by David Bret
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there whilst Rock had been filming in Israel. He admitted that he had left this claim out of his pre-trial disposition, but did not explain why. There were gasps of horror and disgust from the gallery when Wright described the state of the bedsheets: “I saw some grease stains and empty yellow packages—I think people call them poppers—in the bed, and a towel on the floor. I think they call the towel a trick towel. There were skid-marks from sex-grease on the sheets, and other brown stains.” Wright then spoke of how he had observed first-hand the rapid disintegration of the Hudson-Christian union while at the same time witnessing Rock’s growing affection for Ron Channell. Lastly, under cross-examination from Harold Rhoden, he denied the allegation that he himself had “plucked teenage boys from the streets” and brought them back to the Castle for his own personal pleasure.
There was hilarity from the public gallery when Susan Stafford took the witness stand. She glossed over her lengthy friendship with Rock and confessed how Marc Christian had made a pass at her on the very day Rock had died. Harold Rhoden next quoted her as having said that she had once made a pass at the Pope during a visit to the Vatican! Stafford dismissed this as having been a joke. What really brought hoots of derision from the court was Rhoden’s next allegation—that this “acknowledged, born-again Christian” had not only stripped naked at one of Rock’s parties, but that she had claimed to have had sex with two AIDS sufferers, before having them exorcised of the disease by a priest. Christian had a fit of giggles over this and found himself being cautioned by the judge.
Next on the stand was Richard Lovell, a theatrical agent. He had been summoned to speak at a dinner party held at the Castle in the spring of 1984, the sole purpose of which had been to find Christian acting work, inferring that Rock had not just wanted him out of the house but out of his life. Rock was alleged to have
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told Lovell, “He’s interested, and I’d like to find something for him to do in order to get rid of him.” Lovell found himself attacked by both sides in the dispute over this. Robert Mills posed, “What did you do in terms for the interview?”—whilst Harold Rhoden got to the point and asked, “Mr. Lovell, isn’t it true that when he came into your office, you asked Marc Christian to have sex with you?” Lovell denied this.
There was serious probing when Mark Miller again took the stand, summoned by his defence counsel, Andrew Banks. Miller spoke of his first meeting with Christian, in October 1983 prior to Rock’s trip to Israel when Rock introduced him as his house-sitter. Like James Wright, Miller described Rock’s exhilaration early on in his relationship with Christian, and how quickly this had deteriorated. He recalled seeing Christian in bed with other men and how, upon Rock’s return from Israel, he had frequently spent nights away from the house—and that he had once “hit on” a straight guest at a Dean Dittman soirée.
Of Christian’s supposed blackmailing of Rock, when he had threatened to sell the Hudson-Channell story to the press, Miller claimed that Rock had said, “He has letters. Give him anything he wants—money.” Miller’s assertion that Rock had stopped having sex with Christian once Channell had appeared on the scene was challenged by Harold Rhoden, who repeated what he had earlier told Miller: Miller could not have known this because he had not been living at the Castle around the clock. Miller’s reaction was to say that proof was not necessary—that everyone knew that for much of the first half of 1984, Rock had been on some trip or other, almost always with Channell. This admission made many assume, rightly or wrongly, that Rock and his fitness instructor had been more than good friends, and that Channell had denied this because he had not wanted the public to know that he had been sexually involved with an AIDS victim.
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According to Miller, on 5 June 1984 Rock told him that he had AIDS, and made him swear to tell no one—not even his partner George Nader, though he had later permitted this. The court learned that Miller had accompanied his “employer” to a number of AIDS specialists, and that Rock had said of Marc Christian, “I could have gotten it from him. I want him out of the house.” On the subject of Rock’s final hospitalisation at the UCLA Medical Center, Miller reeled off a mental list of those who had been allowed inside the sickroom—Christian’s name had not been amongst them. When asked whether, in his opinion, he had thought that Christian should have been told about Rock having AIDS, bearing in mind that he had almost certainly been exposed to the virus, Miller repeated what Rock had told him—that he and Christian never had anal sex, just oral. Allegedly Rock had said, “I’m finished with Marc, I’m moving on to Ron Channell,”—adding there would be no risk of Channell getting AIDS because he had “struck out” (levelled) with him. Channell again repeated that he was heterosexual, and that he had been unaware of Rock’s diagnosis until their last trip to Paris….not that this prevented both sides in the dispute from speculating yet again on the kind of relationship he and Rock had had, particularly as the court was now told that Mark Miller had also been sexually attracted to Channell. Harold Rhoden interrogated Milller about this, and the $2,000 Rolex watch he had given Channell (he claimed on Rock’s behalf) shortly before Rock’s collapse in the Paris airport. Rhoden told the court of a reputed conversation between Christian and Miller wherein the latter, intent on seducing Channell by way of the costly gift, had said that Rock’s money would turn Channell gay: “The Movie Star’s money will turn any farmboy queer—if it doesn’t then I don’t know what would.” Miller denied ever saying this.
