“Did they tell you what to do if Mike did slip into a coma?”
“The doctor said in that case bring him back to emergency.”
Gary reiterated that Mike’s symptoms grew worse, until they peaked in January 2008 “when it was like [a] rubber band in his head snapped.”
Regarding the chain saw incident, Arend found it curious that no one called the police; no one tried to get Mike psychiatric help; no one even told the teenager’s parents. Again, as was the case with the accident, there was no official paperwork to back up the witness’s credibility. The jury just had the brothers’ word for it.
“It wasn’t that big of a deal. I wasn’t worried about him hurting me. I didn’t take him to a hospital because I didn’t want to get him in trouble,” Gary said.
“You say that he was in a trancelike state in January 2008?”
“Right.”
“Did you see Mike on January 17, 2008?” Arend asked, referring to the day of the murder.
“No.”
“Do you know if he was in a trancelike state on January 17, 2008?”
“No.”
“No further questions, Your Honor.”
Because of logistical problems, Rodney King, the defendant’s youngest brother, testified from Michigan via video. Rodney, questioned by Carolyn Schlemmer, said he was thirty-six years old, unemployed, and living on disability.
There were a couple of reasons why he was teleconferencing his testimony—he had a few serious health problems, including lung and kidney disease. He couldn’t be there because he was on breathing medications, a nebulizer.
He was testifying from his father’s house, where he was trying to help out as much as he could, do a little yard work now and again. Dad recently had a triple bypass; and once he recovered from that, he was scheduled for more surgery because he had another blockage.
Today, Rodney was glad to say, was a pretty good day for him. He had three kids—sixteen, fourteen, and eight—and had been married for sixteen years.
He remembered that Mike was held back a grade in school, but wasn’t sure if he repeated second or third grade. Rodney’s parents held Rodney back at that time as well, because they didn’t want the two of them in the same class. They didn’t want people making fun of Mike because his little brother caught up with him in school. Mike was held back because he “wasn’t getting anywhere” and “didn’t understand.” Rodney admitted that in junior high, both he and Mike were in special education.
Schlemmer asked if Rodney recalled Mike’s sledding accident. Rodney did, because around that same time he had hurt his chin. He and Mike went to the same doctor. Mike’s accident was traumatic for Rodney. He remembered how bad it felt wondering if Mike was ever going to wake up.
Rodney explained that he always remembered those events in the order they happened. He got stitches in his chin; then after, Mike got knocked cold. He saw it happen, and it really affected him badly. The three brothers were having fun: Gary driving the snowmobile; he and Mike taking turns on the sled being dragged around in the snow. Mike could hold on better than Rodney, so Gary drove faster with Mike on the sled. When the accident happened, Rodney was standing in the snow, waiting his turn. Then Mike’s head hit the shed and “that stopped him in his tracks.” How fast was the snowmobile going? “Eighty-nine miles per hour,” Rodney guessed. Nobody really knew. The snowmobile had no speedometer. There was so much blood coming from Mike’s mouth, where his teeth were mangled, that they didn’t even know at first that he had a serious nosebleed as well. Rodney approached tentatively, in shock. Gary took charge and tried to wake Mike up. Rodney was too scared to think. Gary picked up Mike and carried him into the house, where they told their mom what had happened. Rodney didn’t recall his dad being there. Dad came in a few minutes later, and it was then that they began to put ice on Mike’s swelling head. Frozen hamburger and chops were used to slow the swelling. Dad said it was time to go to the hospital, so they all piled into their “Brady Bunch station wagon,” the one with the wood-grain panels on the sides. Rodney recalled that at first the roads were bumpy. Then they were on a main road and went to a doctor, the same one who put stitches in his chin. After that, Rodney wasn’t sure what had happened. He got stuck in the waiting room. The next thing he remembered, they were on their way home. His mom was saying that they had to keep Mike up and continue icing his head. Mom said they had to check on Mike every twenty minutes, half hour, to make sure he was awake. After that, Mike had regular nosebleeds. Real gushers, too. He’d be fine, and then, in a snap, blood would pour out for no reason. Mike would have to lie on his back with a bloody washcloth on his face.
“Did Mike like to go to doctors?”
“No, he hated it. He was always too scared.”
Once they took Mike to the family doctor, where they wanted to take a blood sample to perhaps help determine why Mike was getting the nosebleeds. Mike saw the needle and ran right out of the office, got in the backseat of the family station wagon, and refused to come out—so the tests were never done.
But Mike did go to dentists. Rodney was the scaredy-cat when it came to dentists. Mike had to have his wisdom teeth out, and he took it bravely.
“When Mike was growing up, did he ever exhibit any bizarre behavior?”
Rodney recalled the days when Mike and he rode their bikes through a stretch of woods, as a shortcut, on their way to and from school. One day, Mike refused to go that way. He was too scared—claimed there was a witch after them. He would act weird sometimes.
Once, Mike showed him a pair of trees next to each other. Mike would point up there and say that was the spot where the witches hung up their victims, and that was what was going to happen to them if they kept taking the shortcut. One time, he took his rifle, and made Rodney bring a BB gun, and they went in the woods to shoot the witches. Mike, Rodney testified, told him never to tell their parents about the witches or they would be in trouble. Eventually, it seemed to Rodney, they just forgot about the witches and continued to ride their bikes through the shortcut.
