Doc: The Rape of the Town of Lovell (63 page)

The pastor also had it in for the women's movement. "Look at the women at the thrust: Kathy Karpan and Judi Cashel. Karpan wants to dominate. Cashel's overly sensual. They both show anger toward men. Doc can't fight back. He's a 1950s doctor. He doesn't understand that in the 1970s, people began to use the law to their own benefit. He didn't change with the times, and it caught up with him."

Arden McArthur had her own theories about Story's problems, but she was much too busy to join in the lengthy exegeses. She had a pair of failing businesses on her hands and a husband too weak to help.

Late on the morning of October 14, 1986, she was working on cap transfers at the dry cleaners when fifteen-year-old Marc phoned from home. "Mom," he said, "you better come! Dad's laying here in the chair and I can't tell if he's breathing or not."

Arden raced out the door. Dean had spent most of the summer in a Billings hospital. When they'd sent him home with a portable

YELLOW RIBBONS

oxygen pack, he'd insisted on another long driving trip, this time to see their children in Wyoming and Utah. Arden had had a good idea what that meant.

She ran inside her house. Meg's husband, Lovell Patrolman Dan Anderson, was administering mouth-to-mouth on the floor. Arden picked up Dean's cold hand. "Danny," she said, "he's gone."

"No he's not!"

It took the ambulance thirty minutes to make the run from the hospital, and five minutes for the return. Arden and Dan followed in the police car.

When Dr. Welch came out of the operating room, his lab coat was covered with blood. He said Dean's heart had burst.

89

APPEAL

With Story's appeal pending, the Defense Committee scrambled for exculpatory evidence. Volunteers pored over the 1,600-page trial transcript and analyzed thousands of pages of police reports and other documentation, looking for leads and contradictions. Private detectives stepped up their surveillances.

In a typical move, Lovell's Avon Lady was prevailed upon to sign an affidavit saying that on one of her sales visits, Arden McArthur had "expressed anger and frustration" about Dr. Story.

Back in Maxwell, Nebraska, the scholarly William Jerod Story began massive genealogical research on his brother's behalf. First he used the voluminous Mormon files in Salt Lake City to trace the Story family lineage to Pepin the Short, Eleanor of Aquitaine, the Viscomte d'Avranches, and an unnamed Irish king of 340 A.D. Then he searched out ancestral connections on the prosecution side. "Everyone's related to someone," he explained. "That helps us to understand why these people behaved the way they did toward my brother." He had no trouble showing interlocking family trees, but made no progress on his highest priority: "to show that the judge is related to the accusers."

Jerod soon amassed boxes full of "family group sheets" and other data. "Look here," he showed a visitor. "Five generations back, Richard Harrison was one of fifty-two Mormon assassins who committed the Mountain Meadows massacre. They killed a column of Arkansans on orders of Brigham Young. And he's in a direct line with Emma Lu Meeks!"

His file card on Judi Cashel began, "Judith Ann Cashel, 1141 Freden Blvd., Mills, Wyo. With Casper Police 71/2 years, came to Lovell 27 Sept. 84, set up office in Town Hall Building on Nevada. Used search warrants. Didn't know the word 'surreptitious.' Specialist in sexual cases. Penchant for wearing Dolly Parton wigs. Gave a lot of lectures—'I am woman, hear me roar' . . ."

His complete file on the Casper policewoman included her marital history, the churches she'd attended, her "hangouts," closest friends, personal habits, and ancestry for six generations.

Jerod also drew up an enemies list of corporations and businesses which he believed to be antagonistic to his brother. The list included Osco Drugstores, General Mills, General Foods, Beneficial Life, and the Pizza Hut in North Platte, Nebraska.

The sheer bulk of his research material began to tax the hand-hewn cedar walls of the old family store in Maxwell, where he'd lived since 1974 after retiring as a college language instructor. His trove included every edition of the Lovell
Chronicle
back to 1940, listings of prominent Lovellites and businessmen by religion (and Mormons ward by ward), and deep biographical and genealogical studies of every personage in the case.

