"See that, Helena?" Segal said softly, leaning so close to her that he could have put his arm around her if he'd desired. "See that calendar? It has been there for nine years. Waiting. Waiting for somebody to tell us how this story should end."
She stared at the picture. There was absolutely no change of expression on her face. She took a sip of diet soda.
"I can't help you," she said tonelessly. "I wasn't in that house. I didn't have anything to do with any of this."
Bernie Segal began to shake his head. "No, Helena. That won't do. You can't get away with that anymore. It's got to end. We are at trial now. The time has come. I'm serious, Helena. You were in that house. I know it and you know it. Now let's talk about it. Don't go on punishing yourself."
She stared at the floor, shaking her head, still with no change of expression. "I don't know what you want to know. I was never in that house."
"Helena, believe me," Segal said. "If you talk to me here, if you tell me what happened, I can make this very short and painless. Helena, you can put it behind you forever. Now, for your own conscience. And for the sake of that man in the courtroom, that man who has been made to suffer unjustly for nine years.
"And, Helena, you will not be prosecuted. Nothing will happen to you. That I can promise you. The statute of limitations has expired. This is the end, Helena. Right now. Right here. All you have to do is talk to me."
For the first time, Stoeckley looked driectly at Bernie Segal. "I can't help you," she said. "I can't tell you things I don't remember.''
For nearly two hours, Segal persisted. His tone changed from soothing and protective to harsh and demanding and back again. It made no difference. He might as well have been a morning quiz show. Stoeckley was tuned to his station but she was only a viewer, nothing more. There was nothing he could do or say to move her.
"Helena, people have gone to the electric chair for having said one-tenth of what you've said about this case! I've got six witnesses! People to whom you've already confessed! They're waiting in the next room. One after another, I'm going to put them on the stand and have them tell the jury what you've told them. Then, by law, I have to put you on the stand."
She looked at him coolly. In silence.
"Helena, the choice is yours."
"I can't help you."
"Helena, remember what you told Jane Zillioux? 'The blood . . . the blood ... I remember the blood on my hands!' " She shook her head. "I don't remember ever saying that." "Do you think Jane Zillioux is lying?"
"I didn't say that. I just said I don't remember saying that." Still, there was no inflection, no spark—not even of resentment—in her voice. "Do you realize how much drugs I've taken since that happened? I'm not gonna sit there and say yes to things I didn't say, or things I don't remember saying. Besides," she said, "how do you know he's not guilty?"
Segal returned to the albums of crime scene and autopsy photographs. He turned to a picture of Kimberly. A picture that showed the fracture of her skull and the piece of cheekbone protruding through the skin of her face.
"That was his flesh and blood, Helena. What kind of father could do that to his own flesh and blood?"
"Somebody on drugs could do something like that. Not acid. Maybe speed. Did they do blood tests on him right away?"
"Yes, Helena. They did blood tests. There were no drugs, there was no alcohol."
"Has he been given psychiatric evaluation and everything?"
"Yes, Helena, he has been given all of that." Segal flipped to a picture of Colette. "Look at his wife, Helena. Look at this picture. Her jaw was broken. Both of her arms were broken. Her skull was fractured right down the middle. She was stabbed— with a knife, with an icepick—dozens of times. Helena, that was the work of a repulsive, crazy person. Dr. MacDonald is a normal, decent human being. Even the Army psychiatrists who examined him agreed to that."
Segal turned to a picture of Kristen. A colored picture, taken before the body had been removed from the bed. The bright red of her blood filled the room.
"Only somebody crazy or whacked out on drugs could have done something like that," Stoeckley said. "I don't know what anybody else is capable of, but I know I'm not capable of that."
"Helena, no one is asking you to say that you did that. You will not be touched. I promise you. You will not be indicted, ever. All you have to say is you were there, holding the candle. Saying, 'Acid is groovy.' You don't remember hurting anybody. Then you ran out the back door."
