Lobster Boy

by Fred Rosen

  Grady hit her and knocked her on the bed of their trailer. “‘I’ll fix it so. you can’t lay with anyone else,’ he said.”

  From his pocket, Grady took out a blackjack. “He tried to shove it up my vagina. It left black-and-blue marks all over my legs. I had a hard time walking and sitting the next day.”

  If Levine were going to win her acquittal, he needed to prove that she was in imminent fear of her life. He addressed that point now. He asked her about making out her will in 1991.

  “At several times, I was fearful for my life. I prepared a handwritten will. I was scared. He wouldn’t let me get a divorce. I couldn’t walk out and leave. I couldn’t hide them,” Teresa pleaded, referring to Cathy and Little Grady’s deformity. “Little Grady said to me, ‘What’s gonna happen to me, Mom, if you leave me?’”

  In December of 1991, Teresa said, she gave Cathy an envelope to hold for her. In it was her will.

  Arnie asked what happened after they got off the road in 1992.

  “Grady hit me in the back of the legs. It was like watching him do it but I couldn’t feel it. He beat the wall and said, ‘This is an example of what I can do to you.’”

  During that same period of time, “I woke up and Grady was standing by the bed. He was drawing a butcher knife across my throat.” Then on November 29, he tried to poke her eyes out with his claws. By that time, the threats and the beatings were more frequent.

  “He’d say, ‘One of these days when the time is right …’”

  “Why didn’t you leave him?”

  “He’d find me,” Teresa answered defensively, her voice rising. “I told Glenn something’s got to be done. ‘I can’t take it much more.’ I had saved up fifteen hundred dollars. I just told him, ‘Something’s got to be done.’ Glenn knew I had the money. He said, ‘I’ll find someone to help you, Mom.’”

  “Prior to that day, you’d never had a conversation with Christopher Wyant?”

  “I never saw Chris Wyant in the trailer. I didn’t know my husband would be killed that night. I didn’t feel I had any other alternatives.”

  “Why did you lie to Detective Willette the first time he questioned you?”

  “I loved my husband. I still do. I couldn’t stand the thought I could do something like this. It’s better just to forget it.”

  “No further questions.”

  Crying, Teresa gripped the front of the witness-box. She continued to shake back and forth, back and forth.

  “We’ll recess and reconvene at two-forty-eight,” Judge Graybill said.

  Teresa Stiles left the stand. Outside, she was comforted by her loving family.

  Precisely at 2:48 P.M. Ron Hanes moved in, determined to show that Grady Stiles wasn’t dangerous the night he was murdered, that Teresa was not in imminent danger, and that she was not the helpless, destitute victim that Arnie was trying to make her out to be.

  Through the early part of his questioning, Teresa admitted that on the day of the murder, they all ate dinner together, and that nothing happened. No threats, no blows.

  Grady, she said, ate in the living room on the TV stand, while Little Grady and Glenn ate in the kitchen. Little Grady went to bed around nine, nine-thirty; he had school the next day. Glenn, meanwhile, stayed in his room.

  “When I decided to go out back to see how Misty was doing, Glenn said, ‘Mom, where you going? Let me get my shoes. You shouldn’t be out there alone. I’ll go with you.’”

  After they had gone out back and been there a short while, Marco Eno had come over to tell them about the gunshots, and then he went into the trailer.

  “Marco tried to stop me at the back door. It was the first time I was aware he was murdered. It came as a surprise to me.”

  Under further questioning, she admitted that she recalled telling Cathy that Chris Wyant stole $1,500 from her, and that Little Grady had known Chris since 1991.

  For some reason, Hanes turned back to her early life in the carnival. “I did the blade box and worked the front bally stage. I was paid twenty-five dollars a week.”

  After her first husband Jerry Plummer beat her, she “… went to Connecticut to get away from [him].” After they split up for good, “I got an attorney to get a divorce.”

  “Did you have any other business duties during your marriage to Grady?”

  “I booked shows, had to see to the employees. Grady made up the payroll and gave me the money to give to them.”