Sure, Mike complained of buzzing in his head. He always related it back to the accident. But his brothers never thought it was an issue. His head was constantly buzzing for no reason. They didn’t know it was bothering him that bad.
Rodney gave his version of the chain saw incident. He remembered the cover-up as clearly as the event. They made desperate attempts to air out the house so it wouldn’t stink of chain saw smoke when their parents got home. He’d lopped off a bunch of tree branches out by the garage, and those had to be hidden as well. Gary and Rodney did the cleaning up. They kept waiting for Mike to say he was just joking, but that never happened. In fact, Mike never even knew what was going on. Rodney had thought about the chain saw incident a lot in the years since it occurred, but it still made no sense to him. Mike suffered from memory loss. You couldn’t automatically assume that he was going to remember something he should remember.
Rodney gave the jury his version of the bow-and-arrow incident. That happened sometime in the 1980s. They had a big bow, and the arrows had rubber tips. Mike would shoot the arrows at Rodney. Sometimes he would “get brave” and take the rubber tips off before shooting the arrows at his little brother.
“Did he hit you?”
“Yes.”
“How did that feel?”
“It stung!”
Then came the day Mike went into Gary’s room, and came out with a real arrow, like the kind you could kill a deer with. Mike shot the arrow at him. Rodney managed to duck behind a door. Mike had fired the arrow so hard, it went through the door. Later, when their dad came home, Rodney told him Mike caused the hole by firing a real arrow and it “accidentally went through the door.”
At times, Carolyn Schlemmer had to steer Rodney through his testimony.
“Did Mike do other things that were strange?”
“He used to act out cartoons—‘ Say your prayers, rabbit.’ Uh, I got sidetracked.”
“Did Mike
do strange things throughout his life?”
“Yeah.”
“Any other things you could tell us about?” the defense attorney asked patiently.
“I’m trying to think more.”
“I can direct you. Let me direct you to late 2007. Was Mike up in Michigan?”
“Yeah, Mike was in Michigan, at my mom and dad’s house, and I went over there one time to visit.” That was when Mike was in some kind of trance, lying in a reclining chair, just staring, not understanding. Rodney couldn’t even tell if Mike knew who he was, or even knew anybody was there.
“My wife went right up to him and snapped her fingers in his face.”
Rodney had been told that Mike had been like that all day. It started with a fit of paranoia: Mike claimed that there were wolves in the woods, and they’d been chasing him. Next Rodney brought up the sledding accident, noting that Mike had never been right after that. Now, all those many years later, he was “in outer space.”
“Do you know anything about Mike’s breakup with his ex-wife?”
“I know she was always on the Internet talking to other guys.”
“Did his wife leaving him have an effect on Mike?”
“Yeah, of course. I have been married sixteen years. When you have kids, you want to stay together and live as a family. That’s the way I look at it.”
Rodney told the jury that there had come a time when Mike wanted to put together a résumé that he hoped would lead to him getting better jobs as a plumber. But he had struggled. He was not very good at reading and writing, so his brother decided to help him. They tried to list past jobs and the dates of those jobs, but it wasn’t easy. Mike didn’t remember nearly as much as you’d think he would. The brothers couldn’t help, because he’d lived in Florida and they had no idea what he’d done while down there. Their dad helped him a lot with the résumé, helping him put the dates together.
The witness suddenly hit upon a new strain of testimony. He recalled that there was always a problem with Mike and directions. That was a good indication that there was something wrong with his brain. You couldn’t just give him directions to a place. You had to give him directions on how to get back as well, or he’d get antsy. Heaven forbid you should give him two roads to choose from. Sometimes you could take two routes from one place to another, because it was six of this and a half-dozen of the other. Mike, however, would get scared and think something bad was going to happen to him if he chose the wrong road. You could explain to him again and again that there was no wrong road, but he wouldn’t listen. Sometimes he wouldn’t go to a place at all because he was confused about the directions, so he’d end up staying where he was. This was the biggest handicap for Mike in terms of trying to find work, Rodney thought. His suspicion was that Mike sometimes didn’t show up for job interviews because he was petrified of getting lost.
Carolyn Schlemmer knew this registered with the jurors. Earlier they had heard Robert Salvador say that giving King directions to the firing range hadn’t worked, and King was only willing to follow Salvador there. That tended to corroborate Rodney’s testimony.
When Mike showed up in Michigan after years in Florida, Rodney was under the impression that he’d already lost his house down there. Later, he found out that Mike still had the house but had lost the furniture. Rodney admitted that he wasn’t sure when that was, when Mike had returned to Michigan.
On the witness stand, Rodney King was beginning to lose momentum. “I’m having trouble with my short-term memory,” he said, an out-of-the-blue admission that could not have pleased Schlemmer. He did recall that Mike had to return to Florida. Mike had to declare bankruptcy, and their dad took Mike to a lawyer for advice.
