CHAPTER 50
“STATE YOUR NAME, please,” I said after the witness had taken the stand.
“Kelly Gilbert.”
“And you’re also known as Sally Steerman?”
“I used to be.”
“Can you tell me how you went from being Sally Steerman to being Kelly Gilbert?”
“My full name is Sarah Kelly Gilbert. I always went by Sally when I was a child, and when I married my first husband, I became Sally Steerman. After he died and I married my second husband, we started a new life in a new place and I thought it would be appropriate to start with a new first name as well as a new last name. I started using my middle name. Kelly. Not a big secret.”
“But you didn’t tell your friends here in The Villages that you were once known as Sally Steerman, did you?”
“It didn’t seem important.”
“Did you tell any of them that you were once known as Sarah Kyle?”
“No. Kyle was my maiden name. Nobody was writing my biography, so I didn’t think it was important.” She was getting a little testy, but I wasn’t surprised. She’d called me when I’d had the trial subpoena served on her. To say she was nasty would have been like saying the New England Patriots are an adequate football team. I let her have her say that night on the phone and heard some words I hadn’t heard since I got out of the Army. A lot of those words were slurred and now I wondered if she’d had a few drinks before she arrived at the courthouse.
“You were also once known as Miss Berrien County, weren’t you?”
She seemed surprised and looked down at her lap before replying with a nod. “Ms. Gilbert,” I said, “you have to answer verbally. The court reporter can’t hear a nod.”
“Yes. A long, long time ago.”
“And you competed in the Miss Georgia pageant that year?”
“Yes.”
“You didn’t win, did you?”
“No.”
“Are you related to Buford and Lionel Steerman?”
“Not by blood.”
“I believe they’re your stepgrandchildren.”
“Yes.”
“The adopted children of your eldest son?”
“Yes.”
“They took your son’s name when he adopted them?”
“Yes.”
“Who is Polly Norris?” Sometimes when you can bring a question out of left field, it rattles the witness. I could see that this one hit home with Kelly, but it didn’t rattle her. She made a face, a fleeting moue, as if she had suddenly sniffed an offensive odor.
“She was the girl that won the Miss Georgia crown the year I competed.”
“Have you stayed in touch with her?”
“No.”
“You were roommates at the pageant, were you not?”
“We were.”
“But you never tried to contact her after the pageant?”
“No. I’d read about her appearing around the state as Miss Georgia, but we never got together again.”
“Your testimony then is that you never in the years since the pageant have had any contact whatsoever with the woman you knew as Polly Norris?”
A shadow of a frown crossed her face. She shook her head and said, “No.” My gut told me she had just committed perjury.
“Let me show you Defense Exhibit C for identification and ask if you can identify the person in the photo.” I handed her a copy of a publicity photo of Olivia Lathom taken shortly before she died.
“Yes,” Kelly said, “that’s Olivia Lathom.”
“Can you identify the person in Defense Exhibit D?” I handed her the picture of Olivia that our computer expert had regressed by forty years.
“No. I don’t know her.”
“How about this one, Defense Exhibit E? Do you know who that person is?” I showed her the picture that had been copied from the Miss Georgia Pageant program book.
“I don’t know her, but she looks like the same person in the picture you just showed me. They’re just dressed differently.”
“You’ve never seen the person depicted in Exhibits D and E before?”
“Not to my knowledge.”
“Ms. Gilbert, I want you to think back to the Miss Georgia Pageant you competed in and assume that the pictures of the younger woman, Exhibits D and E, are photos of a woman taken back then who was involved in the pageant. Would that refresh your recollection as to whether you know her?”
She looked at the pictures again. “No, sir. I don’t know her.”
“Thank you, Ms. Gilbert.” I put the photo of Olivia into evidence as Defense Exhibit six and said, “Your Honor, may we approach the bench?”
Judge Gallagher waved us forward. Meredith and I and the court reporter crowded into the space in front of the judge. “Mr. Royal?” he asked.
“Your Honor, I have some film clips I’d like to have Ms. Gilbert authenticate for purposes of putting them in evidence, but I’d like to proffer them outside the presence of the jury.”
He looked at Meredith. “Any objection to the proffer?”
“Are these clips listed on the evidence list?” she asked. The list is of all documents and other items we plan to offer into evidence. It has to be served on opposing counsel along with our witness list several weeks before trial.
“Yes,” I said. “Number twenty-one. ‘Certain film clips, videos, and other recordings in original form that will be made available to the state upon request.’”
“We were never provided with the recordings,” Meredith said.
“They were originals, Your Honor. I didn’t want to go to the expense of copying the clips if they weren’t needed. I was ready to provide them to the state attorney’s office for copying if needed. I did so. The state attorney’s investigator, Mr. Bliden, and I met in his office and went over all the exhibits. He didn’t see the need for copies of the clips I showed him.”
Meredith looked at me. “You showed him the recordings you want us to look at now?”