  “In 1992, the family made how much?”

  She wasn’t sure. “Grady put money aside for all expenses. During the last year on the road, we had three to four shows [to pay for]. We were paid usually on a Tuesday.”

  Hanes asked her about the family’s vehicles, and she listed them—a Ford truck, Cathy’s small trailer, her trailer, the trailer Eno had been living in that contained the gorilla show, Cathy’s Ford Suburban, and her own van.

  “You mentioned earlier that you employed an attorney to get a divorce after your first marriage.”

  “Yes.”

  “Did he help you with anything else?”

  “I used an attorney to modify the child custody after my first marriage ended.”

  “You were successful in doing that?”

  “Yes,” Teresa answered.

  “How old are your kids?”

  Teresa stated their ages. At seventeen, Little Grady was the youngest.

  “Then the only child not of his majority is Grady III?”

  “Yes,” Teresa admitted.

  “Now you stated earlier that you saved fifteen hundred dollars. What for?”

  “I saved money because my husband was unsure if he’d have money all the time.”

  “Now the vehicles you mentioned. Who owned them?”

  “I considered all our property to be joint.”

  “But isn’t it a fact that four of the vehicles are registered in your name?”

  Reluctantly, Teresa agreed. She was totally dry-eyed, staring straight at Hanes with hate in her eyes. He got her even angrier when he forced her to admit that she hadn’t provided for Little Grady in her will.

  “Turning to the fifteen hundred dollars. How did Chris Wyant get that money?”

  “I made it available. I put the money on the dryer weeks before anything happened.”

  In some way, she said, it had then disappeared.

  “What did you tell your daughter had happened to the money?”

  “I told Cathy that Chris Wyant stole the money that was left on the dryer.”

  Hanes wanted to know what Glenn, Jr., thought of the household situation. She paused to think before answering Hanes’s question.

  “He knew what would happen to us if we didn’t do something. Every day got closer and closer.”

  “And what did Glenn say he’d do?”

  “‘I’ll see if I can talk to someone.’”

  Under further aggressive questioning by Hanes, Teresa admitted that she “… had a conversation before placing the money on the dryer about two weeks before.”

  “Did you ask Chris Wyant to return the money when nothing happened?”

  “I never told Chris Wyant personally to return the money.”

  “Were you in danger the night Grady was killed?”

  “No,” Teresa admitted. She was in no imminent danger, “… at that precise moment.”

  Hanes paused, looked down at his yellow pad, checked off a few questions and found a few he hadn’t asked.

  “Who paid the household bills?”

  “I wrote the checks on the household.”

  “Did you have your own checking account?”

  “Yes.”

  “Were you afraid you’d lose all your properties with a divorce?”

  “No, sir.”

  “Couldn’t you reunite with Mr. Newman if you divorced?”

  “I wouldn’t.”

  “Isn’t it true that Mr. Stiles was free with the gifts he bought the kids?”

  “Yes.”

  “Didn’t bot
h boys have TVs, VCRs, and video games?”

  “Yes.”

  “But you don’t have any memory of actually planning this man’s death?”

  “It’s too horrifying to think I could do something like this to someone I love, to my husband. It’s horrible.”

  Teresa began to cry. Hanes had no more questions.

  Graybill adjourned until Monday morning.

  Alone in the courtroom save for Sandra Spoto, Ron Hanes, in a mild voice and methodical manner, was getting his files together. In his own quiet way, he had laid a trap for Teresa and she had fallen into it.

  “I didn’t know if she had an attorney or not handle her first divorce, when I asked her that question on the stand,” Hanes said later.

  Hanes had managed to establish during his cross that a woman who was trying to portray herself as a helpless victim had enough emotional wherewithal to hire an attorney on numerous occasions to represent her legal interests; ostensibly, in Hanes’s view, a far cry from the battered spouse she was trying to portray.

  Eighteen

  July 18.

  Judge Graybill convened court promptly at 9 A.M. He had done a lot of thinking over the weekend.