He turned to another picture of Kimberly. "Helena, help us end it. I beg of you. Look at this child's face. For God's sake. To accuse the father of these babies of having done that to them . . . Helena, look at this! Look at this one. Smashed with a club. Come on, Helena, how much longer will that man have to sit there, accused of something so monstrous. You have it in your power, Helena, to end it. Right now. Otherwise, Helena, I guarantee you: I am going to take you into court."
'if I could remember," she told him, "I would say."
Segal stepped into an adjacent room, where his other witnesses had been waiting. One by one, like the ghosts of Christmas past, he brought them in to confront her with the things she had said to them years before. Beasley. Gaddis. Zillioux. Underhill. The polygraph man, whose name was Brisentine. And finally her ex-neighbor, Posey.
None of it mattered. She said hello. She said, nice to see you, how've you been? But whenever they asked her about the MacDonald case, she said "I don't remember any of that."
One by one, the witnesses trooped out of the room. Segal was admitting defeat. There would be no dramatic announcement. There would be no news bulletins on TV. No eight-column headlines across page one. There would just be a truculent, uncommunicative, apathetic witness—thirty pounds overweight and looking far less menacing than pathetic—telling the jury she didn't remember a thing.
Now, too late, Bernie Segal realized he would have been better off if she'd never been found. Much easier to have conjured up the image of a drug-crazed and murderous hippie from the distant and dangerous past and to have the jury seize upon that as an explanation than to present them with this burned-out woman and expect them to believe that she had ever stood over a couch on which Jeffrey MacDonald had been sleeping and had held a candle beneath her face while chanting, "Acid is groovy . . . Kill the pigs . . . Acid and rain ..."
Segal left her, in the company of her fiance, the barefoot and bedraggled Ernest Davis, while he went to inform the judge that he had completed his witness interview and that he was prepared for the trial to resume.
It was now lunchtime. Helena Stoeckley had been given a bologna sandwich. She sat quietly, placidly, chewing her food and slowly turning the pages of the crime scene and autopsy photo albums, as if she were browsing through a movie magazine.
On the witness stand, under oath, Helena Stoeckley denied that she had ever been found by a psychiatrist to be mentally ill or that she had ever been committed to a mental institution. This was, of course, untrue. She had been a psychiatric patient at the University of North Carolina medical center in the spring of 1971 and had been diagnosed as a paranoid schizophrenic, subject to delusions and hallucinations.
In describing her educational background, Stoeckley said she had attended Aquinas Junior College in Nashville during 1971 and 1972 and had studied police science there. In 1974, she said, she had taken a six-month operating room technician's course at a Fayetteville hospital. In 1975, at Daytona Beach Junior College, she said, she had taken nursing courses.
She then described the extent of her narcotics addiction during the early months of 1970. She had been injecting heroin and liquid opium intravenously six to seven times per day. She had also smoked marijuana and hashish on a daily basis; had consumed LSD "almost daily," and mescaline "about twice a week," in addition to using barbiturates and "angel dust."
On Monday, February 16, 1970, she had followed her usual pattern of drug consumption, topping it off with the tablet of mescaline given to her in her driveway by a sold
ier from Fort Bragg named Greg. She recalled re-entering her apartment after having consumed the mescaline but said she remembered nothing after that until her return to the apartment at about 4:30 or 5 A.M., in a blue car with "two or three" soldiers from Fort Bragg. She said she could recall neither the owner of the car nor any of the other passengers.
She said she did not recall ever telling anyone that she thought she might have been involved in the MacDonald murders—only that she could not-remember where she had been during the time that the murders had taken place. She added: "All I said to the CID whenever I talked to them was I didn't know where I was at that time."
This was by no means the startling testimony for which Bernie Segal had been hoping. It seemed, in fact, actively harmful to his case. Segal lost further ground when, on cross-examination, Jim Blackburn extracted from Stoeckley the remark that she had worn her blond wig "infrequently," and that she had not been wearing it on the night of Monday, February 16, because Greg, who had given her the mescaline, did not like it.
