“I had to shake Max to save him. I didn’t shake him because I was frustrated.”
“That made sense to you?”
“At the time it made perfect sense. I loved my baby. I would never do anything to hurt him. I wanted him to be safe.”
She said it over and over, every chance she had, during the remainder of Chapman’s questioning and during Bergen’s long, relentless cross-examination. “I love my baby. I would never do anything to harm my baby.”
MS. BERGEN: Mrs. Saunders, when did you first hear these voices?
A: I think it was on Tuesday.
Q: Tuesday, March 5?
A: Yes.
Q: And what did you do?
A: I didn’t know what to do. I asked Robbie if he thought the baby sounded normal. Robbie didn’t hear anything, so I thought I was just overtired.
Q: But you didn’t tell him you’d heard strange voices.
A: No.
Q: On Thursday, March 7, two days later, what time did you start hearing these voices?
A: Sometime in the early evening.
Q: Can you be more specific?
A: I’m sorry. I don’t remember.
Q: They worried you?
A: Yes. I was terribly frightened.
Q: Why didn’t you phone your husband and ask him to come home?
A: The voice said not to.
Q: Did you talk to your husband earlier in the day?
A: Yes, he phoned me in the afternoon.
Q: What time was that?
A: I don’t remember.
Q:Your husband testified that it was around three o’clock. Does that sound right?
A: I guess so. He would know.
Q:And you didn’t mention the voices to him at that time?
A: I didn’t hear them at that time. I started hearing them later.
Q:Actually, Mrs. Saunders, during the preliminary hearing you stated that you’d phoned your husband and told him you were nervous.
A: I may have.
Q: Did you phone him, or did he phone you?
A: I don’t remember everything that happened during the day clearly. I was very tired. I’d been up all night with the baby.
Q: But you remember talking to your husband?
A: Yes.
Q: And you told him you were worried.
A: I may have.
Q: But you didn’t mention the voices.
A: No.
Q: Did you phone your husband later that day?
A: No.
Q: Because the voices told you not to call him?
A: Yes.
Q: And you did everything the voices told you to do?
A: Yes.
Q: So you didn’t phone anyone?
A: No, I don’t remember calling anyone.
The prosecutor introduced into evidence Robert Saunders’s cell phone records for that Thursday, then gave a copy to Lenore.
MS. BERGEN: Looking at page seven, the eighth line. The phone number highlighted in yellow is the number from which a call was placed to your husband’s cellular phone at five twenty-six in the evening and a message was left. Do you recognize that number?
A: Yes. It’s our home number.
Q: You testified that you were home alone in the house, that the housekeeper wasn’t there. Is that correct?
A: Yes.
Q: So Mrs. Saunders, can you tell us who made that call to your husband’s cellular phone?
A: I don’t know.
Q: Did the voices make the call?
FROM MR. CHAPMAN: Objection!
MS. BERGEN: I’ll withdraw that. Can you explain the phone call, Mrs. Saunders?
A: It’s what I said before. I guess I must have called him. I don’t remember doing it.
Q: You don’t remember doing it.
A: No.
I could imagine Donna Bergen’s sarcasm and assumed the jury had heard it, too. Yet, judging by the manslaughter verdict, they’d believed Lenore. So, obviously, had the judge. In spite of the sarcasm, or because of it?
MS. BERGEN: Your husband testified that he phoned you a little before six o’clock that evening, but you didn’t answer.
A: I was probably sleeping.
Q:You testified earlier that you were exhausted that day because you hadn’t been able to sleep for even five minutes.
A: I tried lying down. I may have fallen asleep for a few minutes. I don’t really remember.
Q:Maybe you didn’t answer the phone because you were shaking the baby.
A: I don’t remember hearing the phone.
Q: Mrs. Saunders, what were you doing when you first heard the voices?
A: I don’t remember exactly. I think I was lying down.
Q: What did the voices sound like?
A: They were male voices. They were loud and angry.
Q:Can you demonstrate for the court what they sounded like?
