Tom embellished his story of Mafia connections. He told Robin he had been betrayed by a girlfriend who was in the Organization, and Robin believed him. She knew he could kill, and she believed now that he was an expert in survival. Now he was letting her see the pain he had known in his life. It was important for her to see him as something other than a murderous monster.
Tom didn't like to see Robin cry. "You should be getting over it by now," he complained. But Hank had only been dead for twenty-four hours. How could he expect her to get over it so soon? She would never get over it.
"He was hard to figure out," Robin wrote. "One minute, he'd be rough and mean, and the next he'd be kind and gentle. We talked about the human mind a lot. He said the mind contains a lot of little doors and that you could open and shut them when you wanted to. He said, 'When I kill someone, I open a door.' He said someday the doors in his head might all open and let the bad things loose and he might go crazy, but until then he had no guilt feelings."
Robin read the Bible aloud to Tom until he asked her to stop. It helped her to hear the words aloud. When she began to cry again, Tom got angry and yelled at her.
All along, he assured Robin that he was her protector. She had to remember that he was saving her from the men who were hunting them.
"Why didn't you just tie Hank up," she asked. "Then you could have taken me away."
He explained why he hadn't done that. "That would have been mean," Tom said. "[To leave him] In the hot sun with no food or water."
His reasoning was bizarre, but somehow he made it seem believable. He said he had killed Rusty out of kindness, too, because the dog would never have made it in the wilderness with them. It was far better to eliminate him humanely. "Rusty never knew what hit him."
Robin was getting mixed up. There was no one but this man beside her, and she wanted so much for him to tell her it had all been a terrible accident. She couldn't bear to think Hank had died only because Tom wanted her.
They camped out for a second night.
"What will you do if you tire of me?" she asked.
"I don't see how I could. You're the only person here."
* * *
They talked about books and movies. He told her he admired Adolf Hitler. She asked him about his family and he said he hated them. She had to be careful about the subjects she brought up. Things could make him so angry in an instant. Gradually, however, Robin's fear lessened and she prayed, asking God to somehow allow her to get home.
The next day, July 26, they didn't travel at all. Tom was sick, coughing and pale. He thought he might have pneumonia. He ranged around, checking the area, asking her how far away she could spot him. He wanted to be sure they would see anyone looking for them so they wouldn't be ambushed. He came back and asked for some paper, and he then sat down to write three notes to friends in which he apologized for the "accident."
"I'll probably be dead soon," he said.
Robin started to cry, and suddenly Brown began to cry, too. "I knew that one of those doors in his head had finally opened," she wrote. "He told me that if I would mail the letters for him, he would tell me what had really happened. He told me that killing Hank was an accident. When he said that, it was just what I needed to hear. He said he didn't remember how it happened."
Seeing Robin coming around to his thinking, Tom pressed on, telling her the sad story of how the woman he loved had rejected him. He said he'd gone to Nebraska to forget her, and he was treated well there. He admitted his name was really Tom, after all. He promised to walk Robin to the river and let her make her way home. He even went so far as to take her there, telling her that he was sick and was better off dying alone in the woods.
"I felt so sorry for him," Robin wrote. "Deep inside, I knew it was no accident, but I told myself he was telling the truth. I couldn't just let him die up there. After all, he was nice enough to spare my life and let me go."
Tom was now all generosity. He offered her the sleeping bag and the water, and he told her sadly that no one would ever believe him about the accident. He had no choices left.
"And you're sure it was an accident?" Robin asked.
"Yes. I'm sure."
"If you're sure," Robin said, "I'll go to the police with you and tell them I saw it."
Tom smiled then, as if this was exactly what he wanted her to say. He led Robin all the way back to the camp she and Hank had set up— how long ago? The days were beginning to blur. She knew she could easily find her way out of the forest from here. Then Tom told her that he was heading back into the woods. "All I ask is one hour."
Robin's essay for Jim Byrnes continued, detailing her day with Tom. She wrote that she hated the thought of leaving a sick man all alone deep in the woods. She insisted she would be his alibi. At this point, she'd honestly believed he was a nice person, that he was a victim of a terrible mishap. Her brainwashing was complete. He allowed her to "persuade" him to accept her help. Finally he agreed to go with her so she could explain that she had seen the shooting, that it had all been an accident.
Tom went to where Hank's body still lay and brought back his wallet. Meekly, he asked if it was all right that he'd taken two dollars out for gas, and Robin said it was. She didn't want to see Hank dead. The sun was setting by the time they reached Tom's truck.
They headed for Estacada, and Robin noticed that Tom was driving erratically. He actually was ill and had a high fever, so she told him they should wait until morning to go to the police. They spent the last night in a park, going to Tom's lawyer's office to talk to James O'Leary the next morning.