She also said she had never been inside 544 Castle Drive and that she had never seen Jeffrey MacDonald until that very morning when she had entered the courtroom to testify.
As Blackburn's cross-examination continued, Stoeckley came to seem more like the star witness for the prosecution than for the defense.
"To your own knowledge," he asked her quietly, "did you participate in the killings of the MacDonald family?" "No, sir."
"How do you feel toward children?" "I love children."
"Of your own personal knowledge, did you kill Colette MacDonald?" "No, sir."
"How about Kristen?" "No, sir."
"How about Kimberly?" "No, sir."
"Did you try to kill Dr. MacDonald?" "No, sir."
"Do you know who did?" "No, sir."
"Do you recall ever being in the MacDonald apartment carrying a candle?" "No, sir."
She also said that the night of February 16-17, 1970, had been by no means either the first or the last night on which she could not recall her whereabouts or activities. Given the level of narcotics she had been consuming at the time, this remark seemed her most clearly credible statement of the day.
Flustered and frustrated, Bernie Segal knew that the jury would have to hear—as soon as possible—from those to whom Helena Stoeckley had told a different tale. It was time for the parade of the Stoeckley witnesses—a last, desperate attempt to reincarnate the spirit of evil hippies. The prosecution, however, had no intention of standing idly by, mere spectators at such a parade. They, in fact, sought to have the marching orders countermanded.
In a criminal trial, when a witness is called to testify, he is, in general, permitted to speak only of what he did or had done to him directly, or of what he personally observed.
Were Helena Stoeckley to have told the jury that she remembered standing over the couch in the living room of 544 Castle Drive holding a candle, there might have been some question about how much weight the jury would have been inclined to give her testimony, but no dispute whatsoever regarding her right to deliver it.
Whether it was equally proper for police officers Beasley or Gaddis or polygraph operator Brisentine or laundry man Posey, or ex-Nashville neighbors Zillioux and Underhill to relate what Stoeckley had told them, was a somewhat more complicated question.
Rule 804 (b) (3) of the Federal Rules of Evidence, which govern procedures in federal court, says, "A statement tending to expose the declarant to criminal liability and offered to exculpate the accused is not admissible unless corroborating circumstances clearly indicate the trustworthiness of the statement."
Out of the hearing of the jury, Judge Dupree heard the six "Stoeckley witnesses" describe what she had told them concerning her possible involvement. Having already heard Stoeckley say she had no recollections of having participated in the murders, he had now to decide whether the jury should hear statements also from those to whom she had been less unequivocal.
Understandably, the prosecution thought such "hearsay" evidence ought not to be admitted. Even more understandably, Bernie Segal believed the statements of these witnesses to be crucial to his defense. At the Kappa Alpha house, in light-hearted moments, he would hand out pens that said, "Your Criminal Lawyer: A Reasonable Doubt At A Price That's Right," and it was reasonable doubt—not absolute proof of innocence— for which he was striving now.
In conference with Judge Dupree, Brian Murtagh said that the statements of the Stoeckley witnesses, "because of their inherent lack of credibility" and because they were hearsay, ought not to be deemed admissible.
"We have no physical evidence whatsoever to tie her to the crime scene," Murtagh said. "You know, you say, 'Well, why do you think you were there?' and she says, 'Because I think I was there.' You know, you go round in circles on that."
Bernie Segal was reaching new heights of indignation. "The fact that the government might want to attack her statement," he told Judge Dupree, "does not deny the defendant the right to introduce it. If it was the United States prosecuting someone for murder and it had these kinds of statements and so-called admissions by the defendant, would the court for a moment hesitate to let the government introduce it?
"I find it difficult to believe that any court would hesitate to let the government put it in. The fact that someone is crying and weeping when they are talking about a murder that is horrendous does not make it inadmissible.
"The fact that later on they say, 'I would like to pull it back and withdraw it,' can't affect admissibility. It goes to weight. That is the issue.