  “The court won’t allow battered spouse expert testimony unless more testimony proves she was in imminent danger based upon factual evidence presented toward self-defense. It is for the jury to decide if killing was necessary to prevent great bodily harm.”

  As the judge ruled, Teresa Stiles looked down at her lap, where she twisted her handkerchief into a tight ball.

  “Now this morning, we’ll break at about 11. There’s a personal matter I need to attend to. Call your next witness, Mr. Levine.”

  “Grady Stiles III,” said Arnie.

  All eyes turned as the bailiff wheeled Little Grady into the room. He took the oath in front of the court clerk and was wheeled over to the witness stand. Grady popped out of the wheelchair onto the stand in one smooth movement.

  After asking the preliminaries, establishing Little Grady’s lineage, Arnie asked Little Grady to give a demonstration of hand walking.

  As cameras clicked, and the reporters in the media room set their VCRs to record, Little Grady crawled off the stand. Throwing his pelvis in front of him, he hand walked around in front of the jury box and the prosecution table.

  The jury watched impassively. No one shuddered. No one even sighed. They did not look impressed one way or the other.

  Arnie then showed the silent videotape of the two Gradys wrestling.

  The jury watched as Grady had his son in a headlock. With all the faces they were making, it looked like it had been a vicious match.

  “What happened during that match?” Arnie asked.

  “We started playing around but eventually, I could not breathe,” Little Grady answered.

  “Did you ask him to stop?”

  “Yes.”

  “Did he?”

  “No.”

  Arnie asked about the hole in the wall Teresa had referred to earlier during her testimony. He introduced into evidence a picture of the hole in the wall in Little Grady’s bedroom.

  “That’s where he pushed me through the wall.”

  Arnie took Little Grady through a series of questions to reiterate the family history that the other family members had already testified to.

  “He [Grady] wasn’t using [alcohol] real frequently,” when they remarried. “The verbal abuse began first, then the drinking, then the getting physical.”

  “When did the abuse begin again?”

  “The stuff began in the beginning of 1990,” Little Grady replied. “Three to four drinks a day, about three days a week. He would drink more. As he drank, he got more aggressive physically and verbally. There were times he would drink fifths in a day or a day and a half. Sometimes, he’d go to clubs.”

  “He drank every day?”

  “Every day he drank.”

  “Did you do things with your father?”

  “We didn’t do a lot together. We’d go to movies once in a while and to an amusement park once a year.”

  Arnie asked what he really thought of his father.

  “When he was or wasn’t drinking, I didn’t really like him. He was always making remarks about his [Glenn’s] weight.”

  “Was Glenn physically abused?”

  “I’m not aware of any physical abuse of Glenn.”

  When the family was reunited, “I got along with Cathy because I hadn’t seen her for so long. As for Donna, our relationship was all right.”

  Grady had answered the last question just as Sandra Spoto was standing to object.

  “If you see Ms. Spoto come out of that chair, please don’t answer,” Judge Graybill admonished.

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Mr. Stiles,” Arnie said, “did your father ever abuse you?”

  “When he was drunk he would abuse me. And he would say to Glenn—”

  Sandra Spoto stood. “Objection.”

  Judge Graybill did not want to allow Little Grady to testify to what his father said to his half brother. Arnie disagreed. While they argued the point, Teresa nonchalantly bit her nails.

  “Mr. Stiles,” Arnie continued, back at the lectern, “did you see bruises on your stepmother’s body?”

  “During the latter part of October, November of 1992, I observed bruises on her legs, arms, and shoulders.”

  “How often?”

  “About every other day.”

  Arnie then asked him to describe his memory of the night his father was killed.

  “I went to my room at 9 P.M. I woke up around 11 P.M. I had heard three pops that woke me up. I sat on my back, wondering what had happened. I remembered they’d rented a movie, Ruby.”

  Little Grady thought the shooting came from the movie. Evidently, he did not know his history. Jack Ruby shot Lee Harvey Oswald only one time before he was subdued.

