Michael Benson's True Crime Bundle

by Michael Benson

  All of this eyewitness data was important to Dr. Wu because it helped him interpret what he was seeing when he looked at King’s PET scans.

  “Did you receive information that there came a time when Mike King appeared to have blunted emotions all the time?”

  “No, not all the time. Maybe with increased frequency. This is typical of episodes of catatonia. There were times when he could be loving.”

  “Were there other examples of bizarre behavior in the reports you read?”

  “Yes. His brother Rodney reported that one time, Mike came to a stoplight next to girls in a car and he began to act peculiarly. Later he had no sense of himself behaving strangely, but he did wonder why the girls in the car were staring at him.”

  “When did you learn about Mike having severe headaches?”

  “His brothers reported that ever since his childhood accident, he had suffered from loud buzzing in his head, and he felt frustration because he couldn’t turn it off.”

  Dr. Wu said that King’s symptoms worsened in January 2008. Things went wrong in his life. He lost his girlfriend, declared bankruptcy, gave up custody of his son.

  It was impossible to say if things went wrong because his symptoms were worse, or if his symptoms grew worse because things were going wrong. Most likely, both were true, and the two fed off one another.

  Certainly, brain injury patients when stressed lost the ability to inhibit inappropriate acting out.

  King’s medical records, Wu said, indicated permanent brain damage in other ways. They showed two IQ tests—one before and one after his childhood accident, and a fourteen-point drop in his score. That disparity, in combination with the previously mentioned deteriorating cognition, was a solid and reliable indicator that King’s childhood brain injury was permanent.

  Today he measured seventy-one in the verbal portion of an IQ test, which was only barely “normal.” A score of seventy or below would have qualified King as “mentally retarded.”

  Would King have been able to “deal with the law”?

  The doctor replied that the defendant would be challenged to conform his conduct to the requirements of the law. Dr. Wu’s diagnosis: Michael King suffered from post-concussive syndrome, an impaired ability to distinguish reality, with an increased chance of depression, dementia, and psychosis.

  “No further questions,” Carolyn Schlemmer said.

  After a fifteen-minute break, court resumed. Dr. Joseph Wu returned to the stand, was reminded that he was still under oath, and faced the cross-examination of Lon Arend.

  Dr. Wu listed all of the elements he’d used to come to his conclusion: the PET scan, interviews with brothers Rodney and Gary, interviews with King’s friend Tennille Ann Camp, and his former girlfriend Jennifer Robb. He also used school and medical records, and the results of a legal evaluation done following King’s arrest. He’d shown the jury two PET scans, one King’s and the other a “normal” scan. Arend asked if Dr. Wu was allowed to identify the person whose brain represented “normal.” The witness replied that he didn’t think he was supposed to, but it made no difference, as he’d forgotten the name of the “normal” patient, anyway.

  “Outside of those elements, you used nothing else to come to your conclusion, Doctor?”

  “Not that I recall.”

  “Okay. You talked about conforming his conduct to the requirements of the law. That sounds like legalspeak. Could you explain what you mean to the jury in simpler terms?”

  “That difficulty to conform to the law would be caused by an individual’s neurological capacity to regulate his behavior to the degree that the law demands.” The answer to the question obviously was no; he couldn’t describe it in simpler terms.

  Could he quantify King’s inability to conform? Was it slight, mild, medium, or substantial?

  “Substantial,” the witness said.

  Didn’t he look at all of that time—Michael King’s whole life, for example—when Denise Lee’s murderer did follow the law?

  “I was aware that he was capable of following the law,” Dr. Wu said.

  “The fact that he was, for many years, a law-abiding citizen—that came through in the interviews you read?”

  “Yes.”

  Arend asked where the witness got copies of those interviews. Dr. Wu received them from Carolyn Schlemmer.

  “In order for those interviews to be helpful in formulating your opinion, Dr. Wu, you have to assume that they are factual and truthful. Isn’t that right?”

  “Yes.”

  Dr. Wu admitted that he had not received any medical records from the past that supported his diagnosis of a head injury. He had not received any medical records from King’s distant past.

  “Did you see any documentation that King had even gone to a hospital after his childhood accident?”

  “No.”

  “Did Michael King’s ex-wife provide you with medical records from shortly after his accident?”

  “No.”

  “If you had received those records, would they have been helpful to you?”

  “Yes. More information is always helpful.”

  Arend forced Dr. Wu to gauge the credibility of the information he did use. King’s brother Gary, for example, was somewhere in the vicinity of twelve years old at the time of the snowmobile accident. Had Dr. Wu taken that into consideration when he used Gary’s statement to formulate his opinion? The witness said he “was aware” that the brother was a child when the accident occurred.

  Dr. Wu told Arend that he’d come to Florida in August of 2008 for the specific purpose of making a PET scan of King’s brain. He met King at that time and the two had an opportunity to “chat.”

  “When you formulated your opinion, Dr. Wu, did you take into account that the defendant had been a successful plumber?”

  “I knew he was a plumber.”

  “And raised a son?”