"We want everything that she said to come out. The fact that she both admits and denies, in my judgment and my experience, has never precluded a confession or admission from being put into evidence.
"Many a defendant has said, you know, to the police officer while being taken to the station, 'Yeah, I was involved.' Then he gets to the station and they get a formal statement. 'Oh, no, I will not admit that on paper,' the defendant screams. 'You cannot let that thing in. I mean, I said I didn't do it.' The court says, 'It's for the jury to decide which statements are admissible.'
"Why is the defendant here now being told that after he has done the job that should have been done by somebody else, he can't offer the evidence? It just seems to me that we have established beyond any reasonable argument the right to put this forward."
Responding, Brian Murtagh once again quoted that portion of Federal Rule 804 (b) (3) which pertained to trustworthiness of the statements. "Your honor," he said, "first of all, Ms. Stoeckley's statements are not clearly admissions of guilt. If anything, what they are is what has been brought out on direct and cross-examination: that the woman doesn't know where she was that night; that she was being constantly interrogated by the police; and that she began to have fears about not being able to account for where she was.
"And these statements cannot be taken out of that context and out of the context that the woman has been a drug addict, has had hepatitis, has been incoherent and—to use the description of one of the witnesses—hysterical. So it seems to me that these statements are not trustworthy, and they certainly are being offered to exculpate the accused."
Without commenting on whether or not her testimony at trial had seemed believable, Judge Dupree said, "I think her incompetency at the time she made at least some of the statements attributed to her has been more than adequately established."
"Your honor," Segal said, "I dare to disagree. As a matter of fact, there is a certain internal consistency that always has impressed me about what she has said. Now, while I truthfully do not think there is any evidence that Helena Stoeckley inflicted an injury, there is clearly evidence in my mind from all these witnesses that she carried a candle and was present."
Brian Murtagh would not budge. "Your honor," he said, "we are talking about whether a reasonable person making these statements at the time would so appreciate the gravity of the statements that they wouldn't make them unless they meant them.
"I
don't think we have that in this case. What we are talking about here is somebody who is hysterical, perhaps hallucinating. Under those conditions, she makes various statements. Now, those statements are never of an unequivocal nature. It can all be drawn back to her lack of an alibi and the fact that she is constantly being interviewed, picked up, hassled by the police, and having to account for her whereabouts. I think you can't take it out of that context.
"And I still think, Judge, that the issue here is that the rule mandates that the statements should not be admitted unless there are corroborative circumstances which clearly indicate their trustworthiness. And I just don't see how Mr. Segal can argue that these various statements which are all over the lot are trustworthy or unequivocal."
"Your honor," Segal replied, "we are talking about the denial of the right of a defendant to show that there is evidence that could raise a reasonable doubt on his behalf, because it tends to show the involvement of someone else. Remember, that is all his burden is. And I think the fact that a great range of witnesses, coming from every side—police officers, people who do not know this person, people who wanted to help the person—this broad range of people coming forward to say that she has made statements which have the tendency to involve her in the crime are statements that deserve to be heard by the jury.
"And, as my last observation, your honor, I do say that these crimes were not committed by reasonable people. These acts are unreasonable. These acts are so consistent with the kind of culture, the kind of persons that Ms. Stoeckley was involved with, that they in themselves tend to be corroborative. I think we have a tendency—in our own sanity—to lose sight of the fact that we are dealing with, truly, acts of monstrous insanity."
"Your honor," said Brian Murtagh, "they've had Helena Stoeckley herself on the stand for the better part of the day. I think she was more than cooperative with both sides. The basic issue here is that the defendant has not been prejudiced by the exclusion of Helena Stoeckley's testimony. She was asked point-blank on the stand the sixty-four-dollar question about whether she was there or whether she did it. I think we have more than satisfied constitutional requirements in that regard. These further statements are not her statements, they are the statements of other witnesses, and I do not believe they meet the applicable standard of trustworthiness as specified in 804 (b) (3)."