MAMA DON'T KNOW WHAT I DID. She might have a stroke if she did. This is how it happened and how I did it. . . .
All of his grandson's troubles and the knowledge that Tom was going to prison for a crime he had not committed had worn the writer down.
That worried me and got my brain tired out, and probably made me have the heart attack. I didn't want Tommy to stay in prison, but I aint going to prison for Killing Walter, when I had to do it to keep him from killing us or putting us away. If I tell about it now, they'll still lock me up, but I’m too old, and that'd kill Mama, so I can't do it right now. But I 'M telling this now so that when I die at least they'll beleive Tommy when he tells the truth. After I"M dead Mama will understand why i did what I did. I'M gonna sign this in front of a witness to put in a envelope to give to my lawyers. They can’t open it til after I die. . . . That's all I got to say.
Underneath that voluminous confession, someone had printed crookedly:
“Sworn to and subscribed before me this 16 day of April 1976. Joyce Tichenor, Notary Public.”
There was no seal imprint, but there was Tichenor’s official stamp, and she had verified to investigators that the stamp was indeed hers. The printing was not.
Paw Allanson's signature was at the bottom. It was his signature—he was sure of it. And the initials at the bottom of each page were his too. But he had absolutely no memory of writing or agreeing to any of the contents. He seemed dumbfounded—as well he might. Harris pressed. Was there any truth in this confession? In any part of it? “No!” Paw snorted.
If Paw Allanson hadn’t written the confession, who had? The details certainly sounded as if the author had been an eyewitness to the deadly events of July 3, 1974. But Paw? He was a sturdy old man, but would he have been capable of all the actions the confession described? Tedford figured that was highly unlikely. Paw was as puzzled as the detectives were. Of course, if he had died of an overdose, he would not have been able to refute the confession.
If the D.A.’s office believed that Paw was the real killer of his son and daughter-in-law, then Tom would get a new trial and would quite probably be freed. And who, Tedford asked himself, had the most to gain if such a thing came to pass? Tom Allanson certainly. Tom had sent frequent letters to his grandparents—right up until May—urging them to trust Pat. But as far as any hands-on action, Tom couldn’t have poisoned Paw if he had wanted to; he was locked up tight in Jackson Prison, and had been for months.
“Do you remember ever signing any papers for Pat?” Tedford asked Paw quietly. “Anything at all?”
Paw scratched his head. He explained that he and his wife had trusted Pat; she had been good to them after Tommy went to prison.
“Did you ever go to a bank on Washington Road with Pat?” Harris asked.
Paw strained to remember. “Yeah, seems like I did. Pat wanted me to sign some papers—in front of a notary lady.” He could not remember actually going into the bank, but he recalled Pat had wanted him to sign some business papers. He hadn’t bothered to read the papers.
Sergeant Tedford turned to Hamner and Reeves, Paw Allanson’s attorneys.
“When did you say you got this envelope?”
“Mrs. Allanson—Pat Taylor Allanson—came into the office one day in April,” Hamner replied. “I couldn’t tell you the exact date. She told us that Mr. Allanson wanted us to have it.”
This didn’t jibe with what Pat had told the East Point detectives as she wept in the shadow of the wisteria vine on Paw Allanson’s porch. Both Tedford and his partner had been impressed with her sincerity, her pain, and her helplessness.
“During earlier conversations with Pat,” Tedford wrote in his follow-up report, she told us that Mr. Allanson’s attorneys were in his hospital room when he had had his last heart attack. This is when Mr. Allanson had given this statement. Pat said she took notes during this conversation, and then, when Mr. Allanson was released from the hospital, she had typed another statement from her notes and Mr. Allanson had signed it. The copy of the statement obtained from Dunham McAllister, Pat’s attorney, is exactly the same as the original obtained from Hamner and Reeves, and could not be exactly alike if she had typed hers from notes. Hamner and Reeves are sure that they have never taken a statement from Mr. Allanson in the hospital or anywhere else. . . . [B]ased on this information, this statement is believed to be a forged document. . . .
