Dark Justice

by Sinclair, Rachel

  She took a deep breath. “All of you are here for one reason. Addison Wentworth, a legendary actress, a two-time Oscar winner, was brutally murdered in her Malibu home. I’m not going to pretend that none of you know the details of this case coming in, because I know that all of you know these details. Probably a lot of you have accessed pictures of the murder scene on the Internet, even if you say that you haven’t. I’m realistic. I know that those pictures are out there, and people all over the world have been fascinated by this case.

  But I need for you to set aside all of that and just focus on the facts at hand. Specifically, I need you to focus on the fact that Carter Dixon’s hair was found at the scene. Carter Dixon also threatened Addison Wentworth on a Reddit site that is dedicated to a specific group that he belongs to - the Incel group. Incel is short for “involuntary celibate” and those Incel sites tend to be a breeding ground for misogyny. The boys on this site tend to write out violent fantasies about what they would like to do to various women.

  Carter Dixon was not an exception on that site. Granted, his misogyny was limited to one individual, Addison Wentworth, but the messages he posted about her were sickening. You will hear evidence about these messages that he posted about her. You will hear evidence that he was obsessed with her, as per his Reddit messages. You will hear evidence that his hair was found at the murder scene. You will hear evidence that there was no connection that Mr. Dixon actually had to Ms. Wentworth, so there was absolutely no innocent reason why his hair would have been found in her bedroom. None at all.

  The evidence will further show that Addison Wentworth was butchered. Our expert will reveal that, considering the amount of blood that was found in her bedroom, the only conclusion that can be drawn is that she exsanguinated, which means that she bled out. That was how she died, by bleeding out. This same expert will establish that there was no way that an individual could lose as much blood as was found in that bedroom and survive. This establishes that Ms. Wentworth was, in fact, murdered. Her body has never been found, but the fact that there’s not a body found does not preclude a charge of murder. Not in the state of California, and not in any of the other fifty states. If there must be a body for a murder to be charged, then that would just reward those individuals who are really good at getting rid of the physical evidence of their crimes.”

  She paced around some more, looking every juror in the eye again. “Really, this case is open and shut. Carter Dixon threatened Addison Wentworth. Carter Dixon’s hair was found in her bedroom. Carter Dixon didn’t know Ms. Wentworth, at all, so there was no innocent explanation for how his hair made its way into her bedroom unless he was the one who actually murdered her. That’s the only explanation for that hair. And that’s all that you really need to focus on, ladies and gentlemen of the jury. Don’t get lost in the weeds, here. Never mind about Senator Nash having an affair with her or Jackson Anderson allegedly impregnating her. I know that there was even a vicious rumor out there that Jackson Anderson had raped Ms. Wentworth and that Ms. Wentworth was ready to go to the cops about what he did, so he killed her for that reason.”

  She nodded her head. “You can admit it, I know that most of you have heard this story. You couldn’t miss it. That particular salacious tale has been leading newscasts for weeks now, and it’s been blasted on the cover of every magazine in the supermarket. It’s been all over the Internet. But that’s a conspiracy theory, one that has zero basis in fact. There’s not a single corroborating witness who can attest to it. So, it’s noise. That’s all it is - noise. Senator Nash did not murder Addison. Jackson Anderson didn’t, either.”

  She looked over at Carter and pointed to him, and then turned back to the jury. “No, Senator Nash or Jackson Anderson never laid a hand on Ms. Wentworth. The only person who did is sitting right here in this courtroom. His name is Carter Dixon. His hair was found in her bedroom, and that’s all that you need to know. His threatening and vile messages were posted on a Incel community. Once you hear the evidence that is presented against this young man, you will vote for a finding of guilty. Of that, I am sure.”

  I took a deep breath as Neera took her seat. I stood up and went over to the jury box. “Ladies and gentlemen of the jury,” I began. “I echo Neera’s greeting. I understand that being a member of the jury for a case such as this is not without stress. I know that, and I understand that, and I sympathize with that. And I thank you in advance for your ability to keep an open mind about this case.

  Yes, a hair belonging to my client was found at the scene. I’m not going to pretend that this isn’t a fact, because it is. And I’ll admit right up front that I do not have an explanation for this. I’m not going to pretend differently.”

  I took a deep breath as I looked at their skeptical faces. Several of them looked at Carter with hate in their eyes as I admitted that there wasn’t a good explanation for that hair being found at the murder scene. I knew that their minds were made up, especially after I said that.

  Nevertheless, I was just going to have to continue on. I really had no choice. I didn’t want Carter to plead guilty to this charge, because I honestly thought that he was innocent. The prosecutor’s office had offered 30 years, hard time, which meant that he would serve every day of those 30 years, and I encouraged Carter to turn down that offer.

  Was that a mistake? The boy was 16. With that prosecutor’s offer, he could have been out of prison before he was 50 years old. That wasn’t a great outcome, but it was certainly better than the alternative, where Carter would never get out of prison.

