Cry Rape: The True Story of One Woman's Harrowing Quest for Justice (25 page)

Linda Draeger had helped secure this confession, so her testimony was critical. But Short deposed her for barely two hours before throwing in the towel. Draeger used the phrases “I don’t recall,” “I don’t remember,” or “Not to my recollection” more than forty times, not counting her “no” answers to questions beginning, “Do you know . . . ?” The veteran detective couldn’t remember the circumstances under which she assisted Woodmansee on October 2. She couldn’t remember him bringing up suicide or sexual abuse in Patty’s family history and said no mention was made of suicide watch—all things Woodmansee had admitted.

Draeger did recall lecturing Patty about “The Boy Who Cried Wolf ”

and letting her smoke inside rather than endure the (make-believe) inclement weather. Did Draeger also smoke, as Woodmansee and Patty attested? Draeger couldn’t remember.

Woodmansee, in his three depositions, also suffered from the severe memory lapses endemic among Madison police. Indeed, he could not even remember what
year
it was—1997 or 1998—when Riley gave him Patty’s letter complaining about his use of lies and threats. This was especially perplexing, since this letter and the one to the
Wisconsin State
Journal
that accompanied it were central to the Police and Fire Commission proceeding at which Woodmansee testified.

Back then, it was not disputed that these letters were received on October 23, 1997, the day after the
State Journal
article they referenced.

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And Woodmansee, explaining his failure to forward these letters to the district attorney’s office, as Riley had intended, testified that his report on the case had already been sent. But now, in March 2000, he could not remember “if the letter was in my possession” at the time he sent his report. When Short pressed him on this, Woodmansee got testy: “I did not intentionally hide this letter as it feels like you’re insinuating.”

Woodmansee said he completed his forty-eight-page report “sometime soon after” the last event it describes, on October 10. The exact date “should be easy enough to figure out if we look at the case intake form, because that’s when I forwarded the report to the DA’s office.” He located the form among the files he had brought along. “The date presented was the twenty-fourth of October.”

This did not ring any bells for Short, who moved on to other questions. Nor did the significance of this date occur to him when a copy of this intake form was included in a court filing several weeks later. Short was trying to hold his own against three attorneys as well as a judge who had announced his eagerness to throw out the case. He was juggling depositions and discovery demands in addition to handling other cases for which he was actually getting paid. And he was not fully aware of the timeline and testimony regarding Patty’s letters. Thus it never dawned on him what this date revealed: Woodmansee did not seek obstruction charges against Patty until
the day after
he was presented with the letters she had sent to his boss, accusing him of misconduct. This revelation powerfully substantiated one of Short’s causes of action—

that Patty’s prosecution was commenced as an act of retaliation. But Short was too overwhelmed to notice.

Woodmansee’s report did say he notified the district attorney’s office of his intention to seek charges two weeks earlier, on October 10. And the police department’s October 21 press release indicated its inclination to seek prosecution. But this did not actually happen until after Woodmansee received Patty’s letters, making his failure to give these to the district attorney’s office, as his supervisor had wanted, even more suspicious. It also meant that Woodmansee’s testimony before the PFC had been untrue.

Throughout his depositions, Woodmansee exuded what Short would later describe as “monumental arrogance.” His memory was selective, his answers self-serving and evasive, his reinterpretations of reality
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audacious. When not attacking Patty’s credibility, he pegged himself as her ally: “She’s had horrible things happen to her. She’s had a great deal of dysfunction in her life.” He saw her decision to fabricate a rape as a cry for help, to which he was seeking to respond by having her charged with a crime. “I felt that I was trying to help her,” he said. “I still feel to this day that I was.”

During his first deposition, Woodmansee testified that Patty was unequivocal in naming Dominic, saying she was “sure he did it” and “very sure he did it”—statements that appear nowhere in his forty-eight-page report. During the second deposition, he admitted, “She never said she was positive throughout the entire contact I had with her.” Woodmansee then expressed amazement that Patty was upset when he confronted Dominic: “It makes no sense to me.” Perhaps, Short suggested, she was bothered that he told Dominic she had, in no uncertain terms, named him as her rapist. “Why did you say that to him?” asked Short. Woodmansee: “Because she did!”