A: I—I can’t.
Q: Why can’t you?
A: I have no sense of it now.
Q: Maybe that’s because you never heard them.
A: I heard them, but I have no sense of it now.
It was an odd phrase, I thought, yet strangely familiar. I wondered why.
MS. BERGEN: Where was the baby when you heard the voices?
A: He was in his crib.
Q: During the preliminary hearing, you said you were holding him.
A: I took him out of the crib, and held him. That’s what I meant.
Q: But it’s not what you said. If he was saying terrible things, and you thought something inside him was going to kill you, why would you take him out of the crib?
A: I don’t remember everything exactly. I remember hearing the voices. I probably picked him up because he was crying, and then heard the voices.
Q: What did they tell you?
A: To kill the baby. They said the baby was evil.
Q: What did you do?
A: I loved my baby. I wanted to shake the evil out of him, to make the voices stop. I wanted to save the baby.
Q: You wanted to save the baby, so you shook him so hard you broke his neck?
A: I loved my baby. I had to save the baby.
Q: How long did you shake the baby?
A: I don’t know.
Q: Two minutes? Ten minutes? Twenty minutes?
A: I don’t remember. It didn’t seem like a long time.
Q:Long enough and hard enough to kill him. And then what happened?
A: And then the voices stopped.
Q: What did you do?
A: I think I put the baby in the crib, so he could rest.
Q:Your husband testified that he found you in the rocking chair, holding the baby.
A: I guess I must have picked him up again later. I don’t remember the details.
Q: It’s interesting that you remember exactly what the voices told you, but you don’t remember other things at all, like phoning your husband’s cell phone.
A: I heard the voices. They said I should kill my baby, so I had to save him.
Bubbie G says a liar must have a good memory. I could see why Donna Bergen hadn’t believed Lenore—I didn’t believe her—and why Korwin, hearing her testimony, might have been troubled.
I had wondered why the prosecution’s psychiatrist hadn’t testified, but I found Leonard Vogel’s testimony in the state’s rebuttal, after the defense rested its case.
Vogel insisted that Lenore had been fabricating; that there had been no prior history of bipolar disorder or manic depression typical of patients suffering from postpartum psychosis; that she had said nothing to her pediatrician about hearing anything strange in her baby’s cry. Chapman had brought up Lenore’s difficult childhood and suggested that depression hadn’t been diagnosed because she’d never sought help.
MR. CHAPMAN: Do you think that’s possible, Dr. Vogel?
A: Sure, it’s possible. But it’s a far cry, if you’ll excuse the pun, from general depression to postpartum psychosis. It’s a major leap.
&
nbsp; MR. CHAPMAN: So you think Mrs. Saunders invented all this?
A: I do. It’s a great defense.
Q: And you’re basing your assumption on the fact that she didn’t mention hearing voices to her pediatrician?
A: That’s one of my reasons. It’s not the only one.
Q: Since Dr. List isn’t a mental health expert, is it possible that Mrs. Saunders was reluctant to reveal something she feared might make her sound crazy?
A: Sure, it’s possible. It’s equally possible that she didn’t say anything because she invented all that later after she realized she’d killed her baby.
Q: But it’s possible, Dr. Vogel?
A: Yes, it’s possible.
Q: And if the voices told a psychotic person not to tell anyone, including her doctor, would that person obey the voices?
A: If the person were truly psychotic, yes.
Even Vogel hadn’t suggested Donna Bergen’s theory: that Lenore had planned on killing Max. Bergen never brought it up either, not in her opening, and not in her closing statements, because it hadn’t occurred to her until after the trial was over.
She did raise all of the inconsistencies in Lenore’s testimony. She also raised the fact that Betty Rowan, the defendant’s mother, hadn’t testified for her daughter:
“Who better could have told us about Lenore Saunders’s devotion to her newborn son? Who better could have given us insight into the depression that supposedly afflicted the defendant throughout her adolescence and adulthood? Who better could have persuaded us that her daughter was telling the truth about the death of Max Saunders? I find it interesting that the defendant’s mother chose not to testify, don’t you? I can’t understand why, unless she didn’t believe her own daughter and knew that you and I would realize that if she took the stand.”
