The Coincidence (The Trial Trilogy)

by David B Lyons

  So here she finally was; sat in the overly large velvet-cushioned judge’s highchair at the back wall of the largest trial room in Dublin’s Central Criminal Courts, squinting at Gerd Bracken – a defence lawyer she knew all too well – as he began his opening argument.

  ‘Imagine, if you will for one moment, Your Honour…’ Bracken forms a steeple with his fingers and frames them around his navel, ‘you call out for your two beautiful young sons, and they never answer back. Two years go by and you are still calling out for them… and they still don’t answer. Then a detective knocks on your door one morning, informs you your sons’ bodies have been found in wasteland high up in the Dublin mountains.’ Bracken shakes his head. ‘Sounds like Hell on earth, doesn’t it, Your Honour? But imagine that was only half of the story? Imagine six weeks after hearing such devastating news, the same detective knocks to your house again, this time to arrest you for the double homicide of your sons. And imagine, eighteen months later, despite the fact that there was zero forensic evidence and zero eye-witnesses, a jury of twelve find you guilty. And then you are sentenced to two life sentences in prison – unlikely to ever get out. That’s a lot for me to ask you to imagine… but I would ask you, Your Honour, to imagine one more thing if you will… imagine this… imagine you were innocent all along?’ He allows a silence to wash over the court room as he subtly shakes his head again. ‘Your Honour, my client has so far spent over eight years in prison for the most heinous of crimes that she simply did not commit. And the only reason she has spent over eight years in prison comes down to mere coincidence. Coincidence!’

  Bracken kisses his own lips before shaking his head again. Judge Delia doesn’t react at all; not to even blink her eyes, which are still peering over the rim of her glasses at the lawyer in the pin-striped suit.

  ‘Your Honour, Joy Stapleton – who may I add is still in the process, many, many years later, of grieving the loss of her sons – has only been convicted of this crime for the simple reason that somebody else out there was wearing the exact same hooded sweat-top to one she happened to own at the time. That’s it. That is the only reason she was arrested. It is the only reason she was convicted. There wasn’t one jot of forensic evidence that links Joy to this crime. Not one eye-witness who can link Joy to this crime.’ He lowers his voice, and his tone, ‘not one credible motive that links Joy to this crime…’

  He pauses, then fills his cheeks with air before slowly exhaling; displaying a show of anguish. But this sort of act won’t do him any favours. Bracken’s melodramatics might work on jurors; in fact, his melodramatics almost always work on jurors – he’s only lost one trial out of thirty-three over the past ten years. But his melodramatics won’t work on Judge Delia. She knows him well; has presided over two major trials he had been the leading defence lawyer on. Still, she has always been professional enough to not allow her own personal feelings on individuals to cloud her judgements. Bracken may well be a sleazeball, he may well love the sound of his own voice and the attention he gets from the media as much as he loves a sunbed, but Delia has evolved an envious ability to shove all of her peripheral thoughts to one side so she can focus solely on the facts of any matter, let alone the matter of a major murder trial.

  ‘Your Honour,’ Bracken says, ‘I and many, many other people, in and out of the judicial system, have felt, for years, that Joy Stapleton is innocent of this crime. We can’t quite understand how or why our judicial system could put a young grieving mother behind bars based on evidence so minimal and so trivial. But I am now glad we have won the opportunity to be here today in front of you at this retrial, so that we can bring, to you, undoubted evidence of this mother’s innocence. A cadaver dog, Judge Delia. The cadaver dog – a dog named Bunny who helped detectives push their narrative that Joy Stapleton was guilty all those years ago – has since been exposed as not having the adequate training required to determine anything about this case. Bunny, y’see, Your Honour, was said to have found evidence of decomposing bodies in the Stapleton family home back in January of 2009 – mere months after poor Reese Stapleton and Oscar Stapleton were first reported missing. Bunny’s findings played a major role in the original trial. But we will bring to you evidence that Bunny didn’t know what he was doing all those years back. Because another trial, in London, Your Honour, collapsed four years ago when Bunny’s findings in that case were found to be useless… pointless… meaningless… redundant. We will prove to you that Bunny’s findings in the original trial concerning Joy Stapleton were just as useless, pointless, meaningless, and redundant. I will also bring forward, Your Honour, a former member of An Garda Siochana who assisted in the original missing persons case of Reese and Oscar Stapleton who will detail to this court that the original investigation got this wrong from the very outset. That’s right! A former detective will sit in that seat there,’ Bracken points his whole hand to the witness box to the judge’s right, ‘and tell you that she and everyone else she worked with got this case wrong from the very beginning. I will also bring evidence that the coincidence upon which Joy Stapleton was arrested certainly was a coincidence. The girl seen in the CCTV footage wearing a pink hoodie was not Joy Stapleton at all. It couldn’t have been. Over the course of this retrial, Your Honour, it will be proven to you that my client did not kill her only two children in November of 2008. Thank you.’

