Doc: The Rape of the Town of Lovell (41 page)

"My . . . wording?"

"You called them 'ladies' and then 'women.' "

He frowned. "If they were ladies, they wouldn't be accusing me."

"I see." Judi stared at the desktop as though she were reading confidential files. "Doctor," she asked, "why did you move to Lovell?"

He paused, then looked from her to Wilcock and back again. "Because I was needed here," he said.

She shuffled some papers as the silence congealed. She noticec that his hands were in constant motion, smoothing his pants brushing back his hair, one finger tapping another.

"Come on now," he said confidentially. "Who paid you to do this to me?"

She began reading off the charges and asking his reaction to each. He denied two or three and then said he'd talked enough "That's your right," she said, and slapped her notebook closed.

Marilyn sat in the darkness, feeling sick and cold. Hours had passed since John left to buy the plastic trash can. She'd tried to call him at the Coast to Coast, but the line had been busy.

At last her phone rang. "Marilyn," John said, "you're not gonna believe this."

"I know," she said.

They talked for a few minutes. In the background, she heart someone warning him that his time was up.

John said, "They're taking me to Basin."

"I'll call Aarestad," she said.

"Okay." She could tell that he was trying to sound calm. That was always his way. He hated to see her worry.

She drove the two blocks to the clinic. A big deputy sheriff blocked the door.

"I'm Mrs. Story," she said. "I need to look up my attorney's number."

"Sorry, ma'am. Nobody gets in till they finish searching. And that won't be till late."

She refused to cry. As she drove home to try North Dakota information for the lawyer's phone number, the streets seemed unusually dark. Someone had turned off her porch light. Then she realized that every house was black. A power failure! She thought, John's leaving the city limits right about now. It's a sign.

She couldn't reach Aarestad. Her fingers scratched and fumbled at the phone as she dialed Ken Buttermore's number for help. When the preacher answered, she was crying so hard she could hardly speak.

The Reverend Kenneth Buttermore, an energetic young man who usually prepared his sermons three or four days early, had been polishing up his remarks for the Wednesday night prayer meeting when Marilyn telephoned the disastrous news in wrenching, gasping gulps.

The preacher loved every member of his flock, and none more than the Storys. He'd been pastor of an old church in Maxwell, Nebraska, when the doctor had come back home on a visit, heard one of his spellbinding sermons, and convinced him to take over the Lovell Bible Church. It proved to be the perfect marriage of leader and flock. "I try not to preach the negatives," the handsome minister with the thick brown wavy hair liked to say. "I preach love." Personally, he found it a challenge to love some of the Mormons, but he kept those negative feelings to himself. Too many pastors had tilted against the Saints and been run out of town.

After he finished consoling Marilyn, Buttermore phoned a lawyer friend and was informed that Elder Story
would
have to remain in jail till a judge set bail in the morning. The preacher refused to believe that God would allow such an injustice to one of His most faithful children, but the lawyer sounded positive.

Buttermore began dialing other officials of the Bible Church. Joe Brown's advice made the most sense. "Tom Holm and I'll drive to Basin," the hospital manager said. "You get on your knees with the congregation and pray."

By 7
p.m
., the little wooden church resounded with prayer. The pastor led his parishioners with elegiac fervor and tried to maintain a positive note.

Marilyn prayed by the phone. An autumn squall roared down the hill like a tornado. She thought, Another sign! She looked out the atrium window and saw leaves and trash and other debris flying by. Willow branches lashed the air like horsewhips. The storm moved off toward the Big Horns, leaving behind a charged silence. No more trick-or-treaters knocked. She couldn't help hoping that the Lord had driven Satan out. Now if only John would walk through the door. . . .

Friends set up a front-room vigil. Apparently the news of John's arrest had spread. A reporter from the
Chronicle
called for details. Marilyn's sister Marge arrived on an impromptu visit from Colorado and started to cry.

