by Irene Pence
At home, over his morning coffee Johnson had scanned the newspaper and read that police were looking for a John Battaglia, whose ex-wife had accused him of killing their two young daughters. The front-page article was hard to miss, and now the judge wanted to talk to Paul about it.
He pulled into the multileveled parking garage at the Crowley Courts Building and took the elevator up to the sixth floor.
Judge Warder had presided over the First District Court for twelve years, and now she had been assigned the Battaglia case, along with a list of prospective court-appointed attorneys. All judges dread having their cases overturned on appeal, and “inadequate legal counsel” is one of the first areas scrutinized by an appellate court. The judge wanted the best defense counsel she could appoint, so she called Paul Johnson.
Johnson entered Judge Warder’s small, well-furnished office. Just like the day’s leading story, Paul Johnson was hard to miss. At a trim six-foot-six, the blue-eyed, sandy-haired man cut an athletic figure. He had spent two years in junior college on a basketball scholarship, and then transferred to Southern Methodist University. After graduation, he stayed on for his law degree at the SMU Law School.
Judge Warder outlined the case, mentioning that after his arrest Battaglia had refused to talk without an attorney present. That was promising, Johnson thought, at least the guy understands his rights. The judge asked Paul if he wanted the case.
When Paul had first read about the murders, he thought that the media had already tried John Battaglia and found him guilty. Doing anything on John Battaglia’s behalf would take a monumental effort. But Johnson never backed away from a challenge, so he agreed to become Battaglia’s lead defense attorney.
Judge Warder also chose Paul Brauchle to assist Johnson. That afternoon, both attorneys went to the Lew Sterrett Justice Center to talk to their new client. The tall brick center, located next door to the Crowley Courthouse, was fenced with razor wire and had tiny slits for windows.
A guard brought John Battaglia from his cell to an austere-looking meeting room that held a small wooden table and four chairs. Johnson grimaced when they first saw him. Battaglia’s eye had appeared red in this morning’s newspaper, but was now black, and he had additional bruises on his face.
The lawyers had reviewed the legal documents regarding John’s spousal assaults, and they were anxious to ask him about them. A man with a history of wife beating was not the best defendant to bring before a jury.
The three men sat at the table, and John Battaglia downplayed the attacks to his defense team. Refusing to say that he had beaten his wives, he insisted these were trumped-up charges brought by women with axes to grind. However, John had trouble explaining police photographs of Michelle’s swollen face and Mary Jean’s bruises.
Over the next few weeks, the lawyers learned about their new client. Battaglia talked willingly about his mother’s suicide that doctors said was caused by depression. That interested the attorneys. Killing two little girls would be hard to defend, but now they had a basis for such bizarre action. They discussed that Battaglia possibly suffered from some kind of mental illness. His hyper, then calm demeanor led them to believe that he was bipolar. Now they had to set about proving it so they asked the New Jersey Police to send them all of his mother’s mental health records.
County Family Court Judge David Finn didn’t receive Mary Jean’s long-sought revocation request against John Battaglia until Thursday morning, the day after the murders. After trying to release Battaglia the year before, Finn quickly signed the revocation and issued an arrest warrant. Since John was already locked in jail, the signing was completely unnecessary and tainted with political overtones. People who knew of Mary Jean’s attempts to stop her ex-husband’s constant harassment wondered what Judge Finn was thinking. Did he remember Mary Jean Pearle standing in front of him less than a year ago, crying and begging the judge not to dismiss the beating charges? Did he remember that she had said she was scared to death of the man? Did he remember John’s smirky grin when he rushed out of his courtroom?
After John Battaglia’s arrest, his father, John Sr., flew in from Florida. Paul Johnson would learn in short order that John Sr. was a defense attorney’s worst nightmare. A loose cannon, John Sr. thought he knew better than anyone how to run the case. Since John Sr. had been estranged from his son for much of his life, he decided he was going to make it up to him now by helping with his defense. He would be a man on a mission.
Paul Johnson laid down his demands to both Battaglias. There was to be no communication with the media: no newspaper interviews, no TV tapings, nothing!
A flutter of activity began once the news reports on Battaglia hit the streets. Battered women’s shelters around the city reported a fourfold increase in calls from women in situations similar to Mary Jean’s. And women already in shelters sought counseling.
An outpouring of condolences from friends and a multitude of strangers started flooding Mary Jean’s mailbox. When the envelopes no longer fit inside her mailbox, the post office began delivering them in white plastic boxes. The sheer brutality of the killings—and the inexplicable callousness with which Battaglia arranged for Mary Jean to listen to her daughters being murdered—appalled the entire city.
THIRTY-EIGHT
There is no task more stressful than planning a funeral for a child. It’s completely out of the normal order of how life is supposed to be. Now Mary Jean Pearle had to plan a funeral for two children. She had decided on a single white casket, unable to separate her girls for all eternity. They were each other’s best friend, and it only seemed fitting to keep them together.
It had been six years since Mary Jean had lost her father. Not a day went by that she didn’t think of him, and many of her friends thought that she hadn’t entirely reconciled herself to his death. She still consumed Zoloft, the antidepressant the doctors had prescribed at the time her father died.
