Doc: The Rape of the Town of Lovell (64 page)

On August 4, 1986, seven weeks after the Wyoming Supreme Court ruling, Marilyn turned sadly to her journal. "Today John entered the Wyoming State Prison for the second time," she wrote. "This time he drove himself up to the gate and reported in 'returning from bail.' Susan and I said good-bye to him while a guard quietly stood by. He picked up his few personal items, slung his 'prison' boots over his shoulder and walked alongside the guard across the compound and through the doors without looking back (our last view of him). His last words to us—'Head for [Susan's home in] Colorado and don't stop until you get there.' We obeyed."

90

PRISON

Penitentiary officials were quickly reminded that the new man was important. His first visitors were former Senator and Mrs. Cal Taggart. The three old friends chatted for several hours.

Taggart returned to Lovell with a confidential message for his friends on the Defense Committee: "I don't think Doc wants to get out of the pen. He's always been very naive about the whole situation. He asks for advice and doesn't take it. He only wants you to agree with him. I feel sorry for Marilyn."

Soon Taggart received a letter from Story asking for an affidavit affirming that he'd been victimized by an unfair judge. Taggart replied that he hadn't attended the trial, "but I still think you're innocent." Privately he took the position that he'd done enough.

Inside the walls, the first blowup came after prison officials took letters addressed to "Dr. John Story," stamped them "no such person," and returned them to Lovell. A small package was sent back to Jan Hillman in damaged condition that suggested tampering. Before the long-distance phone calls and incendiary letters stopped flying back and forth, Story and Hillman had involved the warden, the Lovell postmaster and a team of U.S. postal inspectors. The prisoner put out word that he wouldn't accept mail that lacked his title. After that, all mail addressed to "Dr. John Story" or "John Story, M.D." went through untouched.

There was more friction when a prisoner staffer mentioned "Dr. Story" and was told by an annoyed guard, "There's no Dr. Story here."

"There sure is," Story piped up. "I'm him."

When another guard addressed him as "John," Story instructed him, "You call me anything you want here, but save my first name for my wife and my mother."

He took a fellow prisoner aside and said, "Pass the word to the others. You're no friend of mine unless you call me doctor, especially if there's a guard around. They think they can erase my degree. They don't understand. Nobody in the world can take it away except the University of Nebraska."

He refused to respond to a guard lieutenant who called him "John." The officer repeated his first name, and Story walked away. For weeks afterward, prison personnel went out of their way to use his first name. At night, guards would peek in on him and say, "How ya doing,
John?"

The psychological warfare raged. Story told Marilyn, "A counselor warned me, 'You better not let anybody call you doctor or you'll end up in the hole.' I just smiled and said, 'Well, I've never been to the hole.' I kind of challenged him to put me there. I'm one of Solzhenitsyn's prisoners that don't change. In here, they know the guys that are tough enough to go to the hole and live there for months. I'm one."

He confided that prison officials were "Kennedy-type people. They would first-name the Queen of England." He insisted that there was an important issue involved. "In prison, all you need to do is say you're guilty and they'll smile at you and treat you fine. The worst thing you can do is be innocent and say so. You're a dirty dog then. Everybody frowns, the counselors are down on you. They'll never destroy me. I won't change."

He admitted that prison was an incongruous place for an innocent man, but G. Gordon Liddy had toughed it out and so
could
he.

PRISON

Marilyn went home and wrote in her journal: "Separation— something so rare for us—so foreign and distasteful. But 'I will lie down in peace and sleep, for tho I am alone, O Lord, You will keep

me safe.'"

Dutifully she added the scriptural reference, "Ps. 4:8," as she'd always been taught as a child.

EPILOGUE

1

THE SUPPORTERS

By the blessing of the upright the city is exalted: but it is overthrown by the mouth of the wicked.

—Proverbs 11:11, quoted by Cheryl Nebel

For a long time after her hero went off to prison, florist Beverly Moody tried to reconcile her anger with her need to earn a living. "In my business I can't be ignorant to people," she explained. "But I'm not gonna put my arm around Aletha Durtsche and Arden McArthur and say, 'Hi, how are ya?' There's no 'Hi, how are ya' when an innocent man's in prison."

She maintained that Lovell was dying because too few of its citizens lived their beliefs. "That's why I admire Doc so much. I've told my husband Larry over and over: there's not enough men in this world that'll stand up for what they think is right. You could never say that about Doc."

Shunned and boycotted by the accusers and their sympathizers, the Moodys talked about starting over in Worland.

Pastor Kenneth Buttermore looked out on his thinning flock and announced, "Volunteers will now collect the offering." He was at a loss to explain where the Bible Church's regular ushers were on this beautiful Sunday morning when the air flowed down the mountain slopes like melting ice. "Are those guys on strike today.

he asked with a mischievous smile. "Are they striking for more money? For better sleeping conditions?"

The congregation had to laugh. Someone called out, "They're working at the sugar factory."

"Oh, yes," Buttermore replied. The sugar tramps were working around the clock these days. A white cumulus cloud hovered over the refinery at all hours, and the hum of the centrifugal separators hit the ear like the lowest note on an organ. The pastor said he would expect to see his missing ushers as soon as the campaign ended.

He led the group in song, his own jubilant voice soaring above the others. He'd always tried to maintain a joyous church, even in these difficult days when its most prestigious charter member was serving time for unspeakable crimes.

In the second year of Elder Story's incarceration, Pastor Buttermore reduced the schedule of special prayer sessions and finally halted them entirely, but his personal fidelity remained as solid as his belief in God. Had he ever wavered about Dr. Story's innocence?

"Never.
In my wildest dreams I couldn't imagine him guilty." Nor had he given up hope that yellow ribbons would fly again in the Story front yard.

