Before He Wakes (44 page)

“So when does Barbara make that payment for November? She makes it on December twenty-eighth, the day the second payment becomes due. But at that time she still doesn’t have any money in her account. So the December payment comes up insufficient funds and what does Mrs. Peterson do? She calls Barbara and Barbara seems upset and she says, ‘Please don’t call my husband; we’re having family problems.’ And she talks about another woman.

“Now does that sound similar to something you have heard in this case? Do you really believe there was another woman? I suggest to you there wasn’t, never has been, never will be.”

But Mrs. Peterson doesn’t want to cause trouble, Evenson noted, and Barbara was able to hold her off from telling Russ and letting him learn of this new big debt.

The overdue payment for December is brought to the bank on January 6, 1988, and on the following day a check for $500 is drawn from Russ’s account at the credit union, payable to Barbara.

“It’s a forgery, according to Agent Matheny. Now, who do you think drew that particular document? He says he can’t be sure, but he had a high degree of belief that it was her signature.”

That check was deposited into her account on January 7. The third payment on Barbara’s loan was due January 28. It, too, bounced. The very next day, a check for $1,500 was drawn against Russ’s First Union checking account. Another check for $175 was drawn against his credit union account that day as well. That was, Evenson noted, the same day that Russ was voicing his concerns about Barbara into a tape player at his office. Both checks were written to Barbara, Evenson noted, and Matheny had found Russ’s signature on each to be a forgery.

That brought Evenson to the morning of February 1, 1988, and again he turned to his charts to show times of events. The call to the dispatcher came at 6:08, he said. The first deputy arrived at 6:18. Barbara and the deputy had arrived at the Duke Medical Center emergency room at 6:53. At 7:00 the school secretary received a call from Barbara saying Russ wouldn’t be at school because he was sick.

“Ms. Cagle thought it was a normal sick call. Now, is it unreasonable for me to imply that a normal person under those circumstances would be hysterical at Duke Hospital at that moment? And yet Ms. Cagle thought it was a normal call…. At that time, Doris Stager is waking up. The phone doesn’t ring at her house. She leaves for work at seven-fifty. The phone never rings once. At eight-forty, who calls but the defendant’s mother and says, ‘Doris, you need to come out to Duke emergency room. Barbara wants you out here.’ Not get out here quick, there has been an accident. Barbara wants you out here. Now, why would the defendant’s mother say Barbara wants you out here? Is this something that she feels like the victim’s mother needs to know, that Barbara needs her out there? Why is she saying that?”

Russ had died at 12:35 that day, Evenson reminded the jurors, and at 2:15, Barbara’s father had the bedding. “So isn’t it interesting that on that day when he’s shot and killed that the Terry family thought it was sufficiently important when all they had to do was comfort their daughter and their grandsons, they thought it was important to go and wash those things on that particular day.”

That same day, too, Evenson reminded the jurors, the bank manager had instructed an employee to call Russ and tell him about the missed payment on the loan Barbara had negotiated, but it was too late. Russ was already dead.

And on the following day, the statement from Russ’s credit union checking account was mailed, showing that a $500 forged check made out to Barbara had been written against his account nearly a month earlier. The implication was clear. Within a day, Russ would have learned of the forged check and that would have led to his discovery of Barbara’s secret loans and financial shenanigans and a certain confrontation, one that Barbara couldn’t face.

Also on the morning of February 2, Barbara had deposited two checks for $1,500 and $175 in her account, both dated January 29, both with Russ’s name forged, an obvious move to clear his accounts of all cash before they fell into his estate and the accounts were frozen. Yet at eleven that morning she was at the funeral home. “ ‘I don’t know what to do. I just don’t know what to do. Do you need my Social Security card? Can I draw a Social Security check on these two boys for this husband along with the first husband?’

“On February the third, Russ Stager is buried. On February the fourth, she calls Chris Wagner. ‘Chris, can you come over and pick up all of Russ’s clothing, just get it out of the house?’

