Doc: The Rape of the Town of Lovell (44 page)

"Uh . . . yes." She said she wouldn't be able to use that word in court. "I didn't know what it was called till this case came up."

Tharp suggested that the round little woman intensify her counseling at the behavioral clinic in Lovell. Patricia Wiseman and Judi Cashel had been trying to raise the consciousness of the victims, but some seemed as backward as ever. A few still hadn't told their husbands.

After several counseling sessions, seventy-six-year-old Emma Lu Meeks confessed to Tharp and Dave Wilcock that she'd been holding back vital information. "I saw Dr. Story's uh—his
penis,"
she said. "I couldn't say that word before." When the chief started to leave the room, the pioneer woman said, "You sit back down and listen, David Wilcock! I've got to practice saying it. . . ."

Terri Lee Timmons called from Powell, so upset that Tharp could hardly understand her. He urged her to talk to a counselor. He thought, She was fifteen when Story raped her and he damn near ruined her life; I've got to get her before the jury. But Terri had sounded ready to quit.

67

TERRI LEE TIMMONS

She'd had fits of despair since she was seven, but never like this. She couldn't stop crying. Antidepressants only aggravated her ulcer. For three months she'd walked around in a daze, an icy pain in her throat from holding back tears. Her cat ate more than she did. Terri was thirty-two, but her gaunt body made her look like an anorexic child in a gypsy-shag wig.

Loyd had been out of work for almost a year now, ever since the Lord had moved him to give up his job in Denver and take his family back to Powell. They were crammed into her parents' one-story house and rubbing one another raw. Wyoming winters were so depressing. She picked her way around the snowbanks and skidded on dirty ice. Chinook winds roared down from the Rockies, pruned the old trees and made the branches clack against the house like skeleton bones. The kids went from virus to virus. Sometimes little Trevor couldn't catch his breath; his chronic bronchitis seemed to be deepening into asthma. She rocked him for hours, their tears mingling. She seldom slept past 2 or 3
a.m
. She ached all over, and no doctor could help.

Her Celestial Father and her earthly husband were all that kept her from killing herself. "You're worried about that trial," Loyd told her. "Why don't you think of it as the end of eighteen bad years? This'll settle things once and for all."

Loyd's priesthood blessings were such a comfort that it was hard to imagine he was a convert. An elder by now, he kept his own sacred oil in the refrigerator. She would kneel in front of him while he anointed the crown of her head. "Terri Lee Timmons," he would say in his tender voice, "by the power of the Holy Melchize-dek Priesthood and in the name of Jesus Christ, I lay my hands upon your head and anoint you with this oil that has been consecrated and dedicated for the healing of the sick in the household of faith. In the name of Jesus Christ, Amen."

He would lift his hands, then return them to her head and say, "Terri Lee Timmons ... I seal this anointing upon you and give you a blessing." At the end he would say, "And this blessing you will know comes from your Heavenly Father."

After her tearful telephone conversation with the county attorney, she rushed to her bishop for counseling. A few nights later she summoned the strength to drive the icy road into Lovell for a group therapy session with some of the other witnesses. A speaker from the State Rape Crisis Center reminded them of their rights as women. They were urged to stop turning John Story's crimes in against themselves; they were
his
filthy acts and his alone. The women were no more responsible than the victims of a rattlesnake or a tornado.

It felt good to visit with the other women and learn that the same questions were tormenting them, but it was painful to see how easily they lost control, to watch their hands tremble as they spoke, to get a preview of how dumbstruck they would be on the witness stand . . . herself included.

It took her three weeks to write about the meeting. Her journal had always read like latter-day Dickens: sick children, family problems, her dyslectic brother's death in a car crash, personal guilts, unpaid bills, unemployment payments running out, aches, pains, depressions, tears. Now she added another chapter:

It was a good evening. I expressed the fear that Story's followers might hurt me and my family, and I am afraid that they will take one of my kids. This really bothered me, so I talked to Taya's teacher at school about it. She talked to the principal—they decided not to tell the other teachers and that I should talk to Taya about what she needed to do to stay safe. So I did, and it upset her.