Woodmansee’s third deposition was devoted to his list of forty-one reasons for not believing Patty. Short went through the list, item by item. He asked about Woodmansee’s representation that Patty reported no odor, including any alcohol odor, from the suspect, then changed her account. Short noted that, according to Woodmansee’s report, one of the first things Patty said about her assailant was that he had “a strong smell” of alcohol on his breath. So why did Woodmansee put this on his list? “I don’t know what I’m trying to say,” he answered.

Another item: during her 911 call, Woodmansee alleged, Patty “indicated that the knife used in the assault was one of hers but she never mentioned this to me.” Short, reading from a transcript of the call, notes what Patty actually said: “He had a knife but I believe it was just like one of mine.” She never said it
was
one of hers. Woodmansee thought she had. Was it possible, asked Short, that he got this wrong? Woodmansee would not concede the point: “I listened to the tape closely. What I heard was her indicate that it was one of her knives possibly.”

Short continued through the list, establishing that each item could be the result of some error or misunderstanding. Woodmansee protested that it was unfair to focus on specifics when what mattered was

“the totality of the investigation with all the inconsistencies.” The detective admitted including discrepancies in the accounts given by Patty 178

Against All Odds

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and Misty without ascertaining who was right and who was wrong. He could not name any of the “several” women who told him it was not possible to feel a condom fill. Short found this hard to believe: “I mean, those are pretty personal questions.” Barked Armstrong, “What’s the point?”

Many items weren’t inconsistencies at all, just things Woodmansee considered strange, like Patty’s offer to go into the closet. Wasn’t this, asked Short, a rather smart idea? Woodmansee didn’t think so: “I found it highly unusual that someone going through the incident . . . described would make any suggestions to the suspect to help the suspect rather than just do nothing and be told what to do.”

Woodmansee had also listed that Patty only belatedly revealed the intruder had touched her on the shoulder and asked if she wanted more sex, to his mind a “very unusual and blatant fact.” Asked Short,

“Doesn’t that go to her credibility, though, that she would tell you such an odd thing?” “No,” said Woodmansee. “It goes to her consistency of saying very odd things of her alleged account of what took place.” When Short suggested Woodmansee’s assumptions of how Patty should react might be erroneous, given that he was not a blind rape victim, he replied acidly, “Neither was she.”

Under other circumstances, a rookie detective who mishandled a rape investigation might have acknowledged, even learned from, his mistakes. But the unwavering allegiance of the police department, district attorney’s office, and now the city’s hired attorneys caused Woodmansee to commit himself entirely to defending his actions and defam-ing Patty. In the process, damage was done not just to Patty but also to Woodmansee’s potential to become as good a detective as his self-image.

On April 17 the attorneys for Axley Brynelson filed a motion seeking summary judgment—dismissal of the case. It was accompanied by a 90-page brief, a 55-page document called “Proposed Findings of Fact and Conclusions of Law,” a 10-page affidavit from Tom Woodmansee, and more than 250 pages of exhibits, all made part of the case’s public record.

These included police reports that revealed Patty’s last name in violation of the protective order, excerpts from Patty’s depositions, and, of course, Judge Aulik’s ruling. “Plaintiff has failed to provide any factual support for her claims,” the motion said, referring to Short’s ongoing failure to respond fully to Axley’s interrogatories. And it claimed Patty’s
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causes of action were all barred by “the doctrine of qualified immunity”

that protected police officers in the performance of their duties.

Woodmansee’s affidavit, like his list of forty-one points, mainly itemized his reasons for doubting Patty’s account. They ranged from the fact that no condom or condom wrapper was found to Woodmansee’s belief that Patty’s demeanor “was not consistent with that of a sexual assault victim.” There was one freshly minted reason: Patty’s failure to force her adult daughter to break up with the chief suspect. “In my opinion, it is inconceivable for a mother to allow her daughter to be alone overnight with the individual who the mother believed had sexually assaulted her.”