Tedford suspected other false documents might be tucked away here and there. He made a note to check into the elder Allansons’ wills. Paw was in no immediate danger of dying, although he would be in the hospital for some time. The doctors still couldn’t pinpoint just what had brought on his collapse and week-long coma.
CHAPTER 31
***
Jean Boggs was a determined woman. She didn’t know yet about the confession, but she did not believe for a moment that her father had tried to kill her mother, nor did she believe he was suicidal. Paw was too bullheaded to give up on life, and he had taken exquisite care of her mother for a decade. He would never leave her behind willingly, and he would never hurt one hair on her head.
Paw seemed as puzzled as Jean was by his condition. He had been truly amazed to find that he had not had a stroke. He shook his head in bewilderment at the thought that he had “overdosed.” He wanted to find out what was wrong with him as much as Jean did.
Two specialists—neurologists—were called in on a consulting basis. Neither could isolate the cause of Paw’s coma. They suggested that he have CAT scans of the brain and his upper gastrointestinal tract. The scanning lab was just across the street from South Fulton Hospital. Jean and her son, David, wheeled Paw there. The tests took thirty minutes and the results were inconclusive.
A horror was growing in Jean Boggs. She already suspected that Pat Allanson wanted to inherit her parents’ assets. But now Jean wondered if Pat might actually have attempted to hasten her father’s demise. Was Pat dosing her daddy with something that made him sick? Jean had heard that two years ago someone had snuck into Little Carolyn’s apartment and put something in Tommy’s baby’s milk. She had been told—mistakenly—that the substance used was arsenic. In fact, the milk had been contaminated with formaldehyde.
Jean was about to become an expert in poison—at least one poison: arsenic. Paw had used it on the farm years back with the animals, not as a poison but as a cure. It was really the only poison she had ever heard about. Jean called the Georgia State Crime Lab and asked to speak to someone about the symptoms of poison. She got lucky; one of the top experts in the South happened to be in the lab that day. Dr. Everett Solomons, with an undergraduate degree in chemistry and a Ph.D. in medicinal chemistry, knew as much about poisons as anybody in the state of Georgia.
“Could you tell me what the symptoms of arsenic poisoning are?” Jean began without preamble. “I really need to know.”
There was something about her voice. This woman meant it when she said she had to know.
“Well, it could show up a number of ways,” Solomons began. “Gastrointestinal upset, vomiting, or flulike symptoms, aching in the extremities—the feet, legs, hands, arms.”
“My daddy has three of those symptoms. Is there any way that you can check for arsenic poisoning after the person’s system has been flushed out with intravenous feeding—I mean, after time has gone by?”
Solomons paused and cleared his throat. “Is this gentleman—is he still, ah, alive?”
“Oh, yes.”
“Well, then your answer is yes. I can check for you. I want you to do some things for me. Ask your doctor to collect a twenty-four-hour urine specimen. Next, cut some hair off your father’s head.”
“How much?”
“Oh, about a fourth of a cup.”
How much hair makes a fourth of a cup? Jean wondered to herself. Do you pack it in like brown sugar, or let it fluff up like shredded coconut? Solomons explained that the hair had to come from new hair growth around the subject’s neck. Thirdly, she was to cut her father’
s fingernails and place them in a plastic bag.
Jean hurried back to the East Point Police Department and conferred with Assistant Chief Lieb and Sergeant Tedford. She informed them of Solomons’ advice. This time, they had every reason to take her seriously. Tedford immediately called Dr. Jones and asked if it was possible that Paw Allanson had been given arsenic.
“It could be,” Jones said, his voice suddenly aware of an unthinkable possibility. “The symptoms look like so many other diseases—at least at first.”
When arsenic is ingested, it seeks a place to “hide” in the human body. It goes rapidly to areas where phosphorus is stored and replaces it. Human beings need phosphorus for energy. After long exposure to the poison, the extremities ache, circulation is compromised, and eventually paralysis and death occur. In the beginning, arsenic poisoning can resemble a bad case of bone-aching flu with vomiting. Later it can mimic multiple sclerosis and other more serious chronic illnesses.
