Perfect Victim (40 page)

Ending on that note, he turned the witness over to the prosecutor.

After Mcguire’s pointed crossexamination of Cameron, her treatment of his mother was almost startlingly gentle. In a soft voice she asked, “Mrs. Hooker, you love your son very much, don’t you?”

“Yes, I do.”

The question was disarming, and at the same time established her undeniable bias. Then Mcguire asked a list of questions: Did you ever meet “Kay” while Cameron lived on Oak Street? Did you know she was kept in the basement? In a box? In a hole?

To all of these, Mrs. Hooker could only answer no.

Cameron’s father, Harold Hooker, walked to the witness stand with a slow gait, turned, and took the oath looking like a farmer right out of the famous painting “American Gothic”-tall and gaunt, with a weathered face.

He’d known Colleen as “Kay,” he said, and thought she was a “pretty pleasant kinda girl.”

“Was she afraid of you?” Papendick asked.

“I didn’t think so.”

The defense attorney asked if Mr. Hooker recalled a time after Cameron’s arrest when Jan came over with her dad and made a comment about the rape charges against Cameron.

“She said it was a bunch of hogwash. He didn’t rape her,” Mr. Hooker said bluntly. When Jan had learned there were thirteen rape counts against Cameron, he went on, “She said, ‘They cain’t do that, that he didn’t rape her.”

During her crossexamination, Mcguire steered wide of this whole business about Jan. She wasn’t as gentle with Mr. Hooker as she’d been with his wife, but she kept it brief.

“Do you understand that your son admitted to kidnapping Colleen in 1977?”

“That’s the way I heard it.”

“And that she was kept in a box on Oak Street?”

“I don’t know all that he’s admitted to.”

“Were you ever down in the basement at Oak Street?”

“One time.”

“Did Cameron show you the box?”

“No.”

“Did he build a waterbed?”

“I don’t know.”

“Did you know he kept Colleen in a box?”

“Just hearsay.”

“Did you ever see ‘Kay’ show affection to your son?”

“No.” (After Mr. Hooker testified, Mcguire privately commented to Papendick that it would have been a kindness to inform him what Cameron had testified to. Papendick said he had, but Mr. Hooker apparently didn’t want to hear it.)

When the defense called Dexter Hooker everyone expected a younger version of his brother. But though he was also tall and gangly, Dexter was better looking, with a Sam Shepard-ish quality to him.

Dexter claimed that he’d visited Cameron’s trailer “almost every weekend” in 1978 and saw Colleen “every time I was there.”

After his divorce in 1980, Dexter spent about thirty or forty hours a week at the trailer, making him the only person outside the immediate family to spend a great deal of time around Colleen.

Often, he was there with “Kay” and the kids while Jan and Cameron were at work.

“How did she appear to you?” Papendick asked.

“Normal.”

“Depressed?”

“No, she was always smiling, always easygoing.”

Like most of the witnesses, Dexter confirmed that Colleen was “real good” with the kids, but unlike the rest, he had a critical piece of corroboration for his brother’s story: For a while, he said, the girls referred to Colleen as “Mommy.”

This wasn’t what Mcguire had expected. During her crossexamination, she did her best to demonstrate that, as close to the situation as Dexter claimed to be, he knew little of what was actually going on.

“‘Kay’ never told you her last name?”

“No.”

“And she never told you she was kidnapped?”

“No.”

“Did Cameron ever show you the basement at Oak Street?”

“No.”

“Did he ever show you the rack?”

“No.”

“Did he ever show you the box beneath the waterbed?”

“Yes.”

“Did you know Colleen was kept under there?”

“No.”

“Did Cameron ever show you the hole underneath the shed?”

“No.”

Mcguire also tried to elicit testimony about Colleen’s slavelike behavior, but got mixed results.

“You saw Colleen working in the garden?”

“Yes.”

“She worked hard, didn’t she?”

“Pretty good, yes.”

“And she worked real hard around the house, didn’t she?”

“Oh. about normal.”

“You saw her cooking, preparing lunch, washing dishes pretty much like a household servant?”

“Yes.”

“Was ‘Kay’ reserved around you?”