It was only now at this stage in the hearing that the real reason
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for its being held in the first place was discussed—the alleged conspiracy to prevent Marc Christian from finding out that Rock had AIDS and his own fears of contracting the disease. Particular emphasis was placed on Christian’s pre-trial disposition, part of which read:
I do not know whether [Rock] did it because he was non compos, or whether he wanted to kill me and take me down with him, but he wilfully withheld the information and slept with me.
The court was told that between July 1985 and March 1986, but not since, Christian had been tested HIV negative by five different specialists all using different techniques but that despite this and on account of its uncertain incubation period, there was still no way of knowing that he was not carrying the virus. Evidence of this was provided by Dr. Jeffery Laurence of New York’s Cornell Medical Center, one of the country’s foremost authorities on AIDS. Laurence briefly explained the history of the disease, said to be in its eighth year and still very much a mystery. The court learned of the grim conclusion, announced at the 1988 Stockholm AIDS Conference, that in some patients the virus could avoid detection by every known method of testing—by entering the victim’s body through anal or vaginal tearing during intercourse, and not always passing into the bloodstream where a test would pick it up. Harold Rhoden stressed that if this was the case, his client had every right to feel worried.
As the hearing headed towards its fourth week, the major players in this acrimonious drama were merciless with their allegations—as if Rock’s name had not been sullied enough. Wayne Bernhard repeated what he had seen taking place on the chaise longue at Christian’s birthday party—though by this stage
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of the proceedings there was some doubt as to whether Rock had felt like celebrating and actually been present at the event, mere weeks after being diagnosed with AIDS. James Dodds, another part-time handyman at the Castle and subpoenaed as an “adverse” witness, explained how he too had assumed that Rock and Christian had still been lovers in the late spring of 1984. Dodds then dropped a huge bombshell: once the Hudson estate had been turned over to George Nader, Mark Miller had promised that a percentage would be shared out between Dodds, Dean Dittman, Ron Channell, Clarence Morimoto, Tom Clark and James Wright. The only condition was that they would be required to perjure themselves during this hearing and make sure that Christian lost the case.
The most uncompromising witnes
s of all, not surprisingly, was Christian himself. Well-dressed, quietly confident and composed he politely denied every accusation Robert Mills flung in his direction. He had never sold his body for sex, nor slept with any other men at the Castle whilst Rock had been away. He had not met Rock at a bathhouse but at a Gore Vidal rally. He had not denounced Rock as “an old fart”, and he denied making a pass at Susan Stafford—arguing that she had made a pass at him, and confessed to him how she had propositioned the Pope during an audience at the Vatican. Christian also denied trying to pick up straight men at the Dean Dittman party, though he felt it his duty to inform the court that at one of these he had seen a number of “street urchins”—boys of fourteen or fifteen—procured by Dittman to serve the food, which they had done clad in just their underwear. And if this was not shocking enough, he added how Mark Miller had subsequently suggested, several times, that maybe Christian should bring a few under-aged boys back to the Castle to “spice up” his sex life with Rock—moreover that he had made this suggestion after Rock’s AIDS diagnosis. Christian
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repeated this under cross-examination from Miller’s defence, adding that Miller had once told him how he and George Nader often enjoyed sex with “pretties” (under-aged boys) and that he and Rock might do well to follow their example.
On 7 February during the fifth week of the hearing, the lawyers for both sides in the dispute began analysing the wealth of evidence—a mixture of unsubstantiated facts, gay parlance, changed statements, arguments and contradictory medical opinions. Harold Rhoden asked the jury to question Mark Miller’s integrity. Was he “an honest man” or “a pathological liar”? Both he and Rock Hudson were immoral men who had acted with extreme deviousness towards a “boy” (Christian) whom Rock had knowingly exposed to AIDS. And was it not the moral and legal duty of the AIDS victim to warn those around him, even those he hated, of the dangers of HIV so that they would not pass it on to others? And just how could one measure the mental anguish and enhanced fear that Christian had already suffered, not knowing if or when he was going to die? Harold Rhoden told the court that representing Marc Christian—a homosexual who did not have AIDS but who might still get it—was a no-win situation. He likened to “representing a Jewish client in 1939 Berlin”.
Rhoden therefore urged the jury to take into account the immense media and public prejudice aimed at the gay community in the wake of the AIDs epidemic, and begged them not to inflict any prejudices of their own whilst reaching their verdict. Homosexuals, he declared somewhat unctuously, had the same feelings for members of their own sex as heterosexuals had for members of the opposite sex. Rock Hudson, he concluded, had possessed no feelings for anyone but himself. Well aware that he had AIDS, he had persistently engaged in high-risk, unprotected anal intercourse with any number of innocent young
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men, caring not at all how many of these he might have infected or killed. As for Mark Miller—as chief beneficiary of the Hudson fortune, along with partner George Nader he naturally had made every endeavour to “please the boss” by conspiring with him to keep Marc Christian in the dark regarding the possible death sentence he had inflicted on him.