Short had just three weeks to submit his response. In the meantime, the attorneys for Axley Brynelson proceeded with plans to depose nearly everyone on his list of potential witnesses. It was an exercise that would prove helpful to Patty’s case but be devastating to Patty.

24

A Strong Case

Patty’s agreement with Mike Short required her to pay all expenses as the lawsuit progressed. These included filing fees, copying costs, and, most onerous, depositions. While the court reporter was hired by the party doing the deposition, both sides ordered transcripts, and the tab soon ran into thousands of dollars. Patty, having nowhere else to turn, began borrowing from her businesses. It was a dangerous strategy, but she was desperate.

In early April 2000 Hal Harlowe expressed his concern about Patty’s circumstance: “The inarticulate term of art for it is, they’re ‘cost-ing her to death.’” He feared her case would not just be dismissed, which he expected, but that she would be assessed costs. Short brushed this off: “Patty is as judgment-proof as any person I’ve ever seen in my life.” She made eight dollars an hour. Her businesses were struggling.

There was no way she could ever repay the vast sums of money Axley Brynelson was expending, as Judge Shabaz had put it, “running up the meter” on its deep-pocketed client.

Axley tapped two outside experts—Ray Maida, a local investigator of sensitive crimes who had worked for both the police and district attorney’s office, and Joseph P. Buckley, president of John E. Reid and Associates, a Chicago-based interrogation-training outfit—to review Patty’s case. Buckley, as coauthor of
Criminal Interrogations and Confessions,
literally helped write the book on techniques used to extract sometimes-false confessions from recalcitrant suspects. Maida was paid $55 an hour for his time; Buckley got $150 an hour, or $1,500 per day,

“plus expenses.” Maida, in his written report, found “nothing in the 180

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documents” or his interview with Woodmansee to indicate any “wrongdoing” or violations of common police practices. Buckley, in a three-page report accompanied by a six-page list of materials he professedly reviewed, concluded that police had done “a reasonable investigation,”

that Patty’s interviews and interrogation were “conducted in a reasonable manner,” and that her resulting confession “appears to be a voluntary and truthful statement.” That she promptly and consistently repudiated it was not given any credence, or even addressed.

In the latter half of April 2000, nine more people were deposed in Patty’s case. Most sessions were brief, averaging just under two hours.

The longest were for Misty and Debra Kuykendall, a “direct services supervisor” at the Rape Crisis Center. The shortest were for Dr. Thomas Stevens, Patty’s ophthalmologist; and Nina Bartell, a psychotherapist she visited after the charges were dropped. Also deposed: Connie Kilmark, Linda Moston, Patty’s sisters Brenda and Sue, and Jill Poarch.

The Axley attorneys, Modl and Armstrong, divided these depositions between them. Both routinely attacked witnesses when they supported Patty or called the conduct of police into question, as all of them did.

For instance, when Misty testified that she had been offended by some of Woodmansee’s questions—like how often she and her boyfriend had sex and in what positions—Modl tore into her. “Did you understand, Misty, that [Dominic] was a suspect?” No, not at that point.

“Do you know now that [he] was a suspect?” Yes. “And you understand that your mother said the person who assaulted her assaulted her anally, orally, and vaginally?” Yes. “And knowing what you know now, do you find Woodmansee’s questions to you about positions . . . to be offensive?” Well, no, but he could have explained himself better. “Did you ask him why . . . he was asking it?” No.

Misty, in response to Modl’s leading questions, admitted being surprised that, after the assault, her mother was not more upset. But this had not caused her to doubt that an assault occurred. On this point, Misty was a rock: “I don’t believe my mom would make up a rape.”

What made this testimony more compelling was Misty’s insistence that this was
always
her position: “I never doubted her being raped at all, period.” This meant that while Woodmansee and later Schwartz were pumping her for information to support an obstruction charge, 182

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Misty believed her mother was telling the truth. The only point of disagreement was whether Dominic was to blame. And, from Misty’s perspective, it wasn’t clear “who was focusing more on Dominic between the two of them”—her mother or Detective Woodmansee.