Marital Privilege

by Greg Sisk

  Candace first outlined her conversations with Bill about the use of the TNT at the construction site and his acknowledgment to her that he could not account for and failed to timely log two of the TNT sticks. She next described her belated discovery that Bill had long been aware of the million-dollar insurance policy on her life.

  Then came a moment of prosecutorial serendipity. Assistant United States Attorney Isaacs asked Candace to reconstruct that morning of the darkest day of her life. She explained how Bill had asked her to take his car, how James Daniel had missed the bus, and how she had returned to the house for her missing purse when the explosion occurred. Without any tactical cunning other than to impress the casualty of the car bombing on the jury, Isaacs closed this line of questioning by asking her to recall Bill’s statements at the moment of the tragedy.

  Candace hesitated for several long seconds, suddenly appreciating the appalling alternative interpretation of the words Bill had uttered on that awful morning. Before that query posed to her on the witness stand, she had accepted Bill’s reiterated phrase that morning as nothing more than a horrified and guileless exclamation of a father’s loss. With her voice briefly betraying the oppressive sadness that she had thus far well-concealed, she narrated how Bill had repeated, “J.D. was supposed to be on the bus. He was supposed to be on the bus.”

  Lest the jury fail to appreciate the impact of the testimony, the prosecutor recited the words again, slowly and with pointed emphasis: “So, Mr. Klein said, ‘J.D. was supposed to be on the bus.’”

  • • •

  All observers agreed that attorney Andrew Dietrich mounted a valiant defense on William Klein’s behalf. If it were possible to lead the jury toward reasonable doubt, Dietrich marked the most accessible path.

  Under the circumstances, the defense had no option other than to put the defendant on the stand. William Klein proved to be a competent and reasonably sympathetic witness. He affected an appealing balance between composed insistence on his own innocence and heart-broken grief as to the loss of his child.

  From the beginning of his testimony, however, and even more so when he came under sharp cross-examination by the prosecution, Klein was plainly on defense. He had to acknowledge, of course, that he had access to explosives, that he had failed to properly account in the log for two sticks of TNT, and that he knew that his wife’s life was covered by a million-dollar insurance policy. And he had to admit that he had lied about both matters, falsely logging the missing sticks of TNT after he had left the construction site and misleading his wife about his awareness of the insurance policy.

  Klein explained at some length he had not been forthcoming for fear that his actions would be misconstrued. He confessed he had been foolish in not coming clean earlier. Nonetheless, the contrast drawn with his wife’s plainly forthright and honest behavior was not missed by any courtroom observer or by the jury.

  Dietrich also presented an expert witness to challenge the crucial fingerprint evidence, which was the only evidence directly tying William Klein to the crime. The defense expert extensively questioned the scientific validity of any comparison of a fingerprint exemplar to a latent partial print. The expert argued that the federal fingerprint analyst had crossed the line from objective science to subjective opinion in finding a match.

  This defense witness cast doubt on the supposed perfect reliability of fingerprint identification, re-telling the much-publicized story of the Portland, Oregon, man who had been accused of participation in the terrorist train bombing in Spain based on a fingerprint identification by the FBI’s super-computer which then had been confirmed by FBI analysts. Only after the poor man had spent weeks in jail wrongly accused of the atrocity did federal authorities back away and begrudgingly admit that the fingerprint taken from a terrorist’s bag in Spain simply did not match the Portland man.

  Directly attacking the fingerprint match in Klein’s case, the defense expert argued that the partial print found on the duct tape was too small and lacked sufficient clarity to make an accurate comparison with the fingerprint exemplar taken from William Klein. The expert accused the prosecution’s witness of teasing out comparisons in the ridge pattern that were not there.

  Consistently, through both cross-examination of the prosecution’s witnesses and later direct examination of defense witnesses, ­Dietrich returned to the security video and the unidentified third person. Carefully building the case for another perpetrator, Dietrich regularly referred in his questions and asides to the blurry video figure as “the Mystery Man.”

  • • •

  The strengths, weaknesses, and themes of each side’s cause were well-capsulized in the closing arguments made by each attorney before the case was finally submitted to the jury.

  Assistant United States Attorney Isaacs was first to present a closing argument:

  “William Klein had it all planned out. He had found a way to collect a million dollars, end an increasingly troubled marriage, and escape from being trapped in a dead-end job with his own father-in-law as his boss.

  “Klein would steal explosives from work, where he had easy access to TNT in his construction job. He would wire the TNT into a timed bomb on the vehicle his wife would drive, to which he also had easy access.

  “And, crucial to his plan, Klein would blame it all on a fellow at work, Olin Pirkle, who had been caught stealing construction supplies and who thus would be the perfect patsy. Klein already had called the police to report the theft by that worker, cleverly making sure that Pirkle had already been brought to the attention of the police. When the car bomb exploded, Pirkle would immediately be suspected of trying to kill Klein in retaliation for having cost him his job and then reporting him to the police.