The day before the funeral, she startled friends by announcing she would place her children’s casket on top of her father’s. Hillcrest Cemetery didn’t find this extraordinary, but unfortunately Mary Jean had to have her father’s casket exhumed, then buried three feet deeper so that Faith and Liberty’s casket could rest on top of his. She found solace that the three people she loved so dearly would be together.
On a cloudy Saturday morning on May 5, at ten-thirty, hundreds of grim-faced mourners marched quietly into Our Redeemer Lutheran Church in North Dallas and filled it to overflowing.
The clouds had burst open the night before as if shedding giant tears, and humidity added an oppressive weight to the air.
Seeing the coffin deepened everyone’s grief. Every mother could identify with Mary Jean’s loss. Every father wondered at the black heart of a man who could commit such a heinous act against his own children.
Michelle Ghetti flew in for the funeral with her daughter, Laurie. Michelle wept constantly, feeling especially guilty for not insisting on jail time for Battaglia and for having allowed him to plea bargain his way out of assaulting her. Mary Jean entered the sanctuary holding on to Laurie, and Michelle and Dorrace followed close behind. They moved somberly down the church’s center aisle.
Mary Jean had chosen the most fitting song for a child’s funeral. The walls of the church echoed with the familiar strains of “Jesus Loves Me” as the entire congregation sang from the printed program.
Robert Clark, Mary Jean’s oldest brother, acted as family spokesman. Standing behind the pulpit, he described the many accomplishments of his nieces’ short lives.
As the mourners exited the church, they had no idea that John Battaglia Sr. and his wife were watching from across the street. The elder Battaglia wanted to save Mary Jean the grief of seeing her ex-father-in-law. Then the two, who were also in mourning, followed the long entourage of cars leading to the cemetery. They carefully stayed a discreet distance behind.
At the close of the graveside service, the minister was offering his final prayer when the clouds that
had plagued the services all morning miraculously separated, and sunshine beamed down on the gravesite. It was like heaven was opening to welcome the little girls.
Mary Jean Pearle did not want to leave her daughters. Almost everyone had left the sprawling green cemetery, but she stayed with her mother and two close friends on the gently sloping hill.
“I can’t say good-bye to them,” she moaned. “I don’t want to go.”
As the day warmed, the scent of flowers intensified and became overpowering. Finally, Mary Jean moved closer to the coffin and placed her hand on it. With tears streaming down her face, she began pounding on the casket as she spoke to her girls, “Your daddy’s gonna pay,” she promised. “As God is my witness, I will make this right for y’all.” Then her friends helped her into a waiting limousine.
After Mary Jean left and the casket was lowered into the ground, John Battaglia’s parents came from behind the stand of trees where they had been waiting and silently observing. Garbed in black, they both cried as they placed white lilies on the girls’ grave. They stood for a few moments, arms around each other, then quietly left.
The deaths of Faith and Liberty raised many questions, and fingers pointed directly at law enforcement and the courts. Why did it take two weeks for an arrest warrant to be issued? The highly touted Highland Park police took it on the chin for dragging their feet. Their first lame excuse of wanting to gather more evidence against Battaglia before arresting him was followed by a second lame excuse that they didn’t know his work address. However, his work address was listed in the Dallas phone book. In addition, the alarmingly slow response to the 911 call was partially due to the Highland Park operator who had originally told Dallas police that it was a “domestic situation.”
Everyone was second-guessing Judge David Finn for not having revoked Battaglia’s visitation rights after he had demonstrated so much previous violence.
All the criticism boiled down to one fact. Domestic abuse was not taken seriously enough.
Karen Rogers was one of Mary Jean Pearle’s best friends. The two women had been close ever since they met at Hillcrest High School. An exquisitely beautiful woman with porcelain skin and sculptured features, Karen didn’t need any beauty aids, yet her grandmother, Mary Kay Ash, happened to be the world-renowned creator of Mary Kay Cosmetics.
Karen had dated Stan Graff, who also became a good friend of Mary Jean’s. Karen and Stan were two of Mary Jean’s many friends who were outraged that John Battaglia had been allowed unsupervised visits with Faith and Liberty.
They were well aware of the hell John had put Mary Jean through during their marriage, and now the grief and the unfairness of it struck them all. They couldn’t understand why a judge would allow a father who was both physically and verbally abusive to see his children without supervision.
For the memory of Faith and Liberty and for all abused children, they were going to do something about it.
A ripple effect began.
Stan Graff owns Graff Chevrolet in Grand Prairie, Texas, a growing community between Dallas and Fort Worth. The five-foot-ten, sandy-haired man is more apt to tell you that he “just sells cars” than admit he owns the entire dealership. Mary Jean had thought enough of Graff to choose him as one of her daughters’ pallbearers.
Graff, a take-charge type of person, contacted Bob Holmes, a Dallas attorney, and told him, “We have a flawed system that everyone is frustrated with, and if everyone feels that way, why don’t we change it?”
Holmes eagerly agreed to help.