Searching for legal references, he accumulated thirty lawbooks to go with his 800 works in German, his 300 volumes in French, his seven volumes on the Basques, his Bibles in English, German, Hebrew, Greek and Latin, and his works in Middle High German, Old High German, Frisian, Old Frisian, Old Saxon, Gothic, Chinese, Russian, Greek and Hebrew—10,000 volumes in all, just inside the old grocery's door bearing the faded Rainbow Bread logo.

In the course of the research, Jerod dredged up unexpected nuggets. "Meg and Minda are both liars," he informed the Defense Committee after reading a paper on psychology. "They look down and to the left. Psychologists claim that is a sign of lying."

When he wasn't flexing his scholarship, Jerod worked late into the night with his eighty-six-year-old mother, getting out the latest edition of
The Real Story.
Inez functioned as label paster and folder and sometime proofreader, often working for six and eight hours at a stretch. "Look at this!" the meticulous matriarch complained late one night. " 'Ridiculous' is misspelled three times."

The former undersheriff Rex Nebel nosed around the country on Dr. Story's behalf, but came up short on his most ambitious caper. He flew to Michigan to interview Terri Timmons' ex-fiance and try to settle the delicate question of who dismantled Terri Timmons' virginity. But the man wouldn't budge from his claim that in three years of dating, they'd never touched below the belt.

After a few such setbacks, Rex felt waves of helplessness and frustration. "It doesn't do much for your peace of mind to know that a great and innocent man is in the penitentiary and you can't lift a finger to get him out," he explained. "It's like one of those bad dreams where you're running from something and you can't move.

"I try to forgive the accusers," he went on. "I asked the Lord on my knees, 'Lord, show me how to love 'em.' I don't want this hate inside me 'cause it keeps me awake nights. I got so mad I broke our cordless telephone, just winged it outside. I've been taking baking soda and eating Rolaids, but I still got bad guts. I never had anything affect me like this."

His wife Cheri added, "Rex feels deeply. He hates hypocrisy. I do, too. I believe there's a constant battle for the souls of men. I believe there's a realm of evil with principalities and powers and rulers of darkness that battle against true men of God, men that refuse to be involved in sexual sins, refuse to be dishonest. Doc was one of those men."

Financial contributions picked up as Defense Committee members began appearing on talk shows to recount the railroading of an innocent man of God. Soon
The Real Story
was able to inform its thousand or so readers that "Wheaton, Illinois; White Bear Lake, Minnesota; Deaver, Wyoming; Kremmling, Colorado; Rockford,

Minnesota; Worland, Wyoming; North Platte, Nebraska; are just some of the places that contributions keep arriving from."

The Committee responded to every slur on Story's name. The merest mention brought a flurry of corrections, counterclaims, and threats of legal action, usually by Jan Hillman herself. Phone calls and letters went to Judge Hartman, Terrill Tharp and Paul Sironen. The
Ladies' Home Journal
drew an attack after it referred to the case in an article on doctor-rape. Patricia Wiseman of the Big Horn County Behavioral Clinic was threatened with a libel suit. Wyoming State Penitentiary officials walked on eggs.

Traps were set for the unwary. When Diana Harrison asked to meet old friend Marilyn at the Story clinic, Rex Nebel hastily installed a tape recorder in a heating vent. Marilyn's assignment was to put on a friendly face and pry out the inside story of the Mormon conspiracy.

But Marilyn proved to be a poor manipulator. "You're saying he's guilty," she said angrily, "and he isn't! And you
know
he isn't, Diana. . . . You have put an innocent man in prison."

"No, I haven't," Diana said meekly.

"Yes, you have! I'm sorry, but you have! You've hurt us more than anyone possibly could. ... I am amazed that you are the kind of a person who knows us as well as you know us and would believe Julia Bradbury, Emma Meeks, Wanda Hammond, Arden McArthur—the whole mess of people. I can't believe that you would take a side against us."