  I knew that it wasn’t a mistake, though, because I honestly thought that Carter wouldn’t make it a week in prison. There would be a bounty on his head, for sure, just because of who he was. I imagined that he would have had to have been put into protective custody, which would mean isolation. I thought that that would be a fate worse than death itself.

  “Okay. So, his hair was found in Addison’s bedroom. But I do have a good answer for those heinous messages that were submitted on Mr. Dixon’s Reddit page. I will present evidence by a forensic analyst who will testify that those messages were planted. He will testify that Carter’s Reddit page was hacked and spoofed, which means that somebody came in and made it appear that Carter was posting these messages, but it wasn’t really him. This is prima facie evidence that my client was set up. And if my client was set-up, then that would explain the hair found in the bedroom, because that would have been one more element in this set-up.”

  Seeing the jury faces, I knew that I wasn’t making inroads with them. They were still stuck on that hair. I knew that they would be, but I didn’t expect that their faces would still show such skepticism and outright hatred for Carter.

  I took another deep breath, feeling more and more deflated. “I will also present evidence that two other men had motive to kill Ms. Wentworth. Senator Nash, a powerful senator who was running for president of the United States, was having an affair with Ms. Wentworth. Mind you, Senator Nash is a married man. At the time, it was thought that his wife was dying of metastatic breast cancer, although that cancer has appeared to have gone into remission since then and there’s a good chance that she will be cured.

  Jackson Anderson, a powerful studio head, also had reason to kill Ms. Wentworth. You will hear evidence from two different people who were present at one of Mr. Anderson’s legendary bashes, and these individuals were specifically present during a private party that was being held for a select group of people who were all snorting heroin with Mr. Anderson and Ms. Wentworth. They will testify that they were asked to leave, and that when they left, Ms. Wentworth was unconscious.”

  There was no other evidence that I could present that Addison was allegedly raped. I was going to question Jackson about it, but I knew that he was going to lie. I couldn’t ask her girlfriends if she told them about the rape, because that was going to be hearsay. Unfortunately, she never got the chance to file a police report about the rape, otherwise I would have had that report in
hand.

  “You will also hear evidence that Ms. Wentworth was pregnant.” Unfortunately, I was unable to obtain a court order to enter her paternity test into evidence, even though I made a motion about this. Since Senator Nash and Jackson Anderson weren’t parties to the case, the judge refused to allow a subpoena for that paternity test. I had protested this ruling strenuously, but I couldn’t get the judge to order the DNA results be released.

  So, I had to rely on Jackson Anderson’s testimony that there was a pregnancy test in Addison’s trash can. I had spoken with him beforehand, and he agreed that he would testify to this. He wouldn’t agree to testifying that he was the father, however, because he still insisted that he wasn’t.

  I cleared my throat.

  I had a weak case and I didn’t really know what to do about it. My forensics guy was the only thing that could possibly save my case, if he was convincing in his testimony that Carter’s computer was hacked and his account was spoofed.

  Other than that, I had nothing.

  “In other words, there were two other men who had reason to kill Addison.” I knew that most of the people on the jury knew the gossip about Jackson, Senator Nash and Addison’s baby, so I hoped that this would also be my saving grace, but I wasn’t holding my breath about that one.

  My opening statement went on for several more minutes, but I could feel myself running out of steam by the end of it. I was very discouraged when I looked at the jurors while I spoke. They looked like they hated my client and hated me for defending him. They didn’t even try to disguise it - many of them were either disgustedly shaking their heads, rolling their eyes, or sneering. Many of them had closed body language, with their arms crossed in front of them. A couple of them were doing all of the above. I think that they thought, coming into this, that our side had a stronger hand, and when they figured out just how weak our hand was, they were furious to have had their time wasted.

  I sat down, and looked down at my hands. Declan put his hand around my shoulders. He could see that I was feeling defeated. “Don’t worry,” he whispered. “Whatever happens here, it’s going to be okay.”

  I shook my head.

  “No, it won’t be okay. If we lose, it won’t be okay.” I took a deep breath and looked over at my client, who was looking terrified and depressed.

  “It’ll never be okay.”

  Chapter 38

  For the next two days, Neera carefully laid out her case. She brought in her forensics guy who testified about the amount of blood found in the Addison’s bedroom was consistent with Addison being dead and not just missing. She carefully laid out, in front of the jury, the disgusting messages that Carter had written, after laying the foundation for presenting these messages into evidence. She brought in the forensics guy who identified Carter’s hair that was found in Addison’s bedroom.

  There wasn’t much that I could do with these witnesses, but I did try to trip all of them up.

  “Dr. Wyatt,” I said to the forensics guy who came in to testify about the amount of blood in Addison’s bedroom. “How did you measure exactly how much blood was found in Addison’s bedroom?”

  He then talked at length about pattern analysis and reconstruction, and how he used both trigonometry and a computer program to analyze the volume of blood and about the splatter pattern. He explained that it was difficult to ascertain from where the victim was bleeding because the splatter pattern was obscured by the sheer amount of blood, but that this wasn’t unusual when the victim exsanguinated.

  I looked over at the jury, and they were listening to Dr. Wyatt with rapt attention. He got into the weeds through his technical analysis, but they were trying to understand.

