Jen admitted she had been convicted of murder in this case. Burns eased into her life and had Jen explain where she was from, where she lived, and how she met Bobbi. Throughout this biographical portion of her testimony, Jen did not tell the story she had recently given in detail to Texas Monthly, wherein she had met Bobbi beneath a tree in front of the town library after Bobbi called; and that when Bobbi planted one on her, Jen was immediately swept off her feet in some sort of fairy-tale love affair. Nope. She never said any of it. According to what Jen now claimed (her fifth version), she met Bobbi over the course of a few weeks while Bobbi was dating Audrey; and then, at a party one night at Bob’s, Jen and Bobbi “hooked up” (a story that Bobbi later agreed with).
Jen talked about how difficult a life she’d had: dropping out of school, doing drugs, having sex with any boy who wanted it, moving around a lot, her mother in prison, a father unavailable to her the way she wanted. What became most interesting about this exchange was how Jen explained that she had never really felt loved or had ever gotten that parental approval, which all kids crave. She was marrying that thread of her testimony with meeting Bobbi and, for the first time in her life, feeling all those things from Bobbi.
For Jen, it was about the attention she got. Bobbi made her feel wanted and whole—and she lapped it up.
“Was it a good feeling?” Burns asked.
“Yes, it was.”
“Did there come a time when you fell in love with Bobbi Jo?”
“Yes, there was.”
A few questions later, after Burns introduced Bob Dow into the dynamic of Bobbi and Jen’s love affair, he asked, “All right, did Bobbi Jo and Bob have an intimate or a sexual relationship?”
“Yes, they did,” Jen said without expanding beyond how Bobbi was forced to “sexually give herself to him in order to get something in return . . . [and she would] have to sometimes give up her girlfriend and sleep with Bob to get what she wanted. . . .”
Jen said she and Bobbi had a name for this: “paying the rent.”
Bobbi sat, listening, shaking her head in confusion. She was deeply hurt by this explanation of her life with Bob. This was not the truth Bobbi had remembered living.
What in the world is Jennifer trying to prove? Bobbi asked herself as she listened.
Here was Jen lying under oath and nobody was challenging her. Bobbi was beside herself.
How could Jennifer tell one story after another and not be held accountable? What is Mr. Matthews thinking?
“How did you feel about her having to do that?” Burns asked, referring to Bobbi allegedly selling herself to Bob.
“I didn’t think it was right.”
“Did it make you jealous of the relationship between Bobbi Jo and Bob?”
“No, it didn’t make me jealous.”
“Why not?”
“Because it made me more disgusted. . . .”
In one breath, Jen had said she fell in love with Bobbi; in another, she claimed not to feel any jealousy when a man she hated was having sex with the woman she loved.
Jen said she felt Bobbi did not want to talk about the sex she was having with Bob whenever she brought it up, adding, “It had been going on before I came.”
Burns asked next: “Now, were there situations in which you felt pressured that you would have to do that (have sex with Bob) as well?”
Quite contradictory to what Jen had said on several other occasions, nearly blowing the state’s motive to bits, she answered, “Yes.”
“Did anyone protect you . . . from that happening?”
“Whenever that came about, Bob asked Bobbi Jo for permission. And she had asked me if I wanted to, and I had said, ‘No.’”
The way Jen talked through it, that offer of sex seemed like it was casual and consensual, as though Bob had made the suggestion and the girls simply said no and moved on. Furthermore, when I later pressed her about this, Bobbi insisted, “Jennifer, Audrey, and Kathy all had sex with Robert. All the chicks that came over got high and sexed him. . . .”
Right or wrong aside, the indication was that none of the girls—and the tapes left behind seem to back this up—were ever forced into having sex on camera or having sex with Bob.
“So Bob would ask Bobbi Jo for permission to approach you?” Burns asked.
“Yes,” Jen said.
Burns made his move to place Bobbi in the driver’s seat of the relationship after that, asking Jen several leading questions relating to which one of the two controlled the relationship.
Jen talked about how they practiced Wicca together.
How they cut their fingers and exchanged a blood bond.
How Bobbi, acting as director, told Jen what she needed her to do as Bob filmed them making love and taking off their clothes.
How they’d sit down and get high, watch the films, and laugh.
How they took pleasure in creating the videos and photographs.
How they had parties at the house just about every night.
How they went to the mall that day and got busted shoplifting, which led to Jen’s version of that conversation in the truck she’d had with Bob—the motivation for Bob’s murder.
One of the problems with all of this was that there had been no buildup to Bob’s proposition being anything other than another day in the life of these three. Yes, Jen claimed, this was a “final straw” moment for them. Yes, Jen said, Bobbi had “had it” with Bob making advances toward her. Yes, Bobbi was upset about this particular remark and paying him off with sex. But there had been no precedent set by Jen’s testimony. In fact, if I were to argue precedent, it would be the opposite—that this proposition by Bob was no different than any other time. Besides, Jen admitted, they went from Graford to Mineral Wells to “pick up our things” at Bob’s “because me and Bobbi decided that we didn’t want to stay there anymore.”