Wed and thurs nights the 30th and 31st she did not sleep a wink Scared me to death. She had been complaining of headaches and stomachaches for weeks. ... I took her to the doctor. He checked her over, and said she is a victim of "stress." I rubbed her back and neck the next few nights and made sure she was asleep before I went to bed. . . .

Counseling brought more insights. She discovered that behind her depression lay a blind rage against men, especially the handsome genius who'd dumped her for another woman after a three-year courtship. A few weeks before the trial, she wrote rapidly and with her usual disregard for spelling:

Loyd took me to dinner at the church for Prime Rib. That night and for two more nights I had terrible nightmares again. I was sick for three days. The trial will probably affect me worse than that. . . .

I found I was full of very bad feelings for-again. I found

them from very deep inside of me and they were very strong feelings. I have been in agony for days now again. Why can't this end. I want all these bad feelings against him resolved. I found I wasn't angry with him because he married someone else, but because of the dishonest decietful munipulative way he treated me and used me throughout our whole relationship. The pain from all these feelings was very hard to bear.

The Lord blessed me by helping me understand that there wasn't

anything wrong with me, it was- that had the problem and

probably still does. I have felt a lot better about it since then.

I am basicly dealing with my nerves on this Story trial in two weeks. I feel like I want to throw up a lot of the time. The stress and headaches are difficult to get through sometimes. Then other times I feel like I want to stand on a chair and shout, "By damn Satan, your not going to beat me!" The strenght will come, I know it will. . . .

TERRI LEE TIMMONS

She kept telling herself, "I'm sick and tired of men taking advantage of me." She set about improving her self-image. The mirror was no help. At ninety-nine pounds, she looked slack-skinned, half alive. The last time she'd gone to Story, she'd been a healthy, chunky fifteen-year-old with well-defined muscles and curves.

Spring came and her counseling continued. She learned how to say words like "intercourse" without turning red, and how to breathe on the witness stand, and how to listen carefully to each question before answering. Over and over she was reminded that she was as good as any man in the courtroom, including the judge, and there was no need to tremble in their august presence.

She enrolled in a weight-lifting course to build herself up for the ordeal. By the time the last patch of snowmelt disappeared, she felt as though Heavenly Father was making her into a different woman.

68

THE TRIAL

The squarish form of the Big Horn County Building bulked large among Basin's billowing trees and frame houses and the small shops and stores that ran for less than a mile along a widened stretch of the two-lane Wyoming Highway 16. The town had been called Basin City back in the days when the word "deadline" alluded to the fate of any local sheepman who crossed into cow country. Basin hadn't grown much through the years. Its population was still barely 1,400.

The County Building was the tallest structure in sight. Its walls were of light brown brick and its roof of terra cotta. The architect had created his own version of a Potemkin front: four handsome Ionic pillars tinted in the faintest pink repeating a shade found on cliffs to the east. Heavy white doors opened on a vestibule housing a 35-cent pop machine. A small lobby served several public offices staffed by women in skirts and white blouses and men in Pendleton shirts and lariat ties with pointed metal tips. A broad staircase led up to a movie-set courtroom carved in rich dark woods. A narrower staircase led to rabbit-warren offices on the top floor.

The comfortable old building was set back from the street by a broad reach of lawn and shaded by a forty-foot weeping birch and two thick spruces in deepest blue-green. An angled parking area in front accommodated five or six cars and was seldom full. Across C Street, Bernadine's fabric shop and Odds 'n' Ends Recycle flanked a fading sign,
B
asin
R
epublican-
R
ustler
. Big Horn County still had its share of rustlers and more than its share of Republicans, but the newspaper had long since gone to its rest.