Miller’s defence, Robert Mills, argued each of these points concisely. Rock had no obligation, moral or otherwise, to warn Christian of any possible dangers to his health because by June 1984, when he had been diagnosed with AIDS, the pair had no longer been having sex. Yet even if they had still been lovers, Mills argued, had not Rock been given the “all clear” by Dr. Dormont? Harold Rhoden contested this, declaring that a man of Dr. Dormont’s high standing would not have said such a thing to a patient clearly already at death’s door. And even if Rock and Christian had no longer been lovers, Christian should still have been told the truth because, as Dr. Laurence had explained when describing the intricacies of the disease, there was a strong possibility that he had been infected before June 1984 and the condition not yet shown up—medical evidence had already ascertained that the virus often lay undetected by regular testing.
Rhoden then addressed the jury’s “moral interpretation” of Marc Christian—should any of its members be disgusted with his sexual practices. His client he avowed, was not gay but bisexual, and there might come a time when he would want to marry and have children. If so, these children could be doomed before birth by this virus. Rhoden next set out to prove just how much Rock had loved Christian and to demolish the opposition’s claim that their sexual relationship had ended before Rock’s diagnosis. He did this by reading out a number of romantic letters which Christian claimed Rock had sent him from Israel at the end of 1983. One included the admission:
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To say I miss you terribly is true. I have comfort in knowing it’s temporary, and fairly soon I will be able to hold you in my arms for ever…
Another letter referred to a long-distance telephone call, proving that there had been verbal communication between the two, which Mark Miller had denied. A third irrefutably proclaimed that Rock and Christian must have been head-over-heels in love:
Babe, I miss you so much…I’ve been in love before, but nothing like the way I feel now. I’m consumed and obsessed by you, but in a very warm and wonderful way…My heart feels like it’s going to explode with joy. When I get home I’m going to hug you and never let you go. We’re both going to starve to death because I will not let you go long enough to eat…
Rhoden asked the jury to carefully consider the evidence provided by James Wright and Clarence Morimoto. In his pre-trial disposition Wright had denied seeing Christian in bed with another man, yet in court he had cited several names and vividly described the soiled bedsheets. Morimoto had named Christian’s lover as Marty Flaherty, yet in a further statement he had been unsure who had been in bed with him. Both, Rhoden proposed, had lied under oath because Miller had promised them a percentage of his inheritance.
Rhoden attacked Miller’s defence for flying in costly AIDS expert Dr. Jeffery Laurence from New York, when money could have been saved by hiring an equally authoritative local man. Finally, there was the irreparable slur on his client’s good name. Miller had called Christian a blackmailer and a whore. Who would employ him now? Who would want to or even dare make
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love to him after what Rock Hudson had done to him? In short, his life had been ruined.
Robert Mills was no less scathing in his attack on Christian. His chief concern was that the major witness in this case—Rock Hudson himself—was only conspicuous by his absence, and that only he could have verified and defended himself against the charade that had unfolded over the last weeks. Mills asked the jury to consider why, if Rock had loved Christian as profoundly as his letters implied, Christian had never been taken anywhere of importance, why he had been left nothing in his will—and why, when Rock had first been diagnosed, had he not turned to Christian for support instead of Mark Miller? More essentially, he demanded, would Christian still be suing the estate if his lover had been anyone but the mega-rich Rock Hudson? He then asked the jury to ponder the fat that, if Christian was so mentally distressed, why had he not supplied the court with medical evidence to this effect?
Mills challenged the authenticity of Rock’s letters to Christian….whether they had been sent to him, or someone else. No names were mentioned in them: each began with the words “Hi honey”, or “Hi babe”, and Christian had not retained the envelopes. Though Mills did not specify Ron Channell as their recipient, the press assumed that he was implying this. Mills then cast his doubts over Christian’s claim over the sheer number of times he and Rock had had sex. Just how, he demanded, when his partner had been dying of the disease, had Christian managed to get away with not contracting AIDS when they had been so sexually active? In short, he concluded, the court only had Christian’s word that he and Rock had still been sexually involved between June 1984 and February 1985. Andrew Banks, Mark Miller’s lawyer, agreed with Mills on each of these points and concluded of Christian’s defenc
e, “It’s like Swiss cheese—it
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has so many holes in it, it’s hard to believe. To assist the jury in reaching their verdict in what he described was one of the most complex cases he had ever presided over, Justice Geernaert, with Mills’ and Rhoden’s assistance, drew up a document listing 37 questions, each relating to a specific aspect of Rock’s relationship with Christian and whether, aided by Mark Miller, Rock had conspired to put the young man’s life at risk. Basically, this transcribed as:
1: Had Rock had high-risk sex with Christian?
2-4: Had Rock given Christian the idea that he did not have AIDS and had such representation been false?
5-7: Had Rock’s misrepresentation been with the intent of coercing Christian to have high-risk sex with him, and would high-risk sex not have taken place had Rock told Christian the truth?
8-9: Had Christian been justified in relying on Rock’s representation that he did not have AIDS, and as such had Christian suffered emotional distress upon subsequently learning that Rock had lied to him?