“What do you mean?” Dexter countered. “She was quite friendly. She seemed to talk all the time.”

The only way Mcguire could contest his most damaging comment was to ask: “When you spoke to Officer Shamblin, you didn’t tell him the girls called Colleen ‘Mommy, did you?”

He admitted he had not.

Papendick had presented another view of the private lives of the enigmatic threesome who had lived together so quietly for so long and were now on such public display. Layer after layer had been peeled away, but the whole picture had yet to emerge. Now Papendick called his expert witness to put it all into context.

Like Mcguire, Papendick had saved his big punch for last.

In this “battle of experts,” Dr. Donald T. Lunde’s testimony would be the final bout.

Papendick asked Dr. Lunde, a plain, slightly pudgy, softspoken man, to tell the court of his credentials. This took some time.

As a clinical associate professor of psychiatry at Stanford University Medical School, Dr. Lunde taught psychiatry at the medical school and engaged in clinical work. He also had a private practice in psychiatry. Having done most of his training at Stanford as well, Dr. Lunde was thoroughly a Stanford man.

His specialization was forensic psychiatry-“the interface between law and psychiatry”-and he’d authored about forty articles and about eight books on this subject. He’d received various honors and awards, including one from the California District attorneys’ Association for outstanding service. Some of the cases he’d been involved in relating specifically to captivity included the Jonestown case (United States v. Larry Leighton), the Patty Hearst case, and the U.S.S. Pueblo case, regarding a captain captured by North Koreans in the late 1960s.

Lunde testified that, since being retained by Mr. Papendick, he had prepared for his evaluation of this case in much the way Dr. Hatcher had, except that Hatcher had interviewed Colleen and Janice, while he had interviewed Cameron Hooker.

1. Lunde’s association with the defense of Dan White did little for his credibility. Dan White, the man who murdered San Francisco Mayor George Moscone and Supervisor Harvey Milk in 1978, had received a scandalously light sentence, which was blamed on the notorious “Twinkie defense”-a diet of junk food. Recently out of prison, White had committed suicide just four days earlier, putting his name back in the news. When asked about working on the case, Lunde said: “Right. I didn’t say anything about Twinkies, though.”

2. Mcguire couldn’t shake a feeling that it was vaguely unethical that Lunde, who many months prior had indicated he was willing to work with the prosecution, was now about to testify for the defense.

Having established his expert’s credentials, Papendick asked the same question he’d asked Dr. Hatcher: “What’s the difference between a psychologist and a psychiatrist?”

Dr. Lunde gave a lengthy answer, concluding: “Psychologists do not have the same kind of background. They are not qualified to diagnose physical ailments or physical effects of psychological distress. They are not able to, or allowed to, prescribe medications and so forth. And basically, psychiatry is a medical specialty. Psychology is more of an academic, nonmedical field.”

Next, the defense attorney inadvertently sparked a courtroom squabble by asking the seemingly benign question: “Could you please define the term ‘coercion’?”

“Coercion exists in a situation where any reasonable person would be in imminent fear of being killed or of suffering serious bodily injury,” Dr. Lunde began. “To put it in even plainer language, coercion is a psychological phenomenon that is present when someone has threatened someone else directly with death.”

Dr. Lunde went into detail about what he meant about a reasonable person,” then added, “Furthermore, the threat has to be to the person themselves. It cannot be a threat to somebody else. This was an issue in the Patty Hearst case. She claimed, among other things, that the SLA, the Symbionese Liberation Army, was threatening to harm her parents and members of her family. And in that case, as in all of these in the field of forensic psychiatry, the law simply does not allow for threats to other people.”

Judge Knight’s hackles went up. “Just a minute,” he said, turning to Papendick. “The doctor is testifying, counsel, as to the law. What he is testifying to is not accurate.”

Papendick reframed the question, trying to limit Dr. Lunde to the definition of coercion within the field of psychiatry, but again the doctor ventured off into a legal interpretation.

Mcguire curtly objected that Lunde’s answer was prejudicial to the jury, and moved that his answer be stricken.

Judge Knight granted the motion, ordering the jury to disreprd Lunde’s definition of coercion.