The trial of John Huntington Story, M.D., opened on the first day of Holy Week, a coincidence which wasn't lost on the eighty-five members of the Lovell Bible Church. District Judge Gary Hart-man, a quiet man with a reputation for toughness, had cleared his calendar for the month.

In one of many pretrial rulings, the white-haired judge had banned any mention of the Medical Board hearings and placed strict limits on testimony of the law officers involved, since almost everything they knew was hearsay. The preliminary rulings were victories for Story and Wayne Aarestad; they meant that the verdict would turn almost entirely on the testimony of the complainants.

Prosecutor Terry Tharp took his preliminary losses and waited. Except for Aletha Durtsche, none of the listed victims had ever appeared against Story. He hoped that their testimony would be fresh and convincing. And if it wasn't—well, he still had his sax and his law degree. He could start over. Somewhere.

In the tedium of jury selection, the defense looked for impressionable females and the prosecution for hard-nosed married men. Unacceptable candidates were sent home by the carload. The first reject, John Gams, turned out to be a Story patient. So did several others. All were excused, as were several of Story's fellow churchmen. Some members of the venire were dropped after confessing to fixed opinions. Mona Lee Averett admitted that she was convinced of Story's guilt. A dubious Nancy Moore said, "I don't know how this could happen to any woman and not know." Mrs. John Pru said she lived across the street from the accused and believed that he was innocent "because of his lifestyle." Mrs. Burke, a nursing home volunteer, admitted that "we maintain loyalty to the doctors." A rancher named Hyatt said, "Well, to be right truthful . . . anytime a doctor steps into a room with a patient without an accompanying nurse he is asking for trouble." Mrs. Preis was excused when she explained that she was hard of hearing. A farmer explained that he was in the middle of planting; another was calving, a third lambing. One woman was eight months pregnant and another was "against men right now." Prospective juror No. 93 nodded off during the proceedings. No. 98 didn't seem to understand the questions. All were excused. Eleven women and three men survived. Two would serve as alternates.

Both sides made spare opening statements. Tharp told the jurors that Story was charged with six counts of forcible rape and three of sexual assault spanning the years 1967 to 1983. He listed his witnesses, synopsized what each would say, and was back in his seat in twenty minutes.

Aarestad spoke for half as long and came off as warm and friendly, his deep growly voice somehow easier on the ear than the intense young prosecutor's stressed treble. "I suppose you have figured out by now that I am Wayne Aarestad, one of Dr. Story's attorneys in this case," he opened. "And I don't know if congratulations are in order for being selected to this case."

He reminded the attentive jurors that twenty-seven -years back, Lovell had lost its physician and Dr. Story "responded to that call."

"The evidence will show that he is a dedicated physician," Aarestad continued in his pleasing North Dakota drawl, "and we will further show that in some respects he was a little bit out of time sequence in that he almost practiced nineteenth-century form of medicine in the twentieth century. ... He was extremely caring and considerate and kind to his patients. He did devote a lot of time to them. . . . Oftentimes he acted as counselor, somebody who offered an ear and listened to many, many problems.

"Many of these complaining witnesses that Mr. Tharp has indicated will testify are those who were most demanding upon Dr. Story in respect to utilizing his services that I consider extramedi-cal. He was a friend to them. The evidence will show that many of them brought cookies to him and painted pictures of him, his fam-

iiy"

The lawyer closed with a palms-up gesture toward his client. "Dr. Story is going to testify. He
wants
to testify. This is his moment of truth. This is his ability finally to tell his side of the story." There was no mention of a conspiracy defense.

David Wilcock looked less rumpled than usual as he took the stand, followed by the strawberry blond Judi Cashel in her newest uniform and polished shoes. The two law officers outlined their qualifications, told how they'd located the victims and investigated the case, identified some of the state's exhibits, and laid the groundwork for the complainants' testimony. Aarestad's cross-ex-amination was respectful and brief.