Although Robin had not seen Tom shoot Hank, it seemed now that she had. Tom had explained it to her often enough. "He told me how it was supposed to have happened, what to say, and I believed that story. I heard it so often, I really believed it was true."
And, according to Dr. Treleaven, she did indeed believe the story she had told the Clackamas County sheriff's detectives was true. At that time, she had been methodically and thoroughly brainwashed.
Tom Brown was now in jail. Criminal Investigator Paul Keller spoke with him, and he glibly went through the same story he'd told before. The shooting was an accident, and Robin had seen it. That was all there was to it. If the dead man's wife backed him up, he couldn't understand why the police were harassing him. Then, on the advice of his lawyer, Tom stopped talking. He had nothing more to say.
As Tom Brown's trial approached, Steve Keutzer and Bob Hamilton acknowledged that they had some problems with their case. They were absolutely convinced that Brown was a merciless killer, but would a jury believe the victim's widow? The defense would certainly bring up the undependability of her memory. Was the evidence enough? And would a jury understand the gunshot-residue evidence?
Knowing Brown's potential for violence, they didn't want him out on the streets. Could they gamble on a win in court? It might be safer to agree to a plea bargain, allowing him to plead guilty to a lesser charge. That would ensure he was locked up for a little while at least.
The two state attorneys were conferring with Brown's defense team about the possibility of reducing the murder charge to negligent homicide when a grinning detective walked up. "Don't agree to anything," he whispered. "I've got somebody you might like to talk to."
At this point in the case, a colorful witness named Wendell Stokeberry* came forward. He had never been known for his cooperation with the police; Stokeberry had a rap sheet that went so far back that even he wasn't sure just what he'd done and what he hadn't done— although if he was pinned down, he could usually sort it out. He was bright and silver-tongued, and he would make one of the best— and one of the most flamboyant— witnesses Hamilton and Keutzer had ever brought into a courtroom.
Wendell Stokeberry was currently a resident of the Clackamas County jail and had recently renewed a friendship with Tom Brown, an old schoolmate from the MacLaren School for Boys. Brown was so positive that he was going to walk free that he had spent hours bragging to Stokeberry abo
ut how he had convinced Robin Marcus to go to the police with him.
Jim Byrnes taped Stokeberry's statement. Stokeberry wanted little in return. He wanted a simple escape charge erased from his record, and he wanted to be sent to an out-of-state prison after he testified. That wasn't unreasonable; snitches didn't live long inside the walls. Jim Byrnes knew Stokeberry was risking more than he might gain. Still, he agreed to give information without any promises being made to him. Even with his many walks on the wrong side of the law, Stokeberry felt Tom Brown was too dangerous to be turned loose on society.
"I been knowing this cat since the early sixties, even before we went to MacLaren," Stokeberry said. "Once we got there, we were in the same cottage. We was good friends. So I get booked into jail here, and there he is. I tell him what I'm in for and he tells me he's in for first-degree murder and a couple of sex things."
"Did you ask him any questions?" Byrnes asked.
"Yeah, about the murder charge."
Tom Brown had explained who the Marcuses were but had not given their names. He just told Wendell Stokeberry he'd met them only the day before the killing. "He said they all went fishing and that they had a big collie with them. He said he shot the guy in the face."
"Did he say it was an accident?"
"He said, 'I killed him,' but that his story to the police was that it was an accident that happened when guns were being exchanged. He said he had used an odd kind of gun. The casing of the bullets was extra long with a heavier powder charge than usual."
"Did he tell you the reason for killing this man?"
"Later he did. He said he was paid to kill him, and he said the police didn't have a case against him, because of the girl involved. He says it's just his word against hers, and he said the girl wasn't even there. Then he said he just leveled the gun down and blasted the dog. Then he said he got together with the girl for four days. He said he was going to beat the case because the girl was so nervous and the jury wouldn't believe her. Then he said he was going to kill her, too, as soon as he got out."
"Did he say why?" Byrnes asked, keeping his voice calm. "Yeah, because she won't corroborate the lie he made her tell police in the first place. He told me how he beat the polygraph. He said you just have to tell yourself the same story over and over, and then you get to believe it yourself. Then you have no worry, no stress at all when you take it yourself. Then he showed me how to breathe and all when you take it."
Stokeberry said that Tom was sure a jury wouldn't believe Robin because she looked about twenty-four or twenty-five. "She's a Jezebel type," he says. "They won't believe her."
Tom added that he'd been 8 or 10 feet away from the victim when he shot him. "Tom says powder burns won't show from that far away, and he's worried about that now."