“We’re going to need lab tests,” Tedford said. “Mrs. Boggs said we need at least two hundred cc’s of urine over a twenty-four-hour period.” Jones said he would advise the hospital at once and the urine samples would be collected. Tedford hung up and called the Fulton County D.A.’s Office and informed them of the new suspicions about Paw Allanson’s condition.
On June 26, Tedford accompanied Jean Boggs to her father’s hospital room. The old man sat patiently as Jean snipped a quarter of a cup of hair and cut his fingernails. Tedford said he would be back the next day to pick up the twenty-four-hour urine sample.
By 8:00 a.m. on Monday, June 28, 1976, Dr. H. Horton McGurdy of the Georgia State Crime Lab was in possession of a brown jug containing 1,000 cc’s of urine, a plastic bag with hair and hair root samples, and a similar bag with fingernail clippings. Analysis would begin at once.
***
Jean Boggs was nervous. Now that the wheels were in motion, she hated the thought of her mother alone with Pat out on Washington Road. Scarcely expecting a gracious welcome, she drove there anyway. She found Nona Allanson sitting in the kitchen with a practical nurse Pat had hired. The nurse stared at Jean. “Miz Allanson’s went on home to tend to some things,” she said coldly. Evidently, she had been told to beware of Jean.
Jean saw tears on her mother’s cheeks. She knelt down and took her hand. “What's wrong, Mother?”
“There’s nothing wrong with her," the nurse answered quickly.
“Yes, there is,” Jean said. “She’s been crying.”
“She doesn’t ever cry unless you come around her.”
“Mother, what is wrong?” Jean asked again.
“I can’t tell you,” Nona mumbled.
“I can’t help you, Mother, if you don't tell me what’s wrong.”
Finally, Nona sighed and asked sadly, “Why did Daddy kill Walter and Carolyn?”
“Who on earth told you that?”
“Mrs. Radcliffe.”
“Mrs. Radcliffe? Is she the only one who told you that?” Jean thought surely her mother was confused.
“Pat told me too, and Colonel Radcliffe . . .”
Nona Allanson was so upset that her daughter could not calm her down.
Jean got Bob Tedford on the phone and he offered to come out and talk to her mother. Jean had some questions of her own too. When he arrived at the house, the young detective assured the elderly woman that her husband was not a killer, that nobody believed that. He was sick and he was in the hospital, but he would be home with her soon—just like always. Nona Allanson seemed only slightly comforted; she remained apprehensive and tearful.
Almost as a throwaway question, Tedford asked, “You haven’t been signing any papers, have you, while your husband is in the hospital?”
Tedford couldn’t be sure, but he thought her mumbled answer was, “Yes.”
“Oh, my Lord,” he breathed. Jean looked up at Tedford with dread. She didn’t even have to ask her questions. She could see it in his eyes.
***
At 3:00 that afternoon, the lab called Gus Thornhill. “The screening test on Walter Allanson’s urine is complete,” Dr. McGurdy said. “We found arsenic . . .”
It would take somewhat longer, the toxicologist said, to test the hair and nail samples. But the first results were more than enough for Thornhill and Tedford. They grabbed their case file and headed for the D.A’s office. Andy Weathers would be taking over this case. The assistant D.A. was sharp, combative—but with a humorous edge—and terribly dangerous to guilty defendants.
Until now, the case file had been only a few pages thick and the complaint still read, “Overdose.” It was growing thicker. The charge would now be “Criminal Attempt to Commit Murder.”
And the prime suspect was Patricia Radcliffe Taylor Allanson.
The Georgia Crime Lab had placed Paw Allanson’s urine sample in a container with hydrochloric acid, water, and a piece of copper. If certain metals were present—including arsenic—a black deposit would appear on the copper. It had. The urine was further analyzed by a wet oxidation procedure to reduce the specimen to a small amount of clear liquid, free of all extraneous materials except metals. This material was then subjected to reduction by zinc and acid, producing arsene gas in a small tube. A reddish color would indicate the presence of arsenic. The amount of arsenic present could then be determined by an electrospectrometer with a laser probe.