  “I knew he was a good father.”

  “And a good worker?”

  “My information was not specific regarding his work success.”

  “And all you know about his accident is what you read of Rodney’s and Gary’s statements?”

  “That, and his PET scan, which shows a lesion at the top of his head, where he would have struck his head.”

  Arend induced the witness to admit that he had testified in thirty murder cases—always for the defense—and in the great majority about diminished activity in the frontal lobe of the defendant’s brain.

  The frontal lobe provided humans with the capability to plan. That was where we formed our understanding and appreciation of “civilizing and socializing” behavior. It was that part of the brain that made us people, that allowed us to rise above the animals. Dr. Wu agreed that a PET scan in itself couldn’t be used to diagnose anything. The image needed correlation, to be used in conjunction with other data, and was predominantly used to confirm other data. And yes, despite the fact that King had spent the great majority of his life abiding the law and staying within the social parameters of civilized behavior, it was Dr. Wu’s testimony that, due to brain damage, Michael King was barely capable of following rules. And yes, because his opinion was based on cross-modality, it was to a large degree dependent on the credibility of the historical statements.

  Arend tried to get the witness to simplify his explanation of the technology of PET scans, this time offering his own language. The red dots on the PET scan were sparks of heat caused by the brain breaking down sugar, right? Dr. Wu said that was basically correct. The colors on the image were not real; they were assigned by a computer to make the image easier to read and interpret.

  “Can PET scans, by themselves, predict violent behavior?”

  “No, only that there is an increased likelihood of violence.”

  “Isn’t it true that experts disagree regarding the limitations of PET scan technology?”

  “There are different perspectives, yes, of course.”

  “Some experts, for example, believe that
we simply do not know enough about the brain to gauge impulse control from reading a PET scan, true?”

  “Some hold those views, yes.”

  “And the PET scan in no way excuses Michael King’s behavior?”

  “I am not trying to excuse his behavior,” Dr. Wu replied firmly. He was merely saying that this was a man who had suffered a significant head injury as a child, and thereafter had episodes of fantasy/reality confusion, and an episodic inability to regulate impulse. He wasn’t basing this solely on the fact that Michael King had raped and killed a woman, but also on the chain saw and bow-and-arrow incidents as well.

  Arend asked if it wasn’t true that there were a considerable number of people in the world whose PET scans would resemble those of King, with its diminished frontal-lobe activity, with a similar history of brain injury, who did not have trouble regulating their impulses and were never violent.

  Dr. Wu agreed that was true. The witness added that there were other variables that would increase the likelihood of violence, such as drug use and sexual abuse. No, he had no reason to believe King was a drug user, or that he’d been abused.

  On redirect, Dr. Wu noted that he had received money from the government for PET scan research. The reason he usually testified for the defense, rather than the state, was because they were the ones who hired him, Dr. Wu stated. The reason he always testified that PET scans supported brain injury was because in cases where the PET scan came back normal, he simply did not testify, he reasserted.

  The witness was excused, and court broke for lunch.

  In retrospect, Lon Arend was pleased with the way things went with Dr. Wu: “I felt like after I was through cross-examining him, anyone who believed anything he said would be naïve.” In the days and weeks that followed, Arend would receive many letters and e-mails from people who had seen the cross-examination on TV and thought the same thing. “Holy cow, you destroyed Dr. Wu” was a common sentiment.

  “That made me feel good,” Arend later said, “that we were able to do what we were supposed to do. I don’t know if PET scans show anything or not. I do know that his interpretations of them were subject to debate.”

  When court resumed, a television with speakers was set up. Judge Economou explained that the next witness, Tennille Ann Camp, would testify via teleconference. Under Carolyn Schlemmer’s questioning, Tennille said she was thirty-three years old, formerly of Ellenton, Florida, and currently living in Michigan. She was unable to testify in person because her grandfather was ill, and she’d spent the last several weeks caring for him.

  Tennille said she met Michael King sometime during the summer of 2006 through his mom, and had an off-and-on relationship with him for the next year and a half.

  She never knew him to use drugs, became close with the defendant’s son Matt, and helped him move his stuff back to where he was staying, in November 2007. He had just broken up with his girlfriend, which didn’t seem to upset him. He was determined to go back to Michigan and start a new life with his family.

  Since she only knew him for a year and a half before 2008, she had no firsthand knowledge of his childhood accident, or the chain saw incident—but she did know that he suffered from headaches and regularly complained about buzzing in his head.

  “Did you notice that he had more headaches after he broke up with Jennifer?”

  “Yes.”

  “Did he take medicine for his headaches?”

  “No.”

  “Why?”

  “He didn’t like to take pills.”

  Yes, King returned to Florida on January 13, 2008, and she saw him in person. No, he didn’t seem spaced-out or anything. He seemed normal to her. There were instances when he seemed a little out of it, preoccupied. She remembered once she had to snap her fingers to get his attention after he was unresponsive.

  “On January 15, 2008, did the defendant seem paranoid?”

  “Yes, he talked about people looking in the windows to his house on Sardinia.”