It was a powerful statement, and a compelling condemnation, but it hadn’t been compelling enough to persuade the jury to convict Lenore of second-degree murder. I was reading the rest of Donna Bergen’s closing statement and was annoyed when the phone rang, but my annoyance disappeared when I looked at my Caller ID.
“You said to call till twelve,” Darren Porter said. “So I guess it’s not too late. What’s this about?”
thirty-nine
Thursday, July 24. 9:05 A.M. 11300 block of Stevens Avenue. A woman reported that her mail had been stolen from the front-door mail slot of her house. The victim had left the outgoing mail in the slot. The victim knew the mailman had already come by that day. Outside, the victim found an empty envelope that had contained a $35 DVD. The other piece of mail had been a bill with a check for $73. (Culver City)
I was becoming addicted to “the lady from 29 Palms.” I have an unhealthy attachment to the Internet as it is (ask my family), and I’d listened to the song on the town’s Web site last night after talking with Darren Porter, who, it turned out, used to do property management for Saunders Enterprises. He’d agreed to meet me during his lunch break at a coffee shop on Pico and Beverwil, just a few blocks from his current workplace.
I listened to the song again this morning, thinking about Lenore, wondering who she was. I’d just finished rereading her testimony, and like Donna Bergen, I was convinced she’d been playing a role.
During his closing statement Chapman had explained Lenore’s inconsistencies as the natural confusion of a woman coming out of a postpsychotic episode. Maybe if I’d heard her on the stand, if I’d seen the grief on her face, maybe if Zena hadn’t told me she’d seen Lenore reading books about postpartum depression when she was pregnant. Maybe then I would have believed Lenore, too.
I checked my e-mail, replied to several posts including one from my agent, who wanted to know if I had an idea for the new book. Then I looked at my Amazon numbers for Out of the Ashes. 84,101. Rock-a-Bye Baby was on the same Amazon page, in the column to the left, because I’d checked out Korwin’s bestseller on Monday. I clicked on the link.
His star had risen—the book’s ranking was number four. The news reports associating him with Lenore probably hadn’t hurt. Which didn’t mean it wasn’t a great book. Even Bergen, cynic that she was, had acknowledged that Korwin was tops in his field.
If Korwin had been troubled by Lenore’s testimony and suspected that she’d shaken the baby to death in a fit of frustration, he wouldn’t be thrilled to learn that the woman he’d helped beat a second-degree murder charge had killed her child in cold blood. I wondered what would happen to his Amazon numbers if the truth came out. Probably nothing. Notoriety is like a bad review—it’s better than no review, as long as they spell your name right.
But what about his credibility? Maybe psychiatrists can’t always detect when patients are faking symptoms, but Korwin had staked his reputation on his certainty. Any good interviewer would find that out and bring it up, embarrassing Korwin in front of the audiences watching all those national talk shows he’d been booked on. And his peers. And his patients, and all the prospective patients banging on the clinic’s doors. Not great timing.
Of course, he could reject what was, after all, conjecture. The smile, the embrace, the look on Betty Rowan’s face. Even the fact that Lenore had been reading up on postpartum depression when she was nine months pregnant. He could argue that Lenore had been a conscientious mother-to-be, that we don’t always recognize in ourselves the things we see in others, that we deny. Which is all true.
And the fact that Lenore had lied about it under oath?
Maybe she’d been frightened to admit that she’d read books about PPD. Maybe she’d worried that the jury would damn her with the knowledge, just as I was willing to.
Half a truth . . .
The point was, Korwin hadn’t known the truth. At most, he suspected that Lenore had panicked and fabricated the postpartum psychosis. Unless . . .
Betty Rowan had known. She’d known the truth on that first day of the trial, and when she’d looked under the rock and had seen something nasty, maybe she’d seen part of herself. She had known, and that explained the rift between her and Lenore.
