawyer named Joe Zeszotarski, argued that compelling Gammon to tell the court what Willard had told him would forever tarnish the meaning of attorney-client privilege in North Carolina. Zeszotarski claimed that it would thereafter make it impossible for defense attorneys to gain the trust of their clients and adequately represent them. Morgan knew this argument would be raised, and that it was in fact a good argument. He held his breath and waited to see what Judge Stephens would do with it.

Stephens paused, as he often did, appearing to be in deep thought about what he had just heard. He looked up at the ceiling as if the answer could be hanging there from a low beam where he might just pluck it off. You could almost see his mind working on a counterargument to challenge the young attorney. He asked Zeszotarski whether, if someone had been convicted and sentenced to death and Gammon had information that could prove that person was really innocent, it would be prudent to hand the information over.

“Judge Stephens gave him that sort of halfway grin, halfway smile, and said: ‘Well, is that right?’ ” Morgan recalls.

It was over, for now at least. Stephens ordered Gammon to tell him everything he knew in the privacy of his own chambers, or
in camera,
to use the legal term. Morgan had no doubt that Gammon had something important to share, and that somehow, Judge Donald Stephens would find a legal way to get that information to investigators.

“We left that hearing in the Wake County Courthouse that day, myself and the Miller family, with a sense that things were finally on track,” Morgan says. “I don’t think any of us realized at that point and time just how slow the wheels of justice sometimes turn.”

It was clear that Rick Gammon was going to appeal the judge’s order mandating him to reveal what he knew about the Miller case. And on March 14, 2002, following proper legal protocol, he did just that. Word on the street was that the case would skip the Court of Appeals and go straight to the North Carolina Supreme Court, but no one knew for sure because this was such a unique case. It was a test of the attorney-client privilege that had the capacity to affect many other cases in the future. Given its gravity, most people close to the case felt it was a legal question which deserved to be heard by the highest court in the state.

In the meantime Morgan was nervous. He had made so many promises to the Millers, to the community, and to himself. If this didn’t work, he wasn’t sure there was anyplace else for him to turn. He would officially be at a dead end in this investigation, and the thought kept him awake at night.

“It was like I had written a very large check and wasn’t sure I was ever going to be able to get the funds in the bank to cover it by the time it had made it to the bank,” Morgan recalls.

But Morgan just kept hoping that the funds would be there. He prayed that a trip to the North Carolina Supreme Court would mean a big payoff for the Eric Miller case—a payoff in the form of the arrest of Ann Miller on murder charges.

As everyone waited for some kind of resolution to the legal wrangling, the media weighed in on the question of attorney-client privilege. Every night Morgan watched self-proclaimed experts on the evening news arguing that vacating the attorney-client privilege would be the worst thing that could happen in this case—that it would set a legal precedent that would have a permanently chilling effect on the attorney-client relationship. But while the pundits sided with the defense, Morgan observed the general public siding with the state’s position, that solving a murder trumped the attorney-client privilege of a dead man. Yvette Willard herself had weighed in on the debate, saying that she
wanted
Gammon to speak, that as the executor of Derril Willard’s estate, she gave him permission to do so. But under the law, her permission was still not enough for Gammon to vacate his oath not to share his confidential conversations with his client.

The Millers became media junkies as well, scouring the Internet every day for the latest news on the case. They also, like Morgan, became increasingly disturbed by the fact that so many lawyers were deciding the outcome of the case before the courts had a chance to even consider the question.

Morgan couldn’t understand it no matter which way he looked at it. He felt strongly that what the state was asking for was a narrowly defined exception to the attorney-client privilege in a case where the client was deceased. It wasn’t as if Derril Willard was going to sue. Morgan had always felt that the end result, getting a killer off the street, was worth whatever small breach of attorney-client privilege would result from this case.

“By that time in my career, like it or not, whether it was a good thing or not, I guess I had become something of a public figure,” Morgan says with bravado. “People recognized me. I’d be standing in line at the convenience store and people that I’d never seen before, didn’t know, would come up and say, ‘I think you all are doing the right thing and I just don’t understand why they can’t make that lawyer talk.’ ”

One late night Morgan stopped by a grocery store on his way home from work to pick up a few items. While he was standing in line a woman he didn’t recognize tapped him on the shoulder and identified herself as the wife of a prominent local attorney. She told him she thought he should keep pushing, that he was going in the right direction, that he was “doing the right thing.” She hugged him as she exited the store and left Morgan thinking he must be doing something right if the folks from the other side of the battlefield were wishing him well.

