by Megan Goldin
“What happened that night?” Alkins asked.
“I was in the boat shed trying to sleep. The wind howls when it blows into that rickety old shed and I’m a deep sleeper, so for a long while I didn’t know that anyone else was there. Later in the night, I came out to pee and I found a half-naked girl lying on the sand. At first I thought she was dead, because she didn’t move and her eyes were closed, but then she made a whining sound. Like an injured animal. I realized that she was awake, but she wasn’t responsive. It looked to me like she was drugged, or delirious. She was in obvious pain, but not so much physical. More emotional. It’s hard to explain.”
“Did the girl say anything to you?” Alkins asked.
“I don’t think she realized that I was there. She kept whimpering and saying things like, ‘Let me go. Let me go.’”
Alkins showed Knox a series of photos of teenage girls and asked him to identify the girl he’d seen on the beach that night. He immediately picked out the photograph of Kelly Moore.
“As the only other person who was at the beach that night, did you hear or see anything that indicates whether Scott Blair raped Kelly Moore?” Alkins asked.
“Oh, he raped her all right.” said Knox. “After I found that poor girl, I saw and heard enough to know without a shadow of doubt that she didn’t want any of it.”
50
Guilty or Not Guilty
Season 3, Episode 11: He Said/She Said
The most incriminating testimony against Scott Blair may well be the word of a drifter. His name is Vince Knox. That’s not his real name. He changed it when he got out of prison. Aside from a criminal record, he has a history of vagrancy. For the past few years, he’s been living in Neapolis. He gets work where he can find it. Odd jobs mostly. He mows lawns, clears gutters. On weekends, he pushes a wheelbarrow down the beach to collect discarded cans and bottles for cash deposits.
He owns a rusty station wagon and a small outboard motor boat. He takes it out most mornings to catch crabs. He sells his haul to local restaurants to supplement his income. He cares for injured birds with damaged wings; he wraps them up in his own shirts to keep them warm. And he keeps his own company. He doesn’t have friends. Not unless you count the birds and strays he feeds and cares for when they’re injured.
He sleeps wherever he can lay his head. In good times, it’s a room, if he can find one cheap. In bad times, he sleeps in the back of his car. Sometimes he sleeps on the beach or in a boat shed. That’s where he was on the night in question. The night that K was allegedly raped.
Vince Knox was one of the character witnesses called by Scott Blair’s defense lawyer earlier in the trial. He told the court how, three years ago, Scott dived into the sea in dangerous conditions and saved a drowning boy who’d been pulled out by the currents. Vince Knox said Scott was a hero.
Today in court, he testified again. This time, he didn’t call Scott a hero. He called him a rapist.
Vince Knox told the court that he was living in a boat shed last year when he came out early in the morning and saw K lying half-naked on the sand. He thought she was dead.
When she whimpered, he realized that she was alive. He recalled seeing bruises on her body. It looked to him as if she’d been assaulted. He suspected she’d been raped. He took off his shirt and covered her nakedness with it. Then he tucked it around her like a blanket. Just the way he does with the injured birds that he saves. He was worried she’d go into shock.
He returned to the boathouse and kept watch from the gap between the timber slats. He said he didn’t want to frighten her if she came to and saw him. He’s an intimidating man. Frightening to look at. He has scars on his face from a knife attack in prison and tattoos that go all the way up his neck.
He didn’t call the police or an ambulance that night. He claims his mobile phone battery was dead. He admitted that he could have taken her to the hospital in the back of his station wagon. He didn’t. He was afraid that he’d get jammed up. Perhaps be accused of raping the girl himself. Or get hit with a vagrancy and trespassing charge. This is a man who’s spent so much of his life in prison that he doesn’t trust the authorities to leave him be.
So he watched K to make sure she was safe while he was hiding in the boat shed. Peering through the cracks in the timber slats, he saw Scott Blair walk onto the beach from his sports car. Scott was carrying a small navy sports bag. The girl had woken by then. The shirt Vince Knox left on her body slid off as she sat up, visibly disoriented. From his hiding place in the shed, Vince Knox assumed that Scott was there to help the girl. Instead, Scott kicked her lightly in her thigh with his sneaker. Like he was rousing a stray dog.