“Was his proposition kind of the driving force behind that decision?” Burns asked.
“Yes, it was.”
Jen spoke of how she broke the window to get them inside, a fact forensic science later proved. And after they collected most of their belongings, Jen testified, “That’s when Bobbi Jo got inside the chest or whatever, and she got some guns out and took them also.”
“And was there any discussion between the two of you of why she was taking those guns?” Burns asked.
“No.”
“But you saw her do it?”
“Yes, sir.”
Jen never said Bobbi Jo rushed to that chest to “steal” the guns. Instead, she testified, “She got some guns out and took them also. . . .” (Emphasis is the author’s.)
Bobbi later claimed she grabbed the guns to pawn because Bob owed her money. If they were moving out, she wanted her money. She also claimed Bob had given her the weapons as gifts. Jen’s testimony did not disprove this—actually, her testimony bolstered it. In addition, there were plenty of nights when Bobbi and Jen went into that same chest to get those guns and have fun with them, placing the barrels in their vaginas and taking photographs.
Leaving Bob’s, according to Jen’s new version of the events, they went to Graford. While at Dorothy Smith’s house, Jen claimed, she and Bobbi discussed going back to Bob’s to “ask him for Bobbi Jo’s check.” Along the way, Jen testified, “the idea of getting rid of Bob came up. Bobbi Jo said that he just needed to be killed, that he needed to . . . that we needed to kill him.”
“And why?”
Stumbling through her words, Jen exclaimed, “Because she was . . . she was tired of . . . tired of the abuse that . . . that she was getting.” Then she stopped. And, almost as an afterthought, added, “And she was tired of him harassing me, and she said that that was the only way that me and her could be together.”
Jen claimed Bobbi “brought it up first.”
She said she saw Bobbi load the gun.
She said she tried to talk Bobbi out of it, but Bobbi insisted, telling her, “This is the only way that we can truly be together.”
/> She said Bobbi fired the gun (to test it) on the way back to Bob’s. And that was when Jen decided to do it herself—this, after trying to talk Bobbi out of it. If it had to be done, Jen explained, she wanted to be the one to do it.
Why?
“Just the continuing of her saying that he needed to die—just the statements of her saying that that’s the only way we could be together.”
“Did you believe that?”
“Yes, I did.”
“Did you want to lose her?”
“No, I didn’t.”
All Bobbi could do was cringe in her seat while listening to this.
But we were together. . . . Bob wasn’t splitting us up. . . . Why isn’t anyone questioning these lies?
What Bobbi went on to explain was that she and Jen had been spending lots of time together, and nobody was coming between their friendship. If anyone was making a stink about Jen living at Bob’s, it had been Kathy and Audrey. It was not Bob. Jen and Bobbi could do whatever they wanted.
Jen then told the story of Bob and Bobbi heading to the back room to talk. And how Bobbi came back and told her Bob needed to “talk to her” in the bedroom.
Then Jen admitted shooting Bob in the face as she straddled him during intercourse. “I kept shooting at him,” Jennifer explained, breaking down in an uncontrollable crying fit.
Burns asked if she needed a break.
Jen said she could manage.
Continuing, she talked about how Bobbi “came into the room” after Jen had unloaded the weapon.
“And what did she say to you when she saw you standing there?”
“She said that I ‘looked sexy holding that gun.’”
Bobbi dropped her head. My goodness, she’s back to the lie we both agreed to tell.
Jen told the story of them heading over to Spanish Trace and saying “we” killed Bob. Not “I killed Bob” and then Bobbi saying, “We killed Bob.” But now she was certain, absolutely clear, that they barged into the apartment saying in unison, together, “We killed Bob.”
Jen’s new version of the road trip was condensed.
Then she explained how she had lied in her first statement to Brian Boetz and Penny Judd and also lied in her second statement; but that the only parts of both statements she had lied about—you guessed it!—were the narratives of the actual shooting and what had happened leading up to the murder.
The only time Jen said she told the absolute truth was when it mattered most: in court, during the penalty phase of her case several months ago, and here on this day.
After a few more questions underscoring Jen’s newfound religious experience of being saved and now having a clear conscience, Mike Burns concluded his questioning: “But for Bobbi Jo, would Bob Dow still be alive today?”
Jen said, “I think he would.”
If Jen’s testimony was a boat, picture the slats of its sides coming apart, water spilling in, its one passenger trying desperately to bucket the water out, but the boat half in the water, on its way toward the bottom of the ocean. A solid defense attorney, worth his weight, would be able to bury Jen and her lies, sending her back to prison with her tail between her legs, begging for a chance at redemption.
CHAPTER 56
THE ART OF cross-examining a witness lies within the technique of trying to poke holes in her story, thus catching her bolstering a certain version of the events to support an agenda. There is a science to cross-examination. F. Lee Bailey, one of the most experienced and certainly most notorious cross-examiners from the past fifty years, a man who literally wrote the book on how to do it right, stressed the importance of eye contact with a witness, and pacing with his questions.
“The greatest challenge most cross-examiners will face is the intelligent, but deliberately mendacious, witness,” Bailey said.