The Millers were frustrated that there was little they could do to influence the courts. But they felt strongly that they had the ability to influence public opinion. So Verus and Doris Miller wrote a letter to the community at large and distributed it through the media. Morgan wholeheartedly supported their decision to make this painful and emotional public statement. He had been around long enough to know that while judges were supposed to ignore public sentiment when making their decisions, they, too, were human beings with feelings, human beings who read the newspaper and watched television news.

“To be honest with you, I think I was just as fearful as they were,” Morgan admits.

He had tried to keep in touch with the family on a regular basis and kept them as informed as he could about the case, but it was hard. He had other murders to solve. He was only one man with a staff of detectives who were already working overtime on several other cases. But like every other case he had been involved in, he walked a fine line between being a detective investigating their son’s murder, and a man who had become their close, personal friend.

“I had tried to be as careful as I could to maintain a professional relationship, which I always did,” Morgan says like a man trying to convince himself. “With a case as complicated, as heart-wrenching, as Eric Miller’s, I mean I couldn’t leave these people out there flapping in the breeze.”

He had bonded with Beth-Ellen Vinson’s family. He had bonded with Eric Miller’s family. He had bonded with Beulah Dickerson’s family. Morgan simply didn’t know any other way to do his job. It was impossible for him to get the victims or their loved ones out of his mind.

“Sometimes I’d just be drawn back to Wicker Drive . . . where Beth-Ellen Vinson’s body had been found, and I would sit there, park my car, walk over the actual exact spot where Beth-Ellen’s body had been found, and almost will her ghost, her spirit, to come and give me some kind of guidance,” says Morgan uncharacteristically. He was not a man who was naturally prone to put much stock in the supernatural.

He did the same thing with Beulah Dickerson’s house, driving way out of his way on his way home from work to “swing by” Pine View Drive one more time, hoping something would come to him, something he had not seen before.

It was around this time, the spring of 2002, that the district attorney’s office officially pronounced the Dickerson case dead in the water. Morgan met with several assistant district attorneys who told him there was simply not enough probable cause to charge his suspect, Dickerson’s former neighbor.

“Same old story; I’d heard it before and I was getting kind of tired of it,” grouses Morgan with a chip on his shoulder the size of California.

But he wasn’t tired of the victims’ families. Truthfully, he felt privileged that they allowed him into their homes and their lives, and shared their very personal sorrow with him. Yet at the same time he felt helpless. At this point it looked as if there was nothing he could
ever
do for the Dickersons, and there was nothing at the moment he could do for the Millers. The legal process was slow as molasses, and while it dripped one lonely drop at a time, the investigations had both come to standstills.

Morgan acknowledges that for victims’ families, the loss becomes the biggest and most significant part of their lives. Given this fact, allowing them to be involved in the investigation, even in the tiniest way, went a long way toward helping them heal because it made them feel useful.

In order to maintain their precious relationship with Clare—their only connection to Eric—the Miller family continued to have a relationship with Ann. It was close to impossible for them to interact with the woman they felt sure had murdered their son and brother, but they did it for Eric’s daughter. Morgan admired their cool detachment in dealing with Ann for the greater good of the relationship with their granddaughter and niece.

The entire Miller family, including Eric’s sisters, had kept up a brave front all along for the sake of Clare. Because neither grandparents nor aunts have any legal custody rights to a child unless specifically granted by a judge, Ann was their gatekeeper to Clare. They
had
to have a relationship with her in order to have access to the child. But at the same time their rage grew as they learned about the growing body of evidence against Ann.

But then the Millers went one step beyond just keeping the peace. With Morgan’s help they became pseudo investigators, hoping to glean something from Ann Miller that the police had missed, something that only someone who knew her could get out of her. They were fed up with waiting and decided to join the search for answers.

On March 13, 2002, Pam Baltzell, Eric’s sister, called Ann Miller at her home in Wilmington. This was no typical phone call.

Without Ann’s knowledge, Pam taped the telephone call as she probed Ann about the case. Because North Carolina is a one-party state, meaning that only one person needs to be aware of the taping, Pam was completely within her legal rights to undertake this bit of sleuthing. She later shared the tape with the Raleigh Police Department. Below are excerpts from that call.