  Bracken almost bows – as if he’s just nailed one of Shakespeare’s most renowned monologues on the stage of The Globe Theatre, before spinning on his heels and walking back to his desk, where he plonks himself next to a sombre-looking Joy.

  Judge Delia deflects her gaze and purses her lips at the desk adjacent to theirs.

  ‘Mr Ryan. Your opening statement, please,’ she says, before scribbling some notes onto the top sheet of the mountainous paperwork in front of her.

  Ryan rises from his chair and clips open the two buttons of his suit jacket before he strolls his way to the centre of the courtroom floor. The courtroom is deathly quiet, despite the fact that not only is it packed inside, but the doors outside of the courts are almost bursting with reporters who couldn’t quite get a seat in the arena today.

  ‘Your Honour,’ Ryan says, ‘Joy Stapleton has spent the last eight years in a cell in Mountjoy Prison for one simple reason. In November 2008, she killed both of her sons – Reese, aged four and Oscar who was eighteen months old – in cold blood. We believe she rendered them unconscious using chloroform, then likely suffocated them to death. She brought them to the Dublin mountains and disposed of their bodies. On the day we believed this happened, we know that Joy Stapleton was wearing a unique pink hooded top. Very unique. So unique in fact, we know Joy to be the only person in Ireland who owns one. Let me say that again. Joy Stapleton is the only person in Ireland to own the top that was caught on CCTV footage close to where the bodies were found, on the night we are certain the bodies were buried there. Your Honour… for years, the defendant’s argument has always been that this is mere coincidence. But that’s hogwash. And we will be able to prove it. The probability of her defence of coincidence is so low, Your Honour, that it simply cannot be considered coincidence. And I will be able to prove that once and for all in this retrial. I do not wish at any stage to insult the intelligence of this court. But this must be said… In mathematics, two angles that are said to coincide – and note the word coincide – fit together perfectly. The word coincidence does not describe luck, or misfortune, Your Honour. The word coincidence describes that which fits together perfectly. We,’ he says, looking back to his desk where his assistant Brigit is sitting staring at him, ‘will be able to prove to you that Joy Stapleton not only deserves to have spent the last eight years in a prison cell for killing her two young sons, but that she deserves to spend the rest of her life in that prison cell, to see out the double-life sentence that was handed down to her in her original trial.’ Ryan takes two steps nearer the judge. ‘The detectives during their investigation got this case right. The judge sitting on the original
trial called this case right. And the jurors sitting on the original trial called this case right. Your Honour, we’re not going to bring witnesses second-guessing the sense of smell of a dog to this court, like the defence team will. We are not going to bring bitter ex-employees of the police force to this court, like the defence team will. We will be putting professionals in that stand; professionals who know this case better than anybody else. And those professionals all agree on one thing, Your Honour. And that is, that on the second of November in 2008, Joy Stapleton murdered and then disposed of the bodies of her two baby boys, Oscar and Reese Stapleton.’