When was the last time Rodney talked to Mike before Mike’s arrest? That was around New Year’s Day, 2008. The brothers got together. Rodney brought a six-pack of beer, but no one drank. He talked to him once after Mike returned to Florida. He was trying to get his electricity turned back on down there, and he was living by flashlight.
“No further questions,” Schlemmer said.
On cross, Lon Arend took the witness back to the time when he and Mike were little and each had an accident that required a visit to the same doctor. How had Rodney injured his chin? Fell out of a bunk bed.
“When Mike said there were witches in the woods, did you believe that he was saying those things because of the aftereffect of his sledding accident?”
“To me, it didn’t make sense. I didn’t know the reason behind it.”
“Do you believe it was a result of brain damage, or was it just children pretending?”
“I believe the accident was why Mike acted differently.”
“According to the testimony you just gave, the witches were a result of his accident?”
“Yes.”
“And you believe the Texas Chain Saw Massacre incident was a result of his injuries?”
“Yeah, I do believe that. I believe it goes back to that.”
“When Mike was in a trance in December of 2007 or January of 2008, and your wife snapped her fingers in Mike’s face, you believe that behavior was a result of his sledding accident?”
“Yes, his eyes were bugging out. It seemed like a lingering head injury.”
“When Mike was worried about getting lost on the roads of Michigan, you attribute that anxiety to his sledding accident?”
“Well, he could never take directions. He never stopped asking directions. All those years later, why was he still acting that way? Had to be the accident.”
“You agree that you yourself do not have a good memory—”
“I have a short-term memory problem. I have trouble remembering dates. I have lung disease, and that affects it, too.” His long-term memory was fine. Things that happened long ago he recalled pretty well.
“You don’t have trouble remembering the chain saw incident?”
“Right.”
“Do you recall on February 5, 2008, a detective came to visit you in Michigan?”
Rodney did remember. Yes, he answered questions about the sledding accident. Yes, he told them he thought the snowmobile was going ninety miles per hour. Maybe it seemed faster then than it would today. Today he would revise his estimate of the speed: eighty miles per hour. The pole Mike hit was “like a telephone pole.” Rodney had previously called the object Mike hit a “shed.” The defense smoothed out the seeming discrepancy by suggesting the pole was at the corner of the shed.
“Do you remember telling the detective on February fifth that you didn’t remember whether or not Mike was bleeding?”
“I don’t. That would be short-term memory.”
“Do you, in fact, remember Mike bleeding after the accident?”
“I remember it had something to do with his teeth.”
“You don’t remember telling the detective you don’t remember?”
“No. I was on medicine at the time.”
“This was three weeks after Mike’s arrest. You knew it was a serious situation?”
“I thought maybe they had the wrong person. My brother wouldn’t do that. I remember that the police from Florida were not nice.”
Arend produced a transcript of the February 5 interview. In it, Rodney didn’t recall the bleeding. He remembered Gary carrying Mike inside and putting a frozen pork chop on his head. During that same interview, he said he didn’t recall if Mike was taken to see a doctor after the accident.
The jury had the idea. Arend moved on.
“When you boys were growing up, your mom and dad were good parents?”
“Yes.”
“No abuse?”
“No.”
No, Rodney had never seen Mike get violent. Never saw him yell or scream or hit anybody. No fights when they were kids. Oh, sure, they would wrestle around, goofing around, like brothers do, but no real fights. Maybe during a previous interview, he had referred to his brother “going off,” but he didn’t know what he meant by that. His answer to the question here t
oday was that Mike was never violent, not that he knew of.
During that February 2008 interview with police, Rodney was asked if he’d seen any changes in Mike after the sledding accident. He’d said Mike was prone to exaggeration, couldn’t tell the truth about the size of the fish he’d caught, always making things seem more dramatic. There was a time when they were little when Mike and their dad went into the woods. Mike carried a cork gun. Came back saying he got a rabbit with the cork gun. “Today, he still believes that. Ever since his accident, he believes all that stuff. Your imagination believes anything’s possible.”
In 2008, Rodney mentioned nothing about the buzzing in Mike’s head. Now he said there was buzzing just weeks before Mike was arrested. How did the witness explain the discrepancy?
“I was in a hurry with their questions,” Rodney said. “I couldn’t think at the time.”
The witness was showing signs of mental fatigue as he tried to field Arend’s increasingly rapid-fire questioning. He hadn’t told the cops about the witches Mike claimed were in the woods; now he did tell that story. How come now, but not then?
“I’m getting sidetracked,” Rodney said again.
“I’m looking at the overall picture of Mike’s history from birth to now,” Arend said.
“I think I’m lost. It could be my short-term memory,” Rodney said. Arend knew he scored a point with the jury each time the increasingly confused witness talked about his poor memory and faulty answers due to “taking medicine.” The jury was getting the point. This guy wasn’t sure what happened yesterday, much less the year before, or thirty years before.
“Did you tell the police in 2008 about the chain saw incident?”
“I believe not. It was hard to sum up Mike’s entire life in one hour. This was a shock to me, and nothing made sense.”
“Did you tell police in 2008 about Mike being in a trance and your wife snapping her fingers in his face?”
Michael Benson's True Crime Bundle Page 59