He described this type of witness as having the “agility to state facts, which do not actually reside in his memory, but are in whole or in part fabricated.” And once an attorney picks up on what’s going on, it becomes imperative for him or her to “gain control” of such a witness “as early as possible.”
Jen was not that smart. For an experienced criminal defense attorney, ripping her testimony apart would be as easy as having her restate most of what she had said. It was clear from all of the stories Jen had told that she had trouble lying. Some people can lie with a straight face and recall those lies at will.
Not Jennifer. She was a seasoned liar, yes; but she had trouble keeping track of all of the lies simply because there had been so many.
Cross-examining Jen was the cusp of Jim Matthews’s case. According to the rules of the game (jury instructions), if he could prove Jen to be the liar she was, Bobbi would walk out of the courtroom a free woman.
Slam dunk.
Matthews started with Jen’s motive for coming forward to help the prosecution. After a bit of banter back and forth, a crackling, feistier Jen agreed that she had contacted the prosecution with her willingness to testify against Bobbi. It was not the other way around.
“Okay. And that was after you were convicted?” Matthews wanted clarified.
“Yes, sir, it was.”
It was a solid beginning. The reason why she had contacted the prosecution after her conviction would come up again. Matthews was versed in defense courtroom rhetoric to know that he needed to leave the jury with that information at the end. Not here. Not now.
After that, Bobbi’s attorney established how the first time Jen told anybody but her lawyer that Bobbi Jo was involved in pushing her to murder Bob was “in front of a jury” during the penalty phase of her case, the previous April. The idea of Bobbi being the driving force behind the murder hadn’t been part of Jen’s narrative before then.
“Yes, sir,” she agreed.
Matthews brought up the point of Bob raping Jen and how it was a complete fabrication.
Jen agreed it was.
Over the course of several minutes, Matthews and Jen traded barbs, and the testimony was confusing as Matthews referred to “the first statement” Jen gave police and asked, point by point, what was true and what was false.
One needed a flowchart to keep track.
The risk in this was that jurors would toss out both statements, simply because it was too hard to follow the truth, and perhaps rely solely on Jen’s courtroom testimony—which Matthews did not want.
Matthews agreed with Jen about all the consistencies in her first and second statements: “One of them was that you said Bobbi Jo was surprised that you actually killed Bob?”
“Yes.”
“Another consistency . . . is that you are the one who actually did kill Bob. The first one was, it was self-defense, but the second one is just a cold-blooded murder, right?”
“Yes.”
“And . . . another consistency . . . is that Bobbi Jo wasn’t—not only wasn’t present in the bedroom—she wasn’t even in the house in either version, right?”
“Yes.”
(And yet, what never came up here was how Jen had just testified during questioning by Mike Burns that Bobbi had walked into the bedroom after Jen killed Bob and laid that sexy line on her. No one, however, pointed out this enormous contradiction in fact.)
A few questions later, Matthews brought up something Mike Burns had said in both courtroom cases, asking, “And in both statements, you said that you told your mother, Kathy, that you killed Bob?”
“Yes, sir.”
“And in both, you didn’t say anything about . . . Bobbi Jo giving you a gun or planning it or helping you in any way, did you?”
“No, I did not.”
“So the third time that you [talked about] killing Bob to officials under oath, you were testifying to it in front of a jury that was going to decide your sentence, correct?”
“Yes.”
Matthews was on a roll. He had Jen against the ropes. She told jurors how she had lied and lied and lied; but only when it served her purpose, did she ever say she told the truth.
“In your earlier testimony,” Matthews continued, “in your [court case], you testified that you and Bobbi Jo were not fantasizing about killing anybody?”
“No, we weren’t.”
“And . . . you testified that Bobbi Jo never did take the gun and shoot Bob,” Matthews said a few questions later.
“Yes.”
“And, in your trial, you admitted that after having several hours to reflect on everything, your mother asked you how it felt to kill somebody and you said, quote”—Matthews stopped here and went back to his paperwork to make certain he got it right, allowing for a little pause to build up tension—“‘Pretty fucking good.’ Right?”
“Yes.”
He then got Jen to admit that “it was not Bobbi Jo’s fault that [I] killed [Bob].”
One would have to wonder, was there anything left for Jen to say at this point? She had just admitted, in no certain terms, that she killed Bob Dow on her own, without any direction or pressure from Bobbi. Amazing. The more she talked, the more it seemed that Jen had murdered Bob Dow without Bobbi knowing anything.
“Okay,” Matthews asked, “I know you shed some tears today, but you did not feel any remorse about killing Bob, did you?”
“Yes! I did!” Jen snapped. This question ignited a rise out of her.
“You did?”
“Yes. I did.”
“Did you feel like that after having . . . sitting on top of a guy having the most intimate relations that a man and woman could have, you have him cover his face up, and just, in cold blood, you shoot him in the head? And then later, when your mother asks you about that, asks you how it felt, you said, ‘Oh, pretty fucking good.’ Is that your definition of showing remorse?”
“Objection!” Mike Burns stood, shouting. “Compound question!”
Bad Girls Page 29