Scott ordered her to get up. He told her to shower in the icy outdoor beach shower. He gave her soap and shampoo, which he’d brought in the sports bag. He told her that if she didn’t wash off all the evidence, then he’d do it himself. “Better be careful,” he threatened with a smirk as he groped her naked body. “One thing might lead to another. I might get carried away.”
When she’d showered and dressed, Scott pushed her against the boat shed where Vince Knox was hiding. Scott warned her not to tell anyone what he’d done to her. Vince Knox recalled that Scott took specific pleasure in mentioning some of the sex acts he’d forced on her. He heard Scott tell the girl that he’d destroy her reputation if she told on him. After that, Scott gave her cash and told her to use it to catch a bus home.
Because K’s testimony was struck from the record, whatever she said that day in court does not exist. It never happened. The jury can’t refer to it. They can’t even remember it. This is why Vince Knox’s eyewitness testimony is so crucial. And his testimony was damning.
Despite his gruff, abrupt manner, I think the jurors found him sincere. A simple man who spoke from the heart in simple words. They appreciated his candor. They realized that he had nothing to gain from coming forward, other than telling the truth. The jury, like all of us, is suffering from trial fatigue. I could tell they liked his authenticity.
When it was his turn, Dale Quinn threw everything he had at Vince Knox. He accused Knox of being a voyeur who spied on two teenagers having a romantic interlude at the beach. He suggested Knox’s testimony was motivated by anger against Scott Blair’s dad, who’d hired him in the past to do ground maintenance work but never followed through with a full-time job. Once he was done casting aspersions on Vince Knox’s character, he focused his attention on finding inconsistencies in his testimony. In trying to trap him in lies.
“Are you asking the court to believe you slept through a rape?” Quinn asked.
“The wind rattles those sheds something awful,” Knox responded.
“If the shed rattles so loudly that you can’t hear a girl being raped, then how did you miraculously hear the defendant discussing his crimes with the complainant, as you have claimed? Isn’t it true that you’re lying when you say you overheard this purported conversation between my client and the complainant?”
“I’m not lying. I heard every word because he pushed her against the side of the boathouse where I was hiding. I was right on the other side of that thin wall. Less than an inch away from them. I heard every word. I ain’t deaf. Not yet, anyway.”
“Why did you not mention any of this when you were on the stand last time?” Quinn asked.
“You didn’t ask me if Scott Blair did it. If he raped that girl. You just asked me about how he rescued that drowning kid all those years ago. If you’d asked me whether he did it, then I would have told you.”
It went on like this for a while, until Dale Quinn was handed a folder of notes from the associate whom he’d sent out earlier. Quinn skimmed the notes in the file and then asked the judge’s permission to have a sidebar conversation with the associate who’d prepared the material. There was obviously something that he wasn’t expecting. We all watched and wondered what was going on as he turned to Scott Blair’s father and the two men whispered to each other angrily. It ended with both men looking
furious. The judge intervened. He said Quinn had enough time to consult and he should continue with his questioning.
“Why should the jury believe a man who killed two of his friends by driving drunk into a tree?” Quinn asked. “You were in jail for killing those boys, weren’t you, Bobby Green? Then you came back here and changed your name so that nobody would know your criminal past.” There was an eerie silence in the court among those who remembered the story of Bobby Green.
“I changed my name just like I said earlier, because I wanted a new beginning. I served time with Vince Knox. He saved my life. More than once. I wanted to honor his memory. That’s why I use his name. I knew that nobody here would have given me any peace if they’d known I was Bobby Green,” Knox responded.