  “Then I laid back down. [The next thing I remembered] I heard voices. My mother Mary, Glenn, and Cathy. I sat there wondering what was going on.”

  After they woke him up, “Glenn stopped me from going in the living room.”

  During cross-examination Sandra Spoto asked, “Think your father kept you on a tight leash?”

  “I thought he was overprotective,” Little Grady responded.

  “We’ve heard testimony that your father always carried a blackjack. Ever see him use it on anyone?”

  “No. The blackjack always stayed in a drawer in the house.”

  “Ever see him use any gun other than a BB gun?”

  “No.”

  At the lectern, Spoto looked down at her pad, checking off questions, finding the ones she hadn’t asked yet.

  “Chris Wyant. You saw him a lot?”

  “Me and Glenn always went to Chris when we’d go someplace.”

  “Where were you the afternoon your father was murdered?”

  “All three of us spent the afternoon together.”

  “In that video we saw, whose hand was that pointing at you when you were wrestling?”

  “Uh, that was Donna’s hand. It was a family video.”

  As Arnie began his redirect, Little Grady rocked in his chair.

  After Little Grady completed his testimony, he popped back into his wheelchair and the bailiff wheeled him out.

  “It’s 11 A.M. We’ll reconvene in a half hour,” said Graybill, and left the bench.

  Outside in the corridor, Teresa cradled Little Grady’s head to her ample chest and hugged him. Tyrill, Cathy, and Donna crowded around him to find out what was said. Tyrill handed him a paper cup filled with water. The boy’s hands shook as he brought it to his lips to drink.

  Back inside the courtroom, Arnie told reporters, “It’s very difficult to get an acquittal without the experts testifying.”

  Levine, Hanes, and Spoto stood at the courtroom’s rear door, the one leading to the judge’s chambers. It was a long corridor, and at the end of it, Graybill yelled out calmly, “I’m contagious,
stay away from me. I’ve got tuberculosis.”

  Everyone in the courtroom was on their feet, craning their necks, trying intently to look down the corridor.

  “Your Honor, how long might you be out?” Arnie shouted.

  “My doctor isn’t sure, but probably around two weeks,” Graybill replied.

  An hour later, Judge Alvarez, the administrative court judge for Hillsborough County, the man who assigned the county judges to their cases, took the bench.

  “Your Honor, I’d like the case reassigned to Judge Fleischer,” Arnie asked confidently.

  “Your Honor, I suggest the case be readjourned in two weeks before Judge Graybill, if he’s healthy,” Hanes answered.

  Judge Alvarez promised to take their positions under advisement. He would rule in the afternoon about the disposition of the trial.

  “Bailiff, bring the jury in.”

  Up to that moment, the jury had been left completely in the dark, cooling their heels in the jury room.

  “Ladies and gentlemen, Judge Graybill has gone to the hospital. It’s not verified Judge Graybill has TB, but he might. He does have pneumonia. His doctor advised him to go to the hospital for further tests,” Judge Alvarez informed them.

  “I will ask you to return tomorrow at 9 A.M. In the meanwhile, the county board of health informs me that unless you’ve worked close to Judge Graybill, you’re in no danger. But anyone who is afraid they might have contracted tuberculosis can be tested for it. They’re sending a technician down here to the courthouse to do the testing, and we will pay for it, of course. I apologize for any inconvenience this may have caused you.”

  Now the jurors had something else to worry about: their own health. Six elected to be tested. Those who had worked close to Graybill were also going to have blood drawn, as were two reporters who had recently spoken to the judge.

  Outside with her family, Teresa was concerned about her own skin. “I’d rather go in with another judge than have to postpone it,” she said.

  Twenty minutes later, a county health department official carried his testing equipment into the jury room to begin the blood tests. Meanwhile, the wheels of justice turned swiftly.

  By afternoon, Judge Alvarez decided to go on with the case. He assigned it to William “Billy” Fuente, a criminal defense attorney who had only recently been elected judge. He had just been robed on the previous Friday.