  2,999 days ago…

  It was the door clicking open that woke Joy inside her prison cell for the very first time. She lazily stirred on her plastic blue mattress, then – in stark realisation of where she was – jolted her back against the wall and brought her knees up to her chest. Though much to her relief, somebody outside pulled at her cell door, slapping it back shut.

  She panted for breath as she listened to the melee of shuffling feet in the landing outside, and before long that distant screeching that she heard as soon as she had set foot inside the prison the previous evening struck up. She had no idea what time it was, but it sure did seem as if everybody got up and about at the exact same time. Perhaps a prison officer, stationed outside her cell, slammed her door shut. She had been told she wouldn’t be mixing with the other prisoners – not for at least twenty-four more hours anyway. And even following that she would be accompanied by an officer everywhere she went.

  She spent the majority of her first full day in the exact same spot she had spent her first night – in a foetal position atop that blue plastic mattress. Though there were two breaks – both for half an hour; once in the morning and then again in the afternoon – in the small yard. It allowed her to stretch her legs and breathe in fresher air.

  Aidan had joined her for her first half-hour out there, looking as nervous and uncertain of procedure as she was. Yet, somehow, she felt a sense of comfort around him. He had a warmth and was certainly open for conversation. He confided in Joy that the previous day was his first day working as a screw in Mountjoy Prison.

  ‘Your first day as well? And your first job was to take me to my cell… wow, that’s a coincidence,’ Joy said.

  Then she immediately looked down to her feet, as she realised she would for the rest of her life every time she muttered that word.

  There were meals each side of the two breaks, too, brought to her cell and left on a flimsy plastic tray atop her flimsy plastic mattress: a breakfast that consisted of toast so dry it may as well have been cardboard, and a reheated microwavable lasagne for lunch that was so congealed it may well have been a stew. The dinner wasn’t too bad, though; Indian samosas with fragrant yellow rice. And there were afters too; a large scoop of vanilla ice cream, stabbed with a diamond-shaped wafer.

  She had been offered the chance of a shower on three separate occasions, but refused each time. That had always been her biggest fear as she lived through her ordeal. It wasn’t the monotony of being holed in a prison cell that frightened Joy. It was the showers.

  ‘There’ll be no other prisoners in there,’ Mathilda, the female officer who had signed her in at the front desk the previous day, said to her. ‘You are being kept from them for the first twenty-four hours.’

  ‘No. I’m okay,’ Joy said, sucking up her tears. ‘I think I can do without showering for the rest of my life.’

  ‘They all say that… till they start smelling themselves,’ Mathilda said. Then she walked out of the cell, slapping the door shut behind her.

  Joy lifted her arm above her head and sniffed.

  ‘Okay, okay,’ she said, leaping down from her bed and knocking repeatedly at the cell door. ‘I’ll take one. I’ll take my shower now.’

  Mathilda chuckled.

  ‘Too late, Stapleton. You had your chance. You’ll have to take one with the rest of the girls in the morning. Now why don’t you get some sleep. I’ve a feeling you’re gonna need your energy – and your wits about you – tomorrow.’

  2,998 days ago…

  Her hands were visibly shaking as she reached to take the towel from Mathilda. The prison officer had visited her cell first thing the next morning, as she promised she would, to ensure Joy joined the queue for the showers.

  Joy expected ‘child killer’ shouts as soon as she stepped onto the landing, but the other prisoners were oddly subdued as they brushed past her, probably because it was too early for them to be bothered.

  She didn’t stand under the water. She just let it fall to her chest, all the while shifting her eyes from side to side, darting glances at the prisoners showering next to her. One of the prisoners met her eye and turned out her bottom lip, accompanying it with a nod. It came across as a sympathetic gesture, but Joy couldn’t be sure. It was only when she was dabbing her chest dry with her towel that she was first spoken to.

  ‘I told you we all a coincidence.’ Joy looked up to meet the bloodshot eyes of Christy. ‘Me ’n’ you on the same wing, sista. I think God sent me to protect yo lil ass, huh?’