“On February the fifth, she phones Doris Stager. ‘Was Russ ever in the regular army? I have been to the VA and was told that Russ had to be in the regular service before he would have insurance and was told the form number I would have to fill out.’ This was Friday. At one-forty-five, Barbara reenacts the shooting. I want to play that for you at this time. Now, keep in mind I’m going to play this thing, and then I want to come back and point out some things on this tape because you really can’t look at this tape too many times, and you see things that kind of pop out at you.”

The tape was started, but Evenson stopped it after Barbara, a flickering image, had begun demonstrating what happened.

“All right. When she stretches her hand underneath the pillow, she feels something. I want you to think about that just a little bit. How many times has she told you in this case that he and she have argued about him sleeping with guns under the pillow? Do you really believe when she feels something that she had a doubt about what that was that she felt? She knew exactly what that was if there was a gun under the pillow. There was no gun under the pillow.”

The tape resumed, but Evenson quickly stopped it again.

“Okay. Right there she said, ‘I stayed asleep.’ Her initial story was that the alarm went off in Jason’s room. She says she fell back asleep. I would contend to you what she’s telling the investigators is because she’s thinking about evidence at this point. She’s saying Jason got up. She has to give him time to get in the shower because I would contend to you that when this happened Jason was in the shower. The phone call went out at six-oh-eight. If his alarm clock went off at six, that gives you eight minutes, so she has to give him time before she reaches under the pillow to get that gun to let him get in the shower and I will tell you why in just a minute.”

Another short portion of the tape was played.

“Okay. Did you see how her hand was when she said, ‘I started pulling it out’? Her hand is right behind his head below the midline—
below
the midline. That’s totally inconsistent with the physical evidence, and look how close the gun is at this point.”

Again the tape.

“She says she has no idea how her hand was. There’s only one way for that gun to go off, and she knows her finger was in the trigger pull. It was inside the trigger guard. There’s only one way. She says, ‘I heard the awful noise.’ ”

The tape.

“ ‘Now, wait a minute,’ ” Evenson said, echoing Barbara. ‘That wasn’t quite right.’ She has seen the errors she’s making and she’s seeing how inherently ridiculous this story is, so she’s going to have to reposition his body because she does know the angle of that bullet.”

Tape.

“She knows how she had it in her hand.”

Tape.

“She’s thinking angle.”

Tape.

“Why is she doing that? In just a minute you will hear her say that she’s blind without her glasses. As you will recall, Doug Griffin says the house was dark when he went in. How does she know how his body was positioned to the point she can tell the detectives as she runs her hand down the contour of his back and pulls his head back? She’s thinking angles and evidence. The reason she knows the position of the body is because she was able to clearly see it when the gun went off, and the reason was that the light was on in the room, I contend to you, and she had a clear shot.”

Tape.

“Do you notice the hand gesture she’s making? She’s like this. She’s pointing the gun at his head, and it’s right behind his head and it’s still below the midline. Still
below
. You know, his head is naturally facing forward at this point. Your body just naturally goes forward if it’s limp. It’s a limp body. He has been shot. There’s no rigor. It’s limp. His head is slightly forward in the pillow.”

Tape.

“Okay. He has the gun if it would help her. ‘Oh, no, don’t give me the gun. I can’t stand guns. I’m terrified.’ Yet she has the gun right there on his waist crawling all over him.”

Tape.

“Okay. She doesn’t even know how it was in her hand. It doesn’t even register. She’s fuzzy about that, she says, but do you recall the reason she says she was pulling out the gun? Because she heard Jason’s alarm go off and she was afraid that Russ might think it was burglars. Something is not right here. You can’t have it both ways. You can’t be fuzzy-headed about how the gun was and at the same time have a clear head about what you’re doing pulling that thing out.”

Tape.