The average person’s urine would show no arsenic present. Certain occupations caused a low percentage of the poison. Paw Allanson had, in years past, used arsenic on his farm. Would that have accounted for the poison in his urine? No, the lab technicians said. Even if he had used arsenic on the farm recently—which he had not— that would not account for the fact that Paw had ten times the amount of poison in his system that a working farmer would have!
Arsenic had been carried in his bloodstream and deposited at the base of his fingernails and at the roots of his hair, an irrevocable process that left a “calendar” of ingestion. Paw Allanson’s hair had 1.0 milligrams of arsenic per 100 millimeters; his nails had 5.5 milligrams of arsenic per 100 millimeters.
The East Point detectives swung into action. They called Dr. Jones with the results of the crime lab tests. He agreed that Nona Allanson should be removed from her granddaughter-in-law’s care at once and hospitalized. For a long time, Jean Boggs’s accusations against Pat had seemed suspect; it was clear to them she didn’t like her nephew’s wife, the woman who had taken her place in her parents’ lives. The East Point officers and Dr. Jones had initially found Pat Allanson a rather nice woman who seemed genuinely concerned about her grandparents-in-law. Just a week before, Nona had suffered from pneumonia and severe bronchitis, and Pat had obediently followed Dr. Jones’s every direction. Nona’s 103-degree fever had dropped, and she was doing much better. Given the fact that Pat was on crutches or a cane due to her own poor health, Jones had found her especially dutiful.
Now Jones doubted his own judgment of human nature. It was beginning to look as if Pat Allanson was not the tender caregiver she purported to be, and that Jean Boggs had been right all along. Bob Tedford sent word to Jean that he was on his way to see Fulton County District Attorney Lewis Slaton himself to get a court order to remove Nona Allanson from her home. Every hour’s delay might count, and someone should be with the old lady. “Bob says not to let your mother eat or drink any thing,” the police dispatcher advised.
Jean and her son headed immediately for her parents’ home. She was met at the door by a livid Pat Allanson. She had had a phone call from Dr. Jones. “He said they need her there for some testing, and I think that’s a terrible thing,” Pat ranted. She could see no earthly reason for Nona to go to a hospital.
“Well,” Jean stalled. “If he thinks that’s the thing to do, then we’d better do it.”
Pat wouldn’t even consider letting Nona go to the hospital. She had already called an attorney, who advised her that Dr. Jones had no power to hospitalize Mrs. Allanson. Pat was suspicious, but her
suspicions were pointed in the wrong direction—at Jean Boggs. She had no idea that a police investigation had rolled into high gear. She assumed that Jean was trying to have Nona declared incompetent so she could take over her guardianship—and control Paw and Nona’s assets.
Pat fussed over Nona’s hair, petting her and reassuring her. “You don’t have to go anyplace you don't want to, Ma. They can’t make you and I won't let them.”
Jean was frightened. She wondered what was taking the ambulance and the police so long. She was even more concerned when Colonel Clifford Radcliffe showed up. He was such an imposing man, and Jean was suitably intimidated. None of them wanted her there—not Pat, nor the colonel, or even the nurse. The only chance Jean had was to somehow get through to her mother—make Nona understand that she was there to save her life. But how? Her mother seemed to think that Pat walked on water.
When Pat left the room, Jean whispered to her mother, “Mother, listen to me very carefully. Don’t tell anyone what I’m saying to you. Don't say anything to Pat—but Daddy has been poisoned.”
It was, perhaps, an unwise move. Her mother was very feeble, and they had not been close for months now. Nona Allanson just looked at Jean blankly and mumbled, “What?”
“We just found out about it,” Jean whispered. “We have to get you to the hospital to see if you're all right. You have to have some tests.”
Nona clamped her jaw down and announced she wasn’t going anywhere. “I won’t go.”
Jean begged her mother to trust her, and to speak quietly. The wait was becoming a nightmare. Despite Jean’s objections, the nurse brought Nona a 7-Up. Jean couldn’t very well snatch it out of her mother’s hand.
The phone rang. Jean grabbed it. She lied to her mother and said it was her husband—but it was really Bob Tedford.
“How are you feeling?” Tedford asked.
“Uncomfortable.”
“Hang on. I’m on my way.”