  Joy stood there, naked. And vulnerable. And damp. And cold. Damn cold. The water in the prison’s showers never raised to a level beyond lukewarm.

  ‘Hi, Christy,’ she said.

  And then those drying around her mimicked her.

  ‘Hi, Christy,’ they said, their voices mocking and high-pitched.

  And almost immediately that horrible cacophony of immature laughter cackled again, sounding even more echoey bouncing off the shower tiles than it did bouncing around the landings.

  ‘Alright, bitches, cut it out,’ a middle-aged, flaming red-haired woman, with one foot up against the tiled wall, flossing the towel between the pits of her groins, said. ‘If it makes ya feel any better, love, I’m not entirely sure whether you did or whether you did not kill those little kiddies of yours. But I am pretty sure you shouldn’t be here. I read all about your trial. I don’t think the prosecution offered up enough evidence to send you down. Those jurors, whoever they are, they screwed you, honey.’

  ‘Eh… thanks,’ Joy whispered back, before Christy tugged on her shoulder.

  ‘C’mon, get yourself dressed, Joy. We gonna eat some breakfast together.’

  They sat on the end of a long bench in the canteen; Christy scoffing her porridge within a matter of seconds, Joy still tonguing spoonfuls of it from side to side in her mouth, her lips turned down in disgust.

  ‘Doesn’t all seem so bad in here, now does it?’ Christy said, swiping the sleeve of her jump suit across her mouth. ‘I know some of ’em been calling you a child killer but I also hear some of ’em say you didn’t do it; that you didn’t kill yo boys.’

  ‘Seems as if I’ve split the prisoners…’ Joy said before swallowing a mouthful of porridge.

  ‘Split the prisoners, sista? You split the whole darn country. Half the people on the streets saying such a young pretty little thing like you could never do such a thing. Other half think you a stone-cold killer, girl.’

  Joy fed herself another spoonful of porridge and allowed it to swirl from cheek to cheek again before swallowing.

  ‘I didn’t do it, ye know? That’s not me in that CCTV footage. I swear. I’ve sworn to everybody. I swear to you.’

  Christy raised one eyebrow at Joy, then looked around at Mathilda who was standing against the wall next to them – Joy still under guarded supervision when outside of her cell.

  ‘You know you the only person with one of them hooded tops in all of Ireland,’ Christy said.

  Joy looked down. As she always did when she was lost for a word other than ‘coincidence’. Then she changed the subject, by asking Christy about visitation rights. Though she wasn’t quite sure if anyone was ever going to visit her. Shay had pretty much refused to believe his wife had murdered their two sons, and even after her arrest had stayed somewhat loyal. But it was noted by everyone in attendance – and certainly by those from the m
edia – that he wasn’t present for any of the trial. He had been asked to testify in favour of Joy – to say on the stand that he didn’t believe his wife was capable of murdering anyone, let alone their two precious sons. But he stayed away from the court entirely, and indeed cut off any line of communications with his wife. His silence was eating at Joy, even though she knew that there was no chance of them ever getting back together. Not even if she could prove her innocence. Their lives together ended the day Reese and Oscar were first reported missing. There was no chance of them ever going back to where they once were. Despite that, she was hopeful that one day she’d get a tap on the shoulder from one of the prison officers before being told Shay was in the visiting room, waiting for her. Her best friend – or former best friend as she was by now – certainly wasn’t coming to visit. Lavinia did appear on the stand, to testify that Joy’s personality had changed before her boys were reported missing.

  ‘You think you know who the closest people are in life,’ Joy whispered to Christy while pushing her plastic bowl away from under her nose. ‘But…’ Then she shrugged. Christy nodded, before picking up Joy’s bowl and literally digging into her porridge. ‘How dare Lavinia testify that I was suffering with depression. I’ve never suffered with depression. They tested me. I didn’t have no post-natal depression.’

  ‘But they tested you two years later, right? After yo boys’ bodies were found, not at the time they went missing?’

  ‘You don’t believe me?’ Joy said.