Death Sentence (26 page)

“You didn’t write a check on her?”

“No, I did not.”

“You weren’t afraid of her?”

“No, I was not. There was times that I was thoroughly confused.”

When Jacobson asked about her mother, she told about taking out a loan in her mother’s name without her knowledge.

“You used this money for doctors and medications?”

“The majority of it, yes.”

“Your own mother?” Jacobson asked incredulously, referring to the poisoning.

“Yes, I did not realize my mother would die. I have never intended to kill anyone.”

“Surely you must have suspected?”

“Object to form,” said Britt.

“Sustained to the form,” said the judge, and Jacobson did not pursue the question.

“What about Mr. Barfield?” he said.

Velma shook her head and denied any memory of poisoning him.

Jacobson took her through the first interview with the police, then asked about the second on March 13.

“It is hard for me to really tell exactly what I did tell them. I do not remember my rights being read to me. I made a statement that I didn’t mean to kill him. Mr. Lovett said, ‘It will make it easier on you, tell everything you know.’ I told everything I knew.”

To reemphasize her abuse of prescription drugs, Jacobson got her to tell about her hospital stays for overdoses. Then, wanting to leave nothing for Britt to accuse them of hiding, he asked, “You have been charged with worthless checks many times, have you not?”

“Right.”

“Have you ever been charged with forging a prescription?”

“Yes, sir.”

“You served time in prison for that, did you not?”

“Yes, I did.”

Jacobson thought he had gotten in every point that he wanted Velma to make, and she had done fine—so far. But now would come the real test.

“Your witness,” he said, turning to Britt.

Cross-examination was not something that was easily planned, Britt believed. Mainly, it consisted of seizing opportunity. But in Velma’s case Britt had been planning, because he knew exactly what he wanted from her: anger. And from reading her psychiatric reports, he thought he knew how to get it.

“I liked what her shrink had said about her,” he later recalled. “Passive-aggressive. When she was confronted or felt threatened, she became very aggressive.”

He wanted the jurors to see that aggression, that hostility, that desire and ability to kill, and from the first question he bore in, his tone sharp and indignant.

“So you can’t recall poisoning your second husband, Jennings Barfield?”

“No, sir, I do not.”

“Had you ever bought any poison in 1971?”

“Uh, 1971, no, I had not.”

“When was the first time you ever recall purchasing any poison?”

“Before my mother died.”

“How long before?”

“The day that she died.”

“What type of poison was that?”

“It was Singletary’s.”

“Had you ever had any experience with poisons before?”

“No, I had not.”

“Thereafter, you switched to Terro ant poison, did you not?”

“Later, yes, I did.”

“Did you ever give any poison to Record Lee?”

“No, I did not.”

Velma’s responses were growing sharper. Ronnie could tell that Britt’s tone and the hard, fast questions were beginning to get to her, and he was worried.

“Have you ever given poison to anyone who recovered and survived?”

“No, I haven’t, but could I state one thing, please, sir?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“What I would like, Your Honor, to say to the jury and all, these autopsies—let me say first of all, when a person dies, one of our loved ones, friends, whatever dies, and they ask for an autopsy to be performed, is it not true that we have an autopsy performed to find out the reason of the death? Is this true or not?”

“Let’s not argue with anybody,” Judge McKinnon said to her. “You may make a statement and respond to the question.”

“So I don’t believe it killed them really,” Velma went on emphatically, ignoring his admonition. “That is exactly the way I feel about it.” She stared at Britt with an air of smugness.

“Beg your pardon?” he said, his voice filled with wonder.

“I don’t think it killed them.”

“You have heard the testimony in the courtroom, have you not?” Britt asked, his voice bristling.

Ronnie had seen his mother’s rage building many times. He saw it in her eyes now, and his heart began to sink.

“Yes. I said I heard the testimony,” Velma snapped at Britt. “What testimony are you talking about?”

Later, Jacobson remembered cringing at this point. He put his hand over his eyes and turned to Ronnie with a look of dismay. Velma was reacting just as he had feared. “Her eyes turned as flinty as steel,” he recalled later.

“Let me ask you this,” said Britt. “In the five people that it is alleged you killed, autopsies were performed in four of them, were they not?”

“Every one. I never objected to any of them.”

“That’s right. And the reason you didn’t object is because the first time there was an autopsy performed, you slipped by. You thought they couldn’t pick up arsenic poison in an autopsy. Isn’t that correct?” He was practically yelling at her.

“No, indeed not,” Velma said, her anger apparent. She crossed her arms defiantly and chewed her gum fiercely.

“She’s blowing it big-time,” Ronnie whispered to Jacobson, his face a picture of despondence, and Jacobson could only agree.

“Now you say you started giving Taylor poison on the thirty-first of January,” Britt said, “is that correct?”

“It was on a Tuesday.”

“To make him sick?”

“Right.”

“Had you ever made anyone sick with Terro before?”

“No, I had not made anyone sick with Terro.”

“Well—”

“Except Mr. Lee,” Velma quickly added.

“You made Mr. Lee sick with it?”

“Right.”

“Did you make Mrs. Edwards sick with it?”

“No, I did not.”

“You made Mrs. Edwards sick with Singletary’s rat poison, did you not?”