  “Any other reason to think he was paranoid?”

  “He had a brown gun, and he kept it under his pillow at night.”

  “No further questions.”

  Cross-examination began: “Did the defendant seem normal when you talked on the phone on January seventeenth?”

  She’d even talked to him around six o’clock on the day of the murder. Very normal. Yes, he was intelligent, good with money, outgoing at times, and she still couldn’t imagine him doing what he was accused of doing.

  He did, however, have severe headaches and a persistent ringing in his ears. She recalled the day that January, after King’s arrest, when police came to her home. She told them all about the headaches and tinnitus.

  “Did you tell the North Port Police [Department] at that time that Michael King suffered from headaches?” Lon Arend asked.

  “Yes.”

  “Did you also say that he had a persistent ringing in his ears?”

  “I did.”

  There was a delay at this point. Arend wanted the witness to refer to a written transcript of an earlier statement that she had made, but she didn’t have a copy. The jury was allowed to leave the courtroom as the long transcript was faxed to Michigan.

  When court reconvened, Arend instructed Tennille Camp to look at the transcript from that long-ago interview. He asked her to tell him where, on which page, she said King was suffering from headaches and ringing in the ears.

  “Okay,” she said, and she began to read. And read. Arend took a seat and waited. Minutes passed. Turning the pages faster and faster, Tennille let out a loud and long sigh. Finally she finished.

  “Well?” Arend said. Upon reconsideration, the witness admitted that, at that time nineteen months earlier, she had said nothing to police about Michael King suffering from headaches or experiencing a buzzing in his head.

  On redirect, Carolyn Schlemmer asked, “When you testified about Michael King complaining of headaches, buzzing in his head, and demonstrating signs of paranoia, [were] you telling the truth?”

  “Yes,” Tennille Camp said firmly, and the TV was turned off.

  Dr. Kenneth A. Visser testified that he’d been a psychologist since 1979, in Florida since 1973, and had worked at community mental-health centers until 1985, at which time he started a private practice. He was a trial veteran and had testified in court somewhere between two and three hundred times.

  Dr. Visser explained to the jury that there were different IQ tests, but one of the most respected tests was the Wechsler test, which had been around since the 1940s. It was the gold standard of IQ tests, and was comprised of verbal and mathematical questions. Affecting the score was not just whether or not the subject got the questions correct, but also how long it took for the subject to come up with the answers. To test the subject’s visual perception, he was shown illustrations in which elements were missing, and was asked to fill in the blanks.

  Also gauged was the subject’s ability to determine how things went together. Dr. Visser personally administered the Wechsler IQ test to Michael King, and his observations led him to believe that King was giving maximum effort.

  Visser repeated a statistic the jury had heard earlier from Dr. Wu, that King scored a seventy-one on the verbal portion of his IQ test, which ranked him as borderline retarded.

  Under normal circumstances, one would expect a subject’s IQ to remain more or less the same throughout his life, and a dwindling IQ would be an indication of disease or injury to the brain.

  King had scored an eighty-five in the verbal portion of an IQ test that he’d taken as a child, leading Dr. Visser to conclude that something happened between the two tests to slow down King’s brain.

  “Some sort of trauma would need to have happened for the score to drop like that?”

  “Yes.”

  During Arend’s cross-examination, Dr. Visser admitted that the IQ test in which Michael King scored a verbal eighty-five had been administered in 1984, when King was thirteen years old, well aft
er his known head injury.

  “In order to determine if the defendant was doing as well as he could on the June 2009 IQ test, you interviewed him, had conversations with him?”

  “Yes.”

  “You asked him if he’d had any medical problems during childhood?”

  “I don’t recall that.”

  “You don’t recall King telling you about a snowmobile accident?”

  “No.”

  Dr. Visser said he’d asked King about head trauma in his past, and King said he didn’t remember any. King said that he played football as a kid—that was about it. The witness asked the defendant about his recent past. King told him he worked as a plumber. He enjoyed working on cars. He had communicated his personal history in a “logical manner” and appeared fully alert.

  “How could you be so sure that, during the 2009 IQ test, the defendant was giving full effort?”

  “The test has some tricks in it that expose malingerers.”

  Despite his testimony here that King was not a malingerer, Dr. Visser admitted that, during a previous written statement, he’d opined that King’s working memory was better than his IQ score indicated. That was because he did both well and poorly during the exam on questions of similar difficulty. He had the ability to look at a photo and predict the consequences of what it depicted, indicating that he distinguished right from wrong and understood why laws were necessary.

  On redirect, Dr. Visser testified that he was familiar with Michael King’s school records, which reflected a student who did not learn easily. He’d repeated the first grade, and teachers later commented that he fell further behind his classmates with each passing year. When King was eight years old, he still could not correctly write all of the letters of the alphabet. Because he was not learning at what was considered a normal rate, he was given an IQ test in 1984. The written report that accompanied those test results noted: King has language impairment which has impeded his achievement. He had speech and language difficulties, qualified as a “learning disabled” student, and spent time in special education.