  “There was a challenge, however. Klein had to make it look like Olin Pirkle was trying to kill him, of course, so that the events would neatly fit his story of the disgruntled former employee seeking revenge. That meant that the car bomb had to go on Klein’s red-painted Honda coupe, which everyone knew he drove. So Klein then had to manipulate his wife into driving his car on that fateful morning. And that’s exactly what happened. To Candace Klein’s surprise, her husband asked her to drive his car—a car he otherwise jealously protected and wouldn’t let anyone else in the family touch.

  “Klein did not plan on two things, however. He didn’t plan on getting his own son killed. James Daniel took the school bus to school each day. Klein assumed the boy would be well out of the way by the time his wife started the car rigged with the bomb. Sadly, J.D. missed his bus and wound up being where he wasn’t supposed to be. Remember Mrs. Klein’s testimony, that her husband reacted to learning his son was in the bombed car by repeatedly saying, ‘He was supposed to be on the bus.’ In the shock of the moment, William Klein revealed the first thing that had not gone according to plan.

  “The second unexpected event was that Pirkle would travel to Las Vegas after being fired and, lucky for Pirkle, appear repeatedly on casino security video during the very time the car bomb was placed. Klein’s plan to pin his wife’s killing on Pirkle fell apart.

  “All that was left to William Klein then was to rely on misdirection. He misled everyone, including his wife. Klein knew his failure to properly log the missing TNT could no longer be explained by saying Pirkle must have taken the TNT. So Klein now hoped his failure to properly log the missing TNT would not be noticed. He acknowledged to his wife that he had not properly logged the TNT, assuming she would keep his secret. He hoped the TNT would not even be tied to the Insignia Construction company.

  “Klein also knew he wouldn’t be suspected of trying to collect on a life insurance policy if everyone thought he was unaware of it. Without any knowledge of the policy, collecting a million dollars could hardly be a motive. Only later in an incautious moment when he spoke in anger about his father-in-law—and only when he thought his wife would maintain her refusal to testify—
did Klein reveal that he had known all along about the million-dollars on his wife’s life.

  “Then, through good police-work by Lieutenant Ed Burton and his partner, Officer Melissa Garth, it all fell apart for Klein. Klein’s fingerprint on the duct tape used in the car bombing tore away the veil of secrets. While the defense has worked hard to undermine the fingerprint evidence—a reliable method of identifying criminals that has been used effectively for more than a century—the evidence cannot be dismissed. Klein has no explanation for how his fingerprint came to be found on the murder weapon. So he has to argue it away, pretending it was not really there.

  “But Klein’s fingerprint was on the car bomb. And his fingerprint was there because he was the one who had taken the explosives from the construction site and created a murder weapon from it. He cannot escape from his responsibility. The evidence demands a verdict of guilty.”

  • • •

  Andrew Dietrich responded with his closing:

  “This is a case of random unconnected dots that only seem to link Bill Klein to this horrific act because the prosecution has invented a clever story that draws the lines together without any regard for complicated reality. But the dots need not be seen as connecting Bill Klein to any wrongdoing.

  “And there is another dot—a big, fat, round dot—that the prosecution wants you to ignore. Remember that “Mystery Man”? They want you to ignore that dot because no line can connect that dot to Bill Klein. But this is not just a dot, not some flyspeck that can be ignored. It is huge, round, bouncing ball, which now is flying across the court at the prosecution. And the prosecution is trying to duck out of the way.

  “Yes, Bill Klein had access to explosives at the construction company. There’s nothing nefarious about that. Thousands of Americans use explosives for perfectly legitimate purposes—like construction.

  “Yes, Bill admits that he logged the two sticks of TNT afterward, rather than contemporaneously when the TNT was used at the construction site. He shouldn’t have done that. But let’s be clear. That’s just a bureaucratic error, resulting at most in a fine for the company.

  Of course, maybe those two sticks of TNT were missing because someone else had helped himself to the TNT when Bill wasn’t looking. More on that in a moment.

  “Yes, Bill had learned his wife had purchased a million dollar life insurance policy on herself. Bill didn’t buy the policy or encourage his wife to get it. She did that on her own and without confiding in Bill. And for many Americans, and especially for professional couples like Bill and Candace, a life insurance policy with a million dollar face value is not unusual. And professional couples with life insurance policies are not scrambling to kill each other to collect on the proceeds.

  “The prosecution tells you that Bill’s fingerprint is on the proverbial murder weapon. That’s simply not correct. Weeks after the murder—after the crime scene had been left unattended for three months—the police found a piece of tape scrap with a fragment of fingerprint on it. The fingerprint was a partial print. If the government would be strictly accurate about this, they can only say the partial print might have come from Bill Klein. But maybe not. And, even if it was Bill’s fingerprint, the TNT may have been stolen from Insignia ­Construction, which might explain how his fingerprint was transferred from the TNT to the adhesive substance of the duct tape.

  “Which brings us back to the biggest dot of all, the one that can’t be connected to the story drawn by the prosecution. This is not a small dot or even just a dot at all. It is an asteroid-sized object that crashes down and destroys the prosecution’s theory.