When he was eighteen, Vince Knox, who was then known as Bobby Green, drove a pickup into a tree one summer night. His blood alcohol content was twice the legal limit. The vehicle turned into a fireball. His friends died. He was badly burned. He almost died. He was hospitalized for months and underwent multiple lifesaving surgeries. He’ll carry those scars to his dying day. After he recovered, he pleaded guilty to manslaughter and served time. In the years that followed, he spent more time in prison than out of it until he returned to Neapolis to start his life afresh several years ago.
If Quinn thought that delving into the open wounds of Vince Knox’s past would provoke him to explode on the stand, then he couldn’t have been more wrong.
Vince Knox stood up, a burly man with thinning brown hair and a protruding belly. His tattooed neck and scars from being stabbed in prison attested to his troubled life.
With tears in his eyes, he turned to the jury. “I’ve never said I was a good man. I’ve done plenty wrong in my life. Plenty to be ashamed of. I killed my friends. Drove that truck straight into a tree. But that’s got nothing to do with what happened that night. Scott, he did something bad to that girl. He raped her. And then he told her he’d do it again if she ever told anyone. I heard him say it. Every word of it.”
Vince Knox’s testimony was enough for Judge Shaw to reject Dale Quinn’s request to dismiss the case due to lack of evidence. Quinn looked crestfallen. He’d walked into court that morning expecting the case would be over by lunchtime. He walked out like the rest of us, unsure where the verdict was headed.
Mitch Alkins and Dale Quinn gave powerful closing arguments. In Alkins’s version, Scott Blair was a predatory rapist. Cruel, calculating. He knowingly and with full premeditation entrapped a teenage girl and raped her to win a competition. His conscience was guilty from the start. He tried to arrange an alibi and did his best to wash away the evidence. In Dale Quinn’s account, Scott Blair was, at worst, an immature jock falsely accused after a consensual sexual tryst that the girl regretted in hindsight, spurred on by her angry, vengeful parents and a prosecutor’s office trying to use Scott as a high-profile scapegoat to satisfy a public lust to jail men accused of sex crimes.
As the jurors filed out of court to deliberate the verdict, I felt as if I were saying goodbye to old friends. At the start of the trial, the jurors were strangers. To each other. To me. To everyone in court.
Over the course of the trial, I’ve come to know them as individuals. Their facial gestures. Their nervous tics. I’ve seen them cry. And laugh. Roll their eyes in disbelief. Mostly I’ve seen them stifle yawns while they discreetly checked the time. After two weeks of testimony, they’re now tasked with determining whether Scott Blair is guilty beyond a reasonable doubt of rape and sexual assault.
There are some who say that the reasonable doubt burden is one of the reasons why so few rape cases end in a conviction. It’s a difficult standard to meet when it comes to sexual assault, because rarely are there witnesses other than the parties themselves.
The idea that guilt must be proven beyond a reasonable doubt dates back to the eighteenth-century British jurist Sir William Blackstone, who wrote in his seminal works that underpin our legal system: “Better that ten guilty persons escape, than that one innocent suffer.”
Studies show that rapists tend to be repeat offenders more than other criminals. They go on to rape again, at a rate of around five rapes in their lifetime. That means the ten guilty rapists who escape, to paraphrase Sir Blackstone, might go on to rape another forty innocent women. I wonder what Sir William Blackstone would say about that?
The jurors will review the evidence and argue the merits of the case. Then they will vote until they reach a unanimous verdict. Either they will find Scott Blair guilty. Or they will find him not guilty. We will find out in the coming hours or days.
I’m Rachel Krall and this is Guilty or Not Guilty, the podcast that puts you in the jury box.
51
Hannah
Dear Rachel,
Let me start by apologizing. I promised myself that I would respect your boundaries. I’ve restrained myself. I haven’t left letters on your car or anywhere else intrusive for some time. Yet here I am, downstairs in the lobby of your hotel, writing this note. I promise that I’ll leave it just outside your door, followed by a loud knock to ensure that you’ll get out of bed to collect it.
I’m ready to meet you, Rachel. Tonight. At the Morrison’s Point jetty. I’ll go there as soon as I drop off the letter. I know it’s late, but please come. I don’t think I can do this alone.