"Doc might die in the pen," he said in a moment of frankness, "but the case is not closed, because God is gonna do some marvelous things." He said he just hoped the accusers would "accept the Lord and become part of the family. Then I could hug 'em and love 'em."

Lovell's senior pastor had greater expectations for Elder Story than for his failing community. Church attendance was down all over town. "The sexual abuse and sexual sin here is staggering," Buttermore said with a glum shake of his head. "It will always be that way, till folks return to God."

Rex and Cheryl Nebel went through changes of their own, but their belief in Doc's innocence remained as constant as their pastor's.

"My letters to the editor were the only thing that saved my butt," Rex mused. His philippics also revealed a hitherto undeveloped talent for writing. He enrolled in the community college in Powell and began pulling straight A's. Some day he hoped to be able to write for a living.

He told friends that he doubted he would return to law enforcement. "I lost every cop friend I had. Good riddance! I don't want these Lovell pigs around here." He spat the words again:
"Pigs!
One of 'em stole the nameplate off Doc's office. One of 'em's a window peeker and a weirdo. Another's into porn. This case was right up his alley; he got to talk dirty to women."

Like the Reverend Buttermore, Rex and Cheri saw a doomsday scenario for their hometown. "These fools never learn, never change," he said. "Things just get worse. Crack cocaine is the big deal in Lovell now. I see dopers that are skin and bones. Sex and dope—that's their life. The other day a guy beat up his wife 'cause she left a party before he did. When he woke up the next morning, his right hand was Superglued around his penis and they had to take him to the hospital. I saw him the next day with his hand in a bandage. That's Lovell for ya."

Rex, Cheri and a few of Doc's other supporters liked to sit up late in the warm Nebel living room and share gleanings from the case. "She started when she was sixteen, and I can prove it" . . . "She wore a filmy nightgown in the hospital and just threw herself at Doc" . . . "What can you expect of pea-brains like Hartman and Tharp?" . . . "That guy calls himself a Christian attorney. Isn't that a contradiction in terms?"

The Mormons were highest on their verbal hit list. "There's ten church high councils scheduled in Lovell right now for polygamy," Rex confided. "What does that say about those Latter-day quote unquote Saints?"

But the former biker also found an unexpected mellowness within himself. One night he was sitting in a saloon when someone accused the Mormons of ruining Lovell's only good doctor. Another customer responded, "I'm sick and tired of the LDS being blamed for everything!"

Rex clenched his fists, then walked out. "I would have said too much," he explained to Cheryl.

He still considered himself Doc's strong right arm, but he was no longer disposed to throw folks through walls or sit up till six in the morning writing invective. Doc put him to the test by trying to involve him in a half-baked jailhouse scheme to pry a partial refund from Wayne Aarestad. Doc wanted Rex to sign an affidavit that Rex and the lawyer had been out partying on nights when Aarestad should have been preparing for trial. Doc wrote from his cell, "It could mean 32 to 42M in dollars for Marilyn instead of living off borrowed money. Do you know the extent of Aarestad's deceit? Now—the time is now or not later.
We're all accustomed to my years in the penitentiary by now."

"See?" Rex said when he read the letter aloud. "He's so damn sarcastic, trying to jab me."

Rex wrote that the plan was too dangerous. Doc replied, "It's come to a point where you're just gonna have to feed everything to me and let me be the judge."

Rex complained to Cheri, "See? Doc's judgment has got him into some pretty deep water. I'm not letting his judgment rule our future."

Doc pressed on. He gave Marilyn a note to be hand-delivered to Rex: "Would you please quite soon write to me a description of all things that you know as soon as possible. Could refer for security to him [Aarestad] as Alice. . . . This would be critically valuable unless I am reading you completely wrong. ..."

Rex refused. "I've got three kids and an old lady and a future in this state," he explained. "I've got to think about that, too." He hoped his old friend and mentor wasn't trying to use him. That certainly wouldn't be like the Doc he'd known before.

Jan Hillman was the only member of the Defense Committee willing to admit that she'd ever questioned Doc's innocence. Fortunately for her peace of mind, she'd been able to resolve her doubts and continue her buzz-saw campaign to win his freedom.

"When I take a stand I'm not about to back down," she ex
plained in her
pleasant voice, "but I do try to be intelligent about it.
When
I first
read the
trial transcripts and the Medical Board hearings, I thought,
Can I be that dumb?
Am I being blind? But

EPILOGUE

no, I'm not. I'm still convinced. Do you know what Aletha Durtsche wrote the Medical Board? 'I dearly love Dr. Story. I don't want to hurt him.' Now that woman has
not
been raped!"

Two years after the conviction, Jan was still sending out press packets, attacking the accusers, pruning and correcting the record, threatening lawsuits. She instigated a portrayal of the case on TV's "60 Minutes." After the CBS airing on March 1, 1987, letters and checks poured in. A woman in Massachusetts wrote, "I have never been so ashamed of our judicial system." A letter from Montana said, "What kind of monster is your county attorney?" A New Jersey nurse asked, "How can I help?" A Seattle man said, "Everyone at Boeing Aircraft was talking about '60 Minutes.' Almost unanimously they agreed that Dr. Story was railroaded."

Jan found herself in demand on the broadcast circuit. She swore she wouldn't rest till Doc was freed. But she refused to let the case squelch her natural sense of humor. "In the Lovell area," she quipped, "sexual harassment will not be reported. But it will be graded."

2

THE STORYS

Death—I used to sit here and she used to sit over there and death was as close as you are. . . . The opposite is desire.

—Tennessee Williams,
A Streetcar Named Desire

Marilyn's crushed spirits were revived by "60 Minutes." In her regular Saturday phone conversation with John, he told her that he was receiving better treatment from guards who'd seen the show.