  “Olin Pirkle and Bill Klein were not the only people with access to the TNT in that van at the construction site. You’ve seen the video from the nearby restaurant. There was a third person—other than Pirkle and Bill Klein—who was alone at the back of that van. George Peterson, who owns the construction company and hires the workers, couldn’t identify this person.

  “Who was he? What was he doing there? Who is this ‘Mystery Man’? And why aren’t the police doing more to identify him? Why isn’t the prosecution focusing its attention on finding this person?

  “We don’t know who he is. The prosecution doesn’t know either. The prosecution wants you to pretend it doesn’t matter.

  “We still don’t know why someone was targeting—not Candace Klein or her dear boy—but Bill Klein. Someone tried to kill Bill Klein. And it was almost surely that ‘Mystery Man’ who could not be identified at the construction site.

  “Bill Klein was not the perpetrator of this atrocity. He was the intended victim. And until Bill Klein is acquitted, the police won’t even be looking for the true criminal.

  “Where is that ‘Mystery Man’? By your verdict of acquittal, you can tell the government to look harder.”

  • • •

  In rebuttal, Assistant United States Attorney Isaacs had the last word:

  “The defense would have you believe that someone else committed this act, some other unknown person, supposedly caught on the video tape of the construction site. As George Peterson testified, there were a dozen workers at the site that day, any one of whom might have been near the van for a moment and thus caught on the security video. It could even have been a random person passing by.

  “And the defense would have you believe this unknown third person, for no apparent reason, without any motive, attached a car bomb to the very vehicle that would be driven by the defendant’s wife. So the defense would have us imagine this third person happened to be an expert in explosives—just like William Klein and Olin Pirkle.

  “The cold reality is that only two people had any motive at all to do this horrible thing.

  “One of those two people was Olin Pirkle—if we were to speculate that his anger about being caught stealing and then being pursued by the police could harden into murderous intent against the man who reported him to the police. So, it might have been Pirkle. But it wasn’t. It simply was not. That we know for a certainty. Even the defense does not try to argue that Olin Pirkle had anything to do with the car bomb.

  “The only other person who had any plausible motive was the man who stood to receive a million dollars in life insurance proceeds if his wife died. That man was William Klein.

  “He had access to the explosives. He admitted to his wife that he had fudged the log records on the explosives. He admitted to his wife he knew about the million-dollar insurance policy. And his fingerprint was later found on the duct tape used to attach the bomb to the car. Yes, it was a partial print, but the experienced experts at the crime lab found sufficient clarity to make a solid match.

  “The defense tells us that William Klein was not the kind of man who would kill his own wife. Perhaps he hadn’t been that kind of man. But the chance to score a million dollars—and simultaneously escape an unpleasant work and family situation—can change a person.

  “In any event, this is truly a case in which the evidence speaks for itself. A million dollars in motive. A man who had easy access to explosives and to the car on which the car bomb was installed. A man whose fingerprint appears on the device that killed a child. That man is William Klein.”

  • • •

  After one afternoon and evening of deliberation, the jury informed the judge that they had reached a verdict. When the parties had been recalled to the courtroom the following morning, with Candace faithfully looking on as before, the jury foreman announced, “Guilty.”

  Before anyone else could react, Bill turned from his position standing behind the counsel table, looked for Candace in the gallery, and then said in a voice that carried through the courtroom: “Candace, you told me that Jesus said the truth will set you free. I really do pray you now have been set free.” In a tone that sounded more resigned than bitter, he added, “It hasn’t worked out that way for me.”

  Candace winced, but said
nothing. Had Bill now told the truth? she wondered. Or has the truth continued to elude him? And, if he at long last had been forthright, did the truth come too late for him to find salvation?

  Judge Williamson pounded the gavel and waited for the room to fall silent again. “While formal sentencing will be scheduled later, with the death penalty not being sought, the sentencing guidelines plainly call for an extended term of imprisonment. So I’ll ask the Marshals to take Mr. Klein into custody immediately.”

  As Bill Klein was led out of the courtroom, Candace was tempted to drop her head. Instead, she firmly instructed herself, she must remain resolute, see the matter all the way through, and not turn away.

  Even as Bill was taken down the aisle of the courtroom, she realized she had come to another resolution, without being fully conscious of her deliberation. This would be the last time she saw her husband.

  She had faithfully attended every minute of the trial. She had refrained from offering even a hint as to her opinion on her husband’s guilt. She had seen it through. Now that the answer had come, or at least the jury’s verdict on events, she could not bear to continue. She would not attend the sentencing.

  Chapter 16

  [FIVE TO SIX MONTHS AFTER THE TRAGEDY]

  Those anguished months from the morning of the bombing to the evening of the jury verdict would be forever chronicled in Candace’s personal history as the “Summer of Loss.” She had lost her boy. She had lost her husband. She had lost her home.

  Determined to abate her time of mourning, however, Candace Klein resolved that the undeniable Summer of Loss would not slide inexorably into an Autumn of Grief that drifted fatefully into a Winter of Sorrows. She could not change the past, but she could control her own future.