“Couldn’t figure out what it was. Do you believe that? The .25-caliber goes off right in front of you, and you say I sort of realized what it was, heard the awful sound.”

Tape.

“All right. She turns over and gets her glasses. Where’s the gun? Where’s the gun when she now turns over and gets the glasses? She doesn’t tell you that, does she?”

Tape.

“See that? Did you all see that, what I was pointing at? Do you know what it was? It was a phone. It was a telephone. And on that same table did you see the lamp?”

Tape.

“Now, she says, ‘I might have even turned him over some, like that.’ Do you remember the EMT said the body was in a semi-fetal position with one leg on top of the other? If she rolled that body back, as she said she did, you know what happens to the leg, don’t you? It falls over. There is no rigor. It’s a limp body. He has been shot, so how is it that leg got back on top when the EMTs got there? It’s because she never rolled him. She never rolled him one time. Don’t you think she might have done that?”

Tape.

“ ‘I turned the light on, told Jason to call 911.’ ”

Tape.

“Okay. Earlier in the tape she said that she got up, she went to the bathroom, turned the light on, came back and saw what happened, saw the pillow. She saw the blood. Later in the tape, she says, ‘I heard the awful sound,’ said, ‘Jason, call 911,’ and then came back. Why did she tell Jason to call 911 if she hadn’t yet turned the light on to see what’s on the pillow? Where is Jason when this happens?”

The tape played out.

“Ladies and gentlemen,” Evenson said, “as you can see, things are not right on that reenactment, and have never been right, and one of the main reasons is that the angle is all wrong. She told Dr. Honkanen she was three to five feet, getting off the bed, and just basically sliding the gun off the bed, but in this particular film, the gun is right behind his head. If the gun was like that, the bullet would have come right here and gone up through his head. She has to start repositioning his body….

“Just think about the probabilities of the angles of the bullet. If that gun really went off accidentally, don’t you think the probabilities are greater that it would have maybe blown off his ear, or gone in his neck, or off the top of his skull, or in his shoulder or back? But look at where that bullet hit. I hate to say it, but it’s a bulls-eye. It’s perfect, and does that show accident? The angle says more about this being intentional. This is the very back of his head. It’s a perfect shot. Isn’t it amazing that the one accidental shot on that occasion was so perfect?”

Evenson turned to the report written by Doug Griffin, the first person on the scene on the morning of the shooting, reading from it how Griffin had entered the darkened house, banging on the walls as he approached the bedroom. The door was slightly ajar, then it opened and the lights came on.

“Why aren’t the lights on?” Evenson asked. “They should be on. She’s standing in the dark. Did Jason phone in the dark? Did she cut the bathroom lights off that Jason had? She should be sitting there, I would contend to you, holding him in her arms. It’s her husband. She loves him. Rocking him, head in her lap. Wouldn’t She have wrapped a towel or something around his head? The EMTs didn’t notice any blood on her. I think it would be vivid in their minds.”

He read from the report about Griffin noticing the pistol and Barbara saying she had already moved it.

“What does that mean? ‘I’ve already moved it.’ You wouldn’t have said that. And then the chant begins. ‘Why does he keep those things in here? He has been hearing sounds. He placed the pistol under his pillow the night before.’ I thought she didn’t know the pistol was under there. Now she says he did place it under there. Did she ever say was he going to be all right? Oh, I love him, please help him, is he breathing? Please, is he going to be okay? Was this a case where the grieving wife was terribly and vitally concerned about the welfare of her husband, or is this a person who is being defensive and trying to set the stage for what has really happened?

“You know, in nature the praying mantis is so careful when he catches a fly. He’s kind of a bulky insect and he can do it with so much care and stealth that he can catch a fly, yet a fly has five thousand eyes, and I would suggest to you that she was so careful in the way she had this thing set up that she almost fooled a lot of eyes out there, and as a matter of fact, Detective Buchanan said, ‘Well, it looks like an accident to me.’ Because, you see, this thing had been thought out.