(While the judge may have been piqued that this witness was presuming to define the law, Mcguire was alarmed at hearing, as she had feared, that dreaded comparison between Colleen Stan and Patricia Hearst. And Lunde, who had been retained by Hearst’s lawyers to conduct some examinations, though not to testify in court, seemed all too eager to make those comparisons.)

Papendick now directed Dr. Lunde toward the term coercive persuasion, which Dr. Hatcher had said had no accepted definition within the field of psychology. Papendick asked Lunde to define the term as accepted within the field of psychiatry.

“‘Coercive persuasion’ refers to a condition where a person does things they would not otherwise do which are, in fact, possibly contrary to their own belief systems, because of a situation of total captivity and control over their environment and, to a great extent, control over their behavior on a twenty-four-hour-a-day basis.” This would have been sufficient, but, again, Dr. Lunde hazarded a legal definition of coercion.

Again, Mcguire objected.

By now Judge Knight was clearly unhappy with this witness.

“Mr. Papendick,” Knight said hotly, “he is a medical expert by his own definition. The court neither desires nor needs his definition of legal terms unless they are appropriate and correct. It’s up to the court to instruct the jury as to what the law is, not up to this witness.”

Again, the jury was instructed to disregard Lunde’s comments on legal definitions.

Papendick led his expert witness back to “coercive persuasion,”

and the doctor explained: “The kinds of things that accompany coercive persuasion are: physical captivity — being held against one’s will for the period in question — that’s the first and foremost requirement for this condition; then there are a variety of other conditions that have to do with control over the person’s environment and an attempt to indoctrinate them — deprive them of sleep, of food, control their bodily movements, when they can move, other bodily functions such as bladder and bowel functions, and so forth.”

(Dr. Lunde spoke to the jury, which usually adds to a witness’s impact, but he also had the disturbing habit of frequently licking his lips, a nervous tick.)

Now Papendick outlined a hypothetical situation, based on Hooker’s testimony, designed to match Colleen Stan’s first year of captivity. He asked Dr. Lunde if, based on these hypothetical facts and his own training and experience, the victim would have been subjected to coercive persuasion.

Mcguire shot out: “Objection, Your Honor. Lacks foundation; and the hypothetical is not in line with the facts as they have been elicited.”

Judge Knight conceded that the hypothetical was incomplete, but overruled the objection — this time.

Dr. Lunde gave the opinion that, indeed, the victim would have been under the influence of coercive persuasion.

Papendick proceeded, setting forth the next set of hypothetical facts. This time, however, he meant to outline the next three years of captivity.

When he concluded Mcguire promptly objected: “Misleads the factual basis.”

“Sustained.”

Papendick took a moment, added another batch of details, and again put the hypothetical to his expert.

Again, from Mcguire: “Objection, Your Honor.”

Again, Mcguire’s objection was sustained.

This was embarrassing for Papendick. He asked to speak to the judge outside the presence of the jury.

With the jury excluded, Mcguire and Papendick argued over his hypothetical. She claimed it was incomplete; he claimed a hypothetical did not need to include all facts.

The judge listened and finally concluded: “It’s not incumbent upon him to frame the hypothetical question in accordance with the prosecution’s testimony, but he has to frame it at least in conformity with his own testimony. And while it does not have to have every single detail, it must have every material or important detail. There is no sense in getting an answer to a hypothetical that is incomplete, and certainly a hypothetical that lacks substantial information is incomplete.”

“Assume we are talking about the Company,” Papendick said.

“That’s one of the things,” the judge agreed.

The jury was called back, and with this rebuke in mind, Papendick resumed his hypothetical, adding several details about the Company from the defense point of view: “After a period of time, the person is told they have been bought out of the slavery contract and the person is going home within a three-month period of time. Further, assume that the husband and female spend time together cutting posts. That, after the three-month period, the female tells the husband she desires to stay.”

Mcguire promptly objected that the hypothetical was incomplete.

The judge agreed. Turning to the jury, almost as an apology for the stop-and-go proceedings, he explained: “When you ask an expert witness something from a hypothetical question, you have to present sufficient facts that are encompassed by the evidence for the witness to be able to give an intelligent opinion. Therefore, the hypothetical question is not an easy thing to draw.”