I know who killed Jenny. I’d tell the cops, but after watching the Scott Blair rape trial unravel, I’m not confident a jury would ever convict. The lack of forensic evidence and the passage of time would work against a successful prosecution. There’s one witness from the night Jenny was killed. A reluctant witness. A dying witness. You led me to him when I followed your car to the Golden Vista retirement home.
Rick saw Jenny’s killer. He told me so when I spoke with him this morning, after he was discharged from the hospital wing. At first Rick pleaded ignorance, but he eventually relented. He said that it didn’t much matter anymore if the truth came out. Apparently, he has weeks to live. “They can’t do anything to me in hell.” He laughed dryly. And then he told me what he remembered from that night. He told me the name of the boy he’d seen running away from the beach.
Thanks to Rick’s recollections, and my own hazy memories, I believe he’s right. The only way to find out for sure is to ask him straight out. To ask Jenny’s killer. His confession might be all we get.
Below is the letter that I’ve been writing to you over the past few days, about what happened the night that Jenny died. I wrote it in fits and starts, in different pens, and in handwriting that changed with my moods. I hope it’s legible enough for you to read.
* * *
After that drunk boy disconnected my call, he smashed the phone with the receiver until it was a mess of wires. When he was done, he kicked the glass phone booth door until it shattered. All the while, he held my upper arm so tightly that it was bruised for days afterward. My feet were bare. By the time he’d dragged me across the concrete toward the beach, the soles of my feet were slashed and embedded with glass.
He threw me on the sand next to Jenny. She was lying on the ground near the fire as the boys stood over her, drinking.
“Your little sister came to tell you that you need to go home.” He laughed. Jenny stared at me. The numb expression on her face turned to panic.
“She’s the kid sister,” said a drunk voice from the dark. “What do we do with her?”
“Let’s take a look at her. Maybe she’s old enough.”
I felt a hand grab my chest. “Flat as a pancake,” he said. “Definitely underage.”
He flicked up the skirt of my dress. I tried to pull it down. It made him laugh. He flicked it up again. I grabbed the folds of my dress and held them tightly to my body.
“What do we have here?” He pushed my hands away and pulled my skirt up anyway so they could all see my underwear.
“Hello Kitty panties. Such pretty panties.” He pulled me toward him and whispered into my ear with his stale drunken breath, �
�Do you know what a grown-up kitty is called?” I shook my head.
“Please. I’ll do whatever you want. Leave her alone. She’s just a kid.” Jenny’s voice was hoarse.
“I don’t do little girls,” said one. “That’s disgusting.”
“What do you think, Bobby?” the boy holding me called out. “Which do you prefer, big sister or little sister? You haven’t shown any interest in banging the big sister. Maybe you’d like to give the little one a go.”
“Leave her alone,” shouted Bobby.
“Are you sweet on her, Bobby?” the boy teased. “I always figured you liked them young,” he said, flicking up my skirt again and laughing as I tried to hold it down.
Bobby dived at the boy and pushed him to the ground. Those boys were strong, but nothing compared to Bobby Green in a rage. He punched one of them until he’d turned his face into a bloody pulp. One of the others kicked him in the ribs to get him to stop. They dived on him and rolled together in the direction of the bonfire until I heard Bobby scream. I didn’t know why until I smelled burning human flesh. After that, everything was a blur. There were panicked shouts about taking him to the hospital and howls of agonized pain from Bobby. They carried him to the truck. Someone ran back and kicked sand over the bonfire to douse the flames. It was the one who’d been driving the truck that very first day.
“You listen to me, you slutty little bitch,” he snarled, lifting up Jenny’s head by her hair as he spoke to her. “If you ever tell anyone what happened, then we’ll do to your little sister what we did to you. But worse. Much worse. Do you understand?”
Jenny nodded.
“You learn fast.”
He ran to join the others, leaving us lying in a heap on the beach, clutching each other as we watched the truck reverse, its headlights on as it sped out of the parking lot.