Just after
9 p.m
., the phone rang. John said he was passing through Greybull, thirty miles south, on his way back home.

At ten o'clock, lights flickered against the living room walls and a car pulled into the driveway. Marilyn ran across the lawn and hugged him. He was grinning, but he looked tired. She'd seen eyes like that on cowboys just coming in from riding night herd.

He seemed calm enough as he told the story. She thought, John, where's your anger? Where's your outrage? But that just wasn't his way. On the way south, he told her, the police car had stopped at the South Big Horn Hospital and a technician had drawn a sample of his blood. When he'd protested, they'd shown a court order.

John said that Joe Brown had yelled at the jailer, "You can't keep this man! He performed surgery this morning. If anything happens to his patients, you'll be responsible." After ninety minutes, John had been freed.

Marilyn told him that the police were still searching the clinic. Someone had called and said they'd seen two deputies carrying out the Ritter table. "I hope they got a hernia," Marilyn said. John seemed too tired to care.

Ken Buttermore phoned. "Marilyn," he said in his hearty voice, "the Lord opened the jailhouse door. The Lord pulled the string on the judge's heart and stopped the mouth of the oppressors. I don't know how he did it, but this has to be the work of the Lord."

Marilyn agreed.

"At first I was really surprised," the preacher went on, "but then I thought, God shouldn't surprise me anymore."

The final call of the night came from their friends the Nebels, Rex and Cheryl, fellow Bible Church members. Rex had been an undersheriff and knew the law. Cheri was quick and bright. Both were deeply religious. "Almighty God takes care of his children," Cheri told Marilyn enthusiastically. "Rex tried to say that the blackout and the storm were coincidence, but I believe in a realm of darkness that battles against the true men of God. This time the men of God won."

She said that she'd talked to people who'd driven by the clinic. Police cars were lined up outside, and neighbors were standing around gawking. The storm had caused broken windows and roof damage on the hill, but the clinic was untouched. "Let's call it the Passover Wind," Cheri told Marilyn, "like when the angel of death came and killed everybody and passed over the Jews."

For once, John was first in bed. Marilyn hadn't seen him so exhausted since med school. What a blow it must have been to be thrown into a cell! The most decent, the most law-abiding, the most pious, gentle,
useful
man in Big Horn County! She wrote in her journal:

10 31 84 Halloween. This afternoon the police—local, sheriff's department, and a Casper policewoman—arrested John downtown like a common criminal. . . .

"DOC"

_i.

« » *

Caroline Shotwell heard about the arrest by jungle drum and almost cried with relief. For the first time in ten years, she slept through the night.

At eight the next morning, she gave a prayer of thanks. Then the phone rang and she learned that Story was back at work at his clinic.

Chief Wilcock's home phone rang in the middle of breakfast. "You're hurting the town, Dave," Herman Fink said in his quavery voice. "These witnesses might be talking to you now, but when they have to testify under oath, they'll all be gone."

"I hope not," Wilcock said. He waited for the mayor to tell him he was fired, but all he heard was a click.

Aletha Durtsche's morning mailbag overflowed with copies of the weekly Lovell
Chronicle.
This November 1 edition carried a three-paragraph story under the headline:

COUNTY MAN CHARGED WITH SEXUAL ASSAULT

She laid a copy on the counter of Ponderosa Floral. Every delivery day since her last confrontation with owner Beverly Moody, she'd called out a cheerful "Good morning!" It was intended as a mild irritant and obviously accepted in the same spirit.

This time the florist looked up from some roses and said, "Oh, you're still struttin' around, huh?" "Yep," Aletha said.

As she was walking out the door, she heard, "You women are really sick!"

That same post-Halloween evening, Marilyn Story wrote in her journal:

ARREST

We were called before the judge for a bond setting ($10,000). John is required to check in every day to the police department. Can't leave state without telling the judge or getting permission. Harassment! Ps 3 "O Lord, how my adversaries have increased!" Ps 5 "For it is
thou
who dost blest the righteous man, O Lord.
Thou
dost surround him with favor as with a shield. "A civil suit has been filed by McArthur girls, 1.5 million.

