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Authors: Michael Benson

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“Now, at some point in your relationship, isn’t it true that you were the aggressor?”
“Yes, sir.”
“There were times when you would be physical with Michael King?”
“Yes, sir.”
“You struck him?”
“Yes.”
“And at those times, he never struck you back. He walked away?”
“Yes.”
“He was never violent with you, was he, Ms. Robb?”
“No.”
“What would he usually say to you after you hit him?”
“He’d ask me, ‘Why’d you do that?’”
On the surface, Arend’s cross-examination might have seemed supportive of the defense’s case, but the jury picked up on the subtleties. Sure, Michael King was showing signs of stress, but it wasn’t so much that he was sick. It was more that he was a jerk, a guy whose pressure cooker had no release valve—a guy ready to blow. “Thank you, ma’am,” Arend said.
There were no questions on redirect, and Judge Economou declared a long lunch break. He suggested the jurors go outside and take a walk, get some fresh air. There was some business the court needed to attend to before they could proceed.
 
 
Judge Economou didn’t like the look in the defendant’s eyes, hadn’t for a while. It wasn’t that he saw evil in those eyes; rather, he saw nothing at all. Michael King was inanimate, dulled, devoid of emotion—to the point where the judge wondered if he was still cognizant of his trial’s significance, that his life was on the line. So the judge ordered that two court-appointed doctors examine King to determine if he was still competent to stand trial. As it turned out, the doctors were available that afternoon.
The defendant, of course, had been examined before the trial began and had been judged competent, but that might have changed. Although it was rare, cases existed in which a defendant was competent before a trial began but—because of stress or whatever—became incompetent. More common were malingering defendants who faked incompetence to stop their own trial.
This turn of events made Denise Lee’s loved ones anxious. They wondered what would happen if King proved incompetent. Would they lose their chance to hear him condemned to death? Their stress only grew as the examination process took longer than expected. Court did not resume until Friday morning.
CHAPTER 22
SEPTEMBER 4, 2009
With the jury out, Dr. Ed Regnier testified regarding the defendant’s competence. The court officially recognized him as an expert. Dr. Regnier said he’d seen Michael King in jail the previous day for more than two hours, and had performed on him a clinical review. King answered all questions and was cooperative. Dr. Regnier reviewed reports submitted by Dr. Kenneth Visser and Dr. Michael P. Gamache. Taking all of that into consideration, Regnier declared the defendant competent to proceed. King understood what was going on around him and appreciated the gravity of his predicament. He even understood the rules of court, and distinguished the guilt and the penalty phase of the trial.
None of that should be taken as an indication that Michael King was a mentally well person. During the previous day’s exam, he also demonstrated paranoia and confusion. He experienced difficulty, for example, recalling the events of his life in chronological order. Twice during the exam, Dr. Regnier recalled, King was overcome with emotions. He required a pause in the questioning in order for him to regain his composure. He said he was overcome with grief, although it was possible that he only grieved over his own dilemma.
There were times when Dr. Regnier found the defendant to be malingering, using the opportunity of the exam to better his own condition. King realized a poor diagnosis might take the death penalty off the table.
As an example of King’s malingering, Dr. Regnier found it unlikely that the defendant remembered being a plumber but could not recall the number of inches in a foot or a yard. It took King a very long time to solve even the easiest of math problems.
“The confusion was manipulative and served his purposes,” the witness said.
When it came to his trial, and the charges against him, King proved to be an expert. He could quote the charges against him in detail. King told his examiners that he not only understood the charges, but he was innocent of them. He said that the prosecution was merely out to get him, that he was being railroaded—and the tape recordings that he’d listened to in court were fabrications of the state, created out of thin air in order to incriminate him.
Dr. Regnier saw no evidence of delusions, and found that many of the defendant’s concerns betrayed a three-dimensional appreciation of his infamy, the spotlight of notoriety that relentlessly illuminated him. He heard people say horrible things about him, and he didn’t like that. He said that he didn’t like the idea of the media “covering” his ex-wife, that she didn’t deserve that kind of publicity.
The subject’s voice was clear and soft when he answered questions. He was familiar with what was and wasn’t appropriate behavior in court. He knew when he could speak aloud and when he had to keep his mouth shut.
King told his examiners that he felt a personal disconnect between the things he knew to be true about himself and the horrible things people were saying about him in the newspapers and on television.
This represented a normal defensive posture, and it was possible that the defendant believed the things he said, as those beliefs made it easier for him to cope with the fact that his own impulsiveness had destroyed his life.