I wondered if Lenore had written the truth in her journal. That’s what journals are for, right? Your secret thoughts. Had Betty blackmailed Korwin with the truth? Had she teased Robbie with it?
Don’t you want to know what really happened to Max?
Maybe she’d given Robbie a copy before Lenore died.
And if Korwin had discovered the truth and worried that Lenore would tell? She had nothing to lose. They couldn’t try her again, because of double jeopardy. Had he weighed the worth of a psychopathic killer against the needs of all the women trapped in postpartum depression, women he’d no longer be able to help if his reputation were ruined? And what about his clinic, his dream come true?
Suicide or murder. I still didn’t know, and it was making me jumpy. As Bubbie G says, you can’t sit on two horses with one behind.
On the way to my meeting with Darren Porter, I stopped at the Hollywood station. I had to wait a few minutes before I could see Connors, who told me he’d received the preliminary autopsy report on Betty Rowan that morning.
She’d been strangled with a scarf—silk, judging from the fibers. Bruising on her arms, along with tissue under her fingernails, indicated that she’d struggled with her assailant.
“She was killed sometime between ten P.M. Sunday and two A.M. Monday,” Connors said. “She was dead when she was put in the tub and her wrists were slashed. Very little bleeding from the wrists, and the M.E. found no water in her lungs.”
Connors also had a list of the phone calls Lenore had made the night she died.
“Lenore phoned Saunders repeatedly between one and three in the morning. The last call she made was at two fifty-five, just before the nurse did her rounds. She also phoned Nina Weldon, at two-twelve, and left a message on her machine, asking her to phone Saunders.”
I wondered again why Nina hadn’t told me about the call when we’d first talked.
“At eleven thirty-five, Lenore phoned Korwin’s
exchange. She phoned him again at two thirty-five. The service said they tried contacting Korwin both times but couldn’t reach him. He says he never received the pages.”
“Interesting.” So was the fact that Lenore hadn’t tried phoning her mother—it was a sad commentary on their relationship. “She didn’t try to call a nurse?”
“The call light box was on the floor, near her bed. Lenore either dropped it or someone did it for her.”
“Did you ask Saunders about the calls?”
Connors gave me a look. “Duh. He and his fiancée were out until around two. Then they went to sleep and didn’t hear the other calls.”
I sniffed. “All those phone calls, and Robbie and Jillian didn’t hear anything?”
“Maybe they were otherwise occupied and didn’t want to be interrupted.”
“More likely they thought she was crying wolf. I can’t blame them.”
“Do I hear sympathy?” He raised a brow. “I thought you were on Lenore’s team.”
“I thought so, too.” I repeated what Bergen had told me and what I’d read in the transcript, and my conversations with Irene and Zena Lopost. “Apparently, Lenore and her mom were both manipulative and scheming.”
“Just when you thought it was safe to go into the water,” Connors said, but he sounded sad.
That’s one of the reasons I like Connors. He has heart. “What did Lenore say when she called Saunders?”
“That she needed to see him, that she was going to kill herself if he didn’t come to the hospital. That’s what he claims, anyway. He erased the tape.”
“Do you know for certain that he was home?”
“The neighbors were all asleep. I couldn’t find anyone who can say whether or not Saunders left the house around the time Lenore died.”
“And Sunday night?”
“He and the fiancée went to dinner and a late movie.”
“They could be lying to alibi each other.”
Connors widened his eyes. “Hey, let me write that down!”
I’d opened myself up for that. “Did you talk to Brad Messer, Andy?”
“Yesterday afternoon. He’s committed to the environment and he was outraged—outraged!—when I suggested he was more committed to another kind of green.” Connors grunted. “As for Betty Rowan’s murder, he claims he was home with his wife the entire night. No other witnesses. Ditto for the Hortons and Maureen Saunders. Home alone. Mrs. Saunders’s maid is off Sundays.”
Blues in the Night Page 25