BOOK E1E

JUSTICE AND DENIAL

TERRILL THARP

I'll tell you why Story has so many backers. He used to counsel his patients. He asked questions like, "What positions do you and your husband use when you make love?" He knows a lot of personal secrets. People are scared to death he'll tell if they come out against him.

—Arden McArthur

The prosecutor felt as though he'd broken open a hornets' nest. Angry letters appeared in the Lovell
Chronicle:

It's bad enough that some venomous women accuse Dr. Story of rape, but to have him convicted in your Policia station is showing complete disdain for the U.S. Constitution.

The way in which he was arrested showed he had already been convicted. Three squad cars surround his car on Main Street in Lovell when a phone call or one police officer would have been sufficient.

Is there a difference between a rifle butt search warrant served on a Jew's door in the dead of night or a pistol butt search warrant on a doctor's office. ... I would recommend each of your officers be decorated with a yellow swastika.

In Tharp's small office in Greybull, eight miles up the road from the county seat town of Basin and thirty miles south of Lovell, the telephone clanged all day. Newsmen demanded interviews. Anonymous callers suggested that he resign before they booted him out. Bible Church members informed him that prayers for the rehabili. tation of his soul were being said daily.

Cal Taggart, Lovell's most prominent citizen, made the situation worse by charging publicly that Dr. Story's accusers were "emotional" and "given to hearsay." The former state senator predicted from his carpeted office in the Taggart Building that "some of these women will find it difficult to get on the witness stand." To Tharp, the statement had the ring of an attempt at a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Intimidated witnesses phoned for reassurance. The victims had always been fearful about telling their stories in a courtroom, but now they also feared for their lives. One said her husband was pressuring her to drop out, and another called to say that she was no longer sure she'd been violated.

Tharp dictated a letter to the witnesses, suggesting that they avoid talking about the case, especially to the press and outside investigators. "If you are harassed or there is any overreaching on the part of anyone," he wrote, "please call this office. . . ."

No local judge would agree to handle the preliminary hearing. The Lovell justice of the peace declined because Story was his physician, and the Basin J.P. declined on the grounds that his mother had nothing but good to say about Story and "I thought it better to withdraw."

A justice from adjoining Washakie County finally agreed to preside in Basin on Tuesday, November 13, two weeks after the arrest. For the occasion, Story's lawyer subpoenaed every listed complainant. The women sat on stiff-backed wooden benches outside the courtroom, waiting to testify. They'd never been together as a group, and the place resounded with sobs and shrieks of surprise: "Not you, Wanda!" "Oh, gol, Mary, you too!" Sgt. Judi Cashel ran errands and tried to maintain morale.

As the day wore on, a few victims who'd been frightened by the latest uproar recovered their courage out of sheer annoyance at the six-hour wait. Mae Fischer advised her high school classmate Terri Timmons: "When we go in that courtroom, I want you to remember: we've got to do this because we're gonna be facing Satan himself " Aletha Durtsche knitted with red, raw hands; she'd come down with nervous eczema. Minda Brinkerhoff laughed and giggled and chattered about everything under the sun. Her sister Meg looked serene with her long straight silvery-white hair: the Madonna of the abused. The two oldest victims sat quietly by themselves. Julia Bradbury had been under the weather but refused special attention. Her friend Emma Lu Meeks patted her hand.

As Terrill Tharp surveyed the group, he felt annoyed that they'd been subpoenaed at all. None of them took the stand. Most of the hearing was spent in the judge's chambers, discussing three newspapers' demands that the proceedings be open. Story's new lawyer, Wayne Aarestad, argued, "In weighing the balance between the defendant's right to a fair trial and the public's right to know, I believe caution must be exercised in favor of the defendant." The visiting J.P. agreed and kept the hearing closed.