King denied that he had mental-health issues, and his examiners tended to agree. He wasn’t even borderline, but “quite competent” to continue. The defendant was asked about the snowmobile accident, and he verified that it had occurred. He understood that the state attorneys were not in court to help him, that there was an adversarial aspect to a trial. He “couldn’t believe” that the jury had convicted him.
King said he heard a voice sometimes, that he was distracted about half the time, that sometimes the voice in his head was so loud that it made it difficult for him to hear or pay attention to what was being said in the courtroom. He heard the voice every day, but not all day. When asked if he thought the voice in his head was a symptom of mental illness, he said no. It was not his imagination. The voice was real. He did not believe the voice was human. It didn’t have a body. It wasn’t “the Devil” or any other sort of religious being. He never heard the voice until he was arrested and jailed. The voice, he maintained, had the power to alter his perceptions. It could—and he used an odd phrase—“flip him pain.”
Dr. Regnier told the jury that his examination of the defendant took place during the early-morning hours, beginning at five-thirty, and that lawyers from both sides were present.
 
 
Dr. Greg DeClue took the stand and identified himself for the court as a forensic psychiatrist who had earned his Ph.D. in psychology at the University of Missouri in 1983, and was fully approved by the American Psychological Association (APA). His specialties included forensic psychology, psychology of interrogation and confession, and the assessment and treatment of sex offenders. He had been in a private independent psychological practice in Sarasota since 1987. Dr. DeClue said that he, too, had examined Michael King the previous day and determined that, without exception, the defendant understood and appreciated the charges against him, the range of penalties he faced, and showed “some ability” to discuss legal strategy with his defense team. If he chose to testify during the penalty phase of his trial, there was no indication that he lacked the capacity to do so properly.
 
 
After listening to the doctors’ testimony, Judge Economou declared Michael King competent to continue, and the jury was brought in. The defense called their first witness of the day, the defendant’s brother, a heavily tattooed Gary King, who was questioned by Carolyn Schlemmer. His voice shook as he said he was forty-three years old and drove a long-haul semi for a living.
“Are you nervous?”
“Yes, ma’am. It’s been a long time since anyone asked my age.”
Gary’s nervousness gradually dissolved, and he grew animated and loud when he spoke. He explained that he lived in Memphis, Tennessee, but wasn’t home much as he drove trucks across the nation. Michael King was his younger brother, about five years younger. Rodney was the only brother younger than Mike.
“Let me direct your attention now to the accident Mike had back in the 1970s. Do you remember that?”
“Yes, ma’am.” Gary recalled driving a snowmobile and pulling Mike on a sled. Mike was wearing a ski mask, and the rope connecting the snowmobile to the sled was twenty to twenty-five feet long. When the snowmobile turned from side to side, Mike moved back and forth. As the turns became sharper, Mike was sort of whipping from side to side, holding on for dear life. Gary took the snowmobile down the side of a large hill, the hill by the red barn, where the boys used to play king of the hill. He took it easy at first, but then he looked back and saw the sled was traveling faster than the snowmobile. The rope had an increasing amount of slack. So, to pull the rope taut once again, Gary gunned it down the hill. By the time they passed a shed, he figured the thing was going forty, forty-five miles per hour. Gary went to make a right turn.
“We were going
supersonic speed,
and I yelled, ‘Mike, let go!’” But Mike didn’t let go. The kid had his head down, so he couldn’t see where he was going, couldn’t see what was about to happen. “I was watching him go and go, and there was slack, and he went
boom!
Into a wall with his head down.”
“What was your reaction when that happened?”
“I said, ‘Oh, my God!’” Gary ran over to his brother, but Mike wasn’t moving. He shook him, but his brother remained motionless in the snow. Gary pounded on Mike’s chest. He screamed that he was sorry and begged his unconscious brother to forgive him.
Mike was bleeding from his nose and mouth. Gary picked him up, and Mike’s eyes popped open. “Praise the Lord,” Gary said. But blood continued to pour out of his nose. His face was covered with blood. Gary carried Mike to the house and told his mom that Mike had been in an accident. They got ice from the freezer and put that on his head. They grabbed the frozen meat from the freezer and used that, too. They tried to get the swelling down, but Mike’s face and head were visibly growing. Their mom put everybody in the car and drove to the emergency room at the hospital. Gary remembered that he was in the backseat holding a frozen steak to his injured brother’s head. As they were heading into the hospital, Gary got his first look at Mike’s teeth and could see that they were “all mangled up.”