"Did he say why the girl gave the wrong statement?"
"Yeah. He says he convinced her that the police wouldn't believe her." Then Brown explained to Stokeberry how he'd worked on the girl's mind until she believed him.
Jim Byrnes knew there was no way Stokeberry could have known certain details about the case unless Tom Brown had told him. No one beyond Robin and the investigators knew all these details. Wendell Stokeberry was clearly telling the truth.
With the added impact of this witness, Steve Keutzer and Bob Hamilton felt they had more than enough to go ahead with a first-degree murder charge against Tom Brown. There would be no jury. The case was to be heard in front of a judge only— Judge Winston Bradshaw.
Two days before the trial, Tom Brown scraped up enough money for bail and walked out of jail. He had threatened to kill Robin Marcus, so the attorney general's office put her into a motel under guard until the trial. She was petrified with fear even though they assured her that Brown couldn't find her. She was registered under a fake name and a police officer would always be there to ensure that no one could approach her.
* * *
When the time came for trial, the smug defendant wasn't nearly as confident as he had been. As the eight-day trial progressed, Robin testified for a day and a half. Wendell Stokeberry testified, too, although he drew giggles from the gallery as he swaggered to the witness chair. He adeptly parried defense efforts to discredit him by saying, "If you say I got busted for something, then I guess I must have. My record is ex-ten-sive."
He might not have been a law-abiding citizen, but he was telling the truth— and it showed.
Prosecutor Bob Hamilton presented expert testimony on the fact that there were no lead particles in the tissues around Hank Marcus's wounds. Using a long wooden dowel, he demonstrated just how far the killer had to have been away from Hank so that a shot wouldn't leave gunpowder stippling on his skin. There was no way that it could have happened as Tom Brown said.
Hamilton showed the judge the angle of the wound. Again, it contradicted Brown's version. Brown had even forgotten which side of the victim's head the bullet entered.
After hearing his story riddled with errors, Tom Brown insisted on testifying. Now he gave a different version of his recall of the gun exchange, but his efforts were feebly transparent.
Over defense objections, Judge Bradshaw allowed testimony on the mechanisms of brainwashing into the record. This was a major coup for the prosecution. As Dr. Treleaven explained it, the brainwashing of Robin Marcus was a classic example of mind control. Her mind literally became evidence in the case.
As the trial wound down, it was apparent that the attorney general's prosecutors, Bob Hamilton and Steve Keutzer, had presented a brilliantly organized case— a case that had begun with all the earmarks of a loser.
Judge Bradshaw retired to make his decision. Three days later, he came back with a verdict of guilty. Thomas Leslie Brown was sentenced to life in the Oregon State Penitentiary. His motion for a new trial was denied on July 19, 1977.
The testimony in the Marcus-Brown case on brainwashing was something of a landmark in legal precedent. Bob Hamilton pointed out that, although such testimony is generally not admissible, furtive conduct to cover up a crime is evidence of guilt. In this instance, the evidence that Tom Brown covered up was Robin Marcus's memory. If he could have permanently changed the "computer" of Robin's brain, the crime might never have been discovered, much less successfully prosecuted.
* * *
The long ordeal of Robin Marcus seemed to be over. At the time Hank Marcus was murdered, however, life sentences in Oregon were not what they seemed to be. Some lifers got out in ten to twelve years. And by the late 1990s Tom Brown began to appear periodically before the parole board, asking to be released.
The victims or the victims' families usually appear at these hearings, standing in a small room with the felon who terrorized them as they give their reasons why the prisoner should not be released. To protect Robin, Bob Hamilton stands in as the victim. "It would be too hard on Robin to have to see Tom Brown again," Hamilton explains. "So I'm there in her place, and Brown and I engage in what's basically a long staring contest."
Thus far, Brown has failed psychological tests that would indicate he was safe to move about in society. He is still in prison, but he will continue to come up for parole, and it's quite possible he will one day be released from the Oregon prison system.
Robin Marcus is over forty now; she has remarried and has children. In her new, happy life she now lives thousands of miles away from Oregon. Only a handful of people know where she is and what her name is, and she is grateful for that. She is still afraid of the man who hunted humans rather than animals, and she dreads the day he is paroled.
Table of Contents
(*)
Foreword
Empty Promises
Bitter Lake
Young Love
Love and Insurance
The Gentler Sex
The Conjugal Visit
Killers on the Road
A Dangerous Mind
To Kill and Kill Again
The Stockholm Syndrome
Ann Rule, Empty Promises: And Other True Cases
Thank you for reading books on BookFrom.Net Share this book with friends