“Yes.”
“I’m going to kill that investigator,” she said. “This is the first I’ve heard of these, but if Matt Royal says he showed them to Bliden, then he did. I don’t object to the proffer, but I may object to the evidence.”
“Thank you, Meredith,” I said.
The judge gave the jury an instruction concerning his need to review some evidence outside their presence and sent them to the jury room. I signaled to the county’s audiovisual technician in the back of the courtroom, and he wheeled in a table containing a large flat-screen TV and a compact disc player. I looked at the two discs and handed him one. “Will you play this one first, please?” I handed him a disc that had been recorded by a television station in Macon, Georgia. It contained an old film clip that had been digitized and put on the disc.
I turned to the witness stand. “Ms. Gilbert, I want you to watch this video.”
I looked up at the judge. “Proceed,” he said. The A-V guy hit a switch and some of the most beautiful music I’d ever heard filled the courtroom. It was a clip of a lovely young woman dressed in an evening gown singing Gilda’s aria from Verdi’s Rigolleto. Her performance was worthy of a headliner at La Scala in Milan or The Met in New York.
I looked at Kelly and saw tears running down her cheeks. I let the clip play out, and when it was over, I turned to the witness box and said softly, “Do you recognize that, Ms. Gilbert?”
She nodded as she tried to regain her composure. “Where did you get that?”
“WMAZ-TV in Macon. It was in their archives. It’s you at the Miss Georgia Pageant, isn’t it?”
“Yes,” she said softly.
“It was beautiful, Ms. Gilbert. Now I want to show you another clip.”
“Okay.”
I turned to the A-V guy and asked him to play the second disc. A young woman in a majorette’s costume was twirling a baton as she danced around the stage. When it was over, I turned back to the witness stand and asked, “Do you recognize that young woman?”
“Yes. That’s Polly Norris.”
“The woman who won the pageant?”
“Yes.”
“That’s my proffer, Your Honor,” I said.
“I object, Your Honor,” Meredith said. “Relevance.”
“I will tie everything up, Your Honor.”
“Your objection is overruled, Ms. Evans. Without prejudice. Bring the jury back in.”
When the jury returned, we again went through the process of showing the videos and asking Kelly to identify them. When she had done so, I asked, “That was your talent at the Miss Georgia Pageant?”
“Yes.”
“And the young woman twirling the baton, who was that?”
“Polly Norris.”
“That’s the woman who won and became Miss Georgia?”
“Yes.”
“And she is the same woman as the one in the pictures identified as Defendant Exhibits D and E, isn’t she?” I showed her the pictures.
“Yes, it would appear so.”
“What made you decide to compete in the pageant in the first place?”
“The winner gets a good amount of scholarship money and that would have funded a college education for me.”
“Were you able to go to college?”
“No. I went back to Nashville, Georgia, and went to work as a waitress in a diner.”
“Were you bitter about being cheated out of the title?”
“What do you mean, cheated?”
“Do you remember John Peters?”
She visibly slumped in the witness chair, a look of surprise on her face. She was obviously taken aback by how deeply I had delved into her life. “Yes.”
“He’s the man who had a sexual affair with Polly Norris during the pageant?”
“Yes.”
“And he’s the man who lied to the other judges and told them that you were pregnant at the time of the pageant?”
“Yes.”
“And that ruined your chances, didn’t it?”
“Yes.”
“And you found out about that because Mr. Peters showed up twenty years after the pageant and confessed to you what he’d done, right?”
“Yes.”
“Were you bitter about him ruining your chances of winning and getting the scholarship money?”
“Not really.”
“He funded a trust for your two sons, didn’t he? An apology of sorts.”
“Yes.”
“And then your husband got killed when a dump truck ran a stop sign and hit him.”
“Yes.”
“And one of your sons, the older boy, spent all his trust money on drugs and alcohol and never went to college?”
“Yes.”
“Your younger son is a successful physician in North Carolina and doesn’t want to have anything to do with you?”
“Yes.” By now her head was down and she was answering in a soft voice that matched the sympathetic tone of my questions.
“Your second husband died an untimely death from a heart attack a year or so ago?”
“Yes.”
“And all the hard times resulted from your getting cheated out of the Miss Georgia title, right?”
“Who can say? Maybe. If I’d won, I think my life would have been set on a different course.”
“And perhaps it wouldn’t have been so full of disappointments?”
“Maybe.”
“And this was all the result of Polly Norris having bought the title with sex?”
“Probably.”
“When did you discover that Polly Norris had become Olivia Lathom?”
“I didn’t know that.”
“Did you suspect it?”
“No.”
“Did you kill Olivia Lathom?”
“Of course not.”
I didn’t know the answer to that question before I asked it, but it could only have been either “yes” or “no.” I didn’t think any sane person would answer that question in the affirmative, so I really had nothing to lose. “Thank you, Ms. Gilbert. I have no further questions.” I turned to the judge. “I’d like to introduce the recordings into evidence.”