“No, I thought it was roach and ant poison,” said Velma, with a look of satisfaction, as if she had scored against Britt.

“So you knew these compounds would certainly make people sick?”

“I knew it would make them sick.”

“You knew it would kill them, too, didn’t you?”

“No, I did not.”

“Did you tell Frieda Monroe at the hospital, ‘You needn’t look for recovery of Mr. Lee because I have been through this before and I know they don’t recover’?”

“I did make that statement, and I had stood by a lot of people that had died that had not had ant or roach poison also.”

Ronnie sat looking at the tabletop, no longer able to watch what his mother was doing to herself.

Britt went to Velma’s interviews with the detectives and asked if she was under the influence of drugs during the first on March 10.

“I was under the influence every day.”

“Well, were you—”

Velma cut him off petulantly. “If I was under the influence every day, I was then.”

When Velma said she didn’t recall signing a waiver of rights, Britt carried it to the stand, handed it to her and got her to admit that it bore her signature.

“Do you write that plainly when you are under the influence of intoxicating drugs?”

“I sure do,” she said with a tone of self-satisfaction. Still she maintained that she didn’t recall having the waiver read to her. She did, however, remember denying to the officers that she had anything to do with poisoning Stuart.

“Your denial was not true, was it?” Britt said. “You had killed these people, hadn’t you?”

“No. I didn’t think that I had killed them,” she said adamantly. “No, I did not.”

Britt moved on to the $300 check that Velma had forged on Stuart’s account. She took the checkbook from a dresser in his bedroom before she poisoned him Tuesday and wrote it when he went to fix a hog fence, she said. She kept it in her pocketbook.

“When did you cash the check?” Britt asked.

“On Friday,” she said, the day he died. She drove his truck to the bank.

“And left him there at the house?”

“He seemed better.”

She was gone for about an hour after lunch, she said.

“So it wasn’t true when you told the officers that you killed him because you were afraid that he was going to have you arrested for cashing a forged check, was it?”

Velma looked as if she’d been caught off guard. “Would you repeat that, please?”

“In other words, you cashed the check just before he died, didn’t you, lady?” Britt said sharply.

“Yes, sir. I sure did.”

“And you wrote it the very day you put the poison in his food, didn’t you?”

“I sure did.”

“And kept it while he suffered through three days?” he said indignantly, his voice thundering through the courtroom.

“Object,” said Jacobson.

“Sustained to the hollering.”

Ronnie could tell that his mother’s wrath was reaching explosive levels again, but Britt didn’t press further, turning instead to another check Velma had written.

“And in Mr. Lee’s case, you wrote the check on Record Lee, his wife, didn’t you?”

“Yes, I did.”

“They caught up with you on that, didn’t they?”

“No, they didn’t.”

“Then why did you put poison in his food?”

“I thought he would find out.”

“Were you just going to make him sick because you thought he would find out?”

“Yes, sir. I never intended to kill him.”

“Let me ask you this: What was your purpose in making Mr. Lee sick if you thought he was going to find out?”

“Well, I thought in the meantime I could have paid the money back.”

“Now, Mrs. Edwards, the reason you poisoned her was because she was just a cantankerous old lady, wasn’t she?” Britt said, his voice again loud and antagonistic. “At times she was difficult.”

“Extremely?”

“No, not extremely.”

“Made life miserable for you, didn’t she?”

“No, she did not.”

“Well, can you give us any reason whatsoever for giving poison to poor old Mrs. Edwards?”

“No. I was under a lot of drugs again all this time.”

Britt shifted to the night of Stuart’s death, getting her to admit that she was standing by, watching his agonies.

“Able to talk, weren’t you?” he asked with heavy sarcasm.

“I was able to talk,” she said defiantly.

“Did you ever tell anybody that you had given him poison?”

“No, sir. I did not.”

“Why?”

“When I went into the room, as soon as they would let me go in, they asked me had he been drinking much, had he taken too much of his medicine, and I said no. Then they told me I would have to leave out, so I left out.”

“Did you ever tell anybody, doctors, family, anybody that you had given him poison?”

“No, sir, I did not.”

“Why not?”

“Because I was afraid.”

“You were afraid they would save his life?”

“No, I wasn’t afraid they would save his life. I was hoping when I brought him in Thursday that he would be kept. I asked them to keep him.”

Britt turned to the loan Velma got six weeks before her mother’s death. She admitted that she never made a payment and was there when Lillie got the past-due notice.

“And there was the dickens to pay around that house, was there not?”

“No. She did not say anything at the time.”

“Well, why did you decide to make her sick?”

“Because I was afraid that she would find out, and I was hoping that I could get the money and pay it back to her. I did not mean to kill her.”

“Would you explain that, please?”

“Borrow the money from someone to pay the loan back.”

“Well, explain to us what you mean when you say that making her sick would allow you to borrow money.”

“Well, if she had to be in the hospital for a while, I would have had the chance,” Velma said, making little sense to anybody in the courtroom.

Britt handed Velma the two-ounce bottle of Terro and began asking about the amounts of poison she had given to each of her victims.

“You knew that both Singletary’s and Terro are completely tasteless, didn’t you?”

“Yes, sir, I did.”

“You knew that because nobody had ever complained when you put either one in their food.”

“Could you repeat that please?”