The next day, Holmes called Bill Carter, who represented Fort Worth in the state legislature. Carter told him that the Texas legislature had a premier expert on family violence—Representative Toby Goodman. Goodman had practiced family law in Texas for over twenty-eight years and currently chaired the House Committee on Juvenile Justice and Family Issues. Attesting to his popularity, he had never lost a bid for reelection.
Goodman, a thoughtful, patient man, was gray-haired and fatherly looking. In the House of Representatives Goodman sits directly in front of Carter, so it was convenient for Carter to give Goodman a thumbnail sketch of the situation and ask him to contact Stan Graff.
The next morning, Goodman wasted no time calling Graff from his office. The representative was willing to listen to anyone wanting to safeguard the rights of children. Graff discussed the problem and wanted to know what Goodman could do about it.
“That upset me too,” Goodman replied. “John Battaglia should never have been permitted unsupervised visits with his daughters. There’s this presumption that a child benefits from maximum contact with both parents, and in a perfect world that would be true. However, a recent government study found that children in homes where spouses are abused are 1,500 times more apt to be abused than in homes with no spousal abuse.”
Representative Goodman didn’t hesitate. While sitting at his desk and still on the phone with Graff, he picked up a pen and a yellow ruled tablet and started drafting the language for a new law. Goodman found it easy to be enthusiastic about such a bill, and he’d put teeth in it too.
In Austin, Texas, the Texas House Chamber is an imposing room that seats 150 house members, plus a Speaker and the press. A gallery wraps around the room on the mezzanine level. On May 9, exactly one week to the day after the Battaglia murders, the Speaker of the House called on Rep. Toby Goodman to explain Senate Bill 140. Every Senate bill must have a House sponsor, and State Senator Moncrief had asked Goodman, because of his expertise, to sponsor his bill. The Moncrief bill involved children left adrift after a divorce. Goodman, logically, had written his “Battaglia” visitation law as an amendment to the custody rights bill. The amendment stated:
It is not in the best interest of a child for a parent to have unsupervised visitation with the child if credible evidence is presented of a history or pattern of past or present child neglect or physical or sexual abuse by that parent directed against the other parent, a spouse, or a child.
Goodman went on to tell the assembly that his amendment was stated in such a way that the court must look at any abuse issues before the judge signs the order. He moved for the passage of the bill. Not one question was raised from the floor, nor was any discussion called for. It passed by voice vote and the speaker’s gavel echoed throughout the massive chamber.
The same result for the bill and amendment held true in the state Senate the following week. All members concurred by voice vote, and Senate Bill 140 was sent to Governor Rick Perry, who promptly signed it.
It became law on September 1, 2001. From that date forward, a parent’s history of abuse with either a spouse or their child must be considered in a judge’s decision to grant unsupervised visits with their children. All because of Faith and Liberty.
THIRTY-NINE
Two weeks after the murder of his daughters, John Battaglia shuffled into court with the baby steps that his leg irons would allow.
Before his indictment hearing, his court-appointed attorneys, Paul Johnson and Paul Brauchle, filed a motion seeking to dramatically restrict publicity about the high-profile case. The motion asked Judge Janice Warder to ban photographs of the indictment hearing. The judge said she would allow only two cameras in the courtroom.
The defense had good reason to want cameras banned. As Battaglia was brought in from the Lew Sterrett Justice Center, he looked every bit the criminal. Razors had been forbidden, and his unshaven face had a scrubby appearance. His hair also looked wild and unkempt. There was no trace of the Kim Dawson model he had once been. His longer hair showed more gray, making him look older.
Battaglia’s rough white cotton jumpsuit, light years away from his expensive suits, was wrinkled and baggy. The jail-issued orange slip-on shoes made him look like a court jester.
Judge Warder read the indictment charging him with two counts of capital murder. When she stated that his punishment, if found guilty, could be a life sentence or the death penalty, Battaglia only nodded and stared blankly.
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sp; She glanced at his attorneys. “Does he understand ?” she asked.
“He does, Your Honor,” Paul Johnson said.
It had been rumored that his attorneys would put forth the defense that John Battaglia was bipolar, and therefore mentally ill. His lethargic persona at the hearing may have been caused by the mood-altering drugs he had been given in jail.
On the same day, Judge David Finn raised Battaglia’s bail to $4 million, of which one million was to be in cash.
John Battaglia Sr. insisted that he be involved in his son’s defense.
Since the older Battaglia openly assumed that his son was guilty of the murders, he asked to accompany Paul Johnson to talk with the DA, hoping to convince him to not seek the death penalty.
At the courthouse, both Johnson and Battaglia Sr. met with chief prosecutor Howard Blackmon. Blackmon told them that no decision had yet been reached.
“We’re still weighing our options,” Blackmon said. “We don’t rush these decisions.”
Johnson knew it was a long shot.
Two weeks after the murders, Steve McGonigle of The Dallas Morning News talked with John Battaglia Sr.
John Sr. had earlier told Paul Johnson that he felt he could use the media to generate sympathy for his son and sway public opinion. Paul pleaded with him not to, feeling that the case should be decided in the courtroom. Johnson knew that the media would only sensationalize the story and show the Battaglias in a worse light.