Inside, Mike was treated by a really old doctor, who said they couldn’t do anything for head injuries, and that Mike’s teeth might fall out. They were ordered to take Mike home, continue administering the ice, and to make sure he didn’t fall asleep for the next forty-eight hours. If he did, he might slip into a coma. The incident badly upset Gary. Schlemmer asked why.
“I felt bad. It was an accident, but I felt responsible. He was a young person. I think it contributed to things he later told me about his life. I felt responsible, but it was an accident.”
“Did anyone else see the accident?”
“My brother Rodney was also outside when it happened.” Gary explained that Rodney was not on the snowmobile or on the sled. He might have been the best witness.
“Back in the 1970s, all doctors could do with head injuries was say ‘put ice on it’ and ‘don’t let him sleep’?”
“Yes.”
“And there was severe bleeding?”
“Yes, from the nose and mouth. When he hit that pole, he was embedded in the pole. If only he had missed that pole ...” Jurors had now heard that the defendant had hit a shed and a pole, and some may have wondered which it was, if either.
“Mike still had his baby teeth?”
“Some. His teeth were mangled for the rest of his life.”
“You are six years older than Mike?”
“I think five.”
“And this happened in January or February of 1978?”
“Yes.”
“This was a traumatic event for you?”
“Yes, ma’am. I thought he might not live. I didn’t think someone could take that kind of impact and survive. I think God helped Mike that day.”
“You and your brother Mike did a lot of things together when you were kids?”
“Not a lot. We played Frisbee and stuff together. Mike was closer to Rodney’s age. Jim was older, higher in school.”
“Speaking of school, of the brothers, was Mike slow to learn things in class?”
“Yes, he was a slower developer.”
“Was there a change in Mike’s personality after the accident?”
“Yes, he was happy-go-lucky before, but after, he was—well, just different. Later, through the years, I knew he was having problems.”
“Did he tell you about his headaches and the buzzing in his head?”
“Yes, he would complain, and I would bring up the sledding accident. He would say yeah, he still had a buzzing in his brain. I never knew what to say or how to help him. The doctor said there was no treatment for brain damage.”
Gary figured the accident had to be what caused the buzzing. Mike simply didn’t have vices. He didn’t smoke or drink. He didn’t own guns and he had no tattoos. “He was normal, like society wants a person to be,” Gary said.
After the accident, Mike sometimes seemed as if he had a tenuous grip on reality, hallucinating and exaggerating.
“Could you give us an example of Michael’s being out of touch with reality?”
“One time, he told me he saw ghosts and that he had been shooting at ghosts.”
“And what did you and your other brother do when he said things such as this?”
“We teased him about it.”
Gary then told the jury about the chain saw incident. It occurred in 1988, when Michael was seventeen. He’d brought the chain saw into the house.
“Mike, my girlfriend—who was pregnant at the time—and I were watching a movie on TV.
Texas Chain Saw Massacre.
You can tell exactly how long ago this happened because my son is twenty now and in college. During the movie, Mike got up and walked outside. I remember being traumatized by the movie. I couldn’t believe that they could make a movie like that. Seemed evil. Next thing I heard
reeeeeeeeeee,
” Gary said, imitating the sound of a chain saw. “Mike had the chain saw going and he was cutting branches off of our father’s blue spruce trees.”
“What happened next?”
“I told him, ‘What are you doing?’ I told him he was going to get in trouble.”
“What did he do?”
“He looked up and then he went inside the house. Mike came into the kitchen with the chain saw still going. He filled the kitchen with smoke, and he was twirling circles with the chain saw. I told him to turn it off,
turn it off.
”
“Then what, if anything, did Mike do?”
“The next thing I know, he started walking toward me with the chain saw. There was a scary look in his eyes. He had a ghostlike look in his eyes. It was like he couldn’t hear what I was saying. It was very loud.
Reeeee, reeeeee.
I told him I was going to hit him if he didn’t turn that thing off.”
Mike did turn it off, and left the house via the garage. He still had that vacant “nobody home” look on his face, and Gary asked him why he did that. “Did what?” was his reply. Mike had no idea what he’d just done. At the time, Gary admitted, he couldn’t believe it. He was shocked. He never told his parents or his big brother, Jim, who weren’t home at the time, about the chain saw incident. Gary and Rodney cleaned up the mess, picking up all of the blue spruce limbs off the lawn and throwing them out into a field.
BOOK: Michael Benson's True Crime Bundle
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