  “And is it your understanding that the only place that blood was found as in the bedroom? No drop anyplace else?”

  “That is correct.”

  “Is that unusual? To have a victim bleed out at the crime scene, have the victim’s body dragged from the scene, and not spill one drop anyplace else in the house?”

  He cleared his throat. “It is unusual, but not impossible. If the perpetrator wrapped the victim up tightly enough in a plastic bag or fiber-free material, the perpetrator could conceivably dispose of the victim without spilling a drop of blood.”

  I pointed to my client. “Take a look at my client. He’s 6’3” and weighs 170 lbs. He’s lean and lanky. Does he appear to have the strength to drag 130 lbs of dead weight out of a second-story window without dropping any blood anywhere?”

  At that, Neera was on her feet. “Objection. Calls for a conclusion that is out of this witness’ realm of expertise.”

  “Sustained,” Judge Carson said.

  “Nothing further for this witness,” I said.

  And so it went. Witness after witness came in, and there wasn’t much that I could do with any of them.

  I did manage to get somewhere when I questioned Detective Paulson, the guy who was in charge of processing the scene. “Detective Paulson, tell me about Ms. Wentworth’s home. Was there a gate to her home?”

  “Yeah, there was.”

  “And was that gate attached to some kind of alarm system?”

  “It was, of course. She was a big wheel, you know. She couldn’t just live in a place where any Joe Shmo could just walk on up and knock on her door, you know.”

  I got out a picture that I took of the home. It clearly showed a heavy wrought-iron gate in front of Addison’s home. “Is this picture a fair and accurate representation of Ms. Wentworth’s home?”

  He took a look at it. “Yeah, that’s what it looks like.”

  “And you see a heavy black gate in front of Addison’s home, then?”

  “Yeah, that’s what her house looks like.”

  “And is that gate something that would be easy for an average person to get behind?”

  “No, I told you that. Wentworth protected her property from randos. Not just anybody can get on that property.”

  “So, if my client, Carter Dixon, wanted to get on that property, would he have difficulties doing so?”

  “Sure. Anybody was going to have a hard time getting on that property. She didn’t have an electric fence or nothing like that, but the next thing to it. Somebody tries to get into that gate, and that alarm system is going off.”

  “And the only way to get through that gate would be through inputting a code, right?”

  “Right,” he said, nodding his head. “You gotta have that code to get past that gate.”

  “And is there a way to scale the fence to get on that property?”

  “No way. Her fence is wrought iron, like her gate, and it goes up 7 feet. You can try to get over her gate with a ladder, but where you gonna go after that? You gotta jump down all that way, even if you manage to get over that wall in the first place.”

  “And then getting into the house,” I continued. “Would an average person get able to get into her house, even if that person manages to get on the property somehow?”

  “Nope. Another alarm system in that house. You gotta know the code to get in that door, too. No rando is getting in that house, even if that rando manages to scale that wall surrounding the property.”

  “So, if my client, Mr. Dixon, manages to get on the property, he would have had a difficult time actually getting in that house?”

  “Of course. Unless he’s some kind of genius or something like that, he’s not getting on that property.”

  I nodded my head. “Nothing further.”

  I felt good about that exchange, but I finally drew blood with the moderator of the Reddit site. His name was John Wilson, and he complained that this entire situation led to the government ordering that the entire site be shut down. “This was a site that was an excellent venting area for our members. These are men who have been rejected by the world and were bonding with each other and befriending each other. Their pain was shared on this site. Now, these men have had to find other places to go, and they made friends on the site, friends that they might never
hear from again. This entire process has led to a real injustice to the members of our site.”

  Once Neera was through with John Wilson, I stood up to cross-examine him. “Mr. Wilson, you are the moderator of the sub-Reddit that was dedicated to the men who have identified themselves as Incel. You testified on direct that, as moderator, it is up to you to police the site, as it were. That means that if somebody reports a message to you, it’s up to you to decide whether to delete that message or to ban the user or give a warning, correct?”

  “Right. That is correct.”

  “And on August 21, the day that Addison went missing, my client allegedly posted a vile, disgusting and violent message that indicated that he wanted to rape Addison with his knife and mix his semen in with her blood. He threatened to rape her and slit her throat after he raped her. He wrote about this in detail, gory detail. Did you get a report about this particular message?”

  He shifted uncomfortably in his chair. “No. I did not get a report about this message.”

  I nodded my head. “You didn’t? A vile, graphic message like that, written about a high-profile celebrity, was written, and nobody reported it? Nobody?”

  He rolled his eyes. “I don’t get many reports about messages, truth be told.” He looked embarrassed. “Our site was a safe space where the men who frequent it were allowed to vent. Their venting often took the form of violent fantasies. I’ve also found that our members were reluctant to out another member, which is what reporting member’s messages would amount to.”

  I nodded my head. “So, on your site, it’s the wild, wild west, is it? As a moderator, if you don’t do something about a message that is explicit about raping and murdering a prominent actress, then what is your actual job there?”