As Diana sighed, Marilyn remembered that the tape was running and sweetened her voice. "There's something more to it, don't you think?" she said. ". . . Did someone ask you to come here today?"

"Absolutely not. You know me better than that."

"No, I don't!" Marilyn snapped. "I don't know you at all."

As though to stress John's guilt, Diana asked, "Why did they take his license?"

"I'd like to know," Marilyn answered. "There is something more to this than meets the eye."

"What?"

"I'd like to know from you . . . and I'm not the only one to think that."

Diana turned the conversation to "things that you confided in me, that I have never told anyone."

"I don't know that I confided in you," Marilyn said.

"Well, listen—things that, you know—your depression. That has to mean something—"

"Oh, no."

"—with the way he treated you."

"Oh, no! He was never more than a perfect, beautiful, wonderful husband to me. . . . Depression comes with middle age. ... If you're trying to get something out of me about my marriage, you'll never, because it was a perfect marriage.
A perfect marriage!"

"Okay."

"I never once suspected him. I never will in all of my life. . . . No, absolutely no! You'll never convince me. ..."

Marilyn took a final stab at finding the smoking gun. "Does it have to do with family ties? . . . Has Arden got to you? The whole bunch?"

"No."

The meeting of the two old friends broke up after Diana asked sarcastically, "Marilyn, where did your prayers go? What happened to your prayers?"

"You don't have any idea what God has in mind for us," Marilyn snapped back. "Christians have gone through persecution and suffering for many, many years. And your fasting and prayers and your burning in the bosom and all that—I would be very careful about that. . . ."

Diana mumbled, "There's no hope. ..."

"Did you come to twist the knife? Is that what you're doing? Well, you did, when you said there's no hope."

On the way to the door, Marilyn stressed that she felt no hate toward anyone.

Argument on the appeal was scheduled for a week before Christmas. Early that morning, two dozen demonstrators sheltered against the knifing winds in front of the State Capitol in Cheyenne.

One carried a cardboard effigy of Story locked in stocks under black letters: "RAPIST JOHN STORY, convicted by a jury of his peers." Some wore buttons: "Trust Me, I'm a Doctor." A few circulated NOW petitions demanding a grand jury investigation.

Minda McArthur Brinkerhoff couldn't stop crying. "It's taken a long time," she told a reporter. Her youngest child, Shanardean, rode her shoulders in a snowsuit.

The biggest crowd in twenty-five years crowded into the Wyoming Supreme Court to hear Story's new lawyer, Gerald Mason, stress judicial errors, the "overzealous" prosecutor's "239 leading questions," Diana Harrison's claims about the sperm-stained tissue, Dr. Flory's inflammatory testimony, and the impossibility of having to defend against charges that went back seventeen years.

An assistant attorney general argued that the defense was asking the Supreme Court to retry the facts of the case. He also reminded the justices that Wyoming was one of two states without a statute of limitation. The court took the appeal under advisement.

Six months passed without a ruling. Then the court reversed Hayla Farwell's count on technical grounds. The other five were affirmed. Later the United States Supreme Court declined to review.

Arden McArthur heard the news by long-distance telephone. Her husband's death had sent her on a frantic odyssey, visiting with old friends in Texas and Utah, moving in with one or another of her children, then running off again. "I'm afraid of what I'll find if my feet touch the ground," she explained to one of her daughters.

She'd been trustful all her life, but no longer. She regretted the hardening in her outlook and fought against it. Sometimes she was able to summon up a twinge of pity for her old friend Dr. Story. Three years back, she'd come to the reluctant conclusion that he was sick, like Bob Asay, like the Rose Doctor, like so many other sad and dangerous men. She thought, This could have worked out better, but Story wouldn't let it. All we wanted was a nurse in his examining room, but he always said no.
I'm the doctor here. . . .

She'd read somewhere that sociopaths or antisocial personalities or whatever they were called never admitted guilt and enjoyed

"DOC"

taking risks. She'd also read that they adapted well to prison life. For her old friend's sake, she hoped it was true.