“No objection,” Meredith said, “and I have no questions of this witness.”
I had noticed that Meredith had not objected during my direct examination of Kelly, but then she had an objection on the record concerning the proffer. It must have appeared to Meredith that I had elicited no evidence from Kelly that was relevant to the murder and, therefore, there was nothing to cross-examine her about. I hadn’t yet discerned her strategy, but I was pretty sure a lawyer as smart as she was not planning to go with the bare bones as she had done so far. Maybe Meredith had just made her first big mistake.
“Call your next witness, Mr. Royal.”
“The defense calls Dr. Gary Burris.”
CHAPTER 51
GARY BURRIS AND his wife, Debbie, were on the witness list I’d filed before the trial. For some reason, the state attorney’s investigator had never contacted them. It may have been that their names on the witness list would have appeared just to be a couple of neighbors who would serve as character witnesses.
Gary took the stand and was sworn. I got the preliminary questions out of the way and then asked, “What is your profession?”
“I’m a professor of computer science at the University of Florida.”
“What is your educational background?”
He told me about his degrees, including a doctorate in computer science.
“Your Honor,” I said. “I’d like to offer Dr. Burris as an expert witness in computer science.”
“Voir dire, Ms. Evans?”
“No voir dire, Your Honor, but I object to the witness appearing as an expert. I did not have an opportunity to depose him.”
“Was Dr. Burris on the defense witness list?”
“Yes, sir, but apparently, my investigator never contacted him.”
“The court will accept Dr. Burris as an expert witness in the area of computer science.”
“Thank you, Your Honor,” I said. “Dr. Burris, did you receive a laptop computer from me?”
“I did.”
“What were you asked to do?”
“You asked me to examine the computer to determine the date that certain data was put into the computer.”
“Which data was that?”
“Specifically, an MS Word document that was a book manuscript.”
“Did you determine who owned that particular computer?”
“Yes. I examined it closely and found the owner’s name throughout in online orders she made, emails she’d sent and received, and a number of other indicia that I can go into if you like.”
I waved that off and asked, “Who did the computer belong to?”
“Esther Higgins.”
“Was there more than one date concerning the manuscript?”
“A lot of them. It appeared that she worked on the book for several years and the dates in the computer corresponded to the dates she was writing.”
“Were you able to determine when the manuscript was completed?”
“Yes. I concluded that the book was apparently finished when there was no evidence of further inputs.”
“What was the date of the final entry?”
“November 12th of the year before last.”
“Can these dates be manipulated, Dr. Burris, so that it would appear that a document was created on a date other than the date it was actually created?”
“Not without leaving an electronic trail, and I found no such thing. In my opinion, the book was finished on November 12th and nothing was added after that date.”
“Dr. Burris, I’d like to turn to another subject. Take a look at these three pictures. I handed him the exhibits. “Did you at my request manipulate any of these pictures with a computer program?”
“Yes.” He held one of the pictures up for the jury. “This is a computer-generated photograph.”
“Tell me how that
works, Dr. Burris.”
He held up the publicity photo of Olivia and said, “I scanned this picture of Olivia Lathom into a computer program that will regress the age of the subject in the photo. In this case, I asked the computer to produce a picture of what Ms. Lathom would have looked like forty years before the present-day picture was taken.”
“Is one of the other photos the one that the computer produced in response to your instructions?”
“Yes. This one.” He held up a picture of a young woman.
“Do you recognize the picture the computer generated?”
“Yes. I’ve seen another picture of this young woman.”
“Did you see it before you ran the computer program?”
“No. I saw it a few days later for the first time.”
“Did you make any changes in your computer program based on what you saw on the later picture?”
“None.”
“Do you have an opinion based upon a reasonable degree of probability as to whether the picture produced by the computer is of the same person as the woman in the third picture you have in your hand?”
“No question. It is the same person.”
“Do you know where that picture came from?”
“Yes. It’s a copy of a photo from a fortysomething-year-old Miss Georgia Pageant program book.”
“Bear with me, Dr. Burris, but I have one more question because I want to make sure I understand your answer. Defense Exhibit three in evidence is a recent picture of Olivia Lathom.”
“Yes.”
“Defense Exhibit D for identification is the computer-generated picture of what Olivia Lathom looked like forty years ago.”
“Yes.”
“And the computer-generated picture matches the picture from the Miss Georgia Pageant program book.”
“Yes.”
“Your Honor, I’d like to mark this copy of the program book into evidence.” I handed the program to the witness. “Dr. Burris, turn to page twenty-three in the program book and compare the picture generated by your computer to the picture on that page.”
“It’s the same young woman.”
“Is the picture in the program the same one as the other picture I handed you?”
“Yes.”
“Please tell the jury the name of the person depicted in the picture on page twenty-three of the Miss Georgia Pageant book.”
Vindication Page 30
